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🪐 has got you covered with fresh content from our trending stories of the day! Set email preference . Want to know what's trending right now?: The Techbeat by HackerNoon here Python's Testing Playbook: Building Bulletproof Code By [ 11 Min read ]
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The TechBeat: Python's Testing Playbook: Building Bulletproof Code (1/16/2024)

How are you, hacker?
🪐 has got you covered with fresh content from our trending stories of the day! Set email preference . Want to know what's trending right now?: The Techbeat by HackerNoon here Python's Testing Playbook: Building Bulletproof Code By [ 11 Min read ]
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Sales issues surrounding the iPhone have led to Apple’s stock receiving two rating downgrades within a week, sending share values tumbling in the new year. @dmytrospilka Read More. Crypto ETFs Have Been Approved — A Simple Guide to What it Means for Investing in Crypto & Beyond By [ 4 Min read ]
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The TechBeat: Python's Testing Playbook: Building Bulletproof Code (1/13/2024)

THE EUMENES

Hey Hackernoon! My name is Igor Shaversky. I am the co-founder of WaveUp. You can read more about us in our profile here or on our . We are engaged in a rather rare line of business - consulting in VC. What does this mean? That we can tell you a lot about the best way to raise money. website In our first publication, we want to talk about the best way to build the funding ask slide. Let's go! The moment you make the “big ask,” you have arguably reached the culmination of your pitch deck presentation. Surprise, surprise, that’s also the part where many founders fall flat on their faces, diminishing their chances of getting to the negotiation stage. Asking for money isn't always as straightforward as it seems. Ask for too much, and you can end up looking for funds for months or years on end. Fail to show how the money will support your business model and facilitate 10x growth – which is what VCs actually invest in – and you’ll be met with a bunch of chuckling faces instead of cash. While a flawless funding ask slide alone won’t secure you the round, it will do something equally important: it won’t blow your chances. The information discussed below will help you with that. Three components of the perfect funding ask The funding ask is the final stage of your fundraising pitch. It often consists of two parts: the ask itself and a description of the use of funds. Here, you explain the sum you are raising, how you will use it, and what it will achieve for the business. Ideally, it must contain three main components. The funding sum Make sure to put enough thought into how much money you’ll request. A rule of thumb is to base your ballpark on the numbers in your so that you can defend it should the investors challenge you. Remember that, over the course of the fundraising process, you will likely need to adjust the sum anyways. Knowing your maths will help you to find the perfect compromise between what you need and what you are offered. financial model In some cases, you can also mention the funding stage if you need to put the numbers into context. Mentioning it shows whether the sum and the stage match (which isn’t always the case) and informs the investors about your previously raised funds, if you have any. Use of funds & milestones The vital use of a funds slide must convince investors that You know what to do with the money they might give you. You know how to achieve X results. You and the investors are on the same page about it. There are a few ways to go about this. One option is to make a pie chart with the main spending categories, the percentage and dollar amount that will go to each, and a brief explanation of what each category will achieve. For example: 50% / $700k Product development (release an MVP, add new AI capabilities) 30% / $420k Marketing and sales (expand sales and marketing teams, Facebook ads) 20% / $280k Management (hire key C-level team members, etc.) Here is a good example of a use of funds slide for any stage: What’s good about this slide? It shows milestones It shows funds distribution It briefly expands upon the processes Here is another one of the good use of funds examples for mature startups raising their Series A rounds: You can see that this example of uses of funds skips plenty of details, mainly focusing on strategic goals and expansion; thus, this approach might not work for raising pre-seed or seed stage rounds. Traction regarding previous rounds If this is not your first round of raising funds, mentioning the traction gained in previous rounds can help to tip the scales in your favour. By “traction,” we mean a track record of the efficient use of funds you previously raised. As has officially taken the front seat in terms of importance, anyone who can demonstrate it has a real chance to make the investors’ shortlist for a new round. capital efficiency Including the logos of the VC firms or the names of your current angel investors are also good moves. Serving as compelling social proof, they show who has trusted you with their money, motivating others to follow suit. Haven’t raised before? No worries. Investors don’t expect this information if it’s your first raise; after all, there are other ways to early on. Just keep this ace up your sleeve for future rounds. show traction Most common funding ask mistakes to avoid in your slide In the course of talking to founders every day, we at Waveup stumble upon a fair share of poor choices made willy-nilly. We have boiled them down to the three most repeated funding slide mistakes that we help our clients fix in their funding proposals. The sum is pulled out of a hat Way too many founders we meet arrive at their funding amount randomly. One client read in a Medium article that you should always request triple what you need. Another one didn’t estimate his cash burn rate and the investment period correctly, asking for money that would keep him afloat for seven months at best. In determining the use of funds, startups benefit from precision. If your estimate is unreasonably low, you’ll run out of money before reaching your milestones. Asking for too much is no better, either. No one will commit more than the necessary amount unless you show stellar traction and growth. Calculate how much money you need for the next 12–18 months; that’s how long a typical round lasts. This sum is situated between your burn rate, cash flow gap, and runway numbers. To arrive at these figures, calculate the following: How to fix: CapEx, or one-time expenses (licences, machinery) OpEx, or recurring expenses (salaries, marketing, rent) Your NWC, or net working capital Yes, coming up with the right amount can be a tough nut to crack. Some nuances are hard to get right if you aren’t a financial wizard, so we often sit down and calculate them with our clients. This process results in a realistic and defensible sum, therefore the game is worth the candle. Putting all the funds into salaries If only we had a penny for every time we’ve seen founders make this mistake. Yes, we know that at least 60% of the cash you raise will cover salaries (at least at the start), but that’s not what investors want to hear. That’s surely not what’s going to convince them to give you $3M. Instead of funnelling everything into salaries, be more strategic. Manipulate the structure and numbers in your use of funds slide. Distribute the funds evenly across the departments, like in our example at the start. You could also attribute the money to the core activities that will achieve the key milestones (e.g., user acquisition, purchasing licences, etc.). As for the salaries, the more of them you can cover from your future revenue, the better. How to fix: Oversharing your terms Particularly, valuation. There are two reasons why we don’t recommend our clients drop the V-bomb during their pitch deck. First, it can scare off investors who expect a larger piece of the pie, killing the chance to negotiate with them. Or conversely, you’ll end up giving up more than you could’ve. It never hurts to save the conversation about your terms for the after-pitch talk. It includes voicing your valuation, discussing the instrument (preferred shares, convertible notes), minimum ticket, and so on. Best case scenario – you reach an agreement and raise the round. Worst case scenario – you don’t get the money but at least establish a valuable connection! How to fix: Common after-pitch questions from investors What are your cash burn and runway rates? It’s common practice for investors to check if the founders understand how long the round will last. That’s why knowing your maths when coming up with the cash ask is of utmost importance. What positions in the team do you need to fill? Knowing your hires demonstrates that you know the ins and outs of your business. Needless to say, answering this question should be as easy as counting to ten. When are you going to break even? If you don’t mention this as one of your milestones, expect to hear this question. Of course, you should prepare the answer beforehand. Check with the industry benchmarks, and be realistic in your projections, especially if you’re an early-stage startup. Why does so much money go to X? This question can stem from either a negative experience with a given line of expenditures, simple curiosity, or a test of your business acumen. Either way, it can be handy to have an explanation ready. Wrapping up The funding ask provides the momentum of your pitch deck presentation. The stakes are too high to take your chances and rely on guesswork. A well-structured, visually appealing, and persuasive funding ask slide that moves you to negotiations is rarely a result of randomness. No effective pitch deck ever is. That is why it is so important to know your numbers, show how the use of funds will facilitate business growth, keep the visuals simple, and use our examples as a reference.

The Funding Ask Slide: How to Make it Better?

Millions of people have paid tribute to the late monarch in the hours since Queen Elizabeth’s death. But in the darker corners of cyberspace, some NFT and cryptocurrency enthusiasts have sought to make light, and even tremendous profit off of this miserable situation. The death of Queen Elizabeth has sparked the invention of innumerable so-called “meme coins” looking to capitalize on this misfortune occasion. 40+ Queen-related cryptocurrency tokens which are similar to bitcoins have emerged in decentralized exchanges on Ethereum and BNB smart chain. RIP Queen Elizabeth, London Bridge is Down, Save the Queen, QueenDoge, and Queen Elizabeth Inu are to name a few. Cryptocurrencies and meme coins are created with names or likenesses related to newsworthy or viral events in the hope that people will want to purchase and trade with them. And since the news of her Majesty’s death is on hype, several sprang on the opportunity to create Queen-themed coins as a cash grab. Statistics are mind-blowing. Activity on the Queen Elizabeth Inu coin spiked approximately 28.506% in over 24 hours with a trading volume reaching $200,000 (£174,000). As per , the amount was even higher for the ‘Save The Queen’ coin i.e $700,000 (£608,000). Dex Screener With that being said, let’s just start this piece of reading by remembering the Queen. Remembering the Queen Elizabeth II, in full , officially Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, (born April 21, 1926, London, England—died September 8, 2022, Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland), queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from February 6, 1952, to September 8, 2022. In 2015 she surpassed Victoria to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Aged 96, the queen is said to have died in peace at Balmoral in Scotland with the current King Charles and Princess Anne at her bedside. Family members including Prince Edward, Prince Harry, and Prince William sadly missed their chance to say goodbye to the queen in person. Irrevocably, jotting one or two paragraphs won’t be able to justify how powerful she was, but let’s move this piece of writing in the direction of its main topic i.e. crypto gamblers, NFT hawkers, and Web3 enthusiasts quickly moved to cash in on the world’s attention as soon as Queen’s death was announced. QueenE, an Ethereum-based NFT project In early July this year, QueenE launched its auctions, offering a single Ethereum NFT portrait in tribute to the late Queen. The project was created by builders , , , and the pseudonymous . It was designed to launch new procedurally generated pieces at a steady clip for the rest of the Queen’s life. Web3 Fabio Sevá Vinícius Rodrigues Everton Matumoto mladen. eth The project forked its format and code from , an inventive NFT project that auctions a single Ethereum-based profile picture every day and admits buyers into an exclusive club—but gave it a royal twist by serving up lo-fi renditions of Queen Elizabeth II instead. Initially, the QueenE auctions occur every few hours but have mostly launched at a once-daily rate. Nouns https://twitter.com/QueenEDAO/status/1567939439992651781/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1567939439992651781%7Ctwgr%5E385923db1a54d705b5a8995f20384eab80e0e9bb%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdecrypt.co%2F109309%2Fqueen-elizabeth-ethereum-nft-tribute-project-final-auction The project’s Twitter bio now reads, “Rest in Ethereum, forever.” Secondary sales of QueenE NFTs have picked up since the announcement of Queen Elizabeth’s death, and currently the floor price, – that is, the cheapest available item listed on a marketplace – sits at 0.88 ETH or about $1,450 at . OpenSea As with Nouns, the proceeds from primary sales of QueenE NFTs are funnelled into the treasury, which is controlled by a . For those of you who don’t know, DAO is an online group with shared interests and token-based memberships. DAO members can vote on proposals that use the funds (currently 10.10 ETH, or $16,650) for several initiatives. decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) “Queen’s dead. #Bitcoin never dies” Undoubtedly, people were swift to hit back at the Web3 community for its lack of taste surrounding the death of Her Majesty. One of the Reddit users on crypto-hating online forum r/Buttcoin shared a screenshot of a tweet made by MaxKeiser, crypto fund Bitcoin Capital founder, claiming it “new lows”. https://twitter.com/maxkeiser/status/1567938696464187392/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1567938696464187392%7Ctwgr%5E41d19286d725657d5a134d0bbd5851dadb751a8e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffortune.com%2F2022%2F09%2F09%2Fweb3-cash-in-queen-elizabeth-death-flood-crypto-markets-memecoins-nfts%2F One more user named Spooky9999999 called out crypto owners for minting the new coins, jotting the words “insensitive crypto greed strikes again.” Meanwhile, others joked about the future of the new coins. “ElizabethMoonCorgiRocketCoin is the future world currency. Central bankers are shivering as we speak,” Chuckolater comments. My Opinion Without a doubt, the prices of the coins discussed above are extremely volatile and will not be able to sustain any sort of value in the long run. The fact cannot be neglected that cryptocurrency is a completely unregulated marketplace, and the people behind the Queen-based tokens are doing nothing but simply trying to cash in on this moment of extreme sorrow. Innumerable coins that have already been introduced in the crypto market are based on the name of the new King Charles III. In my opinion, it is not an excellent way to capitalize on a significant moment of sorrow in the crypto world. Queen Elizabeth II died, but the crypto community didn’t miss the chance to utilize this opportunity to its benefit. The nation has stepped into a period of official mourning that will last until seven days after the funeral. May her soul rest in peace.

