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After being a developer for around three years, Allegra Shippy, a software engineer at Bandwidth had taken for granted all the software and techy concepts that serve as a foundation for knowledge. So, when given the opportunity to teach sixth and seventh grade girls basic concepts in computer science, she had to think way back to the beginning. Q: What does your team work on at Bandwidth? A: I’m a software developer at Bandwidth, a communications technology company, working on our emergency services product. Emergency services is a great product to work on, because we’re literally saving lives by reducing the amount of time it takes for emergency responders to reach people in need when they dial 911. However, I took the job primarily because of how close-knit, fun and enthusiastic the team was. In June, my team had an opportunity to participate in an event to inspire middle school girls to consider careers in STEM, through GESTEM (Girls Exploring Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). As a woman who benefited from STEM programs myself, I really wanted the team to create something informative, but also engaging for these girls, to get them really excited about computer science. Q: How did your own experience impact why you wanted to inspire young women to pursue STEM? A: In my free time, I’m also a girls’ volleyball coach, working with the same age group. I never hear them saying they want to go into computer science when they’re older. It’s always doctors, vets or professional athletes. Thinking back to when I was that age, I hadn’t even heard of software development, beyond just super nerdy hackers from TV or movies. But I liked math, so when I went to college my first instinct was to try mechanical engineering. Were it not for the one required Comp Sci 101 class I had to take, I wouldn’t have been exposed to the field I fell in love with and started my career. I liked how writing code was like solving a puzzle and when you ran your program you would instantly get feedback if you solved it or not. I also liked having a kind of secret understanding about how everyday apps I used like social media and Youtube actually worked. So many people take for granted how incredibly complicated our digital world is and how many people it takes to build and maintain it. Q: How did you get students to interact with complex ideas? A: Our hope was to demystify computer science and make coding fun for these girls. We chose APIs as our anchor concept, because it’s a really easy one to understand, and is basically the backbone of so many things. Not to mention super great for creating analogies! To translate the concept of an API to a 6th grader, we wanted a program that was interactive, competitive, and fun, yet at the same time not too complicated that it would be confusing. We went with a tic-tac-toe game where the girls were the clients and would submit their HTTP requests to the servers–played by myself and my fellow volunteers–who kept track of the tic tac toe board state. We started by giving a brief overview of the internet and APIs, explaining how the internet is a tangible network, and APIs make all the different parts interactive.  We split the girls into teams and handed out documentation, explaining that if you want to interact with an API, you have to have the proper tools. We also talked about the importance of reading documentation. The game was set up so that there were a lot of different ways for the girls to interact with the API and make moves. They had to look through the documentation, learn how to structure an HTTP request, submit it to the servers and wait for a response code that would let them know if their move was successful. Q: Was it challenging? What were the results? A: The girls were a little overwhelmed at first, but once the game started picking up, we saw them really set their minds to it, saying “Ok, we got this,” and stepping up the pace. We sprinkled in some secret ways to cheat the system, like moves where they could delete the other team’s moves, play as the other team for a round, or even start another board. As the girls took on a daunting task–interacting with an API for the first time with only the documentation to get started–we saw them creatively adapt and problem-solve. In the process, before our eyes they shifted into the mindset of a true developer. Q: What was your key takeaway from the experience? A: It was really awesome seeing these girls engage with computer science for the first time. Most of them really seemed to grasp the concept of an API, and many of them were absolute natural early developers, embracing the creative spirit of problem solving.  In short, I saw many of them start to open their eyes in the same way I did in my first experience with computer science back in school. Overall, working with these girls in STEM was a really cool and rewarding experience!

Inspiring Girls to Code Inspired Me: Allegra Shippy

When the Nintendo Wii was introduced in 2006, it was a literal game changer for the company for 7 years. As Nintendo’s seventh-generation console, it was the first Nintendo home console to introduce features such as internet capabilities and backward compatibility for a previous console. Personally, I’ve found the Wii to be the best Nintendo console for retro titles through its (now defunct) virtual console option - it’s what I use mine for almost on a daily basis. The point is, the Wii opened a lot of doors for some pretty great games and proved to be one of the best game consoles of its era. There are plenty of these Wii games that are still worth revisiting today, but which ones deserve the most attention? The following list will answer that question based on Wii games with the , a site dedicated to aggregating reviews from top critics for different types of media. It will also list titles from lowest metascore to the highest. highest metascores from Metacritic 10. Rock Band 3 - Metascore: 91 Several gamers will recognize this franchise title right away. It brought out the inner musician in each player and created some of the best memories with friends and family back in the day. Rock Band 3 followed the pattern of gameplay found in its predecessors. Players attempt to sync the rhythm and timing of their “music playing” controls with on-screen prompts, which consist of scrolling color bars that represent different musical notes, in order to play the selected song as perfectly as possible. This third installment in the franchise differed from previous installments in that it debuted “Pro mode” where the game would up the ante in specific actions expected to complete the song, such as matching fingering on strings and frets of a guitar or accurate and precise fingering on a keyboard - one would really have to quite familiar with real musical instruments to succeed in this mode of gameplay. 9. Rayman Origins - Metascore: 92 Next on the list is the Rayman franchise! Rayman Origins was a highly praised Wii game due to its art aesthetic, level design, and unique sense of humor. It follows Rayman, Globox, and Teensies as they attempt to save the Glade of Dreams from Darktoons and many other harmful creatures. Its gameplay offers a variety of unique and bizarre challenges throughout the course of the story. Each level gives Rayman and his friends different abilities to use, like running up walls and changing size to access new areas of the level. Its challenge consisted of collecting hearts to avoid one-hit kills from enemies and yellow Lums needed for Electoons. The game was nominated for several awards, winning GameSpot’s Best Platformer of 2011. Eventually, it received two sequels (not Wii games) with the release of Rayman Jungle Run and Rayman Legends. 8. Xenoblade Chronicles - Metascore: 92 Part of the highly praised action-RPG franchise, Xenoblade Chronicles is all about revenge as it follows protagonist Shulk and his friends as they go against the Mechon for attacking their home. One of the best things about the Xeno series is its fantastical environment and the freedom of exploration within it - I mean, characters journey across the backs of frozen titans, how much more fantastical can a setting get, really? Exploration is essentially the core of this Wii game. If one chooses to pursue them, side quests and collectible items - for the “collectopaedia” - can determine the course of gameplay. Another important part of gameplay is relationships. Quests can affect the way characters think about each other and unlock other story components. There are also the different relationship “systems” that determine how well characters get along with each other and reveal the histories and personalities of the characters in question. Xeno really is an excellent Wii game to revisit simply because each session of gameplay can take a drastically different direction. 7. Rock Band 2 - Metascore: 92 Now we’re back to the Rock Band franchise. This series really stirred up the gaming scene back in the day, for sure. Rock Band 2 greatly improved the overall flow and features that the series had to offer. The gameplay is the same as other Rock Band titles and it was the first released to introduce “Drum Trainer” mode and “Battle of the Bands.” 6. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Metascore: 93 Okay, so it was obvious that a was going to show up on this list eventually. If fans of the series want to know the absolute beginning of the infinite conflict between the Triforce representatives, Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon, then this game is certainly the best place to start. Not only that, but the story is one of the best ones in the franchise, in my personal opinion. Partly taking place on floating islands in the sky, players once again control everyone’s favorite pointy-eared protagonist as he sets out on a quest to save Princess Zelda after she becomes lost in the forbidden lands below. Zelda game Every Zelda installment brings its own unique flair and worldbuilding to the series, but Skyward Sword really went all out with it. As usual, players will find themselves traveling through forests, deserts, and volcanic lands as they track Zelda, but this time they are accompanied by Fi, the spirit of the Master Sword. There’s also the chance to complete side quests that will require Link to soar through the sky on the back of his Loftwing (a huge bird) to various locations. The game is filled to the brim with personality, from eccentric characters and creatures to the story itself, which will have players facing all sorts of challenges and battles until the final moment when they face Ganon once more. Skyward Sword recently received an HD remaster for the Nintendo Switch, so the Wii game version isn’t necessary to revisit the story. In the end, it doesn’t matter just as long as this masterpiece is given another well-deserved playthrough. 5. Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Metascore: 93 Serving as Metacritic’s 2008 Game of the Year, Super Smash Bros. Brawl continued the popular crossover fighting series. Players choose from a slate of classic Nintendo characters and choose an arena, often an environment based on different Nintendo franchises, where the selected characters can duke it out. The game also allows for players to create their own arenas (referred to as stages in-game) that can be saved for later use. There’s also a story mode to experience where players battle against the antagonists called Subspace Army, led by the Ancient Minister. Other gameplay features include the Vault, where players collect trophies of different characters and video game artwork. There are also minigames that can be found in Stadium mode, with some making a comeback from previous Super Smash Bros. entries. 4. World of Goo - Metascore: 94 The goal of this Wii game is relatively simple. Players build things out of goo to progress through each chapter. However, there’s somewhat of a twist. There is a required number of goo balls that need to make it into a pipe (the official exit of the level) before players can progress to the next level. There are different types of goo players can collect and use to create structures needed to complete the chapter. Some goo has to be combined with other types to achieve different goals. That’s not all the game has to offer, however. Among all the goo, there’s a story to unravel, so there is more to the game than simply mixing and matching pieces of goo and sending them down a pipe. The unique style of gameplay and mixture of story are what make this game worth revisiting. 3. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Metascore: 95 So who thought that another Zelda title would make the list? Let’s be honest, everyone did, and for good reason. I personally would have been immensely confused if Twilight Princess didn’t make this list eventually. It’s great to see that it earned a top spot. The story follows Link as he travels back and forth between the real world and a parallel dimension, known as the Twilight realm, in an attempt to keep Hyrule from becoming corrupt by evil forces (Ganon and his minions again) and the dark power that has taken over the Twilight realm. Did I mention that Link transforms into a wolf when surrounded by Twilight? It’s a neat gameplay touch. Once again, this Wii game relies heavily on motion controls. Players use the nunchuck and Wii remote to control both human and wolf versions of Link. The game also follows a similar pattern as previous titles, with players having to complete dungeon puzzles to progress through the story. The game was highly praised upon release and was the highest-rated game of 2006 on the Metacritic website. It went on to win several awards from organizations like the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and Game Critics Awards. Twilight Princess is still considered to be one of the best games of all time. 2. Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Metascore: 97 Super Mario Galaxy is one of those Mario series that continues to stand the test of time. Building on the success of the first Wii game, Super Mario Galaxy 2 allows players to, once again, visit a variety of themed galaxies and complete physics-based challenges - to track down and defeat everybody’s favorite Koopa King after he kidnapped Princess Peach. Its gameplay involves the usual platform-style expectations from the Mario series, but there are some new power-ups and environments to enjoy and explore. Oh, and Yoshi is part of the adventure this time, helping Mario with different obstacles. Another big plus for this game (that can also be found in the original) is the music. I always liked that the music sometimes matches what happens in the environment. It’s the little things that have the biggest effect at times. 1. Super Mario Galaxy - Metascore: 97 We’re finally at number one. I can personally vouch for this Wii game too. It follows the same pattern as Super Mario Galaxy 2 as far as gameplay and overall goal are concerned. But I can definitely see how it would rank as number one on Metacritic due to it serving as the introduction to the iconic Mario series. It’s the game’s original creativity mixed with the usual Super Mario platformer style that keeps gamers coming back to Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. Hopefully, in the near future, Nintendo will bring these titles to the Nintendo Switch. Conclusion There are a lot of Wii games that are worth checking out, obviously. When the console was introduced, it felt like it was the official turning point for how Nintendo approached creating their games and the overall gaming experiences they strived to provide for gamers of all types. It’s great to see that a lot of these games are still actively played today.

