12 Months Adventure of My Startup
A year has passed since I started my startup. I made a record of my adventure. Fate of startup is often depend on decisions on exploration and exploitation. I really need to qualify my exploration skill.
This is long blog. I put summary and conclusion. You can know what happened roughly to read first and last part of this blog. This story start from September 2017, return to 2010, and finally reach to August 2018. I described what happened to me and what I think and do at the time.
Summary
I finished covering the Indonesian presidential election in Jakarta in the autumn of 2014 as Business /Politics Jornalist. I decided to go back to Japan and found startup. However, cofounder declared sudden withdraw. Project halted once. In September 2017, I quit job and started a business media startup. We tried to develop next-generation news app at first, but we shifted to video startup, as a senior level video creator joined the project.
However, the creator disappeared suddenly with the video we pour bunch of resource into. I expected to show the video to potential investors in purpose of fundraising, but disappearance clashed this plan. In January 2018, the project focus on blockchain, but 28 days later, Coincheck, second largest Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked. At the end of February, I quit focusing on blockchain, and dissolve the team.
I became alone. I started learning programming to build web application by myself since March, but as a result of joining party with hostile people, I suffered viral pneumonia whose tolerance to specific antibiotics. Food poisoning came next. A large amount of algae came out from the stomach. I was caught by doubt that I am in the simulation. Although sickness cured finally in July, I was like dead fish. I recovered to the level where I can swim at the pool at the end of August. I am getting ready for the next battle.
September 2017
I quit a job. I began to make business news application, I had been thinking of for a long time. I would like to explain the background. Journey has its origin in indonesia in 2010.
April 2010 — August 2017
Going to Indonesia, becoming reporter on politics and business
My career is on Linked In exactly as they are, but I might be different from average Japanese people, I need to explain in detail.
I was working part-time at a Japanese newspaper company when I was university student, not as a newspaper delivery person, but as an office boy for many of journalists. I quit electronic music production at that time and I was searching what to be involved in next. I met Yasuo Kusano, ex Mainichi Shimbun reporter who made “grand slam”, becoming head of every South Asian countries’ branch of Mainichi. he made several international scoops in the region. Kusano was one of the founders of “Jakarta Shimbun”, Japanese business and social news network, in Indonesia. The company was born immediately after the collapse of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998. After straight 9 hours of interview at a coffee shop (6 hours) and a ramen shop (3 hours) with Kusano, he said finally .“Why don’t you come to Jakarta?”.
I decided I was going to Indonesia immediately.
I made a trip across the United States for 2 months before I met Kusano. I joined Burning man in Black Rock Desert of Nevada. when I was getting out of the middle of desert, Lehman Brothers broke down suddenly, and Financial system seemed to collapse completely. Obama was in good mood toward John McCain in upcoming Presidential election, and Joe Biden make Sarah Palin a piece of swiss cheese at vice president candidate debate.
Since then, Japanese social system does not fit my belief. I did not want to be a mass production type Japanese waged worker. As soon as I graduated, I became a newspaper reporter in Jakarta. First month was impressive. I met a Japanese who was arrested for alleged fraud in a detention center, covered a meeting between a former vice president of Indonesia and top-ranks of a Japanese trading company(Mr. Jusuf Kalla asked me “Do you play basketball?”), and be in the press room of ASEAN ministerial meeting. There was an incredible environment where I could challenge various things and I really enjoyed it.
Although I was nearly dead due to medical doctor’s mistake, I stayed in Indonesia. I learned economics, deepened knowledge on Indonesian politics, society, religion, ethnicity. Finally, There were no competitors among Japanese or foreign people, on understang Indonesian political — economic context.
It was from autumn to the winter in 2014 that I thought about founding startup. I had covered the Indonesian presidential election of that year since the previous year. As various predictions fluttered, I was able to anticipate the voting results quite accurately. I was able to distinguish between accurate information and bad information. My prediction was not biased because I was not a serious stakeholder.
