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240 Stories To Learn About Startups Of The Year

Another Walk on the Fells

At the time appointed the queen was ready: she had suffered so much at Edinburgh

I understand this situation. You want to help, but you don’t know what to do. Or you are doing your best, but the effort or value of your work seems small compared to what the developers are doing. In this post, you will find 8 ideas on what you can do to make things easy when the product is ready. This is by far not a definitive guide. It is a list of ideas that you can start with. If you have anything to add or any suggestions, you can add them in the comment. I promise to quote you and probably add it to the main post. Let's start. #1. Talk to a Mentor Is there a business person you admire, respect, and trust? A mentor? It’s time to pick up your phone, call the person, tell them what the problem is, and let them help. This action will be more helpful because the person probably knows you and has a better experience. In addition, their guidance can be more specific to you than picking random advice from strangers. Do you know what the best decision would be right now? Closing this tab and making that call. This can wait. #2. Validate Your Ideas in the Market Validating your product idea helps you refine your product features or improve on its weaknesses. In addition, it can help you understand what you’re doing wrong. Without validating your ideas in the market, you're probably creating something no one wants to buy. Or something only a very few people might consider interesting. How to Validate Your Ideas Validating an idea is a continuous process. So you have to do it repeatedly until you have enough data to make your product remarkable. According to , you can start validating your ideas by asking these essential questions: Harvard Business School What’s the value of my product? Who’s the target audience, and what assumptions have I made about them? What differentiates my product from existing ones? What hypotheses do I have about my product, pricing, and business model? : , Harvard Business School. Source Market Validation You can check the link to see the complete explanation. #3. Learn Marketing/Sales/Pitching Marketing creates awareness and grows a business. No one will hear about you or your product if you’re not actively marketing it or if people aren’t recommending it to other people. Learning marketing as a co-founder doesn’t mean you’ll become the head of marketing when the product finally launches. Instead, it will help with things like cold-calling and investing in marketing. You’ll start understanding things from the perspective of a marketer. It also means you won’t give some of us a lot of explanation to do when we tell you what we need. Studying marketing can help product development because you start to ask yourself, “how can we sell this?” And marketing is a broad topic on its own. You can start learning about a little aspect of it. You can learn: Cold email/copywriting Cold calling Pitching Persuasion Sales Storytelling “Cold-call selling teaches you the most unbelievable life skills. It teaches you how to get your foot in the door or win somebody over in 30 seconds or less. It teaches you perseverance and to keep going, especially when people aren’t necessarily kind or friendly to you. A lot of people ripped up my business card in my face.” Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx Image credit #4. Networking I’m a freelance content writer, and one of the best opportunities I’ve gotten was because someone referred me. Someone in my network found the job and sent the link to me. "Instead of better glasses, your network gives you better eyes." -- Ronald Burt Your network can serve as the first people to validate or test your ideas before launching. Many of them, who are outside your company or field, can bring a new perspective, especially user-oriented views. They are your extra pair of eyes or ears because you can’t see every opportunity or be your own critique. So How Do You Network? I think Brianne Brown captures the perfect answer in this quote: "Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen." Brene Brown Be seen. But “being seen” is subjective. You don’t want people to see you painting your brand or reputation with mud. So it is essential to be seen (but not as an asshole.) First, I'll let you figure out what an asshole means on your own. Then, later, I'll give suggestions on how to not be one. These are the things you can do to network: Go to events. You can check places like or to see events that interest you. For example, you can attend product launches or tag along with someone going to events. Eventbrite Meetup Write about interesting topics and share them online. (I write on Hackernoon, and I know some people have been tempted to reach out.) You can share your write-ups, such as Medium, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, etc. Send cold emails Volunteer How to Maintain Your Friendship With the People You Meet I said I would tell you how to keep people around, so here you go: Be genuine in what you do. Don’t say something and act the opposite when no one is watching because they might find out one day. And when they do, that might be the end of everything you mean to them. Be valuable. Be the guy who helps others. By giving more than you can get in return, you can build a network of people who will stick around and show up when you need them. Show some courage. Be the one to make the first move or start a conversation. Share your ideas. Take the initiative. You will need to sacrifice some of your time to help others, especially if they are one of your networks. #5. Personal Development Personal development is a broad topic. It’s like saying, “do something that improves your life.” There are thousands of things that fit that description. Everything we have discussed to this point fits into the definition. I mean, you’re an entrepreneur. “Entrepreneurship is a personal growth engine disguised as a business pursuit.” James Clear These are other things you can as related to Personal Development: Regular Exercise Listening skills. Many people don’t listen. Invest in important relationships Meditation Read books Learn from other's experiences Contribute to meaningful projects that don’t promise a financial reward Journaling Start a challenge Starting a business (yeah, it will teach you a lot of things) Travel Mentoring others Working with a mentor The list goes on and on. I think it's cool to ask yourself this one question every day: “...if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, (or