10 Best Wii Games of All Time Ranked by Metascore

Los 10 mejores juegos de Wii de todos los tiempos clasificados por Metascore

10 meilleurs jeux Wii de tous les temps classés par Metascore

मेटास्कोर द्वारा रैंक किए गए सभी समय के 10 सर्वश्रेष्ठ Wii खेल

メタスコアでランク付けされた史上最高の10のWiiゲーム

10 melhores jogos de Wii de todos os tempos classificados por Metascore

10 trò chơi Wii hay nhất mọi thời đại được xếp hạng theo Metascore

Metascore 评选的 10 款最佳 Wii 游戏

How new models of e-commerce can enable the Passion Economy Before becoming a VC investor, I worked as a Product Manager at Shopkick, a Greylock- and KPCB-backed shopping app that rewarded users for walking into retail stores. Our product roadmap was oriented around the holy grail of combining : enabling people to browse content in the app, share, and shop. Not only do the three factors in tandem create a stickier, more engaging experience that improves with more users, but all three are core to how users naturally shop: say they are more likely to purchase based on a social media referral. content, community, and commerce 71% of users In the US, dominant platforms typically have just two out of the three: Amazon is a wealth of commerce and content related to products, Tik Tok has community and content—but it’s rare to successfully integrate all three elements (they require very distinct DNA to do well!). Successful case studies include Glossier and Food52, while new startups like Supergreat for makeup and cosmetics reviews, Popshop for live video shopping, and Jumprope for how-to content are forging new models of social e-commerce. Coming soon: live shopping features on Instagram and Facebook A natural opportunity for social platforms that already serve as a hub for content and social connections—and which already spark purchase intent—is to allow users to seamlessly purchase. Facebook recently announced its intention to pursue that opportunity with and , which allow businesses to create storefronts that drive product discovery, all in a native shopping experience. In addition, Facebook is rolling out more features for Live Shopping: “Sellers, brands and creators will be able to tag products from their Facebook Shop or catalog before going live and those products will be shown at the bottom of the video so people can easily tap to learn more and purchase.” Facebook Shops Instagram Shops Facebook has a of attempts to move into payments and commerce, and this latest iteration is happening amid an accelerated transition from and a . long history offline sales to e-commerce softening ad market Many have been written about the announcement from a business strategy perspective, but I find it exciting for a few reasons from a consumer and creator angle: smart takes These features create new monetization paths for businesses and creators through selling products, providing another way to participate in the Passion Economy. Because brand sponsorships were mainly accessible to creators with large followings, the addition of e-commerce functionality should lower the barrier to earning income from the platform. As I’ve previously , the importance of individual brands diminish on aggregator e-commerce platforms. It’s to build a strong brand on Amazon because Amazon itself is the brand that consumers trust, and brands become secondary to signals like reviews and sort order. The antidote for brands is to leverage platforms that allow for accentuation of uniqueness and to build an emotional connection with consumers. For many brands, Facebook and Instagram already represent the discovery/storytelling piece of the e-commerce stack—and can enable brands to maintain more pricing power and resist commoditization. discussed challenging Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops represent a model of e-commerce that more closely aligns with consumers' natural shopping behavior, combining serendipitous discovery and social inspiration. Commercial activity is already happening on the platform, and these features are a more user-friendly way to support it. Today, the comments under many creators’ posts are peppered with commerce-related questions like, “Where is that dress from?” and users are left with the onus of finding the products elsewhere. Shops is interesting also from the angle of growing and Facebook’s revenue sources: the company’s revenue today is dominated by advertising, with just 2% of ARPU coming from non-advertising sources ( in US & Canada was $41.41; only $0.92 was from non-ads), and the same holds true across its entire family of apps. In contrast, there’s a ton of revenue to be unlocked through e-commerce: the average Amazon Prime subscriber, for instance, spends about per year on the platform. Facebook is well-positioned to be a major e-commerce player given that it has already aggregated demand and supply (2.6B MAUs, ). diversifying Q4 ’19 ARPU $1,400 140M small businesses Shops represent a natural evolution for Facebook and Instagram, and in many ways, are a step towards catching up to what Chinese counterparts like and have been doing for years. One prominent example of a social e-commerce platform in China is , which was founded in 2015, went public in 2018, and is now worth more than $87B as of June 2020. Pinduoduo’s success has been attributed to its social shopping model in which buyers leverage social platforms and receive discounts for , as well as its C2M (consumer-to-manufacturer) model in which manufacturers design and produce products based on user data, resulting in a more efficient development process. Pinduoduo is the 2nd largest online marketplace in China by number of users and number of orders, with 482M monthly active users, $145 billion in GMV, and $1.6B revenue in . Xiaohongshu Taobao Live Pinduoduo team purchases Q4 ’19 Interview with Ada Yang, International Corporate Affairs, Pinduoduo I recently sat down with from Pinduoduo’s International Corporate Affairs team to get her perspectives on social e-commerce in the US and China and to delve into how Pinduoduo is an enabler of the Passion Economy. Ada Yang Here are some of my top takeaways from the interview: . I was surprised to learn that nearly 15% of Pinduoduo’s GMV comes from products (which I had never thought of as being part of the Passion Economy!). Farmers on PDD are livestreaming while tending to their crops, building relationships with customers who care about where their food comes from, and earning a living by selling to a broader audience of customers beyond their vicinity. The Passion Economy is broader than what one might think , and encompasses all types of work where the worker/service/product isn’t just viewed as interchangeable and commoditized agricultural By removing intermediaries and cutting out middlemen, creators can benefit from higher earnings and consumers can enjoy lower prices. Ada shares lots of great examples of creators leveraging the platform to build a brand and earn a living through e-commerce. While Facebook & IG Shops are long-awaited and much-needed, they only begin to scratch the surface for innovation in e-commerce. Indeed, as Ada points out below, Pinduoduo considers itself part e-commerce platform, part entertainment app, and part social network, meeting multi-faceted user needs through different features. As we graduate beyond the intent-driven model of e-commerce—marked by table-like grids of products, filters, and search bars, there are opportunities to create new experiences that promote the sense of serendipity and fun of shopping in the real world. How has Pinduoduo been impacted by COVID-19? Like most businesses in China, Pinduoduo faced challenges during the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak earlier this year. We stepped up efforts to help the entire ecosystem of users, merchants, and our business partners. For instance, we helped factories that faced a hit to their export businesses to customize their products to sell to Chinese consumers. In February, we launched a “Help the Farmers” section on Pinduoduo to allow consumers to buy fresh produce directly from farmers in poverty-stricken areas. Since May, we’ve recovered to pre-COVID levels with 65M average daily orders, up from an average of 50M in mid-March. What are your thoughts on the recent news from Facebook regarding Shops? Facebook’s latest foray into social e-commerce bears resemblance to what Pinduoduo has been pioneering in China. We are at the beginning of a mega trend in e-commerce where we leave behind the legacy model of “search, pay, and leave” and move toward a more interactive, social