Why My Blog Posts are Horribly Written

Hint: It's not because I can't write.

Tl;dr - Quantity with minor edits would make me a better writer than perfecting posts.
Efficiency = Quality / Speed

I've been self-teaching myself the piano for the past 7 years to a mixed degree of success. I can play a couple tough songs (by tough, I mean it sounds challenging enough that I wouldn't mind playing in front of guests), but I can barely sight read and have very little understanding of theory. My musical abilities rely on brute repetitive practice and muscle memory, which obviously are not characteristic of a talented pianist.

However recently, I've went down a few notches and started playing simpler songs that I can sight read almost flawlessly within 2-3 attempts. I must've been through a few dozen of these songs, and I can already notice that my ability to play an unfamiliar piece has significantly improved.

The reasoning is quite obvious--if one of my weaknesses is sight reading, then I should sight read a lot. Mastering a beautiful song over a few months quickly becomes tedious, and any benefit to sight reading disappears after a few playthroughs.

I view blog writing the same way. I want to organize and structure my thoughts in my head quickly and be able to freewrite them down without outlining. The only way I can do that is practice organizing my thoughts as I freewrite.

A quick readthrough can help identify flaws, and peer review can give an outside perspective. But perfection is not a priority right now. I want efficiency (quality/speed) and would rather not waste 80% of my time in the editing stage.

The Risk of Innovation to Startups

Several of my tech entrepreneur friends are at a point in their company where they need to decide whether or not to continue. These are brilliant guys in nascent industries that have been hyped by the media in the past 3-4 years, and they all struggle with the same question -- do people really care about my product.

This concern, in their mind, is often phrased as -- how do I change people's innate behavior to use these products?

Now I'm not going to go into another post about the need for customer development and validating demand for a product--I have done so already and will continue to in the future. Rather, I want to muse about a reason why choosing a nascent market is (too) often a losing strategy.

The repeated conclusion I hear from these struggling founders is early adopters are your only customers, and you can only push your product so far before nobody else is willing to pay. Silicon Valley tends to over estimate how quickly tech gets adopted -- new industries with unproven demand takes too long to develop for most venture backed companies to depend on.

For example, 3D printing has been buzzing around in the press for the past ~3 years. However, it seems that the vast majority of dollars go to either the companies that make the printers, or a few successful printer farms. They is a long tail of 3D printed consumer goods companies that might be sustainable and growing, but nothing at a scale to match even a tenth the hype of how 3D printing will revolutionize manufacturing.

News of quadcopters, as another example, has been circulating the interwebs for a year or two now. Ignoring military research, I imagine that the vast majority of dollars flowing in this space are to the few companies that manufacture parts and quadcopter kits, not futuristic delivery services.

Or many payment companies idealize how in the old days, store owners knew who you were as you entered, and automatically placed your order. They paint a picture of the future where your face would pop up in the POS system, or the barista would prepare your drink as you enter the driveway. Personalized coupons based on your shopping habits would be pushed to your phone as you walk around a geo-fenced store. But does anyone truly want this? How often have you heard people complaining that they want a deal on Corn Flakes as they walk down the cereal isle? Yes, your preferences might be more integrated into shopping. Yes, the store owner or cashier might address you by your name. But you'd never get to personally know the people serving you anyway. People are shopping right now -- would adding all these services (and introducing massive privacy concerns) increase the amount of money people are already spending?

I don't have data for any of these claims and am very open to being told I'm wrong. I am simply regurgitating what other founders I've spoken to have been saying. Like everything in SV, there are exceptions all over the place. But as someone starting a tech company with no prior wins -- to what extent do I want to bank my future company on nascent markets? 

Why the Fukushima radiation leak matters

There have been several articles about the ecological devastation caused from Fukushima's nuclear plant that was damaged in the 2011 Earthquake. Here's an example: http://www.theinertia.com/environment/mother-fukushima/

The gist of these articles is:
1) Hundreds of tons of radiation waste is leaking into the ocean every day since the earthquake.
2) Ocean currents have been transporting that radiation everywhere in the world, most recently to the west coast
3) Many animals species, including some land animals, are dying from unknown causes
4) The seafood we eat has been poisoned.

And each and every of these articles have their doubters arguing:
1) Hundreds of tons of radiation is nothing compared to the vastness of the ocean
2) The radiation content in ocean water, even if increased 10-50x, is still below harmful levels
3) There is no concrete science backing these claims
4) The author is using scare tactics by stringing together random events to get views

First, when it comes human health and the environment, science and the media takes decades to come to conclusions--usually after the damage is done. The majority denied human involvement in global warming until what, 10 years ago? Let's not forget the ecological damage DDT caused that went unnoticed during WWII to the 70's. Or how in the 50's, everyone thought smoking was harmless until people starting getting lung cancer years later. 