I pointed the critical information to Japanese business community. That was suspicion of corruption in the late stage of the former presidency which had not been noticed by foreigners. I waited until the election was over. I released the information. There was a big reaction on it. The layer that I reached was really far from that “the nobles” belong to. The nobles were claiming they gathered critical information just by reading local newspapers.
Things getting worse
In the company I worked for, strange politics had continued since Kusano-san passed away in 2012. Everything became political and productivity was killed. It was uncomfortable to breath in the office.
Covering Indonesian Politics is terribly hard at the same time. I was known as “Very tall Japanese with childish face and deep insight”. Indonesian politicians and tycoons were overwhelmingly powerful. I did not have “security” as reporters of Japanese major newspaper company relying on. In such a severe situation, I was always excited so much. I enjoyed to encounter them, and later I always lost whole of stamina.
There were so many extraordinary things. As the voting day comes closer, Macho-man has been waiting on the way back home. I could judge where the guys are from, viewing their hairstyle, face, body built up nicely, behavior and how he speaks.This is sign that my privacy was completely invaded by somebody at least, or by several groups at maximum. The fact he stand in front of me would be natural to interpret “strong warning”. This was one corner of the iceberg.
Back to Japan, Found Startup
Situation was similar to the small castle surrounded by millions of enemies. I met Wired (US version) Magazine at bookstore. In Indonesia, the Financial Times coming by air from Singapore cost around five dollars. The Economist also cost about $ 15. English magazines seemed to be terrific in the environment. Wired featured so-called “viral media”. What is written there is completely different from the “media” people from Japanese newspaper companies defined, and I got so excited. The most exciting thing was that they were creating new distribution methods on Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels. Distribution was big wall to prevent newcomer’s entry in the media industry, but social media was dezocratising the industry after the Internet, the World Wide Web came out(at that time).
Now “viral media” is controversial term because of the fake news heavily is considered to affect US presidential election in 2016. Anyway, viral media was sign of the change at that time. I wonder if the trend will come late for Japan. I always have something I want to make, but it can’t be done in traditional Japanese company. I brought out excellent information to the Japanese business society and it worked pretty well, but the society didn’t reward me, young guy, who does not have membership.
The answer was clear. I quit the company and backpacked Southeast Asia → China → Taiwan → Hong Kong → India over 3 months and returned to Tokyo. China, Southeast Asia, India is center of the world economy. I decided to come back with business I would start in Japan in next few months. It was too exciting to think about dreams while crossing over borders.
Changed Attitude
When I returned to my home country, I lost partner who will be co-founder. he deny to what he promised a few months ago. he explained that his wife disagree with making startup thoroughly. I have been away from Japan for 5 years, so I could not find a pinch hitter.
So I joined the company that was about to launch a Japanese branch of “DIGIDAY”. Through launching of it, I was able to learn business development of internet business and how to build production process.
It’s time for the next battle
DIGIDAY JAPAN was successful, but I think we had opportunity to win thoroughly. I couldn’t turn over every negative factor surrounding it. Tekken, my favorite video game, remind me the phrase at that time. “Get Ready For the Next Battle” I also love Steve Jobs’ Quote.
“I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go it something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long.Just figure out what’s next.” — Steve Jobs
I had worked for the company for 2 years. It seems that it will be profitable if I move to the other workplace. However, I did not select it. Since I was a high school student, I chose my life carefully so as not to become a mass production type robot that Japanese education system is motivated to produce.
So, I was targeted and attacked by some teacher whose far right political belief when I was high school student. He made committee only for the purpose of punishing me sometime, and he condemn me in homeroom class in front of classmate, seeming to pressure to my dignity(I never obey him). Anyway, I have been walking a completely different path from average Japanese people.
As interesting things happened in Fukuoka on business trip, I walked around the center of the city by myself, and decided to found startup. It was time to drive the project that had been laid down for two years. It was August 2017.
