Projects

I tend to have too many ideas that I want to pursue at any one given time, and wind up letting life get in the way instead of focusing in on one or two. I’m working on prioritizing what I want to pursue and doing so. I’ll keep a record of what I’ve decided to pursue here. Some of them are simple designs that I’m working on in my spare time, some of them are passion projects, and when I’m building websites or startups, they will be listed here as well.

My “Dream Desk” – This is just a fun personal project. I’ve always been dissatisfied with desks.. They are just always lacking, or not quite high enough, or wide enough, or the shape isn’t quite right. I’ve also got a love for desktop computers. Ever since taking apart the old Compaq Presario to understand what the different parts were and putting it back together, I’ve been into building and modifying them. (Luckily, Mom was fine with it. She figured I’d learn something from it and knew I would put it back together properly.) My sisters, on the other hand, were not happy at all! I had considered making a company selling custom liquid-submerged rigs several years ago, but never really went for it. Not a very big market, as they can be a real pain to deal with. Other cooling options are just as viable, less messy, and more convenient. However, I’ve always wanted to build an amazing desk with my computer built into it. Still messing around with different design ideas on that one.

TheStartupGuy.com – If you’ve read my other posts, you know that the goal I set out to achieve was to provide as much value to people as I could through becoming a Venture Capitalist and backing ventures that provide the most value to society and humanity’s future. While I’ve had some setbacks in my initial time-frame, I’ve always made a hobby of predicting what businesses will end up failing or succeeding. TSG is where I plan to make picks of crowd-funded businesses that I think have a good shot at success. I will follow up yearly and see how accurate I am. If I prove to be fairly accurate, it may be a good place to get tips on newly founded startups with potential. I will go into detail with some of my analysis and reasoning behind my “bets”. The startups will come from sites like startengine, wefunder, and indiegogo.

I will also analyze the nature of seemingly unlikely success stories. One I saw the other day, for instance, is called the “Ice Straw”. My best explanation without doing any kind of real analysis is that they were able to capitalize on three primary areas of human psychology in selling massively overpriced ice molds. Good for them, and the fun of busting out the ice straws at a party likely makes up for what seems to be an obscene amount of money to spend on the product!

The next site, UM.org, will work in step with TSG. Some of the models that I use to predict success or failure of startups will be available there, (likely simplified versions) and it will crowdsource new ways of analyzing all kinds of data that has traditionally been inaccurate. The real bottleneck there is the actual data being input with which to calculate outcomes.

UncommonMetrics.org – UM is a community of people interested in economics, quantitative analysis, data analytics etc. The idea here is to establish new patterns and ways of calculating old things. Doesn’t make sense? Let me re-phrase it. We use formulae for a lot of things. Even some of the things that we take to be the established or accepted way of coming to a conclusion may be flawed or by chance. UM challenges different ways of thinking, and calculating things. I will submit examples and then source theorem to put to the test, mostly regarding economic calculations, typically using accepted, past data to audit the efficacy of old models, and put new ones to the test. We will be able to track and compare what works and maybe find better ways to analyze our world more accurately.

WeFixtheWorld.net – WFTW is about quantitatively examining the root, and possible solutions to “problems” sourced from everyday people. This is a forum-like website that sources, and then through a voting process, prioritizes and organizes said problems into categories and proceeds to solicit solutions, again from users of the platform. Users then vote again on the submitted possible solutions and may debate. The idea is to filter these solutions down to applicable, plausible business ideas. Users of the platform are incentivized by a couple of different factors. Social factors and recognition are built into the platform, with awards, badges etc. Obviously, a monetary factor is important, so the final stage of a “Problem” that has been filtered through, is the organization of a startup to implement the “Solution”. These companies will spawn from the platform, much like an incubator, and take investment from users of the platform. Hence, being active and participating can allow for opportunities to get in at the very beginning of the next unicorn, even if you don’t have much capital. No need to be an institutional investor!