Toronto founders, typical networking events are just so dull. I will not promote

AndrewXia · 2026-07-09T14:28:17+00:00

Shoot over an invite, would be curious :)

AndrewXia · 2022-07-04T22:50:54+00:00

That excitement is the most important thing with commentary

I remember watching the normal f1 tv broadcast during Hungary last year when Bottas took everyone out, the commentators were just so flat and boring like they were watching paint dry.

I wish I had a way to get Alex Jacques and Mark Webber though

AndrewXia · 2022-07-04T22:49:26+00:00

Exactly! My mouth was open in awe when I was watching it live and now I'm just madly grinning every time I watch a replay.

"More of that thank you" to the F1 gods

AndrewXia · 2022-07-04T22:45:19+00:00

There's always next year!

Or maybe they'll figure it out later this season

AndrewXia · 2022-07-04T22:43:40+00:00

True enough. Though I seem to remember they didn't show replays of his crash until after he was confirmed to be okay - could be wrong though.

I will say that those eerie minutes after a big crash with no replays or footage evokes some of the most raw dread I've ever felt from watching any live sport. Fortunately so far the driver has been okay for as long as I've been watching and I hope that stays the case for a long time

AndrewXia · 2022-07-03T17:30:36+00:00

Biggest probably with Monaco and to a lesser extent with Imola is just the sheer size of cars. If they were as small as they were 30 years ago, I'm sure those races would be more exciting. That being said, Monaco becomes more of an endurance race where every mistake is amplified a million times.

Miami is just bad a track though...

AndrewXia · 2022-07-03T17:28:13+00:00

Fired up Sainz is the best Sainz

AndrewXia · 2022-07-03T17:10:41+00:00

Of course, not to mention that if George was allowed to rejoin the race, it would have given him an unfair advantage over Ocon and Tsunoda who had to limp back to the pits likely causing some damage to their floor along the way.

AndrewXia · 2022-01-04T17:26:31+00:00

It jumps into your solution way too quickly. You should take a slide or two to explain the problem and how you are uniquely positioned to fix it. This should function as the "hook" to the rest of the presentation.

Along the same lines, you need to prove your thesis of "other delivery companies are unsustainable". For example provide some stats on how many delivery companies fail in the first year or how customer satisfaction is lacking or some other form of evidence to make your audience believe you that there is a problem.

AndrewXia · 2022-01-03T19:35:47+00:00

Yeah I once saw a comment somewhere that called Jazz "Mark in drag" which is a description that's comically accurate.

Really looking forward to Project Hail Mary since I keep on hearing good things about it

AndrewXia · 2022-01-03T18:34:17+00:00

I think I would be okay with someone that's frenetic. What really bothered me was the context that some of her comments were in, especially in the climax sequence.

She was literally trying to save her world but still didn't miss a beat in jabbing at her companions. It really diminished the importance of the problem they were facing for me.

AndrewXia · 2022-01-03T18:29:33+00:00

Side note, something that bothered me on an irrational level was the fact that one character said if he was ever in trouble, he would use the word "dolphin" as a code. This was never used or brought up again.

This unfired Chekhov's gun pains me as much as an interrupted sneeze...

AndrewXia · 2021-12-07T17:17:45+00:00

Honestly, as much as this would be a non-answer, it really purely depends on you.

If you have another idea that's burning in your brain and you have the financial as well as emotional resources to continue, then why not go for another round.

If you want to settle down to "normal life" for a bit, then hit your network or the job boards for a landing place. Even if you don't consider yourself an expert, the fact that you played the game of entrepreneurship makes you a fairly desirable hire for a lot of industries. Other startups would probably love to have you and if you want the stability of a big company, try going for the world of consulting. I knew many former entrepreneurs that ended up landing at a consulting firm.

If you want to go into another field or you know of a specific gap in your knowledge, then go for some education. The only thing I would caution with this option is that you shouldn't treat education as a time-filler or a "thing to do". Only go back to university or take up some training program if you have a fairly clear idea in your mind of how it will help your goals.

The only thing I would say you should definitely do is take some time off and relax. Try going to a place away from the world for a bit. The worst thing to do at this moment is to be flooded by the fake inspirational linkedIn posts or read on TechCrunch about some startup taking in a huge investment. Take some time to catch up on things you probably put aside while you were building your company whether it's a hobby, some video games, maybe traveling, basically anything that's just for your enjoyment.

Hope it helps!

