At the end of my last post, I mentioned that I would write a follow-up piece that went more in-depth on my investing strategy and specific investments I’ve made. Unfortunately, since then I’ve moved to Shanghai (more on that in a future post hopefully) and have been busy settling in so I haven’t had a chance to write until now. Continue reading
Stock investing: How I made a 20% return in 3 months
Everyone wants to put their free cash flow to work, one way to do that is through stock investing.
Creating your own stock investing strategy and managing your own money can be a very fun and rewarding task, much more than I had ever imagined it to be. Continue reading
How a hotel front desk rep got me to pay him a big tip
Mid last year I wanted to go on a vacation with my friends. We looked up options, compared prices, and ended up selecting Cancun as our destination and Hotel Riu as our all inclusive resort. We were all excited and got up early, around 3am, to get catch a 6am flight to our destination a few weeks later. Continue reading
Personalization at scale for acquisition and engagement
Imagine if H&M only sold size large men’s shirts because that is what the average male wears? What if they only sold size small women’s shirts because that is what the data showed was the average size for the female? They would be leaving so much money on the table, due to only producing for one category of customer. So, why do companies think it is fine to funnel customers to the same website, delivering the same content and messaging to each, if everyone is different? In this post, I want to shed light on how I believe technology companies can use data to drive persona based personalization. Continue reading
What is often overlooked when building a lifetime value model
Over the past six months, I’ve been working on SketchBook, a subscription based sketching app, where I spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of customer lifetime value (LTV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC). Tons, and I mean tons, of content has been written about both these concepts from the marketing gurus of this world, but as I built out an LTV model for SketchBook, I realized a few complexities with building such a model that are often overlooked. Continue reading
Has Instagram killed Snapchat yet? Vanity metrics argue yes; actionable metrics say otherwise
Facebook announced last week that Instagram Stories has now reached 200M daily active users (DAUs). Compared to Snapchat’s 161M DAUs, alongside the slowing DAU growth rate, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that Snap is doomed, and soon to be dead as illustrated below. But is it really? Continue reading
Trying to find your traction channel? Think through market and model first
Startups live and die by growth. Growth is comprised of many factors, which can be boiled down to: acquiring new users who find value in your product, and making sure they stick around actively lovin’ it (perhaps, this explains McDonald’s jingle). Once a company is finished the first few iterations of their product and has found initial product-market fit, whereby their product is serving a market that has a need for it, the next step is doubling down on acquisition. Which brings us to the need to find your traction channel. Continue reading
My perspective on going from idea to product
Over the past few months I’ve been reading a lot of books and have briefly experimented with learning the process of starting a new venture for a course I was taking. After getting feedback on it and through all the reading I’ve done, I decided to jot down my thoughts on building products. Continue reading
A trick to navigating a new country without Internet
Landing in Europe
Since arriving in Europe about four months ago, I’ve had the opportunity to explore 12 countries and over 24 cities to date. Travelling has allowed me to learn about difficult cultures, experience new activities, and make countless friends. However, when I first arrived to Europe and began to travel, it was a bit difficult to navigate my way around, especially since everything looked so different than North America. It took me a while to get used to travelling and figuring out maps, cities, and how everything works in general. But, through the friends I’ve made, I’ve found out a useful method for navigating a new country without access to internet that makes it really easy. Continue reading
Still buying TV ads? First max out digital
Not everyone is accepting it but the state of traditional media is rapidly drifting away as we now live in a world where nearby, if not all, marketing actions can be quantified. Watching sports on television has declined by 10% and movies and other programs has dropped by an even steeper 13%. People are still consuming media and content, it’s just not by the same means – there are less eyeballs on TV, and more eyeballs on digital channels now. Continue reading