recommendations-based model, such as what Pinduoduo has pioneered. At Pinduoduo, we’ve designed the online shopping experience to mimic the offline experience of browsing, getting recommendations and feedback from friends, and interacting with shop staff. I think with the introduction of Facebook and Instagram Shops, you will see a more direct example of how a recommendation model can be integrated with e-commerce. How does Pinduoduo relate to the Passion Economy and the idea of monetizing individuality? We believe in not just providing a platform for people to make a living, but also help them to build their own brands via connecting them to our 600M+ users. We have found that consumers like to know the stories and people behind the product. This appreciation for the work that goes into the making of a product often translates into higher sales. We’re big on putting creators and makers in front of the camera and connecting them with consumers directly, rather than spotlighting influencers who have little connection to the products they’re hawking. For example, a whose family has been in the tea business for generations was able to share that knowledge with Pinduoduo’s users through a livestream. He was able to build a following in the app and recently broke 1M RMB ($141K USD) in monthly sales, and in the process helped his family business undergo a digital transformation. university undergraduate Another merchant, , was similarly able to help boost his family’s business through Pinduoduo by connecting with users through a livestream and explaining how to choose high-end jewelry. Artisans in Shandong province show how they go about crafting woks, shaping the kitchenware by hand with a mallet. a demobilized soldier We’re continually launching new features to engage merchants and consumers. was launched in late 2019 and gives the stage to creators to showcase their work. Any content creator has the chance to broadcast their skills, from agricultural professors delivering , to farmers on the latest growing techniques, to vineyard owners providing online wine appreciation classes. Duo Duo Live online classes What are some surprising examples of workers in the Passion Economy who are enabled by Pinduoduo? . Agricultural sales represent nearly 15% of total GMV on the platform. Farmers are seldom seen or heard but have found their voice on Pinduoduo, which has become China’s largest agricultural e-commerce platform In mid-April, potato farmers in Shandong province hosted a livestreaming session, welcoming more than 600,000 users to visit their farms, virtually. It’s akin to the direct connection and relationship you might build with producers at a farmers’ market, but because of Pinduoduo’s digital platform, customers can purchase from merchants all over the country and enable them to become much bigger businesses. Users saw in real-time how farmers dug up potatoes and could purchase them through the platform. To date, Pinduoduo has held more than 100 livestreaming sessions in conjunction with more than 20 provinces in China to help local regions showcase their farm produce. The webcasts, many of which are helmed by farmers, have helped sell more than 350,000 metric tons of produce directly to consumers, By reducing the layers of intermediaries and their associated costs, Pinduoduo has helped raise farmers’ incomes while allowing users to enjoy lower prices and fresher produce. The cost of an onion in the supermarket (left) vs. Pinduoduo (right) are 5.9 RMB/500 grams and 8.6 RMB/2.5kg, respectively. Savings are achieved via bypassing intermediaries and selling direct-to-consumer, a journey that is chronicled in this YouTube video . How does Pinduoduo differ from e-commerce platforms we’re familiar with in the US? Pinduoduo’s model is designed to more closely mimic how people interact, exchange feedback, and share recommendations when they shop in real life. interactive e-commerce / social commerce Much of legacy e-commerce is based on the conventional search-based, transactional model. But this is increasingly not how most people prefer to shop, either online or offline. . Imagine spotting a nice dress while passing by a shop window or telling a friend about a bargain. Pinduoduo integrates the social aspects of shopping, the interactivity of the process between friends and between shopper and sales assistant, into the user experience. Aside from certain shopping use cases that are truly intent-based (e.g. you are out of toilet paper or pasta and need to replenish) much of shopping in the physical world is actually quite serendipitous We have features like which inject fun into the shopping experience. It’s a game within the app where users can tend to virtual fruit trees and be rewarded with a free box of fruit from Pinduoduo once their virtual tree is fully grown. As of March 2020, logged on to play the game. Duo Duo Orchard 60M daily active users Is Pinduoduo first and foremost an e-commerce platform, social network, or an entertainment app? Pinduoduo is a co-mingled space between the virtual world and the physical world, where users can find the best value-for-money goods. Given that we have more than 600M users and 5M merchants interacting in this space, it’s less useful to put a label on it and say that we are one or the other. Perhaps the best way to understand it is that we are here today precisely because we have created a space that meets the different and evolving needs of our community, whether that’s social interaction, commerce, or entertainment. Why do you think US platforms lag behind in combining commerce, content, and community? There are several aspects to the development and innovation of China’s e-commerce industry that differ from other regions of the world: 1. Many of China’s internet users skipped the desktop internet era and went straight to mobile. With close to 900M people having access to the internet via mobile devices, this has created an important base condition for the proliferation of mobile e-commerce. 2. Mobile payments: China never really had a credit card culture and for most mobile users, cashless transactions took place via smartphone. WeChat Pay and AliPay, the two leading payment apps, together account for 93.3% market share for mobile payments. 3. The logistics industry is well-established, having developed alongside the e-commerce industry. Thanks to the e-commerce boom in China, particularly in the past decade, the logistics and express delivery market is speedy, reliable, and cost-efficient. 4. As the global manufacturing base for much of the world, China has earned the nickname as the “factory to the world.” This manufacturing capacity has provided the e-commerce industry with a wide selection of cost-efficient products that draw in consumers. In my blog post , I wrote that Passion Economy platforms go beyond simply facilitating transactions and provide holistic tools to grow and operate a business. In what ways does Pinduoduo support merchants? We very much believe in the proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Pinduoduo has launched various initiatives to empower our merchants and help them not only gain knowledge and skills, but also to leverage technology to improve their business efficiency. We launched to help merchants, including farmers, learn how to sell directly on Pinduoduo and to train them in the basics of e-commerce, finance, business operations, and online marketing. Duo Duo University Pinduoduo also provides consumer insights to merchants to help them better develop and price their products, plan their inventory, and schedule deliveries. This results in more sales and better products for users. Farmers in Yunnan Province learn how to open and operate a store on Pinduoduo at the Duo Duo University. The way we shop in the offline world often blurs the distinctions between social hangout, entertainment, and actual commerce: think of weekends spent at stores with friends/family, asking for others’ opinions on items, and buying together. My former partner Connie Chan recently , “The next Amazon competitor is likely going to look like a social or video app, not a shopping app.” I’m excited about a future where digital platforms reflect our offline behavior, empower creators to build a brand and earn a living, and integrate the trifecta of content, community, and commerce. predicted Originally published as " Facebook and Instagram Shops are here, finally. Plus an interview with Chinese social commerce giant Pinduoduo "

Live Shopping Features On Social Media And Interview With Chinese Social Commerce Tycoon