Secondly, I don't think the masses realize how sensitive ocean life is. Small fluctuations in ocean acidity, or a temperature increase of just 1C can cause coral bleaching and kill 90% of all life in a region. Maybe 10-30x radiation levels is harmless to humans, but we don't understand how it will affect sea life. 

Thirdly, most of us don't give a rat's ass about ocean life and view this as a localized human-problem that killed a dozen people. Personally, I think this disconnect is due the majority of us never seeing or interacting with underwater life on a routine basis, nor realizing that billions of people rely on seafood as a primary staple in their diet.

So yeah, there's no concrete science indicating the magnitude of the damage caused. It might turn out to be a non-problem. But when it comes to environment or health, I don't think its a risk we can ignore until the data pours in years later.

Employers can fix America's healthcare problems without new technology or federal policy changes.

I recently watched a video on the CEO of Safeway describing about how they revolutionized their healthcare policy. It's a little dated, but the premise is sound.

http://coe.berkeley.edu/static/streaming/gtl-conference/2009/recording-part-1.html
(It's somewhere past the hour mark)

In short, most employers have been seeing around an 8.5% annual growth in health care costs, but Safeway's has been flat despite providing quality service. They do this by actively encouraging their employees to adopt healthier habits. Their policy is founded on some great principles:

1. Insure everyone: Everyone is covered, regardless of pre-existing conditions. It's still cheaper to provide preventative care to higher risk individuals than to treat them after a serious health issue arises. 
2. Create personal responsibility: Safeway had weight-loss competitions within stores, with thousands of employees competing. Within one year, they managed to move 7% of their total employees out of the "obesity category."  
3. Reward healthy behavior with financial incentives: Employees who don't smoke get an extra $300 of credit, which goes to their retirement account. Not obese? +$300. Don't have high blood pressure, hypertension, high cholesterol? Same deal.
4. Pay for results, not service - Safeway does a survey of prices and picks a fair (usually close to the median) amount they'd cover. Employees can choose to go to any hospital they want and Safeway would subsidize the procedure by the predefined amount.

You don't need new technology to drastically improve healthcare. You don't even need policy change. The fundamental goal of healthcare spending is to make people healthier, and doing so would reduce the need to spend on healthcare. I bet that employers can collectively cut $500B/year in healthcare costs within 5 years simply by being proactive about making their employees healthier. That's a quick 3% of GDP that can be better spent elsewhere.

I got 25K views from HN, but now what?

So I made a quick hack mapping hospital chargemaster prices in the country:

http://www.bestmedicareprice.com/

It got #1 on Hacker News all day Friday, giving me ~25,000 views. Whoo!

I'm trying to semi-live blog my thoughts about this. I never planned on working very deeply in health care because of all the red tape, but this might be the momentum to get me started.

What I learned:
- There is interest. People don't know how much prices fluctuate throughout the country
- Some people want to see more data, such as growth rates of chronic diseases, commodity procedures (like dental), or price comparisons for treatments around the world
- Data in healthcare is highly fragmented based on state, often not very insightful, and usually non-existent.
- People are genuinely willing to help me in this issue because it strikes a chord with many

My questions, in order of severity:
1) How can I use this, or any other accessible data, to make a sustainable business in this space? Sell visualized data and reports to insurance companies? Sell simulation software to state Medicare organizations to help them plan policy? Make a kayak.com for elective procedures? I need help figuring this out. Healthcare is a vast space that I know little about right now, so any direction would help tremendously
2) Where can I get health-quality data about doctors and hospitals?
3) How can I reach patients who are looking for cheaper, out-of-pocket procedures and can't find it?

Writing Experiment - Blogs without scroll

A lot of people who strive to improve their writing muscle embark on a daily writing challenge, usually consisting of 1000 words every day for 100 or 365 days. I've tried several of these myself, but I'm going to reveal my sad truth--I can't do it.

Well, to elaborate, I can't write 1000 words of publishable content a day. Some days, I have more important things to do than share a fleeting thought--like spending time with family. Other's I'd rather opt for an extra hour of sleep. Maybe someday when writing comes naturally and I have fewer things on my plate, 1000 words/day would be doable, but that time is not now.

