Budgetree builds world-class financial solutions and products to manage the business expenses of Corporates, SMEs, \u0026 Startups through automated and innovative workflows

Budgetree

budgetree

With less than a semester left of college, and a need to build something I realized I needed a budget app. I knew of course about Mint, and later learned of Clarity Money far into development, but I wanted something smaller and more focused without all the extra heft that Mint provides, or the advertising and recommendations that Clarity Money includes. Budgeteer was born (My sister came up with the name at dinner when I was home on vacation, I am not that creative). This is the story of how I built it, lessons learned, and experience gained. It’s not finished, and still requires a fair amount of work left, but not so much that I couldn’t finish in a couple of weeks if I really wanted to, or couple of months if I want to relax with it. Please feel free to and leave any comments you have here (Please just avoid adding or removing too many accounts in the settings page as it does update the DB and I don’t want to check one day and see 50 linked accounts that I have to remove). Design advice is particularly welcome. check it out Why another budgeting app you ask. While banks and credit cards provide a lot of the same statistical information, few companies aggregate all of it together. Most people I figure have at least 2 credit cards, a savings account, a checking account, and a retirement account. Thats a lot of accounts to keep track of and the data from each individual account is useless without being combined with the others. This is the why for Budgeteer. The Stack MERN. MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS and NodeJS. Its awesome and powerful. In addition to these, I use Mongoose, PassportJS, Webpack , date-fns (awesome date library — very modular = tiny size), Plaid, ReactRouter, Recharts, and a few others. Why am I sharing all the tech I used? Cause I doubt someone else wants to go through it and rebuild exactly the same product. And frankly if they do and can do it better, then go for it. I’m a free market kind of guy. I may try and bring this to market and sell it as a subscription (Plaid is the only big cost if I were to sell it as a service) but with a developer account, I am happy to be the only user and can do so for free. Scope Defining the scope of this project was an evolutionary process. First I focused on a desktop site. Then I wanted it to also be mobile friendly and look great on a phone with a screen as small as 4". Then I decided to build it as a Progressive Web App both as a means to learn what PWAs entail and because I think PWAs will be far more popular in the near future. With one codebase I can hit every device and get native app functionality. The core of this product revolved around getting data from banks. Was I to resign to picking a few banks (aka the ones I use) and go through their API documentation (if it even existed) which was bound to be terrible or was there a better way. Enter , an awesome API that lets developers let users link bank accounts and access transactional information among many other data points. But for me, I got TRANSACTION DATA. The only data I needed, beautifully formatted and organized. If you ever need to work with bank accounts for whatever reason, check them out. Plaid Core Functionality Above all I wanted simplicity, an elegant design, and a tool that would in the end be helpful and not just a shallow clone. No advertising, no weird partnerships, no financial products recommendation, no nothing. Just an honest, quality product that I would want to use. I hope you will too. I’ve listed below the core functionality. View and search transaction data across all accounts Provide meaningful feedback that helps users understand their spending patterns — visualized statistics with charts Easily view your Net Worth Track monthly recurring expenses like Netflix, Spotify, HBO NOW, etc Easily add or remove accounts without any fuss or hoop jumping Transactions Being able to view all your transactions across all your accounts gives users the power to see in one place where they spend their money, where they can cut back, and make tackling a tough subject easier. Being able to search transactions and filter by category, date, and account type makes tracking various expenses easy. Knowing what you’ve spent in the past week in the chart keeps you honest about how you’re doing in the short term while the statistics sections help focus your attention on the medium and long term. (NOTE: The calendar button doesn’t do anything yet. Still trying to find a good calendar drop in that I can use — suggestions welcome). Statistics This required a charting library. I first started with ChartJS and after sticking with it for a while, I eventually switched to Recharts. ChartJS styling and option configuration is weird. Mentally picturing how something should look after an edit frequently failed to match the reality. Recharts, though more complex at first, was far easier to configure and style. The five charts I create are explained below Categorical breakdown of spending as a doughnut chart Annual spending by month for the past year with a line for the average amount per month Monthly Budget chart showing amount spent so far in the current month and the amount remaining Week vs Weekend spending to better understand if your spending changes drastically during one or the other Heat map showing transactions in various locations with hotter regions indicative of more spent (IN PROGRESS — Not in the demo). Each of these charts answers valuable financial questions. Where is my money going? How am I spending it? Where can I cut back? Am I on track with my Budget? Is my spending consistent month to month? Where physically am I spending the most? Each of these charts and graphs offers a quick snapshot of a different perspective on a user’s financial health without overwhelming them with extraneous information. It crystallizes the rough idea people keep mentally remember by showing them the hard numbers of their finances. Above all, each chart is insightful and simple. Net Worth and Recurring Payments Net Worth quickly allows people to view their total account balances and know how much cash they have on hand in their various accounts whether it be an emergency fund they set up or their primary checking account. Showing each account gives users the transparency they need to ensure they can allocate their money effectively instead of roughly tracking amounts in their head. Recurring transactions give users a good sense of the products and services they pay for monthly. Maybe that Pandora subscription you forgot about isn’t necessary anymore now that you started using Spotify or since you stopped using it entirely. Settings Page The settings page is all about bringing even more transparency to the user. They can easily remove any accounts they would rather not have linked and see if they are missing anything. Once they click remove the access tokens stored in the database are deleted and more importantly invalidated so even if someone got them they wouldn’t work. Design Designing Budgeteer was the most interesting part of this project. I have gone through so many iterations of finding the right way to display transactions, show the charts, style the nav bar etc. I’ve checked-out different commits across the history so you can see the progress below. Transactions Page 3 Different Versions of the Transactions Page The difference is stark. Transactions are far more elegant and take up much less space while communicating nearly double the information. The graph adds a visual perspective which breaks up the UI and provides the user with another quick summary of their spending trends. All the sorting options were compacted into smaller expandable parts reducing clutter and adding much needed visual breaks. It makes the design mobile friendly and easy to navigate. Statistics Page At first I started with a tab based design. I thought that looked cool on desktop but knew it wouldn’t scale on mobile. Then I decided to have a slider like option with next and previous buttons which the user could press to change graphs. While it doesn’t look awesome on desktop yet, it does on mobile. Maybe next I’ll switch to having a little menu bar on the bottom with an icon for each graph. That would take up the extra visual space on a computer while still also fitting on mobile. Desktop could contain words if they fit, switch to icons with a breakpoint when they don’t, and stay that way for mobile. The Nav Bar Oh boy. The Nav Bar. Easy on desktop but a lot of iterations on mobile. The three main ones are below. The biggest difference in the final version is in the nice little bump at the end which makes it feel more dynamic and interactive. Whether this remains the final version or I go with a more native app feel of leaving the left side attached is yet to be determined. — UPDATE — I went with a native mobile navbar. on your phone or make the window smaller on desktop to see how it looks. View the site Broader Comments on Design In some of the images you might notice the font is a little thicker. I switched at some point from a 400 weight (normal) to a 300 weight (just a little thinner) and the difference was astounding. It created so much space I was amazed. Everything felt modern, cleaner and just looked better. Another idea I had was to make the color of the price in a transaction red or green based on if it was a payment or a return. Further, using larger font sizes for the transaction name and a smaller one for the account name below it, focuses the users attention to the more important information. These and many other tricks I learned by spending time on other websites and apps just looking. Taking a moment to notice just how an animation of a menu bar in an app looks, seeing where your eye is drawn to on a page and why, or by looking at how color is used to convey information gave me a lot of inspiration for what good design and UX entails. Lastly, absolutely check out for awesome designs and trends. This was my first go to when I felt stuck or needed quick inspiration. The designers behind their submissions are seriously talented. https://medium.muz.li/ Developing as a Progressive Web App One of the most interesting parts of this project has been working to build it as a Progressive Web App. This allows it to be installed and function like a native app. The primary benefits are push notifications, setting up offline functionality and cacheing resources locally to reduce network requests. This means that with one codebase I get a site for desktop and mobile as well as native app like functionality. PWAs are kind of weird though. I have had some problems cacheing resources from a CDN with a different domain, a CORS issue I know, properly configuring a service worker, setting up push notifications, and figuring out how to get the install pop up to appear automatically. Also testing it is always difficult since it caches everything but updates to the code may not always invalidate the now stale cache. While React Native would have let me actually build a native app, this lets users choose exactly how they want to use this product whether it be infrequently on their computers, a few times a week on their phone’s browser, or as often they use other apps. The PWA version isn’t pushed as I’m still working out the kinks of cacheing and push notifications but I hope to finish this part next and then tackle final design issues followed by any functionality I’ve put off *ahem, sorting transactions *cough, by date *cough, ahem, clears throat. Conclusion I’ve learned a tremendous amount about design and building a product. From tooling, to API integrations this has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve taken up. When bored at school or when I wanted to procrastinate HW I would work on this and working on it was so much fun. As a final thought I’ll ask you all to please leave a comment if you think a light theme would be better than the current dark theme. This has been an ongoing debate with my sister.

Building Budgeteer - Lessons and Experiences

The tech workforce in the US is not growing at an optimal pace. The number of schools offering computer science is not enough which is impacting the access of computer science to young women and students from marginalized communities. The truth is that there are over in the US but only graduated into the tech workforce last year. 410,020 open computing jobs 71,226 computer science students This is because only in the US offer computer science which deeply impacts its access to young women and students from marginalized communities. 47% of public high schools To address this pressing issue, we have launched #MyStartInTech, a campaign dedicated to drawing attention to this cause and in turn, help widen access to computer science in schools. Learn more about the campaign by visiting www.startin.tech As part of this campaign, we present the #MyStartInTech interview series where some of the esteemed tech entrepreneurs and professionals in the industry share details about their journey in tech. With this, we hope to draw attention to the infinite opportunities that will lay open if young women and students are given the opportunity to study computer science. In this interview, Jordan Silverman, Co-Founder of , talks about how he got his start in the tech world. Budge Technology Jordan is currently building a software product for the restaurant/hospitality space. He grew up in a family of food distributors and now he hopes to solve focal issues for restaurants with tech. Let’s find out what he has to say! When was your first interaction with computer science? The first real interaction I had with computer science was not until I joined the Budge Technology team. I had no prior experience before then. Just using the base product and working close to our dev team motivated me to learn more about programming. I started teaching myself a lot about web design and eventually started doing challenges on for some practice. freecodecamp.org I regularly do those challenges as I continue to learn more. What nudged you into taking up a career in technology? I'm almost 2 full years out of college. I was a student-athlete on the baseball team where I studied Communications and Marketing. An above-average student with a strong work ethic but no real direction. My initial job search wasn't the best as I was more focused on baseball in the Spring of 2019 rather than finding a job out of college. Once I graduated, I landed a sales job that just did not pan out to what I wanted it to be. But, I was networking and trying to keep my eye out for another opportunity. That's when I was approached by Max Weiner, the founder of Budge Technology Inc. A few weeks later, I left my sales position and joined Budge. Since then, I've found a passion for technology and startups. My family has always been involved in the restaurant industry and I've worked in a variety of them, so the product was fitting to my prior experience. Now, I hope to solve focal issues in restaurants with tech. What are your earliest memories of using a computer in school? If we go all the way back to grade school, I remember playing Oregon Trail and the Mavis Beacon typing games to improve my typing speed and accuracy. What is the importance of technology to you now and how does it impact your day-to-day life? I feel as though my life is technologically driven. I'm always on either a computer or using my iPhone. I resort to technology to be more productive and simplify my work. Whenever a problem arises, I will initially search for software to solve said problem. How important is it to increase access to computer science and technology to underrepresented communities and young women today? I think having any sort of computer science or technology experience goes a long way no matter where or who you are. Programming has become completely democratized. Anyone can learn to code at the pace they'd like. The barrier of entry is fairly small. You can get a Rasberry Pi 400 computer that costs $70. The information to learn is scattered at your disposal throughout the Internet. This unleashes the great potential for the future of tech and the world we live in. More access = more opportunity for innovation. Why do you think access to computer literacy in school is important? Having access to computer literacy at an early age can open so many new doors for young individuals. Schools should tie in more computer science and programming into their curriculum. I'm a huge advocate of contributing to the marketplace of ideas. More computer literacy means more contributions to the marketplace of ideas. And more people that have access to learning more about programming and computer science will be more inclined to execute their ideas. What do you think about .Tech Domains taking up this cause? I think it's completely relevant to the times we're in currently. We are seeing more innovation than ever. It's great that you're covering how technology is shaping the world we live in and how important it is to provide access to underrepresented groups of people. Learn more about #MyStartInTech campaign and lend your support at . https://startin.tech/

