Author: Titus

Categories
Life

Two ways out of this coronavirus social isolation crisis

If you’re like me, you’ve been in “shelter in place”, or under some kind of isolation that your government decided for you. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to work from home. Beyond not being able to go out and grab a drink or dinner with friends, hang out with family members that don’t live with you, travel, life is pretty much the same.

What has changed, though, is that managers everywhere are coming to terms with managing remote workforces effectively; because they have to, there’s no other way now. And teams are still performing well, without that in-the-office-have-to-be-next-to-my-team vibe. This accelerates adoption of work-from-home as the new normal. It also opens the world up for one of the two scenarios I predict will follow in the next few years.

The fall of mega-cities

As soon as people figure out that they can work from anywhere in the world, they will start moving out of expensive urban jungles like New York, San Francisco and other areas hit hard by the coronavirus and isolation.

Why would you choose to pay $3-$4,000 per month to rent a small one bedroom apartment in San Francisco? You can buy a mansion in Wyoming for less than $200,000. Or you can rent a resort-style three bedroom with pools and stuff for less than $1,500 in Arizona.

Not only people start moving away and vacating these once profitable rental properties, but the commercial space becomes empty. If you run a 400 people organization in San Francisco, you’re probably paying $10M+ every year to have an office. Now that you have unlocked that capital, you can grow your company further, hire more people, invest in marketing, sales, research and development etc.

Meanwhile, smart people everywhere are moving around. New post-isolation communities are born in places that were traditionally more closed off, and had less influx of people. We’ll replace the office with social clubs and co-working spaces, home offices and other working amenities. But there’s another interesting consequence. You start competing with people within 3-4 hours of your timezone, not just the people in your area and potential relocations. This is exciting for the global marketplace, but will place a lot of people in a new, challenging environment.

There’s going to be a spillover effect into teleconferencing software. People will try to recreate life-like working conditions in VR/AR, so we can work from anywhere.

We will reopen borders, and we will travel again, provided there is a vaccine/immunity test available. But people will have moved out of big cities and into other, traditionally less desirable parts of their countries. This combination of factors will likely change the way we live in the next century.

Open source medicine

If cities are to survive this pandemic and isolation, then we need to change the way we work with medicine around the world. Right now, every country and every state have different rules and limitations when it comes to drugs, cures, medical supplies, research, patents and ability to develop, test and go to market quickly with solutions to health issues.

The world where mega-cities continue to be the main way we live, combined with large scale travel, the old normal we were used to, require a more agile approach to medicine.

Right now, countries and companies are protecting their IP, production assets. Instead of continuing this, we could create a bounty system, where everyone contributes to a pandemic protection mega-fund. It could be bundled into a travel fee, or health tax, if people don’t want to voluntarily contribute to it.

This mega-fund invests in global solutions for future pandemics, vaccine rapid creation, advanced open source medical research that any person, country, city, state or company can tap into. It could share profits from its endeavors, like a superVC, or it could be a not-for-profit. The capitalist in me would opt for the for-profit model. This can work with strong bylaws/checks and balances, like fixed pay-per-use, based on income/net worth. This is to avoid racketeering or price gauging during times of need.

This could give us a rapid-response vehicle better than the WHO, or governments, or big pharma, or even billionaires working on vaccines on their own. It would be global, and it would be open, and it would likely be more effective.

I don’t think we’re going back to the old normal, we’ll have to create a new one, just like people did after the plague, tuberculosis, yellow fever, influenza, cholera and other pandemics. This change will also be an opportunity for generations to shift, wealth to redistribute and new models to emerge for business and society.

Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash

Categories
Politics

6 ways to defend your freedom in hard times

A few of my friends called me out because I raised the alarm with my previous post of freedom. They said I didn’t offer any specific solutions about how to defend your freedom in democratic regimes.

This only works if you have elected officials representing your best interests. The more fragile the democracy, the less power we have as individuals to influence things.