The original AI Dungeon was made just over a year ago, the result of a curious gamer, a hackathon, and the GPT-2 text transformer. Fast forward to the present day, and AI Dungeon has expanded into a unique example of creative AI technology. The game now boasts 1.5 million players, multiple genres for stories, and even multiplayer adventures. is an AI-generated text adventure game in which players progress through the game by typing whatever they want. The game responds to player input thanks to a novel adaptation of GPT-2, an AI text transformer. In this way, the game offers each player their own unique game experience. AI Dungeon Development on the game has shown no signs of stopping or slowing down, so I reached out to creator Nick Walton to talk more. In the following interview, we look back at the progress of AI Dungeon and his plans for the future. Can you tell us about your background in computer science and AI? I’ve always been interested in robotics. I actually started out as a mechanical engineering major, then switched to computer science when I discovered all the cool stuff that was happening there, especially with deep learning. I ended up working in the deep learning lab at Brigham Young University. At that point in time, I was studying computer vision and self-driving cars. I interned in Japan working with autonomous vehicles, and later at Aurora Innovation for autonomous technology. How did AI Dungeon start? GPT-2 had just come out and I started playing around with it at a hackathon. I realized you could do some pretty fun things with it. I’d also recently started playing Dungeons & Dragons, and my first thought was, The first prototype of that idea used the smallest GPT-2 model, which was 126 million parameters. It wasn’t super great, but it did highlight for me the possibilities in larger models and more training. what if you could make an AI dungeon master? Maybe a few thousand people played that game, which was AI Dungeon 1. But next fall the larger GPT-2 model was released, and I’d also found a dataset of text adventures for training. When the game was fine-tuned on that data with the larger model, we saw a massive improvement in quality. That’s when I released the Colab version of the game, AI Dungeon 2, which exploded and really jump-started the journey to where we are now. How do you feel looking back at the last year of AI Dungeon? Was there anything particularly challenging or difficult on the way to getting to where you are now? It’s pretty amazing how far we’ve come from that first prototype, especially given that I couldn’t really work on it over the summer. So it’s nine months of progress. One of the hardest challenges that we’re just figuring out now is how to take the super open-ended story of AI Dungeon and add more game-like elements such as progression and world persistence. I think that was lacking in the initial AI Dungeon. It’s actually really hard to figure out how to integrate continuous natural language elements with discrete game-like elements, because you need to be able to say, “Okay, given the text output, what value should we update in the discrete model?” Basically, you need machine learning models that can detect the different things you want. We’ve actually just released our quest detection model, which is our first step in that direction: you have quests and the game can detect whether or not you completed the quest on each action. It uses a machine learning model to classify whether or not you completed a quest, and it works surprisingly well. That’s our first step; we’re building it so we understand what’s happening in the story and can keep track of those elements to build to more interesting things. How long did it take to build that particular model? Building the infrastructure took longer than we hoped. We’re using T5, which is a very general-purpose language model. We have a way for users to label data so we can train and deploy the model, and now that we’ve built the whole pipeline and model architecture, we’re hoping it will get faster. Two and a half months sounds quick compared to general game update schedules. That’s one of the powerful things about using AI in games. We see two axes of improvement. One is the dynamic world, which generates content, responds intelligently, and gives the player complete freedom. The other is developer costs. In a game like Skyrim, you’re talking about employing hundreds of people over roughly five years. It’s so expensive. Ideally, AI lets us cut down on a lot of what developers normally do. We can define the overarching themes of the game, and let the AI fill in the details. How will you create world persistence? There’s some fundamental challenges when it comes to world persistence. The first is that the AI model can only take in so much information in its context window each time it generates. With the original GPT-2 it’s roughly a thousand words. So the problem then is figuring out which parts of the world information are relevant. We just released a system a few days ago where the user can define things about the world. An example of this might be defining things about a kingdom, a person, or an object. When the system sees those things mentioned in the game, it pulls in that information so it knows about it. That’s our first step in that direction. On the other side, the system has to be able to say, This is a bit trickier, and it’s where our quest model is a first step; it updates quest information based on output. given the output of this model, how should I update the world information? The next steps then are building out the other pieces. So maybe there’s a location model that tracks your location, or an item model that tracks what items you gain or lose. But that takes more time because we have to build out the datasets and the systems for them. Have you been able to add extra data to AI Dungeon as you work on it? We still mostly use the original data. Most of the improvements we’ve made have been in sampling, such as adding things like repetition penalties so the game doesn’t repeat sentences or words. Those are the primary changes, but right now we’re doing some more model experiments that have been showing some good promise. Probably in a few weeks we’ll be able to share more about our future model upgrades that we’re doing. So is it more about a smoother game experience than having more data? I think more data is valuable, but it’s hard because there’s only so much text adventure data in the right format. It’s also hard to create that data because it’s not something you can have just anyone make. The average person is probably a decent writer, but they’re not a great writer. Ideally you want people with the right writing skills creating that data. We are doing some of that with datasets that fill out some of the holes in genres that aren’t very well represented. But I think what we’ll be looking at next is how to use our current set of user data to improve the model. What plans do you have for developing AI Dungeon over the next year? Normal games work like clockwork, so you can design the whole game and how everything will work in advance, because you can set up programming systems. We can’t really do that because that’s not how AI works. It’s not something where you can go in and tune every little gear and every little piece. It’s almost more like gardening, where you have to trim here, or prune there, and build things around it. We’re treading new territory and it’s hard to plan exactly what we’re going to do in advance. Instead, we’re experimenting and building new things at an extremely rapid pace. Even in the last three or four weeks, we’ve made massive changes. We’ve done the world info, we’ve pushed out the quests update, and we released modding, too. Modding basically allows for people to create custom modifications for their worlds. One of our visions for AI is not as a tool to replace game designers, but a tool for augmenting their work. We want to make it easier to create awesome games. If it only takes one or two people to build an awesome game because AI fills in the details, it opens up doors for a lot of people. We really want to enable people to build cool things with this tech. Deploying this kind of AI training and these massive models is really hard for the average person, so our hope is that we build out the infrastructure and platform, and then let people build cool things on top of that. I think in the long run we don’t want to just be the only guys who make a cool AI game. We’d like to be the guys who make it so tons of people can make their own cool AI games. Would you say there’s a heavy element of R&D to your work? We’re very much still an R&D center. We’re building out AI Dungeon, but so much of what we do is trying out concepts that no one has ever tried before. For example, we’re thinking about how to have quests that are automatically detected, but after quest detection we want to work on quest generation. So imagine you get a little notification pop-up telling you that you have a new quest, but it’s a quest that nobody else has ever had before because it’s unique to your story. That idea is really powerful because it’s an example of a world that is dynamically changing. To try out AI Dungeon for yourself, you can find it on multiple platforms through their . You can also keep up with Nick Walton’s work directly on . website Twitter Also published on: https://lionbridge.ai/articles/can-ai-make-video-games-how-nick-walton-created-ai-dungeon/

