Reflections on the closed company Hola! Dating app

I'll discuss my fuckups as an entrepreneur and CEO. All of them refer to the dating app Hola!, which I co-founded and starred in.

Spring 2021 was when we started. Two techies and two non-techies created a dating app. Pokemon Go and Tinder were combined.

Online dating is a business, and it takes two weeks from a like to a date. We questioned online dating app users if they met anyone offline last year.

75% replied yes, 50% sometimes, 25% usually.

Offline dating is popular, yet people have concerns.

• Men are reluctant to make mistakes in front of others.

• Women are curious about the background of everyone who approaches them.

We designed unique mechanics that let people date after a match. No endless chitchat. Women would be safe while men felt like cowboys.

I wish to emphasize three faults that lead to founders' estrangement.

This detachment ultimately led to us shutting down the company.

The wrong technology stack

Situation

Instead of generating a faster MVP and designing an app in a universal stack for iOS and Android, I argued we should pilot the app separately for iOS and Android. Technical founders' expertise made this possible.

Self-reflection

Mistaken strategy. We lost time and resources developing two apps at once. We chose iOS since it's more profitable. Apple took us out after the release, citing Guideline 4.3 Spam. After 4 months, we had nothing. We had a long way to go to get the app on Android and the Store.

I suggested creating a uniform platform for the company's growth. This makes parallel product development easier. The strategist's lack of experience and knowledge made it a piece of crap.

What would I have changed if I could?

We should have designed an Android universal stack. I expected Apple to have issues with a dating app.

Our approach should have been to launch something and subsequently improve it, but prejudice won.

The lesson

Discuss the IT stack with your CTO. It saves time and money. Choose the easiest MVP method.

2. A tardy search for investments

Situation

Though the universe and other founders encouraged me to locate investors first, I started pitching when we almost had an app.

When angels arrived, it was time to close. The app was banned, war broke out, I left the country, and the other co-founders stayed. We had no savings.

Self-reflection

I loved interviewing users. I'm proud of having done 1,000 interviews. I wanted to understand people's pain points and improve the product.

Interview results no longer affected the product. I was terrified to start pitching. I filled out accelerator applications and redid my presentation. You must go through that so you won't be terrified later.

What would I have changed if I could?

Get an external or internal mentor to help me with my first pitch as soon as possible. I'd be supported if criticized. He'd cheer with me if there was enthusiasm.

In 99% of cases, I'm comfortable jumping into the unknown, but there are exceptions. The mentor's encouragement would have prompted me to act sooner.

The lesson

Begin fundraising immediately. Months may pass. Show investors your pre-MVP project. Draw inferences from feedback.

3. Role ambiguity

Situation

My technical co-founders were also part-time lead developers, which produced communication issues. As co-founders, we communicated well and recognized the problems. Stakes, vesting, target markets, and approach were agreed upon.

We were behind schedule. Technical debt and strategic gap grew.

Bi-daily and weekly reviews didn't help. Each time, there were explanations. Inside, I was freaking out.

Self-reflection

I am a fairly easy person to talk to. I always try to stick to agreements; otherwise, my head gets stuffed with unnecessary information, interpretations, and emotions.

Sit down -> talk -> decide -> do -> evaluate the results. Repeat it.

If I don't get detailed comments, I start ruining everyone's mood. If there's a systematic violation of agreements without a good justification, I won't join the project or I'll end the collaboration.

What would I have done otherwise?

This is where it’s scariest to draw conclusions. Probably the most logical thing would have been not to start the project as we started it. But that was already a completely different project. So I would not have done anything differently and would have failed again.

But I drew conclusions for the future.

The lesson

First-time founders should find an adviser or team coach for a strategic session. It helps split the roles and responsibilities.

Affiliate marketing is a popular online moneymaker. You promote others' products and get commissions. Affiliate marketing requires constant product promotion.

Affiliate marketing can be profitable even without much promotion. Yes, this is Autopilot Money.

How to Pick an Affiliate Program to Generate Income Autonomously

Autopilot moneymaking requires a recurring affiliate marketing program.