September 2017 (again)
How I think the Age We Are Living in
Now that the evolution of computing has provided great progress opportunities in various realm, society is not ready for the change very much. Twentieth century is over that you can see things with “perspective of linear”, now we are sure of being in a nonlinear and chaotic world (it is highly probable that we misunderstood the world in twentieth century).
The evolution of technology that crosses multiple areas is hyperconnected, and the results brought about are unpredictable. In such a period that the event that machine learning program win over humans with Game Go will propagate to medical, space development, nuclear fusion power generation, genetic analysis, manufacturing robot, agriculture, etc. the convergence of Internet and phone that Apple create by exploiting the lessons of predecessor made it usual that not only people in rich countries but also people in Developing Countries use computers, they are connected to the network. These changes should now occur over a wider range at a higher frequency. Changes are not predictable as a curve that is different from the monotonous curve depicted by the CPU’s performance improvement or, as point is out of the normal distribution. There is a high possibility that large changes will be brought about in a non-linear manner. Our perception or system of understanding the world do not fit the way changes comes out.
Society and people are not ready too much. The populistic president rampage in the United States, and far right parties are very influential in Europe. Nationalism and anti-intellectualism exploded in Japan. I doubt such a beautiful world can capture such overwhelming change. The potential to liberate humanity from various constraints can be dead easily if it does not resolve the gap between society and technology. How can we deal with stupid humanity?
Why don’t we have a tool that gives people a tremendous educational efficiency information, encourages the transition from erroneous fixed ideas to a more pure knowledge ecosystem, and lift human society to much higher level. It is my life work to make this. I decided to challenge business news up as a small step. I judged that can be the first win among many playgrounds that is easy to take.
New Team, Fundraising
Team consist of me(business, content production) and software engineer(development).
I made pitch deck and visited several VC and Angels. Although some people were interested, but we didn’t agree with condition.We didn’t have any product at that time. Since I did not feel like being a small. I thought to fundraise after I proceeded to more specific situation. I did not register my syartup. we have not received investment and not make any revenue, so registration just yield costs.
Considering ICO
ICO was in fashion. I searched possibility of product design that issues blockchain tokens in some way, but in any case it will compromise the user experience. I concluded we should make the product by usual means and consider whether I add blockchain feature like payment or authorisation.
I thought that it was not very favorable for to sell token. It is because some ICO project listed tokens on cryptocurrency exchange and exploit “pump and dump scheme”. US regulator established very standardised ICO later, but ICO was losing its trust then. ICO could solve various restrictions related to startup, on the other hand, behavior of greedy people without morals were breaking the frontier.
October 2017
Mysterious “Software Engineer”
I was about to learning programming. It is clear that engineering capability is a big deficit of the project. If I had been the engineer, I could have make more product, and test it in the market. But I obeyed to the whispers of the devil. Another member, a engineer, stopped studying, saying “It takes a year for you to take programming. I will make an application on your behalf, which will make better use of resources.” I wanted to make the first product by myself, but it is more important to accelerate the game.
However, the engineer was to go on a trip. As soon as he returned from his trip, he said “I will not do it, you can do it yourself.”
I made a WordPress driven news site. It was very easy. The site was made with Wordpress and hosted it to WordPress server. A small change in the back end is done with copy and paste of PHP code. The reputation was good when the site was released. As soon as it seemed that things would go in a good direction, the engineer said that he need to help. But what he did was only to replace the low resolution Jpeg file with a high resolution Jpeg file. He left quietly.
November 2017
Start News Site “Axion”
News site “axion.zone” stareted. The goal was to provide information on the Tech Business, which tends to be short for Japanese business people. Our point of view is based on the global world not Japan.
The problem was securing future human resources. I made all the site and contents by myself. I needed someone to help but the Japanese media industry has few talented people with expertise in tech, science, economics etc(a few people are extremely great). However, Tech companies are dominative in the market capitalization among the global companies. It is obvious that new value is created by Tech Giant and startups. There was a gap between reality and the industry. If axion.zone expands, what kind of people should I hire?
