Around the time I wrote a blogpost on culinary tips I had amassed from various chefs, I ended up getting one more piece of advice from a James Beard award winner. The culinary equivalent of a Pulitzer. In fact, one piece of advice that came in right after I clicked publish on that blogpost. Which I subsequently failed to include.
I had asked, “How do you know the palate you come into the kitchen with today is the same as the one that you came in with yesterday? And similarly, what about the one tomorrow?”
To which he responded, “I don’t know.” For a brief second, there was silence. Both of us knowing that the void will be filled, but left there for dramatic effect. “Swiss cheese.”
“Huh?”
“Swiss cheese. Not the fancy stuff, the one you find in the refrigerated section in the supermarket. Every day, when I go into the kitchen, I take a bite of swiss cheese. To me, it has the perfect balance of umami, salt, nuttiness. And the supermarket brand one is always produced with a consistency in their quality. If my bite that day is not as salty, then my palate is muted, and I should salt my dishes that day a little more. And so on.”
And I found that fascinating. Recently, I was reminded of that advice when I was chatting with my friends on preparation rituals. When we start something, to get us in the right mindset, what is the set of practices in which we use to orient ourselves?
Back when I was still swimming competitively, we used to always say the hardest part about swimming is getting in the water. Effectively, starting. The below were some other rituals that came up in that conversation. Part in hopes that it may inspire you to start your own, partly to make sure that I immortalize these practices for myself.
Music
The tuner in many ways is the swiss cheese in music. Something so consistent that it becomes the benchmark for what sound should be. Is your instrument too sharp or too flat?
But from a ritualistic perspective, I’ve seen many play the scales to loosen their fingers, but one of my favorites from my buddy who plays the flute in the orchestra is beatboxing, while playing the happy birthday song. The song choice itself matters less than using one’s entire mouth to enunciate certain beats. And so, by the end of the song, the windpipes and larynx are fully massaged and ready to go.
Podcasts / Streaming
For me, it’s doing 20 burpees while listening to a collection of my favorite podcast clips that I’ve saved from other podcasters, then sitting down and skimming through this list of catchphrases that I’ve since called “The Rookie Guide for Veteran Podcasters.”
For another friend, who’s far more accomplished than I am on this front, it’s doing a series of vocal exercises and facial massages. The former of which expand in both pitch and volume (from a whisper to singing in a voice suited best for operas).
From a third friend, it was religiously taking a 1-hour nap about an hour before the recording session.
Giving live talks
This isn’t from any of us in the room at the time. But Tim Ferriss has also gone on record sharing what he did in preparation for his first SXSW talk when we just launched the Four-Hour Workweek. That he was staying in a friend’s home who had cats. And he kept practicing his talk in front of the cats trying to get their attention. None of which, I assume, knew anything about what he was talking about, yet if he could convey his intent, energy and emotions through to the cat, he’d have a fighting chance getting the audience’s attention at SXSW.
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost). Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!
The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs
We live in a world where everyone is seeking validation from some kind of audience — large or small. And I’ve come to realize over the years that as long as we’re chasing what most people want, we will eventually be like most people. And truth be told, forgettable. Speaking for myself, I will just be a number in a sea of sameness, rather than THE number.
I realized later than I would have liked that I didn’t want to be like everyone else, after being inspired by a rejection email from someone I deeply respect when she replied with four words “Be interested and interesting.” And I count myself lucky to be surrounded by people who think different, to borrow a phrase Steve Jobs loves. For some, that means going where no human has gone before. For others, it’s a means to live their most fulfilling life.
So, I can only thank my good buddy Matt — one of the most outlier and honest-to-goodness thinkers I know — for the alchemical jazz that birthed this blogpost. Our only ask is that you suspend judgment until you reach the end. What may seem eccentric at first glance may prove to be the kernel of inspiration you didn’t know you needed today.
Below is only a snippet of quirks — seven to be exact — that make the two of us us, but hoping this inspires a larger conversation of people being unapologetically themselves.
1. The whiteboard in the shower: Leaving no shower thought unturned
There are only two kinds of reactions I get when I tell people this. Utter bewilderment. And, what I call, sparkle-eyes.
Many of my best ideas happen in the shower. In fact, about 60-70% of the topics I write about on this blogpost found its origin in the shower. But, forget myself for a second. There’s a whole movement in the world called shower thoughts. There’s also some great academic literature on the subject — that hot showers open your pores, helps your blood circulate, and put you in dopamine-high, yet relaxed states, just to name a few. But whether the science matters or not here, one of my biggest frustrations in life is losing access to great ideas just because I couldn’t commit it to memory or document them. Many of mine merely happen to start in the shower.
So, with a small purchase of a $10 whiteboard and $15-20 rainproof markers, you’ll be set.
2. Dream journaling: Better access to conscious and subconscious memory
I’ve been fascinated by dreams ever since I was a kid. Luckily, blessed by vivid imagination, I was able to synthesize the art, movies, and stories I was consuming into interactive experiences in the amphitheater of my mind. To me, dreams were the ever-evolving playground that very few tangible experiences could rival. I’m gonna be hated for saying this, but I remember the day I was let down by the Disneyland promise. I was only seven. And I told myself that day, I would start trying to remember my dreams.