AI Dungeon: An AI-Generated Adventure Game by Nick Walton

Billions of dollars in venture capital have poured into direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands over the past ten years, funding hundreds of upstart brands challenging the incumbents in product category. These brands, once by investors, are now raising multi-million dollar rounds pre-launch and recruiting top talent. nearly every ignored There’s no question that there’s hype around the D2C space, but we’ve seen far less interest in the infrastructure that allows these brands to scale. D2C brands uniquely own every step of their production and distribution process — from product design to packaging to marketing to fulfillment. New brands can struggle to put all these pieces together, while established brands face challenges like figuring out how to serve an international audience and maintaining growth in a capital-efficient way. We see a huge opportunity for the rise of tools that better serve these brands, and we’re excited to share our research on companies in this space and areas where we hope to see further development. If you’re working on something in the D2C infrastructure space, please email us at twins@crv.com — we’d love to talk to you! Playbook for New Brands We’ve compiled a list of the tools we see D2C brands using today, based on our conversations with dozens of brands and data from Siftery . Product Design & Development Most brands handle design and development of products in-house, sometimes with heavy input from customers, which Glossier (and more brands are exploring via Instagram Stories and surveys). The development process typically involves finding a factory or manufacturing partner with expertise in the space, and working closely with them. famously does However, we’ve found a few startups that are aiming to use tech in the product development process. and offer this for 3D-printed products, while and do the same for hardware. and all focus on fashion, doing smaller production runs with quick turnaround times. (customers include , and ), and ( ) both work across industries. Voodoo Manufacturing Shapeways Shape Prototype , Kickr Design , Seeed Studios CALA , IndieSource , Nineteenth Amendment Parcel Supply Birchbox, S’well Blue Apron PCH International Walker and Company, Fitbit, Blaze Manufacturing Many brands find manufacturers through their personal networks or referrals, but there are also established marketplaces that connect companies with domestic and international factories — , , , , and are a few examples. Some of the newer players cater to younger brands who are concerned about eco-friendliness, quality control, and social responsibility — ( , ), , , and (fashion-specific) are a few examples. MFG.com Kompass Alibaba IndiaMart ThomasNet Anvyl LOLA, Hims, S’well Native Sourcify Maker’s Row Sewport Financing There’s a number of firms that focus on consumer brands, many of which combine an investment with incubation or branding, advertising, or other support. is a major player in this space — the company offers as well as financing options, as is is a newer firm that focuses on brands doing $1M+ in annual revenue. CircleUp credit equity Indie.vc . Assembled Brands Other funds include , , , , and invest exclusively in food and beverage. , , and (beauty-focused) all serve as accelerators that combine funding with agency-like support. Outroll Ventures Unilever Ventures Touchdown Ventures Beechwood Capital Simon Capital , Elizabeth Street , VTF Capital *. AccelFoods , First Beverage Group , Distill Ventures Bullish The Brandery SKU , XRC Labs , Sephora Accelerate and remain a popular way to fund an initial production run, as well as equity crowdfunding platforms like , , , and . Along with traditional credit options like small business loans (also offered via startups like , , and ), there are also a few new credit options catered directly to D2C brands. These include , (working capital), and (marketing funding). does the same via merchant cash advances and loans. Kickstarter Indiegogo SeedInvest Crowdfunder Republic Wefunder Fundbox SnapCap Kickfurther CircleUp Credit Advisors Dwight Funding Clearbanc Shopify Capital Inventory Management Inventory management and forecasting are crucial for young brands that are short on cash and storage space. Forecasting is complicated by the fact that these brands can have “viral” moments that are difficult to predict and lead to long waitlists. Like most other software categories, there are existing inventory management solutions (Netsuite, Workday, SAP, etc.). However, the pricing, features, and implementation often don’t work for early-stage, high growth companies. A few startup platforms that cater to D2C brands — ( , ) and ( ). Other options that are popular amongst e-commerce more broadly are , , , , , , and . Fuse Inventory Glossier, LOLA, MeUndies Snowe Stitch Labs Brooklinen, Thinx TradeGecko Finale Lightspeed Retail Ops Unleashed Veeqo Brightpearl Branding Many brands do this in-house, especially if they have a designer on the team or can easily consult with an expert. , and are a few of the more popular tools for managing brand assets, and some also include tools or design space for generating these assets. It’s also common to hire a freelancer on a platform like , , , , , and . Canva , Brandfolder , Bynder , Outfit , OpenBrand Frontify 99Designs , DesignCrowd Dribbble Behance Upwork Toptal Fiverr A number of design agencies have risen to fame for their work with top D2C brands — ( )and ( ) are two of the most popular. Others include ( ) ( ) ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), and ( . Red Antler Casper, Allbirds, Keeps, Brandless Gin Lane Hims, Sweetgreen, Harry’s, Stadium Goods Pentagram Buffy, Tender Greens, The Wing , Condensed Pair Eyewear, Num Num, Keepers , Partners & Spade Allbirds, Flamingo, Warby Parker , M. Gemi Collins Heyday, Nourish, Archer Farms Motto Even, Keetsa, Crown & Buckle Circus Maximus Roman, Bombfell High Tide Warby Parker, Casper, LOLA) Marketing Like traditional e-commerce companies, many D2C brands devote most of their marketing dollars to Facebook, Instagram, and Google. There is a sea of marketing software tools for new brands to manage this spend. To get a sense of what both early and late-stage brands are using, we used to check out the marketing stack for the top 15 most well-funded D2C brands, as well as the 29 brands who raised a VC seed round last year. We’ve included below platforms that were used by five or more brands out of this group. Siftery Most of the brands we surveyed used at least one option in each of the sub-categories above, making it by far the most complex area of the stack we examined. Seed-stage brands were more likely to experiment with similarly early-stage marketing platforms (perhaps because they are the most hungry to acquire customers!)—particularly in categories that go beyond the basics like referrals, re-targeting, and conversion. We know many brands are also using tools to schedule and post content to social media, which wouldn’t show up in a Siftery stack. Examples include (Instagram scheduler), (Twitter scheduler) as well as cross-platform schedulers and — which we’ve included in the “Customer Success” map below as they also support customer service. Later Tweetdeck Sprout Social Buffer Customer Success Similar to marketing, many of the customer success platforms built for traditional e-commerce seem to be working for D2C brands. Unlike marketing, however, we found most D2C brands used a fairly tight set of customer success solutions — most commonly a live chat tool ( and were the top two), an email/ticketing system ( and —which all also offer social support) and a social-focused service platform ( and ) Olark Zendesk Zendesk , Kustomer , Gorgias , Conversocial Sprout . We’ve also included customer review systems in the “Customer Success” category — though they could arguably be considered “Marketing” tools as well. and were by far the most-used platforms in this category. Yotpo Okendo Commerce & Payments Almost all of the seed-stage D2C brands we surveyed used either or as their commerce platform, while later-stage brands commonly used to process payments. About half of the 43 brands we looked at also used one or more of the following: and is another newer option that handles checkout, analytics, and fraud protection. Shopify Magento Stripe Google Wallet , Paypal , Apple Pay , Amazon Payments . Bolt Payments Outside of the core payment processing functionality, almost all of the subscription-based D2C brands we looked at used for their billing, and several of the later-stage brands used a fraud protection solution like and Brands with higher-priced items also often implements solutions to allow customers to pay over time — with platforms like , , and . ReCharge Payments Riskified Signifiyd . Affirm Klarna Quadpay Fulfillment, Shipping, & Returns We’ve discussed Inventory Management above, so in this category we‘ve focused on packaging, shipping and fulfillment, and returns. In packaging, arguably the most well-known brand is ( ) but many earlier-stage brands that struggle with Lumi’s prices and minimums turn to and also have quite a bit of traction in this space. Lumi Parachute, MeUndies, Rockets of Awesome Packlane . Arka Pakible On the shipping side, ( ), , and are three of the most popular options, though some brands ship directly via USPS or FedEx. helps companies offer same-day delivery. , , , , , and are other popular 3PL and fulfillment options for D2C brands and e-commerce more broadly. Shippo MeUndies, Ipsy, Hims ShipStation ShipBob Darkstore Flexe ShipHero RubyHas Quiet Logistics ID Logistics Dotcom Distribution , Fosdick and are focused on international shipping, which remains a huge problem for brands of all sizes. Brands use platforms like and to help customers track orders. On the returns side, and (sometimes used together!) are the two most popular options we found, with and as other common options. Passport Shipping , Flow , FlavorCloud Arrive , Newgistics , AfterShip , Narvar Returnly Happy Returns ReturnMagic Narvar Brick & Mortar Space As we’ve , D2C brands are increasingly experimenting with physical retail space — usually via pop-ups or by renting shelf space in their early days, and then setting up permanent stores further down the line. The last few years has seen the birth of many startups that aim to help brands tackle this without having to hire a broker or realtor. written about before In the shelf or display space category, some of the biggest contenders are (with an online marketplace and three stores in NYC), (focused on consumer hardware) (in Edmonton and Minneapolis), (Plano, TX), (NoHo in NYC), and (SF). On the short-term or pop-up side, and all offer solutions. assists with longer-term retail placements alongside (formerly thisopenspace), a CRV portfolio company that also helps smaller brands find short-term and shelf space. Bulletin b8ta Fourpost Neighborhood Goods Showfields Re:Store Storefront , AppearHere , Go-PopUp Leap Uppercase (customers include and ), also helps D2C brands with retail — but with a focus on connecting companies to vendors and service providers who can manage store operations. This includes maintenance, events, dry cleaning, and other custom services that brands may not have the time or expertise to set up themselves. Worksmith Outdoor Voices, Casper, Bonobos, Stance What’s Left To Build? There are several areas where we see considerable room for improvement on existing solutions, as well as other categories that have yet to be tackled. Here are just a few areas of opportunity we are particularly excited about: CACs continue to rise on Instagram and Facebook — though consumers remain excited to try new brands, it’s hard to cut through the noise on social feeds. Many brands are turning to cross-promotions with other brands to lower acquisition costs, and sites like have popped up to aggregate brands. We’ve also seen new entrants focus on dominating specific product categories (e.g. in beauty) or distribution via friend referrals (e.g. ). We’re excited to see more scalable, software-based solutions for brands to reach the right customer. Discovery. Newfound Supergreat MASSE It’s surprising how hard it is for brands large and small to ship internationally — just take a look at the variety of products on ! Because D2C brands advertise heavily on social media, where content can be shared globally (even if ads target a domestic audience), it’s especially important to be able to serve these potential customers. We’re very excited about starting to tackle this problem, and are looking forward to seeing these solutions expand to more brands. International Shipping. Grabr Passport , FlavorCloud , Flow We continue to see D2C brands struggle to finance their inventory, particularly given that they often can’t negotiate favorable payment terms with manufacturers early on. This results in many companies raising more venture funding (and taking more dilution) than they need to scale. , , , and have been making progress in providing working capital to brands, and we’re interested in watching how this space evolves. Financing. Clearbanc Assembled Brands Dwight Funding CircleUp As shown by the many categories above, brands have to piece together and manage a huge amount of different resources just to get a first product out the door. This can be especially overwhelming for small teams running on limited capital, who don’t have partnerships or contracts with larger retailers. It will likely take more time and capital in the space, but we’d be excited to see something closer to an end-to-end solution (even just for one category!) that simplifies brand operations. is one example — as well as serving as a subscription platform for brands like , , and , they also offer fulfillment, customer service, and business intelligence. Resource Aggregation. OceanX Ladder Cora Seed Thanks for reading! If you’re working on something in this space, please email us at twins@crv.com — we’d love to hear from you! Like this post? to help more people see our story, and share it with your friends! Clap for it Interested in reading more content from us? You can subscribe to our weekly newsletter, , for more insights on millennial and Gen Z trends: Accelerated https://accelerated.carrd.co/ Thank you to Saar Gur for his help with this post.

