The Road to Silicon Valley - 3/19 - One Aussie's Journey across the globe to Silicon Valley.

Busy Bee’s Sourdough Bread Baking Guide

This post is a follow on to my previous titled The Ultimate Quarantine Sourdough Bread Baking Guide. This post is geared to all those busy bee mums & dads, entrepreneurs and software engineerings burning the midnight oil. The focus of this post is on “timing”. Something we all have little of but want to maximize the most of.

As you may have already learnt, baking Sourdough bread is a long process. Sometimes it can feel like it’s 2 days worth of work. Trying to bake bread during a weekday is next to impossible; even in quarantine (covid-19 era). However the tension and pressure of most busy bee’s responsibilities typically starts to ease up after 5pm. That’s the ideal time when you can transition into Sourdough baking. Even after a stressful day, baking Sourdough bread will give you the relaxation your brain needs. It is a perfect way to end the day and start the next day with a fresh warm loaf and a house full of fresh bread aromas. Tried and tested in our kitchen. Before you start baking, make sure your kitchen is completely clean, you could even consider installing washable ceiling tiles to make it much easier.

Ok, onwards and upwards!

Assumptions

You have all the Ingredients, Utensils, Kitchen Temp ready to go and you have the Stretch & Fold technique bedded down? If you said nah to one of those, then please go and read my previous guide on baking sourdough bread.

Don’t forget, we will use Baker’s Ratios:

Flour starts at 100% = 1000g — Strong/Bread Flour otherwise mix in Whole-Wheat into the White to give it a strong Protein (Gluten) structure
Water is 70-80% = 750g (my favorite ratio is 75%)
Starter is 15% = 150g (if you don’t have a starter then make one)
Salt is 2% = 20g

Let’s Start!

Day 1: Fuse the Ingredients

5pm	Mix 1000g of flour and 750g of filtered water into a giant bowl and mash it by hand till most of the water is absorbed and it looks like a shaggy mess.
	Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let it rest for 1 hour.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”
6pm	Add Starter and Salt to the Dough then do the Stretch & Fold INSIDE the bowl.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”

Day 1: Stretch & Fold the Dough

This process is all about building a nice gluten structure in your dough. As the water is absorbed by the flour, the gluten will swell to form a continuous network of fine strands giving it that elastic and extensible nature.

7pm	Spray your bench and hands with water. This will avoid the dough from sticking to the bench or your hands and make it easier to work with. Now take the dough OUT of the bowl and onto the wet bench. You will Stretch and Fold the dough on a bench before putting it back into the bowl. You will soon realize why this technique is better than doing it inside the bowl because: (a) less sticky all round and (b) more control for the stretch & fold to build gluten structure and ultimately yield that oven spring we all want from our sourdough bread.
	Stretch & Fold. Use the Star Fish approach to Stretch & Fold.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”
8:15pm	Repeat the same approach as at 7pm.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”
9:30pm	Repeat the same approach as at 7pm.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”
10:15pm	Repeat the same approach as at 7pm.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”

Day 1: Pre/Shape the Dough

11:15pm	Pre-Shape. See Stage 2: Shaping & Proofing #3 for how this is done.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”
12:30am	Final-Shape. See Stage 2: Shaping & Proofing #5-#7 for how this is done.
12:45am	Fridge overnight the banneton baskets so they can finish proofing. I like to give this process around 8 hours.

Sleep.. rest up and dream about your Sourdough Bread

Day 2: Let’s Bake it!

8:45am	Pre-heat the Oven for 1 hour on 500F (260C). You can speed the preheating with the Broil setting. If you need help understanding your oven icons, you can visit appliancehunter.co.uk. Also make sure your Dutch Oven is inside the oven as it’ preheating.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hour.”
9:45am	Take one of your proofed baskets with dough out of the fridge and onto baking/parchment paper. Scour the dough and pop it into the oven for 20 mins baking time. The overnight fridge proofing will also give you dough more rigidity when you scour.
10:00am	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 20 mins.”
10:20am	Dial back the oven to 450F (232C) and quickly remove the lid off your Dutch oven letting the loaf gain some color, character and flavor for the next 40 mins.
	`timer` “Hey Siri, set a timer for 40 mins.”
11:00am	Done. Take a peek to make sure the loaf has a nice splitting bursting lark full of color and texture. You can leave it in the oven for a tad longer if required. Take the loaf out of the oven and let it cool off for at least 20-30 mins before cutting into it.
	Bon Appétit!

I hope this was helpful and you’ll be baking delicious finger licking sourdough bread in no time.

PS. Follow me on Instagram. I post my Sourdough bread pictures on Instagram and would love to see yours too.