There are two major strategies. One is internationalization of talent. we don’t accept race barriers traditional Japanese companies have. The other is thorough Meritocracy. I emphasize output, not input unless specific condition exist there. Traditional Japanese companies dislike this idea, but I think this is fare for employees.
Video production
Video production senior guy joined team. Video or graphics is crucial trend. We extended our product to video. It was my first time to edit video with Adobe Premiere Pro, but I had the experience of music software Ableton Live, so I grabbed the way to put “video files instead of MIDI and waveforms” and I was able to catch up video editing quickly.
I knew what to do in a simple way to film journalistic work. I used to have an aspiration to be documentary film director. I had took a examination of video department of a certain college twice, but I had not passed. I just had option to major in political economics.
Video required me much of investment. I moved to Shinjuku, near from business district from suburb to use my room as video studio. Room was like a square box, we set up a green back for chromakey. I bought a lot of expensive stuffs. Youtube stars tend to adopt single lens reflex camera, iPhone 8 or iphone Ⅹ. Audience get used to the pictures taken with these cameras. I insisted on these equipments, but Senior guy insisted on traditional set of equipments old TV station likes. Windows PC is much cheaper than Mac. I wanted to build PC with Nvidia GPU and AMD Ryzen, but senior guy likes Mac, so we adopted SONY and two Macbook Pro.
Disappear of Senior Guy, the Video, and Macbook
I was anxious since I was only one person to invest own money and career into the project. I remembered Nashim Taleb’s book “Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life”.
In conclusion, Tareb was correct. Senior and I covered the US Tech Giant. We were producing a Program analyzing the circumstances of business run by the company. We made two videos before this production, so I thought we are ready to make higher quality one.
He erased original video file from micro SD card, so he is only one to hold the data.Even though I asked him to send me file he edit, senior rejected it as he need to edit by myself. We could not contact him suddenly. He and Video I spent a lot of time disappeared with Macbook Pro 15 inch 2017 I bought.
“Skin in the game”. He didn’t invest anything to the project, but showed attitude that he needs to be rewarded sufficiently.
Lost Fundraising Scenario
This incident was so painful. I was thinking of going to talk with VC and Angel again, with the news site and video as MVP, but video was gone.
What we were doing is somewhat new in Japan, and it was impossible for existing internet companies to copying it because of lack of human resources and its old-company-like corporate culture.Even if the project falls into the worst scenario, I could presume that someone would buy us (honestly I don’t like to be locked up). This is like betting with a minimum guarantee. Because of this, Japanese VC, struggling from not meeting big fly, can be confident to invest to us in my opinion.
I was totally optimistic. I wanted to spread the business to Asia and make it a high-end economy information service in Asia pacific region. The Japanese market is attractive with enough size and modest competition. Meanwhile, the regulator has helped legacy and eliminated challengers. There is a risk that startup growth will be hindered at this Japanese issue. We have to build startup from the beginning with the goal of global market. I will set the internal language as English, because Japanese is a language barrier for people from other regions. The service itself will start in Japanese, but English will be the pillar language of product.
January 2018
Focus on Blockchain
I changed focus of axion.zone to blockchain. It was mainly from the desire to test my hypothesis on media business.
“axion.zone” was full of blockchain content. We emphasized the information of “How to use the blockchain business”. I wanted to know what kind of user’s response would be generated when increasing quantity of article. Former axion.zone showed incredibly long time spent in December. It was a place where only people interested in theme, came and spent their time. I should not have change tactics.
Problem is that I missed configuring to measure AMP by Google Analytics. I set the website to be converted to AMP automatically. AMP is served relying on the connection situation of mobile. Since the site was relatively heavy, a lot of traffic should have flowed to AMP. This is quite a painful mistake. Perhaps there is a possibility that the fundraising could be successfully carried out only by the numerical value of the news site, without the video disappeared.