building a startup) and then improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.” James Clear, Atomic Habits #6. Learn Public Speaking “Communication isn’t as simple as saying what you mean. How you say what you mean is crucial, and differs from one person to the next, because using language is learned social behavior: How we talk and listen is deeply influenced by cultural experience. Although we might think that our ways of saying what we mean are natural, we can run into trouble if we interpret and evaluate others as if they necessarily felt the same way we’d feel if we spoke the way they did.” , Harvard Business Review The Power Talk This one can fit under the last point about personal development, but it needs to be discussed differently. In the world, the way you express your visions or business aspirations is through words. And speaking is the most typical way to do that. As a co-founder, you have to speak to employees, investors, delegates, or government personnel. It can be a meeting of just ten people or a crowd at a convention. Sadly, many of us are not blessed with the oratory skills of Martin Luther King, so we have to learn. So, if you're a co-founder and you aim to scale your business, you might have to speak in public one day. You can skip to the next step if you have this figured out. But if you haven't, it is time to perfect your oratory skills. These are things you can do: Practice before you speak. Breathe. Start small. Learn to speak at meetings or parties, and it gets better when people start seeing you as someone with an ability to talk. Tell a story. People like stories a lot. If you can find the exemplary anecdote and present it well, you can deliver a memorable speech. Pro tip: Watch TedTalks Ask interesting questions when speaking. Hello, my dearest reader, have you ever wondered what will happen if your message gets to the heart and soul of your listener? #7. Build an Audience Online Building an audience is hard. People don't follow you because you are on the internet. They follow you because you have something to offer them. But, hold on? Why do you need to build an audience as a co-founder? On a Small Scale One, you can market your product to your audience. I wrote about . There are 9 of them in the post, and they all circle around building an audience. affordable ways to market your product As a founder, you build trust, loyalty, or awareness with an active audience. . According to its content, all you need to make a good living as a creator is 1000 people that will travel to see you or pay you, say, $100 for a product ($100,000 from 1000). There is a popular article about having 1000 true fans You can use this as . 1000 true fans will tell the world about your product when it launches. They will share your posts, attend your event or product launch live, and probably invite others to see it. leverage If your 1000 true fans should show up at the event you host, that's a hall filled with 1000 people. I don't know about you, but that's impressive (mainly because the world will see thousands of pictures of the event on Instagram). On the flip side It makes sense, right? But it's hard to have those kinds of fans. 1000 true fans have been misinterpreted as having a large following on social media. The reality is that having many followers on Twitter or LinkedIn doesn't mean you have 1000 people that care that much about you or your product. Most of those followers are there for the entertainment you provide and aren't ready to give anything back to you. Having is a good place to start. In the beginning,100 true fans and a large audience who will show little interest can be enough for a start. 100 true fans On a Large Scale You can influence an entire industry. Have you seen Elon Musk’s Tweets? He's a big guy, and his tweets usually lead to conversations that sometimes last for weeks or days? Moreover, big organizations or government officials generally respond directly or indirectly to his content. Some news said his tweet influenced an entire market. — CNBC Bitcoin falls after Elon Musk tweets breakup meme — CNBC Elon Musk says he talked to 'North American Bitcoin miners,' sending bitcoin price surging — Economic Times Extent of Elon Musk Influence on cryptocurrency; where it is headed This is extreme, but you understand how this can help your business if you focus on the small scale. Using Social Media Building an audience on social media can be difficult. It is attention-driven. It is designed to share content that people are interested in or give more attention to. And the algorithm can only tell if the content is fascinating by how many engagements it has. So if you're new to the whole idea of building an audience, or you have a few followers, you won't get many engagements. However, I won't leave you without giving tips. Give valuable content Stay consistent Learn from other competitors Don't rely on one channel Create something you can give in exchange for their emails and subscriptions. If you don't know how to go about it, hire someone to do it. There are tons of social media managers and content writers or agencies on Upwork and Fiverr who will help with content creation for a fee. The channels to use for building an audience: Blog Email list Social media YouTube Podcasts channels By the way, I found this guide by very impressive. You can learn how to build an audience with it. Copyblogger Image credit #8. Understand Your Audience Understanding your audience is a continuous process.  As long as your business exists, you must continue learning about your audience. Think of a place where your ideal clients hang out. Listen to their problems, ask questions, and read between the lines. You can join them by participating in activities or helping them with answers. You can do this offline or online. These are the other ways to understand your audience: Spy on your competitors Create content online and see how the audience engages with it Use tools like or to understand your audience Google Analytics Google Trends Monitor the audience: feedback, comment, or questions Hubspot has a guide on finding your buyer, building . a persona, and understanding your audience Tell Me What You’re Doing Now I will leave you to go ahead and do your thing. It's a journey, after all, and no one can linearly predict the progress of a business. So start with something and figure the rest out along the line. The world is waiting for your product to make it a better place. And if there's something that has helped you in the process, don't hesitate to share in the comment. I will add it to the main post.