#MyStartInTech: Interview With Jordan Silverman, Co-Founder of Budge.Tech

Let’s say you have a job interview in a few days. How should you prepare for it so that you can make an informed decision about joining the company, as well as make sure that your interests are taken care of? Prepare your questions An interview is a two-way street: it’s not only the company investigating you as a potential employee; in addition, you are investigating the company as a potential employer. Hopefully, you have some other options available—such as staying at your current place or trying out other companies interested in you. In the best case, you’ll have the flexibility to decide whether you want to follow through with the company or not. To learn about the potential employer, you need to ask questions. The question will depend on what’s important for you at the current stage of your career. Some things I would like to know before deciding to join a new company are as follows: What is their development process? If they use some standardized methodology such as Scrum, I would like to hear how they implement it. Especially whether they have Scrum Master and Product Owner roles covered—and whether those people are easily reachable. I would also ask if they do retrospective meetings. How do they do quality automatization: things such as unit tests, e2e, CI & code-style enforcing? For things that they don't have, I would ask if they would like to see it in the project. I would ask about their product and how they do product design/discovery. Life–work balance questions inspired by : How do they deal with emergencies? How often is there a need to receive a call or respond to messages outside working hours? Healthy Software Developer’s video how long do employees usually work? Salary negotiation The point of going to the interview is to get to the salary negotiation. The result of the negotiation will have a great impact on your life for the whole time you spend at the company—it’s a smart move to prepare well. The earlier you start, the better—as you will have more time to investigate, ask questions, and plan your strategy. The best resource for preparing for an interview in IT is . You can buy the complete e-book, read the chapters online, or get the key advice from the bite-size articles on the website. Fearless Salary Negotiation Research compensation Before you start negotiation, figure out the current situation in the market. A little bit of time spent on systematic investigation can give you a much more precise picture than anecdotes heard here or there. Check out this . chapter on market value estimation Decide your minimum Great advice is to decide on the minimum pay that you’ll accept you start speaking with the company. It could happen that during the various rounds of interviews, they will manage to the company very well or that the effort you have already invested into the company will make you more flexible than you should be. In those cases, having the minimum salary decided ahead of time can be very helpful. . before sell Relevant chapter from the book here Think openly about your options. As you negotiate with the company, it’s good to be flexible about the options you consider. If you are asking for more money than they have budgeted for, you can propose reduced hours with the same hourly rate that you are happy with. Similarly, commuting to the office can easily take 1–2 hours of your day, so a lower salary could be worth it if it comes with guaranteed remote work. Practice interview Try role-playing an interview with someone. If you can handle it, you can ask them to be tough on you—stricter than what you would expect from a real interview. Ideally, you’ll have a tough, low-stakes interview that would make you relaxed during the real thing. Investigate the company Learn about the company—all you can do before the meeting, that is. Check their website, their LinkedIn page, and their key employees. Play around with their product if you can. In short, spend an hour or two trying to learn as much as you can about the company. It will help you ask important questions and make a good impression. Summary A bit of preparation can go a long way. As developers, we often think about the technical part of the interview, but learning about the company and preparing for salary negotiation can help us even more. We can filter out companies we shouldn’t join, and we can make sure that we get as good a deal as possible. Also published . here

Nailing Your Job Interview: Preparation, Research, and Looking Out For Your Best Interests

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In your deployment phase, a crucial question to address is the cost estimation of the resources required for deploying your amazing application within the allocated or recommended budget. Failing to address this question could result in exceeding the allocated or budgeted amount due to resource creation costs. One tool that was developed to help with putting a check on the cost of cloud resources is Infracost. Infracost is a valuable tool designed to monitor and control the cost of cloud resources. Unlike tools like the AWS calculator, Infracost stands out with its automated approach. By simply parsing the format of your Terraform-created resources as an argument to the Infracost CLI command, it automatically provides you with the monthly cost estimation for the resources to be deployed, whereas the AWS calculator requires manual input of each resource to be created. JSON This article aims to guide you, the reader, on obtaining cost estimates for your cloud resources using Infracost. It covers creating an Open Policy Agent (OPA) policy to enforce monthly budget constraints and integrating the infracost command into your Jenkins pipeline. To set up Infracost, refer to the for detailed instructions on getting started. official documentation The terraform files for the resources to be created are stored in a folder which is in the same location as the This is the file location format used in this article. terrafom Jenkinsfile. As we execute the Infracost command within a Jenkins pipeline, we utilize the official Infracost docker image as the Jenkins agent, alongside configuring essential environment variables. Here is an example of how the configuration should be set up: agent {
  docker {
    image 'infracost/infracost:ci-latest'
    args "--user=root --entrypoint=''"
          }
       }
environment {
   INFRACOST_API_KEY = credentials("INFRACOST_API_KEY")
   INFRACOST_VCS_PROVIDER = 'github'
   INFRACOST_VCS_REPOSITORY_URL = 'https://github.com/Okeybukks/devops-automation'
    } To get your you can run this command in your cli. INFRACOST_API_KEY infracost configure get api_key Alternatively, you can access the Infracost dashboard, login with your credentials, navigate to " ," and click on the " " button next to the API Key. This key needs to be securely stored as secret text in Jenkins credentials, with an ID of . Considering that our Git repository is hosted on GitHub, set the value of to "GitHub." Additionally, specify the as the URL of the repository containing your Jenkinsfile and Terraform folder. Org settings Copy INFRACOST_API_KEY INFRACOST_VCS_PROVIDER INFRACOST_VCS_REPOSITORY_URL After configuring Infracost for Jenkins, the subsequent step involves executing the command. This command analyzes the Terraform plan and provides a cost estimate for the cloud resources intended for deployment. The resulting output is saved in a JSON file format, which will be utilized by our OPA policy. infracost breakdown stage("Check Financial Expense of Infrastructures Job with Infracost"){
   agent {
     docker {
       image 'infracost/infracost:ci-latest'
       args "--user=root --entrypoint=''"
             }
         }
   environment {
       INFRACOST_API_KEY = credentials("INFRACOST_API_KEY")
       INFRACOST_VCS_PROVIDER = 'github'
       INFRACOST_VCS_REPOSITORY_URL = 'https://github.com/Okeybukks/devops-automation'
            }
   steps{
       dir("./terraform") {
          sh 'echo "This is the financial check job"'     
          sh 'infracost breakdown --path . --format json --out-file infracost.json'
          archiveArtifacts artifacts: 'infracost.json'
           } 
          }
   } The terraform files are located in the terraform folder, so to change into the terraform folder, we will be using the block. dir The command takes a couple of arguments with values passed to it. infracost breakdown takes the path where the terraform files are located. Since we are already in the terraform folder, we use to reference the path. --path . takes the format of the output of the command. --format infracost breakdown takes the name of the file you wish to save the output. --out-file infracost breakdown To enable the utilization of the output file generated by the command in subsequent stages, the file is parsed to the "archiveArtifacts" command, converting it into an artifact. For a more comprehensive understanding of artifact creation and copying, I invite you to explore the I have authored on Jenkins artifacts. infracost breakdown article To establish a cost constraint on the creation of resources, an OPA policy is employed. In this article, we are imposing a limit of $100 on the allocated resources. OPA serves as a comprehensive toolset and framework for policy implementation throughout the cloud-native ecosystem. To delve deeper into OPA, you can find more information by clicking here OPA policies are written in the rego language, and as such, the policy file is suffixed with .rego. The for rego serves as a comprehensive resource to comprehend policy formulation. In this article, a straightforward policy will be presented, which verifies whether the cumulative monthly estimate of your cloud resources surpasses the predefined maximum monthly estimate that must not be exceeded. documentation package infracost

deny[out] {

    # define a variable
	maxMonthlyCost = 100.0

	msg := sprintf(
		"Total monthly cost must be less than $%.2f (Current monthly cost is $%.2f)",
		[maxMonthlyCost, to_number(input.totalMonthlyCost)],
	)

  	out := {
    	"msg": msg,
    	"failed": to_number(input.totalMonthlyCost) >= maxMonthlyCost
  	}
} The line is the infracost package or module utilized by OPA to understand the content of the output file from the command. OPA policies are written in a block. Any code written outside this block will return a error. package infracost infracost breakdown deny[out] rego_parse_error is the defined variable which is the maximum amount budgeted for our resources. maxMonthlyCost The message to be output in the Jenkins pipeline and GitHub commit message if the set condition fails is defined in the block. msg The condition logic is set using the block. The total estimate our resources will cost us is saved in variable. This variable is a default variable in the rego language. The is the total monthly cost estimated by infracost. out input.totalMonthlyCost input.totalMonthlyCost From our policy, if is true it stops the pipeline and prevents moving to the next stage of the pipeline. The message in the block explains to us that we cant go forward. The content of this policy is stored with file name. This filename can be changed though, but it must have the format appended to it. to_number(input.totalMonthlyCost) >= maxMonthlyCost msg infracost-policy.rego .rego With the policy written, it is then parsed to the command. This is what the stage looks like. infracost comment github stage("Post Infracost comment"){
  agent {
     docker {
        image 'infracost/infracost:ci-latest'
        args "--user=root --entrypoint=''"
             }
        }
  environment {
     INFRACOST_API_KEY = credentials("INFRACOST_API_KEY")
     INFRACOST_VCS_PROVIDER = 'github'
     INFRACOST_VCS_REPOSITORY_URL = 'https://github.com/Okeybukks/devops-automation'
     INFRACOST_VCS_BASE_BRANCH = 'main'
     GITHUB_TOKEN = credentials("GITHUB_TOKEN")
     GITHUB_REPO = "Okeybukks/devops-automation"
         }
  steps{
     dir('./terraform'){
         sh 'echo "This is the financial check job"'
         copyArtifacts filter: 'infracost.json', fingerprintArtifacts: true, projectName: 'test', selector: specific ('${BUILD_NUMBER}')    