Performance tuning
Long page loading time might cause huge loss of visitor. Whenever I thought about this, I felt like taking a heavy punch by Mike Tyson, and could not sleep.
As amateur of performance optimization, I explored various things. However, it seemed that there was basically a limit for Wordpress. There is way that WordPress is limited to the backend using JS framework such as React at frontend. If so, it may be better to forget about Wordpress and to adopt Headless CMS. It is unlikely that PHP, composing Wordpress, will be in the main stream until 10 years later. The optimal solution is to adopt Single Page Application (SPA), but it was tough for me.
You can’t do anything without basic knowledge on low layer of Internet, World Wide Web, and browsers, when you work on performance tuning. Modern browsers are somewhat very deep. Chrome seems to be like the OS, and indeed it has become OS as Chrome OS. You can think that performance optimization does not fit “frontend” at all.
Forget the dungeon. ”CDN (Content Delivery Network)”make the loading time faster. Put the page in CDN in advance, and when the visitor clicks on the URL, serve the page from the closest CDN server. I didn’t adopt CDN since this method cost money so much, but Web may be headed in this direction. It’s about Google’sWeb Packaging. How much “tax” can be taken then?
Anyway, I could not find anything with immediate effect with less cost (including learning costs), so I decided to leave it.
Coincheck hack
Second impact hit us. The coin check, second largest criptocurrency exchange, was cracked in less than a month since shifting the foot to blockchain. Japanese media companies started to condemn whole of cripto. Criticizing Facebook seems to be favorable nowadays, but The legacy media were very terrible to distribute critical information. They are very authoritarian.
February 2018
Ethereum is not worthy?
I have changed the way of thinking to blockchain. When I read series of computer science text books, I became pessimistic about the future of Ethereun. If “world computer” exists, it will come from harmony of the cloud and edge computing . Main pillar is machine learning, not blockchains. The significance of blockchains is to exclude trusted third parties in transaction of digital assets. This alone is a huge possibility to shake the modern economy from the ground. Do not be too greedy. I began to think that development of bit coin and its layer 2 is the most promising. What I can was to wait carefully for the development of layer 2.
Ethereum has value in issuing tokens. Dapps (Distributed Application) is not effective way to develop application. Use AWS. “Slow database” is just nightmare.
Halt Video Production and dissolve team
I decided to dissolve the team. I worked with Junior video creator, but the person insisted on turning the startup into a video studio he really desired to own. I always deny it, but the person just showed plenty of animal spirits. I decided to divide the way from the creator, and halt video production.
This event also reminded me of “Skin in the Game”. You should not put people in the team “Do not take risks but request minutes before”. It is necessary to wait until that person talks that “I want a reasonable amount as it takes risk.” I got to know with my own body that the first period of startup is such.
March March 2018
I became alone. Honestly, I was so happy with that. I could have opportunity to build new team to progress the project. I reorganize the project, analyzing situation surrounding the product to find the best way to make the destination.
Labor-Intensive business model
We produced bunch of articles and videos, but as this business grows, marginal cost will follow revenue surge. axion.zone was very labor intensive harming scalability of business. I considered solution is to build contents platform at specific category.
I fixed target market as business news. Market selection was based on basic business analysis. There was already real demand recognized, but the products supplied in the market lost focus on users due to long-time cartels or culture of aging organization. While competitors are suffering from the “dilemma of innovation”, we can create rich markets by introducing good product that bring user’s benefit.
As mentioned earlier, device change should also come. Contents consumption in AR / VR will expand dramatically after it get over constrainment. Some information on specific categories will be dealt with only by machine learning model not by human. I want leverage this drastic change for a meaningful impact to society.
Can the small player be a content platform? Network effects works obviously for big pkayers such as Youtube, Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. At the same time, we can point out the specific area giants don’t control. Twitch and Discord was born in gaming. Netflix succeeded in drawing a line with YouTube and becoming rival of Disney.