You see, as fantastically awesome as dreams are, the only downside is I forget the vast majority of them within seconds of waking up.
So, for a long, long time, I’ve been dream journaling. I have a notebook by my bedside. And every time, I remember a dream, I write it down and/or draw it out. Even if all I remember is a single word or a single image. Over time, I get better at it. The better I get at capturing my dreams, the more intentional I get.
There’s now a whole slew of literature on the topic, but for me, it’s fun. And an interesting byproduct of it all is I seem to have better memory than most of my peers.
3. High-quality notebooks: Evergreen homes to high-quality ideas
This is truly a prime example that while we all come from different backgrounds, curious minds can reach the same conclusion from different angles. That’s exactly what happened when Matt and I were ideating for this blogpost when we realized we both graduated from ten-cent back-to-school-sale spiral-bound notebooks.
The more expensive the notebook, the more respect you treat it with, and the higher quality of thoughts you will entrust it to house. Think of it like sunk cost fallacy. After all, it’d be a pity to leave the sacred halls between the two leather covers unadorned with ideas that would complement the quality of the frame.
4. The Emotional Catalog: The vending machine of emotions
The human emotional spectrum is fascinating, yet quite volatile and unreliable when you most need it. For instance, I know I’m not alone in this, but I used to always find myself feeling anger and aggression upon hearing constructive feedback, rather than curiosity. That I felt anxiety and overwhelmed when on stage rather than excitement and confidence. That I felt frustrated and discouraged when writing blogposts when I want to feel inspired.
So when I committed to this blog in 2019, I started keeping tabs on when I feel strong emotions, hoping to preserve these emotions in cryogenic slumber and awakening them when I needed them most. I keep a Google Doc that has a glossary of emotions in it — from joy to anger, from optimism to jealousy, from compassion to sadness, just to name a few. And each time I consume a medium that inspires a certain emotion, I include it in that doc. They become my shots of espresso when I’m just on the wrong side of the bed.
5. The Excite-o-Meter: Matt’s personal Stoke Diary
Matt: I’m a big believer that energy is palpable, but ephemeral. Like a wisp of smoke, energy is beautiful and can dazzle and inspire, but it fades… eventually. The buzz dies down, and it saddens me. That’s why I’ve developed a practice to immortalize positive energy – by keeping a running list labeled “Excite-o-Meter.” It’s my personal Stoke Diary.
Here’s how it works.
At the beginning of every week, I create a “dashboard” in a specific notebook I have for work –- a two-page canvas that I reference back to throughout the week. Page one contains items that I detail at the beginning of the week, like my “Big Rocks” (priorities for the week) and “Principles to Uphold” (personal growth tenets I aspire to embody).
Page two is more dynamic. It contains running logs of moments that captivated me in the present, that I choose to immortalize.
I allocate 25% of page two to the “Key Learnings” of the week. But the real magic happens with the other 75% of the page. I label this section “Excite-o-Meter.”
My rule is that anytime my excitement exceeds a very scientifically-defined 7/10, I jot it down immediately.
Reached alignment on a cross-functional project that was birthed out of a chaotic primordial soup of conflicting objectives? Jotted.
Overcame a once-limiting belief, reminding myself that I hold the paintbrush against the canvas of my life? Jotted.
My SQL query finally ran after debugging it for 24 minutes? Jotted.
At the individual level, it helps me memorialize the moment, etching it down onto my notebook and simultaneously, my mind. But when I read the log in periods of reflection, when I browse weeks worth of “Excite-o-Meter” entries – it reminds me of who I am. Of what gets me to tick. Of what makes me experience pure exuberance. It’s my Stoke Diary, and it’s my ever-growing source of inspiration.
6. Marriage counseling: A recipe for strong co-founder relationships
Two and a half years ago, after a conversation with one of my favorite founders, I stumbled across the parallels of marriages and co-founder relationships. Ever since, while I don’t do so with any element of regularity, I’ve found couple counseling to be a huge unlock to demystifying sticky co-founder dynamics, hell, even how to make amends with friends.
7. Restaurant recipes: It never hurts to ask
I stumbled across this one quite accidentally. So, one of the things I’m quite known for among my group of friends is that I like bringing a notebook with me almost everywhere. And there have been multiple times that for a party of two, I’ve been the first to arrive. In hopes to capture my thoughts and ideas before they dissipate into the cosmos, as soon as I am seated at the restaurant, I immediately start to take notes. Additionally, when I ponder, I tend to look around as if my eyes were bees just hovering above sunflowers in a prairie without any intent to rest on any particular nectary.
That, in effect, without even noticing it myself, makes me look like a food critic — to which I’ve been offered complimentary drinks and appetizers while waiting for my dinner guest. On occasion, they serve me something I wouldn’t have ordered myself and I love it. And well, being a curious home cook I am, I had to ask how they make it, in hopes of replicating the flavor and/or texture profile at home. And I remember the first time I worked up my courage to ask, the chef de cuisine hand-wrote out her full recipe and gave it to me at the end of the meal.
