> we closed a $1.7M seed round led by Kleiner Perkins [...] in a little over 8 weeks
This is fast and it's hard to believe that it was a terrible experience. How would have been your post if you needed 8 months or didn't raise at all after one year?
If you want to buy a notebook with a US keyboard (which some devs prefer) and when it's hard to get them in your home country.
eBay.com offers a Global Shipping Program where the US seller just send their stuff to this shipping program and eBay takes care of everything else. Even customs will be paid by eBay and the buyer just pays once and benefits from fast processing. It's a buttersmooth way of international shipping.
I got my last notebook within just one week and it was still cheaper than the local version in my home country. I know that some notebooks offer US keyboards in any country (ThinkPads and Macbooks) but then you usually wait also min 1-2 weeks because they are custom builds or they come directly from China.
Don't know of any other entity than eBay offering this.
The Global Shipping Program is a really fantastic thing. I've used it both as a buyer and a seller (vintage computers) and now have all sorts of interesting stuff from all over the world. Also no problems at all shipping CRT monitors internationally despite couriers (probably perfectly understandably) refusing to provide insurance on them.
Had also one key which was registered as two key strokes every fifth to tenth time. Super annoying and the solution was strange: after vacuum cleaning and blowing the keyboard many times the only thing that helped was resetting the NVRAM with Command + Option + P + R.
I'm annoyed that my new device isn't covered here, as well. :( I'll clearly survive, but there seems to be no solid reason for why some of these devices aren't more supported.
The problem you face is pretty simple, your opportunity costs are just too high:
The probability that you create a company as a first-time founder that generates $500k/yr or $42k/month is...
- in 12 months ultra low
- in 24 months super low
- in 36 months low
And being a founder lacking success over a period of many months or years might be much worse than what you experience now. You would learn a lot though. But I doubt that your mental health would be better.
Created a site in pure AMP. All competitors didn't use AMP then (1 yr ago). My site was the fastest, didn't have any ads, was the lightest, the most beautiful, had the best UX flow.
SEO-wise my site still doesn't list on the keywords which are in H1 and the page title but all the crappy, non-AMP, megabytes big slow-loading, ads-heavy competitor sites are still in the top ten SERP.
Guess that even Google stopped giving AMP sites any special rank power except they are news sites (then you will see them probably in the carousel but only if they are accepted with Google News).
Isn't it in Google's best interest to list the ad heavy sites first? They don't receive any commission sending users to your ad free site, but they'll earn 32% of AdSense profits from your competitors.
Now, I don't believe that is actually occurring, but it's one of the many ways that our interests and Google's interests do not align.
> don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That's what you do when life is short.
It depends on your situation. If you cashed out and don't have to worry about paying rent and feeding your family (like Paul) then it's easy to spend more time with your family.
If not: You are constantly torn between spending time with your family and getting your startup/career/job right to be able to finance the next vacation/school/flat. It's actually even worse. Every minute you spend with your family you face opportunity costs losing money you could invest into your family. If you work only your kids won't remember you.
Try to cash out before you hit 25, not later than 30.
At macro scale not everyone can retire early. It's a pyramid of sorts. Who is going to wash the rich person's car? Until we have very advance tech, the answer is the person who didn't get lucky and cash out at 25.
Three years ago I forced myself to reduce my FB usage.
- At the beginning I remember it was super hard not to check FB
- So I just stopped posting first
- Then I realized that it significantly helped to avoid FB in the morning
- Later, I installed the Chrome Extension Eradicator which lets the FB feed disappear; I never used a FB mobile app
- More and more I could stay away from FB the entire day just checking it in the evening
- Still for 1 or 2 years it was kind of tempting to check FB even if it was in the evening
Now, I rarely use FB anymore, maybe once a week or even less and if I see all the same people posting non-stop self-adulations and all the likers liking every little thing because xy posted it, I command-w FB faster than I opened it. I pity those posting people, too lonely, too little attention, on a desperate hunt for some friends on a addictive Skinner Box network.