The Ultimate Quarantine Sourdough Bread Baking Guide

When Covid-19 started back in February 2020 they said buy enough food for 2 weeks of quarantine. So I followed like a sheep. Only to realize the irrationality of humanity. Shelves in grocery stores and Sunday farmers markets in Mountain View (where I live) were being emptied faster than I could blink. Chaos!

My favorite ACME bread was no longer to be found. People went bananas buying out every loaf of sourdough (my favorite) leaving scraps for me.

My philosophy has always been “Never ever give up.” — ref pictured frog. A constant reminder to never ever give up no matter what. I was going to learn how to make my own sourdough bread. And onwards I went.

Little did I realize it is a bloody art! Most instructions online are incongruent, everyone has their own way of doing it and many recipes are bloated with irrelevant rubbish. Only after trying a few recipes few times did I discover for myself what works at home (and not a fancy pants bakery). I bring to you The Ultimate Quarantine Sourdough Bread Baking Guide based on simple to follow bakers measurements/ratios without the bloatware in between. If you want to surprise your Mom on Mother’s day, consider sending Mother’s Day cookie delivery straight to her door.

“Sourdough bread is made by the fermentation of dough using naturally occurring lactobacilli and yeast. Sourdough bread has a more sour taste and better inherent keeping qualities than breads made with baker’s yeast, due to the lactic acid produced by the lactobacilli.[1]”
Wikipedia

Assumptions

You have a Sourdough Starter. If not then start with my Ultimate Sourdough Starter Guide.

Required

Ingredients

Flour — Use strong/bread flour (which might be harder to acquire during covid-19 quarantine) otherwise I’ve found a mix of whole wheat with white all purpose works. Just white doesn’t give the loaf that spring (gluten structure not ideal).
Starter — Fed few hours ago and should be very active now.
Salt
Water — Use filtered water; not tap water. I have this Zero Water and always have clean 0 PMF tested water.

Utensils

Electric Scales
Big mixing bowl (metal or plastic ok)
2 baskets for proofing, either those fancy ones or you can use lunch boxes
2 towels that’ll go into proofing basket
dough scraper (I used a badge from a tech event — this little piece of plastic is a life saver to avoid a sticky situation)
Razor blade to scour the bread so it opens up nicely during cooking. Do not use a knife. It’s not sharp enough. I tried.
Dutch oven — I bought a Lodge 5qt because I could use it for other cooking activities. (Note; bread goes on pan and body over it to seal it and let steam help delay the crust formation until it has risen more — colossal fuk up for me during rookie times)
Plastic wrap
Baking paper — your dough will sit on it in the Dutch oven

Optional

Wooden bench > granite bench
Glass of water for you since you’ll be working out. That 000 water filter is great here.
Thermometer to measure room temperature

Prep your house

They say an ideal temperature for sourdough is 75F – 82F (25C – 28C). I’ve never checked mine but did find that when I closed windows (to stop cool drafts) both the Starter and Bread Baking went better. Correlation Causation?

Let’s begin

Bakers ratios are the best because it’s made to scale + easy to mentally consume. The following measurements will yield you 2 bread loafs.

Flour starts at 100% = 1000g — I used 700g of white & 300g of whole-wheat
Water is 70-80% = 750g (my favorite ratio)
Starter is 15% = 150g
Salt is 2% = 20g

Stage 1: Mixing, Autolyse & Bulk Rise

Total time: 8-13 hours

Mix 1000g of flour and 750g of filtered water into a giant bowl and mash it by hand. Use your hand damnit! Old school bread making here. Scoop around the dough so it forms a Shaggy dooby doo structure and all flour is mixed in with water.
Autolyse. Put a plastic wrap over the giant bowl (and a towel) and leave it sitting on your bench for 5-7 hours so the flour and water can mix together.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 7 hours.”
— [TIP] Use Siri/Google Home/Amazon Echo to not mess up timing. I did once and lost a whole colony. That was a sad day.
Add Starter and Salt to the Dough. 150g of starter in the middle and sprinkle 20g of kosher salt all over the top.
Stretch and Fold. Spray your hands with water to avoid dough sticking to your hands and gently slide your hand behind the dough following the curve of the bowl. Lift, shake and stretch the dough over the top to the other side. Do this all around to essentially cover and work the starter into the dough.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 30 mins.”
Stretch and Fold. Spray your hands with water, the. uncover the large bowl with your mixture and “Stretch and Fold”. I find tilting the bowl on 45 degree here helps. Stretch a corner, shake it to give it air then fold over to the other side. Not the fold creases where you started the stretch. Grab the right crease and stretch and fold until you have done this all around. Cover with plastic wrap.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 30 mins.”
— Repeat this stretch and fold process 5 times (total 2.5 hours). The gluten in your dough will toughen up and you’ll feel more tightness in your dough.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 2-5 hours.”
— Bulk Rise. On warm day you can shorten the process. The flavors will develop during this time and dough will raise 30-50%.