D2C 2.0: The Rise of Infrastructure

Learn how Josiah and the Trolysis team plan on powering your home with soda cans in the not-so-distant future. Davis Baer : What’s your background, and what are you working on? Trolysis has a kickass dream team of 8 people (myself, Tirthak, Bob, Annie, Cooper, Aaron, Noah and Ashley). Some highlights of their achievements include designing origami solar panels for NASA satellites, selling over $1 Billion of fuel cells for Bloom Energy, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Award in Energy, a two-time Y Combinator Alumni, and backgrounds from Stanford, MIT, Google, Airbus, and more. Trolysis has a ton of moving parts, but basically we’ve engineered a system to use recycled aluminum as fuel to make hydrogen and electricity. This may not sound that groundbreaking, but for pretty much the first time in history, we can make renewable energy on-site, on-demand, in extremely large quantities and at a cheaper price point than fossil fuels. First, though, a quick chemistry lesson. Aluminum has tons of uses and is one of the most abundant materials on earth. What a lot of people don’t know is that it is actually energy-dense. No seriously — it’s . 1 kilogram of aluminum contains roughly 8.8 kWh of energy. To put that in perspective, extremely 4x more energy-dense than Lithium with just 4 kg of aluminum, you could power the average american home for a full day . Why isn’t everyone powering their house with soda cans already, then? Because extracting the energy from the aluminum isn’t easy. The best way to do that is to strip it of a thin and drop it in water, where it will release its stored energy by ripping apart the molecules of water to release hydrogen and heat. oxide layer Now, onto what Trolysis does. The reaction I just described has been known to scientists for a long time ( ), but by itself it’s basically useless. For example, gasoline by itself can be lit on fire to extract its stored energy, but the reason it’s one of the most widely used fuels today is because someone came along and made an internal combustion engine to harness it. Trolysis is making the aluminum equivalent of an internal combustion engine, and instead of torque, we get hydrogen and electricity. here’s a demonstration What motivated you to get started with your company? Like millions of other people, I was deeply concerned about climate change, but beyond riding a bike and using high-efficiency appliances, I felt utterly powerless to do anything about it. I’m not one to just sit around and twiddle my thumbs waiting for someone else to solve things though, so I started digging and let my curiosity run free to find novel ways to help. I first came across the aluminum reaction completely by accident, while working on another project. Some of the materials I was working with caused that oxide barrier to be stripped and when I was cleaning up, the containers started bubbling like crazy. I did some looking into what the reaction was doing and immediately knew I was onto something special, but that was only the beginning. What went into building the initial product? This wasn’t something I could sit down and code in a weekend or slap together with a Raspberry Pi. To cite the analogy from before, we basically had to build an internal combustion engine from scratch in order to harness this reaction. I started by just researching other attempts and failures at putting this technology in a product in extreme detail. Before ever starting to tackle designing the system, I wanted to identify previous points of failure to both avoid them and see if I was missing something. I spent over 100 hours just reading scientific papers and digging through the history of this tech. From this research, I compiled a whole bunch of problems that needed to be solved and pretty well quantified what this product needed to do in order to have a chance of success. After doing this research, I got to work. Initially by myself but I realized pretty quickly I needed an extra brain (or 9) to do this right, so I recruited two of the most brilliant engineers I knew: my close friend Tirthak Saha and my brother, Noah (who actually built an internal combustion engine). has Over the course of a few years, we worked together on this as a side project in addition to our jobs. We spent thousands of hours and over $50,000 of our own money to test out various pieces of engineering and we collaborated with some very bright people to help tackle the engineering challenges that go with building a complex system like this. We made incredible progress during this time and ultimately all the hard work paid off. We iterated until we finally reached a point where our technology was able to consistently produce hydrogen at a cheaper rate than fossil fuels, and thus, Trolysis was born. What’s your business model, and how are you bringing this to market? Trolysis, at the highest level, is aiming to solve the disparity between the simple facts that the Earth is on fire and there’s not a super great way to fix it. That is not to say that there aren’t good ways out there, but the truth of the matter is that any solution has to be adopted at wide-scale for it to be effective, and that pretty much means you have to get big, huge, unglamorous industries to swap over their operations, which is a monster of a task. Making this system as attractive to these organizations as possible is a driving force behind both our initial product and go-to-market strategies. Everyone’s mind goes straight to running homes off soda cans when they hear about our tech, but there’s a lot that has to happen to get there. We’ve talked with customers and forecasted dozens of strategies to find the most optimal path is starting off with commercial & industrial hydrogen and using revenue from that to fund expansion into other verticals. Render of commercial-size unit Right now, about 95% of hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels and almost all of it goes to heavy industry. We’re attractive because we can solve problems for them, both logistical and financial. Being carbon-neutral is just icing on the cake. One mile of hydrogen pipeline costs about $765,000. A hydrogen storage tank large enough to support a facility’s needs is around $5m and those are costs you have to pay before you can even start buying hydrogen. Our model is to install one of our systems, supply our treated aluminum to it and charge for the hydrogen the system produces. We can come in and put one of our systems down for under $2m and since it’s on-demand, you produce the hydrogen as you use it, meaning far less storage capacity is needed. The hydrogen itself is also less expensive, so they’re reducing costs at both ends. These are just the tip of the iceberg of our benefits, but the point is that we solve headaches big enough to convince big, risk-averse businesses that switching is worth their time and risk. We’re currently in the middle of what is shaping up to be a really solid fundraise as we gear up for our first market deployments. What are your goals for the future? As we expand and grow our foothold in the commercial hydrogen industry, we want to start moving into verticals with even more impactful use cases. Our tech is a Swiss Army knife. It can be tweaked to suit everything from hydrogen refueling stations, grid-scale energy storage, home electricity generation and even providing power and clean water to remote villages. My goal is for this technology to bolster the switch to renewables at a global scale. To be clear, I’m not saying our goal is to have Trolysis dominate the energy industry and be the only thing people use — that was never our intention. The beautiful thing about this technology we’ve built is that it’s not here to replace other technologies — it’s here to augment them. The ultimate goal of this tech is to make renewables more feasible than fossil fuels. That requires a team effort. as a whole To that end, my goal is to see cities that have solar panels on every rooftop, windmills in abundance and electric vehicles dominating the pavement, but with our technology filling all the gaps; storing the energy at high efficiency until its needed, allowing those EVs to top up their batteries with aluminum so you’re not chained to charging stations, and silently load-balancing the grid. All this goes to making an economy where energy is democratized. Why the heck should we put trillions of dollars in the coffers of people who had the foresight to drill up dinosaurs when anyone can get their hands on aluminum? It’s the quintessence of putting the power back in the hands of the people. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles you’ve overcome? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? We’re a square peg in a round hole. Our tech is awesome because it has a ton of applications and solves a lot of problems, but that’s a problem because people naturally try to put things in boxes. So, when you take technology that’s complex to begin with and it doesn’t squarely fit into one box, people can get confused. This is where we’ve learned to be extremely deliberate in how we explain this technology because it’s easy for people to get tripped up or miss important details. Finding the right people that grasp the full picture of the tech and all the different moving parts is pivotal. There’s not much I’d do differently, though. That’s not to say we haven’t messed up along the way, but like anything, it’s about perspective. My whole life, my dad has always fostered my entrepreneurial spirit and one of the most powerful things he’s said that has always stuck with me is that failure and mistakes are nothing to be afraid of. Even if you fail, it was an adventure — you learn and can be better next time. This whole experience has been a function of learning and the mistakes we’ve made early on helped us to be much stronger and avoid bigger ones later. Have you found anything particularly helpful or advantageous? Being extremely deliberate on choosing people to come on the team and putting the effort into making a strong culture is probably the single largest driver of our success. The success of any company really just boils down to the team behind it and Trolysis is no exception. I’ve been extremely lucky in bringing together a team of brilliant and passionate individuals. All of our team members are co-owners of the company with equity. The level of passion and confidence is clear when you have this group of high-caliber individuals investing their time and effort into making this company successful. That’s something I’m extremely proud of. Another big factor to our success were elements that were beyond our control. Trolysis is sitting in a “goldilocks zone” of timing and technology. Climate change is something people are seeing as a real, imminent threat and secondary industries like electric vehicles and solar panels mean the technology can reach far wider than it could 10 years ago. Technological advancements and shifting public opinion of the last 10 years have been huge in making a stronger market for this tech. What’s your advice for entrepreneurs who are just starting out? You have to breathe and you can’t force growth. I see too many people spinning their wheels, working 100 hour weeks just to barely move the needle. It’s getting better, but people think if you’re not working yourself to the bone, you’re not dedicated enough. Yeah, I sometimes work until 4 in the morning when something needs to get done, but most days I leave the office at 6 and turn my brain off to spend time with my family. Founder burnout is real and you’re only hurting yourself by not taking time to breathe. It’s not sustainable. Where can we go to learn more? You can check out our , , or . I love hearing from people and getting their thoughts and I make a point to read every email I get. So if you’re excited about what we’re doing and want to get involved or just think it’s cool, shoot me an email or go to town in the comments below! Website Facebook Instagram Twitter This interview is brought to you by , a tool to schedule and automatically repeat your posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business OneUp