Queen Elizabeth’s death inundates the crypto world with Innumerable NFTs and Meme Coins

Focus On The Problem: When Your First Solution Fails, Simply Start Again

Blockchain technology (BCT) integration within multi-continental supply chains bolsters efficiency, transparency, and traceability and leads to billions in capital savings.(2) . Clearly, the world is waking up to BCTs potential. Blockchain-focused startups saw significant capital investment in Q1 2021 at $2.6B — more than the entirety of 2020 Supply chain management (SCM) professionals fulfill two fundamental roles within an organization. 1) SCM professionals plan, implement, and control activities that deliver value to customers. 2) SCM professionals integrate and coordinate business processes within and across participating firms.(5) A core duty of SCM professionals is in the realm of technological advancement. SCM professionals seek new strategies and maturing modalities to elevate the customer experience and bring new-found transparency to increasingly complex networks.(1) It is essential for organizations to have transparent material tracing, sourcing standard adherence, ethically operating contract manufacturers, and a development process void of child labour.(3) These critical supply chain (SC) attributes become increasingly more viable with BCT intervention. The significance of communication technology and information management is widely acknowledged within the SCM space with industry professionals often embracing new technologies. The fourth industrial revolution brought advances in smart machinery capable of forming self-coordinating systems such as “smart” factories.(5) Discovered within the slipstream of such SCM technological innovations has been a natural convergence with BCT. Kindling won’t sustain the flame Touted for its capabilities of producing a trusted and transparent ledger, BCT has use-cases far beyond cryptocurrency. Nearly in some capacity, showing a keen interest globally in its potential.(2) 82 percent of Fortune 100 companies have dabbled in BCT The proliferation of BCT in SCM happened to intersect with all-time low consumer trust in organizations. Across the globe, . This coincidental convergence may have inspired much of the initial investment in BCT, specifically in the realm of corporate application and integration. Is it enough to keep the ball rolling? nearly 75% of customers, consumers, and clients cite a growing mistrust with their favourite businesses Much of the exciting potential of BCT can be compartmentalized into four key tenets: transparency, validation, automation, and tokenization.(5) Within these tenets lies its disruptive and revolutionary use-cases. Here’s a summary of the defining five. BCT integration can remedy inefficiencies caused by a lack of end-to-end transparency, typically leading to the bullwhip effect, a distribution channel phenomenon characterized by an erratic relationship between consumer demand and inventory volume.(5) BCT enables the automatic recording of an asset’s birth information. Users can record point of creation data, seal the asset’s birth information and changelogs within immutable records, and track the asset content every step along the way. BCT integration, in this vein, would enforce responsible sourcing and enable enhanced detection of counterfeit and other fraudulent behaviour. BCT’s smart contract capabilities could bring new levels of autonomy and efficiency to SCs. In the event of a machine failure, the machine could order the part from the supplier, request maintenance service, and inform downstream participants of inevitable delays. Leveraging BCT’s tokenization capabilities, IT developers could develop a logical representation of physical hardware in software. This approach is more commonly known as “ ” and could increase the utilization and flexibility of IT assets. In addition to leveraging a logical representation of physical hardware in software, SC assets, such as inventory or technical equipment, could be tokenized. or ordering options could be created as a token and circulated outside the typical bi-lateral contractual relationship, allowing the excess product to be monetized. Parties bound to contractual relationships could have newfound contract flexibility and risk reallocation. virtualization Capacity claims BCT integration could expedite settlement conclusions in multi-tier and multi-party contractual agreements and enhance transparency and autonomy, alleviating some burden from accounting departments.(5) BCT has theoretical potential in SCM but has it shown any promise in real-world application? At its conception, BCT garnered significant recognition as a disruptive innovation with SCM. Touted for its potential to cut costs, enhance transparency, and elevate sustainability. It seemed like the next big thing.(2) Unfortunately, much of the existing note-worthy attempts at integrating BCT into SCM have hit a wall. BCT implementations in SCM often get stuck at the demonstration and pilot study stages.(2) Why is this? Is there a core problem with BCT? Is BCT’s nascency impinging on its adoption rate within SCM, or are there fundamental compatibility problems? Organizational sentiment is certainly not the issue, with regarding how highly blockchain is ranked as a strategic priority. Could BCT just not be capable of facilitating SC's ever-growing complexity? Deloitte citing year-after-year increases Despite this, you don’t have to look far to find successful small-scale blockchain integrations. USA-born . This pilot project was powered by the Hyperledger Fabric and required certificate uploads for pork sourced from China and mangoes from the USA. Walmart partnered with IBM in 2016 to tackle traceability lag in the event of food-borne disease The time needed to trace product origins shrunk from seven days to 2.2 seconds. Sounds promising, right? Walmart has since expanded this service to 25 products from five suppliers, bringing more trust and transparency to the food people consume. Walmart announced they had plans to include more products in the network, but little expansion has been done since 2018. North of the border, Canada-based Convergence.tech joined forces with the UN to enhance traceability within the Mongolian Cashmere supply chain. The . Unfortunately, the life of a Mongolian herder or agriculture worker, comprising nearly , is rife with income instability. This is principally attributed to the overgrazing practices of other producers globally and not to cashmere production, which is quite sustainable. Mongolian nomadic community is one of profound pride, with their agricultural trade lodged in the upper echelons of their cultural significance 30 percent of the population in 2011 The UN and Convergence.tech chose Mongolian herders as they are considered some of the most sustainable and ethical in the world. The pilot program involved , subsequently pinned to a virtual map. Since its conception, over 471 kg of cashmere has been funnelled through this system, flowing from nomadic small-scale producers to the doorstep of a willing consumer. over 70 herders and eight cooperatives and utilized an intuitive Android app to register cashmere and RFID tags , a consulting firm pioneering a movement towards transparent supply chains, streamlines the BCT integration process for willing organizations. Provenance envisions a future where every bottle of wine, pair of socks, or smartphone, comes with accessible and trustworthy information regarding its origin, journey, and environmental impact. Trusted by over 200 retailers, with Provenance has proliferated and helped facilitate hundreds of organizational transitions to a more sustainable approach. Provenance detailed case studies listed on their website, Where is the downside? Cited within this article are three successful examples of BCT integration. Despite very positive results, this growth doesn’t come without concerns and unique problems. There are technological, SC-specific, internal, external, and environmental barriers that hinder its adoption. Technological concerns and public perception BCT is still a developing technology and needs advancements in scalability, usability, and interoperability. In addition to these areas of improvement, throughput and latency issues must also be tackled.(2) A substantial obstacle is the level of technological complexity and understanding required to recognize its benefits. Improving BCT's palatability and public perception are two adoption hurdles likely to be spanned with time. Blockchain is most commonly associated with the inexorably linked crypto sector, which some still believe to be rife with illegal activity.(7) Those holding this belief typically point to high-profile incidents such as the Silk Road darknet marketplace shut down in 2013. The FBI seized over 26,000 BTC, and the reputation of blockchain and cryptocurrency took a hit.(7) However, these beliefs are not true. Between the years 2012-2020, less than 1 percent of BTC transactions were cited as having a connection to illicit activity.(7) It can be troublesome for both organizations interested in BCT and “crypto-curious” individuals that have latched onto these incidents to look past these illegal activities. Substantial investments in BTC from firms such as , have served to bring newfound legitimacy to the sector. Successful integration can even be found in the public sector at the was employed to publish grants and funding data. Tesla, Square, and MicroStrategy, in addition to numerous other organizations National Research Council of Canada, where the Ethereum blockchain To what extent have organizations brought blockchain into production? Twenty-three . BCT perceptions are improving. percent of firms noted BCT usage in 2019 and over 39 percent in 2020 Internal organizational barriers Integrating new technology is not a cheap endeavour and requires commitment from C-level executives. It is challenging for small businesses to migrate to a new inventory management program which may only require barcode adjustments and data migration. Can you imagine the perceived complexity for a multi-continental supply chain to incorporate a new form of asset integrity? Costs associated with BCT integration often increase with the organization’s size and make that initial pitch to management a tough pill to swallow.(2) Provenance distills what is ultimately very complex into a palatable, non-offensive elevator pitch that anyone can understand. Further saturation of BCT consulting companies should positively affect adoption rates and further legitimize the technology. External organizational hurdles Despite organizations facing considerable pressure from consumers and central governments to elevate their sustainability efforts, progress has been relatively slow. A lack of a clear, standardized framework for SC sustainability integrations may be impinging on BCT’s potentially disruptive effects.(2) Government regulations and perceptions are still not fully onboard with BCT, reducing adoption benefits.(6) If investing in BCT rewards organizations sustainability “points,” it may inspire more deliberate action. BCT’s global proliferation BCT may still be recognized as a fad that will fail to meet the test of time; just as the technology is immature, so are some developing perspectives. Integrating BCT into SCM is fraught with typical emerging technology growing pains. Risk-averse adopters need to be convinced that their commitment of time and capital will be rewarded through enhanced sustainability, reliability and interoperability. This disconnect presents a lucrative opportunity for consulting firms to facilitate transitions to more sustainable and ethical product delivery systems. Airbnb became the largest hotel chain in only seven years, boasting more than 850,000 rooms without any hotel asset ownership. Between 2012 and 2014, Uber devoured over 65 percent of San Francisco's taxi market. Evolution in AI and robotics is expected to put 47 percent of U.S. workers (nearly 60 million jobs) at risk of being replaced. Over ten million autonomous vehicles per year may enter U.S. highways by the year 2030. What do these all have in common? The power of exponential growth. Is your organization ready to embrace the power of BCT? References Dietrich, F., Ge, Y., Turgut, A., Louw, L., & Palm, D. (2021). Review and analysis of blockchain projects in supply chain management. Procedia Computer Science, 180, 724-733. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2021.01.295 Kouhizadeh, M., Saberi, S., & Sarkis, J. (2021). Blockchain technology and the sustainable supply chain: Theoretically exploring adoption barriers. International Journal of Production Economics, 231, 107831. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107831 Francisco, K., & Swanson, D. (2018). The Supply Chain Has No Clothes: Technology Adoption of Blockchain for Supply Chain Transparency. Logistics, 2(1), 2. doi:10.3390/logistics2010002 Apte, S., & Petrovsky, N. (2016). Will blockchain technology revolutionize excipient supply chain management? Journal of Excipients and Food Chemicals. Retrieved April 28, 2021, from . https://jefc.scholasticahq.com/article/910-will-blockchain-technology-revolutionize-excipient-supply-chain-management Blossey, G., Eisenhardt, J., & Hahn, G. (2019). Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management: An Application Perspective. Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. doi:10.24251/hicss.2019.824 Choi, D., Chung, C. Y., Seyha, T., & Young, J. (2020). Factors Affecting Organizations’ Resistance to the Adoption of Blockchain Technology in Supply Networks. Sustainability, 12(21), 8882. doi:10.3390/su12218882 Kirshner, J., Schoenberger, T., & Morell, M. (2021). An Analysis of Bitcoin’s Use in Illicit Finance. Retrieved May 4, 2021.