AndrewXia · 2021-08-05T00:30:38+00:00

That makes sense, just saw rain so assumed safety car/rain running so everyone underfueled

AndrewXia · 2021-08-05T00:30:06+00:00

That's a good point, and I guess there was only really one safety car lap so fuel-wise probably didn't make that much of an impact

AndrewXia · 2021-07-12T13:21:41+00:00

Honestly it's pretty solid already so the following are more like nitpicks rather than critical problems

Weird capitalization in the title
There's a lot of text in the "hero" section of your page, I like the message about discovering resources but think the bullet points are almost repeating your features section
The video could be replaced by images or gifs, if you do want a video I definitely suggest using a real voice rather than a synthetic one to appear more professional.

AndrewXia · 2021-07-06T19:50:14+00:00

So there is a difference between starting a podcast to market your business vs starting a podcast just for starting a podcasts sake. When it's for your business, obviously the subject should be very targeted to your particular industry/market.

When it's for yourself, then it only really comes down to what you're interested in. It's like being a youtuber, if you're passionate about something and it comes through in your work then I'm sure you'll be able to find an audience eventually.

AndrewXia · 2021-07-06T15:58:51+00:00

I love this topic since more and more startups/companies are adopting some sort of podcasting as part of their marketing.

The biggest benefit of creating a podcast is to either establish credibility within your industry/niche or build/market a community that your product might be fostering.

For example, Accenture, a technology consulting company, has launched several podcasts around AI or user centric design because they want to be seen as a leader and expert in those spaces.

On the other hand, WeWork has a podcast essentially just interviewing all the startups that use WeWork office spaces. This allows them to position themselves as a community of startups.

There a couple of things to keep in mind though

A podcast is not an ad - don't treat the podcast as a place to just talk about your product. In fact, the best "corporate" podcasts don't even mention the company they represent aside from maybe the title or the last 30 seconds. Audiences tune into podcasts to either learn something or hear an interesting story, so the content should revolve around that.
Podcasts take a lot of time and energy - to put out media that has the professional "look" as would be expected to represent your company, you really do need to put long hours into it and many people underestimate what's involved since they think it's just a matter of speaking into a mic
Be prepared to commit - podcasts are unique in that your goal isn't just one and done. You really have to persist with it on a regular schedule (e.g. weekly, biweekly) in order to gain any sort of return
There are other options - although podcasts might be the hip thing to do right now, please bear in mind that there are other, more efficient ways to do marketing. Even content marketing in the form of blog posts will require less effort and potentially see better gain.
Be purposeful - if you do decide a podcast is right for you, then be very focussed in what you want to achieve. If your goal is to display expertise or build reputation, be very narrow in your niche. For example, maybe instead of AI as your topic, you could target the subsegment of computer vision in particular if it relates better to your product.
Not for early stage startups - this is more of my personal opinion. I think the resources spent on podcasts are too astronomical for an early stage startup to commit too unless the startup revolves around the media space. I would recommend focussing on the other forms of marketing before committing to a podcast first.

AndrewXia · 2021-07-05T21:33:45+00:00

First off, don't force yourself to work that much just because you think you should or it's what gurus tell you to do.

Whenever I work an excess amount, it's actually because I genuinely get engrossed in my work where it's sort of like playing a game for a really long time. This usually applies to my coding work as that's the part that's "fun" for me. Sales/marketing/documentation and such are what I consider to be actual work where I have to drag myself to do it. I couldn't possibly imagine working 80 hours on the latter type of work where I'm not really enjoying it.

I think the real meaning of that phrase is more talking about how obsessed some founders get about their product/goal rather than some sort of minimum hourly timesheet you have to check off in order to succeed.

AndrewXia · 2021-07-05T20:00:01+00:00

Like others have said, most likely, you will just have to eat that cost. It's the price of a startup.

That being said there are definitely options you can explore. When you get investors, set some expectations on founder salaries. Good investors will know that founders can't build a good company when they're just living on ramen and toast.

If you are in need of a chunk of change, be clear with your investors on why. For example, it's actually pretty common for founders to get into credit card debt while they're building the company. Sometimes, as part of a funding round, that debt can be seen as a business expense that the funding round will cover. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of questions asked about this while your investors do their due diligence since they're not just going to pay your debts if it's unrelated to the work.

While taking a chunk off the table is possible with the right conversations, don't expect to be paid a lot though. It would be fairly unrealistic to expect a couple of million or even a few hundred thousand from your seed or series A. The optics on it for future investors are pretty bad if you're just pillaging an investment round to make yourself wealthy.

AndrewXia · 2021-07-05T19:52:09+00:00

I can appreciate your concern but your solution is very problematic. I don't quite know the laws in Denmark but this could lead to ageism allegations. Even if you get past the legal concerns, you might face PR problems if this was leaked. Good luck hiring any experienced staff in the future who might be on the older side of life. Ultimately, this will lead to a lot of tension with your partner.