Reach out to your immediate community and friends

Before taking more extreme measures or committing to more time, reach out to your friends and immediate community and assess the situation. See if others feel the same way. It’s easier to find support, and take the next steps as a group. There’s so many ways to connect and organize nowadays, so I won’t get into that. Email / phone numbers are usually a good idea to have, in case you need to move people off social networks and onto other channels.

Privately reach out to your representative

You’re living in a democracy, so you elect people to represent you at local, regional and national level. Find out who your representative is and start reaching out to them and express your concerns. Do it in a calm, articulate way and be respectful. Ask for help and show that you are not alone in feeling that your freedom is being threatened.

If they don’t respond, use public channels, like Social Media, to continue reaching out to them until they take notice. Here being more that a handful of people helps a lot. Interject existing social conversations and prevent them from carrying out their comms plans while ignoring you.

Look at how existing grassroots organizations do this. Learn from activists.

Gather public support

While you are working on the official outreach, it can be a good idea to start a petition. This is a good way to get your voice heard and get like-minded people to rally together. It will amplify your impact beyond your friends and family group. This is the place where there’s strength in numbers.

At this point, you should consider starting a group/newsletter/community, so you can better organize people that feel their freedom is threatened. This will enable you to take coordinated action, managed decision making, keep people informed of latest progress.

Find existing communities that defend freedom and democracy

It’s also a good idea to get in touch with non-profits that defend democracy and can help you defend your freedom. Thankfully, we have a lot of these in the US. They can help you connect with people with similar concerns, have experience battling abuse on this topic and have tools that you can’t easily access.

Take visible action consistently

It takes time and commitment to defend your freedom. You need to have a cadence of staging protests on visible properties/channels, petitions, press coverage, legal action and other tools your local non-profit can help with.

You need to keep doing it for a significant period of time – weeks or months, or until the threat is removed. People will stop abusive action if they are called out and there is consequence – either reputational, political, or, if the legal framework permits, constitutional.

Celebrate victories with your network

This is a very important step. Celebrate every new supporter, new piece of coverage or reply from your representatives. If you manage to get legal wins, celebrate those too. Keep spirits up during hard times by doing this consistently.

These are just a few ways you can start protecting your freedom. If you feel this will put you or your family in immediate danger, try to rally a bigger support group before going out on your own. Stay safe and stay free.

Photo by Katie Rodriguez on Unsplash

Categories
Change Management Politics

Freedom in the time of COVID-19

Freedom

For the first time in decades, our freedom is under threat again. This time, it’s not even a human-made one, but a virus that’s infecting people at an accelerated rate.

Governments around the world have hit their big, red panic buttons. They have stopped tourism, travel, closed borders altogether and have severely restricted freedom of movement. Some have gone as far as enacting military orders and curfews.

History all over again

While some think this is justified by the imminent danger of a pandemic, I can’t but see how much power decision-makers are harboring over everyone. A part of the population is begging government to intervene because they can’t self-organize.

People fail to remember the 30s, which gave rise to nationalist regimes and eventually WWII. That was a time of economic crunch, much like we will have in the upcoming years.

People also fail to remember or ignore what communism did in Eastern Europe and other places in the world. There, up until 1989, the government and their cronies dictated who could do what, when, how much you could buy and from where, what to think, do, publish, travel etc. Retrospectives with and for those who lived through those times might help with remembering all of this.

I hope this time we’ll look back and not allow narrow-minded, aggressive leaders to pit country vs country based on COVID-19 responses, quarantine measures and numbers of infections.

So yeah, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’ll remember the freedom of 1990 – 2020 fondly, when we could travel to most countries around the world and there were little restrictions in place.

The next 10-15 years will be interesting to watch, with the world becoming an increasingly divided place – even with the coronavirus pandemic solved by vaccines.

The price of freedom

Let’s talk about freedom for a bit. Do you value freedom, or would you rather be safe?

If you don’t value freedom, then close this window and go back and wait further instructions from Big Brother.