         sh 'infracost comment github --path infracost.json --policy-path infracost-policy.rego \
                    --github-token $GITHUB_TOKEN --repo $GITHUB_REPO --commit $GIT_COMMIT'
         }
     }
 } Upon observation, you will notice the addition of new environment variables required for this stage. Since the infracost command will be responsible for posting the commit message to our repository, it will necessitate specific GitHub access permissions to fulfil this task effectively. Generate a classic token with repo permission ticked. If you can read how to generate a classic GitHub token using this . Once generated, save it in your Jenkins credential using secret text and save it with the ID . article GITHUB_TOKEN The GitHub repo name of this project is also needed. Store this value in the ID. GITHUB_REPO The output of the command is saved in the infracost.json file. To access the file at this stage, the is utilized. infracost breakdown copyArtifacts Now we have all the values to the arguments needed by the command to utilize our policy in creating a check for resource creation. infracost comment github value is the file created with the command, i.e infracost.json --path infracost breakdown value is the policy file we created i.e . --policy infracost-policy.rego value is our classic GitHub token stored in . --github-token GITHUB_TOKEN is the project repo name stored in --repo GITHUB_REPO is required to post on a pull request's commit. Its value is stored in variable, one of Jenkins default variables. --commit $GIT_COMMIT When you run your pipeline, you should have something similar to this if your resources estimate exceeds the set mark. + infracost comment github --path infracost.json --policy-path infracost-policy.rego --github-token **** --repo Okeybukks/devops-automation --commit a0e8fa201d81ba9d2a508e4adc55e2b8f1ffca6d
time="2023-06-12T04:29:15Z" level=info msg="Finding matching comments for tag infracost-comment"
time="2023-06-12T04:29:21Z" level=info msg="Found 0 matching comments"
time="2023-06-12T04:29:21Z" level=info msg="Creating new comment"
time="2023-06-12T04:29:21Z" level=info msg="Created new comment https://github.com/Okeybukks/devops-automation/commit/a0e8fa201d81ba9d2a508e4adc55e2b8f1ffca6d#commitcomment-117572438"
Comment posted to GitHub

Error: Policy check failed:

 - Total monthly cost must be less than $100.00 (Current monthly cost is $168.72) This concludes the article. Implementing this cost monitoring approach will not only lead to cost savings in resource usage but also prevent unintended deployments of unplanned cloud resources. Thank you for reading. Also published here. The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's AI Image Generator via the prompt "A mount counting coins."

Efficient Cloud Resource Cost Management with Infracost and Open Policy Agent in Jenkins

This is a practical guide for using Apache Cassandra as a real-time feature store. We explore real-time AI and the unique performance and cost attributes of Cassandra that make it an excellent database for a feature store and then dive into the basics of feature stores and their role in real-time applications. Cassandra is used as a feature store by large companies, including and Netflix; under real-world conditions, it can serve features for real-time inference with a tp99 < 23ms. Uber The guide is divided into several key sections. We start by introducing Cassandra and its features that make it an ideal choice for a feature store. Then, we explain the basics of feature stores, including what they are and how they can be used in real-time applications. After that, we explore the implementation details of creating a feature store using Cassandra. This includes data modeling, ingestion and retrieval of features, and handling data updates. Finally, we offer up best practices and tips for using Cassandra as a feature store to ensure optimal performance and scalability - from latency requirements to estimated performance metric requirements to reference architectures and ecosystem compatibility. This guide doesn’t discuss the or the in a . The best practices we’ll cover are based on technical conversations with practitioners at large technology firms such as Google, Facebook, , , and on how they deliver real-time AI experiences to their customers on their cloud-native infrastructures. Although we’ll specifically focus on how to implement real-time feature storage with Cassandra, the architecture guidelines really apply to any database technology, including Redis, MongoDB, and Postgres. data science aspects of real-time machine learning lifecycle management aspects of features feature store Uber AirBnB Netflix What is real-time AI? Real-time AI . Traditionally, training models and inferences (predictions) based on models have been done in batch – typically overnight or periodically through the day. Today, modern machine learning systems perform inferences of the most recent data in order to provide the most accurate prediction possible. A small set of companies like TikTok and Google has pushed the real-time paradigm further by including on-the-fly training of models as new data comes in. makes inferences or training models based on recent events Because of these changes in inference and changes that will likely happen to model training, the persistence of feature data – data that is used to train and perform inferences for a ML model – needs to also adapt. When you’re done reading this guide, you’ll have a clearer picture of how Cassandra and DataStax Astra DB, a managed service built on Cassandra, meets real-time AI needs, and how they can be used in conjunction with other database technologies for model inference and training. What’s a feature store? A feature store is a data system specific to machine learning (ML) that: Runs data pipelines that transform raw data into feature values Stores and manages the feature data itself, and Serves feature data consistently for training and inference purposes Real-time AI places specific demands on a feature store that Cassandra is uniquely qualified to fulfill, specifically when it comes to the and of features for model serving and model Training. storage serving Best Practices **Implement low-latency queries for feature serving For real-time inference, features need to be returned to applications with low latency at scale. Typical models involve ~200 features spread across ~10 entities. Real-time inferences require for collecting features, lightweight data transformations, and performing an inference. According to the (also confirmed by our conversations with practitioners), feature stores need to return the features to an application performing inference in under 50ms. time to be budgeted following survey Typically, models require “inner joins” across multiple logical entities – combining rows values from multiple tables that share a common value; this presents a significant challenge to low-latency feature serving. Take the case of Uber Eats, which predicts the time to deliver a meal. Data needs to be joined from order information, which is joined with restaurant information, which is further joined by traffic information in the region of the restaurant. In this case, two inner joins are necessary (see the illustration below). To achieve an inner join in Cassandra, one can either denormalize the data upon insertion or make two sequential queries to Cassandra + perform the join on the client side. Although it’s possible to perform all inner joins upon inserting data into the database through denormalization, having a 1:1 ratio between model and table is impractical because it means maintaining an inordinate number of denormalized tables. Best practices suggest that the feature store needs to allow for 1-2 sequential queries for inner joins, combined with denormalization. Here’s a summary of the performance metrics that can be used to estimate requirements for real-time ML pipelines: Testing Conditions: features = 200 number of tables (entities) = 3 number of inner joins = 2 Query TPS : 5000 queries / second Write TPS : 500 records / second Cluster Size : 3 nodes on AstraDB* Latency Performance summary (uncertainties here are standard deviations): tp95 = 13.2(+/-0.6) ms tp99 = 23.0(+/-3.5) ms tp99.9 = 63(+/- 5) ms Effect of compaction: tp95 = negligible tp99, tp999 = negligible, captured by the sigmas quoted above Effect of Change Data Capture (CDC): tp50, tp95 ~ 3-5 ms tp99 ~ 3 ms tp999 ~ negligible *The following tests were done on DataStax’s , which is a serverless environment for Cassandra. Users should expect similar latency performance when deployed on three notes using the . Astra DB’s free tier following recommended settings The most significant impact on latency is the number of inner joins. If only one table is queried instead of three, the tp99 drops by 58%; for two tables, it is 29% less. The tp95 drops by 56% and 21%, respectively. Because Cassandra is horizontally scalable, querying for more features does not significantly increase the average latency, either. Lastly, if the latency requirements cannot be met out of the box, Cassandra has two additional features: the ability to support denormalized data (and thus reduce inner joins) due to high write-throughput capabilities and the ability to selectively replicate data to in-memory caches (e.g. Redis) through Change Data Capture. You can find more tips to reduce latency here. Implement fault tolerant and low latency writes for feature transformations A key component of real-time AI is the ability to use the most recent data for doing a model inference, so it is important that new data is available for inference as soon as possible. At the same time, for enterprise use cases, it is important that the writes are durable because data loss can cause significant production challenges. *Object stores (e.g. S3 or HIVE) can be replaced with other types of batch-oriented systems, such as data warehouses. There is a trade-off between low-latency durable writes and low-latency feature serving. For example, it is possible to only store the data in a non-durable location (e.g., Redis), but production failures can make it difficult to recover the most up-to-date features because it would require a large recomputation from raw events. A common architecture suggests writing features to an offline store (e.g., Hive / S3) and replication of the features to an online store (e.g., in-memory cache). Even though this provides durability and low latency for feature serving, it comes at the cost of introducing latency for feature writes, which invariably causes poorer prediction performance. Cassandra provides a good trade-off between low-latency feature serving and low-latency “durable” feature writes. Data written to Cassandra has typically been replicated a minimum of three times, and it supports multi-region replication. The latency from writing to availability to read is typically sub-millisecond. As a result, by persisting features directly to the online store (Cassandra) and bypassing the offline store, the application has faster access to recent data to make more accurate predictions. At the same time, CDC, from the online store to the offline store, allows for batch training or data exploration with existing tools. Implement low latency and writes for prediction caching and performance monitoring In addition to storing feature transformation, there is also the need to store predictions and other tracking data for performance monitoring. There are several use cases for storing predictions: – In this scenario, a database used to cache predictions made by either a . The streaming architecture is particularly useful when the time it takes to inference is beyond what is acceptable in a request-response system. Prediction store batch system or a streaming system It is often necessary to monitor the prediction output of a real-time inference and compare to the final results. This means having a database to log the results of the prediction and the final result. Prediction performance monitoring Cassandra is a suitable store for both use cases because of its high-write throughput capabilities. Plan for elastic read and write workloads The level of query and write transactions per second usually depends on the number of users simultaneously using the system. As a result, workloads may change based on the time of day or time of year. Having the ability to quickly scale up and scale down the cluster to support increased workloads is important. Cassandra and Astra DB have features that enable dynamic cluster scaling. The second aspect that could affect write workloads is if there are changes in the feature transformation logic. With a large spike in write workloads, Cassandra automatically prioritizes maintaining low-latency queries and writing TPS over data consistency, which is typically acceptable for performing real-time inference. Implement low-latency, multi-region support As real-time AI becomes ubiquitous across all apps, it’s important to make sure that feature data is available as close as possible to where inference occurs. This means having the feature store in the same region as the application doing inference. Replicating the data in the feature store across regions helps ensure that feature. Furthermore, replicating just the features rather than the raw data used to generate the features significantly cuts down on cloud egress fees. Astra DB supports multi-region replication out of the box, with a replication latency in milliseconds. Our recommendation is to stream all the raw event data to a single region, perform the feature generation, and store and replicate the features to all other regions. Although theoretically, one can achieve some latency advantage by generating features in each region, event data often needs to be joined with raw event data from other regions;. from a correctness and efficiency standpoint, it is easier to ship all events to one region for processing for most use-cases. On the other hand, if the model usage makes the most sense in a regional context, and most events are associated with region-specific entities, then it makes sense to treat features as region specific. Any events that do need to be replicated across regions can be placed in keyspaces with global replication strategies, but ideally, this should be a small subset of events. At a certain point, replicating event tables globally will be less efficient than simply shipping all events to a single region for feature computations. Plan for cost-effective and low-latency multi-cloud support Multi-cloud support increases the resilience of applications and allows customers to negotiate lower prices. Single-cloud online stores such as DynamoDB result in both increased latency for retrieving features and significant data egress costs but also creates lock-in to a single cloud vendor. Open-source databases that support replication across clouds provide the best balance of performance cost. To minimize the cost of egress, events and feature generation should be consolidated into one cloud, and feature data should be replicated to open-source databases across the other clouds. This minimizes egress costs. Plan for both batch and real-time training of production models Batch processing infrastructure for building models is used for two use cases: building and testing new models, and building models for production. Therefore it was typically sufficient for feature data to be stored in slower object stores for the purpose of training. However, newer model training paradigms include updating the models in real-time or near real-time (real-time training); this is known as “online learning” (e.g. ). The access pattern for real-time training sits somewhere between inference and traditional batch training. The throughput data requirements are higher than inference (because it is not usually accessing a single-row lookup), but not as high as batch processing that would involve full table scans. TikTok’s Monolith Cassandra can support a TPS rating in the hundreds of thousands per second (with an appropriate data model), which can provide enough throughput for most real-time training use cases. However, in the case the user wants to keep real-time training from an object store, Cassandra achieves this through CDC to object storage. For batch training, CDC should replicate data to object storage. It’s worth noting that machine learning frameworks like and PyTorch are particularly optimized for parallel training of ML models from object storage. Tensorflow For a more detailed explanation of “online learning”, see Chip Huyuen’s explanation on , or this . Continual Learning technical paper from Gomes et. al Support for Kappa architecture is gradually replacing Lambda architecture due to costs and data quality issues due to online/offline skew. Although lots of articles discuss the advantages of moving from separate batch and real-time computation layers to a single real-time layer, articles don’t often describe how to architect the serving layer. Kappa architecture Using Kappa architecture for generating features brings up some new considerations: Updating features are being updated en masse and can result in a significant number of writes to the database. It’s important to ensure that query latency does not suffer during these large updates. The serving layer still needs to support different types of queries, including low-latency queries for inference, and highTPS queries for batch training of models. Cassandra supports Kappa architecture in the following ways: Cassandra is designed for writes; an increased influx of writes does not significantly reduce the latency of queries. Cassandra opts for processing the writes with eventual consistency instead of strong consistency, which is typically acceptable for making predictions. Using CDC, data can be replicated to object storage for training and in-memory storage for inference. CDC has little impact on the latency of queries to Cassandra. Support for Lambda architecture Most companies have a Lambda architecture, with a batch layer pipeline that’s separate from the real-time pipeline. There are several categories of features in this scenario: Features that are only computed in real-time, and replicated to the batch feature store for training Features that are only computed in batch, and are replicated to the real-time feature store Features are computed in real-time first, then recomputed in the batch. Discrepancies are then updated in both the real-time and object store. In this scenario, however, DataStax recommends the architecture as described in this illustration: The reasons are the following: Cassandra is designed to take batch uploads of data with little impact on read latency By having a single system of record, data management becomes significantly easier than if the data is split between the feature store and object store. This is especially important for features that are first computed realtime, then recomputed in batch. When exporting data from Cassandra via CDC to the object feature store, the data export can be optimized for batch training (a ), which significantly cuts down on training infrastructure costs. common pattern used at companies like Facebook If it is not possible to update existing pipelines, or there are specific reasons that the features need to be in the object store first, our recommendation is to go with a two-way CDC path between the Cassandra feature store and the object store, as illustrated below. Ensure compatibility with existing ML software ecosystem To use Cassandra as a feature store, it should be integrated with two portions of the ecosystem: machine learning libraries that perform inference and training, and data processing libraries that perform feature transformation. The two most popular frameworks for machine learning are TensorFlow and PyTorch. Cassandra has Python drivers that enable easy retrieval of features from the Cassandra database; in other words, multiple features can be fetched in parallel ( ). The two most popular frameworks for performing feature transformation are Flink and . Connectors for both and are available for Cassandra. Practitioners can use tutorials for and , and Cassandra. see this example code Spark Structured Streaming Flink Spark Flink Spark Structured Streaming Open Source feature stores such as FEAST also have a and for Cassandra as well. connector tutorial Understand query patterns and throughput to determine costs The number of read queries for Cassandra as a feature store is dependent on the number of incoming inference requests. Assuming the feature data is split across multiple tables, or if the data can be loaded in parallel, this should give an estimate of the fanout between real-time inference that can be made. For example, 200 features across 10 entities in 10 separate tables give you about a 1:10 ratio between real-time inference and queries to Cassandra. Calculating the number of inferences being performed will depend on the inference traffic pattern. For example, in the case of an inference will be performed whenever a relevant feature changes, so the total number of inferences is dependent on how often the feature data changes. When inference is performed in a “request-reply” setting, it is only being performed when a user requests it. “streaming inference,” Understand batch and real-time write patterns to determine costs The write throughput is primarily dominated by how frequently the features change. If denormalization occurs, this too could impact the number of features that are written. Other write throughput considerations include caching inferences for either batch or streaming inference scenarios. Conclusion When designing a real-time ML pipeline, special attention needs to be paid to the performance and scalability of the feature store. The requirements are particularly well satisfied by NoSQL databases such as Cassandra. Stand up your own feature store with Cassandra or and try out the with the . AstraDB Feast.dev Cassandra connector