What's The Weakest Link in Supply Chain Management? Hint: It's Not Blockchain

Image Credit: Reddit In 2013, Pokémon X and Y were published for the Nintendo 3DS. The titles were the sixth generation of games in the franchise and well-received by fans, selling over worldwide. 16 million copies Usually, with each generation, the Pokémon Company releases three games, with the third game improving and adding new features to the previous two games. For example, Platinum was released in 2008 after the release of Diamond and Pearl, and Pokémon Crystal followed Gold and Silver. However, X and Y never got the third game. The supposed Pokémon Z never got released. Instead, the franchise skipped the third installment to start developing Sun and Moon (Generation 7). What is Pokémon Z? Z would have been the third installment in generation 6 of the main series of games. The game would have vastly improved on X and Y, which successfully transitioned the franchise into 3D on the Nintendo 3DS. It is likely that with Pokémon Z, the game would have integrated the franchise further into the 3D space with a fully 3D reimagined world, much like the one present in Sun and Moon. When looking at the franchise’s schedule of releases, Z would have been released around 2015, two years before Sun and Moon. Evidence for a Third Installment A third installment in the franchise would have tied up many loose ends in the sixth generation. For example, your defeat of the evil Team Flare and the team’s boss Lysandre was rather underwhelming, with far greater room for additional storytelling in Z. A third title could have also explored the mysterious AZ, the ultimate weapon, and the supposed Pokémon war in the region. There was considerable room for storytelling, and that likely would have been present in Pokémon Z. Furthermore, the legendary creature Zygarde also points towards a possible third game with the Pocket Monster criminally underused in X and Y. Instead, the monster had more prominence in Sun and Moon with different forms. Traditionally with three games in each generation, three legendaries get the limelight. Zygarde was supposed to be the third in Generation 6. The presence of Zygarde in Sun and Moon points towards the possible existence of Z, with it likely its new forms were supposed to feature in a third installment rather than in a whole new generation. Likewise, Magearna also seems to have been forced into Sun and Moon with the Pocket Monster having a European look resembling the region of X and Y rather than Sun and Moon. Both Zygarde and Magearna seem to have been stuffed into Sun and Moon, pointing towards the existence of Z. Zygarde (Complete form) Credit: Bulbapedia 3 Reasons Why Pokémon Z was Never Released 1.Simply Sales The first reason Pokémon Z was never released was simply down to . Although X and Y sold well, usually, a whole new generation of games sells better than a third installment. When you look at sales across all main series games, not a single third installment of a generation comes in the . Due to this reason, Z was never released and thus was skipped due to potential poor sales. sales top 10 sales of Pokémon games 2.Politics Interestingly as points out, Gamefreak could have bottled the games due to the Paris terrorist attacks, which occurred around a similar release window for a third installment. Z would have been in France, much like its predecessors. Thus, perhaps the games were never released due to the ongoing crises within the nation. GamesSkinny.com 3.Limited Resources and Time Thirdly, Z was probably never released due to a lack of resources and, most importantly, time. Around one year after the company released X and Y, Omega Ruby and Sapphire were released, the long-requested remakes of the original ruby and sapphire. The release of a whole generation alongside full 3D remakes likely gave the Pokémon Company very little time to develop a third game in generation six. As with any popular game, remakes get requested by fans, and the company must have felt intense pressure to release a Ruby and Sapphire remake considering its popularity. Thus, the company funnelled its time and money into the remakes rather than Z and therefore had very little time to develop a new game before the release of a new generation. Limited resources and time is most likely the reason for the lack of a third installment, as evident by X and Y's limited Pokedex, the weakest in the franchise's history. Final Thoughts Overall, Pokémon Z was very likely to have been in the works as the third instalment in generation six. But likely due to economic and, to a lesser extent, political constraints, the game was never released. Perhaps one day, we might find out more about Z. Until that day, for more Pokémon-related news and features, below. subscribe to our newsletter in the footer Also, check out, Top 10 Pokémon Games Ranked by Sales Where to Sell Pokémon Cards Online: 3 Options Injustice Movie Announced

What is Pokémon Z and Why Wasn’t it Released?

¿Qué es Pokémon Z y por qué no se lanzó?

As Bitcoin and Ethereum soar to all time highs, we take a look at how successful venture capital funds eye up their future winning investments The blockchain industry is once again booming, with pioneering startups changing the face of finance, e-commerce and a myriad of other sectors. As capital floods into this ever-evolving space, venture capital firms search for diamonds in the rough, looking to invest in the innovations of tomorrow. In this article I speak to Charles Read, an angel investor focusing on protocol investments and Co-Founder of Rarestone Capital, a prominent venture capital firm in the blockchain space. Over the years, Charles has been involved in the DLT, DeFi (Decentralised Finance) and NFT sectors as both a collector and investor, eventually moving into Venture Capital as a way to both invest in and support the world’s most talented blockchain founders and project teams. When asked about his overall approach to investing, Charles told me: “I back founders primarily. Good founders can come back from difficult obstacles, they can pivot when required, and they’ll usually come through the other side. On the other hand, while I acknowledge I’m not the most technical analyst I am good at reading people. My gut feeling has a remarkably high hit rate, which I pray doesn’t end anytime soon. When we’re investing as Rarestone, I make up for my shortfalls with an amazing team. We are diversely skilled, highly active, and as a collective we don’t really have any weaknesses. Not many can say that.” With that being said, I wanted to look deeper into what ticks the right boxes underneath the hood a blockchain project that makes Charles and the Rarestone Capital team want to invest in their future development. Below is a selection of Rarestone’s current investments and an insight from Charles as to why they chose to support the teams behind the projects. Please note: The following is not an endorsement to buy any of cryptocurrencies mentioned. I am not invested in any of the projects or cryptocurrencies mentioned and I was not paid to write this article. Mask Network Coined “The Portal to the New, Open Internet”, Charles refers to Mask Network as a “Bridge to Web3 for Web2 apps”. Applications like Twitter are centralised, but we all use them; with Maskbook, you can interface with Web3 while using them. For an example of how this works, with Mask installed anyone can now airdrop tokens to their twitter followers, or encrypt their tweets so that only Mask users can read them. "This is about restoring privacy and enabling more value from these traditional applications to be funnelled to the user, rather than the company in control of the application." Using Mask Network, when you search for a cashtag ($) you can see that Mask adds additional features to the twitter interface, such as price tracking, exchange and swapping directly through the popular decentralized exchange Uniswap. The above is what is seen when hovering over the Alchemix tag ($ALCX) using the Mask Network extension on Twitter. "The implications of this have the potential to be a real game-changer, as Twitter users in theory they don’t even need to leave Twitter to trade." Charles and the Rarestone team believe that the most attractive thing about Mask Network is that it doesn’t require users to do much apart from install a plug-in. It’s not trying to take over or replace Twitter, but rather add extra layers of privacy and customisability for the user as well as allowing them to interact with Web3 directly. ALEPH Aleph provides cloud computing and decentralised storage for Web3, allowing blockchain enabled applications to securely access trusted off-chain data or computation within just a few lines of code. "What’s interesting about Aleph is that it’s much further along than most competitors in terms of product development, yet still seems to be a bit of a sleeping giant. It is cross-chain compatible and has committed use from multiple chains already." Aleph didn’t raise funding other than OTC sales from the team and was built from the ground up in a grassroots fashion. Pretty much all significant ALEPH token holders are long term supporters and running nodes - including Rarestone who run the . Friends of Rarestone node The project is also supported by nodes from globally recognised companies including Ubisoft’s Strategy Lab and Synaps, the decentralised identity provider that handled KYC for sales including Polkadot. Charles insists that considering Aleph’s already aggressive adoption and the growth that projects such as have seen, the project has a lot of room for growth in the coming years. Filecoin Web3API Universally compatible smart contract APIs mean you can use any program language with any protocol. Something that has really skewed adoption of some protocols is that they require rare programming languages that not many developers use. With Web3api, this issue is solved. The team celebrated a win at HackFS, an ETHGlobal hackathon focused on building the foundation for the Ethereum ecosystem and with prestigious judges such as Vitalik Buterin, Austin Griffith from Ethereum Foundation and more judging. The Web3API team  were presented four awards at the hackathon. The engineering team have a background building protocols such as Balancer, Gnosis, Aragon, Metamask and more. "Web3Hub is the portal to the Web3API ecosystem, and will allow developers to discover, use and integrate the API of their choice. The project presents a major milestone for the development of Web3, opening the door for wider adoption by the traditional software development community." Web3API is governed by a DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) and the token holders will control all financial decisions, on-boarding of new developer teams, partners, and future control over the API standard.  As it’s built by Web3 veterans, my research on this DAO makes me very confident in the approach. My Neighbour Alice MNA is a desktop game built by Antler Interactive. Originally viewed as somewhat of an outlier in the space, the project went largely under the radar and was ignored by most because of the funny name and concept. I asked Charles why he and Rarestone had decided to invest in the blockchain-based game: "Antler Interactive was acquired by Chromia in 2019 for an undisclosed sum. What makes that acquisition interesting is that Antler are an award winning gaming studio who have an incredibly talented team of developers - combine this with Chromia’s technology that is ideal for building blockchain games, their teams ability to incubate and you have a winning combination." During this difficult time of lockdown and economic turmoil many people are craving interaction, turning to games like Animal Crossing to connect with their friends. These are what Charles calls web-spaces and reflects the new world we are moving toward; an open metaverse. The game taps into this and players are rewarded while they play. In MNA, the world around you is player-owned and player-built. Every asset you deploy in game is an NFT owned by you, so you can truly own the experience. "It’s nice to see the Chromia Foundation putting this acquisition to good use, and sets precedent for more acquisitions across the industry that may spawn incredible blockchain games and applications." Investment in the project was a no brainer for Charles and Rarestone, with Charles also now advising the MNA team on product roll out, strategy and marketing. Biconomy Biconomy are on a mission to simplify the experience Web3 offers by providing powerful APIs that offer gas-efficient meta-transactions, and the team behind the project created the project with one mission in mind; to make blockchain-based applications work seamlessly and conveniently for mainstream users, especially those who are new to the blockchain space. By tackling the bottlenecks and barriers to entry that have so far stunted the overall growth of the blockchain space, Biconomy look to accelerate a Cambrian explosion of adoption. With this new and exciting platform users do not even need to download digital wallets or buy cryptocurrencies from exchanges; the platform has automated the whole process for them. "A new Biconomy round is coming and the Rarestone team are now looking to also contribute in a big way; we believe the project is a potential Unicorn for 2021. " As well as a strong team, Biconomy has the support of several well established projects such as blockchain Matic  (now Polygon), as well as DeFi behemoth Curve Finance and others. As an angel investor in Biconomy and good friends with Founder Ahmed Al-Balaghi, Charles believes that the project represents a perfect storm in the current market conditions, with the demand from other projects in the space looking to partner with Biconomy overwhelming. The next 5 years in blockchain venture capital: What does the future look like? When asked what he sees the blockchain investment landscape looking like in the coming years, Charles tells me: "The landscape is evolving much faster than it ever has. I feel that we're entering a rapid epochal shift similar to what humanity experienced as we transitioned into the information age; the growing institutional interest in digital assets, combined with the red pill that NFTs and digital artwork present to the mass market and the leaders of the internet (celebrities with influence) is a recipe for absolute fireworks in the next 5 years. We're absolutely ready for the inevitable cultural whiplash that follows." is a Venture Capital fund focused on backing remarkable project founders on a mission to make positive societal change through technology. You can learn more about the Rarestone Capital portfolio and investment thesis over at . Rarestone Capital https://rarestone.capital

How Does a Blockchain VC Fund Choose What to Invest in?