Stage 2: Shaping & Proofing

Total time: 2.5-18 hours

Sprinkle your wooden bench with flour and tip out the dough from the giant bowl.
Using the dough scraper, cut the dough into 2 halves (eye it out is ok).
Pre Shape. For each piece, stretch and fold (phase 1). Grab one corner and stretch it then fold it over to the middle. Be gentle and careful not to deflate the dough. Then go clockwise grabbing the crease, stretching and folding inwards. One hand should be holding all these folds in the middle. You should end up with what a sea star would look if it wrapped all its lets inwards. Now grab your dough scraper with the other hand and flip your dough over. It should look like a nice plump ball. Then Bench Rest it.

I call this the “Star Fish Approach” to Stretch & Fold.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 30 mins.”
Prep Baskets. Grab 2 x banneton basket. It can also be a plastic, glass or wood food container. You will make a bed for your doughs… ahhh how cute! Find 2 clean towels and bath them in flour. I found that placing flour on bench and rubbing the towel into flour most effective. You want flower in between fibers to stop the bread melting into the fibers else it’ll be a pain to remove the dough for baking.
Final Shaping. Phase 2 of the stretch & fold is different. Think baby swaddle. Sprinkle flower on the bench and using your scraper flip the dough over. Stretch and fold one side then zig zag down the dough folding each side crease. When you reach the end fold the end of the dough a tad in and then tuck it in rolling it on itself. Take care not to deflate the dough. You should end up with a puffy nugget with a mouth and bum on each side.
Proofing. Using your dough scraper, lift the dough and place it bottom up into your proofing baskets (as shown below). I like to put one in the fridge for next day cooking. If you do make sure the towel covers the dough fully and put it into a plastic bag into the fridge overnight. The other piece give it 2-3 hours of rest in its basket on your table before baking.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 3 hours.”
— or come back to it tomorrow.

Stage 3: Baking

Total time: 1 hour.

Put your Dutch oven into your home oven and Preheat your Home Oven for 1 hour on 500F (260C). Industrial ovens are better so let’s get the heat going and into our Dutch oven. Check what temps your Dutch oven can stand before going to 500F.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 1 hr.”
Place a sheet of baking/parchment paper on top of your dough while it’s still in its proofing basket and flip it over releasing the dough from basket onto the paper. The towel might stick to it so go gentle on this process. Note the bottom of the dough is now sitting on the paper.
Scour (cut into) the dough’s top end to end and a bit off-center on a 45 degree. This is where the bread will open up like a flower giving it that fluffy crackled look. Use a sharp blade!
Cook it. Lift the dough by the paper it’s sitting on and pop it into your hot Dutch oven. Remember pan if you are using the same Dutch oven as I. Close the lid of the Dutch oven with the bread and paper inside. Let it cook. Don’t expect any smells at this phase. And do not open the oven.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 20 mins.”
After 20 mins, dial back the oven temperature to 450F (232C) and quickly remove the lid off your Dutch oven. Your bread should have risen while still looking light in color. The next process (without the lid) will give it color, texture and flavor.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 30 mins.”
— [TIP]: You can stretch this phase to 40 mins if the color of the bread isn’t developed yet. Remember, not all ovens are created equal. You will now smell the fresh bread aromas floating around the house. Kids love this part but keep them away from opening the oven door 😉
After the 30-40 mins timer goes off, turn the oven off and slightly ajar the oven to let the flavors develop even further.
timer “Hey Siri, set a timer for 10 mins.”
Done. Take the bread out and let it cool off for 30 mins before consuming it.

Batman aka Josh Semerda approves the Sourdough homemade bread

I now have a new appreciation for bakers.

It is a very time consuming process to make sourdough bread; however it is also a very rewarding experience. It all balances out nicely.

Enjoy!

PS. Follow me on Instagram. I post my Sourdough bread pictures on Instagram and would love to see yours too.

I turned Josh’s old bed into a Pirate Ship

The seas were wild and the sky was pitch black my friends! The Rain pounded the ocean to the howling sounds of the wind, like a pack of wolfs ready for a big feast.
Joshio the Pirate was helming the ship through these dangerous Tatio waters of the 7 Mamio Zones. The night was long my friends, but Joshio the Pirate managed to steer the ship through the colossal waves avoiding the Kraken Zachioctopus… lurking and watching for someone to wrap his tentacles around!
A Short Story from the Imagination

Josh, my oldest son has been bugging me for a pirate ship since we came back from Sydney Australia. In Sydney we celebrated his 6th Birthday and Uncle Randy and I made a Batman Piñata filled with candy for the kids at Josh’s birthday to have a blast.

