rpkoven

My thought is yes. There has to be neuronal death as the neuron becomes less sensitive to insulin and metabolize glucose.

The dynamic, wave-like model of aging aligns with the concept of quasi-programmed aging, which suggests that aging is not merely the result of accumulated damage, as proposed by the wear-and-tear model. Instead, aging reflects the unintended continuation of biological programs that were originally optimized for growth, development, and reproduction. These programs, including pathways such as mTOR, become dysregulated over time, driving aging and the onset of age-related diseases.

Our genes are programmed for growth, growth gets out of control, leading to our death

What is the cadence of giving blood to offload iron?

So basically I don’t have to exercise anymore?

No pain, no gain.

Article makes sense. No hacks.

Interesting that they could quantify the differences in energetic output from a mitochondrial level. I guess it’s time to start running again.

Vigorous exercise enhances the heart's plasticity, which refers to its ability to adapt and remodel itself in response to increased physical demands. This includes increasing the size of the heart chambers, improving the heart muscle's ability to contract, and reducing stiffness in the heart walls

In the first four hours following protein ingestion, the study observed a 20% higher rate of muscle protein synthesis in participants who consumed 100 grams of protein compared to those who ingested 25 grams. This difference became even more pronounced during the 4–12 hour postprandial period, where the muscle protein synthesis rates were 40% higher in the 100-gram group. Overall, this equated to a 30% larger synthetic response after consuming 100 grams of protein, as opposed to 25 grams.

APOE4 carriers have impaired free DHA transport into the brain because of APOE4-mediated degradation of the blood brain barrier, but this degradation does not impair how DHA-lysoPC enters the brain

I don’t think Tim Ferris’s book was bad. He mainly talked about automations, but a lot of the tech bro take on it is cringe.

Do you think his podcast is interesting though?

I don’t think it’s unethical

I think you are right. It’s how people ran with the book that is a little cringe

I think being in the Stanford engineering ecosystem has been a positive funnel into starting a tech company. Whereas in NYC it’s more likely you’d get recruited by a finance company.

I’ve heard of the benefits of mdma therapy

We developed new features thinking each feature would cause the inflection point we were looking for. ‘Ticketing will be a game changer,’ or ‘this new mobile app will allow us to sell at a higher price point.’ Each time we barely pushed the needle when it came to growth. We dreamt silver bullets, but we were only pushing out what amounted to paper bullets.

I believe he is discussing pranayama breathing

Although I don’t know if the Harvard connection matters, I thought this was an interesting idea:

Perhaps there is some intrinsic value of innovation and creativity that we can laud as being more valuable than creating the newest financial mousetrap and the compensation that comes with it.

I think you are right with respect to the need to hit the accelerator on growth through sales and marketing. Great products do not sell themselves. I think that having some notion of how to get a product to market and how to market that product is essential.

I thought this article was interesting and touches on your experiences:

It's not a feature problem—Avoiding Startup Tarpits

https://hackernoon.com/its-not-a-feature-problem-avoiding-st...

It seems I am one of those in the tarpit. I think the problem for us engineering types is that there is so much bullshit around marketing, that it's offputting to us. That's the case for me at least. If I spend time/money on a feature, I know how long it will take, how much it will cost and when it will be ready. Compared to this, marketing seems like burning money with voodoo rituals.

It doesn't help that marketing efforts are only meaningfully measurable on a larger scale. If you're bootstrapping something yourself, you don't have 12k to spend on marketing this month. You have $300. It's easy to burn that $300 on adwords or facebook ads and get zero signups, with no meaningful data whatsoever.

The usual advice goes: hire a marketing expert. But how do I hire a marketing expert that a) isn't full of it, b) will even listen to me if my current budgets are in the hundreds of dollars?

I think the article is right on point, but I wish it pointed me to a way to deal with the marketing problem.

I found this in my own startup. We burned through most of our runway investing in feature development.

