I Almost Let My Failed Startup Destroy Me
medium.com
medium.com
"Eyes on the prize" is actually the right attitude, but the prizes should be your sanity, health, and friends & family. Unless you are doing something truly earth shattering like you are close to curing cancer, the world is not going to remember your sacrifice for the cause. I'm close to leaving my nicely paid job in full knowledge that I'll take a hefty pay cut doing so, but the money isn't worth the effect the current environment is having on me, I'm almost done waiting for promised changes to happen, and other changes that are happening may even make things worse (in at least the short term). I am more important than my work. You are more important than your work. If you can manage both then carry on, and it is fine to burn a bit short term to deal with unexpected crisis, but if you find yourself having to chose between the two over the medium/long term then don't chose the work.
I wish you the best of luck leaving your job and chasing something it'll make you happier. Thanks for your input!
Learn. To. Cook.
I run a small, scrappy company that's been in startup mode multiple times over the last 20 years. Being a good cook might well be the most valuable skill I've used over those years.
It lets you drop to very low personal expenditure very easily - far lower than you could manage on all but the junkiest of ready food - whilst still eating well and keeping your health up.
Thinking about it, would a "How To Cook For Hackers" video / ebook / webseries be of use or interest to HN? With the right instrumentation, absolutely anyone can learn to cook nutritious, tasty, cheap meals.
Over the years I've discovered that cooking is the most enjoyable hobby that saved me going into constant stress & depress.
As a "hacker", I think a lot, all of the time.
So I cook to think about something else. Washing the dishes without dishwasher is also a moment where I let my mind wander.
Definitely not some time lost (to be honest I don't enjoy washing the dishes as much as cooking, of course, but I feel that connecting my brain on something "easy" is rahter good for me, else I'd jump on my computer right after eating...)
stf
I usually buy a book (these days I'm reading "Elements of Programming") read a chapter and then build the mental model while cooking. Cooking is a double edge sword for me.
What's the hacker angle on cooking? In my experience, cooking is much more of a craft than an intellectual exercise, which doesn't make it very 'hackable'.
Personally, I'd recommend start with something like these [1][2] - good, fast, cheap, nutritious food has been focus for many others than hackers, for quite a while.
1: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/category/books/jamie-s-15... 2: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/columns/dinner_tonight/
Take soup, for instance. You need a certain amount of liquid, veggies and meat are optional in their type and amounts and you need to apply the correct methods and tools.
I've had a domain and plans to write about this for years but never gotten around to it. Maybe 2015 is the year - even casual interest around here would hitch it up on my priority list.
This isn't "hacking" (loathe this word when used this way) cooking, you've just learned the basic ratios of recipes.
I slow cooked homemade bbq chicken with a dry rub last weekend. You can play games for your whole life with the ratio of paprika to cayenne. A lot of people are really happy with 1:1:1 ratios of onion garlic chilli but I prefer weaker heat and stronger onion and garlic flavor. Another ratio is brown sugar to salt, I prefer no/low sugar and higher salt, but tastes do vary. I suppose "no sugar" is such extreme hacking, that some might not consider my bbq chicken to be bbq chicken anymore. Oh well.
Another analogy is its like modding a game. (and edited to add, its like design patterns)
Most programming is that way too, really: putting ingredients together in a way that makes sense for the end user.
...featuring a novel kind of diagrams which show you when to do what, for example, look at the bottom of http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/227/Ratatouille
Modernist Cuisine is pretty amazing, but not quite the same sort of thing I was thinking about: it isn't exactly newbie-accessible, either in price or approach.
For example, understanding the science of cooking meat lets you cook safely, precisely, and to a very high standard. If you understand how flavour pairings work in terms of aromatic chemicals, you can generate likely combinations from what you have available. And so on.
1. The structure of cooking. A lot of recipes share common patterns, but in recipe books they are presented as individual recipes rather than as modular building blocks and techniques.
2. A scientific approach to cooking. By this I do not mean a description of the chemistry, but rather a more experimental approach and a focus on verifying claims based on taste testing and boiling down recipes to their essentials. There is a lot of stuff around food that to me sound implausible or unnecessary. For example the idea that expensive wine tastes significantly better, or that kosher salt tastes differently, or that searing a steak seals in the juices are as far as I know all myths. There are tons of smaller examples, like recipes that call for adding tomato paste, canned tomatoes, and water, or recipes that call for adding the same spice at several different points in the process. If that is experimentally shown to make a difference, then sure, but otherwise keep it simple. On the other hand there are some things that do clearly work in my experience. Increasing the PH of the cooking water keeps vegetables, potatoes, rice more firm, lowering the PH of cooking water turns them into mush. Grinding spices fresh and combining tastes much better than a pre mixed garam masala. Some herbs are ok dried (e.g. thyme, mint), but some are worthless when dried (e.g. basil, parsley). There is a lot of knowledge like that which you could learn by running your own experiments or from a lot of experience, but that takes far too much time for the average person. It would be great if somebody ran the experiments, and for each recipe tried several different ways of cooking it, and determined the best way to cook it with a taste test panel.
