Iotas

Learning in Iotas

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  • Day 14

    Day 14

    Finally, it has been 2 weeks. I am very grateful that I had the guts to make this decision 4 months ago and I am still not regretting this decision. Another good news is that I got another offer from Antler now so it is down to me to choose between the 2 incubator or I just do it myself and aim higher. Again, I am still not sure but I would get to ask my potential cofounder this weekend to get his real commitment into this. Exciting for sure but I start feeling, nothing really matters. I have been very concerned about “I need to do A B C, if not, I would be in trouble”. However, life is sometimes more complicated/ simple than we thought. Complicated because it is hard/ impossible to predict what would be on the other end of the tunnel; it is simple because you dont need to do anything deliberately, just let it flow and somehow your life would just happen and good things (or bad things) would just happen.

    I am glad the two parties that I told them that I am not interested in their idea took it well and has been very considerate about it. I would make sure I treasure this time and build my own prototype; I hope next week, I would have more focus time (now the renting issue is gone; no more other commitment I got pulled into); no more excuse and more focus :).

    Recently I realised that my mood is easily affected by the stock market. My investment plan is 40% cash, 20% high risk, 40% low risk investment. Given my age, I think it is a good balance; however, my mood would still be affected when the price goes up and down. But then I realised that, those are not the money that would change my quality of life anyway. Even I lose them all one day, my quality of life would still be maintained. So why focus on something that “does not matter” really and I should focus my emotion credit on something that truly matters and also be thankful about having good health and good life and good family and good wife. I am glad I thought it through and just let it be.

    PS: I really has 0 luck in my life so I better work harder haha.

    Journal:

    1. Picked up desk for new flat today
    2. Fixed the shower in my new flat
    3. setup wifi in new flat
    4. Hangout with family tonight and dinner

    Happy 🙂

  • Day 13

    Day 13

    I guess today is the day of rejection. As I mentioned before, I felt I am overwhelmed by number of projects that I got myself in and it isnt a good use of my time and focus. I have turned down explicitly two projects (I would still close the loop next week but I would not invest more into them anymore). I am glad that I made this move and happy to regain my own time and focus onto something that I care.

    To be honest, at the start of the day, I thought today maybe one of the worst day I have. I made some stupid mistake and caused me 1k pounds and I did something stupid and cost me another 500. I guess sometimes I am just stupid and what I need to do is to keep calm and focus on what is most important. I got some time to focus on closing the loop today which is good and worked a bit too.

    I have finally bought the desk for my new flat and I can now see myself to be living on my own at some point. I think once I moved out, things possibly would go faster and I would have more time to focus and prototype my idea. Fingercross.

    Recently I learnt that there is a huge amount of tax I need to pay in 2027 Jan (cry). I would need to make sure I put aside some money before I go broke I guess :S…

    For dinner, I went out to meet a friend from uni. I am glad to see him doing well in his startup and he shared some interesting story and insight from his work too. I think he is definitely very brave and determined.

    Journal:

    1. Interview
    2. Dinner with a friend
    3. Turn down 2 people with their projects

  • Day 12

    Day 12

    Another busy day but I have to repeat it myself – I have to cut off those commitment I have with ideas that I do not buy in. They are nice people but I have to stop entertaining others and take back some of my time.

    At the moment, there are several ideas floating around

    1. IT Infra – I would let them know that I am not interested in joining and I am happy to help when they got the data and I can help them to clean up them. Afterwards for setting up for training and evaluation, I am afraid I couldnt help as I need to take my own time back. (That should be pretty simple and I should be able to close that within 2 hours really)
    2. AI Workflow agent – I think it is not getting anywhere, the cofounder is very nice and he has a lot of passion in what he is building but I really tried to learn and get passionate about. I simply just dont really like the idea. I have to cut this out.
    3. ZKP – I think this maybe the idea I do wanna go after and spend some dedicated time on it. I believe I would be sleeping on this for a week to two
    4. Mosiac – I think this is what I really like to do and I may pitch this in the EF round if possible. I think I would own up that idea and try it
    5. Mental health App – this is what I want to do but I have to say (caveat: maybe I just need a bit more focus time on this): “this is a hard business case”. B2C is never easy , education is hard to get addictive or viral and lastly, mental health is like a topic that no one really cares to speak up a lot.

    So my order of exploration should be ZKP > Mental health > mosiac for the next few weeks.

    I really hope I can get someone to work together with me but it isnt easy. I start feeling that I dont care. Why I always care/ over care so much. I should just live with a bit more selfishness and think about myself.

