He has great taste! It said that Hannibal's father made him swear that he would "never be a friend of Rome" (Polybius). It led to the Second Punic War. So, you know, perhaps go easy on your son regarding that whole "taking oaths" thing, okey?
Uh-oh.. Just caught 3 new errors in Sentry - guessing you may have encountered some broken stuff in the app - very sorry about that - I've gone in and fixed 2 of them (still working on the 3rd) in case the bugs were fully blocking..
We had a chance to work through some of the lessons. Overall very solid foundation I would say. My son's critique was that it was a little confusing when it came to answer format and that he felt the lessons kind of jumped around. Other than that he found it 'OK'. He's 10 so that means you didn't mess up too bad. lol.
We did have a few issues.
1. The hint on the equation simplification section describes the format of the simplified equation as 6 x l. (actual number varies 2 x l x 3) But the only answer that is accepted is in the format is 6l, sans the 'x'.
2. I found the hints' font coloring very hard to read on my old eyes. Also, we did not find out the desired input methods until fairly far along. The SHIFT-8 etc was new to my son and kind of obscure given how soft the font was. Maybe a heads up of the conventions at the beginning?
3. In the word questions section, sometimes the amount being compared to determine the total amount of cages vs squirrels was the exact same. Actual examples -> 2 cages and 2 squirrels vs 2 cages and 2 squirrels. I assuming the desired question would have compared 2 cages and 3 squirrels vs 3 cages and 2 squirrels. (Although that doesn't make sense either.)
4. The spoken word button is a great idea, but the voice is almost incomprehensible to a 10 year old. I know you didn't create the voice, but if there is another easier to understand voice that would help.
5. My son was initially confused by going some distance in a negative amount as a representation for reverse.
6. My son is very competitive and he enjoyed the speed challenge, but there was no reward or signification of accomplishment at the end of the challenge. He wanted to know how well he did.
6. There are some minor grammar errors.
My impression was that the layout and design was on par with other online offerings that we use daily. I actually liked the lower distraction level. The site and UX were predictable, easy to use and did not add to the stress level of the student. I'll have him do some more over the next few days. Keep up the good work!
You've definitely encountered some (fortunately non-crashing) bugs here that I need to look at and fix (the 22 versus 22 for instance needs to have different numbers to make sense in a lesson on operand-order equivalence for multiplication), but seems like there are also quite a few product/design tweaks I should make as well.
For the lessons jumping around --> that's actually intentional & very important for learning (though from your feedback I can see I really need to make it much clearer why so that learners don't experience it as aimless) - question-variation achieves 2 things - it pushes what the learned just covered out of they working memory (so that when they get the question again in a few moments, they need to fully reconstruct the idea in their minds), while at the same time having the learner review lessons they've learned recently (for new users, however, since I don't have any recent lessons for them yet, I'm including questions thy've likely already mastered given their level, which may need to rethink as it could be adding to that potential of aimlessness learners might have).
Thanks again, and definitely let me know if you encounter any other issues.
I think those are good ones because they're definable in ways that we can probably come to a consensus on.
The problem is the term greed is often used in a pejorative way as a proxy for success. If you work hard and achieve a lot and that comes with financial rewards, you are greedy by definition. Add in some snark about how the work hard part doesn't count somehow, and that's the modern critique of capitalism.
Oh, and rent seeking and corruption are because capitalism too and not at all human flaws seen to an even greater degree in every other economic system ever devised.
I think that the issue is when the financial rewards are dramatically greater than how much harder someone could conceivably be working.
A billionaire could conceivably work much harder than the median person. However, they don't work 8000 times harder ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122k).
Why is the "hardness" of the work the key criteria? If you compare "value to society based on peoples willingness to pay", then the ratio of that between a billionaire and the median person probably is 8000x - the founders that become billionaires usually capture only a tiny fraction of the value they create, but we tend to take that value for granted and it's hard to measure. So we only see the billions of dollars they have, not the 10s or 100's of billions of dollars of value they create.
The thing is nobody gets to build a fortune in the billions from saving up their salary. The principal way to do it is through ownership and control of a company. So what's the alternative to private individuals founding companies, finding ways to provide valuable goods and services, employ lots of people and grow successful businesses. Is that something we want to discourage? I think we all benefit from having hard working, innovative people creating, leading and running big companies. Or even from investors deploying capital so that it grows companies and expands beneficial economic activities.
part from my first job working for the government here in the UK all my other jobs have been for companies founded and run by private individuals. They've helped me put food on my table and clothes on my children.
On the other hand I do agree that when it comes to inheritance, rent seeking, financial manipulation, etc there's a lot to do to close loopholes and create a more equitable system. There is a good argument to be made that the main reasons inequality has risen are not good ones. I do not see those as fundamentally flaws in capitalism, they're certainly flaws but you get abuses in any economic system. They're not fundamental. The Netherlands is definitely a capitalist society, but they also have a wealth tax for example. There are good arguments for land value taxes, which some countries use to good effect. There are plenty of tools available to us.
I don't think it's black and white. I have no issue with someone starting a business and becoming hundreds of times more wealthy than the median American. However, I think that's a lot different than becoming thousands of times more wealthy.
Opposition to addressing inequality in the US tends to take the form of arguing that the rich worked harder, earned their wealth, are more valuable, etc.; therefore, it is immoral to redistribute that wealth. The argument that I am attempting to make is that the differences in wealth are so dramatic that it isn't realistic that they earned it in the sense that free market advocates are implying.
