ENTREPRENEUR

A couple of days late, but here it is, quick post on my progress in May:

• Suprailiac measurement: 19″
• Weight: 194.4 lbs
• Waist below navel: 36.75″
• Bicep flexed: 16.125″
• Waist to bicep ratio: 2.279
• Lbs. muscle: 155.6
• Lbs. fat: 38.8
• BFP: 19.95%

Slow and steady progress is continuing.  I gained about 1.5 pounds of muscle and around .4″ on the bicep.  Still have a couple of months to go before I can hit all my goals (10 pullups in a row – done, 165 lbs. of muscle, 16.5″ biceps), but I’m gonna get there.  It’s just a matter of progressive overload and eating the right stuff in the right quantities.

More stats next month.

For those of you that have been following my ramblings on this blog, you’ll know that every month I post an update on my fitness stats.  To recap, my long-term goals for 2013 are to get down to 8% bodyfat.  However, my medium-term goals are actually a bit different, and possibly in conflict.  Since I lost so much muscle mass over the past few months (and probably a lot more during business school), my medium-term goals are to build that muscle back up before trying to cut down again.

In any case, I’ve been making slow progress, as is to be expected when trying to gain muscle.  Here were my stats at the end of April:

• Suprailiac measurement: 19″
• Weight: 193 lbs
• Waist below navel: 36.75″
• Bicep flexed: 15.875″
• Waist to bicep ratio: 2.315
• Lbs. muscle: 154.5
• Lbs. fat: 38.5
• BFP: 19.95%

April was an interesting month.  I gained a lot of muscle and weight, but also put on some fat.  I was traveling for two weekends, which undoubtedly threw off my routine a bit, though ultimately, it seems as if the time I took off from weight lifting actually helped my body to recover faster.  Stay tuned for the May update in a month.

It’s been about a year since I joined up with a couple of friends from b-school to see what we could do in the world of mobile.  A lot of things have progressed.  The business, the technology, and especially my understanding of what it takes to build a new business from scratch.

It’s not like I haven’t been in similar situations before.  I’ve tried my hand at new ventures in the past, with varying degrees of success.  None of them really “made” it before.  And that’s due to a variety of reasons.  Product-market fit, lack of experience, not understanding the true worth of what I was building, not reacting quickly enough, not executing well, not sticking it through.  Suffice it to say, none of them got far – at least, not as far as the current venture I’m in.

The startup lifestyle, and especially the tech startup lifestyle, tends to be a bit glamorized.  There are a lot of stories in the media about successful exits, flowing money, and tales of success.  All well and good, but the media loves sensationalism.  What they don’t love is reporting on the daily life, the minute details of the process that it takes to get from A to Z.  That’s often an overlooked, unimportant issue when it comes to getting eyeballs on an article or in front of a human interest piece.  But in the startup world, that’s the most important thing that comes into play, each and every day.

A year in and I’ve been able to get a better understanding of what it entails.

At the beginning, there was a lot of excitement about what we could do, and we went after our ideas with a lot of enthusiasm.  Interestingly enough, those ideas led to pivots, us trying out new ideas that had better potential, or a larger market, or were even further long shots than our previous idea.  Those pivots pay off, but what’s interesting is what comes after you’ve found your niche.  That’s the long haul.

I can’t even say I know what a “true” long haul is like, but I can say that I’ve seen what could be the start of a, hopefully successful, yet very long, process.

Working day to day in a business you actually care about is awesome.  It’s freaking exhausting.  It’s exhilarating.  It’s draining.  It’s uncertain.  But it’s also exciting.  Suffice it to say, it’s like your corporate daily grind times ten, mixed in with pure highs, and daily questions about how long you can survive on the cash you have (both personally and as a business), whether you’re working hard enough, whether you’ll be able to make it through the long process, all while trying to ignore how slowly your bank account is growing (and that’s if you’re lucky… some entrepreneurs are happy to have a bank account that’s in the black every month).