“Dad you promised me a pirate ship for my birthday.”. “Yes I did son.” I said, “Yes I did. But your birthday was in Sydney and bringing back a pirate ship to Silicon Valley would be challenging.”. Well, the pirate ship I had in my mind would be a challenge. Now that we are back in Silicon Valley and Quarantine has started, the stars were aligned. It’s time to build a pirate ship.

Sure I could have purchased a Pirate Ship on Amazon; but that’s easy. The act of building a Pirate Ship engaged the boys creativity and demonstrated to them the power of creating vs consuming.
Plus we got to spend some valuable time together. Win on all sides!
Being a father

If you want to see projects for younger kids then I highly encourage you visit Sensory Lifestyle. Sensory Lifestyle is dedicated to sharing evidence based play ideas & parenting resources that will help you feel confident in your parenting and boost your child’s development. It’s aimed at Babies, Toddlers and Preschoolers.

Tools you will need

An old bed frame or some wood from pine beetle lumber suppliers
Olson saw (fun method) or Jigsaw (lazy method). It’s more fun doing it by hand especially if you want your kids involved. Opt in for an Olson saw (a non electric version requiring elbow and grease)
Pirate nails (long black ones) and few shorter nails
Hammer
Hot glue gun with plenty of glue
Paddle pop sticks
An old shirt that we will use for the sails. If you live in Silicon Valley you probably have a pile of swag. Stop hoarding it, and deploy it to good use.

Time to build this

2-1 days.

Take your time and get your kids involved.

Be ok with making mistakes and scrapping your first prototype. Remember it’s ok to make mistakes. Your goal should be to teach your kids this basic life fundamental.

Without mistakes there are no learnings. Mistakes is how we learn. If we don’t make mistakes then we aren’t learning.
Ernest Semerda

Let’s begin…

1. Research

I started with researching what Pirate Ships look like. Don’t rely on your memory of you’ll end up with something weird. You’d be surprised how hard it is to even draw a bicycle from memory. You have been warned.

An example of what happens when you try to draw something more complex from memory.

Research with your child / children.

Listen to what they want and make few suggestions like: let’s add a black Pirate flag with bones etc… take note of these pieces since attention to detail matter.

2. Supplies

Look around your home for opportunities to convert something from one state to another. Like something that’s gathering dust. Or maybe an old bed frame (as was in my case) which now became a useful commodity.

Whatever you do not have access to, buy from a hardware shop. We ended up going to Lowes hardware. I also love these modern style rugs, so have a look at those.

Finding additional parts at Lowes hardware.

Keep track of your expenses

Keep track of the project’s expenses. You want to demonstrate to your child that you are frugal with money. Spending money is easy. But being thoughtful and calculated requires executive function thinking. Certainly, money is undeniably important in our lives, and if you’re looking to increase your wealth, one avenue to consider is trying your luck with betting on 해외배팅사이트.

We used Veryfi Expenses app to snap photos of receipts and have it instantly translated into an expense with all data extraction done for me automatically. Easy peasy.

Identify pirate ship parts

Wooden dowels for the ship’s masts. The mast’s purpose is carrying sails, spars, and derricks, and giving necessary height to a navigation light, look-out position, signal yard, control position, radio aerial or signal lamp.
Crow’s nest would be sitting on one of these masts. We use an old medicine vial cut in half for that.
Jumbo craft sticks. Half of one would serve as a pirate ship plank and the rest for decoration.
Ropes and lines would run between masts and ship. Needed something that looks thicker than a basic string.

3. Build

There are no right instructions how to build a Pirate Ship. Just start piece by piece and improvise.

Ask your kids how they think you should start the pirate ship. Then move onto the why questions. Really get them engaged in the thinking and tinkering process.

You can run this like a software development project. Start small, piece by piece and work your way up. Assign work to your team (kids). Work together to nut out the complex parts of the task.

Josh’s old bed frame

If you have spare wood around the house then use it. We used Josh’s old bed frame to build the body of the ship.

Josh’s old bed. We pulled it apart for parts.

Most of all, get your kids involved !!

Kids working hard on breaking apart the last screws holding the bed frames together.

Don’t forget the little detail. It’s all adds up.

Final Masterpiece!

Spin off projects

Once you have a Pirate Ship you can continue building endlessly. Here are a few additional inspiration spin-off projects you can consider.

