Opportunity Overdrive - Issue 4 - December 7, 2023

Because TL;DR is Life

Where’s my bonus? Seriously?

Some people get bonuses for Christmas. Every employee at this guy’s office got this book from the boss, nothing else. No bonus, no candy canes. Nice! Talk about a little toxicity, take this job, and shove it. But fear not, that’s a complete outlier.

This year according to an article in USA Today a whopping 96% of professional services companies plan to dole out year-end bonuses, up from 77% in 2021 and 57% last year, according to a survey of about 1,700 financial, information technology, marketing and other white-collar companies this month by staffing firm Robert Half.

Big Pharma and Energy firms lead the pack with bonuses at over 21% of annual salary. What the article didn’t say, was that 20% of that is for company coupons for antidepressants.

If your year-end bonus is a $5 Amazon card or a Ghirardelli chocolate bar, check out some good hybrid opportunities elsewhere.

Mood Swings & Unicorn Dreams

Fresh Out of Silicon Valley (or Someone’s Garage)

Pick your poison. Malicious hackers are a**holes that, among other things, stealing your passwords through a variety of methods including data breaches, password cracking, guessing, physical theft, and malware. Big Yikes, especially if they get access to your accounts.

But there are ways to protect yourself.

Password managers are a solution to the gazillion sites we need to log in to, but they can get hacked too. About a year ago on December 22, 2022, LastPass the number 1 password manager at the time, disclosed they got hacked. Personally, I was using LastPass and ended up having to change over 300 passwords. I was not happy.

There’s a better way - passkeys.

Passkeys are users authenticate the same way they unlock their phones and tablets: with their fingerprint, face, or other biometrics; by using a swipe pattern; or by entering a PI. Want more scoop, check the FIDO Alliance site, which created a set of open technical specifications that define user authentication mechanisms that reduce the reliance on passwords.

Ramen to Riches

Perpetua, a software as a service (SaaS) company that empowers sellers on Amazon, started with a 2,000 euro ($2,236) loan. But unlike many other bootstrap companies, it didn't take long for Perpetua to turn a profit. Now they are doing over $3 million annually.

“Our first several-hundred [euro] revenue arrived only four weeks after we took out the loan," said Perpetua co-founder Franz Jordan. "We made the first million after 18 months."

His Tip for Success: Create a Minimum Viable Product

"We were entering a growing market at the right time, with the right people," said Jordan of how his company achieved success so quickly. "We believed in our idea, so 'never give up' was our credo. Apart from resilience, my advice is to build a small MVP that yields a good profit fast."

An MVP is the minimum viable product — a version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.

Because Lost Luggage is a Mood

I wasn’t a digital nomad, but working from here for a month was about as good as it gets. The weather was perfect, the people were super friendly, almost everyone spoke English with a bit of a “colonial twang”, and the water was a crystal clear 78 degrees. Just about 700 miles east of Tahiti, lies the Cook Islands. Now, thanks to Elon, Space X, and Starlink, 100Mbs is a reality.

But, if you’re thinking about the definition of nomadism, you may experience something entirely different, maybe good, maybe bad. Take Francesca Specter, who worked in 10 different countries across four continents in a 12 month period. She has a bit of a different take.  

“The promise of “having it all” by hopping from one country to the next has, at least for me, proved too good to be true. Now, I view those laptop-on-the-beach snaps with knowing skepticism, and I’ve become much more disciplined about separating holiday time from work time. Coming home has allowed me to truly focus on the work that inspires me, rather than accepting jobs just to fund my next flight. I’m lucky to have a career I love; I’m no longer interested in trying to do it from a sunbed.”

• Another take on the 7 worst things about being a digital nomad

• Worst place you've ever DN'd?

Ctrl+Alt+LOL

An oldie but goodie. In the 2030 AI remake of "Office Space" (written by today’s large tech companies looking to preserve their real-estate investments), everyone lives in the office and employees soon realize AI just wants to binge-watch everyone's reaction to living in cubicles. Hard pass.

It’s Not a Trap, Just a Poll

Pretend to Listen (But Do)

Web3 adoption: hype or reality?

What the hell is Web3? Good question as it turns out, since a recent survey done by Consensys revealed that 92% of respondents globally said that they have heard of crypto, but only 8% of respondents consider themselves to be very familiar with the concept of web3, which highlights a disconnect between public perceptions of web3 and its potential as a solution to issues around privacy, identity, and digital ownership on the internet today.

Dr. Xiao Feng, Chairman of the HashKey Group explains it this way, Web3 is a distributed network, and blockchain is a distributed ledger, and the two are inseparable. Both are technically distributed, and both are decentralized in terms of governance.

Web3 adoption is evolving and will become more mainstream as use cases present themselves. We believe that two things will drive adoption; 1.) Financial services adoption especially in payments as evidenced by Visa and Mastercard's foray into the space and 2.) A clean and simplified UX/UI. No question Web3 dapps need simplicity, credibility, usability, functionality, and accessibility.

• Ian Rogers thinks we have a long way to go for adoption

• The new CEO of Binance, Richard Teng believes there are clarity of rules and regulations is the first consideration, and the second is fostering institutional adoption.

• Cointelegraph has a good article on the reality of user adoption and keeping the backend out of sight.

VIP (Very Impulsive Purchases)

Our guess is that this vid wasn’t something that was filmed in Michigan mid-winter, but no matter the weather, this thing is a major upgrade to the old Frisbee. In particular, check this guy’s review on Amazon, which is in line with the almost 90% 4 and 5-star ratings. Frisbees have been around a long time actually since about 1937, and marketed as frisbees in ‘57, but you sure as hell couldn’t play with them at night. They had a tough time finding LEDs back then. Side note - LED’s came into being in 1962. Really?

Holiday season is here, grab your drink of choice and head out for a night time game of frisbee golf.

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