New decade, new you. (Okay it’s usually a new year, not a decade but you get the picture. Fuck that. Some folks believe that every 7 years our cells renew such that we physically become someone else. Others feel that we fill the shoes of a soul that has zipped through the cosmos countless times. Whichever way, if we want to change the way we work — we first need to change ourselves. And this needs to be happening all the damn time. Acting yourself into new a way of thinking is a lot more effective than trying to think your way there. In this spirit, here are 3 questions to ask yourself so starting today — you become discerningly doper. Achieving ‘dopeness’ is really an age-old idea dating back to Aristotle’s Eudaimonia. Loosely translating to human flourishing, Eudaimon is all about living in good spirits. It can also extend to your higher self by achieving your unique potential. Likewise, dopeness can be realised through small gains and the commitment to continuously learn, practice, and improve. There may be countless Medium posts touting how to hack your way there, but there is no substitute for showing up and doing the work. The key to living well comes when it’s virtuously earned. If we’re really serious about pursuing excellence we need to put an end to the god awful habit of multi-tasking. We fool ourselves in believing we’re doing many things simultaneously when in reality we’re just switching between tasks super fast. Today we ‘flex’ this hyped-up skill by yapping on the phone with in-laws, watering the plants, and watching Ellen on mute. Throw in how we’re suffering from a ubiquitous low-grade malaise littered with bouts of loneliness and existential dread — and the cards are stacked against us. “The attention economy has a financial incentive to keep us in a state of individualised anxiety and an obligation to constantly be reacting and producing,” says the author of How to do Nothing, Jenny Odell. If we are what we repeatedly do, then the question to ask is, “How can I best direct my energy today?” The answer, it seems, isn’t about doing things at the same time or even the right way — but doing the right thing. Second Home members report that they get fuelled up — not by grooming their social feeds — but by nature, by others, and by their own reflections. Intuitively we all know what gives us energy — we just need to be listening and constantly levelling up. Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, best known for his research on experts, found that what separates stand-out musicians, artists, chess players, and others is not just how long and hard they practice — but how they train. Peak performers punch 60–90 minutes of highly focused training, immediately followed by short breaks. And, crucially, the maximum amount of focussed attention these high performers are capable of in a day is four and a half hours. Computer scientist Cal Newport’s Deep Work popularised this research. Newport urges us to take on cognitively demanding activities in a completely distraction-free state. You’ll end up more creative and a hell of a lot more focussed. Promise. So instead of looking at how we spend our time, we might stay aware of how we’re funnelling our working spirit. Startup entrepreneurs, workaholics, struggle pornographers, and many others may balk at this. But ask yourself this: Would you want your nurse taking care of you at the end of a 12-hour shift or at the beginning of a four-hour one? (Your answer is why a pioneering Dutch healthcare company actually offers four-hour shifts.) Deep attention lets us get on with doing our most demanding, important, and creative work. Think of researching, planning, strategizing, writing, creating, and other ‘ings’ that you know you do best when you’re deep in the flow. Hyper attention lets us scan our surroundings and once helped keep us stay alive when we were hunter-gathers. The point here is that you can perform these activities with less concentration and often using little brainpower. It’s OK if you fracture your attention because you don’t need a lot of it in the first place. Now, intentionally batch your work into deep and hyper categories and keep them wholly distinct from one another. Like oil and water, they just don’t mix well. Knowing your biological clock, or chronotype, is essential for doing great work. Like all living organisms, our bodies are governed by the same physiological principles in a 24-hour rhythm. You might think you’re an early bird or night owl but it’s more than likely you’re somewhere in the middle — a third bird. This means you’ll experience those dreaded afternoon dips sometime between 2 or 3 p.m. SO….here is: do your most challenging and important work (the deep attention tasks you just listed) when you’re most energised. Since your circadian rhythms are uniquely yours, you also need to tweak it such that you regularly hit your stride. Of course, life happens and it’s not always possible to rock your work to your rhythms — the notion is simply to try. Just knowing when you should and shouldn’t work is a sure-fire way to peak performance. Your one task: Block out bursts (anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes) for your deep attention work, like so: With your bursts mapped out — you now know your golden hours. Stick to them and, well, you’ll be gold. Managing your energy and having the right attitude is important if you want to do great work. Second Homers also said that it’s in the realm of fear and the abyss of the unknown that they perform at our best. Often when we lack competence or confidence — it forces us to rise to the occasion. It’s worth doing an audit of the resources you have at bay as well. We tend to bite off more than we can chew when we know our bandwidth is limited. This is where healthy boundaries come in. And sometimes, the biggest catalyst for dopeness comes from constraints. Whether it’s family obligations or training for your next marathon — pressures (either set by yourself or others) helps you to be more creative, and rather ironically, open up new possibilities. While our ancestors saw work as a sacrifice that made them morally worthy, we see work as a moral good that is worthy in and of itself. From caretaking to toy making, from bricklaying to pie-baking — the main driver comes from within. Still, working more is rarely the answer to increasing our dopeness. This is precisely why famed philosopher Bertrand Russell — in a 1932 essay for Harper’s — advocated for a shorter workday. The dude knew all too well that working smarter is the ticket. Work has become an experience rather than a physical place. The office now lives in your pocket or purse. Meanwhile, the opportunities to indulge our curiosity in work have never been greater. This paradigm shift in work is first and foremost a psychological one. How we feel about our work is entirely up to us. Human beings crave open, fluid, and personalised systems. Indeed, the world of work is gradually opening to provide just this. The trick it would seem is to do the work that matters while staying in sync with your badass self. The dopeness will emerge. This article has been adapted from Shapers — the upcoming book published by Wiley (July 2, 2020). New decade, new you. (Okay it’s usually a new year, not a decade but you get the picture. Fuck that. Some folks believe that every 7 years our cells renew such that we physically become someone else. Others feel that we fill the shoes of a soul that has zipped through the cosmos countless times. Whichever way, if we want to change the way we work — we first need to change ourselves. And this needs to be happening all the damn time. all the damn time. Acting yourself into new a way of thinking is a lot more effective than trying to think your way there. In this spirit, here are 3 questions to ask yourself so starting today — you become discerningly doper. Achieving ‘dopeness’ is really an age-old idea dating back to Aristotle’s Eudaimonia. Loosely translating to human flourishing, Eudaimon is all about living in good spirits. It can also extend to your higher self by achieving your unique potential. Likewise, dopeness can be realised through small gains and the commitment to continuously learn, practice, and improve. There may be countless Medium posts touting how to hack your way there, but there is no substitute for showing up and doing the work. Eudaimonia. Eudaimon The key to living well comes when it’s virtuously earned. The key to living well comes when it’s virtuously earned. If we’re really serious about pursuing excellence we need to put an end to the god awful habit of multi-tasking. We fool ourselves in believing we’re doing many things simultaneously when in reality we’re just switching between tasks super fast. Today we ‘flex’ this hyped-up skill by yapping on the phone with in-laws, watering the plants, and watching Ellen on mute. Ellen Throw in how we’re suffering from a ubiquitous low-grade malaise littered with bouts of loneliness and existential dread — and the cards are stacked against us. “The attention economy has a financial incentive to keep us in a state of individualised anxiety and an obligation to constantly be reacting and producing,” says the author of How to do Nothing, Jenny Odell. How to do Nothing, If we are what we repeatedly do, then the question to ask is, “How can I best direct my energy today?” The answer, it seems, isn’t about doing things at the same time or even the right way — but doing the right thing. Second Home members report that they get fuelled up — not by grooming their social feeds — but by nature, by others, and by their own reflections. Intuitively we all know what gives us energy — we just need to be listening and constantly levelling up. Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, best known for his research on experts, found that what separates stand-out musicians, artists, chess players, and others is not just how long and hard they practice — but how they train. Peak performers punch 60–90 minutes of highly focused training, immediately followed by short breaks. And, crucially, the maximum amount of focussed attention these high performers are capable of in a day is four and a half hours. — how they train. Computer scientist Cal Newport’s Deep Work popularised this research. Newport urges us to take on cognitively demanding activities in a completely distraction-free state. You’ll end up more creative and a hell of a lot more focussed. Promise. Deep Work So instead of looking at how we spend our time, we might stay aware of how we’re funnelling our working spirit. Startup entrepreneurs, workaholics, struggle pornographers , and many others may balk at this. struggle pornographers But ask yourself this: Would you want your nurse taking care of you at the end of a 12-hour shift or at the beginning of a four-hour one? (Your answer is why a pioneering Dutch healthcare company actually offers four-hour shifts.) a pioneering Dutch healthcare company Deep attention lets us get on with doing our most demanding, important, and creative work. Think of researching, planning, strategizing, writing, creating, and other ‘ ings’ that you know you do best when you’re deep in the flow. Deep attention Deep attention ings’ Hyper attention lets us scan our surroundings and once helped keep us stay alive when we were hunter-gathers. The point here is that you can perform these activities with less concentration and often using little brainpower. It’s OK if you fracture your attention because you don’t need a lot of it in the first place. Hyper attention Hyper attention Now, intentionally batch your work into deep and hyper categories and keep them wholly distinct from one another. Like oil and water, they just don’t mix well. Knowing your biological clock, or chronotype, is essential for doing great work. Like all living organisms, our bodies are governed by the same physiological principles in a 24-hour rhythm. You might think you’re an early bird or night owl but it’s more than likely you’re somewhere in the middle — a third bird. This means you’ll experience those dreaded afternoon dips sometime between 2 or 3 p.m. chronotype, SO….here is: do your most challenging and important work (the deep attention tasks you just listed) when you’re most energised. Since your circadian rhythms are uniquely yours, you also need to tweak it such that you regularly hit your stride. Of course, life happens and it’s not always possible to rock your work to your rhythms — the notion is simply to try. Just knowing when you should and shouldn’t work is a sure-fire way to peak performance. Your one task: Block out bursts (anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes) for your deep attention work, like so: Your one task: Block out bursts (anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes) for your deep attention work, like so: With your bursts mapped out — you now know your golden hours. Stick to them and, well, you’ll be gold. golden hours. Managing your energy and having the right attitude is important if you want to do great work. Second Homers also said that it’s in the realm of fear and the abyss of the unknown that they perform at our best. Often when we lack competence or confidence — it forces us to rise to the occasion. It’s worth doing an audit of the resources you have at bay as well. We tend to bite off more than we can chew when we know our bandwidth is limited. This is where healthy boundaries come in. And sometimes, the biggest catalyst for dopeness comes from constraints. Whether it’s family obligations or training for your next marathon — pressures (either set by yourself or others) helps you to be more creative, and rather ironically, open up new possibilities. While our ancestors saw work as a sacrifice that made them morally worthy, we see work as a moral good that is worthy in and of itself. From caretaking to toy making, from bricklaying to pie-baking — the main driver comes from within. Still, working more is rarely the answer to increasing our dopeness. This is precisely why famed philosopher Bertrand Russell — in a 1932 essay for Harper’s — advocated for a shorter workday. The dude knew all too well that working smarter is the ticket. more essay for Harper’s Harper’s — Work has become an experience rather than a physical place. The office now lives in your pocket or purse. Meanwhile, the opportunities to indulge our curiosity in work have never been greater. This paradigm shift in work is first and foremost a psychological one. How we feel about our work is entirely up to us. Human beings crave open, fluid, and personalised systems. Indeed, the world of work is gradually opening to provide just this. The trick it would seem is to do the work that matters while staying in sync with your badass self. The dopeness will emerge. This article has been adapted from Shapers — the upcoming book published by Wiley (July 2, 2020). This article has been adapted from Shapers Shapers — the upcoming book published by Wiley (July 2, 2020).

