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misstercool

120 karma · joined July 10, 2024

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misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
would mind try it again?
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
- Adding the hotkey on the top my priority list.

- Agree with you on adding more challenging quizzes!

- Having the various mini assignments in a module on the same tab is an interesting idea.

- Regarding the bird lol, yea, I do plan to redesign the UI at some point to make it more professional look

- We are adding a few more LBO cases

- Sensitive table is a good idea

- Regarding your suggestion on auto-pulling finance data to build dynamic exercise, that is something I have been thinking about from the beginning.

- Double entry accounting is interesting! actually I have been considering building training materials to the offshore accounting firms.

Thank you so very much taking time playing around the tool and writing these thoughtful feedback! Really appreciate it!!

misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
Just my personal opinion, feel free to disagree ;). There are few issues preventing finance being replaced by AI.

1. The large portion of finance is customization. AI works on the simple models, but it may struggle to perform adequately with complex, company-specific situations. Take pilot as example, it is an accounting and bookkeeping company with the combination of tech solution and human services. There is always human in the loop.

2. Finance deals with the numbers, the bar of accuracy is very high.

However, I believe AI can make learning finance much simpler, that is why I build this platform.

misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
oh...thanks, apologize for my typo
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
love this idea!
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
+1, so true!
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
Yep, no stats or advanced math is needed. My primary focus is to cater to beginner and intermediate users.

For beginners, it is a good tool to understand the basic finance and accounting concepts. It is interactive, you can practice the formulas via quizzes, much more fun than reading a textbook. I suggest you try financial statement module.

For intermediate users, you can practice financial modeling by solving generic modeling problems (3-statements, DCF, LBO, M&A). It will help you build the muscle memory of using the functions/formulas.

For advanced users, I am planning to onboard more industry specific modeling content and practice cases.

misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
Yea, I might do more in depth AI integration in the future. The hint function has been the most popular one in assassinating users learning how to solve the financial modeling problems. This platform is designed with the goal of assisting users in enhancing their practical skills in financial modeling.
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
Sure! While beginner content isn't unique, chatGPT can handle such questions effectively. Our main aim is to create a mind map that helps users understand concepts deeply and apply them to build various financial models.
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
Absolutely, the current platform is designed to help beginners and intermediate learners to hone their technical skills. I am considering expanding in areas such as allowing users to share their models and strategies. I understand it can be daunting for newcomers to an industry to figure out the best way to construct models. What are your thoughts on this?
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
The current stage of finance interview is a little bit like coding interview 20 years ago, pre-leetcode time, where you write sudo code on a paper to answer some coding challenges. The coding interview nowadays are quite advanced, I believe Leetcode plays huge role.

The best way of learning financial modeling is by doing it on the excel. Even though many finance technical interviews still focus on behavior type of questions, discussing your model-building approach and assumptions. By practising different scenarios on Excel, timeboxing it, it will help you refine your responses during the interview.

misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
great suggestions, thanks!
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
Our goal is to help users improve their finance and accounting knowledge. This includes acing job interviews and learning how to create different financial models for varied sectors. Currently, we have no plans to provide coding lessons or provide certificates.
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
thanks! IMO, excel spreadsheet is like the compiler for finance folks, there is no better way to learning and practising finance on this interface.
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
That's an excellent query! Many have asked for a mobile app. Right now, we're improving the desktop version as Excel works best on it. Making Excel easy to use on a mobile app isn't easy. Our plan is to first make a mobile app centered around finance quizzes and concepts. Then, we'll aim to provide a complete Excel experience for financial modeling on mobile.
misstercool··on Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling
Thank you!
misstercool··on How I ship projects at big tech companies
I think this article is much more than this.

  > First, you have to get clear on what the company is looking to get out of the project. 
You are not just pleasing the executives. Assuming the company described in the article is a good company. Executives are not idiot that making impulsive decisions.

You need to be able to sense the company direction, communicate clearly, manage the risk, build the trust. This is not an easy task in a big company.

Such an awesome article IMO that explains the art of shipping in a big firm. I believe if any engs can master the skills described in the article, you will get promoted to a leadership role very fast. Of course, this might not be the path everyone loves.

misstercool··on I quit Google to work for myself (2018)
Well, to be honest, I have never heard any of many FAANG turned startup founder friends told me that the want to build a life style business from the beginning. Every one wants to build a vc-backed startup with a home run idea. Many of them ended up building life style business because the markets of their ideas were actually much smaller.

If you do the math, climbing the corporate ladder at FAANG might have better ROI than running life style business. Of course, money is not the only consideration in life.

misstercool··on I quit Google to work for myself (2018)
Quote the author “To continue advancing my career, I’d need projects that were even larger in scope and involved collaboration with more partner teams. But that just meant the project could fail due to even more factors outside my control, wasting months or years of my life.”

I am sure if he looks back and reflects again, he will admit that the success of a startup relay on 100+ other factors that out of your control. It is never a wasting time in your life. You learned how the world works!

misstercool··on What Is a Staff Engineer?
From my observation, staff eng is a person that has the capability to handle many type of tasks, like what described in the article: Eng, Idea direction, project management, risk management, cross-function communication. Not every eng can grow into this role. Many engs hate politics, talking and meetings. I felt only the large tech organization needs this role. For the small companies, engineer manager who manages less than 4 engs usually do not need a staff eng.
misstercool··on Launch HN: Midship (YC S24) – Turn PDFs, docs, and images into usable data
Saw your demo video. Are you focusing on the finance sector primarily? It is a challenging industry IMO, requiring high accuracy and has strict privacy/security bar. How do you address these concerns?

Curious what are the biggest complain from your users? Are they willing to manually auditing the numbers in the table, make sure the output is 1. accurate. 2. formatted in the table they expected.

misstercool··on WebSockets cost us $1M on our AWS bill
It is a good problem to have for a startup, most startups are struggling finding customers to use their thing. Better to go with "good enough" shortcut and prioritize on growth. Recall is a YC company, I am sure they took advantage of huge amount AWS of credits in the first few years.
misstercool··on Show HN: A Coloring App for Everyone
I would advice testing this idea on iOS only, find PMF, find SEO patterns, then consider expand. It also depends what framework you are using to build the app, cross platform vs native. It is not worth maintaining two platforms in the beginning, not just dev efforts, QA efforts, but just understanding how these two platform works would consume lot of your time.
misstercool··on Ask HN: Teaching the "magic" of software development to 3rd graders?
Perhaps, picking one consumer app/tool everyone knows and tell a positive story how it changed the world. When I was volunteering in autism school, I saw many kids have talent of drawing, despite communication challenges. They use instagram to showcase their works, got tons of followers, and find their communities. It's a testament to how technology has changed our world in unimaginable, empowering ways. Telling something inspiring could be great for kids.
misstercool··on Show HN: Tinder, but to decide what to eat
I felt generate recipe repositories is quite a friction, not sure how many user would like to go through this process. But if you have nearby restaurant pictures, swipe right for matches seems a better use case. People don't need to populate the content, and you can let them define a zipcode to narrow down the options.
misstercool··on Show HN: Convert any website into a React component
Nice job! Do you have hypothesis why this is particularly popular in Japan? Did you launch to specific market?