WhyComboNadir
I've seen businesses, especially software, do this where 99% of the company's effort was in "doing the right thing" by supporting their last product so much they were never able to put any effort into a better product. Getting out of this is where the right CEO earns their pay.
Anything you put your attention on, grows. So keep your attention on what you're hoping for, not on what you wish would go away. Don't give negative things oxygen.
(Of course this is all well and fine for someone of generally good character doing productive work; but can also be the formula for monsters to use that are "hoping for" things that most would find repugnant).
Related, which I always loved: Winston Churchill "You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks."
Compared to regular programming languages it reminds me of the difference between lawn signs in the US vs the UK:
US: Keep Off Grass! UK: Please remain on the footpath for the sake of our lawn
Right now we're using OpenAI's models by default since (unlike Anthropic) will allow us to use our pro subscription rather than token metering, but I've already had the joy of being able to change it to Kimi K3 (via OpenRouter) for an hour to try it out, and there were zero hiccups.
Suddenly security was announcing "There's been a sanitary inconvenience, everyone must leave the pool!!! We apologize, but there's been a sanitary inconvenience!".
A moment later we saw them scooping up some floating poop that had escape some baby's swim diaper.
If you're going to walk to the store, don't push you car there! Just walk. So if you want to write code, don't retype what the LLM said, create your code from your own brain.
China is the master of the long-game. It's shortest cycles are 5 year tactical plans. Their strategic plans go far beyond.
I don't know what the solution is in the US (and West in general) to be able to think 25+ years ahead, as no material incentive would do the job; only cultural/society/civilizational goals make someone think that far ahead (religion does too).
If the US can't think that far ahead for the same reasons as China, maybe we need to find things we care about long term and tie economic development to that (family, religion, and even our potential extreme longevity).
For me I feel that LLMs have exploded (in a good way) my cognitive capabilities. I'm now the general of an army, rather than playing the role of a soldier. Of course that means that I lose the experience of being the lonely soldier, but it is a no-brainer tradeoff for me.
Anyway, I have to go now so I can push my car to the grocery store (so I don't forget how to walk), me and my giant calves will be back in a few hours.
All meant in good spirit. Keep doing what you're doing, thanks for sharing, and hope people are kind and only give good natured ribbings.
I'm sure that during your studies, through serendipity, you'll find great opportunities to pursue that you couldn't possibly imagine right now. Give yourself the greatest surface area for luck to find you.
Since you posted this here on HN I can already tell that you're the type of person who will not be short of opportunities and already has a good surface area for luck to find you.
Good luck!
But seriously, happy birthday! I fly a loud aircraft that I’m sure the world wishes was quieter.
For European countries it seems like a left-hand-right-hand problem: I go to a party at the Los Angeles Austrian consulate, or a "Start Up Austria" event in SF and listen to them pitch bringing businesses to Austria (the left hand). But back home the "right hand" and culture seems to look down at people who have accumulated wealth, and be hostile to the idea of the most simple reforms that would actually make someone want to move their business to Austria/EU. For example, the intrenched interests of needing a notary paid a few thousand Euros, are screwing the whole country so one set of people can fill an archaic role.
Do you know how much a notary costs in the US? If you go to a UPS or FedEx store, it is typically about $10-15. If you go to your own bank they do it for free.
And get this, when you incorporate a company in a US state, guess how many things need to be notarized? None. As you fill out the forms you are swearing to their truth, and accepting a notice that you are committing perjury if you are untruthful. Do they check your statements right then to make sure you're not lying - absolutely not! Why bother, you haven't started anything yet. But by God, if 5 years later when you're making money, the IRS finds out that you lied, then you're going to wish you were living in another country.
In other words, the timeframe for the risk concern is completely backwards in Europe: the risk management basically stops 95% of things from happening in the first place, including the 0.001% the might be fraudulent. Wouldn't it be better to let 1,000,000+ companies get formed, then 50,000 of them naturally become a meaningful success, then take a closer look at their compliance once they are truly a real business.
I had some ignorant biases against doing business in Europe before starting this process - and I was hoping that experience would change my mind - but the funny thing is that my biases weren't strong enough! (my bank and incorporating story above is just one example of many). No thank you EU!
(My first businesses were started in Canada, and I thought Canada was so backwards compared to the US in being business friendly, but now I realize Canada is maybe 90% as business friendly as the USA. EU, in my experience is like 5% as business friendly as USA)
There are supposedly streamlined paths for local residents, but I had to go through the standard corporate pipeline. I spent three months fighting a bizarre catch-22 between my notary (who cost €3k+) and the bank. To open the account, I had to prove I deposited €10k in capital. But I couldn't make the deposit without an active bank account. On top of that, the bank's compliance team kept arbitrarily canceling my application due to "incorrect answers"... refusing to tell me what the errors actually were and forcing me to restart the entire process ab initio.
I finally just gave up. I wrote off the €3,000 notary fee and €1,000 in registered office costs as a sunk cost, and incorporated a US LLC instead. It took under 10 minutes, no notary, fees of $25 since I did it myself, plus another 20 minutes to open the business bank account.
There was no commercial reason to choose Austria; it was purely sentimental. My ancestors were entrepreneurs in Linz and Vienna, and I loved the idea of renewing that legacy. But the sheer weight of the bureaucracy managed to kill about 99% of the early-stage startup enthusiasm you normally rely on to get a new project off the ground.
>>> Nothing depreciates faster than the value of a service rendered. <<<
Always get paid in advance. We always had more customers than we could service, so we only worked on stuff that was already paid for. Customers became their own bill-collector when they were trained from contract signing that is how things work. Terms like "2/10 Net 30" will never make your life easier than simply getting paid first.