The Pursuit of Dopeness

Every successful tech product, by the very definition, is a result of some technological marvels working with impeccable user experience to solve a key problem for the users. One such marvel is the recommendation engine by YouTube. In this post, I am going to shed some light on YouTube’s very popular recommending engine and why it stands out. Have you ever wondered how you knock YouTube’s door for just a video on some topic and end up killing hours of your day just watching the recommended videos, or hook onto YouTube for your favourite music track and end up increasing your favourites list? Many content-driven enterprises are funnelling loads of capital for transforming their recommender systems as or more robust as YouTube’s, for making the website more engaging for us. These recommender systems are the most trivial applications of Machine Learning that users will encounter, used by almost every website that has some content to offer, be it YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, etc. The algorithm responsible for YouTube’s recommendations seems to be Sherlock Holmes himself who knows what video will make the website more riveting for you. Here is an article about the gears that run behind YouTube’s much-admired recommender systems. YouTube’s recommender systems were run by Google Brain that was later opensourced by Google as TensorFlow. Doing this made it easy for the entire world including Google to train, test and deploy deep neural networks in a distributed fashion. Shortly after that, at the 10th ACM conference for recommender systems, Google’s delegates demonstrated the deep neural networks approach for recommender systems. After this unraveling of Deep Learning and more importantly the potential concealed behind it, many problems like the matrix factorization problem started getting tackled by the deep learning approach. As explained multiple times by YouTube and its team, the sole purpose of Youtube's recommendation system is to put fresh and relevant content to their users. The videos a user views or the channels they subscribe to, everything matters. In a research paper named Deep Neural Networks for YouTube recommendations, all of this has been explained at length. The paper published by Google analysts and researchers at ACM conference, gives insights about how to look at the recommender problem like a ranking system that is affected by myriad factors. But the most highlighted and emphasized ingredient of all is user feedback. Figuratively, Henry Ford also has a contribution here, as one of the most important techniques out of the bag of tricks is Multi-gate Mixture-of-Experts which multi-tasks learning by sharing the expert submodels across all tasks to manage multiple objectives, while also having a gating network trained to optimize each task, much like an assembly line. If you really ponder over it, there are just two impediments on the way of solving any recommender problem. People often only consider recommender systems in the shoes of a user, but an integral part of these systems are also the videos that they have to rank. YouTube ranks its videos on multiple features like video content, thumbnail, audio, title, description, etc. The primary requirement according to the researchers was to bridge the semantic gap between low-level video features to get them on a single scale, and then make the model capable of distributing the items sparsely over the feature space. Now when this sparsity was attained, you would assume that it is hays and sunshine all over. But not for the world’s most popular video platform. Because with popularity came users, and with users came scalability issues like, some features required by the model were only available online and could not be fetched beforehand. Also, due to the sparse distribution of the items, it was difficult for the matrix factorization approaches to scale among the entire feature space. To solve this scalability issue, the video corpus containing billions of videos are passed through two networks and marginally lesser amounts of videos are retrieved after each stage of the network. Through this way, a sparse distribution of items is ensured without having the scalability issues that come with it. The Candidate Generation Network : The first network that the video corpus passes through is the candidate generation stage. The algorithms running behind this stage mean to spot paradigms between searched queries and candidate video. The candidate generation network takes the huge corpus containing billions of videos as input, user’s activity log into account and gives out a few hundred videos as an output that are considered for user recommendation. The network aims for accuracy and relevance, even if it means channeling out videos with greater views but prove to be irrelevant. The Ranking Network: The second stage that the items retrieved after candidate generation network go through is the ranking stage. In ranking network, a comprehensive set of video features is taken into account and the videos are given scores. It must be noted that user feedback is part of both the networks and is a more important criteria for this network. The degree of relevance on the other hand holds less weightage in this network, than the candidate generation network. The user input in the ranking network basically comprises of two behaviours: - Users' engagement behaviour that is collected from clicks and watches - Degree of satisfaction that is gathered by likes, dislikes, dismissals, etc. The ranking problem might look like a piece of cake but with all of its objectives lined up, it becomes the epitome of confusion. The researchers chose to go with learning-to-rank framework to solve this problem. They modelled this problem like a combination of classification and regression problems with multiple objectives. Here, Multi-gate Mixture-of-experts (MMoE) comes into the play. The neural networks generally used Rectified Linear Unit layer as an activation function (responsible for transforming the summed weighted input from the node into the activation of the node or output for that input). But in the YouTube recommender system, the analysts and researchers substituted the Rectified Linear Unit layer with the Mixture-of-Experts layer and added a separate gating network. The recommender system as a whole is then trained left-to-right, and test the collected data which holds user context upto time t and the system is asked what videos they’d be interested in at time t+1. A true marvel of modern computing, , and much more! devops engineering Wrapping Up The YouTube recommendation engine has really redefined content recommendation. The research paper published at the 10th ACM conference 2016 by Google, highlights the changes that should be made in the ranking systems to find the perfect way of handling multiple objectives. It should be read by every data science and machine learning student. The issues of scalability and consistent improvements in ranking systems have been resolved due to this paper. By open-sourcing TensorFlow, Google has provided a platform for innovation in recommender systems and also deep learning neural networks.

YouTube's Recommendation Engine: Explained

To borrow or not to borrow. That’s a question only you will know the answer to. When setting up a new business, it can be hard to know where the money will come from in those tricky early days, or how much cash you’ll have to kick off your operations. Luckily, there are plenty of avenues you can explore. Some of your options, like bootstrapping, are more modest and risk-free. Others, such as , can land your business a hefty payout, but it’ll come at the cost of your company’s equity. venture capital There’s no one-size-fits-all right or wrong answer when the question of funding arises, so let’s take a moment to explore some of your most common options as a new business founder. 1. Bootstrapping (Varying levels of funding used to lunch companies: Image: ) Neil Patel Sometimes, the best way for a business to grow and scale proportionately is by founders pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and funding out of their own pockets. Wildly popular television series like may well have us believe that the only way to get a company up and running is through a significant injection of cash. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Dragons’ Den The image above illustrates that, although cash injections can certainly be beneficial to startups, they aren’t always necessary. There are plenty of ways to bootstrap too. Many founders call on their savings to help their business grow. But there are plenty of cases of working multiple jobs to keep their business afloat, and elsewhere friends and family can help out and chip in with some interest-free loans. entrepreneurs Bootstrapping is an organic way of raising money, and will ultimately be the most rewarding if your business begins to scale and you’ve accumulated little formal debt and lost no equity in your business. It’s important to stress that it’s a big ‘if’, though. Bootstrapping has to be regarded as the most difficult way to finance a new business in the short term. Unless your savings are near-limitless, there will be setbacks and difficult days to navigate. Side hustles are a popular way of putting in the hours elsewhere to raise funds, but this approach is highly taxing both physically and mentally. In some areas of the industry, the notion of your way to success is revered as a badge of honour. It’s certainly impressive to straddle two jobs and thrive on four hours sleep per night - but it’s not worth risking your health and happiness when there are alternative fundraising techniques out there. hustling and struggling 2. Bank loans Bank loans are a relatively reliable way of accessing good amounts of money without having to give up a share of your business or risk struggling to make ends meet. However, , attaining bank loans has gotten more difficult in recent years. as Inc. notes In the US, lending standards have become considerably more strict for newer businesses - making it much more difficult to find a loan that’s healthy for your startup. However, banks like JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America have earmarked a credible amount of funding for small business lending - so it’s always worth exploring this option if your more organic avenues for fundraising are closing. In the UK, it’s possible to apply for small business grants that enable startups to gain access to money that doesn’t need to be paid back. These grants can cover a range of processes and mitigate the tax you pay or assist with your operation costs, so it could be profitable to or not you meet the eligibility criteria here. check out whether Because of the interest rates associated with most bank loans, it’s important to conduct a serious level of cash flow forecasting before you turn to help. It might seem highly appealing to gain a healthy windfall in the short term, but this extra monthly repayment could make it harder to continue to build revenue. 3. Venture capital (Most people prefer bootstrapping, but plenty look to external help. Image: ) Neil Patel Venture capital is a popular option for founders looking to attain significant levels of funding to match their scaling ambitions. While utilising bank loans can land small businesses with a sizeable chunk of money to cover the costs of setting up operations, a venture capital firm is capable of funnelling anything from £100,000 to £25 million into a project that they believe has potential. The venture capital option also usually comes with greater levels of exposure and easier opportunities for businesses to scale. The caveat is that firms typically ask for a share of your business in return for - meaning that your stake in the business that you’ve founded will be diminished and you’ll not receive the whole fee when you decide to sell up. venture capital their investments It’s also worth pointing out that this option is one of the most difficult to action on the list. Because of the scale of money involved in venture capital firms, most businesses need to present themselves as an endeavour with huge potential before there’s even an opportunity for money to change hands. 4. Look out for angels Angel investors operate in a fairly similar way to venture capital firms. They usually consist of one or a few individuals or a small organisation who invest in businesses by making an equity purchase. The great thing about attracting an angel investor is that you can call on their industry expertise and take on their guidance as your company grows. However, as the financial climate of today is significantly less stable than that of, say, pre-2007, finding an angel investor is significantly harder at this moment in time. tend to lend startups money to help them grow, scale at a sensible rate, and then reclaim their share in the company after a few years of growth for a profit. With this in mind, it’s always a good idea to offer an angel investor the option of an exit strategy when looking to attract one. Angel investors 5. Crowdfunding The art of crowdfunding is one that’s as old as time, but it’s certainly a practice that’s been made easier in recent years with the arrival of websites like . Kickstarter The great thing about crowdfunding is that business owners don’t have to repay the money that’s been invested, and can offer their own incentives for individuals as a way of thanking them for their investments. In the past, authors have used this form of funding as a way of publishing their book for interested audiences. If someone uses the website to pledge, say, £15 they’ll receive a copy of the book. While £25 will get them a signed copy - and so on. If you’ve marketed your business effectively then crowdfunding could generate a healthy amount of money to expand your business. However, it’s fair to say that crowdfunding isn’t the sort of place where owners turn to in order to secure long-term funding - and the platform is usually utilised as a means of gaining financial support for one-off ideas and products. When it comes to funding your business, the most important thing to remember is to be patient. The idea of receiving fortunes in may seem like a dream come true, but you’ll be counting the costs when your business expands and equity is lost to investors. venture capital Bootstrapping could be the most measured way of financing a startup but don’t commit to a struggle and let it dominate your life. Building a prosperous business is highly rewarding, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of your own mental health.