If you do value it, have you ever asked yourself what is the price you’d pay to defend that freedom? Or the price you pay for having it?

I have. I will always prefer a system that recommends and allows people to decide for themselves over an oppressive, overstepping leadership that uses guns to dictate policies. Think about it, they tell you it’s temporary. Then elections come and those get postponed. They might cancel elections altogether, to avoid the risk of contamination. This is in spite of the fact that we have tools and technologies to vote online – with face recognition, fingerprinting and document verification with liveness checks. Would you then defend your freedom?

Something to think about while in shelter-in-place vs military orders to stay in your houses, depending on your country. Think about your governments and decision makers. Do they deserve to be given power again or if you much rather give that power to better people?

Stop cheering for imposed restrictions, cheer for people freely electing to protect others. These imposers are only gaining confidence every day that they can take a little more freedom, and people will still be ok with it.

Photo by Toni Lluch on Unsplash

Categories
Life

Creative energy rant – a water jug approach

Yes, this a rant about creative energy. I’ve been traveling for work and personal reasons for the past few months, on and off. Sometimes close by, sometimes far away. I’ve also had a very intense, productive past few months at work. All good problems to have.

Creative work

The type of work that I do is highly intellectually intensive – strategy, decision-making, writing, conceptualizing. I also enjoy working with entrepreneurs outside my regular working hours, I read a lot of news, and sometimes I do research to justify financial decisions. On top of that, I try to keep learning, at least a few months. I know I need to cut some of these down and prioritize sleep and relaxation more, but that’s not always easy.

Water Jug of Creative Energy

The problem with this type of lifestyle is the cognitive overload that comes with it. The good news is that there are ways to reduce it. I imagine my creative energy like a water jug. Sometimes it’s full, sometimes it empties up.

When I’m in full busy mode, I pour all of my creative energies into my work, so when I try to write on my blog, for example, I’m tapped out.

When I’m out snowboarding, hiking, or traveling, and my mind has a few moments to stand still, the jug slowly begins to fill back up. Sleep sometimes does that too, but only when I do it enough to be fully rested.

There are shortcuts to filling the jug temporarily. Music works sometimes, coffee also works. Reading non-related things or hanging out with people can fill some of the creative jug, but it’s those moments of idle-ness that help the most.

I love what I do. But I need to constantly remind myself that doing too much in one part will end up sapping all my creative energy and leave none for other activities.

They don’t teach this kind of stuff in school. I wish there was more out there than generic advice on how to relax, disconnect and do mindfulness exercise every day. By the way, I found that I need some creative energy for those, too.

So far, I’ve been failing at one of my main goals in 2020 – making space to relax. But it’s only late Feb, there’s time!

Photo by Kouji Tsuru on Unsplash

Categories
Life

Guest post on HavingTime.com: Freedom through seeking closure with your former selves

People who know me well can already see the transformations I’ve been going through in the past year or so.

While working on myself has been a top priority in the past 10+ years, in the past I have shied away from doing anything too radical.

Not anymore.

Check out my latest guest post on HavingTime.com about redefining yourself and letting go of the past, especially if you remember certain negative things after 15+ years.

If you’re like me, try some of the closure tactics I describe in my article. I’m curious if it works for you the same way it worked for me.

Also getting an apology from a person that bullied you in the past is super-strong. Definitely a must try, if you haven’t already.

I’m working on a bullying related post, where my hypothesis are:

  • people who were bullies generally end up less successful than people who were bullied
  • parents of bullies are unsuccessful themselves, maybe not financially, but personally; or both
  • parents of bullied children are either conflict-avoiding themselves and believe in a greater good/peace, or haven’t resolved their bullying issues from their own childhood

More to come in a separate post.

Photo by Allie Smith on Unsplash

Categories
Life Strategy

Competitive people, choose your battles

Yes, you. I’m talking to you, the one that wants to win at everything. If it helps, I’ll admit I’m one, too, although this post is a way of toning down that overly competitive self that can drive to some pretty nasty consequences.