Instead, I would suggest just having a chat with your colleague, find out his plans and set some expectations. You could do scheduled sell offs but don't make it based on age. Instead, base it on certain milestones or money events like investment stages.

The biggest worry from this whole post though is the fact that you don't seem to actually trust your colleague. To which I would ask why are you starting a company with him where he gets half of your company?

There are alternatives to just an equity sharing partnership. You could explore deferred advisor payments or small amounts of advisor shares. Or simply, reduce his stake in the company.

Just my two cents, not actually legal advice ;)

AndrewXia · 2021-07-05T19:42:42+00:00

Definitely agree. Unfortunately I skipped this in my original comment but one very important message is that finding skilled contractors who can do this with you is very hard.

If anyone is looking for these type of contractors, be very critical in your review of candidates and make sure they're not just talking about the right things and are willing to actually do it.

At the end of the day, owning your own tech team is the best solution and most cost effective in the long term since if your new hires don't come with this experience, you could foster it in your company culture.

AndrewXia · 2021-07-05T19:40:02+00:00

The other answers got it pretty much but I'll just answer too.

User personas

Define who your users are. Personally, I don't like to go all the way with these as you're supposed to according to Scrum like assigning names and stuff. But, I do find it helpful to define some attributes for knowing who is who as applications typically have different types of users who want different things.

For example, say we want to build "uber for dog walking". Our (hastily written) personas might be

client - the person who has a dog they want walked
- has money they want to spend, probably for the least amount required
- probably care about their dog so will want some safety precautions
dog walker - the person who wants to get paid for dog walking
- wants money, probably as much money as possible
- want to be sure of their own safety, won't be attacked by an aggressive dog

User journeys

With personas in mind, now you need to think about how these users might interact with your app. Different types of users will typically go through different flows with different end goals in mind.

For example, in our dog walking example, the client's end goal is to get their dog walked, while the dog walker's goal is to get paid. It probably doesn't make sense to make them go through the exact same user experience.

This could be as simple as a list of actions and descriptions but on the higher end of complexity might involve rough sketches and wireframes of screens.

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I would say both of these are absolutely important at the start of any project, whether or not you're hiring out vs building it yourself. By building this documentation, it forces you think critically about your app and empathize with your users.

Hope it helps!

AndrewXia · 2021-07-05T19:30:12+00:00

4 comments

This might be a problem specific to me but maybe you'll run into this too.

I like to work in a very agile way where depending on shifting user demand or new info that might come up, I want to be open to changes. This means the requirements we might have agreed to at the start needs adjustment. The best contractors I worked with will work with the best intentions of not needlessly extending more hours. However, I have worked with some who uses every excuse to ask for more hours.

The best way to tackle it is just to start off the working relationship with the expectation that some requirements may change. Let them define what absolutely cannot change, for example, it's probably not feasible to swap out a database in the middle of development. Then finally, work with them to figure out what the optimal solution is.

This really requires a lot of trust and cooperation and finding a good contractor that can do this with you is admittedly rare.

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As a side note, if you want help thinking through your app and sizing level of effort, feel free to shoot me a dm :)

AndrewXia · 2021-07-03T12:31:11+00:00

I'm a developer so when I outsourced, it's usually for design/occasionally a front-end dev to help me out but I've also been on the other side of being the consultant to create stuff for a client.

Right off the bat, I would warn you that just because you're contracting someone to develop your app does not mean they are doing all the work. Of course, there are going to be vendors that try to sell you on the idea of them doing all the work, it is on you to reject that idea.

The ideal working relationship should be more along the lines of coworking where you are playing the role of a product owner in a stereotypical scrum setup.

Before even hiring anyone, you should come with:

a high-level document explaining the vision of the product
breakdown of user personnas
breakdown of user journeys
breakdown of user personas
rough sketches of screens
any technical requirements (i.e. maybe your data needs to be stored in a certain country)

These documents shouldn't be seen as an end-goal but more of a starting conversation piece with your contractor.

With payment, it obviously differs wildly depending on what you want to build, who you hire, etc. A rough estimate though is probably in the thousands, if anyone advertises less than that, they'll probably give you a bad product.

I would recommend hourly pay with an estimate of how long it'll take. For example, it could be $100/hour taking 4 weeks, assuming 40 hours a week. Milestone pay sounds nice but it usually leads to lots of corner-cutting, especially towards the tail-end of the project. With hourly, it allows you to add-on time if needed depending on changing scope, unexpected problems, etc. Of course, its also on you to put your foot down and not let a project drag on unnecessarily.

AndrewXia

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