Founder Interviews: Josiah Nelson of Trolysis

# start background I embarked on a journey to seriously skill up in the domain of years ago, and I started out doing tutorials on Codecademy as well as signing up with courses on Udemy. As my work involved quite a bit of travel, I downloaded the tutorials offline into my ipad and studied on the plane. I started out with the intention of learning programming to build useful things, and even though the journey was really tough at every step, I realised that I never knew what the word ‘difficult’ really meant until I immersed myself into data structures and algorithms. programming I am a major in Aerospace Engineering, graduated First Class Hons from Singapore. After that I joined Schlumberger as a New Products Engineer, working on oilfield pumps and had stints in in the North Sea installing equipment. Hours were long (16 hour days were common, with weekends usually burnt too), pay was low but the experience was amazing, and I would not trade that for anything else. Till today the survival training doing capsize drills and going down a Norwegian escape chute as well as taking the helicopter to the rig are fond memories, not something people would experience unless they are an oilfield engineer. After that I joined P&G as a researcher working on Hair Care brands, after 2 promotions I started to realize that whilst project management, stakeholder management (making sure everyone you’re working with is happy) and establishing credibility might be important, and actually is the most important anywhere, I was not gaining skills on the job which are required to do what I am super passionate about, which is to ideate, build useful things that solve problems and set up a brand. The environment I was immersed in though, was super great, with supportive colleagues and management. And working in that corporate setting made me realise how much there is to learn about how a company works; how management makes decisions (whether data-based or from the gut (intuition), which is why business is such a beautiful science and also an art) on allocating people and resources and integrating efforts from different departments to build and invigorate brands. Amazing stuff. I wanted to help management and product managers at all levels of the company make better-informed decisions by providing quick and accurate facts, and this led me to pick up programming to create a scraping and data mining tool for the masses, and this tool has been providing valuable consumer insights to teams working on billion dollar brands like Pantene, Vicks, Tide, Head and Shoulders, SKII, Oral b, etc. The tool is called (acronym WGT) (I have set up the authentication so only P&G employees can create an account). www.wheregottext.com Other than WGT, I have been building a job hunting app and an app for recognising products in the supermarket and showing relevant online ratings and reviews from other consumers so that consumers can make a more informed decision before buying, instead of just talking to the sales reps in the stores, among other things. I have also been involved in Android and iOS app development, which I shall describe another time. Anyway, enough with the ranting and I will leave more introduction to another post. Till now, one of the more difficult problems I have come across is the question: Given a BST, find a list of lists which can make the BST. # end background I shall use the example in Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell to provide my perspective and explanation in hopes that people coming across this problem would not struggle as much as I did when I was trying to find useful explanations online, with no success. I will provide the code in . The code in the book is written in Java. Python Consider the binary search tree on the left. We can try to manually list some of the possible arrays that contains elements that could be inserted to form the binary search tree. [20,10,5,15,25] [20,10,25,5,15] [20, 25,10,15,5] … Notice that for every subtree (consisting of three nodes) the root must always be inserted first, followed up any order of the children, because the children are at the same level. My initial though to solve this problem is to first do a pre-order traversal of all the nodes, and store the nodes into a list. I would then generate a list of lists of all permutations of the elements, thereafter filtering out lists starting with the value 20, and also the condition of 10 coming before 5 and 15 (since 10 must be added first to form the BST). There are many flaws with this thinking. This is a very manual method and if the BST is bigger or if we are not able to visualise the BST in a chart as above, it would be unnecessarily complex to figure out the hierarchy of nodes. We could do a BFS and figure out that 10 must be before 5 and 15, but I would rather follow the textbook method than to implement this. We know that we always break down the problem into smaller ones, and then for BSTs we could use recusion to expand a solution to a bigger problem. In the book, two recursion functions are being used. One is called weaveLists, and another is called allSequences which calls weaveLists. First of all, let’s define a Tree class. We need to be able to do insertions and also to get the root. class Node:def __init__(self, val):self.l = Noneself.r = Noneself.v = val class Tree:def __init__(self):self.root = None def getRoot(self):return self.root def insert(self, val):if(self.root == None):self.root = Node(val)else:self._insert(val, self.root) def _insert(self, val, node):if(val < node.v):if(node.l != None):self._insert(val, node.l)else:node.l = Node(val)else:if(node.r != None):self._insert(val, node.r)else:node.r = Node(val) Thereafter, we want to be able to weave the elements of a subtree. The weaveList function is as follows (I added in comments directly into the code to explain what is happening) : # Note that in the recursion, we are always using the same reference to first, second and prefix lists, and hence operations to modify these lists would have to be done in-place. Any copies would have to be done with the deepcopy function. ### EDIT TO CODE BELOW: instead of using result = prefix.copy(), use: import copyresult = copy.deepcopy(prefix) Since .copy() is a shallow copy. Thank you to Zhi Yong for pointing that out. # 'first' list shall be referred to as first[]# 'second' list shall be referred to as second[]# 'prefix' list shall be referred to as prefix[] def weaveLists(first, second, results, prefix):# if first or second is an empty listif not first or not second:# ensuring that result is a CLONE and not a reference to prefixresult = prefix.copy() ### EDIT HERE TO DEEPCOPY# add result to first or/ and second listsif first:result += firstif second:result += second# append the weaved list which is result, to resultsresults.append(result)return # add result to first or/ and second lists  
    if first:  
        result += first  
    if second:  
        result += second  
    # append the weaved list which is result, to results  
    results.append(result)  
    return

# this would be the method as described in the textbook  
# first, remove and store first element of first\[\]  
headFirst = first.pop(0)  
# append to prefix  
prefix.append(headFirst)  
### add recursive call to operate on first\[\]  
weaveLists(first, second, results, prefix)   
# exit when first\[\] is empty

# reset prefix for second recursive call below by removing last element  
# IMPT to modify in-place  
del prefix\[-1\]   
# reset first\[\] for second recursive call below by adding back first element  
# IMPT to modify in-place  
first.insert(0,headFirst)

# do the same thing on the second\[\]  
headSecond = second.pop(0)  
prefix.append(headSecond)  
### add recursive call to operate on first\[\] and second\[\]  
weaveLists(first, second, results, prefix)  
del prefix\[-1\]  
second.insert(0,headSecond) We want the weaveList function to operate on subtrees and build up to the entire Tree. Hence, in general we would want weaveList to work on subtree 1 which is in blue, then the entire tree which is green. The code for allSequences is hence (with comments for explanation): def allSequences(node):# this is the final list of lists we want to outputresults = []# termination, append [] so that results will not be empty\# and the nested for loop will still execute since# leftSeq == [[]] and rightSeq == [[]] in terminationif not node:results.append([])return results # prefix will always be root of subtree  
prefix = \[\]  
prefix.append(node.v)  
# then represent the left and right subtrees  
leftSeq = allSequences(node.l)  
rightSeq = allSequences(node.r)