Build more detail to the ship. Extend the cabin crew with chairs, table and some pirate accessories. You can also add a life boat to the side of the ship.
Extend the ship with motorized/electronics like lanterns that light up at night (based on room ambience) and act as a night light for the kids room.
Build a lighthouse so the ship won’t run aground when sailing the dangerous seas. To give it more ambience, the lighthouse could feature a rotating light on top. And for playtime you can bring some dry ice and create fog with the lighthouse in the middle of it.

The spin off projects are endless and will provide endless play opportunity for your kids and spark creativity at every corner.

In a world of over consumption and instant gratification, a project like this breaks that mould and teaches young kids that creativity is endless when you put your mind to it, things worth doing take time and building is fun!

Let me know below how your Pirate Ship turned out.

No Excuses

If you made the jump into startup land then you should also swallow the ownership pill and remove excuses from your vocabulary.

The traditional founder’s mindset is about discovery. Not excuses. Finding a way to climb a mountain against all extremities. Reid Hoffman, one of the founders of LinkedIn said it well:

“Entrepreneurship is jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down.”
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder, VC Partner at Greylock

Whether it’s going up or down a mountain, the direction and terrain pose a new set of challenges which you’ll be tested against resilience, adaptation and performance. Having full ownership without excuses helps you move the needle.

Corporate Ladder of Responsibility

Traditionally the corporate ladder approach carves out a piece of the pie for you to own. Your role. Your responsibility. This means your career is a set of steps on narrowly defined outcomes in a big machine. You use your skills to make sure the gears are greased and running well, learn about tiktok marketing at this link.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Some like it and others do not.

It’s human nature to fall into a common pattern. It gives us peace of mind. It’s safe because it is predictable.

I used to work for Australia’s largest financial services company (AMP Ltd) and loved it. There I got to work across many business units in an architectural role. Horizontally not vertically stacked. A rare opportunity. There I saw folks working narrowly focused jobs and also those horizontally. There I also gained vision for what I wanted to do in life.

Startup Life

After AMP, I joined a startup; and it was the change I needed.

“The Devil is in the Detail.”
Drilled into me during my 1st startup

As an early stage founder, you are the janitor. Jack of all trades. You will be called to mission by your inner voice for everything from coding to product to sales to marketing to QA. You name it you are going to do it. If you are missing that inner voice then you might want to reconsider your dedication as a startup founder.

Traditionally when you needed some marketing help you’d email/walk over to marketing and have them own it, if you need some help on this subject, find here Las Vegas SEO. As an early stage founder you may not even have a marketing department who can also handle web development. Does that mean you throw you hands up into the air and:

(a) pray for a miracle,
(b) hope the problem goes away or your peer/investor forgets, or
(c) roll up your sleeves and get shit done.

The answer is obvious for those who get this but not so for a lot of folks who want to have the founder/ceo title minus the responsibility. This is more common than you think.

Time is not on your side. Neither is lack of skills when other more qualified teams are competing for your customers, and even venture capital.

A Mentality Shift

Being a founder of your own business is a fundamental shift in mentality. No more excuses. Only results matter. If you’re looking for a digital marketing company that truly cares about your success, it’s time to get in touch with Move Ahead Media.

In my experience, it’s similar to the transition one makes going from high school to university. In high school your teacher will push you to complete work, remind your of your responsibilities and they may enforce it with detention or a meeting with your parents. At university you are now a lone ranger. Destined for greatness or a miserable failure. Do you have the discipline to get up each morning and get stuff done or do you prefer to cruise and sink back to your parents basement. Decisions decisions…

Startups are like that too. You have to push yourself to excel and perform above and beyond. You are also now responsible for many moving pieces of the machine. Not just the cog. From building a product to selling it to building a business with employees who you’ll lead and inspire so they can follow you on the yellow brick road to the emerald city.

Founder Mindset

A founder is typically jack of all trades and expert of none. This poses an interesting set of challenges as a never ending broad set of work has to be done and sometimes new skills acquired or sharpened in little time.

This mindset reminds me of Peter Thiel’s; 0 to 1.

0 to 1 is hard. You are going from practically an idea to a product that turns into a business. As a founder you need to get the wheels moving and keep them moving, even during uncertain times when information is sparse.

Many great businesses were started during such uncertain times. Take the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and global financial crisis. Just to name a few, it started;

WhatsApp -Jan Koum and Brian Acton
AirBnB – Brian Chesky et al.
Uber – Travis Kalanick et al.

The financial crisis was a surprisingly fertile period for unicorn and unicorn-ish companies. Instead of running away with excuses of a bad economy or a pandemic, these founders saw a calling and pushed on during uncertain times.