Ever since, every time I like a dish at a restaurant, I give my compliments to the chef and politely ask for the recipe. Most times I get a thank you but no, but surprisingly and anecdotally, about 40-50% of the time, I actually get the recipe. And in a small, small handful of times, the chef shows me how to make the dish live.
In closing
Most people don’t self-describe themselves as quirky. Neither do they seek to find a quirk that best describes them. Quirks are products of self-discovery and unadulterated problem-solving at its purest. Bespoke solutions to ones’ problems, unabated from society’s judgmental eye, birthed by the crazy ones. And that is something Matt and I find magical.
In fact, when Matt brought up this topic with his bud, Rebecca, recently, she described it best, “Quirks are an evolutionary adaptation. They stand out and persist because they survive. Because they are a survival mechanism. Everyone has a bunch of systems. I have a way of organizing my notes, packing my suitcase, curating my notes, and a bunch more.”
While the purpose of this blogpost isn’t for you to pick what quirks you like and copy them (while we won’t stop you if you do), rather, we hope this helps you better understand where quirks come from. And just maybe, this will help you build the blueprint schematics to what makes you you.
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups, as well as cataloging the history of tomorrow through the bookmarks of yesterday!
Any views expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone. They are not a representation of values held by On Deck, DECODE, or any other entity I am or have been associated with. They are for informational and entertainment purposes only. None of this is legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Please do your own diligence before investing in startups and consult your own adviser before making any investments.
Over the weekend, I was brewing up some mad lemonade. ‘Cause well, that’s the summer thing to do. Since I’m limited in my expeditions outdoors, it’s just watching the sun skim over the horizon, blossoming its rose petals across the evening sky, in my backyard, sipping on homemade lemonade. If you’re curious about my recipe, I’ll include it at the bottom of this post.
Thomas Keller. An individual probably best known, among many others, for his achievements with The French Laundry. Needless to say, I was enamored by his talk. But the fireworks in my head didn’t start going off until the 12:46 mark.
I met a founder (let’s call him Stan) recently who was about to close on his first big executive hire into a team less than 10 strong. Naturally, I asked what the rest of his team thought of that person. Stan replied, “I haven’t asked them yet.”
So, I subsequently followed up, “Were they able to meet him?”
“He’s been by our office, and I’m sure he’s had the chance to chat with them already.”
When he said that, two things stuck out to me:
Stan’s use of “I’m sure…” implied neither that he was sure nor that he took care to verify.
He seemed to have skipped a fundamental step in building a team. And by transitive property, how it would define his team’s culture.
The Culinary Parallel
Synonymously, a day later, my friend asked me, “How do you come up with your ideas for flavor mad science?”
You’re probably here thinking: “What the hell does this have to do with team-building and culture?” But bear with me here. I swear there’s a parallel.
Although, like all of my ideas and insights, I can’t say any of my flavor experiments are truly original, I always start off at the drawing board with flavor maps. And, you guessed it! Not even the concept of flavor maps is original. A few years ago, an amazing chef taught me this very trick of how he concepts new recipes every season at his critically acclaimed restaurant.
So, what’s a flavor map?
The idea of a flavor map is to start with a core ingredient – the star of your dish. And then slowly add other flavors and elements onto your diagram one by one. The catch is that every new flavor you add has to pair well with every single other flavor on that diagram.
Two flavor maps where I used green tea as the (co-)core ingredient.
Personally, I just try to think of a dish that I enjoyed, or know many other people enjoy, as the basis for a drawing a line between a pair. The reason I do so is that many generations of experts before me have already done the legwork to make these flavors work. And I’m just iterating off of their discoveries.
The more scientific approach is through flavor networks – specifically food-pairing and food-bridging. In summary, food-pairings are when you combine two ingredients with the same flavor molecules, like cheese/bacon or asparagus/butter. The most bizarre one in a 2011 Harvard study is probably blue cheese/chocolate, which share 73 flavors. On the other hand, food-bridging is when you take two ingredients that don’t share any flavors, like apricots/whiskey, and bridge them with an ingredient that shares commonalities with both, like tomatoes.
Yong-yeol Ahn and his colleagues explore the nuances of flavors and recipes in their 2011 research, which you can find here. But if you want the abridged summary, there’s a great one on Frontiers. Yet, as one of the co-owners of a critically-acclaimed molecular gastronomic restaurant told me not too long ago, take the research with a grain of salt. Food science is still extremely nascent and lacks consistent data points, especially across cultures.
Looping Back
Just like a complete flavor map has all of its ingredients working in cohesion with one another, a strong team needs to hold the same level of trust and respect. I’m not advocating that you need to agree with everyone on your team. In fact, disagreement on warranted grounds is better. But to be a well-oiled machine, a team can only be agile if you reduce the unnecessary friction that may exist now or arise in the future.
Although it is important that every team member can ‘food-pair’ with every other member, what I believe is more important is to have a fair mitigation system to ‘food-bridge’ all current and future disagreements. A system to resolve disputes and to prioritize tasks at hand. To have not only trust in each other, but also in the system design.