TBH it was a bit like quitting smoking: initially super, super hard and when looking back FB's feed feels just useless.
I’ll talk about mine if anyone wants to hear it. Never talked about it before
Its very clearly a dissociative. I didn’t understand the term until I’d insuffalated a sufficient amount of ketamine. I ended up having very genuine deep conversations with both close friends and new ones while on it.
Time felt choppy. My consciousness felt very divided. My body felt drunk in a way but my mind felt more.. absorptive? Clear? I didn’t feel drunk. I felt like I was dissecting common patterns of my own thought in a way that allowed me to be disattached from the outcomes of those thoughts - in the same way that people have found MDMA useful for dealing with PTSD by making the brain capable of dealing with issues without invoking the flight or fight response, I felt like I was capable of thinking about the way I was thinking in a hearthy constructive way rather than a destructive judgmental way that might happen soberly.
It all in all was quite interesting. I can’t say I can remember all the details of the conversations I had, but I do to this day feel connected to them. It was not a waste of time or effort or “brain space” or whatever.. it was a worthwhile experience.
But I will say that it wasn’t necessarily fun. I don’t want to go out of my way to do it again - it requires mental effort and made me mentally tired. To me that makes it non-addictive, but I could see why some people might get attached to it.
If you were insufflating it, you had a very ambiguous dose and were not using it under the care of a physician such as discussed by the article; not to discount your experience, which is somewhat similar to mine, but readers should know that it is very different from what the article is discussing, which is a very specific dose given over a specific period of time by IV by a medical doctor, under his/her supervision.
I have had ketamine infusions (approximately 15) under medical supervision, where a general practice MD, in his office, but in consultation with my psychiatrist, administers a specific dosage (usually starting at 0.50mg/kg, going up to 0.80mg/kg) calibrated by your weight and previous responses using an infusion pump, set to deliver the dose under an exact 40 minutes. Each session in (my case) costs $600 cash, out of pocket, with no insurance reimbursement, other than (in some people's' experience) potentially a small portion refunded (the "office visit" portion).
The infusion is conducted in a quiet, darkened room, and I'm checked in on periodically over the 40 minutes. The session makes you feel somewhat "out of it", but not "trippy" or "dissociative" or "psychedelic" in any way. It seems to give you an ability to put things that are causing depression or anxiety "in their place" so they cause less ongoing turmoil. There is conflicting evidence as to whether any of the perceived effects of the infusion have any of the antidepressant benefits or whether the benefits are solely chemical (and not in any way a function of any of this "enlightenment" that may be provided by the infusion).
It's a somewhat enjoyable experience but not "fantastic" or one that makes you feel like you want another infusion right away. The poster who insufflated the ketamine likely had a much higher dose over a much shorter period of time than the dosage used for an infusion, and reputable doctors generally give the infusion over 40-60 minutes, not all at once, and not via insufflation. Some doctors will prescribe a ketamine nasal spray or lozenges for use between intravenous sessions, but they are few and the evidence isn't really there for any potential benefit to this practice.
I have noticed a positive effect on my mood and depressive symptoms generally recently, but I have also had a full course of TMS during the same period of time, so it's difficult to attribute the benefits to one modality over the other. TMS, unlike ECT, does not involve anesthesia or shock therapy, and unlike ketamine, TMS is usually covered by insurance. However, it generally requires 30-36 visits to see improvement, so the timing is distinctly different from ketamine when ketamine works. I would think I'm a medium responder to ketamine and a medium responder to TMS.
I am feeling better, but not "a lot better", unfortunately, due to the cost of the ketamine infusions and the inconvenience of the TMS treatments. I received Brainsway deep TMS at one of the better / more well-known psychiatric hospitals in the US. FYI, this hospital is just now starting their own ketamine program, using the standard protocols that I described (i.e., 0.5mg - 0.75mg / kg / 40-60 min).
This is fast and it's hard to believe that it was a terrible experience. How would have been your post if you needed 8 months or didn't raise at all after one year?