8 Things a Co-founder Can Start Doing When Others Are Busy With Product Development

The Open Metaverse: A Definitive Guide to Zero and Wilder World

El metaverso abierto: una guía definitiva de Zero and Wilder World

Journaling is simply writing down thoughts and feelings, keeping a log of everyday life. We all might have experimented with keeping a diary, and journaling, in all its forms, remains a diary. A way to understand ourselves better through writing. Nowadays, there are a plethora of journaling types: bullet journal cognitive journaling dream journal food journal goal setting journal gratitude journal Morning Pages journaling one line a day journal pregnancy journal stoic journaling stream of consciousness travel journal wreck journal As a piece of trivia, blogging started as an online diary ( ). One of the first online diaries, if not first online diary, can still be found online . weblog the here My purpose is to present two types of journaling and hopefully, you will get inspired in grabbing a notebook and start writing. Stream of Consciousness In her 1934 book , Dorothea Brande described a new perspective on the stream  of  consciousness journaling: Becoming a Writer "The best way to do this is to rise half an hour, or a full hour, earlier than you customarily rise. Just as soon as you can—and without talking, without reading the morning’s paper, without picking up the book you laid aside the night before—begin to write." This technique was later popularized by Julia Cameron that renamed it the Morning Pages in her book . Julia Cameron says: “ ”. The Artist’s Way write three pages of whatever crosses your mind — that’s all there is to it She adds that this practice is non-negotiable, “ ” and she argues that by practising this form of journaling, you “ ”. mood doesn’t matter learn how to stop judging and just write “ Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”  You do not stop to edit or correct grammar, you do not think if phrases make sense or not, you just write. ” If you run out of ideas, you keep writing, even if it just a page of writing ‘I don’t know what to write. What should I eat today?  What’s the point in doing this?’ Why should these pages be done the first thing in the morning? So that we can identify our thoughts before our mind starts worrying or planning the day. In Julia Cameron’s words, “to catch yourself before your ego’s defences are in place. We are after candour — that, and specificity. We want to know how you really feel about your life.” Why three pages? Try writing for three pages only “this is useless. What is the point in this? I do not understand this”. Eventually, things will pop out in your mind, and ideas will spring to life ready to be captured in writing. Another critical point about this form of journaling is that we are not encouraged to read our own morning pages. Julia Cameron says that for the first two months, we are not allowed to re-read what we have written. Writing for 30 - 45 minutes first thing in the morning turned out to be too impractical at this point in my life. So, I added my own variations. Time Before starting work, I journal for 10 – 20 minutes. Other times, after a long, strenuous workout, when my mind is sore and numb, I free write for about 20 minutes. During this time, I do not raise the tip of my pen once, words are shouting, screaming, repeating, making no sense, but I continue to write, . enjoying the pure thrill of a proper brain dump Bilingualism I deliberately mix Romanian and English in these journal pages. I want to force myself to fire all my brain synapses that deal with imagery by translating expressions from a language into the other mot à mot, or starting one sentence in a language, and finishing in the other. Writing prompts I plant the seed of a thought and then I let it grow. I water this idea for a few days and after, I go back to my life. The most significant benefit of the stream of consciousness journaling for me (I can’t call it Morning Pages, as I deviate too much from the rules) is that harsh, ruthless critical voice learned how to keep quiet. I do no longer wait for inspiration to come. I start writing, knowing this journey will take me eventually to an idea with all kinds of sounds and colours and arms and legs that might make me say “Hmm…”. It is extremely gratifying to write freely, with no judgement. This act of journaling holds its own reward. Stoic and Positive reflections In the , Massimo Pigliucci notes that “ ” Stoic Guide to a Happy Life a typical Stoic exercise is the evening philosophical diary, a way to develop the habit to reflect on where we have gone wrong. What have we done well, and what could we improve. "Admit no sleep into your tender eyelids until you have reckoned up each deed of the day—how have I erred, what done or left undone? So start, and so review your acts, and then for vile deeds chide yourself, for good [ones] be glad. I make use of this opportunity, daily pleading my case at my own court. When the light has been taken away and my wife has fallen silent, aware as she is of my habit, I examine my entire day, going through what I have done and said. I conceal nothing from myself, I pass nothing by. I have nothing to fear from my errors when I can say: ‘See that you do not do this anymore. For the moment, I excuse you.’ I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past." Seneca’s way of thinking that the future descends from the past builds a bridge across millennia to George’s Orwell quote: "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." Those who know about the Scrum methodology will see the similarities between a sprint retrospective and a daily retrospective through journaling: What did I do? What did I do well? What not so well? How can I improve? Extrapolating, stoic journaling can be combined with growth mindset questions: What can I learn from today’s facts? What benefits can I see about this negative event? I am also careful to recall at least one positive experience. Why? In his , Chris Bailey mentions a talk with positive psychologist and bestselling author Shawn Achor. According to Shawn Achor, neurologically speaking, when you journal or talk about a positive experience you had at the end of each day “ Productivity Project book your brain stamps it as meaningful. The brain can’t tell much difference between visualization and actual experience, so you just doubled the most meaningful experience of your day. ” Done over time, your brain connects the dots and realizes you have a trajectory of meaning running throughout your life. It is not the gratitude as much as it the ability to scan your life for positives that make this habit so effective. To create lasting, long-term effects, Shawn Achor recommends giving these tactics a few weeks to train your brain to think happier. I can add here that maybe here lies the reason rumination and negative self-talk can push us inside a vicious cycle. The more we repeat an internal negative monologue, the more the brain stamps those thoughts as meaningful. And yet, a vicious cycle can be reborn as a virtuous cycle and journaling positive experiences can help this process. It should be no surprise that . Journaling might become another cathartic relief source for our hardships. writing heals When one can’t talk, one should write. I allow the thoughts I have been too frightened to speak them aloud to leave my fingers on the intimate space of a fresh page. Keep in mind there are no fixed rules, you can experiment and choose your own setting. Five minutes or ten minutes might suit you better. Write as much or as little as you like and do it as frequently or as infrequently as you want. Suppose you journal for a day in one week and after two weeks pass, you feel the need to journal for two days in a week. After a while, you might even miss journaling and feel a tingling in your fingers, burning to write. Do remember these pages are for your own eyes only, so be wary of privacy. Finally, I make sure that I journal as often as I can because I see journaling as a . In my opinion, self-care habits are tiny bricks that help us fight our daily entropy. self-care habit Because when, and it is a matter of when, not if, life crashes upon us, it is those tiny unremarkable habits we picked along the way that help us to get back on track. Parts of this article were previously published on my blog .

Finding Healing in Writing: How Putting Down Your Innermost Thoughts can Change Your Life

Shopify is a useful tool for any entrepreneur looking to build an online income stream. Whether you’re looking to escape the 9-to-5 grind or you just want to earn some beer money on the side, there are plenty of ways to turn your skills and interests into cold hard cash online. Sure, making money online sounds like a daydream. The truth is, starting a business or online store of any kind is hard work, but countless people have already done it and chances are you can too. We’re not about to tell sell you one simple life-changing trick or a dream of driving Lamborghinis in the Hollywood Hills. Instead, we’ve put together a collection of simple ideas that you can use to start a real business, without quitting your day job ( ). unless you really want to Let’s get started! 1. Build a Dropshipping Business Think you need a warehouse full of inventory to run your own business? Think again! Dropshipping is a great way to kickstart your very own business on a budget. You can hit the ground running by sourcing a pre-existing product from a supplier and having them take care of everything else, including packaging and fulfillment. This process let’s you skip over a lot of obstacles that might be holding you back from starting your own business, especially finding out if there’s a market for your product without placing a huge order upfront. Why Choose Dropshipping? · , meaning that your cashflow won’t get tied up in inventory. Your store doesn’t need to stock products in a physical location · Since you don’t have to deal with things like tracking inventory or mailing packages, dropshipping takes care of a lot of potential headaches. Whenever a purchase is made, you place an order with a third party and they’ll handle the rest of the process for you. · Whether it’s your living room or the cafe down the street, you decide where you want to work from. No warehouse means that you can run your business from anywhere. Want to see what dropshipping looks like in action? was built from scratch using dropshipping and, after just three days, it was generating . Hello Matcha nearly $1,000 in revenue If you’re interested in dropshipping, install read the to learn everything you need to know about getting started. Oberlo Shopify Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping If you’re not sure what you want to sell, here are some strategies for narrowing down the perfect product: · Search on the Oberlo Marketplace of products · How to Find a Product to Sell Online (Including 10 Trending Product Ideas) · 10 Places Ecommerce Entrepreneurs Go to Find Product Ideas . How I Imported Gaming Glasses with Alibaba and Made $2416.51 in 5 Weeks 2. Start Your Own Clothing Line As long as you have some designs in mind and a little bit of time on your hands, you can get your own clothing company off the ground in less than a day. If you own , you can set up your own clothing line using plugins like , and that automatically link your store to apparel printers or clothing manufacturers. They handle every step of the retail fulfilment process for you, giving you the freedom to design and ship a wide range of pieces right out of the gate. a Shopify store Oberlo Printify Printful Why Start a Clothing Line? than creating products that people love and use every day**.