The cherry on top
Of course, I don’t know if Stan just forgot to set up times for his team to meet with the potential hire between his various tasks of running a business. Or if he had something he wanted to hide from his team. Regardless, his decision, or I guess, lack thereof to do so, would be detrimental to the delicate string of trust that connected his team to him.
To his and every other founders’ credit, there are often matters that seem obvious to an observer, but less so, when one has skin in the game – some degree of emotional attachment. And the deeper one is in the weeds, the harder it may be to follow rational behavior. Loosely analogized to the boiling frog problem. That said, some actions are excusable. These can often be caught by either a mentor or a close friend/family member. But there are a handful that aren’t. The same can be said on a macroscopic perspective as well. Between friendships. Lovers. Coworkers. You name it.
And, luckily for Stan, this falls under the former.
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost).Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups!
I had originally planned to write this post back in February, but when the coronavirus came crashing in 6th gear, I thought it would have been unwise to urge you, friends and family to venture beyond your doorstep. So this post fell into the depths of despair, hoping to find its way to center stage after we were on the road to recovery and when restaurants reopened.
But yesterday, over a Zoom call, in catching up with a fellow foodie and college buddy, he suggested that I still post this. Not to urge people to eat out. But as a voice to support the many struggling restaurants, cafés and bars out there – many of which include our personal favorites. Before I dive into this post, I want to explicitly note 2 disclaimers:
Disclaimer 1: As I mentioned above, this post is not written to incentivize you to go eat out now, but rather just illustrate my musings as someone who loves food. And as many other businesses are feeling the brunt of the impact in the status quo, the culinary industry is no exception. Your favorite restaurant yesterday may not exist tomorrow. And you won’t even be able to experiment with any of the below musings if we don’t put a hand out now and support them when they need us most.
Disclaimer 2: I am neither a professional chef/cook nor is my trade being a food critic. So take what I say with a grain of salt, as with anything I write. Below is merely my observations in one of my most expensive hobbies as a foodie.
Given the extravagant length of this post, here’s a TL;DR:
Why I don’t resort to Yelp/Google when picking a new dinner destination
And a couple of my favorite restaurants in the Bay Area
My calculus for tipping – and why there are times I choose to not tip
Why a notebook may be your best friend in your culinary adventures
I jumped on a call with my good buddy, incredible founder and one of the most magnanimous people that I know, Mike, not too long ago. And no, he did not pay me to say that. As always, we nerded about everything on the face of this planet, but one thing in particular stood out to me. And inevitably manifested into the foundation of this #unfiltered post. He said, just 3 words:
“Words are food.”
The more we delved into this rabbit hole, the more robust the metaphor began. But for the sake of not running your ear off, I’ll cover just one facet of our parallel.
Compliments are sweets. They’re great in moderation, but too many give you cavities. They wrap up a great meal, but you cannot live your life only indulging in compliments. On the other hand, constructive criticism are your vegetables. They may not taste the best, but they’re healthy for you. And a healthy diet should consist of mostly fruits and veggies. Yes, brussel sprouts and eggplants too. Of course, it’s important to note that blatant criticism, like “You suck” or “You’re dumb” is garbage. They neither taste good nor are they healthy for you. You can smell it from miles away. So just steer clear.
After all, you are what you eat. 😀
Empathy in Words
In the past 4 months, we are all going through a transitory stage in our lives – some more drastic than others. Some of us have experienced the deaths of loved ones. Some, a test of relationship integrity. Others, career shifts and a change in household income. For those of you who have been affected by the job market, my friend passed me this resource which I hope you’ll find use in honing your job search. Anecdotally, it seems pretty accurate.
And almost everyone, a dietary change and restriction, due to the market’s supply and demand. And it’s more important a time than any (not that you shouldn’t when the curve flattens and the markets recover), be empathetic.
Be kind – with your actions and your words. In these times, it’s so easy to be caught up in what’s not going right in your life, but you’re not alone. You never are.
Empathy in Business Now
Although this applies to so many different aspects of our lives, I’ve found its pertinence on the business front recently. When the focus of businesses now is on cash preservation rather than growth, which I’ve alluded to in previous posts (1. cash in private markets, 2. heeding advice , 3. brand as a moat), aggressive decisions can be tough. As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once.
Here are some examples of said (preemptive) decisions I’ve seen from founders so far:
Reallocating 30% of the company budget to the core business from expansion and venture bets (70-20-10 rule of thumb to 100-0-0)
50% cut to CEO salary, 10% cut to management, 5% from everyone else, to try to minimize layoffs
100% cut to founder(s)’ salary, 35% cut to management, everyone else keeps theirs the same, while offering healthcare benefits for temporary workers/contractors
The conclusion for some founders may reach the point of laying off people who followed you believing in your dream. You can check out Mark Suster‘s, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures, rubric for questions you need to consider in empathetic moments of business decisiveness.
Empathy won’t change decisions. The tough, but true remarks are your vegetables. People will still have to eat them, but be understanding of where the people eating the food you cooked up are coming from. Rather than boil your brussel sprouts, offer crispy ones with a soy glaze, a little heat, and a layer of bonito flakes.