A Guide to Using Apache Cassandra as a Real-time Feature Store

Una guía para usar Apache Cassandra como una tienda de funciones en tiempo real

Guide d'utilisation d'Apache Cassandra en tant que magasin de fonctionnalités en temps réel

रीयल-टाइम फ़ीचर स्टोर के रूप में अपाचे कैसेंड्रा का उपयोग करने के लिए एक गाइड

Apache Cassandra をリアルタイム機能ストアとして使用するためのガイド

Um guia para usar o Apache Cassandra como uma loja de recursos em tempo real

Hướng dẫn sử dụng Apache Cassandra làm kho lưu trữ tính năng thời gian thực

使用 Apache Cassandra 作为实时特征存储的指南

Tis the season to make predictions that help marketing professionals plan next year’s budgets. After an anything but predictable year, however, no amount of trend forecasts will turn marketers into fortune tellers. Yet at a time when marketers are still expected to magically make smaller budgets go further. CFOs and senior finance leaders are reducing budgets to fight inflation Marketers must release their inner sleuths, collecting clues to reveal the tactics and technologies that can best weather the economic downturn and still bring results amidst shifting market conditions, rising inflation, economic volatility and weakened consumer purchasing power. Well good tidings we bring, because the clues do fit together and they all point to upper-funnel brand marketing becoming a critical investment next year. Marketing tactics that build awareness, trust and perceived value segue well from web2 to web3, where building strong brands and communities is critical. All the puzzle pieces show that now is the time for the marketing community to start shifting collective mindset away from purely transactional to more interpersonal and engaged customer relationships, as brands prepare to adapt to major technological shifts in digital marketing and as web3 becomes increasingly more mainstream in the years to come. Disclaimer﻿: I am a marketer at WOM Protocol, BULLZ and YEAY, so I have a vested interest in the products mentioned below. Invest in Brand Marketing In Analytics Partners’ report, which was published in late November this year, marketers are advised to ensure that at least half of their marketing spend goes towards brand and upper-funnel marketing activities next year. “The Marketer’s Guide to Survive (Even Thrive) in 2023” Analytics Partners analyzed hundreds of billions in marketing spend to identify that brand messaging outperforms performance messaging 80 per cent of the time, and that it is a better long-term strategy for building customer loyalty. The report advises marketers to reallocate at least 50 percent of overall marketing spend away from lower-funnel tactics, such as pay-per-click and price cutting, to prioritize upper-funnel tactics, such as video and social content. This is a logical approach given that when market conditions are tough customers typically become more selective, which makes customer acquisition more expensive with greater competition. Instead, the report states, marketers should focus on connecting with customers on a more emotional level, seeing conversion as the end-game once loyalty and advocacy have been established. While such tactics might be 25 percent less effective in the short term, they are 60 per cent more effective in the long term and this is true in all market conditions. Positive word-of-mouth endorsement is a potent form of brand marketing, because people trust people over adverts. When brands successfully create an emotional connection with consumers they are and . 3x more likely to generate word of mouth marketing 7 in 10 consumers trust the opinions of influencers as much as their real-life friends Useful word-of-mouth martech tools include , which imports social reviews from social platforms to WordPress sites, as do and . WP Social Ninja Smash Balloon Spotlight Meanwhile, recommendations app YEAY enables influencers as well as regular content creators to promote brands and products through short-form video in order to earn rewards based on the performance of their content. Brands can then use the to turn this content into measurable campaigns, while gaining access to web recorder and viewer plugins that enable brands to capture and feature word-of-mouth content directly on their web pages. WOM Campaign Manager Prepare for Web3 In many ways web2 marketing is learning from web3, where the focus is necessarily higher up the funnel. In his marketing aficionado, Robert Cole, outlined the core difference between web2 and web3 marketing: “In web3 you can fork product, which means the competitive advantage has changed to branding and community.” recent article In other words, while web2 marketing has largely been focused on demand generation and customer acquisition, web3 projects, which live and die by the strength of their brand, have focused on growing communities to gain and maintain attention. The reason why, Cole explains, is that in an open source and decentralized world where products can easily be copied, selling a strong product is not enough to gain competitive advantage. Only projects with perceived value and passionate evangelists willing to spread the word will survive and thrive. In web3 community growth is not about accumulating followers, but rather bringing together people with common identities and giving them “skin in the game” – when an entire community can co-profit from a project’s success, as is the case with tokens such as NFTs, that community becomes a powerful word-of-mouth marketing force. As Lunar Research puts it in its , brands must realize that their communities are at once customers and company ambassadors, and build a suitable marketing stack to grow and nurture dedicated and integral communities. With more than 70 web3 teams and projects featured in , there is no shortage of new tools to support this. 2022 guide to web3 community growth Safary’s 2022 analysis of the web3 community growth tools landscape These vary from CRM software, such as , which provides features, such as token gating and embeddable forms to build the most valuable member-based communities, through to messaging tools, think , which creates a direct connection between a business and a customer’s wallet to send on-brand messages. These could be anything from a trivia game, through to a reward. Kazm Dispatch Incentives and rewards are another essential arm of community-building and web3 incentive platforms in this space include the , which enables influencers to mint and airdrop NFTs to communities in exchange for participation in fun challenges. Web3 influencers can also monetize content on the "TikTok of Crypto" BULLZ mobile app, which recently launched as an additional web platform to improve accessibility to web3 for creators. BULLZ Challenge Launchpad , meanwhile, enables brands to establish web3 loyalty programs enabling people to earn crypto rewards for completing tasks. Dappback Community, Community, Community Marketers might not have crystal balls, but they do have plenty of indicators that show upper-funnel brand tactics – and especially building community trust and loyalty through word-of-mouth marketing – should be well budgeted for next year. Going down this path and away from purely transactional tactics, such as customer acquisition, will also lead marketers comfortably into web3 as brands inevitably turn to their marketing teams to help them enter this emerging space.