I have dozens of 50-90% written blog posts somewhere archived in my google docs. The topics are all over the place--startup lessons, education reform, travel experiences, psychology, and life values. Many of them are long and took days to write. Sure, I could finish them, but the last 10% takes half the time, and I have little to gain from publishing a post that will get only a few hundred views and no comments.

So here's an experiment I want to try out: write and publish a paragraph of juicy, rich meat 3-4 days a week. This would minimize boring revision time, force me to be concise, and train me in writing what is essentially an elevator pitch.

Would it make a great blog? Probably not. Would people read it? I don't really care. Would it make me holistically a better writer? No. But releasing short, roughly-edited snippets is better than never releasing masterpieces.

My time limit is 15min/post, starting with this one.

 

It Took 3 Days of Customer Development to Realize My Idea Sucked.

As an engineer in the Bay Area, I routinely receive cold emails from recruiters expressing excitement in my technical background. Messages often start out with the unfortunately familiar “I see you know Javascript! I'd love to chat more about your interests” And of course I don't respond--clearly they either didn’t look very deeply into my background to comment with more insight, or they lack the technical know-how to say anything more.

But what if they knew that I may not be as technical as my engineering degree from a top school indicated? Would they have still reached out? With that whiff of opportunity, I decided to test out a new startup idea.

Hypotheses:

• Many recruiters lack the necessary technical skills or industry experience to effectively evaluate a candidate’s skills. 
• Identifying quality talent would optimize time and energy spent on placing and promoting a candidate and thus help recruiters make more money. 

Business Idea: I’d use technical experts in the crowd to perform resume checks or introductory phone interviews on a recruiter’s candidate. This would function as a third-party certification to add credibility when recruiters promote qualified candidates to companies, and help them allocate time on the right candidates.

Armed with a gorgeous signup page, a list of questions, and half a dozen phone meetings lined up, it was time to see if all of Steve Blank's rants actually mean anything.

THE FEEDBACK

Turned out that all eight recruiters I spoke with said they’d never use it, and here’s why:

• Certifications weaken trust - One recruiter likened skill checks with white papers--they do nothing except “manage risk.” Recruiters want lasting relationships with companies, but a hiring manager asking for credentials is the same as saying “I don’t trust you. Give me proof.” 

• Most companies don’t want the best people -This probably sounds ridiculous in Silicon Valley, where talent is perpetually lacking. However, most larger companies are not highly innovative and use old technology. A qualified engineer would propose a better product that would involve revamping the system, which often means fixing what isn’t (obviously) broken. These companies tend to prefer sacrificing skill for stability. The engineer who is competent and willing to operate and maintain legacy systems and stick around for a few years is worth more than the genius who’d stir trouble by modernizing. Plus, they don’t pay enough to attract or retain the best.

• Some recruiters actually want to be good at their jobs - The best recruiters want to train themselves in whatever industry they focus on to adequately vet candidates. Whether or not they actually succeed is another story, but reliance on third-party certifications is like admitting that they don’t know the subject. 

• Darwinian filtering works - Because the bar to be a recruiter is exceptionally low, many are inexperienced and underqualified. These recruiters would benefit the most from a technical skill vetting service, but they also tend to underperform in other essential skills (networking, keeping candidates engaged, etc.) that they’d leave the industry anyway within a year or two.

• Matching is hit or miss - The best and the worst candidates are easy to recognize, so vetting services are only really useful for those inbetween. However, there is so much variability that a candidate may have botched an interview simply because he was tired that day or didn’t know that one question. One company might say the client too “arrogant” to be hireable, while another might say he is charming and meshes with the team perfectly. It’s often more insightful simply to throw the candidate at a few companies and test the responses.

THE REAL PROBLEM

Turns out I didn’t even bother sharing the website with a single recruiter I spoke with. I also wasted three days designing and coding a pretty landing page to collect signups: www.aidrecruit.com (if it's still up). I did not speak to in-house corporate recruiters or small businesses, so there may still be an opportunity there. I focused this as a value-add tool for agency recruiters and agency contractors.

The underlying goal of customer development is to figure out the real pain point and then build the right solution. From all my chats, the recurring problem was not evaluating candidates, but engaging them. This involves a few steps:

1. Identifying when/if they are in the job market
2. Somehow convince them to come to meetups, beer nights, coffee meetings, etc.
3. Once they are emotionally invested, get them to talk about their background or interests and answer a few preliminary technical questions.
4. Actually propose jobs they'd be excited about

As of right now, the best way to figure this out is also the slowest--long term, in-person relationship building.