Since there are already many contents axion.zone made, let’s pack the contents in the box. I wanted to make a very nice box. In order to take a first step, I needed to make a more complicated application. For example, it is lovely that user can upload their contents, and they can review each other.
I searched for the possibility of developing mobile app at first.
Android App
I used Adobe XD to make prototype. Material Design was awesome to make easy mockapp . After completing the mockup, I tried self-taught of Java and Kotlin but it was stuck. I just had a simple website development experience, but I was not a mobile engineer anyway. I took a contact with a several mobile engineers and talked about participation, but we did not become a team.
Beyond Mobile
However, I found that Mobile app development requires reconsideration through business analyzing. As of 2017, the trend of “Mobile First” was over and the following explorations such as machine learning and AR / VR are gathering much attention in consumer internet. It was considered dangerous for poor startups to make mobile apps as first step. A large amount of marketing expense is necessary to have the user install the app. However, basically it is difficult to make revenues to collect expenses immediately. Not only marketing Cost but also other costs might kill the startup, such as high development expense on two platforms, annoying process of certification, “taxes” imposed by Apple and Google.
It is a big hint that Uber, Airbnb, big hitters in recent years, does not close the value proposition in the mobile app. It makes user feel like being able to control everything with only the mobile app, but, from the point of view of service provider, the valuechain that service providers must look after has spread to the broad real world.
App Market should have a turning point somewhere. Sales of smartphones in developed countries are capped, Apple is desperate to increase the unit price of the iPhone. The new market is an emerging countries, especially India these days. Consumer Internet products in recent years had competing aspects of flexibility and wisdom corresponding to the emerging market.
Both of the industry and users are looking for “next device”. If the performance improvement of embedded computer, the evolution of network, and the utilization of machine learning at both of the cloud and the edge blend well, the future will be brighter. Tech Giant need to create a new market in order to keep on growing as before. This will be quite long story so I like to dig in another post.
Anyway it may have been okay to advance things hastily and not bring Android engineers to the team. As long as that person is not Ninja, it is not a time to create a server side in Java, so it should have been a big deal.
Progressive Web App
I was sure that I was going to develop web application. Web is considered to be inferior to Native mobile applications as mobile environment. Mark Zuckerberg has shifted facebook’s focus from the Web to the mobile app, and traffic and business converged to the mobile app totally. This is a typical case of Mobile first trend, in this 10 years. the Web grew steadily and became able to allow us to do almost anything that can be done on mobile app. There is no way except for leveraging “Progressive Web App (PWA)”. the Web is not divided into two platforms, so you should write code just once. HTML5 allows gaming to works well. Web present enough feature for the news app. I decided that I could create “Single Page Application (SPA)” to fully satisfy the requirements of PWA. As a result of research, we will leverage back-end as a services such as Firebase. Node.js or Go is favorable for backend, JS library like React is so for frontend. We gonna adopt a microservices architecture, not relying on Rails or PHP. “modern web application” seemed to be favorable.
PWA is technology supposed to be effective in development country like India (Flipkart example). These days, changes of the Web occured mainly in Asian countries with large user scale and unstable wireless network. Interesting things happens in the west from Japan. The direction of this technology development fit axion.zone. We are seeing the West, not western countries. “Go West, Go Asia” is fundamental idea.
React Native
When future necessity of native application creation arises, I was planning to develop cross — platform with React Native. This is very influenced by Facebook. However, Recently Airbnbthe use of React Nativewill sunsetmade public that it. I thought that React Native was a means to reduce costs, but in fact it was detailed in Airbnb’s Tech Blog that other costs are incidental. It seems that the stomach hurts so much, React Native will need to consider again.