Communist catalysts

First, a little bit of background. I was born in (still) communist Romania, in 1987, from communist educated parents, and attended a fledgling post-communist school system. Our only goal was to get 10/10, and to get the first prize in class. My mom and my friends’ moms would always ask who got the highest marks on term papers, exams, tests and homework. If I didn’t get the highest, I’d get told off. If I got the highest mark, then they would ask who else got it, too.

I remember the only time I competed for marks by my own free will. It was when I bet with my parents that I would get a snowboard if I would get 10/10 in math over a whole semester. Obviously, they thought I wouldn’t do it, but I did and I’ve been snowboarding for over 15 years, as a result. Looking back, if they had given me similar milestones and if I had identified similar rewards, I would have been more involved in my first years of schooling.

Even childhood games were competitive, sports and any other stuff. I wrote about it earlier last year. This negative competitive attitude then went on to shape people, business and life. It creates bad work environments, bad relationships, bad friendships. It also takes a strong personal toll. If you have an internal conversation going on inside your head (I found out some people don’t, and that’s ok), even that can become competitive.

Manifestation

The way that manifested in mine for the longest of time was through comparing myself and my achievements with others. I know, slippery slope to depression and anxiety. It also fosters imposter syndrome and other nice side effects! If it’s not clear enough, I’ll spell it out: It’s really bad for you.

Naturally, I wanted to fix it. So here’s a few strategies I’ve been applying in work, life and sports.

Sports (for fun)

If you’re a competitive athlete, this obviously doesn’t apply to you – that’s more in the work section.

If you’re like me, and do sports for fun and casual work out, then hear me out. Up until last year, I was snowboarding and playing basketball like my life depended on it. While this was fun and I pushed myself to perform better, I often didn’t have as much fun. I was too focused on extracting every ounce of value or at beating my/others benchmarks. That took the fun out of my hobbies. Needless to say, when I stopped being competitive there, I started having way more fun.

At work

This is a tricky one. While in most situations, I would strongly encourage you to be competitive, there are different ways to approach this.

Not every battle is worth winning, and sometimes you need to give some ground in immediate battles to be able to get what you want long term. It’s like the long term greedy concept I talked a bit about in the fat cat/hungry wolf post.

So next time you’re in a work exchange of opposite views, ask yourself – do I need this win to achieve our collective long term goals, or will conceding here will buy me enough good will to get what I want/we need next time we have to negotiate? Good old fashioned politics, yes. While some people might hate it, it’s inevitable the higher up you move in your career.

Side-thread on politics – if you want to convince a large group of people to follow your lead, you’ll need to use some politics to do that. It’s as simple as finding the group leaders, the loudest people and the most likely to challenge you and working with them, not against them.

So while at work, choose your battles carefully. You might end up competing in a race that’s not yours.

Personal improvement

Here’s where I vote for going 100% competitive. Personal development is about yourself, and improving who you are every single day is a competition I love to be in.

Sure, there will be ups and downs, but overall, I’m ready to beat my previous results when it comes to being a better person, being inclusive, being kind to people, being generous and loving.

That doesn’t mean you have to beat yourself up about it. They way I see it, it’s like with my snowboard bet from high-school – you need to find that positive motivation that pushes you forward. I’ll share mine in a later post.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Categories
More

Parking scams in downtown San Francisco

I should have known parking in San Francisco would be a mess.

QI went out with my wife on Valentine’s day in San Francisco. Long planned, booked in advance, all the bells and whistles. It was a surprise, so she was driving, as she commutes to work every day by car.

We got close to the venue and chose one of the parking location recommended by Open Table, as part of the official description for Black Cat.

The place was great and the jazz concert awesome. The food was good too, but the wine service was slow. We had a great time though.

My recommendation to everyone out there:

If you’re going out in the Tenderloin area and will only be out for a few hours, never park at Turk Garage. They charge $41 flat rates.