Seasonal Advice for Allocating Marketing Spend in 2023

My name's Elena Volotovskaya, I'm head of , a corporate venture fund of Softline Group, and Investment expert. Softline Venture Partners Last week, while I was in the UAE at GITEX GLOBAL 2022, I had over 60 meetings. Some of them I will remember for a long time, while others will soon be forgotten. The diversity of these meetings and their outcomes have made me think about ways . to stand out in the crowd In this post, I combine all my observations about others and share tips and tools that I personally use to stay visible. I'll start by telling how I was won over in Dubai. Come bearing gifts as the Orient teaches Prepare a gift related to your partner’s interests: it always works, especially in the Orient. It shows your preparation and your willingness to go an extra mile. At one of the meetings in Dubai, Nayagam Pillai, CEO of Seven Seas Technology (a leading system integrator in the UAE, now part of Softline Group), gave me a book by his classmate, the guru of the venture industry Mahendra Ramsinghani, called .  The gift was a nod to my work in the VC sphere and it had an added personal touch by being written by somebody Pillai knows. The Business of Venture Capital The book is full of insights from the leading practitioners on the art of raising a fund, deal structuring, value creation, and exit strategies. The author is an investor and consultant for leading security startups. As a seed investor, he has invested in more than 50 startups. Learn more about your companion This is an extension of the previous advice. To choose the right gift, you obviously need to know something about the person. Therefore, your first step must be to determine the purpose of your attendance at the conference. If you are a startup founder and need to find investors, use social media to check out in advance who will attend. Follow the event’s hashtags and select five or so people each day. After that, carefully study their accounts on social media and look for additional information about them online. You can learn a lot of important things about a person and their interests from interviews and even profile photos, and when the time comes, you’ll be able to easily keep up the conversation and make close contact. Believe me, talking about yesterday's football match, children, or a recently attended concert will definitely break down the barriers of officiality. I advise you to put information about your potential interlocutors into flashcards so that you can refresh some talking points in your memory if necessary. If you have trouble locating the right person at the conference, you can turn to the organizers for help. Take notes and write summaries of the meetings: who you talked to, what you discussed, results of the meeting, and your plans for the future. You can do it In a notebook, on your phone, or even on a business card –– the format doesn't matter as long as you do it. But if you don't write it down - you very well may forget it. Become a storyteller The better you tell your story, the more people will listen. It seems like a simple thing, but very few people focus on the actual presentation. Write down your story and practice, practice, practice your presentation skills. If you need a role model, look for the way Americans do their presenting. They manage to combine showmanship with sincerity. Check your pitch not just for memorability, but also for honesty. Speak clearly about what your product does and what value it brings. Remember that public events are not the place where investors go to study documents and commercial offers. Such steps come afterwards, if you make a good first impression. Remember that you only have 30 seconds to grab someone's attention. Demonstration If you can show the product’s functionality in action, do it! Consider the availability and quality of Internet connection at the event. Instead of relying on Wi-fi, buy a local SIM card with internet access. Take a photo If the person you talk to seems approachable, ask them to take a picture together after the meeting. Sending the photo afterwards is a good excuse for a follow-up to the meeting. You can also post the photo on social media, tag your partner, and express your sentiments about the meeting with a caption. Remind about yourself If you followed the previous advice and wrote down the summary of your meetings, doing a follow-up to remind your interlocutors about yourself should not be a problem! Postpone other tasks to give your attention to the business cards you collected during the meetings. Otherwise you will miss the opportunities these meetings created. Send reminders about yourself to the people you met during the conference immediately upon returning home. Everyone you’ve met should receive a message from you with a meeting follow up. Sending a letter with your feedback on a conference speech to the speakers you don’t know personally is an accepted practice, and this can be your chance to make useful contacts. In your follow-up letters, mention where you spoke, describe what was discussed, and make a specific proposal for cooperation. To sum up, make sure to remind your interlocutors about yourself, and do it without delay. Dress for success It's easy to become just another face in the crowd at large events. Add something memorable to your outfit. It may be related to your product. As : “ .” Christina Farr wrote at VentureBeat Who could forget the man in the wedding dress? Evergram’s founder (pictured, left) caught my attention when he tossed me a bouquet of fake flowers. I chatted with Duncan Seay, expecting to be merely amused but was struck by his shrewdness and sincerity. Like all great networkers, Seay followed up the next day Here’s his 30-second pitch: Evergram is a “future messaging” app for weddings. It lets you send an audio or video message to a happy couple that is delivered at a later date. The idea originated when Seay was diagnosed with cancer and wanted to find a better way to communicate with his loved ones. The distinguished (CEO @ B:Side Capital, ex CEO @BodeTree) summed this up : Chris Myers concisely “ Anyone who's met me at conferences or seen me on TV knows that I'm a bit of a bow tie fanatic. My bow ties and penchant for colored pants (thanks to Bonobos) have become somewhat of a trademark and help me stand out from an otherwise perfectly uniform crowd. ” In addition, my team and I always try to stand out in the way we interact with clients. For example, we always give away unique videobooks that automatically play when you open them. To summarize: Before the event, check out the list of contacts you are interested in and find them on Twitter, FB, or other social media, find out about their hobbies, and write down the possible topics for conversation Prepare personalized gifts Compose your 30-second elevator pitch, rehearse (a lot!), be sincere and confident Prepare everything you need to demonstrate your product (charge your phone, buy a SIM card and practice the speech) Take a photo together as a keepsake and a reminder of yourself Do a follow-up, and do it repeatedly, but unobtrusively Add a memorable element to your outfit in line with the event’s dress code and context.

7 Ways to Stand Out at a Tech Conference

Imagine this: you’re in an unfamiliar town, and you suddenly feel hungry. You decided to go grab a bite to eat, not knowing where the nearest restaurant was. You strolled down the street, looking left and right, trying to find the best place to eat. By the time you got there, you realized you’ve spent 30 minutes figuring out where to go, making you a lot hungrier than you were earlier. Unfamiliar with the cuisine, you spent an additional 5 minutes figuring out what to order. And because you’re now starving, you ordered more food than you intended, which led to a higher bill than you initially budgeted. The next day, you decide to go to the same restaurant, knowing where the location is and what food to order. The logistics of getting there are now crystal clear. You reached the place, grabbed the menu, and selected the dish you were craving. Since you didn’t pause a beat, you saved half of the time you spent the day before. On top of that, you enjoyed and savored your meal without rushing, which gave you exactly (or more than) what you paid for. Since you finished early, you still have extra time on your hands, giving you the opportunity to run errands and do other important things to make your day more productive. That’s the difference between every second wasted due to unclear plans. As leaders, we all know that time is money. To say that it’s is a mere understatement. In fact, it’s the biggest abstract investment that yields positively concrete results. We all aim to get things done in a faster, more efficient manner. But the biggest obstacle? The lack of clarity. of the essence Whenever you set a goal, ask yourself these questions: Where do I want to go? What are the tools I need to get there? What strategies do I need to get there fast? What tactics should I implement to ensure an efficient process? Here are 3 key drivers that will give you a tunnel vision toward your goals: Be Well-Equipped Having clarity starts with having the right tools. For CEOs, it starts with industry knowledge. Navigating an unfamiliar space is a gamble, especially if you have an entire organization on your shoulders. You can’t just shoot an arrow in the dark and hope for the best. You need to gear up with all the know-how to hit your target. Knowing the ins and outs of the industry is paramount if you want to get fast and efficient outputs. Industry knowledge is your roadmap to traverse through different slopes. Most importantly, it’s the best confidence booster a leader can have. The clarity on what you want to accomplish is the best investment for every CEO. Focus On One Goal at a Time Clear your horizon and focus on one goal at a time. The more you divide your time, resources, and energy between goals, the longer it takes for you to accomplish one. Having a clear vision and dedicated system to set an objective is just as important as determining which objective you should target first. Clarity on your priorities is key. This establishes the momentum for you to accelerate at an unstoppable pace. Surround Yourself with Experts It’s not uncommon for strategies to have flaws here and there. More often than not, it’s the people around you who can give you the clarity you need. No one is immune to errors from time to time and reaching your goals is a collaborative effort that requires the manpower of a village. From strategizing to execution, it takes multiple minds to join together in pushing a boulder up a mountain. An effective CEO knows how to allocate resources, determine the strengths and weaknesses of each member, and distribute labor according to their expertise. While you’re in charge of the steering wheel, keep in mind that your employees produce the fuel. When it comes to planning execution, there’s no room for testing the waters. Learn the roadmap well enough until it feels like the back of your hand. Ensure that every stage of your strategic plan is perfectly clear and spotless to make obstacles mere irrelevant bumps. Above all, be confident. You know exactly what to do and how to do it – there’s no reason to doubt yourself.