Capitalising on Opportunities: The Primary Ways To Finance Your Business

The following post is a walkthrough on the methodology we followed to value Perlin's native network token, the PERL. The report and post were authored by , Senior Research Analyst at Decentral Park. @eliasimos Key takeaways Holding and staking Perlin’s native network token, will allow validators access to a stream of transaction fees, to be distributed to them as validator rewards. As such we can deploy a discounted cash flows methodology to find the "fair" value of the token. We conclude that a fair token price for PERLs, stands at , at a fully diluted market capitalization of . $0.823 $850,690,646 The core technical that power this valuation are: . assumptions [validator reward: 2%; main use case contribution: 65%; growth rate for TV: 2%; discount rate: 30%; float rate: 100%] Through a scenario exploration exercise, we projected a . fair value range between $0.177 and $2.675 per token We would strongly encourage further research on the modelling approach and more specifically, in incorporating variables such as token velocity to the model. For the reasons above, we have open-sourced the valuation model. Perlin; a short introduction Perlin is a bleeding edge, lightning fast, DAG based distributed ledger, that offers Bitcoin level security through a novel, leaderless PoS consensus protocol (Wavelet), while achieving 31,000+ transactions per second and consistently has 0 to 4 second time to finality. What Perlin also brings to the table, is a straightforward token economics model, that lends itself out to applying a discounted cash flows approach to value its native token. The main use cases that PERLs (the native network token) will assume, are to facilitate: (i) payments for ledger transaction fees (ii) payment for smart contract fees (iii) as a PoS consensus token, used for running a validator node and and potentially (iv) as a governance token as the network grows towards maturity. Given that very little is yet known about (iv), for the valuation exercise purposes, this post will be focusing on use cases (i) through to (iii). According to the team behind Perlin, the validators will receive the full amount that is collected on the ledger as fees, as a reward for securing the ledger via incurring the opportunity cost and risk that is associated with staking. As such, the Perlin token holder and validator, can expect a form of residual income to accrue to them over time, that is relative to the amount of value that is transacted on-chain. The purpose of this short report, is to act as a walkthrough for the line of thinking we followed in this exercise, while acting as a manual for those that are interested in using the model to experiment with their own inputs and potentially even extensions thereafter. While our selected assumptions are strongly influenced by our understanding of the fundamentals of the project, we will avoid getting too detailed on the technical and fundamental merits of Perlin as a nascent platform, and will solely focus on the valuation exercise. The Core Assumptions As a general purpose distributed ledger, Perlin can eventually assume a multitude of use cases. However, given the strong ongoing relationship that the team is developing with the ICC (the largest business organization in the world, with 6 million members in over 100 countries), and the first products that the team is building for the platform, we have benchmarked our analysis on the activity that will concentrate on Perlin, to come from 3 distinct industries; trade finance, supply chain management and distributed computing. We have leveraged 3rd party evaluations to benchmark on rates of compound annual growth for each of the 3 industries, which we are using as a proxy for the transaction volumes that can be driven through blockchains over the course of the coming decade. We have further assumed that technologies based on distributed ledgers will achieve varying adoption levels in the aforementioned industries, with different adoption patterns – though all based on a logistic “S- shaped” function. At the same time, we assume Perlin’s share of the blockchain dominated partition in the industry, to be static and grow in proportion with the overall share of blockchain related solutions (for simplicity). Given Perlin’s unique relationship with the ICC, our base assumption is that Perlin will be a market leader in the trade finance vertical with a 25% market share at the end of the decade, a strong player in the supply chain management vertical with a market share of 8% and a dynamic entrant in the distributed compute vertical with a 3% overall market share. We have further assumed that the adoption curve will reach maturity faster for the first two use cases – again by merit of Perlin’s relationship with the ICC, and our evaluation the transformation capacity the already existing infrastructure and current modes of work allow, and slower for the latter. The table below outlines the quantitative inputs of the assumptions above, and the resultant adoption rates for Perlin, as well as the total value Perlin stands to capture as validator rewards (assuming that the 3 use cases explored here attribute to 65% of the total value transacted on Perlin, and a 2% validator reward) Transaction fees Value will accrue to PERL stakers in the form of transaction fees on the platform. As such, our valuation of the PERL is based on an assumption of a given, competitive transaction fee level. To the best of our knowledge, the team has yet to decide on a transaction fee function, and as such, we have assumed a certain static fee level in order to calculate the amount of value that gets distributed back to the validators. Our base case scenario benchmarks that level at 2% of the total value that gets transacted on the Perlin ledger. The main reason why, is that we feel that this is a fair multiple on the average transaction fees that users have to pay on existing comparables, while (in most cases) remaining competitive compared to centralized clearing parties, adjusted for transaction speed and resource availability. Take Ethereum for example; the table below ranks 6 separate, randomly selected points in time from the past 12 months, and explores the relationship between median transaction value and median fee charged. The result is an aggregate 0.25% median fee charged for every transaction that is processed on Ethereum. Given that Perlin’s latest performance test recorded a resource availability multiple of 2000x compared to Ethereum (31,000 tps vs 15tps), we believe that a modest 8x increase in the cost of service (2% vs 0.25%) can be justified. Given the above, and combining the output of the adoption rate assumptions outlined in the previous section, we arrive at a forecast for the total value projected to be funnelled through the Perlin blockchain and a resultant projection for the figure that validators stand to collect as fees. Valuation assumptions The final pieces of the puzzle that complete the discounted cash-flows model are relating to the modelling process itself. A core assumption in the process of arriving to a “fair” token price, is that the valuation of the whole set of tokens issued, is equal to the net present value of future cash-flows that will accrue to token holders. In this line of thinking, tokens are effectively tickets to a stream of future income, and the maximum a potential holder would be willing to pay, is the value of the whole income stream discounted for risk, opportunity cost and the time value of money – so that cash flows of equal magnitude that materialize further away in time, have a present value that is smaller than that of cash flows that occur sooner. In this process, we assume a discount rate of 30% - the lower bound discount rate among venture industry standards. We believe that both (i) the unique opportunity that is presented to Perlin via the ICC membership and (ii) the quality of the code and early reception from the developer community, de-risk the project and justify a more lenient discount rate. In order to arrive to a valuation for PERLs, we then project cash flows 10 years out, discount them accordingly, add them up (including the cost of building the platform, which we have assumed to stand at $40M) and combine them with the terminal value we estimate for the project (capturing the value accrual beyond the 10 year period explored). To do this, we used the , assuming a 2% steady growth rate, and discount the resultant figure at year 10’s discount rate. The two modules, under the assumptions outlined above, give us a present value of $663M for the first 10 years of cash-flows and at terminal value of $188M that together give a net present value of ~$850M. Gordon Growth Method Divided by the total amount of tokens floating on the 10th year, generates a price per PERL that stands at $0.823. (To keep reading on a scenario exploration exercise and how we arrived at a credible valuation range, refer to the full report here .) Conclusion Perlin is an exciting new entrant in the generalized distributed ledger and smart contract platform space. Though we understand that this is the most highly contested vertical among cryptoassets, we cannot help but look beyond the fact, accounting for both the technical innovations that Perlin brings to the table (leaderless PoS, high transaction speed and throughput) and the pipeline of business opportunities that the executive team has conjured up. Besides the specific value opportunity that this type of analysis helped uncover (the lower boundary of the projected value range stands at around $0.177 a piece, ~ a 2x from current prices), what we are really hoping for here is to further the conversation on different approaches to value cryptoassets and give the tools to anyone interested, to build and extend on this type of modelling. Solidifying a generally agreed upon toolkit for asset valuation in the cryptoasset space, is one of the keys to unlock the next stage of evolution in the industry, inviting new capital to flow into the space - so don't tread lightly! Download the full report and model here Disclaimer : Decentral Park Capital is an investor in Perlin and a PERL token holder. The above DO NOT constitute investment advice in any shape or form.

Token Valuation Done Right: A DCF Model To Value Perlin's Native Network Token

Recent months have posed a challenge for EV stocks as the generative AI boom has seen more investor interest funneled into artificial intelligence. But this may be about to change as Chinese EV manufacturer Li Auto prepares to launch one of the industry’s most advanced vehicles. Li Auto’s market movements have won over many admirers, one of which is Goldman Sachs, with the investment bank forecasting an astonishing for the firm’s stock [NASDAQ: LI/HK: 2015] over the year ahead. 52.9% potential upside Goldman’s ‘Buy’ rating for Li Auto comes with a price target of $52.90 and signifies exponential growth for a stock that had momentarily sunk below $15 as recently as October 2022. Li Auto’s stock has struggled for momentum in recent years, but with the recent announcement that the manufacturer expects to launch and begin deliveries of its first fully , the MEGA, in March, investor optimism has grown surrounding the stock. electric car The MEGA multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) will be available for an , which equates to around $84,533.24 at the time of writing. estimated price of under 600,000 yuan Furthermore, Li Auto has confirmed that the MEGA will be the first model produced at the firm’s Beijing facility, which has a design capacity of 100,000 units per year. While EV stocks and the credentials of ESG firms have struggled to impress on global markets throughout 2023 amidst wider investor interest in the burgeoning generative AI landscape, the launch of the MEGA may stand as a watershed moment for the industry. Could the MEGA Galvanize EV Investing? On Wall Street, EV stocks have struggled to find momentum for some time. This can be seen in the underperformance of clean energy ETFs throughout different US markets. The First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index [NASDAQ: QCLN] suffered severe pullbacks in Q3 2023, representing a widespread lack of buoyancy that has been punctuated by fierce economic headwinds emerging from historically high inflation, consecutive base rate hikes, and geopolitical conflict. Similarly to QCLN, the VanEck Low Carbon Energy ETF [NYSEARCA: SMOG], in which Li Auto of its weight, has struggled following a sharp Q3 downturn last year. makes up 5.79% It’s for this reason that a great emphasis has been placed on the successful launch of Li Auto’s MEGA EV, owing to its next-generation specifications and underlying technology. “Li Auto commenced serial production and delivery of its first electric vehicle, the MEGA, equipped with cutting-edge CATL Qilin batteries providing a 500 km range on a 12-minute charge,” explained Maxim Manturov, head of investment research at . “With over 10,000 pre-orders, Li Auto aims to surpass sales of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi in China by 2024.” Freedom Finance Europe “As a major competitor to Tesla in China, Li Auto's foray into fully electric vehicles, particularly the family-oriented Li Mega, targets the growing Chinese automotive sector.” The key hope for the is that Li Auto’s MPV sparks fresh life in a Chinese EV market that’s suffered from an underwhelming year, where some manufacturers have been forced into price cuts to sustain sales growth. electric vehicle industry Despite this, EV sales in mainland China are year on year in 2024, according to a recent Fitch Ratings report, albeit this would represent a slowdown from the 30% increase that was projected in 2023. expected to grow 20% Fundamentals Point to Strong Potential Li Auto’s impressive fundamentals certainly underline the firm’s potential in driving an EV revolution with its new vehicles and industry-leading batteries. Crucially, Li’s past five years' average earnings growth , signifying exceptional levels of momentum that are more than double the average industry growth over the same time frame, which stands at 23.9%. stands at 57.6% Average earnings growth is a strong metric when it comes to determining the value of a stock, and given that LI’s stock market growth stands at around 122% over the past five years, it’s worth considering whether the firm’s impressive growth is yet to be factored into its overall stock value. Another key consideration when exploring Li Auto’s fundamentals is that the firm pays no dividends to its shareholders. While dividends-paying companies make for attractive stocks, it means that Li has been in a position to reinvest all of its profits back into the business. Theoretically, this reinvestment could help to leverage stronger commitments to innovation and the potential to grow at a stronger and more sustainable rate. Reasons to be Wary At this stage, it’s important to highlight that the performance of Li Auto in 2024 is likely to hinge on the successful launch of its flagship MEGA EV and for there to be no complications in the vehicle or its technology that could undermine the stock. Given that the MEGA was initially due for a December 2023 launch, the to March 2024 may offer a hint of a snag in the production process of the EV. Furthermore, Li Auto gave no reasons for the delay. postponement of the MEGA’s launch Although delays are relatively common when it comes to next-generation technology launches, any further setbacks may adversely affect the performance of Li Auto’s stock and undermine investor confidence. However, Li’s impressive fundamentals suggest that the company is generally reliable when it comes to meeting consumer and client expectations. Will Li Revive the EV Market? The beauty of the EV market is that it’s an industry that’s continually providing more powerful and sustainable solutions to fossil fuel usage that’s set to become more pertinent in years to come. The introduction of Li’s CATL Qilin batteries, offering a 500km range from a 12-minute charge, is a major innovation that’s likely to provide a major boost to the industry’s issues with EV battery life. However, with and global consumer spending power amid high inflation and lingering interest rates, the successful launch of the MEGA may be more dependent on a more widespread global economic recovery. China’s economy weakening continuing to struggle Whether or not Li Auto has the power to galvanize the EV market remains to be seen, but the successful launch of the MEGA is likely to be a watershed moment for a constantly growing industry and a firm that has plenty to offer consumers and investors alike over the long term.

