Sunday, November 13, 2022

Products to Platforms

Here are my reading notes from https://hbr.org/2016/04/products-to-platforms-making-the-leap great research article about transitioning from products to platforms.


1. Start with a Defensible Product and a Critical Mass of Users

Platforms connect two or more distinct groups of users and enable their direct interaction—can generate many revenue streams.

A great platform starts with a great product—one that claims a critical mass of customers and provides enough value to keep them from defecting to competitors (in other words, is defensible).

No platform can thrive unless it creates value for those third parties.

Popularity doesn’t necessarily make a product defensible. (Need moat)

2. Apply a Hybrid Business Model Focused on Creating and Sharing New Value

It’s foolish to think that moving to a platform will revive a struggling product.

In a product business model, firms create value by developing differentiated products for specific customer needs, and they capture value by charging money for those items. In a platform business model, firms create value primarily by connecting users and third parties, and they capture value by charging fees for access to the platform.

Thus successful product-to-platform transitions require firms to engage in activities to increase the value of the product while also trying to attract third parties.

Firms stumble when a “product mindset” leads them to view the value pie as fixed.

3. Drive Rapid Conversion to the New Platform

Provide adequate value.
Stay consistent with your brand.
Involve users in improvements.

4. Identify and Act on Opportunities to Deter Competitive Imitation

One effective way to fend off copycat competitors is to identify and control the openings for value creation.

Firms should consider which aspects of their platforms to own and control. (Control own destiny)

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Relocation tips (from China to the US)

想到接下来团队有几位同学要来美国加州旧金山湾区,就想整理个东西给新同学们,想到哪写到哪,主要还是衣食住行相关的,逐步完善吧。祝大家美国的工作生活一切顺利。



SSN 社会安全号

周五听说新来的同学去办SSN了,是的,这个是一来就要办理的事情,因为工资缴税等都要这个SSN. 这里的Social security number有点像身份证号码,但很少公开,平时用也大多是用最后4位,这个号码贷款等跟信用有关的都要用到。(非常多的scam电话短信,千万不要提供这个号码) 请妥善管理。申请office可以在 https://secure.ssa.gov/ICON/main.jsp 上查询,我当年去的是Mountain View的office, 后来发现 Campbell那边排队的人还好,估计是实在不显眼的原因,也离公司不远。

Social Security Administration

770 W Hamilton Ave, Campbell · (800) 772-1213


信用分

美国信用体系是根据SSN来查的。个人推荐装一个Credit Karma的APP, 可以很好的monitoring自己的银行账户活动和自己的信用分,免费的。新来的同学推荐办2张信用卡先,已开始不要太多,2张足够积累信用分。你的第一张卡一直保留着,这样可以积累credit history.


DMV 车管所

这个是刚来也必去的政府部门,以前的DMV以慢出名,现在也逐渐电子化,很多都可以网上办理,但考驾照还是不得不去DMV office的,具体情况看 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/

对我来说,很久远的事情了,但应该还是有笔试和路考,笔试有中文的题目,只要提前熟悉记忆这边的交规,应该很容易考过。路考就因人而异了,我当时为了驾照可是去了N趟DMV的,每次都要2-3个小时,正常不过的,所以要有耐心,特别是在国内天天开车的同学。听说也有些教练,会很有帮助,可以考虑去比较偏僻的DMV, 一来排队时间短,二来路考的时候路上的车流量也少,不太容易遇到一些特别的,比如警车,校车,垃圾车等等。

加州现在推行的Real ID, 这个就是经常用的身份标识了,比如买酒的时候,就经常要Photo ID, 我们就用驾照。平时把自己的护照和SSN妥善的保管好,不需要随身携带。