** · There’s nothing more satisfying Thanks to apps like Printify and Printful, the process of designing and delivering your own custom-made clothing has been streamlined and simplified. · As soon as you build your Shopify store, you’ll be able to start selling instantly. You’ll love the feeling of seeing your designs come to life. · Transform your creativity into something real and profitable. One entrepreneur used Printful to set up , an apparel store for dog owners, and ended up making . With some time and research, you’ll be well on your way to building a successful t-shirt company for yourself. THINK PUP over $1,200 in just three weeks Want to get started? Read this comprehensive walkthrough, . How to Start an Online T-Shirt Business: The Ultimate Guide From crafting your brand’s story to promoting your products with influencer marketing, we’ve curated some handy resources that will help grow your apparel business every step of the way: · 22 Awesome T-Shirt Templates and Mockups for Your Clothing Line · 4 Creative Ways to Promote Your Product Through an Influential Fashion Blogger 3. Sell Your Art Online An online store is a great way to sell your art and monetize your creativity. Whether you’re a painter, photographer, or , there are plenty of ways for you to turn your latest set of masterpieces into a stable revenue stream with a beautifully designed ecommerce website. musician If painting or , you can sell your work as prints, canvases, and framed posters using Printify or Printful with your Shopify store. This is a fantastic way to turn your art into something tangible that people can take home and make a part of their space. photography is your forte Is music your thing? You can sell your beats, songs, samples, and more as and grow your own online music empire. digital downloads Just take a look at , the largest online drum sample business in the world. They created a successful and sustainable business model with the help of apps like and . The Drum Broker FetchApp ShipStation Why Sell Your Art? Get your work into your customers’ homes and headphones**.** · Be a part of people’s lives. by setting up shop online. · Create a platform to showcase your work This is your chance to turn your passion into a sustainable income stream and do what you really love for a living. · As an artist, creating art isn’t just a hobby — it’s a way of life. Ready to build a storefront for your art? Get started with these: · How an Entrepreneur from Alaska Built the Biggest Hip-Hop Drum Sample Business in the World · John Kraft: How to Sell Art Online · From Artist to Entrepreneur: How Eric Rosner Put His Passion on Pillows 4. Become a Freelance Writer, Designer, or Developer Writers, developers, and graphic designers are in high demand. As a freelancer, you’ll be able to put your talents to good use by helping people across the world with their projects (while making some quick money on the side, of course). Freelancing doesn’t mean committing to month-long projects that eat away at your free time either, you can easily pick up bite-sized tasks that fit into your schedule. To find people that need your help, try freelancing marketplaces like and . Upwork Fiverr It’s worth noting that Fiverr is a little different from a traditional job board — as the name suggests, all the posted jobs cost five dollars. The key to making big money on Fiverr lies in carefully setting up your offers, so that you can easily upsell for more money. For instance, you could offer to write a 150 word introduction for a blog post as your initial $5.00 service. As an upsell for your clients, you could charge another $10.00 for every additional 150 words. Although this might not seem like much, you can tweak your services until you’ve found a combo that makes it worth your while. If you want total control over how much you can charge, . You can list your services as products and disable shipping since you won’t actually be physically delivering anything to your customers. You can also use apps like and to give your customers the option to schedule appointments. create a Shopify store BookThatApp Events Calendar Why Freelance? and set your own schedule and workplace. · When you freelance, you choose which projects you want to work on , whether you’re looking to strike out on your own or you just to make some extra cash on weekends. · Getting paid to do something you’re good at is a rewarding feeling and get some real experience in a wide range of industries. Who knows — you might discover that you have a knack or passion for something that you never expected. · If you’re new to writing, designing, or developing, freelancing is an excellent way to build out your portfolio If freelancing sounds like it might be a good fit for your lifestyle, we’ve put together some great articles that can help you make the most of your time and be more productive. Take a look: · 7 Ways to Be More Productive While Working from Home · 5 Handy and 5 Hilarious Things You Can Buy for Your Business on Fiverr · 8 Tips for Highly Productive Entrepreneurs 5. Teach an Online Course Teaching an online course is a solid way to generate passive income. All you need to do is put together a video walkthrough explaining a subject that you’re familiar with and then host it on your own personal website. Although it takes some effort up front, if you manage to design a popular high-value video tutorial series, you could be making money on a regular basis as people continue to enrol in your courses. To start creating your first online course, brainstorm a topic that you know well enough to teach someone how to do from scratch. This can be literally anything — music production, social media marketing, web development — you name it. Next, you’ll want to grab a screencasting app like to record your screen and voice while you walk your viewers through your tutorial. Screenflow also comes with a built-in video editing suite, allowing you to shoot and cut your videos all on the same platform. Screenflow Why Teach an Online Course? · Take an afternoon to build an online course and you could be reaping the benefits for weeks. With an online course, you can literally set it and forget it. · Focus on teaching something that you’re already an expert at and the rest will come naturally, whether it’s building iOS apps, creating monthly budgets, or running Facebook ad campaigns. You already have the knowledge, you just need to share it. · While there’s definitely money to be made in teaching online courses, helping other people is always a satisfying experience unto