Finding the best product and testing it takes a lot of time and effort.

Here are three ways to choose the best service or product to promote:

Find a good attachment-rate product or service.

When choosing a product, ask if you can easily switch to another service. Attachment rate is how much people like a product.

Higher attachment rates mean better Autopilot products.

Consider promoting GetResponse. It's a 33% recurring commission email marketing tool. This means you get 33% of the customer's plan as long as he pays.

GetResponse has a high attachment rate because it's hard to leave and start over with another tool.

2. Pick a good or service with a lot of affiliate assets.

Check if a program has affiliate assets or creatives before joining.

Images and banners to promote the product in your business.

They save time; I look for promotional creatives. Creatives or affiliate assets are website banners or images. This reduces design time.

3. Select a service or item that consumers already adore.

New products are hard to sell. Choosing a trusted company's popular product or service is helpful.

As a beginner, let people buy a product they already love.

Online entrepreneurs and digital marketers love Systeme.io. It offers tools for creating pages, email marketing, funnels, and more. This product guarantees a high ROI.

Make the product known!

Affiliate marketers struggle to get traffic. Using affiliate marketing to make money is easier than you think if you have a solid marketing strategy.

Your plan should include:

1- Publish affiliate-related blog posts and SEO-optimize them

2- Sending new visitors product-related emails

3- Create a product resource page.

4-Review products

5-Make YouTube videos with links in the description.

6- Answering FAQs about your products and services on your blog and Quora.

7- Create an eCourse on how to use this product.

8- Adding Affiliate Banners to Your Website.

With these tips, you can promote your products and make money on autopilot.

My ego is so huge it won't fit through the door.

I don't know how I feel about it. I should be excited. Many of you have this exact dream to publish a book with a well-known book publisher and get a juicy advance.

Let me dissect how I'm thinking about it to help you.

How it happened

An email comes in. A generic "can we put a backlink on your website and get a freebie" email.

Almost deleted it.

Then I noticed the logo. It seemed shady. I found the URL. Check. I searched the employee's LinkedIn. Legit. I avoided middlemen. Check.

Mixed feelings. LinkedIn hasn't valued my writing for years. I'm just a guy in an unironed t-shirt whose content they sell advertising against.

They get big dollars. I get $0 and a few likes, plus some email subscribers.

Still, I felt adrenaline for hours.

I texted a few friends to see how they felt. I wrapped them.

Messages like "No shocker. You're entertaining online." I didn't like praises, so I blushed.

The thrill faded after hours. Who knows?

Most authors desire this chance.

"You entitled piece of crap, Denning!"

You may think so. Okay. My job is to stand on the internet and get bananas thrown at me.

I approached writing backwards. More important than a book deal was a social media audience converted to an email list.

Romantic authors think backward. They hope a fantastic book will land them a deal and an audience.

Rarely occurs. So I never pursued it. It's like permission-seeking or the lottery.

Not being a professional writer, I've never written a good book. I post online for fun and to express my opinions.

Writing is therapeutic. I overcome mental illness and rebuilt my life this way. Without blogging, I'd be dead.

I've always dreamed of staying alive and doing something I love, not getting a book contract. Writing is my passion. I'm a winner without a book deal.

Why I was given a book deal

You may assume I received a book contract because of my views or follows. Nope.

They gave me a deal because they like my writing style. I've heard this for eight years.

Several authors agree. One asked me to improve their writer's voice.

Takeaway: highlight your writer's voice.

What if they discover I'm writing incompetently?

An edited book is published. It's edited.

I need to master writing mechanics, thus this concerns me. I need help with commas and sentence construction.

I must learn verb, noun, and adjective. Seriously.

Writing a book may reveal my imposter status to a famous publisher. Imagine the email

"It happened again. He doesn't even know how to spell. He thinks 'less' is the correct word, not 'fewer.' Are you sure we should publish his book?"

Fears stink.

I'm capable of blogging. Even listicles. So what?

Writing for a major publisher feels advanced.

I only blog. I'm good at listicles. Digital media executives have criticized me for this.

• It is allegedly clickbait.

• Or it is following trends.