保险

医疗保险公司都有,也有额外的意外险可以购买,都很便宜,不用担心。美国的保险可以一人购买cover全家的。

汽车保险,等买了车后,就需要办理,很多agent代理车险,这个是必须购买的,一般半年半年的购买。


非处方药物

有些非处方药可以很方便的从连锁药店买到

CVS Pharmacy

Walgreens

Rite Aid

Walmart Pharmacy
Costco


手机

美国有5大运营商,不管你是用iOS还是Android, 都有很多选择。公司有手机BYOD的报销,所以办理了后尽快去enroll BYOD, 这样就可以每个月收到报销的费用。湾区主要还是AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, 听说Verizon的覆盖率最好,如果你喜欢经常hiking, camping, 推荐这个。我是用的T-mobile, 还行吧,之前公司没有报销,所以办了个最便宜的。


租房

https://www.zillow.com
https://www.apartments.com

https://www.apartmentfinder.com

https://www.rent.com

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/



买房

https://www.zillow.com

https://www.redfin.com

https://www.realtor.com



购物打折信息网站

Dealsea.com (English)

Dealmoon.com (Chinese + English, 华人社区打折信息,信息量很大)


购物返点网站

https://www.rakuten.com/r/LUCOZH?eeid=28187 (referral & earn $30 using the link to register) 这个是我用下来最好的最方便的, 支持Chrome extension,可以在信用卡返点的基础上额外有返点。美国很多网购都有支持coupon code, 可以用这个插件来帮忙。


买菜

https://www.99ranch.com

Costco (会员制,但在我看来,是性价比非常高的一家wholesale, 忠实粉丝,每月必去。一来后就办理了会员,不过最近Costco也有新会员奖励活动,建议关注dealsea, dealmoon信息)

Safeway (门店很多,很方便)

Wholefoods

Lion market

Marina Foods

Weee!华人生鲜第一站,首单减$20 https://www.sayweee.com/invite_friends/landing?referral_id=2219&t=1&lang=zh


吃饭

DoorDash is a great way to support local restaurants with safe, no-contact delivery. Get $30 off ($10 off each of your first 3 orders) when you sign up with this link: https://drd.sh/AnGW7NreSDX22RUQ


Hungry? Get $20 off your first UberEats order of $25 or more. Terms apply. Use my code at checkout: eats-jimz272ue   http://ubr.to/EatsGiveGet


华人餐厅: Cupertino, Milpitas, Santa Clara, Fremont 等有很多, google上随便search就会发现天南地北的口味都有。


买车

建议新车,省掉很多旧车的烦恼,弄个loan, 还帮助积累信用分。

https://www.carmax.com

https://www.edmunds.com/

https://www.kbb.com/



打车

Uber (应该有支持注册奖励)

Lyft (有推荐奖励)

For $15 in ride credit, download the Lyft app using my referral link. It's the most affordable ride in town. Terms apply. https://www.lyft.com/i/JIM365509?utm_medium=p2pi_iacc


道路救援

AAA https://membership.aaa.com



购物中心

Westfield Valley Fair 

Westgate Center

Santana Row

Eastridge Center

Macy’s

Nordstroms

Great mall

Stanford shopping center

Gilroy Premium Outlets

Simon Premium Outlets (Livemore)

美国网购也是比较发达,几乎零售商都有ecommerce,我个人常用的是amazon, costco, safeway, target, walmart, macy’s, nordstrom, ebay (我很少用)



银行

美国这边的银行一般都有开卡奖励。我当时来的时候都不知道这些,后来才了解到的。跟国内不同的是,这里有checking and saving 两种账户,checking简单说就是支票账户,没有存取限制,平时写支票付房租或者什么的,都是从这个账户走,saving更多是是存款账户,每个月有取款6次的限制。另外很少用的就是CD,类似国内的存单,利率如此低,没有必要定期存款。


  1. Bank of America (网点多,以前新开账户有奖励,不知道现在什么情况)

  2. Chase (新开账户奖励活动经常有,google上找或官网上看)

  3. Citibank (新开账户推荐有奖励,citibank官网显示现在的幅度很大, 根据存入的金额大小,有$300~$2000区间的金额。我个人觉得花旗不错,因为国内也有支行)


上面的三家银行很多网点都有讲中文的银行员工了,另外基本上所有的银行都有网上银行和手机银行。比较方便。

电子支付,这里普及度不高,所以平时出门还是要带着钱包(包括少量现金,因为有些地方是cash only),我偶尔用的主要是以下的几个工具:

Paypal (支持推荐邀请,有注册奖励)

Venmo (也是Paypal旗下的)
Apple Pay
Zelle (转账/付款等,主流银行都已经支持电话号码或email绑定了)

信用卡,建议开始只办2张,找人推荐,双方都可以拿奖励,也添加申请的成功率。在Visa, Mastercard, AMEX, Discover这些常见的信用卡网络中,Visa, Mastercard 应该是大多地方都收的。


我有个运通的卡,平时买菜返点3%, 但也有少数店不收运通的卡 Apply for an American Express Card with this link. We can both get rewarded if you're approved!

http://refer.amex.us/HONGJZbGCh?XL=MIMCP


另一个强烈推荐的是Chase Freedom行用卡,门槛低,Chase Freedom Flex季度有5%的轮换返点(麻烦的是每个季度要从email里点一下,而不是自动enroll的),我一直用,支持Friend Referral program, 双方都有奖励,办卡者是$200,推荐者是$50.
Earn $200 cash back with Chase Freedom Flex or Chase Freedom Unlimited credit card. https://www.referyourchasecard.com/18a/NUSYFKSF8G or
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/18a/DAL4LX30DB
另外一种是Chase Freedom Unlimited, 无限制最低返点1.5%。2个卡的具体对比参考https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/freedom/CFD2022g?CELL=6RRW


证券账户

公司用的Etrade就很好,有stock plan, 也有个人证券账号

我平时用Robinhood, 因为以前这家不收交易手续费,现在应该都不收了。推荐link如下

Join Robinhood with my link and we'll both get a free stock 🤝 https://join.robinhood.com/hongjiz4




Saturday, October 15, 2022

DevOps Automation

I frequently remind the DevOps team about automation to enable standardization, speed and consistency. Manual operations will never scale, so we have to do more and more automations in DevOps work. 

First, automated monitoring and reporting for early warnings. Rapid changes means it is nearly impossible to keep track components and changes. Automation helps by enabling the DevOps team to create automated monitoring rules and generate alerts to keep track of Infrastructure availability, performance, security issues etc. Automation will help with TTD, TTM and TTR.

  • Time to detect (TTD): When performance or other issues arise, rich diagnostic data about the issues are fed back to development teams via automated monitoring.
  • Time to mitigate (TTM): DevOps teams act on the information to mitigate issues as quickly as possible so that users are no longer affected.
  • Time to remediate (TTR): Resolution times are measured, and teams work to improve over time. After mitigation, teams work on how to remediate problems at root cause so that they don't recur.

When we talk about service availability, MTTR (mean time to repair) is also critical during an outage, with automation and observability, DevOps engineers can quickly act on mitigation to bring back the service. Monitoring tools collect and analyze system data and translate it into actionable insights. Observability uses the data and insights that monitoring produces to provide a holistic understanding of your system, including its health and performance. 

Log management can also be automated. Logs are paramount in identifying issues in an application. An application might generate a large number of logs. Through automation and the aggregation and analysis of these logs using log management tools, you’ll be able to easily pinpoint issues in software.

Apart from monitoring and log management, there are other areas need automation:

  • Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)
  • Infrastructure management
  • Software testing

Automation, automation, automation. The more we invest in automation, the better Standardization, Flexibility, Consistency, Speed, and Scalability.

 

Sunday, July 31, 2022

读书笔记 - Blitzscaling (Part 1)

Blitzscaling is a book about "The lightning-fast path to build massively valuable companies", which was written by Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn cofounder) and Chris Yeh, forwarded by Bill Gates. Whether your business has ten employees or ten thousand, Blitzscaling is the essential playbook for winning in a world where speed is the competitive advantage that matters most. This book talks about "What is Blitzscaling", Business Model innovation, Strategy innovation, management innovation, broader landscape of Blitzscaling, and Responsible Blitzscaling. 