    I went to meet the IT infra guy today and he is very helpful and he tried to persuade me to join him but I just do not click with his work. His company would be successful without doubt but I just dont see myself in his business unfortunately.

    Then I met someone remotely who is a friend of my excolleague. He working on building a LLM model that can predict the future. It sounds crazy but that is not impossible. He want to build such model to predict the market based on global events and it is very intersting to be honest. But again, I would need to have my head focus first for now. And focus wins the game eventually.

    Tomorrow I would be meeting the AI assistance founder and I would be working with him for the afternoon and then meeting a friend for dinner. I would let him know that I would need to take a break from this work as I do not feel much conviction on that unfortunately.

    I need to learn to cut loss and say no with great determination.

    Journal:

    1. Met IT infra cofounder today and got invite to join them as cofounder
    2. Met a guy from Poland working on a model that predicting the future
    3. Slept a lot 🙂
  • Day 11

    Day 11

    I didnt sleep well last night as I was overthinking too much about the rental dramatic mess again. FML. But I am glad that I have put a fullstop on it now and I learnt to settled it in my mind finally after sending out the email. Thank god.

    Did 2 interviews today for P. AI and 1 technical deep dive with one of the cofounder that working on interesting stuffs. He is a nice person and super technical and I really admire his technical skill. However, as I told him too, I think he is too technical and blindly technical that sometimes it isnt good especially for starting up. I think he would make a great founding engineers; not necessary founders though unfortunately. But anyway, he is nice so I think I would work with him for a bit for the next 2 weeks before I actually start cutting off those works and focus back to what I want to focus on.

    Technology moves so fast nowadays and the new Malt chatbot (or it called Clawd bot) is pretty fun to play with and I should really host this with my mac mini tomorrow (when I have the time to set that up).

    Today, I went back to office to join one of my old team social as they still want me to come and meet them. Also, I managed to meet an excolleague too who come back from US and trying to startup himself this time. Interesting guy and he is always very biased for action. I admire him that his action does not carry any regret and he would just do it. I think it is a mentality I want to build up myself too. I somehow give myself too much burden all the time and it limit my upper bound for sure.

    Tomorrow I am going to meet with another group of founder, going to their office and try to work together a bit. I think after tomorrow, I would tell them I would pivot to something else and may not work with them after this project. I guess he can sense that and again, they are nice people and I am glad I have this connection for sure.

    Oh also, I got the offer from EF (hurrray) but to be honest, I slightly feel that I may not really want to do it. However, I would chat with my cofounder first and see. Maybe not bad to just try out a few days anyway before I withdraw. Why not right? @@

    Journal:

    1. 2 interviews for P.AI
    2. Team Social dinner
    3. Met with excolleague
    4. 1 tech deep dive with a cofounder

    Happy Day 🙂 and I love my cat.

  • Day 10

    Day 10

    Busy busy day; 3 interviews for P.AI, 1 EF final interview, 2 networking call and 1 technical advice meeting.

    I start feeling that I have accidentally overwhelmed myself with a lot of work and ideas but they are not necessarily what I am into or enjoying unfortunately. I think after next week, I would start turning them down and extract myself more from it if possible. It is simply not really what I want to spend my time on and I should appreciate more about having my own time to think and to “staring into the void”. Sometimes that is how good ideas come to mind.

    Because my day has been super busy and also, the renting shit show triggered me so much; I cant really sleep or relax well at all. Keep thinking what I should do to retaliating the property agent. And finally I made up my mind and just move on. I told myself that I would write the email and be reasonable but at the same time showing my frustration and try to see if they agree what I am undergoing is “fair” to them. And I would move on. At the end of the day, not having a good relationship between landlord and tenant is always bad for the landlord, never the tenant.

    Anyway, I ranted a lot today but that was always in my head unfortunately.

    Journal:

    1. 3 interviews
    2. EF final interview
    3. 1 technical advise call
    4. 2 networking call

    My social energy dropped to the lowest point for sure. 🙂 but still happy 🙂

  • Day 9

    Day 9

    Today maybe the first time that I actually thought of what to write in my blog before I writing it. Before I slept last night, I came across the live Netflix show showing Alex Honnold climbing the Taipei 101 building without any gear. He finished it under pretty strong wind with 1:31hr. Watching him climb alone stresses me but I am sincerely grateful that he did it at the end and it was not an easy challenge at all (and also it is broadcasted live by netflix). Crazy man but very impressive without a doubt.

    Because of him, I slept at 3am last night while I have arranged a coffee chat with someone at 10am in central London. Waking up in the freezing cold London morning is not an easy task.