Programming Learning
Various difficulties existed in learning programming (I still stuck on this). I was learning React through Udemy’s course. At first I felt nifty but Redux became a severe body blow. I did not have basic knowledge of modern JS, I am afraid to learn modern JS first. So modern JS had turned into a figure that looks similar to JS I knew about ten years ago. When I was a college student, when I made a website ‘s website with geo — cities, things are completely different from JS. I listened to Udemy’s course while reading O’Reilly’s “JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition” over and over again. I tried many other things but it did not come down to it. I felt that I need knowledge of low layers programing, and computer architecture.
Fundraising Momentum again
The project seemed like a rocket that wanted liquid fuel. I succeeded to collect knowledge and build culture of axion.zone. I repeatedly failed to build app at low cost, setting single target market. What is most important is that the project never die. I do not have any particular place to go back. I dismissed everything I had when I went to Indonesia after I graduate university.
My strategy was to build web application by myself, and to build a team of software engineer. “The code written by Yoshida was completely rewritten by experienced engineers,” is the goal to be described in the future, I thought. But if money comes before product built, I can hire engineers easily with plenty of incentives. So Fundraising can be effective shortcut. So I pushed two tactics, product development and fundraising at the same times.
Setting Our Vison
I thought that it would be better to clarify the vision of the project. “Free humanity from any constrainments, maximize pursuit of happiness” I had thought that freedom would not be available unless we trade off with other important things, but I would like to offer as it is to people. In five years I was in Indonesia, I realized that freedom is not so easily available. If you born in a low-income household in indonesia, there is no opportunity for higher education unless a miracle occurs. They will not be able to choose their lives. Nevertheless accepting the constraints, they look so happier at all than me. If they are free from constraints, it is probable that they are happier than what they are like now.
When I returned to Japan for the first time in five years, I did not adapt to Japanese common sense. I can able to see a group of Japanese in crowded trains and office districts objectively. They looks to lose their freedom and to be under control of authority. I thought “Why are you trying to be unhappy?” It seemed to be a human being completely dominated by super-intelligence, which appears in SF novel I like. It is the idea of the 20th century to exchange personal freedom for the order of society. Japan has remained in the 20th century for a long time. Majority of Japanese people, who received education prohibiting to have their own point of view, can not have opportunity to know outside of Galapagos island.
But we live in the era when technology allows humans get out from restrictions typical in past century. Human in the 21st century must be freed from various limits. To overcome the gap between technology and society, to create tools to free humanity from constraints and to help pursue happiness. This is the universal vision of the company I will make.
May-June 2018
Meltdown of Health, and Simulation Theory
Nightmare came out again, and this time was very heavy. I had suspended activity for two months because of pneumonia whose antibiotics tolerance and food poisoning, though I had many options to minimize a loss. Food poisoning was very dramatic. A lot of algae came out from the stomach. I suspected that I was in the simulation and have to find telephone box to escape from simulation. This is long story, so I wrote a detailed blog.
https://medium.com/@taxiyoshida/lost-2-month-how-i-failed-to-react-unpredictable-health-meltdown-f7f7ddcc8c4cPoisoning Simulation
These disasters are largely due to bad luck and my intolerance for uncertainty. However, I want to distort my memory consciously, inspired by film”Kill Bill” The movie starts as the scene where the enemy kills main character’s husband. The main character armed with Katana, Japanese sword, begin to revenge with power such as mix of Samurai and Kung-fu. obviously cool. I fabricated configuration that I have poisoned twice and I need to get over disturbance made silently.
I like the story that person who fell into the hell once, revive dramatically, and accomplish precious purpose. It is because there were tough things in my life. Hattori Hanzo says in the “Kill Bill”.
Revenge is never a straight line. It’s a forest, and like a forest it’s easy to lose your way…to get lost…to forget where you came in. — Hattori Hanzo, Kill Bill
In July 2018
my physical strength and body weight
I realized that my diet was so bad. Weight decreased by 7 kg, about 17 kg less than proper weight. My muscles are scrapped and I can not stand for a long time. Fat rate fell to 8.9% without any exercise. I was shocked at seeing myself who became like a skeleton in front of the mirror. Still, it was like nothing compared to when I nearly died in Indonesia five years ago.