Clarity is the Best Tool to Amplify Your Outputs 

A Tract on Monetary Reform, by John Maynard Keynes is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Chapter II: II. Currency Depreciation versus Capital Levy II. Currency Depreciation versus Capital Levy We have seen in the preceding section the extent to which a Government can make use of currency inflation for the purpose of securing income to meet its outgoings. But there is a second way in which inflation helps a Government to make both ends meet, namely by reducing the burden of its pre-existing liabilities in so far as they have been fixed in terms of money. These liabilities consist, in the main, of the internal debt. Every step of depreciation obviously means a reduction in the real claims of the -holders against their Government. rentes It would be too cynical to suppose that, in order to secure the advantages discussed in this section, Governments (except, possibly, the Russian Government) depreciate their currencies . As a rule, they are, or consider themselves to be, driven to it by their necessities. The requirements of the Treasury to meet sudden exceptional outgoings—for a war or to pay the consequences of defeat—are likely to be the original occasion of, at least , inflation. But the most cogent reason for depreciation, that is to say , or the policy of fixing the value of the currency permanently at the low level to which a temporary emergency has driven it, is generally to be found in the fact that a restoration of the currency to its former value would raise the recurrent annual burden of the fixed charges of the National Debt to an insupportable level. on purpose temporary permanent Devaluation There is, nevertheless, an alternative to Devaluation in such cases, provided the opponents of Devaluation are prepared to face it in time, which they generally are not,—namely a Capital Levy. The purpose of this section is to bring out clearly the character of these two methods of moderating the claims of the , when the State’s contractual liabilities, fixed in terms of money, have reached an excessive proportion of the national income. alternative rentier The active and working elements in no community, ancient or modern, will consent to hand over to the or bond-holding class more than a certain proportion of the fruits of their work. When the piled-up debt demands more than a tolerable proportion, relief has usually been sought in one or other of two out of the three possible methods. The first is Repudiation. But, except as the accompaniment of Revolution, this method is too crude, too deliberate, and too obvious in its incidence. The victims are immediately aware and cry out too loud; so that, in the absence of Revolution, this solution may be ruled out at present, as regards debt, in Western Europe. rentier internal The second method is Currency Depreciation, which becomes Devaluation when it is fixed and confirmed by law. In the countries of Europe lately belligerent, this expedient has been adopted already on a scale which reduces the real burden of the debt by from 50 to 100 per cent. In Germany the National Debt has been by these means practically obliterated, and the bond-holders have lost everything. In France the real burden of the debt is less than a third of what it would be if the franc stood at par; and in Italy only a quarter. The owners of small savings suffer quietly, as experience shows, these enormous depredations, when they would have thrown down a Government which had taken from them a fraction of the amount by more deliberate but juster instruments. This fact, however, can scarcely justify such an expedient on its merits. Its indirect evils are many. Instead of dividing the burden between all classes of wealth-owners according to a graduated scale, it throws the whole burden on to the owners of fixed interest bearing stocks, lets off the capitalist and even enriches him, and hits small savings equally with great fortunes. It follows the line of least resistance, and responsibility cannot be brought home to individuals. It is, so to speak, nature’s remedy, which comes into silent operation when the body politic has shrunk from curing itself. entrepreneur The remaining, the scientific, expedient, the Capital Levy, has never yet been tried on a large scale; and perhaps it never will be. It is the rational, the deliberate method. But it is difficult to explain, and it provokes violent prejudice by coming into conflict with the deep instincts by which the love of money protects itself. Unless the patient understands and approves its purpose, he will not submit to so severe a surgical operation. Once Currency Depreciation has done its work, I should not advocate the unwise, and probably impracticable, policy of retracing the path with the aid of a Capital Levy. But if it has become clear that the claims of the bond-holder are more than the taxpayer can support, and if there is still time to choose between the policies of a Levy and of further Depreciation, the Levy must surely be preferred on grounds both of expediency and of justice. It is an overwhelming objection to the method of Currency Depreciation, as compared with that of the Levy, that it falls entirely upon persons whose wealth is in the form of claims to legal-tender money, and that these are generally, amongst the capitalists, the poorer capitalists. It is entirely ungraduated; it falls on small savings just as hardly as on big ones; and incidentally it benefits the capitalist class for the reasons explained in Chapter I. Unfortunately the small savers who have most to lose by Currency Depreciation are precisely the sort of conservative people who are most alarmed by a Capital Levy; whilst, on the other hand, the class must obviously prefer Depreciation which does not hit them very much and may actually enrich them. It is the combination of these two forces which will generally bring it about that a country will prefer the inequitable and disastrous courses of Currency Depreciation to the scientific deliberation of a Levy. entrepreneur entrepreneur There is a respectable and influential body of opinion which, repudiating with vehemence the adoption of either expedient, fulminates alike against Devaluations and Levies, on the ground that they infringe the untouchable sacredness of contract; or rather of vested interest, for an alteration of the legal tender and the imposition of a tax on property are neither of them in the least illegal or even contrary to precedent. Yet such persons, by overlooking one of the greatest of all social principles, namely the fundamental distinction between the right of the individual to repudiate contract and the right of the State to control vested interest, are the worst enemies of what they seek to preserve. For nothing can preserve the integrity of contract between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the State to revise what has become intolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are too great. If the accretions of vested interest were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half. Nor can the fact that in time of war it is easier for the State to borrow than to tax, be allowed permanently to enslave the taxpayer to the bond-holder. Those who insist that in these matters the State is in exactly the same position as the individual, will, if they have their way, render impossible the continuance of an individualist society, which depends for its existence on moderation. These conclusions might be deemed obvious if experience did not show that many conservative bankers regard it as more consonant with their cloth, and also as economising thought, to shift public discussion of financial topics off the logical on to an alleged “moral” plane, which means a realm of thought where vested interest can be triumphant over the common good without further debate. But it makes them untrustworthy guides in a perilous age of transition. The State must never neglect the importance of so acting in ordinary matters as to promote certainty and security in business. But when great decisions are to be made, the State is a sovereign body of which the purpose is to promote the greatest good of the whole. When, therefore, we enter the realm of State action, is to be considered and weighed on its merits. Changes in Death Duties, Income Tax, Land Tenure, Licensing, Game Laws, Church Establishment, Feudal Rights, Slavery, and so on through all ages, have received the same denunciations from the absolutists of contract,—who are the real parents of Revolution. everything In our own country the question of the Capital Levy depends for its answer on whether the great increase in the claims of the bond-holder, arising out of the fact that it was easier, and perhaps more expedient, to raise a large part of the current costs of the war by loans rather than by taxes, is more than the taxpayer can be required, in the long run, to support. The high levels of the Death Duties and of the income- and super-taxes on unearned income, by which the net return to the bond-holder is substantially diminished, modify the case. Nevertheless, immediately after the war, when it seemed that the normal budget could scarcely be balanced without a level of taxation of which a tax on earned income at a standard rate between 6s. and 10s. in the £ would be typical, a levy seemed to be necessary. At the present time the case is rather more doubtful. It is not yet possible to know how the normal budget will work out, and much depends on the level at which sterling prices are stabilised. If the level of sterling prices is materially lowered, whether in pursuance of a policy of restoring the old gold parity or for any other reason, a levy may be required. If, however, sterling prices are stabilised somewhere between 80 and 100 per cent above the pre-war level—a settlement probably desirable on other grounds—and if the progressive prosperity of the country is restored, then perhaps we may balance our future budgets without oppressive taxation on earned income and without a levy either. A levy is from the practical view perfectly feasible, and is not open to more objection than any other tax of like magnitude. Nevertheless, like all new taxes, it cannot be brought in without friction, and is, therefore, scarcely worth advocating for its own sake merely in substitution for an existing tax of similar incidence. It is to be regarded as the fairest and most expedient method of adjusting the burden of taxation between past accumulations and the fruits of present efforts, whenever, in the general judgment of the country, the discouragement to the latter is excessive. A levy is to be judged, not by itself, but as against the practicable alternatives. Experience shows with great certainty that the active part of the community will not submit in the long run to pay too much to vested interest, and, if the necessary adjustment is not made in one way, it will be made in another,—probably by the depreciation of the currency. 17 new 17 The net return to the French rentier is more than 6 per cent; to the British not much above 3 per cent. In several countries the existing burden of the internal debt renders Devaluation inevitable and certain sooner or later. It will be sufficient to illustrate the case by reference to the situation of France,—the home of absolutism of all kinds, and hence, sooner or later, of bouleversement. The finances of Humpty Dumpty are as follows: At the end of 1922 the internal debt of France, excluding altogether her external debt, exceeded 250 milliard francs. Further borrowing budgeted for in the ensuing period, together with loans on reconstruction account guaranteed by the Government, may bring this total to the neighbourhood of 300 milliards by the end of 1923. The service of this debt will absorb nearly 18 milliards per annum. The total normal receipts under the provisional Budget for 1923 are estimated at round 23 milliards. That is to say, the service of the debt will shortly absorb, at the value of the franc current early in 1923, almost the entire yield of taxation. Since other Government expenditure in the ordinary budget (i.e., excluding war pensions and future expenditure on reconstruction) cannot be put below 12 milliards a year, it follows that, even on the improbable hypothesis that further expenditure in the extraordinary budget after 1923 will be paid for by Germany, the yield of taxation must be increased permanently by 30 per cent to make both ends meet. If, however, the franc were to depreciate to (say) 100 to the pound sterling, the ordinary budget could be balanced by taking little more of the real income of the country than in 1922. 18 18 The forecasts of the final outcome of the year are frequently changed and may be somewhat different from the above,—though not sufficiently to affect the argument. M. de Lasteyrie has lately pointed out with pride how the further depreciation of the franc, since he first introduced his budget, is already improving the receipts measured in terms of francs. In these circumstances it will be difficult, if not impossible, to avoid the subtle assistance of a further depreciation. What, then, is to be said of those who still discuss seriously the project of restoring the franc to its former parity? In such an event the already intolerable burden of the claims would be about trebled. It is unthinkable that the French taxpayer would submit. Even if the franc were put back to par by a miracle, it could not stay there. Fresh inflation due to the inadequacy of tax receipts must drive it anew on its downward course. Yet I have assumed the cancellation of the whole of France’s external debt, and the assumption by Germany of the burdens of the extraordinary budget after 1923, an assumption which is not justified by present expectations. These facts alone render it certain that the franc cannot be restored to its former value. rentier’s France must come in due course to some compromise between increasing taxation, and diminishing expenditure, and reducing what they owe their . I have not much doubt that the French public, as they have hitherto, will consider a further dose of depreciation—attributing it to the “bad will” of Germany or to financial Machiavellism in London and New York—as far more conservative, orthodox, and in the interest of small savers, than a justly constructed Capital Levy, the odium of which could be less easily escaped by the French Ministry of Finance. rentiers If we look ahead, averting our eyes from the ups and downs which can make and unmake fortunes in the meantime, the level of the franc is going to be settled in the long run not by speculation or the balance of trade, or even the outcome of the Ruhr adventure, but by the proportion of his earned income which the French taxpayer will permit to be taken from him to pay the claims of the French . The level of the franc exchange will continue to fall until the commodity-value of the francs due to the has fallen to a proportion of the national income, which accords with the habits and mentality of the country. rentier rentier About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Keynes, John Maynard. 2021. A Tract on Monetary Reform. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65278/65278-h/65278-h.htm#sec_7 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

A Tract on Monetary Reform: Chapter II - II. Currency Depreciation versus Capital Levy