3. Quality over quantity & originality. Many recipe books contain a lot of recipes around a specific cuisine or even sub part of a cuisine (e.g. french soups). Many books try to have original recipes rather than classics. I don't care about any of that. Given that I have a limited lifetime, I don't want a book with 50 moderate French soups and 2 great French soups, or a book with 50 moderate Indian curries with an original twist by the author and 3 great Indian curries. Given that I can easily access millions of recipes, the value of a book is not in the recipes which it contains but in the recipes which it does not contain. Please only include the truly great recipes. This also ties in to point #1. This page for example: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/recipe/easy-homemade-curr... It lists 5 curry pastes as 5 different recipes, but 90% of the ingredients are the same. So give a basic recipe, and list the variations. Secondly, it suggests toasting the spices, which in my experience does enhance the flavor of some of the spices, but it destroys the flavor of others. This ties into point #2. Run an experiment: toast each spice individually, then for each spice dissolve the toasted and untoasted version separately in water and in oil, and then taste the difference. I could run that experiment myself, but it would be handy if I didn't have to.
The reason you sear steak is to cause what are known as the "Mailliard reactions", a complex waterfall series of reactions that happen when you expose meat proteins to temperatures over 140C. That decomposes the surface of the meat into a very complex collection of extremely tasty aromatic compounds (including some of the compounds responsible for the taste of coffee and chocolate).
If you're interested in this sort of thing, a) the experiments have already been done, b) I recommend Harold McGee's "On Food And Cooking" as a solid starting point. "America's Test Kitchen" is also good.
This is also the kind of thing I was thinking could be covered in a "Cooking for Hackers" series.
The need for cheap, healthy and delicious meals isn't mutually exclusive to "Hackers." In fact there are many sites out there that have this aim already. One such site is called Budget Bytes [1] which my wife and I use all the time.
"Hackers" / startup guys / whatever you want to call them tend to have similar patterns of thought, which can be applied to cooking to make it easier to learn. For example, we tend to get on well with science and chemistry, which means that it may be easier to teach high-quality meat cookery based on Mailliard reactions, denaturing of proteins, conversion of connective tissue, and so forth.
Hence the question of whether a specifically focused course might help or appeal to the HN crowd - despite the many cookery courses out there, I do see people (like the OP) mention that they haven't found cooking easy to learn.
These things are fine to learn, but they're not essential to learning how to cook. Knowing about the connective tissues isn't going to suddenly make you better at cooking a steak or braising short ribs. Time, practice and patience is what's going to help.
Realistically the easiest and simplest way for anyone to cook is with a crock pot. There are a million recipes out there for basic crock pot cooking. And even better it lets you make large enough batches for multiple days.
I know that I personally became a much better cook - and specifically, since you mention it, much better at cooking steak - after learning the science behind it.
I do agree that they're not essential to learning how to cook. Millions of people cook without knowing these things. But for people with a specific mindset, they are likely to be helpful if more "traditional" routes don't gel well for them.
I largely agree with this. I love my crock pot. Very easy and simple to make very tasty delicious meals. And you can leverage the timing by doing things like turning it on before leaving for work in the morning, and then come home to a hot, tasty, home-cooked meal.
(This is assuming you're comfortable leaving a heat based appliance turned on. In the case of a crock pot, I am. YMMV)
And even better it lets you make large enough batches for multiple days.
Exactly, this is a great feature of slow cookers. I bought one of the larger ones for this exact reason.
Woe is me, I cannot bake a cake from scratch and my souffle always collapses, well, off to McDonalds for a double cheezeburger. OK, well, its pretty hard to mess up the "cooking" involved in making a salad. Oh you want a snack instead of a meal and its too hard to scratch bake homemade cookies so you'll just drive to krispie kreme and eat a dozen donuts, nope, go eat a carrot. Let me describe the "cooking" steps in preparing a raw carrot snack. Wash off the dirt. Optionally cut off the green end or just don't eat it. If you're lazy and wealthy you can buy a bag with carrots in it where this advanced "cooking" has been taken care of for you. I can provide similar "cooking" recipes for grapes, apples, pears, bananas, cherries, blueberries and many more. Meat is microscopically more complicated, but not much worse. Put raw chicken parts in slow cooker. Do not lick hands until after washing them. Dump BBQ seasoning packet (for those who can't handle mixing 8 or so cheap, practically free, dry ingredients by themselves...) on chicken. Put cooker on high for 5 hours, or follow packet directions. Its about that hard.
Another "what to cook" problem is you'll get into huge arguments with people addicted to junk food, because taco bell 35% "meat", which they call beef filling and there have been lawsuits filed to forbid them from calling it "beef", in a shell, is a lot cheaper than seared kobe beef tenderloin, and thats the only option for cooking at home, therefore its too expensive to cook anything at home, so welcome to taco bell for all meals.
Edited to add another common anti-pattern heard continuously on HN is insisting on comparing fake food to out of season organic imported hydroponic food. I live near blueberry country so I'm used to paying about $2/pound once a year. Yet out of season, you can easily pay over $15 per pound. Invariably someone will use as an example, blueberry flavored kool aide vs out of season organic hydro grown imported blueberries at $15/pound at whole foods, which isn't all that fair. My brilliant solution to the annual variation in blueberry prices is not to eat them when the price is above $5 or so per pound. And I can and freeze them. Freeze them on a cookie sheet THEN bag them so they don't clump up.
I very literally almost died, and while there are a lot of factors in having a heart-attack (weight,genetics,stress,nutrition,etc., etc.), there is no question in my mind that three of the big contributing factors for me where A. stress, B. nutrition and C. weight. And sadly all three of those things are things I could / can control, unlike genetics.
Seriously folks, if you're out of shape, if you don't exercise, or if you are the living embodiment of that old joke about "the four food groups for programmers" (salt, sugar, fat and caffeine), please, please stop, wake up, and start taking nutrition seriously.
And don't think "I'm young, I'm only in my 20's, I have nothing to worry about". That's bullshit. You'll be 40 eventually (if you are lucky enough to live that long) and what you're doing with that mindset is letting "20 year old you" fuck over "40 year old you". It takes decades for the bad nutrition, lack of exercise, too much sugar, smoking, etc. to do their damage, so even if you don't see any outward signs now, the damage is being done, and the piper will need to be paid eventually.
Well what if those decades were your childhood? I've been fat since the day I was born, because I was a child of a lazy welfare queen who thought food equals bag of potato chips a day. I dropped out of high school and went on to sick leave because of severe sleep apnea. (Slept 0-4 hours a night, I had so much fat on my body that it blocked my breathing in certain positions and the weight on my lungs caused them not to work properly.)
My future was already ruined because of malnutrition and the only thing I have left is sitting at home on my computer. I've already disowned my mother, but it won't bring my health back. Just the thought that I have to work on my body the rest of my life and it still won't be presentable just makes me want to kill myself.
Then you are starting with a massive disadvantage, there is no way to sugar coat it.
But unless you are properly knocking on death's door it is never too late to start improving things. It can be surprising how quickly you can make small change with a little determination, and how quickly small changes add up, and how much each small change can motivate the effort for the next, especially if you can avoid being completely derailed by the occasional set-backs (that will happen).
If your condition is as bad as it sounds then consult a trained medical person if you can rather than relying on tips from the Internet - they may be able to provide you with a plan specific to your needs that will jump start your progress safely (on the Internet you'll find many ways to jump start progress that may be unsafe either generally or specifically for someone in your current condition).
If you're interested or want to discuss the idea further, email me. My contact info is in my profile.
P.S. I'm not a publishing magnate or VC, just a guy who writes and has lots of ideas. I see a promising idea here.
It's only part of the equation though. For a healthy body you also need a healthy mind. If childhood mistreatments still haunt you, ask for professional advice. Nobody wants to live in the shadow of their parents.
Not that weight is the only health metric, but it seems to be one you are complaining of. Nor is medicating perhaps the best way to lose weight, but it's powerful and might give you motivation to keep at it once you get some easy losses.
That's unfortunate, but luckily a lot of the damage that we do to our bodies can be reversed. No matter where you are, you're almost certainly better off if you start eating right, exercising, etc., today.
As others have said, seek medical advice if you think it's necessary. If your health is so bad that you think you aren't capable of working out and what-not, get a medical professional involved if possible.