Blitzscaling is a strategy and set of techniques for driving and managing extremely rapid growth that prioritize speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty. Put another way, it's an accelerant that allows your company to grow at a furious pace that knocks the competition out of the water.

Whether you are a founder, a manager, a potential employee, or an investor, we believe that understanding blitzscaling will allow you to make better decisions in a world where speed is the critical competitive advantage. 

The term "blitzscaling" derives from the twentieth-century usage of "blitz" as a way of describing a sudden, all-out effort. The first usage of blitz in this way was to describe the "blitzkrieg" strategy that General Heinz Guderian devised for the initial military campaigns of Nazi Germany in world war II.

Blitzscaling is what we call both the general framework and the specific techniques that allow companies to achieve massive scale at incredible speed.

Classic start-up growth prioritizes efficiency in the face of uncertainty. Classic scale-up growth focuses on growing efficiently once the company has achieved certainty about the environment. Fastscaling means that you're willing to sacrifice efficiency for the sake of increasing your growth rate. Blitzscaling means that you're willing to sacrifice efficiency for speed, but without waiting to achieve certainty on whether the sacrifice will pay off.

Three basics of blitzscaling
1. Blitzscaling is both an offensive strategy and a defensive strategy
2. Blitzscaling thrives on positive feedback loops. In that the company that grows to scale first reaps significant competitive advantages
3. Despite its incredible advantages and potential payoffs, blitzscaling also comes with massive risks.

For business model innovation, the key is to combine new technologies with effective distribution to potential customers, a scalable and high-margin revenue model, and an approach that allows you to serve those customers given your probable resource constraints.  

For strategy model innovation, blitzscaling business tend to play in winner-take-most or winner-take-all markets. The greater risk for a successful, growing business is to move too slowly and allow its competitors to win market leadership and first-scaler advantage.

For management innovation, this is necessary because of the extreme strains placed on the organization and its employees by hyper-growth. Companies that blitzscale have to rapidly navigate a set of key transitions as their organizations grow, and have to embrace counterintuitive rules like hiring "good enough" people, launching flawed and imperfect products, letting fires burn, and ignoring angry customers.

Market size, distribution, and gross margins are important factors in growing a company, but the final growth factor (network effects) plays the key role in sustaining that growth long enough to build a massively valuable and lasting franchise. 

A product or service is subject to positive network effects when increased usage by any user increases the value of the product or service for other users.

Companies with a competitive advantage can quickly grow to the point where the increasing returns of network effects produce a winner-take-most or winner-take-all market. This also explains why the growth factor of distribution is as or more important to company success as the product itself - without distribution, it is difficult to reach the tipping point.

A significant number of operational issues arise simply because of human limitations. As much as we might wish that we and our colleagues could work tirelessly and seamlessly, regardless of the scale of the organization, the fact is that growth causes us to trip over a wide array of issues.

The power of modularity goes beyond just software development and engineering. The power of modularity, this principle makes it possible for a company like Amazon and its customers to build complex products out of smaller, standardized subsystems.

How the role of the founder changes in each stage:
Stage 1 (Family): The founder personally pulls the levers of hypergrowth
Stage 2 (Tribe): The founder manages the people who are pulling the levers
Stage 3 (Village): The founder designs an organization that pulls the levers
Stage 4 (City): The founder makes high-level decisions about goals and strategies
Stage 5 (Nation): The founder figures out how to pull the organization back from Blitzscaling and start blitzscaling new product lines and business units


Sunday, July 10, 2022

Kitchen English Words

 grater 刨丝器
a device having a surface covered with holes edged by slightly raised cutting edges, used for grating cheese and other foods.

chopper 劈刀
a short axe with a large blade, butcher's knife

Spatula 炒菜铲
an implement with a broad, flat, blunt blade, used for mixing and spreading things, especially in cooking and painting.

ladle 勺子
a large long-handled spoon with a cup-shaped bowl, used for serving soup, stew, or sauce.

whisk 打蛋器
A whisk is a cooking utensil which can be used to blend ingredients smooth or to incorporate air into a mixture, in a process known as whisking or whipping.

