September 9th-23rd

It’s been two weeks since my last update. I felt so down when all the sudden all things didn’t do as planned. It’s not so pleasant. But I’m ready to go down the pit again. I was reminded of what I read from Paul Graham about the difference between persistence and obstinacy. The former is a good agile method. The latter is a stubborn way to admit I’m wrong. I painfully rejected the latter and embraced the former.

So here we go now!

What did I do last week?

• I’ve rewritten my entire game plan.

• I decided to stop exploring my initial idea of a local and cost-effective e-commerce store. I took Rob’s insight about how small the margins are in the Southeast Asia region. I looked into this, and it’s true.

• I didn’t reach out to ex-executives at Grab and Ninja Van.

• I interviewed 18 Grab and Foodpanda drivers.

• I explored new ideas I had in store. The fact is, I’ve been storing up problems I noticed every day since 10th grade. The e-commerce store was a new idea because I thought it was okay to build locally. But Athena encouraged me to think bigger, go global, and solve a problem the world faces, not just Davao, the Philippines, or Southeast Asia.

• There are two problems I’m currently exploring: one in pharmaceuticals and the other in offshore hiring and time-zone issues. I’m actively researching both.

• I decided to return to Stage 1 for research. I understand that Athena.vc might not reward me for this, but it’s okay because building a strong foundation is important.

• This is timely because the negotiation between me and the partnered e-commerce company from Canada failed. This means I can no longer use their backend. It’s a blessing in disguise because it forced me to step outside my boundaries, and I found a few more interesting and urgent problems to solve.

• I read five articles from Paul Graham’s website.

• I decided to revisit the manual from Athena.vc and do my due diligence more strictly this time around.

• I finished Course 1 of my UX design course. I’m moving on to the second module. This module was supposed to take four weeks, but I completed it in less than 48 hours.

• I completed four lectures from Stanford University on startups. These were from Sam Altman and Paul Graham in 2009.

• I created a master plan to become a frontend developer within six months.

What did I learn?

• I learned that it’s okay to go back to the drawing board every time if you realize something is wrong.

• It’s fun in some ways because I realized I was doing my job well when I discovered this is the wrong path, rather than being unaware for years. I’m blessed to see it right away.

• These setbacks will make me smarter in navigating problems founders typically experience.

• Consistency on a daily basis is key.

• The odds are always against you when you’re doing things that seem foolish to many people.

• I need to set strong and concise goals each week.

My biggest challenge?

• One of my biggest challenges right now is my lack of technical expertise in backend development. I’m not very skilled in this area. So, I created a master plan to become a frontend developer first, and then transition to backend development. This slows down my ability to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and the feasibility of the solutions I have in mind.

Goals for this week:

• Decide which problem to solve. This usually involves heavy research, so I need to complete it this week.

• Finish Sam Altman’s Startup Playbook.

• Start UX Design Course 2.

• Do pomodoro and comply on schedule. use myhours to know how many hours I’m working every week for my project.