    Meeting M is always very inspiring and he is truly someone that I admired and would love to work with for sure. He experience and way of thinking is very impressive. We had a deeper discussion in how we can leverage ZKP to make a product that people would appreciate. We thought about replacing Auth0 with ZKP product (just doing login) to age verification and marketing campaign signalling. Without doubt, I think there is a certain gap in the market that ZKP product has not been matured yet and I do believe there are a lot of opportunities there. Again, I think I should try to build some quick prototype to prove the point for sure.

    After that, I went to meet my excolleague (N, A). We went to try out the newly opened Soho HK bakery and we queued for 1:15hr. I have to say, it does not worth the wait; it is good but not that impressive unfortunately. However, the experience was nice and chatting / meeting up with friends is always nice.

    I think today is a great day and I am pretty satisfied with the way I have been working so far into my startup journey. Still going strong :).

    Journal:

    1. Meeting M talked about our ZKP product ideas
    2. Meeting friends and tried out new bakery
    3. Watched the climbing of 101; very motivating
  • Day 8

    Day 8

    I guess today was my resting day.

    I didnt set my alarm at all and just “let it be”. It is always good to have a day that you can wakeup naturally instead of waken up by alarm.

    Had some quick lunch and played with my cat a bit. Then started to catchup with some news and consolidated all the furnitures I found yesterday and sent it to my landlord. Hope she would be willing to pay for them although the chance maybe a bit slim. Worth a try though.

    Still not moving in yet and no sign of cleaning service arranged yet by the agent unfortunately, I guess I would need to put some pressure on the agent side on Monday (Classic no one would work on Sunday regardless how urgent it is in UK). It is actually very slimy that trying not to get a professional cleaning service after someone lived there for 3+ years and expect they can get away. Ridiculous!

    Then after dinner, I started to use lovable to build the framework of the mental health app that I want to achieve. Seriously they are good but I do not like the way they limit the credit. Even you are on paid account; you can only have 10 credit; which is like 10 changes a day. (Some features burn the credit faster too). However, it did give me a good starting point and I can continue to build on top of that with Claude code (thank god).

    Tomorrow meeting M and friends and trying out some UK bakery; looking forward to it :). Scheduled another call with a connection for Monday too; exciting.

    Still going strong and still doing good. Today my feeling feels better again 🙂 hope this time it lasts.

    Journal:

    1. Settling on furnitures
    2. Started lovable on mental health app
    3. Rest

  • Day 7

    Day 7

    It has been a week since my “last day” at my previous job. This week has been gone past pretty fast. Not sure what I have done or achieved so far but time just flies by. Glad that I managed to see some friends and catchup with some connections this week. Glad that I still manage to write one post per day capturing my feelings and emotions.

    Finally, I have moved into my new place. (Although strictly speaking, I am still living in my original place). Due to the terrible tenancy cleaning and the state of the new place, I cannot really afford to move in yet without worrying dust and mould getting to me. So, typing out all the issues and pressuring the property agent to sort that out before I would move in. Still a lot to do before I would be moving in comfortably to be honest. Fingercross I can move in next week.

    I have some thoughts about a goal that I would set for myself and I would like to discuss this with another cofounder this weekend and see what he felt. I do want to set my goal to be something related to something we may found in the near future (although it does not have to be).

    Spent a bit time helping with a startup on giving technical advice and setup another call with them on Monday. I should consider charging them or at least getting some part of their shares if possible as things start getting a bit more serious and timeconsuming.

    I felt my day today has been pretty scattered actually. (Moved in to new house; email agent about the issues; meet the agent in the new house again for showing her the issue; worked a bit on both P.AI and that startup (Lets call it IG for now), went to ikea for shopping for furniture, link up with another connection and gonna meet them in 2 weeks. Maybe wearing different hats and doing wide spectrum of things is life of a startup/ unemployed actually haha.

    This weekend is going to be fun; tomorrow stay home and pick furnitures for my new place; Sunday would be meeting with M and friends in the afternoon. At least something I can look forward to.

    I really have to setup a good daily routine so I can stick with it and be productive (and mentally stable I believe).

    Journal:

    1. Moved house
    2. Helped IG
    3. Worked a bit on P.AI
    4. Linked up with 2 connection and set a meeting for 2 weeks time from now
    5. Went to Ikea

    Today is so scattered that I felt I am not productive at all. Not really a good feeling day today unfortunately. Hope tomorrow would get better :).

  • Day 6

    Day 6

    It has been a very fruitful day today.

