i just drank a mocha and my BPM is over 9000
Hey every1.
Few lil updates.
Y-Combinator
Zip’s was part of Y-Combinator S20! Not many people apart from my close buddies knew I was going through it for the last few months, so, happy to tell everyone here :).
It was awesome. A solid 9.0/10 experience, despite being fully-remote. My batchmates are some of the brightest people I’ve ever met. My YC Partners were amazing and ridiculously helpful, shout-out to them: Aaron Epstein (Co-Founder @ Creative Market), Kevin Lin (Co-Founder @ Twitch), and Tim Brady (CPO / Employee #1 @ Yahoo).
I could write many pages on my YC experience, but, I think I have more important things to do at the moment :). I’ve noted all the details down in my personal journal and perhaps I’ll write something more lengthy when I have more time to do so.
Digital Demo Day was last Monday. Pretty easy and super well run by YC. Zip did well. Made it into TechCruch’s Top 20 here which doesn’t mean a whole lot but good to know that the press clearly understands what we do. Also, good for SEO ;).
Raised Money
Yeah, so, raised money! I was already in talks with a VC before Demo Day and closed right on Demo Day. I don’t really wanna say how much or from who left but I’ll just say Zip is now extremely well-capitalized to attack the problem + market effectively :).
Raising money is perhaps something else I’ll write more about one day.
With that said…we’re hiring full-timers!!
Check out the posting here. Compensation range included in the posting as wel.
I’m going to add more positions over the next few days right now I just have the one for an engineer. Mainly looking for engineers, a content producer, a curriculum creator, and an operations person in the immediate future.
I’m really excited.
Really really excited.
It’s time to build :).
Sage Mode
I’ve always seen meditation as something pretty wack. Idk why. I guess it just seems weird. Why would you want to do nothing?
But, I was watching Naruto the other day and he was training for this new ability called “Sage Mode” where he meditates and gathers energy from nature around him. Once he achieves Sage Mode he has increase speed, reaction time, and strength.
So basically I was inspired by this and also tried to go Sage Mode myself. I literally copied Naruto’s training.
I’ve been spending around 75 minutes every day just sitting still with my eyes closed somewhere quiet. I don’t try to clear my head or anything because I think that’s lame. All I do is sit there and let my thoughts do their thing.
It is insanely difficult. Oh my gosh.
Days 1-5 were…horrifyingly hard. I couldn’t stop thinking for the full 75 minutes. Everything from everyday problems with Zip to funny memories from my childhood kept popping up.
I’d have these excruciating headaches for the rest of the day. But, a homie’s gotta hit Sage Mode.
It’s getting easier though. I’m only a week in. But, it’s been good. I’ll likely keep it up daily. I feel clearer after.
Sometimes I have these moments of “nothingness” where I’m truly thinking of nothing because I already thought through all my thoughts.
Hopefully, I can hit Sage Mode soon but I’m pretty far off right now. I’m not calling it meditation because meditation doesn’t sound exciting and Sage Mode is cool to me.
Books
Currently reading “The Everything Store” which is about Amazon’s rise and this book is a solid 8/10 so far 50% in. It just hypes me up. Sometimes as a founder I feel like I just need a never-ending supply of hype and books like these deliver that to me :).