• Alternately, growth hacking.

Never. I learned copywriting to improve my writing.

Apple, Amazon, and Tesla utilize copywriting to woo customers. Whoever thinks otherwise is the wisest person in the room.

Old-schoolers loathe copywriters.

Their novels sell nothing.

They assume their elitist version of writing is better and that the TikTok generation will invest time in random writing with no subheadings and massive walls of text they can't read on their phones.

I'm terrified of book proposals.

My friend's book proposal suggestion was contradictory and made no sense.

They told him to compose another genre. This book got three Amazon reviews. Is that a good model?

The process disappointed him. I've heard other book proposal horror stories. Tim Ferriss' book "The 4-Hour Workweek" was criticized.

Because he has thick skin, his book came out. He wouldn't be known without that.

I hate book proposals.

An ongoing commitment

Writing a book is time-consuming.

I appreciate time most. I want to focus on my daughter for the next few years. I can't recreate her childhood because of a book.

No idea how parents balance kids' goals.

My silly face in a bookstore. Really?

Genuine thought.

I don't want my face in bookstores. I fear fame. I prefer anonymity.

I want to purchase a property in a bad Australian area, then piss off and play drums. Is bookselling worth it?

Are there even bookstores anymore?

(Except for Ryan Holiday's legendary Painted Porch Bookshop in Texas.)

What's most important about books

Many were duped.

Tweets and TikTok hopscotch vids are their future. Short-form content creates devoted audiences that buy newsletter subscriptions.

Books=depth.

Depth wins (if you can get people to buy your book). Creating a book will strengthen my reader relationships.

It's cheaper than my classes, so more people can benefit from my life lessons.

A deeper justification for writing a book

Mind wandered.

If I write this book, my daughter will follow it. "Look what you can do, love, when you ignore critics."

That's my favorite.

I'll be her best leader and teacher. If her dad can accomplish this, she can too.

My kid can read my book when I'm gone to remember her loving father.

Last paragraph made me cry.

The positive

This book thing might make me sound like Karen.

The upside is... Building in public, like I have with online writing, attracts the right people.

Proof-of-work over proposals, beautiful words, or huge aspirations. If you want a book deal, try writing online instead of the old manner.

Next steps

No idea.

I'm a rural Aussie. Writing a book in the big city is intimidating. Will I do it? Lots to think about. Right now, some level of reflection and gratitude feels most appropriate.

Sometimes when you don't feel worthy, it gives you the greatest lessons. That's how I feel about getting offered this book deal.

Perhaps you can relate.

Old power paradigm blocks new planetary paradigm

The difference between our reality and the media's reality is like a tale of two worlds. The greatest and worst of times, really.

Expanding information demands complex skills and understanding to separate important information from ignorance and crap. And that's just the start of determining the source's aim.

Trust who? We see people trust liars in public and then be destroyed by their decisions. Mistakes may be devastating.

Many give up and don't trust anyone. Reality is a choice, though. Same risks.

We must separate our needs and wants from reality. Needs and wants have rules. Greed and selfishness create an unlivable planet.

Culturally, we know this, but we ignore it as foolish. Selfish and greedy people obtain what they want, while others suffer.

We invade, plunder, rape, and burn. We establish civilizations by institutionalizing an exploitable underclass and denying its existence. These cultural lies promote greed and selfishness despite their destructiveness.

Controlling parts of society institutionalize these lies as fact. Many of each age are willing to gamble on greed because they were taught to see greed and selfishness as principles justified by prosperity.

Our cultural understanding recognizes the long-term benefits of collaboration and sharing. This older understanding generates an increasing tension between greedy people and those who see its planetary effects.

Survival requires distinguishing between global and regional realities. Simple, yet many can't do it. This is the first time human greed has had a global impact.

In the past, conflict stories focused on regional winners and losers. Losers lose, winners win, etc. Powerful people see potential decades of nuclear devastation as local, overblown, and not personally dangerous.

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was a human choice that required people to acquiesce to irrational devastation. This prevented nuclear destruction. Most would refuse.