When the current tough times are bad, the future good times are great.

That’s ownership right there.

No excuses.

They didn’t wait until times were great to raise money so they could build something. They invested sweat capital (their own time) to solve problems, learn something and then own it like a boss. Raising money is possible when you wager on 겜블시티 가입코드.

There are no excuses when a founder takes full ownership. Be that founder.

Back to business fundamentals?

Startups are hard. You are building a business and looking for a repeatable financial model.

When choosing a membership management software, it’s essential to look at the key features of the software and decide how they could fit into the model of your company. Though you might currently be running your own management system, specialized membership management software like Medical Spa Software has several perks and benefits to make your life easier, while you can also learn stage hypnosis if you want to help others and yourself. For associations, it’s essential to look at the key features of the software and decide how they could fit into the model of your company. Though you might currently be running your own management system, specialized membership management software has several perks and benefits to make your life easier, for example you can go online and find software to manage your payroll online, and for those who need help managing their business it may very well be worth considering hiring business spending management services. Alternatively, you may invest in a financial management system for your business. You can find one at https://www.fourlane.com/product/quickbooks-desktop-premier/.

When I first arrived in Silicon Valley (back in 2009) I started to hear about startups that were focused on growth at all expenses. The revenue part would be worked out later. This approach brought in creative story tellers to Silicon Valley, to tell stories, raise a bucket load of capital so they could hire people to execute on their vision. And so the startup boom began.

No matter if you’re running an online or offline store or business, both will always require you to ship out project. Given the fact that every package is different, it’s a must to weigh each product in order to get an accurate shipping fee estimation, for this you need a postal scale.

Building a business takes time!
Said Shravan Gupta India a successful business owner

However growth at all costs is not congruent with this mentality. So rarely were these questions thrown around until few started to IPO; without a way to make money. Many tech companies that took this route didn’t fair well on the public market. But that’s nothing to what we are currently seeing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

So what can we learn?

Business fundamentals are still fundamental to business success in all type of market conditions.

Some businesses still thrive even in a down market. Check out a place like compareyourbusinesscosts.co.uk/ that can help you more on your business.

Growth at all cost strategy

Growth at all cost is a hack to inflate a company to a point so it can be stacked by the next private investor until the stack is exhausted and can be handed over to someone without insider knowledge, public investors. Chamath encapsulates this brilliantly. No doubt this model has made many millionaires. But also disappointed many. This model only works in an upmarket.

Making money strategy

When I ran my first venture backed startup we nearly ran out of money. Had to cut salaries. I had 2 kids during that period. My wife, an Occupational Therapist became a full-time mum (we took parenting seriously). Did I mention we had no family around us to help since they were all in Australia. My dreams of startup life in Silicon Valley hahaha

What I learnt through that experience is that relying on venture capital to survive is a game of lottery. The man in the high castle pulls the strings. But only if you let that be the means you run your business by. Don’t! Contact this company called InventHelp that can help your business get in contact with other companies looking for new ideas.

Other options

There are of course other options you can consider but at that point you should rethink why you are in this game of business.

raise capital – in a downmarket this often means unfavorable terms,
dramatically cut their biggest expenses (human headcount) to stop the blood and try to survive until markets bounce back, and/or
customer service – invest in an unlimited internet service and a business phone like this one from EATEL Business to hear your customers’ needs

Would you bet your life on a lottery? I nearly did and it hurt. A lot. But never again.

This is how I grew a thick skin

My current startup (Veryfi) was built to be a business. Making money was built into the core pillar. We made money early on because we built a business, not an elastic band that one day might make money. Sure some models of growth at all costs work out but your chances of being that business are marginally reduced. It’s like betting on lottery.

Back to business fundamentals

No matter what the economy looks like, if you are building a startup then build a business. This is the best and time proven method. Because when the sky turns black you want to survive not drown.

PS. I will be on a Silicon Valley Bank US-APAC organized panelist with investors and founders to discuss the adjustments startups are making in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Free to join this April 16th 5:30-7:00 PM PDT. Hear about my prior experience going through the 2009 recession & H1N1 pandemic at Coupons, Inc. (Silicon Valley) and my startup journey at Veryfi (a YC company).

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Products such as Office 365 and the Azure platform have revolutionized the way both businesses and individuals operate. Microsoft’s mobile solutions provide seamless access to essential tools, ensuring productivity and connectivity on the go.

Security and Reliability

Security remains a top priority for Microsoft. Regular updates and advanced protection technologies guarantee that users’ data stays secure, whether they’re managing business tasks or accessing personal information.