    Waking up at 7:30 and heading out for a founders brainstorm events for 4 hours in the morning. The other 3 founders are also quitted “recently” (ranging from 1 year to 6 months). 4 of us, in a room, 4 hours, brainstorming ideas and trying to question each others ideas to dive deep into the problem we trying to solve.

    After that, I waited/ worked in the middle of a very busy wework office for 2.5 hours for queuing concert tickets for my wife and gladly I got 2 for her so she is happy (happy wife happy life).

    Then, I went back to my old office and worked there a bit. It is always great to meet the excolleagues again and have some human interactions after pretty long time I have to say.

    I had some more thought about my mental health application ideas and they have also introduced me to another person to connect too who also into mental health journalling application. Fun fun.

    I personally feel pretty energetic and looking forward to the new challenge again. Today is a positive day and I guess some human touch/ meeting friends are pretty necessary in this dull, lonely startup life.

    So far, I think I am definitely in favor to starting up with someone; but at the same time, there are so many opportunities in front of me and it is always hard to turn down. I guess I need to better equip myself before engaging with the true founders I wanna work with.

    There is one question I got asked in the last interview with Antler and it hits me well. The interviewer asked me “Have you ever built something and launched on your own?”. The true answer is no; I only built something and launch under the company logo/ team effort. I never actually launch something completely on my own and I need to maintain it and run it. And I think I should try to start doing a bit of this so I can learn more experience out of it. I sometimes believe it is a very european/ Hong Kong mindset of satisfying in a work life and getting paid and stable income etc. In the US or mainland, the heart to start a business or run with something is very common (although the success rate is very low, the base is huge so they always have some impressive startup/ business come out on the upper hand. I hope I can get this mindset out of my way so I can truely grow and not dare to try and pivot.

    That would be my new goal: Launch something on my own; and that is what I am good at: following goals

    Journal:

    1. 4 hours brainstorm with 3 other bright founders
    2. 2 hours for BTS concert tickets
    3. 4 hours in the old office socialising and working a bit
    4. Setup some trip for my parents

    Looking forward to:

    1. Moving in tomorrow 🙂
    2. Having a new goal to launch something on my own 🙂

    Happy day today :).

  • Day 5

    Day 5

    Today I experienced some ups and downs again. Feeling a bit like trapped/ im not good enough/ I am not doing the best I shouldve done.

    In the morning, I had a good interview with one of the incubator and I think they would be happy to invest in me. However, I personally not too keen to go with them (I rather go with another incubator which I would interview next Monday) and secondly, the person that I would like to cofound with does not seem to like UK incubator overall. I told my potential cofounder that I would try to get us in to any of those programs first and we can ask them for more details on what support they may give to us long run if we go with them. I guess that is the way to go for now.

    On the other hand, I did some part time work for my previous job (paid) and the rest of the night just feeling trapped.

    From time to time, I have a feeling that I am not good enough and I dont have a good safety net behind me. However, that is not 100% true as I have my own house and good amount of passive income and fortunately my life style is very low maintenance cost too. But the feeling of, “I am not good enough and if I am not good enough and not working hard enough, I would be homeless”, just lingering in my mind all time. I believe this should be one thing that I need to improve myself when I am pursuing this startup journey as it may destroy me if mix of things happen at the same time.

    One exercise that I got online is to list out all your worries and reason why you felt anxious; write them in details and then go through them one by one. If the worry is “preemptive”, then you should limit the time you spend on getting yourself stress on them. I think I would try to write out what my stress/ worry list to be from now on and see if things become clearer or not.

    PS: I try not to read back what I write as I do not like to carryover emotion from night to night when I write my journal. So the use of words/ writing may not be in continuity.

    Journal:

    1. Part time work for P.AI
    2. Had an interview with A.
    3. Start reading “Mastering the Market Cycle”
    4. Watched a bit on SwiftUI tutorial

    Worry:

    1. Moving in to new flat seems to incur more $$ than I expect – furnitures etc
    2. I am not good enough for anything – I felt I need to make a move all time but I just cant
    3. I am just not smart enough for what I want to become/ achieve

    My own anxiety/ emotion are always the problem; I am good at hiding it from others but I am not good at lying to myself on this. sometimes it is just unpleasant. I think I should list out all my financial runway and my plan this weekend so I can have better expectation on my runway.

    Tomorrow, I am going to meet with 3 other founders and trying to brainstorm ideas together; and I need to help my wife to buy concert tickets, and I need to head back to my old office for dropping something too. Busy and hopefully I can meet some real human too to improve my mental state.