funnel 漏斗
a tube or pipe that is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, used for guiding liquid or powder into a small opening

corkscrew 开瓶器
a device for pulling corks from bottles, consisting of a spiral metal rod that is inserted into the cork, and a handle that extracts it.

colander 滤器
a perforated bowl used to strain off liquid from food, especially after cooking.

strainer 过滤器
a device having holes punched in it or made of crossed wires for separating solid matter from a liquid.

skimmer 撇渣器
a tool removing food from hot liquids and oil, blanching vegetables, skimming foam from broth and removing congealed food off the top of liquids.

turner 铲子
A kitchen turner is another name for a spatula. It is used for turning pancakes and such.

wok 炒锅
a bowl-shaped frying pan used typically in Chinese cooking.

Friday, June 24, 2022

IBD’S 10 SECRETS TO SUCCESS

I like this, so copied and pasted it here for future reading.

Investor’s Business Daily has spent years analyzing leaders and successful people in all walks of life. Most have 10 traits that, when combined, can turn dreams into reality. Each day, we highlight one.

1 HOW YOU THINK IS EVERYTHING: Always be positive. Think success, not failure. Beware of a negative environment.

2 DECIDE UPON YOUR TRUE DREAMS AND GOALS: Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.

3 TAKE ACTION: Goals are nothing without action. Don’t be afraid to get started. Just do it.

4 NEVER STOP LEARNING: Go back to school or read books. Get training and acquire skills.

5 BE PERSISTENT AND WORK HARD: Success is a marathon, not a sprint. Never give up.

6 LEARN TO ANALYZE DETAILS: Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes.

7 FOCUS YOUR TIME AND MONEY: Don’t let other people or things distract you.

8 DON’T BE AFRAID TO INNOVATE; BE DIFFERENT: Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.

9 DEAL AND COMMUNICATE WITH PEOPLE EFFECTIVELY: No person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.

10 BE HONEST AND DEPENDABLE; TAKE RESPONSIBILITY: Otherwise, Nos. 1-9 won’t matter.

Monday, April 11, 2022

Be promotable

Here are some bulletin points 

  • Lead before you are promoted to
  • Proactively bring in solutions
  • Speak up and contribute more
  • Volunteer more
  • Be more reliable and following through
  • Deliver excellence of what you do
  • be ambitious, can do attitude and contribution

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Sales Commission Terms

Accelerators
Attainment
Balance
Bonus
Credits
Charge-back
Draw
Draw Repayment
Commissions
Estimated Commissions
Incentive Plan
OTE (On-target earnings)
Override Commissions
Quotas
Quota Retirement
Plan Targets
Ramped Quotas
Reward
Release
Spiffs (Special Performance Incentive Fund)
Splits
Statements
Score
Tiers
Transactions
Variable
Withholding

https://www.salescookie.com/Blog/Content/2021/02/15/sales-commission-key-terminology-and-definitions

Monday, February 21, 2022

AMT 101

Why AMT?
Under the tax law, certain tax benefits can significantly reduce a taxpayer's regular tax amount. The alternative minimum tax (AMT) applies to taxpayers with high economic income by setting a limit on those benefits. It helps to ensure that those taxpayers pay at least a minimum amount of tax. In a nutshell, AMT was designed to keep wealthy taxpayers from using loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

What triggers AMT?
The three main triggers of AMT are having high household income with a significant number of deductions, realizing a large capital gain, or most commonly exercising stock options. 

How to calculate AMT?
When calculated AMT, your taxes are calculated in two ways: 1) Standard Tax and 2) Alternative Minimum Tax - if your Alternative Minimum Tax calculation is higher than the Standard Tax version, you will owe AMT. Again, one of the most likely scenarios where your AMT exceeds your Standard Tax is after ISO exercise. No AMT adjustment is required if you dispose of the stock in the same year you exercise the option.

How to get AMT credit?
If you're not liable for AMT this year, but you paid AMT in one or more previous years, you may be eligible to take a special minimum tax credit against your regular tax this year.