"Developing features of your product without a commensurate push to grow your user base can set your startup on an inertialess path. This is what I learned when I was my previous company’s ramp up phase. We developed new features thinking each feature would cause the inflection point we were looking for. ‘Ticketing will be a game changer,’ or ‘this new mobile app will allow us to sell at a higher price point.’ Each time we barely pushed the needle when it came to growth. We dreamt silver bullets, but we were only pushing out what amounted to paper bullets.

It turns out paper bullets are expensive. Features cost money in the form of engineering hours. We invested all of our seed funding in developing a great product. In doing so, our feature list expanded, but our actual revenue growth never changed in a meaningful way to support that development.

Eventually we stopped making new features all together. We had no choice; we couldn’t meet payroll to continue all of this development. We were in what I call a startup tarpit. The startup tarpit is the land of inertia. We had a good enough product but not enough marketing resources to get out of our stagnation. We raised money to build a great product and when we ran out of money we had nothing to show for it; making it nearly impossible to raise additional money."

I agree with this: "For an early stage company, the longer you can put off expanding your head count and endure the financial pain of not paying yourself anything close to a market rate salary, the more runway and resources you’ll have to invest in actually growing the company."

I am not sure if I believe this, but the author had an interesting point:

"This dynamic seriously limits the pool of individuals who can successfully start companies to those who have higher risk profiles, can defer immediate financial gratification, and who are resourceful enough to make something with scant resources."

I think a lot of good entrepreneurs are risk averse. Meaning they find a good idea and validate it before going headlong into it.

‘I didn’t know how to do x, so I just had to figure it out.’ This is what I regularly hear from successful founders, whereas ‘I couldn’t find someone to do X, so I had to reconsider whether to pursue it at all’ is a common refrain from unsuccessful founders.

"Startup graveyards are full of visionaries without expertise or the proper skills to execute, for no other reason then ideas are not self executing, but are rather made into being by intense engagement by skilled operators."

As an engineer who gets approached to build other people's ideas regularly, I find this trait to be true.

If talking to your clients mostly gets you new feature requests, it either means your product isn't adequate yet or you're not asking the right questions. In a nutshell you want to get of feel of: - What was going on in your clients' heads before they found you. What precise problem were they trying to solve. This'll give you insights on whether or not your product is adequate, and on how to phrase your landing page.

- How they went about to look for you. What google search they did, whether they checked out reviews and how, etc. this is to better focus your SEO and adwords campaigns.

- What their decision process looked like. Was it a single person making the call, or were several people involved? What objections got raised? What were their key decision criteria? Raise them in your sales copy or in drip emails.

- Are they talking about your product? Would they? This is to help you spot segments with viral potential. Don't forget to politely ask for referrals if applicable.

- And, of course, feedback on the product itself. But don't spend too much time on this, and don't promise anything or build expectations.

The product is adequate, because people are paying for it. It could be better, hence the feature requests. The most important thing I always want to know is how they found me — unfortunately, for all of them it was via a search for a specific phrase. That doesn't help me at all: I am prominently featured for that search phrase. No viral potential, this is a niche B2B product.

It seems I am one of those in the tarpit. I think the problem for us engineering types is that there is so much bullshit around marketing, that it's offputting to us. That's the case for me at least. If I spend time/money on a feature, I know how long it will take, how much it will cost and when it will be ready. Compared to this, marketing seems like burning money with voodoo rituals. It doesn't help that marketing efforts are only meaningfully measurable on a larger scale. If you're bootstrapping something yourself, you don't have 12k to spend on marketing this month. You have $300. It's easy to burn that $300 on adwords or facebook ads and get zero signups, with no meaningful data whatsoever. The usual advice goes: hire a marketing expert. But how do I hire a marketing expert that a) isn't full of it, b) will even listen to me if my current budgets are in the hundreds of dollars? I think the article is right on point, but I wish it pointed me to a way to deal with the marketing problem.