Perspectives Forward
Recently, I had the fortune of connecting with a founder whose parents were refugee who found sanctuary in the states. She put things wonderfully into perspective, when comparing the current situation to the one she was familiar with as a child.
“There are 2 camps of refugees: (1) those who want things to go back to the way they were before, and (2) those who move forward knowing that life will never return to the ‘normal’ they once knew.
“And those who progress forward are those who believe in the latter.”
When the dust settles after all of this, life won’t ever be the same as it was 4 months ago. The hospitality, transportation, travel, and service industries, just to name a few, will irrevocably change. You friends and family may have lost dear ones.
Alas, I’m an optimist. And I know that we’re going to come out stronger than we were when we went in. We’re going to have to get used to a new diet. I dare say, even a new vernacular.
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost).Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
Stay up to date with the weekly cup of cognitive adventures inside venture capital and startups!
As a result of my love for food, and eating out, honestly, a bit too much, what started as engaging conversations with chefs at some of my restaurants, and eventually chefs from across the country turned into a passion for cooking. Uhh, well, although I can’t call myself a cook or chef, I have categorized myself as a flavor mad scientist.
Cook– someone who can prepare food
Chef– someone who can create recipes appreciated by a wider audience (personally, don’t care if they’re a professional or not)
Flavor mad scientist – someone who attempts to be innovative and likes experimenting with permutations of flavors and textures (80-90% ‘failure’ rate), aka me
So, I chatted/learned from chefs/cooks, ranging from some of the most prestigious kitchens to my favorite home kitchens. Here are some tips and hacks I got from some of the best:
For the carbs:
You can tell if a risotto (or rice in general) is cooked by smearing a rice grain on a flat surface. If it smears without noticeable lumps, you’re good.
Add a teaspoon of olive oil in the pasta dough to give it a bit of shine.
Flour matters. Don’t just use all-purpose. 00 (double zero) for silkier flour and pasta chewiness. Durum for coarser grinds, longer cook times, and for making flatbreads; some use it for pasta too, depending on the chef. And so on.
For the proteins:
Score the fat of a (ribeye) steak before searing, so it’s easier to render the fat. Score is a cross-hatch pattern. More surface area to render.
Use tongs to cook steak and a spoon to butter-baste (I swear I used to think it was spelled “butter-basing”)
Don’t cook cold proteins (meats/seafood). Let it rest till room temperature before cooking.
Allow for meats to rest for as long as you’ve had it in the pan to better absorb the flavors.
Before searing proteins, dry with a paper towel or season generously with salt to reduce moisture and splatter once you put it into the pan.
Hot pan/hot oil, quick sear and won’t stick to the pan.
Brush fish with mayonnaise to prevent them from sticking to the grill. And a great browning too.
Use cuts of meat that are rich in marrow and collagen (cartilage) to make stock, like wings, chicken feet, chicken carcass, pork knuckle, etc.
If you don’t have a meat thermometer, stick a metal rod (or a cake tester) into the center of the meat. Then place the rod on your lower lip. If it’s cold, more time. Hot, it’s done. If you’ve burnt your lips, well… in gamer terms, GG.
For everything else:
If your meats or onions ain’t sizzling in the oil, the oil in your pan isn’t hot enough.
To not bruise your herbs when chopping (or chiffonading if you want to be fancy), you need a sharp knife and cut once per cross-section. You can tell if you bruised your herbs by the residue they leave on the chopping block.
Lemon juice, ideally fresh, helps fruits from oxidizing (after being cut), so it retains its fresh color.
Flavor extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) with herbs (i.e. bay leaves, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, etc.) for the “secret” zing to your recipes. You can do the same with white wine that’s used for deglazing the pot/pan.
Zest citrus in once in one fluid motion with a zester to prevent mixing in the bitter rind.
Use fine grinds for salt and pepper to season pre-cook, and coarse grinds for post-cook/presentation.
Buy whole spices and a spice grinder (or pestle and mortar), instead of ground spices. You’ll get fresher and richer flavor that way.
Toast spices for more flavor.
Under-seasoning is a rookie mistake. (Admittedly, after this tip, I fell under the category of over-seasoning.)
Keep your work station clean. Mise en place.
Wear short sleeves while cooking, or roll up your sleeves.
If you’re a 4-eyes, like me, invest in contacts. Glasses can fog up from the steam, and possibly blur your vision in critical moments.
Don’t skimp on costs. Quality cookware and ingredients lead to quality food. (Not saying you can’t otherwise get a good meal, but you’ll notice the difference.)
You may notice that I just transcribed what I wrote on paper to this blog, with some extra sprinkles on top.
#unfiltered is a series where I share my raw thoughts and unfiltered commentary about anything and everything. It’s not designed to go down smoothly like the best cup of cappuccino you’ve ever had (although here‘s where I found mine), more like the lonely coffee bean still struggling to find its identity (which also may one day find its way into a more thesis-driven blogpost).Who knows? The possibilities are endless.
Over the past decade, stretching its roots to the dot-com boom, there have been more dialogue and literature around entrepreneurship. In a sense, founding a business is easier than it’s ever been. But like all things in life, there’s a bit more nuance to it. So, what’s the state of startups right now?
