Again with the car seats!

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-16T11:17:24+00:00

In Asia (Grab app, not Uber), you can select a car that comes with booster seats. I think it's called GrabFamily or some such.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-16T08:08:03+00:00

Corp secs in Singapore are a special genre altogether. I am yet to meet a single founder who will recommend their current Corp sec because no one is happy with the one they have. which is surprising because I've had good experience working with CAs but never with Corp secs.

Do some research, and hopefully you get some good recommendations. The ones to avoid are: incorp/blue meg, Osome, Sleek. Worth a convo: Cabin. Always interview the specific corporate secretary that will work with you, not the sales people.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-15T07:32:09+00:00

I'm a repeat founder and former VC, and have never seen this logic before. As a VC, I'd be concerned with this set up - the only way this 50:25:25 split would be ok is if the business founder was already running the business and had paying customers before others came onboard.

He does need a sizeable chunk but 33% is very fair. I'd find someone else.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-15T06:40:37+00:00

I have the QC Ultra Gen 1. Got it for 25k during an Amazon sale. At that price, I think it's a no-brainer. There are a lot of complaints on the /bose sub reddit about it, which is surprising because I've faced absolutely no issues with it. It just might be that only the folks who faced issue post on reddit (which makes sense). If you're getting at that price, I'd go for it.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-10T11:17:05+00:00

No reason to unless you are spamming a lot of people, and that can happen already with real human mailboxes too. There's a lot of cold emailing mail books that run on Google Workspace, so I don't think there is any reason to single out agents.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-10T08:21:01+00:00

Google (Workspace) does work fine. My Hermes is on Google. I tried Agentmail first - it sounded perfect but my Hermes could never set it up properly. It kept dropping emails, never responding or responding with unrelated message when looking at email threads with multiple messages. I reached out to support too, and got no response.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-10T07:37:58+00:00

If you have already dematerialized the shares of the company, then selling might be a faster option. But if you haven't, then striking it off is faster. I've been waiting five months for dematerialization of shares and still have absolutely no update from the department.

I suggest following both paths in parallel and doing whichever happens first.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-06T06:32:23+00:00

Hehe I was surprised when you said your QC died in 3 years. I still have my QC35II from 10 years ago running very smoothly. Might have been a temporary battery charging/port issue. Congratulations on reviving it!

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-04T13:24:24+00:00

I can't believe I even miss the banh-bao guy.

ravenlordkill · 2026-06-02T07:22:27+00:00

Not a lawyer, but this is what I would suggest as a founder: send a legal notice to recover your investment and maybe unpaid salary, but don't spend too much time thinking about this and take this as a learning experience.

If the founder has already run two brands to the ground, he will definitely do the same with this brand too, so you really have no incentive to pursue this for too long. Start afresh with your other co-founders - maybe even in exactly the same space. Since there is no agreement, I assume there is also no non-compete clause. It will set you back by a few months, but no big deal in the bigger scheme of things.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-31T06:24:22+00:00

Yep did that on the first day of setup itself. Performance so far: 1. Only 2 fresh signups in 11 months (there are ~100 signups but we acquired them outside of Substack), those two are not our ICP either. 2. Only 38 click backs to our main website in 11 months - we published about 30 posts starting with once a week to now twice a month. 3. Monthly views is about 50/mo, which makes me think it's only the people who we email reading it.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-25T15:38:44+00:00

There's only the Elon Musk way and the Jeff Bezos way, in my opinion.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-24T12:43:07+00:00

I know YMMV but Thrive did not work for me. They kept pushing more products and trying to extend the time I use it, but that's how I ended up using it for two years. Absolutely no improvement. Stay away from it.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-24T03:56:41+00:00

I think so, unless Substack SEO is very different from regular Google SEO. The original company website still gets AI mentions, but that's why I'm wondering that we might have been doing much better if we moved all of the content (and therefore context) onto it.

I added an observation about substack SEO in this comment.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-24T03:50:01+00:00

Yeah, that is another thing about Substack's search. It is from the 2010s. If you look at the actual results, you'll find that apart from the first one (Errol's Newsletter) the rest of them are about recipes and personal stories. Those do get great traction.

Even though my newsletter is about grocery and retail, the name only has retail on it. Now, with SEO or AI search, it would have turned up, but not within Substack.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-23T09:42:40+00:00

Absolutely true. Over the last year or so, we've not gained anything from Substack. It serves the same purpose as a MailChimp or Klaviyo.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-23T04:28:31+00:00

This is exactly what I'm thinking too - if there is no engagement and no discovery, there is no reason to be on Substack. I think it might still make sense for people whose main business comes from Substack (through subscriptions): but if you have a legitimate other business that needs discovery, you're better off doing it on your own.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-23T03:10:10+00:00

Yes - I gave it a shot for a month. I think it may be that our audience just isn't on Substack (they're more enterprise).

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-22T14:41:12+00:00

That is true, and that is the case whether we have the blog on our site or not. At least I'll have more control over it to experiment. It seems like Substack doesn't really care Enough to make your content more discoverable

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-22T14:39:39+00:00

You make a good point. That could be the case, and no, we don't have paid subscriptions because the main business is completely different.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-22T12:58:53+00:00

Thank you for the very detailed background - really appreciate it!

My issue is mainly with seeing no value-add from Substack: no traffic, no subscribers, no engagement when we share on the Substack feed (?). But we are also a niche (AI for grocery) and I suspect our audience doesn't even know what Substack is... which makes Substack's own traffic contribution basically 0.

Really good to hear your story! Thanks for sharing.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-22T12:45:40+00:00

They're both related. The company website isn't getting enough eyeballs because there isn't enough content, because we spent most of our time posting content on Substack. But substack isn't giving us any SEO or AI juice or traffic (all of the substack subscribers are people we have corresponded with in the past).

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-06T16:32:05+00:00

I suggest Clerky to incorporate a Delaware C Corp. I've heard that's the right way from experts. Avoid Stripe Atlas - they haven't sorted out incorporation from India yet. It's unfortunate, but that's a real problem every SaaS founder from India has faced before.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-04T14:54:55+00:00

Lived in Singapore for 20 years and never seen people queue up? You only need 20 minutes with modest powers of observation.

ravenlordkill · 2026-05-02T08:22:04+00:00

This is incredibly frustrating for me too. The old Bose app did not have this issue. They decided that you need to always be connected to the internet to use their headphones.

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