It’s not visible, so it’s meant to be a racket. Avoid at all costs. Be sure to always check the fees before you go in.

Categories
Life Startups

The trade-off of management roles

Over 10 years ago, when I started my professional career, working as an individual contributor, I couldn’t wait to become a manager. It sounded so cool – to have a team, to lead, to create strategy, run meetings, build agendas. Little did I know of the downsides of being in one of those fancy management roles.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being a manager, and all the great things that come with the role – team, impact, benefits, comp, learning, status (in random order). It’s what I’m great at and will continue to practice it as long as I can build teams or teams invite me to lead them towards greener pastures.

Starting out as individual contributor

Coming back to my younger days, when I was IC-ing, I took something for granted that I soon saw going away as I rose in ranks. People saw me as one of them, and treated me openly and freely. I would get invited to every party and every going out group. I would hang out with the cool people and be able to rant about our managers (yeah, we did that, I know all team members at some point rant about their managers).

Manager roles in the US

That went on for the longest of times. When I moved to the US, I joined a tech startup as their Growth Manager. I helped them grow the team and recruit a lot of the people in the San Francisco office. As we grew, both the company and I felt the need to specialize and I went to focus on Marketing only, becoming Director. That’s when things started to change. Since I was hanging out with the founders, the VPs and Directors, I was no longer part of the group. I had become management and people started treating me like one.

When I moved on to another company, again, I started with more of an IC role. In a few months, however, I had recruited my team and had become Director again. Same story, there was the management layer which kind of hung out together, and shared stories. Everyone else had their own separate group. Sometimes I would get invited to the other group, but it was not the same as 2009.

It’s little things like who hangs out with you at the lunch table or goes out to get coffee with you that change, too. The otherwise rowdy table might quiet down a little when you want to join. Or people might not even want to sit with you in case you start asking about customers, projects stuff related to their day-to-day.

When you’re a manager, you also can’t just party like everyone else. We set examples of what the company culture should be. If we party until dawn at company events, or overcharge corporate cards, this sends the wrong message to everyone else. Sure, you’re not going to be as cool as the life of the party, but it’s easier to lead if you haven’t lost face the night before.

I’m not even going to talk about romantic relationships at work as a manager. There’s no such thing as a no-consequences one.

Loneliness, career growth, support

This part of management is rarely talked about. It’s a lonelier journey, as you get higher and higher in roles and responsibilities. Some people get there and are surprised by the fact that everyone seems to be gone suddenly. I know I was. Some even get depressed or anxious about it, and I can understand why. I think we have to talk about it more openly. We have to embrace that what leaders in organizations are doing is hard, both professionally and personally. And there’s often little support for it.

I’m lucky to be married to someone who understands this and whom I can talk to about my professional life. Not everyone is. Life at the top comes at a cost, and work social interaction is one of them.

For me, I found my groups outside of work, too.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Categories
Life Startups

Retrospectives, these powerful tools for growth

retrospectives

At the end of last year, I did two massive retrospectives for Romanian IT (2019, and since inception) and a personal one (private).

For the personal retrospective, it was the second time in a row when I did it. The first time I did it, at the end of 2018, it was super hard, and it felt like a huge chore. This time it felt a bit easier, and I had more of a put together process to lean on.

The 3 retrospectives I did got me thinking about the power they give you, as the person performing them.

Journey to finding retrospectives

There’s a ton of literature on journaling, on making lists, following up and looking back on quarters, years, months, days, whatever works. Unfortunately, for the longest of time, I thought that was mostly self help bullshit and avoided it like the plague.

It was only when I started running teams in a business setting that I discovered that Agile/Scrum can be applied for Marketing and PR, and that was my gateway to retrospectives. If you run sprints, at the end of them, usually, people spend time looking at what worked, what didn’t and what can be improved in general. This is how you spot overloads, missed goals, successes and opportunities for growth.