I think if you're opposed to people obtaining that much wealth is, how do you stop them? How do you prevent Elon Musk from investing heavily in Tesla, growing the company and ending up owning billions of dollars worth of it's shares?
That's certainly possible, but the argument that usually gets made is that they worked harder and therefore earned being a billionaire.
That being said, I think it's also unlikely that they brought a skill to the table that's 8000 times more valuable. My understanding is that people who become billionaires do so by leveraging capital.
They both seem fine to me. Rent seeking keeps system stable. It keeps a balance between crash-and-burn vs absolute no risk types by taking little risks to collect rent and providing some useful service.
As a third world native I find corruption works better than everyone mindlessly following law under one self-righteous government becomes illegal under the next one, thereby making citizens life hell.
Your idea is interesting. Non-generic advice would be that you did not spend enough time in your deck quantifying the financial opportunity, addressing the risks of writing legal contracts or as you put it 'setting the standard' and describing the business model. What is the current state of the application, demo, beta? Who is your competition? Basically you stated that you wouldn't have any, this is very unlikely. How are people solving this 'problem' now. If people aren't getting contracts for a photography session etc. now, then who would pay for this? I would like to see a target customer.
Also, you have not included much product validation or market fit research in your deck. My sense of your presentations appear to me like a very tech oriented idea more than a product at this point. Not unusual for early stage, but that image could be changed by including a productization road map in your deck.
TLDR: Focus more on communicating customer validation, monetary size of opportunity and your business model.
Good luck!
Thank you very much for taking the time to think about this -- and even more for taking the time to also write.
I agree with your feedback. On the one hand, the deck is meant to be short and to invite conversation -- which it has done. On the other, it is hard to come up with stuff like "customer validation" and "monetary size of opportunity" in this particular case.
What I want to tackle is contracts in general, not any one particular type of contract. I know that this goes slightly against the general product mindset of focusing on a niche. But, to me, in this case, the niche is contracts -- agreements made formal. And, in my mind, the solution is fundamentally the same across the board, and should be approached as such.
There are many products trying to make contracts "easier". Large B2B contract management players like Ironclad; small Freelance-dashboards like HelloBonsai. All of them are using templates, basically, that you edit through some sort of classic WYSIWYG editor -- which is very far away from what I'm trying to do.
With regards to customer validation in particular: I have put this in front of people and asked if it makes sense; and I've gotten very positive responses. I have not, however, done any formal user interviews: to me, the problem seems clear; and whether or not this is truly a solution isn't something that you can find out from just a few interviews -- especially not when what you can show is far from the finished/polished experience.
In conclusion: yes, this is still a tech oriented idea; turning into a usable product is why I'm trying to do -- but, to do it well, I need to raise money.
Actively listen to the people in your personal and professional life as if you were a scientist. Think about what they are trying to say to you beneath the words. Do they want praise, recognition are they feeling stressed,
happy? People will tell you these things almost unwittingly.
When its time to respond try to frame what you say in the context of their needs and what they have communicated. If you can't think of anything immediately rephrase and confirm what they said and you can think about the meaning of it later when you are post processing the interaction, again like a scientist. You aren't going to be good at it at first. Experiment. Even if the interaction turned out negative don't take it personal it's still another data point to help you learn how to do it better.
By doing this procedure you can learn about how your emotional system works and how human dynamics work and when its appropriate to talk about yourself in conversation. It takes time and it has a lumpy reward curve, but it is very satisfying.
What if your parents didn't sacrifice for you? What if you raised yourself? The pay it forward attitude is just so blind to the harsh realities that a large number of children face. It is very possible for a parent to hate and resent their child to such a degree that they take every opportunity to hurt, gaslight and humiliate. And that's IF they are not ignoring you because they are distracted by addiction. I love being apart of my children's lives now. I don't expect anything in return for taking care of them. I have to earn their loyalty everyday by being a great person just like I have to do for everyone else I meet. Its such a sense of entitlement that the children owe you. If you don't want to change diapers, don't have a goddamn kid!!!!!!
I agree with the idea its the mental health of the person cutting things off, me in this case. But, indeed, the lion's share of my mental health issues could be attributed to the toxic nature of my relationship with mother. I was very close to being able to maintain stable relationships outside of the familial one. It was a clue that I was probably ok. Once I cut her out and wasn't under assault, my other relationships improved dramatically. (Intimacy etc) I was able to finally separate from her, find my own natural level of dysfunction and begin to live my own life.
Yes, I've created initial version of the engine first.
In may case the need of having embeddable HTML engine was well known - people were trying to embed IE quite frequently. Even Microsoft itself was trying to put it everywhere they can.
The question was on different angle: can single person compete with the whole IE team at MS to achieve anything viable. And that required the engine to be present to try by others.
Initial version was very basic HTML renderer named HTMLayout that time. Made site for it and published couple of articles about it. These allowed me to gather requirements and estimate interest/market for it.
After that modules of HTMLayout were assembled into Sciter, with additions of CSS and scripting.
As of 9 months...
I've participated in many projects, successful ones took 9 months from first PRD to alpha/beta stage. Longer projects, as a rule, were less successful. Team lost the steam, etc.
YMMV of course, but 9 months to create something, seems like is embedded into human nature. I cannot provide any formal proof, just a feeling supported by 30 years of experience in the business.
