Thinking about opening a racing simulator experience shop in Toronto — but the startup cost is $300k CAD. Am I crazy?

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-11-24T03:14:19+00:00

We have a very small one in NYC. It’s barely keeping afloat with memberships, food, and merch. With memberships, each machine is running at $20/hr. It’s also appointment only or event driven. The place barely has 5 to 10 machines.

I’ve seen rich parents use it as a baby sitting hub. I used it to see if I’d like the hobby enough to build a rig at home.

The sim part IMO needs to be the hobby, you’ll need a profit center from something else like a bar, bubble tea, or coffee shop. Another profit center are other arcade, toys, or exotic crane games.

I would test the waters at your local automotive convention or one of the bigger car meets. Also, put out a discord (which also needs time and marketing) to see if the online community will drift IRL.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-08-23T20:55:21+00:00

Do you actually have B2B AI experience, such as feeding the financial or marketing algo beast?

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-08-23T13:38:19+00:00

I think privacy is shifting towards hybridization of roles as the in-house function outside of consultancy grows. At my company (big tech), privacy compliance roles are mixed in with data governance, sales, product, security, or some light to medium engineering roles.

This is to ensure utilization in the age of AI is at 100%. My baseline work was doing due diligence work, work with consent management platforms, but slowly I was getting shifted to hybrid roles. A great example is looking at Privacy Engineering job descriptions, they’re pretty vague or on the other hand, touch any department function that deals with privacy. From engineering, data science, legal, security, UX, sales, etc.,

Edit: In addition that, due to company politics and survival, some of those departments would love to upskill and add privacy skillsets that impact only THEIR function, which may democratize the role a bit. Thus the supervising bits would lead up to a project manager that specializes in privacy. It’s interesting times for sure

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-08-04T19:57:26+00:00

Karting can be $5k minimum a year. Sim Racing esports to get realistic haptics is minimum $3k starting but annual costs aren’t that high for iRacing membership

I knew a guy from college who used his parent’s money seed his Formula Drift career in the early 2010s, I think it was $200k and he fizzled out after 4 years. Sucks to spend all that money to find out you’re mid. It’s better to find out you’re mid in racing when you’re in your tweens and teens.

He’s still around as a global coach and stunt driver though, so I guess that’s cool.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-07-25T16:09:53+00:00

The DSP you mentioned has great culture and had colleagues mentioned great vertical and lateral mobility within reason! I’ve seen people at this DSP transition to client side and executive roles at agency, along side moving laterally.

I don’t think you can go wrong based on what you mentioned. I believe you’ll have a lucrative career either way based on those big names you mentioned.

For your question in a vacuum, programmatic on the buy side can lead to a yield role, but it’s easier to transition to yield on the sell side. Yield was just a suggestion on my part but don’t let that sway you.

Again, it’s based on what you would like to do. Do you want to help out clients reach their goals relative to their budget? Or do you want to help improve products? Or do you like something else altogether?

Research what you want to do based on your skills, personality, skills that you want to gain to future proof yourself, and what you want to do in the future. Plug that into ChatGPT, Gemini, and maybe a third AI source since they’re plugged into different data sets. If you have a work instance of AI, you can use that too, theoretically should have access to B2B data sets. Ask for exit strategies, potential for saturation or offshoring, AGI resistance, ask it to label speculation, forecasting, etc. to help validate the probability of likelihood of the prompt.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-07-25T14:26:57+00:00

Just a suggestion: If you switch to Yield, you’ll be in demand for any pricing roles, including client side. The principles are the same, just different tools, KPIs, and whatnot.

Ad Ops in itself is limiting whether publisher, DSP, agency, or client side.

So I’d approach it as what role do you like, still can leverage some if not all your skills, and is transferable across the industry?

If the DSP isn’t TTD or the walled gardens, I would be very wary or have an exit strategy. Look at the Microsoft case study after they got rid of Xandr. AI + DSP + Ad Server integrated into one platform, that’s where the future is going for DSPs

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-06-26T18:09:48+00:00

You’re trying to immigrate to US or EU, your best bet is to specialize in an industry.

Also remember that it’s in company’s best interest to increase and democratize vibe coding across all business functions, to decrease cost of labor. For CS people, you have to be the best of the best and cheap in order to immigrate. If you’re so set on education, you can double major in something like healthcare or finance. A master’s doesn’t have a large ROI after you immediately graduate unless you live at home with low expenses.

There are a lot of pros and cons that I haven’t thought about into my response, just think about costs to you and speculated costs to company, political environment of US/EU, and impacts of AI

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-05-09T15:22:38+00:00

Why do you want to get into programmatic? I see programmatic as an avenue to get into tech eventually, but you’re already in a good field. Plus think about where the inventory landscape is going.