Lower Barriers to Entry
A number of factors have promoted such a trend:
There are an increasing number of resources online and offline. Online courses and ed-tech platforms. Fellowships and acceleration/incubation programs. Investor office hours and founder talks. YouTube videos, online newsletters, and podcasts.
The low-code/no-code movement is also helping bridge that knowledge gap for the average person. Moreover, making it easier for non-experts to be experts.
The gig economy have created a fascinating space for solopreneurship to be more accessible to more geographies.
Demand (by consumers and investors) fuels supply of startups, through knowledge and resource sharing. Likewise, the supply of startups, especially in nascent markets, fuels demand in new verticals. So, the ecosystem becomes self-perpetuating on a positive feedback loop. As Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO, once said:
“There are only two ways I know of to make money – bundling and unbundling.”
Bundling
Unbundling
Market Maturity
Market Nascency
Horizontalization
Verticalization
Breadth
Depth
Execution Risk Bias
Market/Tech Risk Bias
Right now, we’re at a stage of startup market nascency, unbundling the knowledge gap between the great and the average founder. This might seem counter-intuitive. After all, there’s so much discourse on the subject. There’s a good chance that you know someone who is or have thought about starting a business. But, I don’t believe we’re even close to a global maximum in entrepreneurship. Why?
Valuations are still on the rise. Six years back, $250K was enough runway for our business to last until product-market fit. Now, a typical seed round ranges from $500K-$2M. A decade ago, $500M was enough to IPO with; now it only warrants a late-stage funding round. By capitalistic economic theory, when a market reaches saturation, aka perfect competition, profit margins regress to zero. Not only are there still profits to be made, but more people are jumping into the investing side of the business.
Yes, increasing valuations are also a function of FOMO (fear of missing out), discovery checks (<0.5% of VC fund size), super duper low interest rates (causing massive sums of capital to surge in chase yields), and non-traditional venture investors entering as players in the game (PE, hedge funds, other accredited investors, (equity) crowdfunding platforms). It would be one thing if they came and left as a result of a (near) zero sum game. But they’re here to stay. Here’s a mini case study. Even after the 2018 drop in Bitcoin, venture investors are still bullish on its potential. In fact, there are now more and more specialized funds to invest in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Last year, a16z, one of the largest and trendsetting VC players, switched from a VC to an RIA (registered investment advisor), to broaden its scope into crypto/blockchain.
Great founders are scarce
“The only uncrowded market is great. There’s always a fucking market for great.”
– Tim Ferriss, podcaster, author, but also notably, an investor and advisor for companies, like Facebook, Uber, Automattic and more
Even if founders now have the tools to do so, it doesn’t mean they’ll hit their ambitious milestones. For VCs, it only gets harder to discern the signal from the noise. Fundamentally, there’s a significant knowledge delta – a permutation of misinformation and resource misallocation – in the market between founders and investors, and between average founders and great founders.
The Culinary Analogy
Here’s an analogy. 30 years prior, food media was still nascent. Food Network had yet to be founded in 1993. The average cook resorted to grandma’s recipe (and maybe also Cory’s from across the street). There was quite a bit of variability into the quality of most home-cooked dishes. And most professional chefs were characteristically male. Fast forward to now, food media has become more prevalent in society. I can jump on to Food Network or YouTube any time to learn recipes and cooking tips. Recipes are easily searchable online. Pro chefs, like Gordon Ramsay, Thomas Keller, and Alice Waters, teach full courses on Masterclass, covering every range of the culinary arts.
Has it made the average cook more knowledgeable? Yes. I have friends who are talking about how long a meat should sous vide for before searing or the ratio of egg whites to egg yolks in pasta. Not gonna lie; I love it! I’ll probably end up posting a post soon on what I learned from culinary mentors, friends, and myself soon.
Is there still a disparity between the average cook and a world-class chef? Hell ya! Realistically I won’t ever amount to Wolfgang Puck or Grant Achatz, but I do know that I shouldn’t deep fry with extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) ’cause of its low smoke point.
Great businesses are scarcer
The same is true for entrepreneurship. There are definitely more startups out there, but there hasn’t been a significant shift in the number of great startups. And the increase in business tools has arguably increased the difficulty to find business/product defensibility. It’s leveled the playing field and, simultaneously, raised the bar. So yes, it’s easier to start a business; it’s much harder to retain and scale a business.
It’s no longer enough to have an open/closed beta with just an MVP. What startups need now is an MLP (minimum lovable product). Let’s take the consumer app market as an example.
The Consumer App Conundrum
Acquiring consumers has gotten comparatively easier. Paid growth, virality, and SEO tactics are scalable with capital. More and more of the population have been conditioned to notice and try new products and trends, partly as a function of the influencer economy. But retaining them is a different story.
So, consumers have become:
More expensive to acquire than ever before. Not only are customer acquisition costs (CAC) increasing, with smaller lifetime values (LTV), but your biggest competitors are often not directly in your sector. Netflix and YouTube has created a culture of binge-watching that previously never existed. And since every person has a finite 24 hours in a day, your startup growth is directly cutting into another business’s market share on a consumer’s time.
And, harder to retain. It’s great that there’s a wide range of consumer apps out there right now. The App Store and Play Store are more populated than they’ve ever been. But churn has also higher now than I’ve seen before. Although adoption curves have been climbing, reactivation and engagement curves often fall short of expectations, while inactive curves in most startups climb sooner than anticipated. Many early stage ventures I see have decent total account numbers (10-30K, depending on the stage), but a mere 10-15% DAU/MAU (assuming this is a core metric). In fact, many consumers don’t even use the app they downloaded on Day 2.
Luckily, this whole startup battlefield works in favor of consumers. More competition, better features, better prices. 🙂
So… what happens now?
It comes down to two main questions for early-stage founders:
Do you have a predictable/sensible plan to your next milestone? To scalability?
Are you optimizing for adoption, as well as retention and engagement?
With so many tools for acquisition hacks, growth is relatively easy to capture. Retention and engagement aren’t. And in engagement, outside of purely measuring for frequency (i.e. DAU/MAU), are you also measuring on time spent with each product interaction?
How are you going to capture network effects? What’s sticky?
Viral loops occur when there’s already a baseline of engagement. So how do you meaningfully optimize for engagement?
From a bottom-up approach (rather than top-down by taking percentages of the larger market), how are you going to convert your customers?
How do you measure product-market fit?
What meaningful metric are you measuring/optimizing?
Why is it important?
What do you know (that makes money) that everyone else is either overlooking or severely underestimating?
What are you optimizing for that others’ (especially your biggest competitors) cannot?
Every business optimizes for certain metrics. That have a set budget used to optimize for those metrics. And because of that, they are unable to prioritize optimizing others. So, can you measure it better in a way that’ll hold off competition until you reach network effects/virality?
Building a scalable business is definitely harder. And to become the 10 startups a year that really matter is even more so. By the numbers, less likely than lightning striking you. In my opinion, that just makes trying to find your secret sauce all the more exciting!
If you think you got it or are close to getting it, I’d love to chat!
One of the biggest aspects I lost when I graduated from college was the social life. All my social interactions these days range from driving distance to the need to cross the Pacific or Atlantic, compared to a simpler time when my friends were within walking distance. So, earlier this year, I started a little passion project: Brunch with Strangers (BWS).
BWS began as an effort for me to:
Help overcome my deep fear of public speaking;
Have an excuse to bring fascinating souls to the same table;
And, help make the San Francisco Bay Area feel just a little smaller and just a little more human.
It’s a Saturday brunch I hold every fortnight between six to eight thrill-seekers, hustlers, crafts(wo)men, entrepreneurs, engineers, and curiously-curious individuals. They are working on interesting projects, have captivating stories, and/or possess an infectious drive for their passion. The key element is that I have to be reasonably confident that they don’t know more than one other person who will be at BWS before the meal, which is, admittedly, harder than I initially thought for folks in the Bay Area. After 20 brunches, with a little over 100 guests and circling back in with 90% of them in the post-mortem, here are the five main takeaways from these enthralling conversations, ordered from the most to least intuitive for me:
Structured conversations work better than unstructured conversations.
Cap it.
The culinary experience doesn’t matter.
Embrace “awkward” silences.
Don’t introduce the guests before the day of the brunch.
Structured conversations work better than unstructured conversations.
But what does “better” mean? I measure “better” by the guests’ answer, a month after the brunch, to the question:
Were you able to catch up with another BWS guest (whom you did not know beforehand) in person?
In the context of startups, that question is how I measure my product-market fit, which I share more context to in a separate post. Guests of a structured BWS are 30% more likely to catch up in person within a month of the brunch than guests who join me in an unstructured BWS. Between structured and unstructured brunches, a structured brunch is when I have at least one activity or topic planned for during the brunch, whereas unstructured brunch, my “control variable”, happens when the guests get to decide how and where the conversation goes, and discussion is more free-flowing.
Over the score of brunches I’ve hosted, the two most well-received activities were 1) a game I call Hidden Questions, and 2) where each guest brings two asks.
Hidden Questions, inspired by Jimmy Fallon’s Pour It Out, is a game where each person has to answer truthfully two to three questions, written by the previous group of people who played the game, but is not required to reveal what the question is. The deck of questions the previous group writes, which even I’m not privy to look through, can cover any topic and ask any range of questions – from favorite books to deepest fears to NSFW ones. Some of my personal favorite are “When was the last time you uncontrollably cried?” and “When was the last time you said ‘I love you’?”. If the person answering the question does not reveal the question itself, he/she has to eat a Beanboozled bean or take a spoonful of one of the spicier hot sauces found on the show Hot Ones. The catch is before the person answering the question decides to reveal question or not, the other guests can ask clarifying questions and bet additional beans or spoonfuls of hot sauce for the person to eat if he/she doesn’t reveal. So, if he/she does, then the other guests eat what they bet. It’s a fascinating game that creates a safe space where people have the excuse to be vulnerable, as well as revealing each person’s level of risk aversion.