itself. Teaching someone a new skill is its own reward. Thinking about sharing your skills with the world? Here are some inspirational TED Talks and podcasts to get your brain moving: · Must Watch TED Talks for Entrepreneurs · 16 Inspirational Podcasts for Entrepreneurs 6. Flip Your Thrift Store Finds If you love hitting up thrift stores and hunting down great deals, then opening up an online boutique to sell your second-hand treasures is a natural next step. Your potential customers want to buy cool stuff, but they don’t want to dig through old soccer jerseys and braided belts to get their hands on that one amazing find. Take advantage of this by positioning yourself as a trustworthy curator who can go out and uncover those great pieces for them. Why Sell Your Thrift Store Stuff? · Let’s face it, you’d be combing through thrift store racks anyway, so you might as well make some money while you do it. Put your shopping addiction to work. · That $2.00 Radioshack ball cap you found over the weekend? It’s now a $40.00 vintage vaporwave strapback. The margins are huge. · Nowhere else on the Web will people be able to find the collections that you’ve put together. You aren’t just selling products, you’re selling something unique. Sometimes a passion for second-hand curiosities is all it takes to kickstart a business. , an online store dedicated to selling vintage video games, started when its owner received a box of old Japanese games from a friend and wanted to sell them online. Now, Windy Gaming generates . Windy Gaming $1,000 per week sending retro gaming gear across the world Want to turn your cool stuff into pizza money? Take a look at these guides to making your products look great in photos: · 7 Steps to Beautiful DIY Apparel Product Photography · 10 Common Jewelry Product Photography Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them) Publish Your Own Book 7. It’s okay to admit it: You’ve probably thought about publishing your own book someday. While seeing your name on a list of best sellers might seem like a pipe dream, it’s actually not that far out of reach. It doesn’t matter if it’s a science fiction novel, a marketing guide, or a children’s picture book, there are now plenty of options for successfully self-publishing your own work. From releasing your writing as an ebook with to on-demand printing services like and , there are many different ways for you to become a published author and sell your book online. the Digital Download app Blurb CreateSpace To sell ebooks through your online store, install the Digital Downloads app and you’ll instantly be able to stock digital files as products. Once purchased, your ebooks will be sent to your customers via email or as a direct download link. If you choose to sell physical copies of your books, you’ll just need to place an order with Blurb or CreateSpace whenever your work is purchased. They’ll custom print your book and handle the entire storage and fulfilment process. Why Publish a Book? thanks to services like Blurb and CreateSpace · Printing, storage, and delivery is taken care of Self-publishing is the quickest way to get your books into the hands of potential readers. · What’s the point of writing if there’s no one to read it? and you deserve to be able to make money while doing something you enjoy. · Creative writing is your passion Ready to live out your dreams of being a published author? These resources will help you out on your way to the top: · The Malcolm Gladwell Guide to Starting a Business · Hacking the Press: Clever Ways to Get Free Press Coverage with Zero Budget It’s Time to Start Your Business If you’ve been wondering how to make money online, it’s time to get out there start a business. Focus on taking your first steps toward success with our guide to getting started, . 50 Ways to Make Your First Sale Have any more questions about setting up your first side business? Let us know in the comments below. <a href="https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href">https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href</a> Follow Home Grown Income on Medium: Home Grown Income Blog . Follow Home Grown Income on Twitter: @HomeGrownIncome

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Science and the Simulation Hypothesis point to many reasons we may already be in the Matrix When came out, the idea of living in a video game was squarely in the realm of science fiction. Today, the simulation hypothesis is debated seriously by computer scientists, philosophers, physicists and others. The reason this argument is taken more seriously now is two-fold: the Matrix the philosophical “simulation argument”, put forward by Oxford’s Nick Bostrom, and the “video game simulation argument”, about the rapid development of video games, put forth by, among others, Elon Musk. Two Major Developments The first was when Oxford professor Nick Bostrom published his 2003 paper, “ ” Bostrom didn’t say much about video games; instead he made a clever statistical argument. Bostrom theorized that if a civilization ever got the Simulation Point, it would create many ancestor simulations, each with large numbers (billions or trillions?) of simulated beings. Since the number of simulated beings would vastly outnumber the number of real beings, any beings (including us!) were more likely to be living inside a simulation than outside of it! Other scientists, including physicists have taken up this argument. Are You Living in a Simulation? In the video game version of this argument, we have the rapid advancement of graphics technology. Elon Musk, speaking at the Code Conference in 2016, asserted that 40 years ago, we had pong, which was essentially two lines and a dot. Today we have VR and AR and MMORPGs — all based on 3D technology. If the pace of video game development continues, in a few decades we would have hyper-realistic games, indistinguishable from reality. I call this point the Simulation Point, and in my new book, The Simulation Hypothesis, one part is dedicated towards the stages of technology needed to reach this point. It’s much easier to see a path from today’s VR to something like than it was in 1999 when the movie was released. With games like and having millions of online players interacting in a shared online world, the idea that we might actually be in a shared connected simulated world doesn’t seem so far-fetched as it might have in 1999. The Matrix Fortnite, Minecraft, League of Legends In this article, we go beyond Bostrom’s and Musk’s simulation arguments to explore some of the reasons why science might be telling us we are in a simulated reality, like the Matrix. 