A dangerous “solution” relies on nuclear trigger-pullers not acting irrationally. Since then, we've collected case studies of sane people performing crazy things in experiments. We've been lucky, but the climate apocalypse could be different.

Climate disaster requires only continuing current behavior. These actions already cause global harm, but that's not a threat. These activities must be viewed differently.

Once grasped, denying planetary facts is hard to accept. Deniers can't think beyond regional power. Seeing planet-scale is unusual.

Decades of indoctrination defining any planetary perspective as un-American implies communal planetary assets are for plundering. The old paradigm limits any other view.

In the same way, the new paradigm sees the old regional power paradigm as a threat to planetary civilization and lifeforms. Insane!

While MAD relied on leaders not acting stupidly to trigger a nuclear holocaust, the delayed climatic holocaust needs correcting centuries of lunacy. We must stop allowing craziness in global leadership.

Nothing in our acknowledged past provides a paradigm for such. Only primitive people have failed to reach our level of sophistication.

Before European colonization, certain North American cultures built sophisticated regional nations but abandoned them owing to authoritarian cruelty and destruction. They were overrun by societies that saw no wrong in perpetual exploitation. David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything is an example of historical rediscovery, which is now crucial.

From the new paradigm's perspective, the old paradigm is irrational, yet it's too easy to see those in it as ignorant or malicious, if not both. These people are both, but the collapsing paradigm they promote is older or more ingrained than we think.

We can't shift that paradigm's view of a dead world. We must eliminate this mindset from our nations' leadership. No other way will preserve the earth.

Change is occurring. As always with tremendous transition, younger people are building the new paradigm.

The old paradigm's disintegration is insane. The ability to detect errors and abandon their sources is more important than age. This is gaining recognition.

The breakdown of the previous paradigm is not due to senile leadership, but to systemic problems that the current, conservative leadership cannot recognize.

Stop following the old paradigm.

Believe what you see, what people say

It’s sad that we never get trained to leave assumptions behind. - Sebastian Thrun

Many problems in software development are not because of code but because developers create the wrong software. This isn't rare because software is emergent and most individuals only realize what they want after it's built.

Inquisitive developers who pass the yellow cat test can improve the process.

Carpenters measure twice and cut the wood once. Developers are rarely so careful.

The Yellow Cat Test

Game of Thrones made dragons cool again, so I am reading The Game of Thrones book.

The yellow cat exam is from Syrio Forel, Arya Stark's fencing instructor.

Syrio tells Arya he'll strike left when fencing. He hits her after she dodges left. Arya says “you lied”. Syrio says his words lied, but his eyes and arm told the truth.

Arya learns how Syrio became Bravos' first sword.

“On the day I am speaking of, the first sword was newly dead, and the Sealord sent for me. Many bravos had come to him, and as many had been sent away, none could say why. When I came into his presence, he was seated, and in his lap was a fat yellow cat. He told me that one of his captains had brought the beast to him, from an island beyond the sunrise. ‘Have you ever seen her like?’ he asked of me.

“And to him I said, ‘Each night in the alleys of Braavos I see a thousand like him,’ and the Sealord laughed, and that day I was named the first sword.”

Arya screwed up her face. “I don’t understand.”

Syrio clicked his teeth together. “The cat was an ordinary cat, no more. The others expected a fabulous beast, so that is what they saw. How large it was, they said. It was no larger than any other cat, only fat from indolence, for the Sealord fed it from his own table. What curious small ears, they said. Its ears had been chewed away in kitten fights. And it was plainly a tomcat, yet the Sealord said ‘her,’ and that is what the others saw. Are you hearing?” Reddit discussion.

Development teams should not believe what they are told.

We created an appointment booking system. We thought it was an appointment-booking system. Later, we realized the software's purpose was to book the right people for appointments and discourage the unneeded ones.

The first 3 months of the project had half-correct requirements and software understanding.

Open your eyes

“Open your eyes is all that is needed. The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes, hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking afterwards, and in that way, knowing the truth” Syrio Ferel

We must see what exists, not what individuals tell the development team or how developers think the software should work. Initial criteria cover 50/70% and change.