Indian Currency and Finance: Chapter V - Council Bills and Remittance 

Congrats on raising new financing for Hoken Tech. How much money did you raise? And what are the terms of the deal? Thanks, in this case, we managed to get 30 thousand euros from an Italian government fund dedicated to culture and art and in more the advantage of these funds is that only half we will have to repay over 8 years. Who participated in the round? And how will these investors help the business grow beyond the money? As previously mentioned, the main actor of these capitals derives, indirectly, from the Italian government, and this also allows us to demonstrate to everyone, how our project has the qualities and characteristics of interfacing with important institutions such as governments Worldwide. What is your company’s current valuation? What data/traction/evidence supports this valuation? We are still a young startup, but despite this, we are making great steps forward, and even the data we are collecting is encouraging and allow us to better define our goals and also the needs of users who are our first supporters. What does your company offer today? And what do you think it will provide in the future? Our business at Hoken Tech is to provide museums and artists with tools to catalyze frictionless, rapid trade of their art. We identify institutions looking for new revenue streams, facilitate the integration of the crypto-based solution, and attract visitors to museums who use QR Codes to buy the NFT too! This is not your regular art collecting closet; we can target all aspects of your business from concept to execution. In the coming months, we will present something never seen in the world, that is an NFT distributor that can be placed anywhere, as it does not require electricity or batteries, and inside it is possible to insert a capsule that contains the NFT to be redeemed, all in a decentralized way and using the EOS blockchain. What differentiates your product and/or offering from competitors? In our case, our NFTs are eco-sustainable as they exploit the EOS blockchain, and for the uninitiated, it is the first blockchain in the world to be carbon neutral, and consequently, everything created on this blockchain, including the NFTs, I can boast of this title and feature. Furthermore, we can offer an integration of these NFTs also on users' websites to integrate something decentralized on centralized portals, having the advantage of both, in fact with our solution you can sell an NFT through any payment method, which it goes from PayPal, to credit card and even bank transfer, which not everyone can offer yet on the market. Who are the founders and key team members? What exceptional skills, abilities and perspectives does this team have? Pro tip: add a picture of your team! Our team is currently made up of two members and in particular, Antonella, who holds the role of CEO of Hoken Tech, born in 1992 who, after graduating in business management, takes over the reins of the family's farm to transform it into an innovative startup of online commerce. And it represents the commercial soul of the company, essential for maintaining relationships with users of the caliber of institutions such as museums and other cultural and non-cultural bodies. Then we have Alfredo, who holds the position of CTO, and is the technological backbone of the startup thanks to his experience in the crypto and blockchain sector since 2011, he has accumulated the necessary experience to concretely develop products and services that exploit the blockchain, not to forget the numerous books also written in the blockchain field (in total he has written over 100 books), and the recent victory as Best Crypto Journalist 2021, also lies behind the NFT distributor which will be launched shortly. In laymen’s terms, how do you plan on spending the money? Half of the funds will be invested to cover all expenses related to professionals such as notaries, lawyers, and accountants to make all our operations legally proofed, to operate clearly and transparently, while the other part of the funds will be used for all the equipment and raw materials essential to operate in this area. What’s exciting about your traction to date? And how do you plan on measuring growth going forward? An important aspect of traction and the parameters to be taken into consideration is to have models and systems that are in line with our society. Obviously, as a young company, we did not have all this information but thanks to the incubation program, which we followed and won, we have learned a lot. Helios (which is part of the Helios VC in which Brok Pierce also participates), and their mentors such as Gavriel Shaw, who have provided us with several templates to use that we’ve found helpful, especially for us the SaaS template created by is proving very useful and simple compared to other templates. Christoph Janz What are your revenue expectations over the next three years? One of our advantages is that we can diversify the various sectors in which we can operate, and therefore we can multiply our offer by the various sectors, not only therefore to the art and culture sector, but also in tourism, the product sector agri-food and more. In this sense, we have developed a 5-year projection, by inserting our various fixed costs and the potential revenues deriving from the various projects that we are going to carry out. What is your TAM (Total Addressable Market)? And what is your strategy to acquire the maximum share of this market? Our main market is the institutional one and specifically the museums, which are over 55 thousand worldwide, of which over 4 thousand in Italy (we are only talking about public museums) and we aim to offer a new form of revenue provided by the digitization of works in blockchain through NFTs. And this is where our strategy comes into action thanks to the NFT distributor as it allows us to attract visitors and at the same time be able to exploit NFTs as a form of monetization. In your funding raising pitch deck, what is your favorite slide? What problem are you solving? And Why is now the time for your company to solve this? The main problem that we are going to solve for institutions such as museums, is the recovery of capital for their structures, since, especially in Italy, most museums are free and depend on aid from the Italian government which is unfortunately not enough. This problem presents itself to us as an opportunity because thanks to NFTs the museum itself puts a new product in its catalog and in its store to be traded as if it were a poster, postcard, or catalog. In addition, thanks to the traction that the NFT sector had in 2021, many are and are approaching the same and want to integrate this technology in some way also in their company. What are the potential risks to the business? i.e. technology, regulatory, incumbents, legal, etc. One of the main problems we have, at least in Italy, is dictated by the lack of regulation, and therefore we must always be in line with what is promulgated by the Italian government and be compliant with them. In fact, having a company like ours in Italy and not abroad as most do, obliges us to follow all the laws of the country, and even if they are sometimes quite restrictive, it allows us to have a significant advantage towards competition, as it does not automatically comply with the various Italian laws, and this is why our company has relied on a law firm specialized in the crypto and blockchain sector, led by an extraordinary woman like Olivia. What intellectual and digital property does the company own? Or intend to build/own? i.e. patents, patents pending, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, domains, bored apes, etc. We embrace the same philosophy as the blockchain, where the code is open, public, and transparent, allowing us to be clear with everyone and provide something that others cannot provide, which is trust because if everyone knows what you do and how you do it, there is no 'it is a patent or secret that can provide the same trust as something transparent and public if it is not possible to verify it how can you trust that product, technology or patent, as you may have a patent but no one would know how it works or what secrets it hides. Regarding digital assets, we have budgeted our cryptocurrencies so as to focus ourselves on this sector and this technology, and also because the amount of cryptocurrencies that a company owns is easily controllable thanks to the blockchain and it is impossible to change even in the budgets, making us also a reliable company also from a financial and economic point of view. Why should we think Hoken Tech could grow to the moon?! The only way that companies have to grow and expand is to offer innovative and cutting-edge products, and we too, being a company operating in the sector of new technologies, must constantly evolve and always provide new solutions to everyone, and this is why we have developed the NFT distributor, something that our competitors have not and have not thought of and which is difficult to replicate, which for us is already ready to be launched on the market, and has already obtained crazy numbers at events into whom we showed it, we even had to remove it because we had blocked an entire hackathon due to our distributor NFT. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? Also check out: The link for the template is HERE. ten questions for every founder :-)

How The Italian Startup Hoken Tech Is Using Its New Funding

I’m a tech entrepreneur that has been building startups for the last 11 years. My last startup, ListenLoop was acquired in 2019. Then I spent three years at the parent company, a fast-growing B2B startup on a path to its IPO. A few months ago, I got the itch to start another venture–this time in web3. To turbocharge my crypto-pilling experience, I joined the accelerator for web3 startups. I’m now in the second week of the program, and Tachyon mentors often ask, “how’s it going?” I strive to give authentic responses, and I recently said, Consensys Mesh: Tachyon “Honestly, it's exhausting. Mostly in a good way but exhausting nonetheless. I forgot how much energy it takes to go from 0 to 1.” As a sucker for time travel stories (Time Cop, Terminator, Interstellar), I've often fantasized about coaching my younger self to be better. This post explores what advice I'd give myself when I was launching my last startup. My hope is that you benefit from my reflections and that this post counsels my future self, too. Should stray, may this post bring him back to center. Future Me What is 0 ➡ 1? According to Peter Thiel, there are two types of innovation. If you take something that exists and improve upon it you go from 1 to . But means going from 0 to 1. N creating something new I think of those moments as shaping clay. You mold it and mold it until you have something beautiful. Clay is given shape by pressing a vision into its malleable form.  Like clay, startups must be given shape and direction for them to become valuable. But many times, we start in a direction and find that there's no product-market fit. Or perhaps the product is not solving a big enough problem. So you grab the clay, mash it into a ball, and try again. Shape. Mash. Shape. Mash. Shape… . If you’re not familiar with the amount of time and effort required, you might quit each time you restart because trashing earlier work is draining. it's an exhausting process But with enough energy–directed at learning more about users and their problems–you can eventually shape the clay into something valuable. Therefore, the key insight is to and then on the actions that best accomplish your goals. conserve energy focus it How can I have forgotten such an obvious lesson? I blame a romanticized memory of running my last startup.  I easily remember the good moments and have to dig for the bad memories. But they're there. Thanks to recency bias, the strongest memories of my last startup were in 2018, when we were growing profitably, which led to our acquisition in Jan. 2019.  It's harder to remember the earliest phases, when we started in 2013. While I recall the big pivots (e.g., moving from feedback collection to advertising tech), it's hard to recall the . feelings of uncertainty, exhaustion, and frustration I'm reconnecting with those earlier feelings as I work on my next startup. The most powerful feeling that I'm rediscovering is . excitement I find myself waking up at 3 A.M. most nights with my mind racing, thinking of all the things I want to accomplish next. I try to resume sleep. But if I fail after 30 minutes, I get up and start executing. While that sounds like I'm leveraging my excitement, I know it's . not sustainable Here's my game plan to survive the 0 ➡ 1 phase. A Better Plan for Time & Energy Management First, I regularly define my “Big Rock,” which is Tachyon-speak for a week-long OKR. Stemming from that weekly objective, I brainstorm all of the things I could do that week to accomplish the task. Then I rate each task using a to determine which activities will be most far reaching and impactful given the least amount of effort multiplied by the probability of accomplishing said impact. RICE framework (Here’s if you want to riff on this for yourself.) the source Google Sheet Then I determine how much bandwidth I want to allocate on those tasks. Without a time constraint, it’s tempting to say, "let's do it all." Constraints breed creativity. For example, I budgeted 70% of my time against my Big Rock. That translated to 28 hours per week, or 5.6 hrs per day, focused on my objective. Knowing that there are limited few hours to accomplish the goal forced me to think and focus my energy. Week 2 Next, I time myself while performing tasks. This is the best way to keep myself on track. I use Toggl.com because it's free, simple, and unobtrusive. My timer safeguards me from web3 rabbit holes. Before using a timer, an hour could pass by consuming the latest crypto news, Discord channels, and Telegram groups without accomplishing the task at hand. (Plus, keeping time is a throwback to my law firm days when I tracked work in 6-minute increments.  I never minded it much, and I enjoy reviewing the week’s efforts to find opportunities for optimization.) At the end of each week, I perform a retrospective against my objective. Was I able to accomplish the goal? If not, why? Did I budget enough time to accomplish the objective? Did I underestimate the impact of the chosen activities? This exercise helps me quickly change directions as I plan next week's goal. The 0 ➡ 1 phase requires unbounded energy. But small bursts of focused energy are better than long periods of distracted effort. Again, the timer helps here. So does drinking plenty of water. I average 8 oz per hour, which is great for hydration but also enforces bio-breaks every ~60 minutes 😅 Aside from better time and energy management, I seek to meditate more.  Truthfully, I used to think meditation was a waste of productive time. You want me to slow down for 15-minutes? No way. I was wrong. After completing “21 Days of Calm,” I learned that meditation leads to mindfulness.  Ten years ago, I would have grumbled, “WTH does that mean?” Stated simply, meditation improves my ability to enjoy food, friendships, and other life pleasures. Here's the insight I didn't understand before: focused, mindful enjoyment of life's little moments means that you burnout less when you're struggling to push big rocks up the mountain. Endure as Long as You Can As Alex Michelsen (Hedgey Finance) aptly reminded me earlier this week: repeat founders love the 0 ➡ 1 phase – even when they're getting punched in the face by customers, or the lack thereof. It’s true, I do. It's certainly hard – not to mention demoralizing – when people don't want what you're building. But with enough energy, endurance, and insights, you can eventually find product-market fit. The important thing is not to burnout in the process. And while molding the clay is rewarding in itself, it pales in comparison to . the joy of others marveling at a great product you put in market I wish I could have given myself this advice ten years ago. May you find it useful on your journey now...

Post-Acquisition Lessons on Time & Energy Management: What I'd Do Differently as a Repeat Founder

Lecciones posteriores a la adquisición sobre la gestión del tiempo y la energía: lo que haría de manera diferente como fundador repetido

Leçons post-acquisition sur la gestion du temps et de l'énergie : ce que je ferais différemment en tant que fondateur récurrent

समय और ऊर्जा प्रबंधन पर अधिग्रहण के बाद के पाठ: एक दोहराने वाले संस्थापक के रूप में मैं अलग तरीके से क्या करूंगा?