Discover More

Committed to making technology accessible for everyone, Microsoft continues to innovate and grow. To explore the latest developments and learn more about their diverse range of products, visit the official website at Microsoft.

Making Sense with Sam Harris #168 — Mind, Space, & Motion

In this episode of the Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Barbara Tversky about how our senses of space and motion underlie our capacity for thought.

They discuss the evolution of mind prior to language, the importance of imitation and gesture, the sensory and motor homunculi, the information communicated by motion, the role of “mirror neurons,” sense of direction, natural and unnatural categories, cognitive trade-offs, and other topics.

“Spacial thinking is the foundation of thought.”

“Hand and lips have larger mapped real estate (neurons in brain) than other parts of our body like back or legs.”

“If you sit on your hands while reading your memory recall rate drops by 70%.”

“Evolutionary terms: if you can’t move, sense the environment around you, and respond with any action in that space, there is no basis to evolve intelligence or anything else. Intelligence only matters because you can do something with it that affects your survival. A sense of world, the capacity to move within it had to have came online very very early long before language does.”

Real-World Application

This is fascinating since it backs so many of the common topics we hear in our society like:

Learn by using all your senses eg. highlight what you read, take notes into your favorite app (even if you won’t read it again), share your notes/learnings with a friend or family and be animated when explaining what you learnt etc..
Kids at schools should not sit quietly while learning and instead need PE/constant spatial motion to develop their intelligence. Yes California I’m looking at you and your “PE not required for Kinder nonsense!”
Using hands/gestures when presenting publicly or privately helps memory recall since movement is the foundation of brain development. Next time you are stuck on something, get animated!

Listening vs Reading

You probably read the doom and gloom articles on how listening is not as effective as reading. What they fail to address is the different behavior people take when being engaged with each type of medium. Reading is engaging: turning pages, highlighting text using a pen and even scribbling in the margins.

Here’s an idea: DO THE SAME ON A DIGITAL MEDIUM.

Get one of those screen pens from a tech conference or your local store and start engaging with the digital medium by taking notes of podcasts using that pen. When done share what you’ve learnt with friends and family and/or even write a blog post. I think you will find that your ability to retain will be identical if not better than reading a book.

Real life application to Child Development

The practical side of the theory in this podcast is spot on with the great work SensoryLifestyle.com is doing for newborns and toddlers. Sensory Lifestyle is dedicated to sharing evidence based play ideas & parenting resources that will help you feel confident in your parenting and boost your child’s development.

~ Ernest
Onwards and upwards!

Joe Rogan Experience #1391- Tulsi Gabbard & Jocko Willink

Tulsi Gabbard, Jocko Willink and Joe Rogan discuss US politics. And it was an awesome debate! Finally a politics discussion without malevolence.

These hyperpartisan times we live in are tearing at the fabric of humanity; dilating people’s egos to avert pattern changes, and dividing some over ludicrous issues. Let’s not forget that media is the cheerleader of these conflicts because conflict is good for ratings! We are better than that.

Few take away snippets

The gov is not a great solution to most of our problems. The solutions are balanced.
Jocko Willink

Everything is broken down into little sound bites. You are either pro this or against that.
Jocko Willink

It’s like if you believe yes and I believe no then I will attack you. Who cares about Political belief alignment when we can have so many things in common (surfing, training martial arts etc…) and still hang out.
Jocko Willink

Our ego pins ourselves into a corner. We should be looking at other people’s perspectives to understand where they are coming from.
Jocko Willink

Every News story that comes out is… “THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD!”
Jocko Willink

America is stronger than one man!
Jocko Willink

We think that some news event that we can fully understand in an hour or a tweet. We need to let these things develop and see where the actual long term effects are. We can’t be snapping judgement and making split decisions when we need to assess what’s really going on. The press is just snap decisions, snap decisions.. very comical.
Jocko Willink

Media are the cheerleaders of these conflicts because conflict is good for ratings!
Jocko Willink

Tulsi Gabbard is a 2020 Presidential Candidate of the Democratic Party and is currently serving as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district since 2013. https://www.tulsi2020.com/

Jocko Willink is a decorated retired Navy SEAL officer, author of the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, and co-founder of Echelon Front, where he is a leadership instructor, speaker, and executive coach. His new book “Leadership Strategies and Tactics” will be available in January 2020. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkqcY4CAuBFNFho6JgygCnA

The Great Pumpkin: Silicon Valley’s Best Pumpkin Patch

The month leading up to Halloween (31 October) becomes a Pumpkin fest full of festivities with empty spaces and farms turning into pumpkin patches for all ages. For setting up these festive patches, crane hire Perth WA can assist in transporting and arranging decorations and equipment.