1. Pixels, Resolution, Virtual and Augmented Reality Today we are already seeing with Virtual Reality that “full immersion” is possible. Anyone who has played a convincing VR game will realize that it’s possible to forget about the real world and “believe” the world you are seeing is real. As a great example, I was playing a prototype of a Ping Pong VR game last year (built by Free Range Games), and even though it wasn’t realistic resolution, I lost myself and thought I was playing ping pong for real. So much so that I set the paddle on the ping pong “table” and leaned against the table. Of course, it was a VR table so it didn’t really exist — I ended up dropping the paddle (actually the Vive controller) onto the floor. As I leaned into the “table” I almost fell over before realizing that there was no table. In other words, to quote from , there is no spoon. The Matrix The immersion comes not just from the number of pixels, but from the controls and responsiveness that VR is able to achieve. In the novel (and Steve Spielberg film) , which was about a VR world called the OASIS, users had lightweight glasses and wore haptic suits and walked on omnidirectional treadmills to add realism. In that world, the OASIS was preferable to real life. Ready Player One The fact that 3D models can be used to create realistic looking objects in films(a glance at movies like Blade Runner 2049 will convince you that we have enough pixel resolution to create realistic looking objects), and that 3D printers can be used to “print” physical objects shows that the physical world can be represented by information, a key part of the simulation hypothesis. Where does the responsiveness and fidelity come from? The limitations today are in real-time rendering and in they way that objects interact with each other inside the world. Most games have a and a . The physics engine is never fully realistic (otherwise it would take you too long to go from one part of the game to the other), and the rendering engine is what’s responsible for making you “see” what the world looks like by deciding what color pixels go where. We can easily see that full immersion may be possible in a few years time. physics engine rendering engine 2. Pixels, Quanta, and Zeno’s Paradox Speaking of pixels, could it be that what we call the physical world also consists of pixels? I recall late nights at MIT during my undergrad years where I had philosophical debates with my classmates about the nature of reality. This was the first time I’d heard of Zeno’s paradox, who presented it in terms of Achilles and a Tortoise. If Achilles was behind the tortoise, and he always had to make up half the distance, how could he ever get there? Zeno’s parado involved Achilles and the Tortoise. Lurking underneath this paradox is the question of whether space is quantized or if it is continuous. The idea was that if space was continuous, like numbers are (you can always find an infinite number of numbers in between any two numbers), how is it possible to touch an object such as the wall? You would always have to cover half the distance and never get there. quite This was my first hint that space might be quantized. Today’s physicists generally acknowledge the Planck length as being the smallest amount of space that can be measured. Below that length, the quantum fluctuations make it impossible to measure anything with any reliability. For all practical purposes, the Planck length is our minimal addressable “pixel” of space. Moreover, physicists tell us that most of what we think of as a solid object is actually 99% empty space, especially if you look inside the atom. The quanta in quantum physics consists of discrete quantities — of energies or “states” that a particle can exist in. Newton’s equations assumed a continuous amount of space; it turns out the universe may be more quantized than we thought. A related question is whether time is quantized? In all computer simulations, there is the idea of “generation” or “steps” in the simulation. These are some multiple of the processor clock-speed, which is the minimum speed at which something could be measured for any simulation running on that processor. Whether time is quantized in the real world is an open question, though there are some that suggest it is, and planck’s time constant (the amount of time it takes the speed of light to travel the planck length) is the minimum quantied time. If so, this would be more evidence that we live in a computation based reality. 3. The Collapse of the Probability Wave, Quantum Indeterminacy In quantum physics one of the most intriguing ideas is the probability matrix, which is an interpretation of how subatomic particles can exhibit properties of both a wave and a solid particle at the same time. At the level of an electron or a photon, the wave is interpreted as a set of probabilities of where the particle might be at any given time. When we observe a particular possibility, then the probability wave is said to “collapse” and we see a single particle in a particular location. This is called Quantum Indeterminacy. How does the probability wave collapse? This is one of the biggest mysteries in physics. The best answer physicists have come up with is that consciousness somehow determines the collapse. Max Planck once wrote, “I consider consciousness as fundamental and matter as derivative”. An even bigger mystery is why does the universe work this way? The simulation hypothesis provides a pretty good answer. The reason that video games have advanced so far in a few decades is because of optimization