時間とエネルギーの管理に関する買収後の教訓: リピーターの創業者として別の方法で行うこと

Lições pós-aquisição sobre gerenciamento de tempo e energia: o que eu faria diferente como fundador recorrente

Bài học sau chuyển đổi về quản lý thời gian và năng lượng: Tôi sẽ làm gì khác biệt với tư cách là người sáng lập lặp lại

关于时间和能量管理的收购后课程：作为重复创始人，我会做哪些不同的事情

Like the Big Mac with its secret sauce, there are some things in life that are key ingredients to longevity and retention. In my eyes Crypto's secret sauce is community. I've found that in Pangolin, a community-controlled DEX (Decentralized exchange). *In full transparency I own and stake PNG, but as you'll discover that was never my plan. From the Oxford dictionary community is "a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals." is a community-owned DEX, that was created by to be handed over to the community. Unlike most projects where teams and insiders can own up to 60% of the supply. The core team retained no personal tokens. Pangolin AVA labs The protocol was built using the AMM (automated market maker) model that Uniswap pioneered. Pangolin was designed to let users farm liquidity as well as swap hundreds of tokens most of which are Avalanche native assets. "Pangolin is adamant not to repeat the sins of enterprise and corporate institutions. The community aspect drives the core team to ensure the benefits accrue to the community.  The core team encourages developers to be creative and build truly innovative solutions. Not to be driven by Legacy KPI's that kill innovation." - Justin Trollip - Chief Herder of Pangolin How was the core team put in place? Early on community members contributed to Pangolin's development through discord and aiding in reviewing code. Ava Labs set the governance structure in place, and community members could make a proposal to be the core team. Teams needed to gather about 1 million PNG to submit an on-chain proposal to be the core team behind Pangolin. The vote elected the core team of Justin, Leo. and Brandon. The team has grown much larger to this date. The Core team was granted access to a budgeted Multi-Sig wallet to use to pay for expenditures and salaries. The core team in a sense works for the community and operates in the best interest of the community. Community wins over profits which is a rarity in our space. How is the core team rewarded? The PNG token is used as a governance token; you can't have a community-owned project without some notion of ownership. users who provide liquidity are rewarded in the PNG token. Users can use the PNG token to participate in on-chain votes. PNG Token - Currently during this bearish downturn PNG still holds a Market cap of over $25 million USD. A project with an amazing upside, and amazing community incentives (*not financial advice). A major tokenomics overhaul is coming that will reduce the max PNG supply by 57%, implement a more strategic emissions schedule, and add deflationary attributes to the PNG token Governance Some of the votes that have already happened on chain with Pangolin are picking market makers determining reward allocations for different pairs picking the core team Some voting has been done off chain by snapshot voting system. This gauges sentiment for voting that doesn't require users to pay gas to vote on topics. Anyone can submit a proposal, as long as thresholds are met. You need 1 million PNG to make a proposal Community members can delegate their voting rights to others they trust Members generally submit proposal ideas via the community forum, or via discord As of now, there is a one-day heads up of an upcoming vote, with a 3-day voting window Staking PNG New Staking rewards, inspired by sushi, .05 % of trading fees go towards the pangolin treasury. All those fees are now being converted to tether and every 2 weeks the proceeds are used to buyback PNG to reward single side stakers. Now PNG stakers are rewarded from Pangolin's entire ecosystem revenue stream just by staking PNG. Inception of Super-farms A new version of yield farming that allows users to earn PNG and other tokens simultaneously. Allowing projects to bootstrap liquidity. The total amount of partner project tokens flowing into the Pangolin ecosystem will be multiplying over the next few months. Partners are stepping up to the plate to jointly incentivize Pangolin’s TVL and volume. In exchange, they receive exposure to Pangolin’s incredible community and the support of Pangolin with co-marketing and business development teams. "Super farms are going to explode TVL and volume by compounding the ecosystem’s incentive program with the full strength of all of Pangolin’s partners.” -Stephen, Head of Strategy at Pangolin Exchange stats Pangolin has had over USD in total volume. $13.69 Billion They currently house over USD in total liquidity. $249 Million Earn up to 1346% UST/USDC farm has over in liquidity $38 Million Features & Benefits Summary integration- users can now utilize to buy 6 assets on Pangolin with a using a Credit or debit card, this makes Defi onboarding easy Moonpay Moonpay Partnership with , NFTrade.com Limit orders on V2- First AVAX native DEX to allow limit orders for any token on the platform Becoming multi chain by launching on NEAR protocol, which means more community UX UIR update, which shows PNG rewards per day when staked Centralized exchange listings like and more to come gate.io Bitmart , Burn mechanism and deflationary attributes to reduce the total supply by 57% Super Farms to allows liquidity providers to earn more than one Token at once Earn a percentage of the protocol revenue stream by staking participate in governance The F.A.B list above is sure to grow with time. But in my opinion, it's tough to find a project that's strictly driven to benefit the community as a whole. This is the secret sauce I think many projects will try to replicate. However, the true sense of community is what creates network effect. When the users get more value out of a network than they put in, the users are likely to stay for the long haul- this creates network effect. I believe Pangolin has a two-sided network effect. For example, more Uber riders does not necessarily improve my Uber experience, but it does attract more drivers, which will improve Uber services overall. I believe when it comes to Pangolin, we will see this two-sided network effect in the following areas:  Super-farms, Liquidity providers, Users, and listings. Pangolin was supposed to be a bus stop for my funds, quick hit yield and out was my plan. But as mentioned above I got far more value out of the exchange than I was putting forth. I've stayed for the community/vision/value and yield. Sources: https://pangolin.exchange/ https://medium.com/avalancheavax/pangolin-a-community-driven-dex-for-avalanche-and-ethereum-assets-6526e6ccea5 Burn- https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/pangolin-dex-is-set-to-burn-57-of-its-png-token-supply-2684135

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Shopping cart abandonment has always been a point of frustration for many e-commerce business owners. A potential customer putting items into their shopping cart with an intent to buy, entering some of their credentials, and then suddenly abandoning the cart can be disheartening as it indicates that something went wrong during the user’s experience. It leaves e-tailers wondering why they lost the sale. A of e-commerce sites across industries shows that a median rate of 88.05% of carts were abandoned during 2020. global survey In order to increase conversions, e-commerce stores should make a point of analyzing their rate of cart abandonment against the benchmarks. The metric can be determined by dividing the total number of completed transactions by the total number of transactions initiated. A high abandonment rate often signals a poor user experience and has a direct impact on the revenue that an online business is able to generate. In order to mitigate the loss of potential sales, e-tailers must be sure to fix the most common shopping cart abandonment fails. Fail #1: Failing to Establish Trust Through a Good First Impression With so many options available to consumers, they have become extremely discerning and can be put off by a number of elements during the user experience. Competitive pricing and attractive products might drive customers to add items to the cart, but that won’t guarantee a sale. Some things that can deter visitors from completing the checkout process include but are not limited to not showing a strong brand image on all pages, the poor loading speed of pages, and not clearly displaying critical information upfront. Gaining trust and ensuring that users are satisfied with their experience on your site can be achieved, but it will require that you take an honest look at your site’s analytics to determine the exact point in the checkout process at which customers decide to exit without paying for your products. To do this, businesses can utilize sophisticated analytics tools such as Woopra and Amplitude, or hire external e-commerce moderators. To create a good first impression, businesses must make every effort to ensure that their e-commerce platforms are designed to be user-friendly and that professional imagery and graphic elements are featured throughout the user journey. Fail #2: Charging High Additional Costs Nothing frustrates consumers more than finding a product that they love, at an attractive price point, only to discover that they need to pay high shipping costs or taxes. Oftentimes, consumers abandon their shopping carts because the price to ship the product is more expensive than the product itself. In other instances, e-commerce stores make it difficult for potential buyers to see detailed shipping information, so these browsers are forced to go through the checkout process to get this information. To fix this fail, online commerce platforms can do one or more of the following: Reduce shipping fees, place the link to the FAQ or shipping page on every product page, or incorporate additional costs like taxes into the price. Offering free shipping and making it visible for the customer to see on the home page, even if it means hiking up the price of inventory, takes the guesswork out of the checkout process and gives the consumer peace of mind that they won’t need to spend over the amount that they have budgeted – thus leading to more conversions. Fail #3: Enforcing Compulsory Account Creation Making shoppers sign up for an account in order to make an online purchase might sound like a good idea for businesses that are focused on building an email database, but in reality, it is a major turn-off to customers that want a quick checkout. From the potential buyer’s point of view, the process of creating an account on an e-commerce platform before checking out seems redundant and a nuisance, especially since some e-tailers require the same information again for the purpose of delivery. Instead of forcing visitors to create an account, e-commerce businesses must allow for guest checkouts to drive an increased rate of conversions. Guest checkout allows users to complete their orders without registering for an account or logging in. Fail #4: Having a Long Checkout Process Another mistake that e-tailers make when it comes to shopping cart abandonment is making the consumer jump through several hoops before allowing them to enter their credentials on the payment page. It’s important for e-commerce businesses to take a step back and get into the mindset of their customers. Including upsells and additional data collection pages in the checkout process presents an opportunity for increased revenue, the reality is that these tactics are a barrier to consumer acquisition. Keeping the checkout process to a maximum of two pages significantly improves the rate of conversion for many online businesses. Instead of bombarding a potential customer with new products before a purchase is made, companies should reserve their upselling efforts for post-purchase email marketing. This solution is a win-win as revenue stands to increase from the reduced rate of shopping cart abandonment, while also introducing consumers to new products that they can purchase after having a successful shopping experience. Fail #5: Failing to Improve Page Load Speed One of the key, but often overlooked, reasons why people abandon shopping carts, is the load speed of the e-commerce store’s pages. Customers tend to lose interest in your product or service, and their patience, if they have to wait for a page to load. The rate at which a website’s page loads is attributed to its hosting provider. In other words, the hosting provider has the ability to either help or hinder time to first-byte TTFB. An example of an e-merchant rectifying the problem of shopping cart abandonment by increasing page speed is My-Spycam. As part of their website optimization project, spy camera store My-Spycam sought to reduce their TTFB from over four seconds to two seconds. Their strategy involved separating the areas of a page that changed on a per-user basis while caching everything else on a content delivery network (CDN). My-Spycam modified Magento, their underlying eCommerce platform, to cache everything except for specific pages and page contents (such as a user’s shopping cart). Their efforts resulted in a faster page load speed and a reduced shopping cart abandonment rate. Shopping cart abandonment metrics can make or break any online business Unlike brick and mortar enterprises, where a consumer’s intent to purchase cannot be analyzed with quantitative data, online retailers have access to metrics that show them that a buyer intended to make a purchase but, in the end, chose to leave the site without any products. It is crucial for e-commerce businesses to see this data for what it is – a key marker of a poor online retail experience. P rioritizing the elimination of chinks in the chain of the user purchasing experience will greatly improve revenue potential and sales.

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