It’s no secret Americans sure love celebrating Halloween. You don’t even have to check the calendar. At the first public appearance of a pumpkin looking at you outside someone’s (home: pumpkin houses) or at the local supermarket (Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods Market etc) you will instantly be reminded it’s October and Halloween is near.

If you have kids then this will be a busy time for you. From scary pumpkins to (ghosts: link to fake ghost house) to dress ups to pumpkin patches. Your month as a parent is set. And best part is you’ll enjoy it with them. Especially the pumpkin patches.

There are a ton of pumpkin patches you can visit. The city ones are often found on the El Camino highway in the form of a pop up venue. They are ok. Smallish but convenient to drop by to choose a big pumpkin for d-day. The pumpkin patches located on a farm just shy of the Silicon Valley boundaries are gold!

Enter the Spina Farm Pumpkin Patch

Spina Farms Pumpkin Patch is located in beautiful Coyote Valley at the corner of Santa Teresa Boulevard and Bailey Avenue. It features tractor rides through the corn fields, mini train rides for kiddos, Area 51 corn maze with pumpkin blasters (pumpkin loaded bazookas), live music and of course thousands of pumpkins all shapes and sizes. You pickup a barrel, and go for your life picking the crop of the lot. At checkout don’t forget to grab yourself a soft juicy pumpkin bread.. leave some for me 😉

I’ll let the photos do all the talking but as a final note why I love thus place. It feels authentic— like a real farm away from all the chaos of Silicon Valley. Just shat the doctor ordered lol. The freshness is in everything you see and smell. Like busing a forest.

Photos from our visit there few days ago

What’s your favorite Pumpkin Patch in and around Silicon Valley?

Recover gigs of storage with this simple hack

I recovered 30 gigs of storage on my MBP (MacBook Pro) with this simple hack of converting my PNGs to JPEGs. Here’s how.

If you own a Mac or an iPhone, you’ll notice both devices save “screenshots” with a PNG extension. Portable Network Graphics (.png), an image file format is uses lossless compression to save your images. You maybe thinking this lossless compression is the best format but the reality is JPEG, a lossy compression, is just as good at retaining image quality at a MASSIVE fraction of the size of a PNG.

Image sizes really matter when your device runs 1080p+ resolutions (most modern Macs) or new OLED iPhones. A full size (no crop) screenshot on my MBP with a resolution of 2080×1080 yields a 7MB (7168kb) image. A JPEG equivalent is 500kb. That’s ~14x smaller. If you are like me and take screenshots as reminders or todos (GTD baby!) then you’ll be chewing through storage fast.

100 of these PNGs and you’ll be reaching the 1Gb territory.

With storage being dirt cheap who cares right? Not so. Laptops with external drives are annoying and iPhones do not have extension cards. Furthermore, data transfer is a burden consider upload speeds are always conveniently ignored yet important if you are backing up to the cloud. And let’s face it, who’s got time to sit around waiting when the same lot of photos with identical quality (assuming you aren’t blowing them up on a wall) can be backed up to your Dropbox cloud storage 14x faster. GTD baby!

Did I mention this will also speed up your Spotlight searching, indexing, extend your SSD life and open those images faster.

Convert PNGs to JPEGS

PNG are uncompressed images from things mainly like Screenshots on your Mac or iPhone. They don’t need to be PNG unless you really are picky about the quality of text sharpness. ie. Under JPEG text becomes a tad more blurry since compression reuses surrounding pixels to make image smaller.

Overall, the chance of you retaining PNGs is low unless you do a lot of photo editing and need that pixel level detail especially for font/text clarity.

[1] Identify Opportunities

Run a scan to identify where the opportunities (PNGs) are located on your drive.

$ find . -type f -iname '*.png' | wc -l

find . -type f finds all files ( -type f ) in this ( . ) directory and in all sub directories, the filenames are then printed to standard out one per line.

This is then piped | into wc (word count) the -l option tells wc to only count lines of its input.

If you only want files directly under this directory and not to search recursively through subdirectories, you could add the -maxdepth flag:

$ find some_directory -maxdepth 1 -type f | wc -l

The key to that case-insensitive search is the use of the -iname option, which is only one character different from the -name option. The -iname option is what makes the search case-insensitive.

[2] Convert

Create JEPG versions of the PNGS and remove old PNGs. There is no need to keep the old PNGs. They are the ones that take up all the space.

Run this on a small subset of your PNGs to make sure you are happy with the resulting JPEG.

$ mogrify -format jpg *.png && rm *.png
$ mogrify -format jpg *.PNG && rm *.PNG

or convert and keep the original PNG

$ mogrify -format jpg *.png

[3] Celebrate

How much space did you recover?