Li Auto Prepares to Make EV Investing Cool Again as New Innovations Bring Investor Optimism

নতুন উদ্ভাবন বিনিয়োগকারীদের আশাবাদ নিয়ে আসায় লি অটো ইভি বিনিয়োগকে আবার শীতল করার জন্য প্রস্তুত

Li Auto bereitet sich darauf vor, das Investieren in Elektrofahrzeuge wieder cool zu machen, da neue Innovationen den Anlegern Optimismus verleihen

Li Auto se prepara para hacer que la inversión en vehículos eléctricos vuelva a ser interesante a medida que las nuevas innovaciones traen optimismo a los inversores

Li Auto se prépare à rendre l'investissement dans les véhicules électriques à nouveau cool alors que de nouvelles innovations apportent l'optimisme aux investisseurs

ली ऑटो ईवी निवेश को फिर से अच्छा बनाने की तैयारी कर रहा है क्योंकि नए नवाचार निवेशकों में आशावाद लाते हैं

新しいイノベーションが投資家に楽観的な見方をもたらす中、李汽車はEV投資を再びクールにする準備をしている

Li Auto는 새로운 혁신이 투자자 낙관론을 가져옴에 따라 EV 투자를 다시 시원하게 만들 준비를 하고 있습니다.

Li Auto se prepara para tornar o investimento em veículos elétricos interessante novamente, à medida que novas inovações trazem otimismo aos investidores

Li Auto готовится снова сделать инвестиции в электромобили крутыми, поскольку новые инновации вселяют оптимизм инвесторов

Li Auto, Yeni Yenilikler Yatırımcıya İyimserlik Getirirken Elektrikli Araç Yatırımını Yeniden Harika Hale Getirmeye Hazırlanıyor

Li Auto chuẩn bị làm cho hoạt động đầu tư vào xe điện trở nên thú vị hơn khi những cải tiến mới mang lại sự lạc quan cho nhà đầu tư

新创新带来投资者乐观情绪，理想汽车准备让电动汽车投资再次降温

As a wise man once said, «The whole world is a bunch of bloody funnels», and I agree with him. The concept aptly applies to the recruitment process. The spray-and-pray When hiring people, it's important to understand that the best specialists are almost never actively looking for a job. They are comfortably seated in companies with good salaries, big bonuses, a gym, free juices, and a fancy badge that pleasingly beeps when swiped at the office turnstile. Often, the whole recruitment process is just a 'spray and pray' approach. Recruiters write to potential candidates: «Hey, we have a cool vacancy, pay well, interested in chatting?». According to my LinkedIn profile, I'm a co-founder at several companies, and I'm still getting the whole bunch of such invites, although it's quite obvious that a job offer would be ignored. Such workflow can catch some people who are already job hunting but it sends the same message to a large number of people who aren't, resulting in a generally low response rate. The good ol' funnel I suggest looking at hiring as marketing, which opens up new and amazing edges. The good old funnel approach comes into play. Let's consider this in the context of searching for a CTO. How a marketer would approach this task First, conduct classic JTBD (jobs-to-be-done) customer development (in-depth interviews). Select CTOs that fit your profile but who you know for sure are currently not interested in joining your firm. Arrange calls with them and the main question to ask is: what would make you immediately resign and accept an offer; describe your dream job (what kind of company, tasks, team, salary); what are 3-5 factors that you look at when choosing where to work and who to work with. From analyzing the customer development interviews, it turns out that top candidates are not as motivated by money; for them, it's more important to have recognition, a cool ambitious case in their resume, the level of people they will work with (to learn from them), the company's mission (increasingly critical), and interesting tasks. Based on these responses, you can creatively upgrade your materials at all stages of the HR funnel: the message on , the job vacancies page, your company's pitch during introductions, a whole lot of them. LinkedIn As soon as each stage of the funnel is based on the real needs of the client (candidate), the conversion at each stage dramatically increases, and most importantly, the quality of candidates. Rinse and repeat, continue to test at each stage, re-do customer development and upgrade your materials. A message to such guys might look like this: Hi username, a few guys from #### told me you're the coolest CTO they know, so I decided to write to you. (recognition) Here at ####, we've assembled a team from ####, ####, and #####, ##### and are developing #### in #### (we're already one of the highest in revenue in the region). (cool team, interesting tasks, opportunity to learn) Interesting tasks for 2024 include #####, #####, and then ##### . (ambitious case) Cool stuff: we use ####, and like no one else in the market #### . (interesting tasks, opportunity to learn) We're currently talking with various awesome people, looking for someone to head our development instead of one of the founders. (recognition) Maybe you'd be interested in a 15-30 minute call to get acquainted? (won't take much time) The same framework works for other vacancies. Iterate, research, test, improve. Good luck with your search, guys. I wish you the top candidates!

Hiring Is a Bloody Funnel—The Whole World Is

Once you’ve built your SaaS product, marketing is the next step. And how well word of your product spreads depends on your Top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) marketing efforts. A good strategy, well executed, could lead to incredible signup rates in the long run. So, in this article, we’ll cover the best practices for creating ToFu content that sparks interest. Let’s dive right in. What is ToFu Marketing ToFu marketing is shorthand for top-of-the-funnel marketing. It’s that involves creating awareness about consumers' needs and subtly hinting that your product can solve them. ToFu exists alongside MoFu (middle-of-the-funnel) and BoFu (bottom-of-the-funnel) on the customer journey and is critical in raising awareness about solutions. a stage in the marketing funnel The main thing to note about ToFu marketing is that it focuses on raising awareness about a need and the existence of a helpful solution. In this stage, selling isn’t the main objective, at least not in the short term. It’s essential to bear this in mind before planning your ToFu strategy, or else your efforts may come off as desperate, leading to potential distrust. ToFu vs. MoFu vs. BoFu The primary difference between top-of-the-funnel content and content created in the other marketing stages is that they cater to different needs in the customer journey. ToFu content is designed to help customers who are just becoming aware of a problem that’s not well-defined, that is, those in the awareness stage. They tend to have longer word counts because they try to answer many questions. MoFu content, on the other hand, is targeted towards potential customers in the consideration stage. They have become acutely aware of their problems and are actively narrowing their options to the one that seems best for them. Their search entries are more specific this time, so MoFu content, like comparison charts, webinars, and podcasts, usually have long tail keywords. When your prospects are ready to purchase, . Unlike ToFu content that avoids directly selling, BoFu tells your audience exactly why they should pick your product by highlighting its unique advantages over other products. Examples include case studies, trials, demos, and customer stories. ) BoFu content helps them choose your product Before you map out your strategy, create user personas. You must understand what kind of people you aim to sell to before making a great ToFu strategy. This is where come in. user/buyer personas User personas are fictional, detailed representations of your ideal customer or target audience. Using them lets you make your content and marketing campaigns more personalized. The most successful SaaS businesses have multiple buyer personas refined over the years until they accurately or nearly perfectly fit the audience they market to. In-app surveys and questionnaires can benefit companies with a reasonable user base. But it can be a little more difficult for startups that don’t have as many users yet. Still, start with what you have. Research your existing customer base and consider factors such as their occupation, age, and home life, among others. You could even survey your current clients to learn more about them. Even if you haven’t entered the market yet, you can create well-defined user personas by looking at your competition. Research what market segment they’re earning the most from and use that info to draft your user personas. Make sure to categorize your personas into different segments to be more specific as you reach out to them. ToFu Content Creation Best Practices The quality of your ToFu content can largely determine how many people notice your product. And the more attention you can garner, the more leads you are likely to attract as well. That said, here are some best practices for making excellent ToFu content. Craft attention-grabbing headlines and hooks It takes 15 seconds for readers to decide whether to continue reading an article. For video content, it’s . five times less time So, when you make content, aim to grab your audience’s attention within the first few seconds. This means using interesting headlines and attention-grabbing intros in your articles and intriguing hooks in your videos. For instance, “10 insanely gatekept methods to saving thousands of dollars on streaming platforms” is a much better title than “10 Ways To Save Money on Streaming.” Video content is even trickier. But here’s one of many hooks that can keep your audience glued: “Stop wasting money on streaming platforms. Instead, try these ten methods to save you tons of cash while enjoying your favorite subscription service.” Utilize various content formats Consider using as many content formats as possible when making ToFu content. This approach enables you to reach audiences that you otherwise may have yet to be able to touch with your content if you stuck to just one. For example, posting short-form videos is a great way to reach many people, but so is a great blog post or a brilliant infographic with your brand’s logo and theme. Incorporate storytelling and emotional appeal . It’s why human-created content has an edge over AI-generated ones. So, leverage this advantage as much as possible, as many startups lean towards AI content these days. Emotions and stories appeal to humans However, maintain brevity. As much as people like stories, they get bored easily when the takeaway isn’t in sight. Optimize content for search engines (SEO) Aside from just using semantic keywords in your content, incorporate other SEO practices. Optimize meta titles, descriptions, and even captions, and obtain backlinks from reputable sources to ensure your content stays on the first page of SERPs. It can be incredible the difference being on top of a Google search can have for your content. Regardless, avoid prioritizing SEO over quality and intent. Leverage multiple social media platforms. It’s best to utilize several social media platforms to make the most out of your content. When doing this, remember that each platform has a different algorithm. So, tailor your content to each one. Also, post the content type that works on each platform. For instance, while long-form posts may do well on LinkedIn, Twitter (or X) may not favor lengthy threads. Trends change occasionally, so try to stay on top of industry patterns. Tread carefully with Email marketing strategies for ToFu Using emails during the ToFu stage is very tricky. You can either nail it or have your domain flagged and all your email campaigns . There is a delicate midpoint that can lean toward either possibility, but it solely depends on the quality of your email copy and your strategy. permanently directed to spam folders As a rule, only email people who subscribe to your newsletter, and avoid using clickbait. Setting clear KPIs It’s easy to lose sight of the metrics you plan to measure when they’re unclear. For instance, suddenly switching from measuring impressions to tracking the number of likes and followers on your pages can quickly make you lose motivation. Because building an organic following takes time. Furthermore, content on TikTok, for example, tends to garner than the same content posted on Instagram. Hence, it takes more time to grow an Instagram following than on TikTok. So, don’t be discouraged if you primarily use Instagram for marketing. more individual views The main point is clearly defining your KPIs for each stage in your marketing process. It will help you streamline your efforts to achieve your goals and keep you motivated in the long run. Conclusion Creating ToFu content that piques attention in an increasingly competitive market takes time and effort. While you’re trying not to be too forward and aggressive with your marketing, you also don’t want to create content that doesn’t drive leads in the long run. So, this article has explored the best practices for creating ToFu content that sticks. Properly implemented, you’ll have a solid foundation for future marketing campaigns.