I constantly took coke, jelly drinks and supplements because I didn’t have appetite. McDonalds was so useful. Unlike McDonald’s overseas, McDonald’s in Japan provides reasonably priced high protein foods. If American eat Japanese McDonald’s, they must mistake it is healthy food.
Podcast
I needed to lie down once a day. In the meantime I was listening to podcasts, it is very useful learning method. My favorite is “Rebuild”, “Turing Complete FM”(Both recorded in Japanese). I also fan of “Misreading Chat”, “Accidental Tech Podcast”, “Microsoft Research Podcast”, “Google Cloud Platform Podcast”, “Web Platform Podcast” and so on.
August 2018
Feynman productivity strategy
I was so frustrated with losing time to progress startup project, butＩdon’t like to dig the wrong tunnel. I adopt Richard Feynman’s productivity strategy, to recover.
i) Stop trying to know-it-all.
ii) Don’t worry about what others are thinking.
iii) Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.
iv) Have a sense of humor and talk honestly.
Learning Computer Science
I aimed to acquire basic knowledge of programming, and more, or comprehensive computer science. Alan Kay’s famous quote “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. I wanted to learn hardware, or computer architecture. Actually, I have liked machines since I was child. My home town is relatively near to Akihabara, famous electronics town.
Theory of CS was very tough. I read “Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach”(by John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson), “Computer Organization and Design MIPS Edition: The Hardware/Software Interface(by David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy) and “Computer Networks 5th”(by Andrew S. Tanenbaum) and more. But it is so far from “understanding”. I think quantity of learning is not enough simply, so I need to read more. I feel like adding some practical way to learn for motivating me for long term.
Swimming
The recovery curve was quite loose. At first I tried running, my trunk usually got a serious muscle pain after 2 minutes jogging. Even at the gym, I could not move anymore after 15 minutes of bike machine hustle. I started swimming in the fourth week of august.
Conclusion
I list five 5 criteria that I gained in my experience over the past year.
1. Cheap Failures
I made a lot of mistakes, but the cost of failure was generally low. As long as I keep failure cheap, I can continue to challenge aggressively.
2. Inevitable Hardness
It is hard to implement what looked easy as third party, when I become a player. The world is very complicated. You can ignore what the adviser who has only partial information or a little knowledge. You might feel you are lonely.
3. “Antifragile” to uncertainty
I lost two months because of sickness. Minimize losses when bad unexpected things happen. Be greedy to pursue their returns when good unexpected things happen.
4. Lack of Engineering capability
I realized that Tech startup can have difficulty if the engineering capability lacks. Unless we can understand and evaluate engineering, we can’t meet this deficiency. Paul Graham points out hiring bad engineers is as a fatal failure at “The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups”. According to Graham, Many e-commerce players appeared in the 1990s, but most of them tried to manage their plans made by business guys (non-programmer). Business guys hired bad programmers, believing that they hired good programmers. Startups was completely same as big company.
5. Internationalization
Internationalization is inevitable, since Japanese startup needs to see oversea market. It is the way that Japanese companies like Honda and Sony passed. One of the factors that Traditional Japanese companies are losing its competitiveness, is their “Japanse-only culture”. They are very Japanese companies, not global companies. I adopt internationalism in the company I am going to build, and get rid of every kind of barrier preventing internationalism. This is effective way to expand business to oversea market, mainly asia also.
What am I going to do now?
I will reboot the project. Four months of sickness and recovery process is not a waste. I will try to make the project more sophisticated based on the lessons I got for four months. I prioritize condition recovery. If I can swim 1000 meters constantly, reboot process will be activate.This project is my will that has never been amended since I resolved in the autumn of 2014. I never quit this.
“Get Ready For the Next Battle” !!