If you pay AMT after exercising ISOs, you will receive an AMT credit that can be used to lower your future tax bills. In order to claim your AMT credit, you will need to file IRS form 8801. You are only able to claim AMT Credits based on the difference between your Standard Tax and Alternative Minimum Tax in any given year.

For current tax year, first, there must be regular capital gains. Second, regular tax must be higher than AMT tax. Create a bigger gap between regular and AMT simply because the top rates for regular and AMT are 37% and 28% respectively. See below example:

Let's say you exercised ISOs in 2020 and your AMT exceeded your Standard Tax by 50,000, meaning you owed $50,000 in AMT in April 2021 (for tax year 2020). If your 2021 Standard tax exceeds your 2021 AMT by $30,000 you will be able to claim $30,000 in AMT Credit for 2021, leaving the remainder for 2022 and on.

Reference
https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc556
https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/misc/1004.html
https://www.esofund.com/blog/amt-tax
https://www.esofund.com/blog/amt-credit-iso

Saturday, January 22, 2022

读书笔记 - The Compound Effect

This book has over 1 million copies sold, less than 200 pages, written by Darren Hardy, which is a guide to jumpstart your income, your life, and your success. There are six chapters talking about compound effect, choices, habits, momentum, influences, and acceleration. After reading the book, I also subscribed to Darren Daily for free morning mentoring program.

It doesn't matter how smart you are or aren't, you need to make up in hard work what you lack in experience, skill, intelligence, or innate ability. If your competitor is smarter, more talented, or experienced, you simply need to work three or four times as hard. You can still beat them.

Small, smart choices + consistency + time = Radical difference

The magic penny, 1 penny, doubles in value every day for 31 days, makes the compounded penny worth $10,737,418.24 on day 31.

The most challenging aspect of the compound effect is that we have to keep working away for a while, consistently and efficiently, before we begin to see the payoff.

Preparation + Attitude + Opportunity + Action = Luck

Choosing to look for and focus on his wife's positive qualities changed his view of her, which changed how he interacted with her. As a result, she made different choices about the way she responded to him.

All winners are trackers. 

That is the power of little things adding up. It's not the big things that add up in the end. It's the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.

Time is of the essence. The earlier you start making small changes, the more powerfully the compound effect works in your favor.

Success is a marathon.

Your core values are your internal compass, your guiding beacon, your personal GPS. They act as the filter through which you run all of life's demands, requests, and temptations, making sure they're leading you toward your intended destination. 

You -> Choice + behavior + habit + compounded = Goals

Five strategies for eliminating bad habits: identify your triggers, clean house, swap it, ease in, jump in

Six strategies for for installing good habits: Set yourself up to succeed, think addition not subtraction, go for public display, find a success buddy, competition & camaraderie, celebrate. 

Change is hard, be patient.

You get started by taking one small step, one action at a time. Progress is slow, but once a newly formed habit has kicked in, Big Mo joins the party.

Momentum works on both sides of the equation - it can work for you or against you. 

A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else. A routine is exceptionally powerful.

It's important to cash out your day's performance. Compared to your plan for the day, how did it go?

Consistency is a critical component of success.

You are 100 percent responsible for your life. You alone are responsible for the choices you make and the actions you take. You must also realize your choices, behaviors, and habits are influenced by very powerful external forces.

Birds of a feather flock together. The people with whom you habitually associate are called your "reference group", which determines as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life.

Invest in mentorship.

Develop your own personal board of advisors. Seek out positive people who have achieved the success you want to create in your own life. 

It's not getting to the wall that counts. It's what you do after you hit it that really matters.

You've pushed through the wall of your max. The real growth happens with what you do after you're at the wall.

You can do more than expected in every aspect of your life.

What's the little extra you can do that exceeds expectations and accelerates your results?

Do better than expected. Find the line of expectation and then exceed it.

Learning without execution is useless.

Whatever I want in life, I've found that the best way to get it is to focus my energy on giving to others. The ripple effect of helping others and giving generously of your time and energy is that you become the biggest beneficiary of your personal philanthropy.