techniques. It would be impossible even for today’s computers to render in real time all the pixels of a single 3D world — instead, information is stored as 3D models outside the rendered world and then only what a particular character can see from a certain angle is rendered. The golden rule of video game rendering engines is: render only that which can be observed! Many adherents of the simulation hypothesis think that quantum indeterminacy is an optimization technique with the same basic idea: only render that which is being observed. The most famous example of this is Schrodinger’s cat, the poor feline who is trapped in a box with radioactive material. After an hour, the probability is that hte cat is either dead or alive. Common sense tells us that the cat is already either dead or alive, and when we open the box we are merely finding out what happened. Quantum physics tells us this is wrong: until we are there to obeserve it, the cat is actually both alive and dead at the same time — what’s called a quantum superposition! 4. Future Selves, and Parallel Universes Another related aspect of Quantum Physics that sounds like science fiction is the Parallel Universes theory, where we branch into different “universes” when we make decisions. If that’s true, then there is a directed graph of multiple universes that are branching out each time we make a decision, resulting in different timelines (in fact, the parallel universes theory was put forward to solve the grandfather paradox of time travel). Which of those universes do we branch into? this may have to do with the one that is most “optimal” — meaning these universes may or may not exist as actual physical realities. The Minimax algorithm looks at possible futures, calculating which one is the most optimal for a video game. Physicist Fred Alan Wolf, for example, says that information from these possible futures is coming to us in the present and that we send out an “offer wave” into the future, which is interacting with the “offer waves” coming from the future to the present. Which possible future we navigate to depends on which choices we make, and how these two waves super-pose on each other (or cancel each other out). These are startling results. Future probable selves are sending back information to the present, and we are consciously choosing which path to follow. This reminded me of the very first video game I made back at MIT. The way that the computer chose the next move was to project the possible futures, and then use a certain algorithm to “rank” those futures, and then bring those values back to the present and then the AI would choose the path to follow. Did the possible futures we were calculating in our game actually exist? Or were they just probabilities? I realized that this isn’t too much different from what’s happening at the quantum level, except that in existing games like chess or checkers, we use a simple function (based on the rules of the game) to decide which of the paths is most optimal. We used the “minimax” algorithm in game design, trying to maximize our score and minimize our opponents score at each “turn of the future”. Physicist Thomas Campbell, in his 2003 book, (Theory of Everything) also proposes that there is a fundamental function and that we are essential in a computatiuonal universe that branches off possibilities and uses an evaluation function, just like a video game! He and a team from Caltech raised funds in 2018 on kickstarter for a series of experiements to try to prove this! My Big TOE 5. The Speed of light Another big mystery is why the speed of light is one of the few constants, one of the few fundamental values in physics. In fact, all matter has been equated with energy, and energy may be a derivative of light itself. While other things change, including gravity and space-time, Einstein found that the speed of light remains fixed. Why would the speed of electromagnetic waves be the same speed at which information can travel through the universe? In video games, it turns out that pixels are based on light — they are illuminated for a temporary period, and all communication happens between computers at the speed of light. Just as in relativity where simultaneity cannot really be guaranteed, the same is true video games — each player is working off of his computer and responding to information about the game, which is being sent to cloud servers outside the rendered world. The cloud serve is doing its best to respect simultaneity and order the events, but it may actually be impossible. Conclusion Along with the statistical simulation argument and the advance in video game technology, these are some of the reasons why scientists are starting to take the simulation hypothesis seriously. In fact, many physicists and biologists are starting to realize that underneath the physical objects they are studying, the universe is actually information. Famous physicist John Wheeler in his autobiography wrote “it from bit” — meaning that bits, not matter, are the fundamental “thing in the universe”. In fact, he said physics went through three phases in his career and each phase was an evoluation of our understanding of the universe. The fist phase was that “everything was a particle” (material, newtonian model), then “everything was a field” (quantum probability model), and finally, “everything is information” or bits. If everything was information, or bits, then this would not only be consistent with a video game simulation like that in , it would explain some of the big unanswered questions in science — why does it work this way? The Matrix While we aren’t able to duplicate at this stage of our technology, our computer science and video games have gotten far enough along that we are well on the road to the Simulation Point. The Matrix Buy Rizwan Virk’s book The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics, and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game , or find out more at www.zenentrepreneur.com Originally published at scientificinquirer.com on March 22, 2019.

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