There’s no doubt it’s tough.  When you’re working hard to release a new feature or get a new client, it’s far less than glamorous.  It’s a push to get something done right, test it out, see how it works, react to the data, and improve it, all while rolling out new features, testing those out, and repeating the entire process for an indefinite number of cycles.  Our CTO (and good friend of mine) said it best – “it’s a daily grind.”

It’s fun.  I wouldn’t trade it for the “stability” of the corporate job that I used to have.  It’s also very, very trying.  It really does put your character to the test.  You know that there’s a longshot of achieving what it is you set out to achieve, but in all honesty, you don’t really care.  You have to keep pushing forward to see what you can accomplish.

All of that is made infinitely easier when you have the right team.  Working with smart people that you really like makes it all possible.  It makes a big difference to have people around you who you know will be able to kick it into gear when it’s needed.  Who will get you through that new product release, or will tell you to ignore that potential customer that just told you to get lost, or to remind you that, through it all, there’s still a solid plan.

I’m loving it all.  But I need sleep!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a couple of R&D projects with a focus on manipulating and analyzing big data.  For me, this is really interesting stuff.  I’ve always found projects at the intersection of software engineering and analytics to be the most stimulating work.  Being able to conceptualize a mathematical approach to solve a problem, and then to actually create an application to implement the solution, is a very fulfilling endeavor.  This combination of analytic problem solving combined with developing the software to actually derive the solution is something that I refer to as data engineering.  And from what I can tell, it’s rare.

Though I’ve always been interested in both software engineering and analytics, my background in software engineering is much stronger than it is in data analytics.  I am by no means a true data scientist.  There’s a lot more I have to learn.  In fact, data science is more than just knowing and implementing mathematical algorithms.  It’s a way of thinking – a way of approaching a problem using the proper mindset.

But one thing I’ve started to find very interesting is that data scientists tend to focus more on the actual theory and strategy of solving a problem, rather than developing the skills to implement it.  There’s a wide gap between knowing how to solve a problem and actually coding up that solution and using it to solve a problem.

Data scientists seem to know the theory behind how to solve a problem, however, what I’m really interested in is data engineering.  Coming up with a solution to a problem and actually implementing it. Though I may not always have the most efficient or optimal solution, a working, functional solution is, in my opinion, worth much more.

My suggestion for universities that are jumping on the data science bandwagon would be to include a good amount of programming education as part of their curriculum.  Someone with the theoretical knowledge and mindset to approach data as a scientist that also has the functional knowledge on how to build solutions around it would dominate the job market.

About a year ago, I wrote a post on how some of the brightest and best minds of our time were shunning fields like robotics and language processing in favor of advertising.  At the time, I was working on a mobile consumer app to allow golfers to track and plan their shots while on the golf course, and analyze and dissect data about their game when off the course.  I was also actively trading options.

At the time, I knew very little about the world of online advertising.  What I did now about it was that there was a great deal of work going into improving the world of digital ads.  Somehow, in my slightly cynical musings, I failed to realize that not only was it a strong possibility that I could soon enter that world, but it was also an industry worth getting into.

14 months later, and without realizing it, I’ve become an advertiser.

Though I’m not living the crazy life of Don Draper, I am working in New York in the 21st century version of targeted commercials and brand messages.  What I find very interesting, though, is how the theory of advertising has evolved in the past few decades.  Before we had the technology to target individual users wherever they are in the world at any time that they seek out content, we had to assume individuals that looked and felt a certain way were all interested in the same things.

What I’m talking about is demographic advertising – target 18-30 year old males for sneakers, or 30-40 year olds with cheap mortgages, regardless of whether a significant portion of individuals in each group would actually be interested in the advertised service or product.  Today, things are a bit more sophisticated.

We have the ability to extrapolate an individual interest profile for nearly everyone.  Not only that, but we also have the means to target individuals with directed messages based off their own interest.  In essence, we’ve moved from using demographic advertising to behavioral advertising.

I won’t get into it too much at the moment, but I also won’t hesitate to comment on how ironic I find it to have taken multiple marketing classes that all stressed the benefits of behavioral segmentation all while thinking I would have never used that information in the real world.  Though my goals of being a busy quantitative hedge fund manager may be (temporarily) put on hold, my interest in analytics, algorithms, and software are just as useful now as they would have been before.