On the flip side, to help guests mentally prepare and pick the dilemma of the highest priority, I ask guests at least 48 hours, up to a week, in advance to bring two asks to the brunch:
One that they’d feel comfortable sharing with most of their friends;
And, one that’s either deeply troubling them and require them to be vulnerable, or one that shows a very different side of them that most people they know might not recognize.
The asks themselves are structured by answering two questions: ‘What are you currently working on?’ and ‘What do you need help with?’, which can range from work to personal life to new projects and hobbies to relationships. When the time comes to share the guests’ asks, usually about 20 minutes in, I ask them to share the one they’re more comfortable in sharing. Based on what they share, I can gauge how comfortable they are with the other guests, as well as indicate how well I’m doing my job.
The asks also incentivize mentorship from folks who have had wildly different experiences in different industries at different ages. For example, an autonomous driving product manager provided advice on building systems to streamline communication to a remote workforce to a newly-minted landlord and property manager by predicting actions and that may need to be taken by the landlord’s employees and working to preempt them. In another brunch, an indie film producer taught us all how to hustle, be scrappy, and run effective crowdfunding campaigns by going back to the roots of meeting people face-to-face rather than over the Interwebs. And more recently, a digital nomad shared his $0.02 on how to build a network and community in a new geography and culture from scratch by being willing to do manual labor and noticing when people needed help, to build trust.
Cap it.
One of the best conversationalists I know, Bobby, once told me:
“A great conversation is like flirting with a girl you really like.”
Share enough to make him/her interested, but close the conversation sooner than you’d like to suggest a sense of scarcity, as well as a reason to go on a second date. If you reveal everything too soon, your audience will most likely lose interest as soon as they have no more questions, like how many of my friends have spoiled the whole plot of Game of Thrones (and now it’s The Mandalorian) before I even began Episode 1 of Season 1.
The same seems to be true for the BWS conversations. I found a moderately strong negative correlation between the length of the meal and the number of in-person catch-ups within a month of the meal, after the first one-and-a-half hours (and a moderately weak negative correlation of meal length and number of in-person catch-ups, if the meal length lasted between an hour and an hour and a half).
Both to be respectful to others’ schedules and to motivate them to catch up after, I cap the brunches to 1.5 hours. To be fair, I am still testing out the optimal length of time, since I don’t have a big enough sample size to decide from.
The culinary experience doesn’t matter.
I initially thought that more interesting meals and/or great eats, which at times, fell on the more expensive side at two to three dollar signs, would give folks, in the worst possible scenario, the culinary experience to talk about when they have no other topic or background of each other. It turns out the culinary experience doesn’t have a strong correlation to the reduction of the number of awkward silences, which I assumed would serve as a leading indicator for how likely guests were to catch up in-person after.
In fact, even when guests had the disposable income to afford the meal, when a meal is expected to exceed $50 per person, it is more likely that the culinary experience detracts from how vulnerable a person can be.
The culinary experience will always come second to the guests and the conversation they bring.
Embrace “awkward” silences.
Speaking of awkward silences, my initial goal was to reduce the number of “awkward” silences in a conversation. Maybe it was my anxiety speaking, but I realized two things:
What’s awkward to me may not be awkward to another;
And, silences are diamonds yet to form (under pressure).
Some people need time to digest everything they have heard up to that point in the conversation. Some people need a break to eat the food they ordered. Some people need time to formulate the next question they want to ask. But for me, silence offers an opportunity to allow guests to dig deeper.
In relation to silence, fours years ago, one of my dearest mentor figures, Robin, shared two rather insightful tips with me:
“Listening is the most important of conversation, and silence, too is one of the sounds a conversation emits.”
“People like to talk about themselves. Give them the opportunity to.”
Silence is that opportunity for people to share more about their life stories. And with the right prompt, it can become a safe space for them to be more vulnerable. And there are two ways I help them continue, with the addendum that I, myself, am vulnerable with them first, earlier in the brunch:
Lean in. Ideally, with an open inquisitive look. I don’t have to say anything, but it will eventually prompt them to continue. It might feel a bit awkward at first.
Ask them to rewind to a point they brought up that I find fascinating, curious, or needs more explanation.
Don’t introduce the guests before the day of the brunch.
At first glance, this seems a bit counter-intuitive. Of course, I want the guests of each BWS to be excited for people who are going to be present at the brunch. I would absolutely love to show off the wicked roster of brilliant individuals each time. What ended up happening is when I did initially release the guest list, many guests did some diligence of the other attendees, and a few came to the brunch with predisposed assumptions of who the others were.
Though most tend to be relatively accurate assumptions, the brunch lost its air of mystery and curiosity which affected the guests in two noticeable ways.
The guests who did their research were less curious on what they thought they knew about another guest and rarely ended up discovering the thought and emotional complexity behind social media posts, titles, and press releases.
Over half of the guests who had been researched felt they couldn’t be as vulnerable as they would have liked, in efforts to “live up” to the expectations of the guests who did their research.
So, going against the grain, I decided, after the first five brunches, to no longer release the guest list prior to the meal.
In closing
With many more to follow, the lessons learned now is only the tip of the iceberg, as I continue my adventure learning from the craziest, the most curious, the most creative, and the most inspiring people out there.
