World's simplest project success heuristic

Here’s a simple project success heuristic. All projects have some element of uncertainty but over time the questions should become more refined. If that’s not happening, then the project is almost certainly failing. The company might still succeed via a pivot but the project is unlikely to. Consider the progression of questions for a consumer (B2C) product. Would anyone use this? Would a million people use this? What’s the total addressable market? Would people pay for this? Is 10$/month too high or can I increase the price further? Notice how questions keep becoming nuanced. ...

Westminster Abbey

London in 5 days

Day 1 - West Minster Start the day with a walking tour that gives you a nice history & geography of the city of London. Many of the royal palaces and crown-related buildings are in the city of “Westminster” which is next door to the City of London. Then head to the British Museum. Like most government-owned museums, it is free to access. However, I would recommend booking a reservation in advance. Rick Steves has a nice audio guide on touring the British Museum that I would recommend. ...

It is hard to recommend Python in production

I started writing in the 2010s when Python 2 was going to be deprecated and Python 3 was too early to support. Python might have died there and then but was picked up by the data science and machine learning community, so, it survived. Running Python in production comes with various gotchas though. Python is resource-intensive Let’s consider a simple Docker image containing “Hello World”. Dockerfile 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 # Build: docker buildx build -t python-fastapi -f Dockerfile_python . # Size: docker image inspect python-fastapi --format='{{.Size}}' | numfmt --to=iec-i # Run: docker run -it --rm --cpus=1 --memory=100m -p 8000:8000 python-fastapi FROM python:3.12-slim AS base WORKDIR /app RUN pip3 install --no-cache-dir fastapi==0.115.11 uvicorn==0.34.0 SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-c"] RUN echo -e "\ from fastapi import FastAPI\n\ app = FastAPI()\n\ @app.get('/')\n\ async def root():\n\ return {'message': 'Hello World'}\ " > /app/web_server.py ENTRYPOINT ["uvicorn", "web_server:app", "--host=0.0.0.0", "--port=8000", \ "--workers=4", "--limit-concurrency=32"] And a similar web server in Go. ...

Inflation, IRS, Credit cards, and Vendors

IRS loves inflation Since taxes are on nominal gains, in case of 10% inflation, the owner of a stock or a real estate becomes liable for a 10% increase in the equity value even though the real gain is 0%. Credit card companies hate inflation Imagine the scenario with 1% monthly inflation (~13% annual inflation). If you spend 10,000$ on day 1 of your billing, the statement closes on day 30, and you pay back in full by day 60, the credit card company lost 2 months of value ~200$! ...

March 1, 2025 Â· 1 min      Finance
Temu logo

Temu and the Chinese approach

American government goes everywhere exporting its brand of democracy. The Chinese government wants to do business and make money [with these autocracies] in Asia, Africa, and South America - Lee Kuan Yew In many ways, American companies take the same approach. They build one product, localize it a bit for the target countries, and try to win big there. However, Chinese companies seem to take a different approach. China utilizes lower labor costs than its American counterparts and builds targeted products for markets. And Temu is the perfect example of that. Temu’s parent company’s flagship product is Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo is designed for the Chinese market. A completely unrelated E-commerce product, Temu is designed for the American market. ...

Miami

Things to do in Miami Florida

Miami is hot and humid. I would recommend visiting during winters (Nov-Feb). You can fly directly or use it as a stop-over for visiting the Caribbean or doing a Caribbean cruise Unlike Chicago or Boston , Miami does not have good public transport, so, I would recommend renting a car. Day 1 Start the day with a visit to Seaquarium for a Dolphin show. Follow this with a visit to Everglades National Park , do watch the show here, and get a chance to hold an alligator or a snake in your hand. ...

Revenue vs Cost Axis

Revenue vs Cost Axis

Every business has revenues and costs. When the revenues and costs are not aligned, the business sooner or later risks bankruptcy. Let me illustrate with a few examples. A restaurant’s costs consist of raw food materials and labor. While the revenues are a function of the amount of food sold. So, in case the revenue falls, the cost of labor kills the restaurant business. A cloud kitchen, due to its reduced labor costs, is more resilient. The costs of oil (or mining) companies consist of drilling and transportation. While the revenue is a strong function of the unpredictable oil/mineral price. That’s why small oil and mining companies go out of business whenever there is a sharp fall in the price of the commodity sold. An airline’s costs consist primarily of the predictable cost of leasing the airplanes and the unpredictable oil prices to fly the plane. While the revenue consists of the number of seats sold well in advance. So, any fall in seats sold or any sudden spikes in oil prices leads to a disaster. A software company’s costs consist mostly of labor and infrastructure. While the revenue comes from the increased sales of the software. The incremental cost of serving a user is marginal, while the fixed costs are huge. That’s why landing a few big initial contracts to become default-alive can make a huge difference in the long run. An exchange takes a cut of transactions flowing through it. The costs and revenues are aligned. Further, if it is an electronic exchange, like stock exchanges or Ad exchanges, then the infrastructural costs are minimal and employee costs are less material. This becomes a pure money-making exercise.

February 8, 2025 Â· 2 min      Finance
Antigua, Guatemala

Language learning as an adult

Two musings of my Spanish learning

The unanchored babies of the green card limbo

The US president has spoken favorably of H1-B and has promised a Green card for all US graduates. So, the only way to explain this Executive Order roping in legal immigrants is that no one in Washington DC properly understands how discriminatory the current green card system is for the Indian nationals.

January 22, 2025 Â· 3 min      Politics

Price variance in the United States

One weird aspect of life in the USA is not just the weird labor vs material costs but even how much the material costs vary from retailer to retailer. I have been to 50 countries now and have not seen this variance in any high-income, middle-income, or low-income country. It taxes your mental energy because even simple tasks can have a huge cost variance. My car has two battery-powered keys. One was dead, other one started giving low-battery notifications as well. Over the weekend, I learned about different ways to change the car battery with a 100X variation in costs. ...