Developers build assumptions problems by assuming how software should work. Developers must quickly explain assumptions.

When a development team's assumptions are inaccurate, they must alter the code, DevOps, documentation, and tests.

It’s always faster and easier to fix requirements before code is written.

First-draft requirements can be based on old software. Development teams must grasp corporate goals and consider needs from many angles.

Testers help rethink requirements. They look at how software requirements shouldn't operate.

Technical features and benefits might misdirect software projects.

The initiatives that focused on technological possibilities developed hard-to-use software that needed extensive rewriting following user testing.

Software development

High-level criteria are different from detailed ones.

• The interpretation of words determines their meaning.

• Presentations are lofty, upbeat, and prejudiced.

• People's perceptions may be unclear, incorrect, or just based on one perspective (half the story)

• Developers can be misled by requirements, circumstances, people, plans, diagrams, designs, documentation, and many other things.

Developers receive misinformation, misunderstandings, and wrong assumptions. The development team must avoid building software with erroneous specifications.

Once code and software are written, the development team changes and fixes them.

Developers create software with incomplete information, they need to fill in the blanks to create the complete picture.

Conclusion

Yellow cats are often inaccurate when communicating requirements.

Before writing code, clarify requirements, assumptions, etc.

Everyone will pressure the development team to generate code rapidly, but this will slow down development.

Code changes are harder than requirements.

Ethereum is the second-largest cryptocurrency. The Merge, a mid-September event that will convert Ethereum's consensus process from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake if all goes according to plan, will be a game changer.

Why is Ethereum ditching proof-of-work? Because it can. We're talking about a fully functioning, open-source ecosystem with a capacity for evolution that other cryptocurrencies lack, a change that would allow it to scale up its performance from 15 transactions per second to 100,000 as its blockchain is used for more and more things. It would reduce its energy consumption by 99.95%. Vitalik Buterin, the system's founder, would play a less active role due to decentralization, and miners, who validated transactions through proof of work, would be far less important.

Why has this conversion taken so long and been so cautious? Because it involves modifying a core process while it's running to boost its performance. It requires running the new mechanism in test chains on an ever-increasing scale, assessing participant reactions, and checking for issues or restrictions. The last big test was in early June and was successful. All that's left is to converge the mechanism with the Ethereum blockchain to conclude the switch.

What's stopping Bitcoin, the leader in market capitalization and the cryptocurrency that began blockchain's appeal, from doing the same? Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever he or she is, departed from public life long ago, therefore there's no community leadership. Changing it takes a level of consensus that is impossible to achieve without strong leadership, which is why Bitcoin's evolution has been sluggish and conservative, with few modifications.

Secondly, The Merge will balance the consensus mechanism (proof-of-work or proof-of-stake) and the system decentralization or centralization. Proof-of-work prevents double-spending, thus validators must buy hardware. The system works, but it requires a lot of electricity and, as it scales up, tends to re-centralize as validators acquire more hardware and the entire network activity gets focused in a few nodes. Larger operations save more money, which increases profitability and market share. This evolution runs opposed to the concept of decentralization, and some anticipate that any system that uses proof of work as a consensus mechanism will evolve towards centralization, with fewer large firms able to invest in efficient network nodes.

Yet radical bitcoin enthusiasts share an opposite argument. In proof-of-stake, transaction validators put their funds at stake to attest that transactions are valid. The algorithm chooses who validates each transaction, giving more possibilities to nodes that put more coins at stake, which could open the door to centralization and government control.

In both cases, we're talking about long-term changes, but Bitcoin's proof-of-work has been evolving longer and seems to confirm those fears, while proof-of-stake is only employed in coins with a minuscule volume compared to Ethereum and has no predictive value.

As of mid-September, we will have two significant cryptocurrencies, each with a different consensus mechanisms and equally different characteristics: one is intrinsically conservative and used only for economic transactions, while the other has been evolving in open source mode, and can be used for other types of assets, smart contracts, or decentralized finance systems. Some even see it as the foundation of Web3.

Many things could change before September 15, but The Merge is likely to be a turning point. We'll have to follow this closely.