Back then, I didn’t pay it enough attention to formalize the process in writing, but I stuck to it religiously. I took it with me in every team that I build moving forward, in the past 3 companies. It allowed our work to focus on the right goals. It also allowed us to spot communication issues early, adjust and improve.

Seeing the power of looking back

Fast-forward back to present day. I didn’t expect what the 3 retrospectives would give me. If you read my previous piece on the imposter syndrome, you know that’s a struggle for me. I also have a few strategies for it. Retrospectives turned out to be one of them.

See, if you’re like me, you moving fast, with little time to look back. There’s very little time to look back and celebrate success or be grateful. Retrospectives give you that and more – if you take the time and go through every day, and every thing that you did, and allow yourself to relive those moments, at the end of it you might find that you did do all that you set out. And more than that.

That’s an incredibly empowering feeling, and it’s remarkably easy to do now, thanks to Google Calendar.

Try going through it 12 months ago and move forward. It’ll surprise with you what you’ll find in there!

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Categories
Politics Startups Venture Capital

“I’m sorry I’m not rich enough to try to get rich”: Accredited Investor status in the US

I’m getting ready to invest my first real money into a company and a team I believe in a lot. I’ve dabbled in venture capital with Republic and with ICOs, but up until now my tickets have been small, like money you would spend on a trip or a nicer dinner.

I wanted to share my learnings from this process and show, in simple words, that non-accredited investors can get in on early stage ventures.

For those who don’t know, the US is probably one of the most protective countries when it comes to capital and investment. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates very strictly what investors and entrepreneurs can and can’t do when it comes to raising money, offering investment opportunities and funding.

Here’s the Investopedia definition of an accredited investor:

An accredited investor is a person or a business entity who is allowed to deal in securities that may not be registered with financial authorities. They are entitled to such privileged access if they satisfy one (or more) requirements regarding income, net worth, asset size, governance status or professional experience. The term is used by the SEC to refer to investors who are financially sophisticated and have a reduced need for the protection provided by regulatory disclosure filings. 

Sometimes, these regulations feel like they are too strict.

For example, if you’re a high earning individual, with ample savings, a diversified portfolio of assets – stock, SAFE notes, real estate, REITs, private equity via JOBS act, that’s not enough to be qualified as an accredited investor.

To become accredited, you have to do one of the following:

  • have an income of more than $200,000/year (single) or $300,000 (married, filing jointly) for two years in a row
  • have a net worth of over $1M (excluding your primary residence)

While I understand some people might need to be protected from themselves, and be stopped from investing in scams / con artists, I can’t understand why the thresholds are so strict. If you make $190,000 / $290,000 or are worth $900,000, you still don’t qualify, even though by all means you can be as sophisticated, or even more sophisticated than someone who, for example, inherited most of their net worth that’s over $1M. That’s not really fair, is it?

Fortunately, the JOBS Act, more specifically Rule 506(b), allows companies to raise money from non-accredited investors, under special conditions, and with, in my opinion, normal disclosures, per the SEC:

If non-accredited investors are participating in the offering, the company conducting the offering:

– must give any non-accredited investors disclosure documents that generally contain the same type of information as provided in registered offerings

– must give any non-accredited investors financial statement information specified in Rule 506 and

– should be available to answer questions from prospective purchasers who are non-accredited investors

Lawyers and inexperienced entrepreneurs will be reluctant to include non-accredited investors in funding rounds, but you can push back using these facts. The website I linked under the Rule 506(b) has more information on the type of offerings that companies can put forward and accept non-accredited investors on their cap table. It’s not impossible now, it’s just hard (still) to understand the rules.

So next time you want to invest and you get push back, instead of saying I’m sorry I’m not rich enough, refer people to the JOBS Act and the Rule 506(b). This way you can access early stage ventures and potentially make 100x returns. Or you can lose all your money, since early stage investing is extremely risky. But at least you have the freedom to choose.

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash