117 karma · joined February 18, 2016
Can you say more here? Is this a payment gateway thing? I though if you used a visa/mastercard/etc that data is up for grabs by a foreign government, but if it's interac or some other payment method, does that ensure the data resides only in Canada?
The problem I'm trying to point to is that we cooperate internationally because it benefits both countries or pushes towards a common goal- but when one of the cooperative speaks of turning that cooperation into a weapon, to me, makes it clear that the goal of the cooperation has changed.
When Canada legalized weed in 2018, the US administration made it clear that they can ban Canadians from the US for life if they have used marijuana in the past. The administration alluded to looking at Canadian's transaction history to facilitate cracking down on this more harshly[1].
It was so clear at that point to me how badly sovereign payments and banking is so needed. FATCA is a thing, I get it, I get the motivation- but allow another country to wield a "cooperation" like a weapon to attack Canada's sovereignty is just further evidence that we need to safeguard our data.
[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4461315/will-your-cannabis-credit...
There's so many games played per week, I want to find the best/most exciting games to watch, without spoilers. I built a little model to classify games and give me control over the level of spoilers shown so I can watch the best games of the week.
Make an educated guess (maybe informed by your competition), and test raising and lowering it over time. Make sure you have a tier of pricing that gives people the chance to pay you a lot of money in exchange for additional value you can provide.
Talk to your customers and understand who they are and have that inform the types of tests you do or tiers of pricing you can offer.
I had a contract recently where I got very familiar with render.com, and I figured I'd do some blogging about some of the things I learned, with some tips and tricks to learn how to write technical content.
It's been a lot of fun to help people on the internet with something I've learned a lot about!
There's definitely still trepidation on attendees part, but it's still there.
I hit this wall last year and I realized that I had to either: accept that work gets you money and you can live with stability and comfort and pursue your hobbies, or take a risk and see what your potential is.
I'm still figuring out what starting a company is for me (is it solo founding? freelancing? product? service?) and what I want out of my life (how do you feel about never ending uncertainty? being on call 24/7 for an unreasonable client?).
What I've found about myself is that building "a business I believe in" is really me saying "I want to be paid to help people I respect". The rest is just being willing to screw up, taking risks, being uncomfortable and having really supportive people around you that will listen when things are hard and you need to cry.
Start by taking some time off (4+ weeks) and into nature. Ask yourself what you really want.
I recommend checking out indiehackers.com and stackingthebricks.com to get inspired and start to see what goes into undergoing such an endeavour.
In the last 5 years SV companies have started to open offices in Montreal (google has been here for a while, fb came semi recently), and that sweet sweet USD + venture funding gives them a real edge in what they can pay people. FTEs with a US base can make 150k+ which is quite a jump above Canada based firms. From what I've seen those tend to be around 100k for someone with ~10 years experience, and anything higher is considered quite good.
There are so many things to learn that you cannot possibly master them all (you probably won't find them all interesting anyway, or maybe you'll see a specialization you'll like!) but learning new skills and keywords to google later makes you really adaptable and feel more comfortable just diving into the unknown. Having a broad knowledge base also makes learning new skills later feel WAY less daunting- approaching a totally foreign concept in something like a MOOC is much less scary when they use words or concepts you've encountered before. (e.g. I didnt do any ML when I was an undergrad, but all the statistics I took helped me through the coursera ML course later).
Do internships- the real world is very different from school and you want to get exposure to it before it comes- it makes you far more attractive as a candidate when looking for work.
And make sure to surround yourself with other curious people, that's a habit that'll help you your whole life.