And consider that "working out" doesn't necessarily mean going to a gym, wearing weird clothes, doing crazy contortions, lifting weights, etc. I can be as simple as walking 30 minutes around your neighborhood.
I started "cardiac rehab" today, which is a 12 week program of supervised exercise, done under the supervision of a exercise physiologist and a cardiologist, nurses, etc. I'll be doing that 3 days a week until early April. Once that's done I'll do another "stress test" and have another echocardiogram done, which will tell them where my heart function is at. Assuming my "ejection fraction"[1] is back to a normal level, I'm basically good to go, just needing to continue to live a healthy lifestyle (diet, exercise, etc). The only real negative scenario is if my ejection fraction doesn't recover sufficiently, they may recommend me for an implantable sub-dermal defibrillator, as having lowered heart function can put you at increased risk of developing a harmful (or fatal) arrhythmia.
But basically I've already been cleared to run, mountain bike, whatever I want to do. My cardiologist basically said "listen to your body" and "don't do anything that doesn't feel good".
Second time around I did just accept that I was going to take paracetamol by default (so on a regimen and not reactive to pain) to take the edge off the headaches though so that could've helped.
Also, having an established competitor is great as it allows you to research what customers say about their experience. An MVP with a slightly different angle can become obvious from that.
No knowing the first thing about your product or market, I'll still go out on a limb and propose that you're most likely wrong. If I had a nickel for every time I thought something was absolutely key, and it turned out to be a wrong assumption - well, I could probably buy a Starbucks latte.
Hey, by all means, work hard, push forward and do awesome stuff and win, I'm all for that - but don't lie to yourself, especially not if it's impacting your health and your family.
Sure, by the time they've decided to use a new thing, they are unlikely to change again soon, and if, at the time some team is evaluating a new system yours isn't on the market, you wont be considered.
So take a deep breath, stop sweating "first to market" startup tropes, build a good product and start thinking about how you're going to sell into this market instead that's probably a much bigger challenge than building the product in the first place.
There's no first mover advantage here; there's only a "most able to convince people to switch from 90's tech to 00's tech"-advantage.
FWIW We sold video interviewing software and decided to abandon recruitment because the market had low requirements for software quality / innovativeness and high requirements for stability and track records; which was the polar opposite of what we offered.
Additionally; ATS integration was paramount for all large players. ATS providers knew that and charged for it at levels only heavily funded companies could afford.
How many real-world examples of first-mover advantage can you find?
I think that the advantage might not be as great as you'd think.
Then reduce the number of cups you drink - or if that's hard then mix using 10% decaf and slowly increase the ratio, while keeping the number of cups the same.
It's tough, but really worth it.
After my daughter was born (she's 18 months now), I set a rule that no matter what happens, 18:00 to 20:00 is guaranteed for her and her alone.
It's a double win: something for me to look forward to every day; and my daughter gets quality time with her father before going to bed every night.
So do it, use painkillers when you can't handle the pain, but don't exaggerate with them, it's worth it not only for the long run but you will quickly see improvements on your daily life, good luck!
- exercise is therapy for my body and mind => clears your head after work, better sleep, helps with anxiety/panic attacks. That's the reason why I simply HAVE to exercise, it's almost free therapy for me.
- exercise is a good willpower training => more willpower in everything in your life
There's a million and N ways to die, both as a company and an individual, if you let them. Basically, expect failure as a default state, don't (or try not to) take it personally. Don't give up on something that people want (and will pay money for)... you may hit 2 to 5 patches where it's "this sucks, I wanna die" times. Get over it (you can if you really want it bad enough), move ahead. (If not, take a break and recover... Working crazy hours/conditions if it kills you doesn't help anyone.) Even if you have to live in a car or tent, put in the effort to make the best shot possible. It's basically impossible to die of starvation in Amerika at least... More caffeine, exercise and less "ambient eating"... Self-restraint is paramount. Get back in the saddle, get up off the ground, another biz model awaits expermentation... Maybe have some survivor bias eventually, if not start a practical business. It'll all work out, on way or another. Have a good time along the way. :) No one has a perfect formula or perfect advice, just do the best possible and hire people that do whatever it is much better.
(Picking cofounders carefully as one would their SO, because it's effectively marriage.)
Having a strong base to build on is much more powerful. Have good health. Good relationships. Good savings. Good income potential. Use that base to build your company on; when the base breaks down rebuild it first and only then resume work on your company.
It's much more powerful in the long term; and especially so after 30 when your body can no longer handle everything that's thrown it at.