# nested for loop and call weaveLists on each list in  
# leftSeq and rightSeq, which are list of lists  
# and each represents results of each subtree  
for left in leftSeq:  
    for right in rightSeq:  
        # make weaved an empty list,   
        # which is results in weaveList  
        weaved = \[\]  
        weaveLists(left, right, weaved, prefix)  
        # weaved is list of lists generated by left\[\] and right\[\]  
        # add weaved list of lists to final   
        # results list of lists  
        results += weaved return results The main function to drive the program would be: if __name__ == "__main__": tree = Tree()  
  
tree.insert(20)  
tree.insert(10)  
tree.insert(25)  
tree.insert(5)  
tree.insert(15)

allSeq = allSequences(tree.getRoot())

for each in allSeq:  
    print (each)  
print (len(allSeq)) Copy all the code into one single script and run it to see results. The code is in Python3. Feel free to reach out for any comments, advice or questions.

BST Sequences in Python

How to get unstuck when you’re feeling down You work hard. Every day you are prospecting clients, pumping out valuable content, and perfecting your craft. But do you ever feel like, no matter how much work you put in, maybe you’re just not the type of person who does ? this I’m not the type of person who can start their own business… I’m not the kind of person who could ever write a book… How can I call myself a “consultant”? When you do get results, maybe you brush them off as just luck. Or you feel like you have to be “tricking” people somehow into thinking you’re smarter than you are. Well, I have some great news for you. It’s not just you! by the “It is estimated that 70% of people will experience at LEAST one episode of this Impostor Phenomenon in their lives” According to a 2011 report International Journal of Behavioral Science Everybody struggles with these kinds of thoughts, especially if you are trying to achieve a new goal. Something that you’ve never done before. I’ve been struggling with this over the last 2 weeks myself. Last night I was laying awake at 3 in the morning thinking to myself “What the hell am I even DOING with my time?” and stressing myself out! It can be so easy to feel bad about yourself. But you know what? After working my way through it, I realized I was actually productive this week. way I went to all of my classes, was able to do all of my homework assignments on time, went to an Innovation Summit in another city, I finished quite a few lessons in a marketing course I’m taking, and I finished not just one — but client projects while I was at it. On top of that, I did some errand running for household stuff and was able to check off my 3 priorities for the week. TWO So what gives? How can I be doing all of this stuff, and still not feel good about myself? For me, the worst thing about Impostor Syndrome is how it can mask the of the tasks that I’m spending my time on during the day. value I wasn’t thinking about all of the stuff that I did this week while I was stressed. Do you know what I was thinking about? I too busy beating myself up and making myself feel guilty! I was making myself feel guilty about a concert I went to on Tuesday (I was able to do a lot of stuff for school, but not that many things for my clients that day), and for chilling out on Thursday and… Well… Basically not doing anything. I was beating myself up about not walking my dog 30 minutes every single day, and that I haven’t practiced German lately, and I haven’t been reading every day (even though I’ve already read 5 books this month!). Anyway, all of this stuff was going through my mind last night — and I wanted to talk a little bit about the strategies I use to try to overcome the feeling. Because the negative anxiety feelings can definitely paralyze you! It can make you feel like nothing you do moves the needle in your business or makes a difference, why should you bother trying something else, what would you even try? There are 2 strategies that I use that I find helpful. super But before I get into that, here is the first thing you need to accept: If you are practicing your “craft” (whatever you think you “can’t” do, or “aren’t the type of person” who does “that”), then the kind of person who does that! you are If you have a novel you want to get out there that you think about all the time, then who’s a writer! you are the kind of person If you have a cool new product that’s always on your mind, then who’s an entrepreneur. you are the kind of person Whatever types of ideas, or dreams, or goals that gravitate to you the most naturally? They come to you easily, because YOU’RE “that” type of person ;) Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Here are my 2 simple strategies for overcoming Impostor Syndrome: #1 Commit to Pushing Through — NO MATTER WHAT! Steven Pressfield wrote an entire book called “The War of Art” to hammer this one point home: If you want to be a writer, or an entrepreneur, or a polyglot, or whatever it is you want then… You HAVE to show up every day! The only way to get good at something is to chip away at it, consistently, until you reach that tipping point. Remember, the only way to lose is if you don’t show up at all. What if you’re not sure what to do next? What should you work on? Gary Vaynerchuk has a philosophy called . “The Clouds & The Dirt” To sum it up: The principles behind your greatest product, the message you want to express to the masses through your art — all of that feel good “higher plane” crap? That is the clouds. The dirt is the grime on your face after you’ve spent a day sharpening your craft. It’s reading HUGE quantities of your favorite literature to cram all those good ideas in there. It’s reading your industry journals to keep up to date. It’s studying with mentors, or in high quality courses to in an extremely focused way improve your skills. And those are the only things that matter. Gary says that most people waste their time living in the middle. If most of your day is spent putting out fires in your company, or debating on which payment processor to use for online check out then you’re not in the clouds or the dirt. How can you use this as a strategy to fight back against Impostor Syndrome? Make a list of “agreed upon” activities in advance! and get super clear on what it is that you actually want. Use a Tony Robbins style of goal planning, Ask yourself “What NEEDS to happen for me to feel successful?”. Be honest with yourself. Do you have a revenue goal? A # of email subscribers? To be “successful” as an author do you need to publish 1 book? 3 books? 12 books? Should those books sell a certain number of copies? How long of a conversation do you need to be able to have in your target language? Those are just some suggestions, but it’s okay if your answer is different! The key is to understand what needs to happen for you to feel that you’ve successfully accomplished your goal. Next, brainstorm a MASSIVE list of every single thing you could possibly do to get yourself to this success. You will probably be guessing — and that’s okay! Tony calls this a Massive Action Plan (MAP), you should have a paper overflowing with ideas on next steps you can take to reach your goals. there is a lot of helpful advice in there that explains how to take a long term goal (like “To feel successful as an Entrepreneur I need to have 3 businesses with a revenue of over $700,000”) and into smaller sub goals. If you have time to watch the video I linked to Tony’s goal planning workshop, chunk it Don’t skip it! Alright. So, now you have a few things here that will guide you in creating you “agreed on behaviors” list: Gary’s “Clouds & Dirt” philosophy A clear idea on what you need to do to that you’ve successfully accomplished your goal feel A big brainstorm of everything you think you could try to get yourself there Using these 3 things to guide you, start reflecting on what you need to “close the gap”! How will you get from here to there? Some things to start you off on what you could include on your “A-Okay!” list would be: reading books, taking courses, working on your company culture, of course sitting down to do your craft (so a writer for example, sitting down to write or a freelancer working on a client project OR creating a sample project) would all be things that could help you get to where you need to go. Here are some of the things that are on my “Good to Go” list (you can call the list whatever you want lol): Working on a high quality marketing course, reading a book, reviewing relevant academic research, working on writing something for a client, writing a high value article, doing lead generating activities. You could even list specific websites you want to stick to, listing sites that have consistent high quality information and are low on distractions. But if you can think critically and agree in advance with what is okay for you to be doing, then there’s no reason to feel bad about it after the fact. You have already sat down and decided that the type of person who is a successful writer does X, Y, Z and taken the decision making out of the process. #2 — Count your wins! Look, when you’re trying to make positive progress obviously a lot of your attention is focused on “where you’ve got to go”. But you shouldn’t let your wins vanish into the night either! If you use a paper journal, an online “gamification” tool like , or use a Google Keep note (if you turn on “checkboxes” — Google will show you items 1–3 that need to be checked “And 27 checked items!” or whatever at the bottom) then you will be able to quantify your progress as evidence of your completed tasks pile up. Habitica Seeing your accomplishments stockpile like this can help your quantify what’s actually coming out of your spent time. Reviewing this list of wins can also be a great source of strength when you’re feeling stuck. The easiest way to crawl up from the lowest lows of Impostor Syndrome is to change your focus. When you’re making performance driven decisions, of course your mind is going to be on your endgame a lot. An easy way to shift your state is to instead look back, and simply appreciate how far you’ve already come :) — — — — — Sign up here! Psst… Did you find this article helpful? ^ Sign up for my email list for actionable business and marketing tips — once a week.

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