Top-of-funnel Marketing Best Practices for SaaS Startups

This story was originally published by by Evan Robinson-Johnson for . contributed reporting. ProPublica ProPublica Debbie Cenziper A former Lebanese diplomat sanctioned by U.S. authorities for allegedly funneling money to the terrorist group Hezbollah was arrested last week in Bucharest, Romania, and U.S. officials are seeking his extradition. Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi, 58, is accused by federal prosecutors of attempting to evade sanctions by trying to launder and move more than $800,000 from the United States to Lebanon, according to the Department of Justice. Bazzi was current or former diplomats identified last year in an investigation by ProPublica and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that revealed widespread abuses in a little-known and poorly regulated system of international diplomacy. one of 500 So-called honorary consuls work from their home countries to represent the interests of the foreign governments that appoint them. In exchange, the volunteer diplomats are afforded some of the same legal protections offered to career diplomats, including travel benefits and political connections unavailable to most private citizens. The found that a number of consuls have stood accused of crimes or were embroiled in controversy — many while they held their posts. “Shadow Diplomats” investigation Thirty current and former honorary consuls have been sanctioned by the United States and other governments; nine have been by law enforcement and governments, including Bazzi. linked to terrorist groups Bazzi was appointed honorary consul in Lebanon by the government of Gambia in 2005 under the regime of then-Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, according to court records. The Gambian government terminated his appointment in 2017. A year later, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bazzi a “global terrorist,” accusing the businessman of funneling money to Hezbollah, a militant group that has attacked U.S. service members, civilians and others in countries including Israel, Argentina and Iraq. The designation blocked Bazzi’s interests in domestic real estate and prohibited American citizens from conducting any business that would benefit him. In 2019, Bazzi sought to overturn the U.S. sanction. In court records, he said the government failed to provide evidence that he had financed Hezbollah. The sanction is still in place. Bazzi’s attorney could not be reached for comment. In a three-count unsealed last week in New York, Bazzi and a second man were charged with conspiring to launder money and to cause U.S. individuals to conduct unlawful transactions involving a global terrorist. indictment Recorded communications revealed that the men proposed numerous strategies to move money, including transferring funds through a fake restaurant deal and a family loan scheme in Kuwait, according to the Justice Department. “The defendants in this case attempted to provide continued financial assistance to [Hezbollah], a foreign terrorist organization responsible for death and destruction,” Daniel Kafafian, acting special agent in charge at the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New Jersey division, . said in a statement John Marzulli, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in New York’s Eastern District, declined to comment on Bazzi’s prior status as an honorary consul. Marzulli said he could not say when the men will arrive in the United States; the government is seeking extradition. Each count in the indictment carries up to 20 years in prison. The Eastern District U.S. attorney, Breon Peace, said in a release: “Mohammad Bazzi thought that he could secretly move hundreds of thousands of dollars from the United States to Lebanon without detection by law enforcement.” This “arrest proves that Bazzi was wrong.” Matthew Levitt, a counterrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Bazzi was especially skilled at finding ways to establish relationships with people in power. “This is someone who is a player for senior Hezbollah operatives and senior Iranian leadership,” Levitt said. “His arrest and extradition is significant.” Photo by on Josh Appel Unsplash

This Man Is Accused of Funneling Money to the Terrorist Group Hezbollah

Regardless of how mature the product is, its owner will always be curious about how it performs, what the conversion rates are, and what areas for improvement there are. One of the most important tools that product owners should get access to at some point in time is an . event tracking system Table of Contents Why an event tracking system is important. When to implement an event tracking system How to implement an ETS In-house vs existing solutions Architecture of event-tracking Operationalization or Make it work Conclusion Why an event tracking system is important Implementation of event tracking will allow businesses to get scientific answers to lots of product-related questions, such as: At which stage of the sign-up journey did I lose most of the users? What would be the conversion rates if I split users into 3 groups and showed them different checkout buttons? Is it true that the performance of my product depends on how it’s been implemented by various clients? When to implement an event tracking system In my , I described how to set up an environment to perform experiments with your product. The approach I provided there implied that one can reuse existing information resulting from core data flows as part of backend architecture. Doing so will be especially beneficial for the products at the early stages of development. previous article At some point in time, the product reaches a stage when it can no longer be sustainably developed without relying on data. Therefore, enhanced is applicable to more mature products. The table below systemizes the recommended practices for product analytics depending on a stage of maturity: event tracking Maturity stage of your product What can your product do? Who is using your product? Recommended practices of product analytics MVP (although MLP, i.e. ‘Minimum Lovable Product’ is better) Very is available basic functionality at one specific market Loyal and patient customers Simple and that store information related to lifecycle of product’s core entities (e.g. of the order or payment). Information is used for health check, building and testing of simple hypotheses high level funnels that are based on the data tables Surviver . New features have been added, but overall still behind well established players (in terms of functionality and market share) Core functionality works rather stable Customers are coming from various segments on a regular basis Funnels . Allows the detailed analysis and obtaining specific insights at each part of the funnel. Can be combined with practices of MVP/ MLP stage based on event tracking covering most important user journeys Serious player Functionality competes or even outperforms established players May have a . It is used by large enterprise clients. There are also plans for global expansion strong position at specific segments . In addition to capabilities of practices for earlier stages, can also be used for precise monitoring of minor adjustments aimed at single-digit conversion improvements. Multiple funnels based on detailed event tracking. Each user journey can be explored separately How to implement an ETS Decide if in-house implementation works for you To begin with, you should decide whether it should be an already existing solution or built in-house. When making a decision, one should consider the following 3 factors: From my experience, end-to-end implementation of event tracking (from the beginning until the moment you will see the first events recorded in production) will take around 3 weeks for 1 mid-senior engineer. On top of that, several weeks of dedicated data engineering and analytics teams’ support will be required to turn obtained data tables into nice and insightful dashboards. Availability of resources: frontend in-house solution will require an initial one-off cost to implement, but will allow you to achieve good economies of scale in case your product will keep developing. In case your company will later introduce new products and services, it will also benefit from existing solutions almost out of the box. Cost: if your product is developing at a fast pace, think twice about whether an already existing on-market solution will allow you keep the required degree of flexibility in terms of supporting every change. Flexibility: To summarise, developing your solution in-house has certain benefits in the long run, however as mentioned in the beginning, it’s highly important to select the right moment for implementation. Proper timing will allow you to ensure that all factors are considered: You have enough resources You are confident that this project will yield you a positive return on investment You believe that your product and company overall will keep growing and all future projects will benefit from the event tracking Further parts of this article will be focused on the implementation of in-house solutions. In case you decide that procuring an existing solution works better for you, you should expect that it will provide you with an end-to-end experience. Architecture of event-tracking While designing your solution, the most important thing is to decide how you want to see your data. The most common approach relies on 3 main concepts: Event, which can be defined as a combination of: Object, e.g. “Order” button Action performed with the object, e.g. “Shown to user” or “Clicked by user”. Therefore, several events can be associated with the same object within the same user journey. Session, which represents a unique and uninterrupted interaction of the user with your product, where interruption can be either: achievement of some event X minutes of a user being idle Parameters of events, which can be used to pass any other relevant information and which can be added to your events at any point in time. The most typical parameters you may need are: Timestamp of event id of the user (if known) Device type (iOS, Android, Windows, …) Experiment-related information. For instance, if you do A/B test, you can pass information on which group user was assigned to. Based on this data you can calculate the performance of each group in terms of conversion and choose the best option. From a data flow perspective, it is rather straightforward. Whenever the user performs an action you are interested in, your library should call the corresponding endpoint and pass relevant data there within the request payload. For instance, the user presses “Create order” button, which triggers the request (illustrative): Request URL: https://eventtracking.yourpoduct.com/WebTracker/RecordWebEvent Request payload: Session_id = abc Event_object = OrderButton Event_action = Clicked Parameter_1 = Value … Operationalization or Make it work Fire the first set of events: Once you’ve got the infrastructure to fire events, it’s time for the most practical step: you have to understand the exhaustive list of events you need to see. Although it takes time, this procedure is necessary if your end goal is achieving visibility on what’s happening with your product. A suggested approach is the following: Understand all the (sub)-flows your product has (e.g. quick flow for existing users vs long sign-up flow for new users) Refresh your knowledge of the flows by manually going through each and recording screencasts Carefully review your recordings and for each flow prepare a spreadsheet outlining all the events that you need to track. The structure of the spreadsheet can be like this: Type of flow (e.g. existing users) Event object Event action All parameters with possible values Discuss the spreadsheet with your Frontend engineer and make sure that all the data you need can be tracked. Bear in mind, that you will be able to add some events in subsequent iterations Finally, ask your engineer to start firing the events in a production environment. It’s not necessary to include all possible events in the scope of the first iteration. Focus on the most important ones that are needed to get insights and test hypotheses. Double-check Once the first iteration is done, it is crucial to make sure that everything works in the correct way. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the number of events you have and miss the gaps. The most reliable way to double-check is: Repeat the step when you went through all flows and recorded screencasts. However, at this time make sure you also save the session id for each flow you are going through (can be easily copied from the network tab of your browser’s console). You can use session id as a title for each screencast for simplicity. Wait until the data on events recorded can be accessed in the database (usually, it’s not immediately) Query the events tracked for each session you have. The dummy example of the query would be: select * from your_product.events_recorded where session_id = ‘your saved id for each flow’ Compare the results of your query with your corresponding screencasts and come up with a list of all gaps (most likely you will observe some). Reach out to your Frontend engineer to close the gaps. Repeat this procedure until you are confident that all events are tracked properly. Construct first funnels (visualize insights) Ask a question Start by asking the main questions you have regarding your product: At which stage of the signup flow users are mainly dropping? What is the reason for existing users not reaching the end of the journey? Which parts of the UI will I most likely experiment with? E.g. titles of the main Call to action buttons Prepare mock-ups with dummy data Based on the key questions you have, you can create mock-ups of your funnels and see if those would be sufficient to satisfy your curiosity. It’s always a good idea to visualize what you want to see before reaching out to the data team. Calculate and sense check Once visuals are sorted out, don’t hurry by jumping straight into making ‘fancy’ funnels. Instead try to calculate all the pieces of data (for a selected period of time), which make up the funnel in a separate spreadsheet to see if the data makes sense. Try to be as critical as possible: Some inconsistencies would immediately get your attention. Make sure that once events are sorted and aligned to user journeys, it’s always a declining trend. You can also triangulate against different sources of data. For instance, compare the number of orders created from your database to the number of events when the last screen was shown. Clearly, the number of events should exceed the number of orders created. If it’s not the case, then you are missing some events Once done, you can proceed to the final step. Construct the funnels you need based on mock-ups and queries you used for sense check Set up clear procedures for the future Don’t settle once you are done with covering all key user journeys with your event tracking-based analytics. Most likely, your product will be changing in the future. One should be very cautious in order not to lose the results of great effort that has been put to set up the event tracking. To achieve that, make sure you have an exact procedure in place with all relevant parties following it. The procedure could be like this: When you or your designer start working on new user journeys, make sure that all changes to the existing product are explicitly highlighted. Communicate the changes to your frontend team that will be updating UI, and make sure all the new events will be sent, while irrelevant events to be deprecated. Having a spreadsheet as a tracker for new/ deprecated events could be useful for you. Aware your analytics team that datable will contain new events, which should be incorporated into subsequent funnels. In the end, you as a product manager should be responsible for results and making sure that  current funnels still make sense. Usually, it should be the case unless you don’t introduce significant updates to your product. Conclusion To sum up, the implementation of event tracking will be a significant enhancement of the product owner’s toolkit. However, one should be reasonable when deciding if the product is mature enough for that. A simple rule of thumb to decide: if you can come up with a substantial “no-brainer” backlog of improvements for your product (which don’t need to be ‘scientifically’ proven), then it’s most likely not yet mature enough for the event tracking, and you have more important things to spend your resources on. Once the product is ready for implementation of event tracking, its owner should understand that it could take a while to achieve the end state. Be prepared for numerous iterations and attempts to resolve inconsistencies. Finally, getting to the end state can be tough. However, losing progress is much easier. In order to avoid the loss of fruits of your labor, you should have a strict and precise procedure for updating your event gathering and analytics whenever something is being changed in your product.

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