Last month I listed my fitness routine and stats.  This month’s post will be a quick follow up to that.

My current stats are as follows:

• Suprailiac measurement: 19″
• Weight: 186.4 lbs
• Waist below navel: 36.5″
• Bicep flexed: 15.75″
• Waist to bicep ratio: 2.317
• Lbs. muscle: 149.2
• Lbs. fat: 37.2
• BFP: 19.95%

Not great when compared to last month.  I lost a little bit of weight and muscle.  The biggest problem was not eating enough calories – something that I will resolve in April.  I’ll post again then to update my progress.

Last month I posted an article on the start of my new fitness routine.  Since then, I’ve been going strong with my workouts and nutrition.  In the month since that post, I’ve lost a quarter inch on my waist, increased .3 inches on my bicep, and have gained two pounds of muscle.  The results aren’t too bad given that the huge gains I made last month were my body recovering a lot of the lost muscle from the previous five months.

My current stats are as follows:

• Suprailiac measurement: 19.5″
• Weight: 188 lbs
• Waist below navel: 36.25″
• Bicep flexed: 15.62″
• Waist to bicep ratio: 2.321
• Lbs. muscle: 149.8
• Lbs. fat: 38.2
• BFP: 20.30%

My end goal for the year is still to get to 8% bodyfat, but I have a couple of milestones I’d like to hit along the way.  Because I lost so much muscle during business school and right after, I’m going to first shoot to get to my highest level of muscle mass.  The initial goal is to get to 165 lbs. of muscle, a 16.5″ measurement on my bicep, and to be able to do 10 pull-ups in one go.

That will get me to a good spot in terms of muscle mass, and will give me a bit of a buffer against some of the muscle loss that will inevitably occur when I start cutting fat.

After that, though, it’s going to be a strict level of cardio, lifting, and caloric restriction so that I can get to 8% bodyfat.  I’m hoping to get there before my friend’s wedding in Thailand during Thanksgiving.

I’ll keep posting here about my results.  Wish me luck.

2012 was an eventful year for me – lots of good stuff, great times, wouldn’t have traded it, etc etc.  It was also the first time I’ve really been a “vagabond.”  Due to a couple of wild and crazy events, I actually ended up crashing on a (really good) friend’s couch for about 5 months.  Now, I’m pretty easy going and don’t care too much about such things, so it wasn’t that big of a deal for me to have had to do that, but one of the biggest problems with that was that I didn’t have a good way of maintaining my fitness regimen.

I could no longer order Fresh Direct every week – the fridge wasn’t my own and there was no space.  I also couldn’t go to a gym, since I didn’t want to sign up to a place before I knew where I’d be living.

So for 5 months, I became a hobo.  Not the best thing for fitness.

Since then, I’ve moved into my own place and have gotten settled down a bit.  When I signed the lease, I told myself that I’d erase the negative effects that 5 years of vagabonding (plus 2 years of business schooling) had on my body.  The week after I moved in, I signed up for a New York City rec center near my place. Ironically enough, the guys at the office also wanted to start a workout challenge, which I joined.  I downloaded Fitocracy (really cool app and fitness community) and have started eating better.

The results are starting to come in.  At the end of my vagabonding period, I weighed 178 pounds and came in around 22.5% in bodyfat, which equates to around 138 pounds of muscle.  Now, at the start of February, I’m weighing in at around 186 pounds, 20.65% bodyfat, and 148 pounds of muscle.  In 3-4 weeks of heavy lifting and eating right, I was able to gain back 10 (of the many) pounds of muscle that I had lost.

I still have a long way to go before I’m back at the level I was at my peak, but I’m in a good routine now – gym close by, social pressure to do well, and in a good routine.  My ultimate goal is still to get to 8% bodyfat, but there are a lot of stepping stones along the way.  I’m going to first work to get beyond my peak muscle mass (160 pounds of muscle).  After that, I’ll likely have a lot of fat to burn off, which will involve a pretty heavy duty cutting routine.  But now I’m ready.  The craziness of b-school is over and I’m in a good routine at work.

Game on.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2