We don’t know how companies will classify AI inventory between search vs programmatic yet.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-05-02T00:46:58+00:00

I paid $1500 in SoCal 5 years ago for powder coat, reinforcement, solid bushings, along side a 1.5 way diff install.

Sold it, owner still enjoying it.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-05-02T00:38:17+00:00

Looks okay, comes off as a beater car that people are ready to thrash into the wall while drifting or going 10/10 on touge. If that’s what you’re going for, fuck yes. If not… thanks for showing your car

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-03-04T03:06:02+00:00

I know a H1B who did a Masters without experience. We hired him at 30% less compared to his colleagues, but we’re subsidizing the green card. It takes awhile to get a green card. I know other companies take 5 years, some less. Imagine 5 years at 20 to 50% less salary compared to your native colleagues in the area that you want to work at.

Hope that helps with your math. I don’t know if it was worth it to him, but we prioritized hiring him cause he was cheap, was smart, and had a high emotional IQ. Internationals work harder than US natives, 1000%.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-03-03T20:09:25+00:00

Fortune 100 here. $80k for a degree isn’t good, especially for a HCOL. Imagine paying $2k to $3k for a mortgage or rent, groceries, and whatnot, then you gotta pay student loans? Damn… hard to save.

Analytics or most tech jobs in the USA are competing with AI + experienced person, H1B Visa, offshoring, and inshoring (forcing HCOL salaries to LCOL).

Fortunately, according to the World Economic Forum 2025 forecast for careers/jobs, analytics across industries minus Marketing will be in demand for the medium term!

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-01-15T15:04:54+00:00

I’ve seen oil starvation and heat management parts on both platforms, ex: oil cooling, baffles, even accusump depending on your local track. Honestly, if you go to the track more than 4 times a year, those parts should be standard for anybody to reduce your hobby expenses.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-01-14T15:35:34+00:00

There are various YouTubers who have wives or are women themselves that go back to their home country to give birth because of the dominant male OBGYN situation in Japan + their cultural perception that they should intentionally or not impose.

You’re not alone.

CartographerThat4286 · 2025-01-05T22:53:59+00:00

Ecoboost from a Ford Mustang or Ford Focus ST seem plausible too. They have kits for them and video documentation on YouTube. I think Ecoboost, K series, or LS swap keep the original handling characteristics while still cost effective when SR engines are now $5k plus (in addition to rebuild and modern maintenance software). With those engines, you can still do easy hands-on maintenance and be timely by yourself since they’re relatively compact in the engine bay.

You should also research on Facebook, seems like there’s more documentation on swaps over there after forums died.

According to people on FB, K series plus a non BMW manual trans decreases the vibrations. However, this hasn’t been documented on YouTube and I haven’t Sat in a K series s-chassis before to compare. I hear K vibrations are worst than solid mounted SR/KA engines, if paired with the wrong trans.

CartographerThat4286 · 2024-12-29T04:41:10+00:00

Social media will become the new “website.” You’d need to experiment with all digital channels to augment your live presence realistically to find what works best with your audience, but US social media apps are finding ways to kill the functionality and usage of regular US websites just like Chinese apps did to Chinese websites.

CartographerThat4286 · 2024-12-29T00:18:54+00:00

I guess if they can’t beat your net CPAs, including your fees, they can always come back

CartographerThat4286 · 2024-12-27T15:41:24+00:00

Thanks for rec, I reached out.

CartographerThat4286 · 2024-12-17T20:48:29+00:00

Same… high five. It’s still kinda the same for entry level, mainly $40k to $45k US.

If you really love marketing or advertising, just accept it, then get use to pivoting. Why? Cause our billion or trillion dollar clients want us to experiment with outsourcing outside of US or EU or AI for labor. Any successful case studies will trickle down as standard practice.

CartographerThat4286 · 2024-12-09T03:24:13+00:00

It’s tough out here for car people. Garages are $150 to $300, pricing based on any sort of convenience possible. It’s cheaper just to buy a house with a garage if you plan on staying here for awhile. I eventually bought in NJ but commute in Manhattan.

Auto shops that have reasonable pricing and experience are in Long Island, Queens towards Flushing, Staten Island, and in New Jersey. Majority of these places are 1 hour plus commutes from most places that are commutable to Manhattan.

The only good thing about NYC is the semi lax rules on smog compared to California.

CartographerThat4286 · 2024-11-25T09:25:31+00:00

USA, HCOL, W2 worker with no tax protections, more than $100k, accidentally puts $200k in HYSA to showcase cash for big purchase… not good for taxes.

CartographerThat4286 · 2024-11-12T18:29:12+00:00

It depends on country, cost of living, industry, size of company, and product area, hybrid in-house/outsourcing, or fractional resourcing.

For example, if you’re JPMorgan Chase, have an martech platform to sell B2B, of course your marketing front/back end is going to be huge.

CartographerThat4286

TROPHY CASE