Head Scratching Startup

 Scientists from The Disreputable Institution have made a breakthrough discovery and found that break room coffee shares a 99% chemical composition with jet fuel. Scientists had theorized that the coffee was terrible, but they didn't realize the extent to which it truly sucked.  To get some insight on the matter, the research team decided to interview employees at various companies to see what they thought of this news. One stated, "I really am not surprised at all by this. I could feel my insides rotting almost instantly after drinking that awful coffee." Another employee stated, "Really? Maybe I can get some worker's comp for this." and then proceeded to chug the remaining pot of coffee.  Only minutes later, the employee realized this mistake and was immediately transported to the hospital. Unfortunately, they are in critical condition and the doctors estimate it's a 50/50 chance of survival. Our thoughts and prayers are with him at this time. 

 You decided bootstrapping the business wasn't for you. After all, you can only take on so much credit card debt on your own. Somehow you managed to scrape together enough information about your product to intrigue a venture capitalist. The meeting is this next week, and you need to nail this pitch deck, or the only prototype you'll be working on is how to maximize lumbar support out of cardboard since you'll be homeless. To really have any chance at convincing the venture capitalist, you need to create the perfect pitch deck.  Initially you may think that all you need to do is clearly explain what your product or service does, who your target audience is, what your TAM is, and how you'll get this investor a return on their money. However, as any founder who has been through this knows, it's all about using as many buzzwords as possible. You need to start off with something like "The synergy of our AI will allow the neural network to operate on the blockchain....

 Local store manager Drew Johnson is stunned to find out that employees don't see an end of year pizza party and a raise as equal.  Drew: "As a manager, it's my job to make sure that my employees are satisfied, and I was truly surprised when an employee told me they wanted a raise more than an end of year pizza party." Employee: "Are you serious? How did you not know that we wanted a raise more than a pizza party?" Drew: "This truly comes as a shock to me. According to any managerial training I've had, managers have always said employees will appreciate a pizza party at least as much as a raise." We decided to dig further into this interesting phenomenon and found some astonishing discoveries along the way. We took managers from several different stores and conducted scientific experiments to see if they all felt the same way about a pizza party. The scientists had shown an image of a box of pizza and a large check handed to an employee to repr...

 When it comes to most things in life, I'm just not very good. However, by not being good at much, that has led me to being great at one thing... getting rejected. From relationships, to job interviews, to startup fundraising, you name it, and if there's a chance for someone to turn me down, I'm sure I have experience.  You might be thinking, "Why would I ever want the advice of an experienced reject?". That is a very good question, and you're absolutely right, you shouldn't take advice from an experienced reject. That's why the blog post ends here.  If you were thrilled by the exquisite attention to detail this blog post offered, be sure to sign up for my course on how to succeed with 100% certainty. This course is only available for a limited time, so sign up with four easy installments of $1,000.00.

 The expression beauty is in the eye of the beholder is used to say that there isn't one standard of beauty. There are certain things that people tend to find beautiful, such as symmetry, and some even going as far as to create mathematical equations to quantify what it means for something to be beautiful. When it comes to artwork, you are often told that there are no wrong answers when it comes to your interpretation. I believe that there are many different kinds of beauty in the world of art, and maybe a part of me wanted to create something beautiful for others. When working on this, I accomplished something genuinely rare. I found a way to create something everyone thought was ugly.  For background, the project I was working on was a wearable electronic. It was already enough of a struggle for me to try and create a working device, much less something that would actually be considered desirable. I have long been an admirer of those who were able to blend art and science. O...

 When looking for startup advice, you are usually given standard advice, like "Focus on your strengths", or "Start in a field you currently work in". These are both solid pieces of advice, given that you actually have these strengths and you are able to notice what's inefficient in your line of work. However, I took the initiative to decide to completely disregard that advice and go into a field that I had no experience and limited knowledge of. That's when I decided to try a hardware startup.  For those of you who have any sort of experience in hardware, you'll know that it's not something you can just pick up along the way. Starting a hardware startup is hard enough if you have a background in electrical engineering, but throw in an overconfident business major like myself, and you have a recipe for disaster. I have had some experience with programming, but in a different language than what's required to start working with hardware. I was think...