Chiang Mai Week 2 - July 2023
Thoughts on Startups, Ai and Buddhism
All the founders of startups that have made a big impact had the capacity to imagine what that would be like. This is a faculty of imagination of what your impact on the world can be through your choices, actions and process of creation.
It takes a lot of hard work to make a startup successful. It takes three to five years of constant work, which gives very little signs of success. It requires a lot of internal conviction to have enough perseverance through this long period of time of three to five years.
It requires the founder to have enough imagination to make their vision a reality. It doesn’t come out of thin air. It takes a lot of trial and error. It takes many unsuccessful attempts. It requires the ability to keep making the app better, refactoring the code, looking for ways to improve it, getting feedback, being engaged in the community of your target audience. The most important thing is to have perseverance and belief in yourself.
Currently I am focused on several start ups.
InLight Meditation
Squad Goals
VayamAi
DCom.market
One of them is called InLight Meditation. It is an iOS app that tracks your meditation. After the completion of a session, you are prompted to write down your reflections on the meditation session. On your profile you can see your meditation history. Currently it is in this state. It has a profile, a profile name, description and an avatar image.
During this week, while I meditated in the temples of Chiang Mai using my InLight app. I was amazed at the thought that it is within my power to make this app much more useful and powerful. It has the potential to be like Instagram, that has that scale of impact, it has that kind of attractiveness in positive habit forming, at the same time it is centered around the practice of mindfulness and strengthening your capacity for concentration and self awareness which is something I am willing to dedicate my energy and effort to supporting and spreading in this world.
Monk Chat in Chiang Mai
On Friday July 21, 2023, I attended a one day retreat in Chiang Mai.
The monk, KK gave engaging lecture on what Buddhism is, Monk life, it’s history and meditation practices.
I was proud to say that I was familiar with meditation and that I had been practicing it on and off for over ten years.
The monk’s teachings were very clear and simple. They gave really good understanding of what the Monks are about. He gave us a window into their world. They believe that their life style is ultimately more rewarding, to renounce worldly desires, chasing the illusions of wanting more and more, instead to strengthening your capacity for awareness, kindness and peace.
At the end we got the opportunity to ask questions to a group of monks that lived and studied there. I asked them why this life style was a better choice for them. The Monks replied that it was because being good, doing good, is more rewarding, that pursing desires is an illusion and it only creates more desires and unhappiness. I asked more questions, somehow I don’t think I got clear answers. I will need to come back someday and have more time for discussions.
During the sitting meditation, I was very deeply moved. I felt this deep sense of joy and happiness to be there, so much that I cried tears of joy. The words and teachings of the monk KK reverberated in my mind. They were so simple and true, things I have thought about, indeed practice regularly, about stilling the mind and becoming more aware of our selves. This experience of discovering the living Thai Buddhist tradition filled me with joy.
About seven or eight years ago, I bought a small metal figurine of a Buddha in the lotus meditation pose with the seven serpents ready to strike behind it. It came from an eBay seller in a Thailand monastery. It came with a letter explaining it’s meaning and origin. To me at the time it was a connection to this other world in Asia, that still was living and rapidly becoming more and more the center of world. I sensed that one day I would likely come to experience it first hand. Now here I am doing exactly that.
I felt this place, the monastery was like my second home. My heart filled with joy and love for this place. I imagined studying and living with these monks and feeling deep joy. I knew then that I must come back here and experience more time here in Thailand and this Buddhist teachings and practices. I knew that I must not forget about this feeling and this desire. It is important that I come back here and talk and live with these monks and others that are live this life style.
This makes me unique in the world of technology, these experiences in travel and meditation give me a new approach to the art of creating products.
Digital Nomad Life in Chiang Mai
During the week I met and spoke with many digital nomads. I met them at the coworking space, from WhatsApp groups and other ways. These interactions have been the most inspiring. I learned about interesting places to visit in the area, like Pai, a small town nearby that is known for peaceful quiet life, ‘hippie’ vibe, hot springs, spas and waterfalls.
On Saturday I met with two friends for a dinner meetup. Originally it was posted on NomadList website, but through a miscommunication, it was removed and cancelled (shame on NomadList). Despite this two other travelers and I just met in the Food 4 Thought restaurant. We got to talk, share our experiences of traveling around SEA, our work and interests. One of them is a really good open source developer whose story is really inspiring. He did not finish any higher education, worked in factories in China, started his own side businesses, taught himself how to code and for a time was a developer for some of the biggest internet companies in China. Then he started traveling and working on open source projects. Another friend originated from Australia and was a COO of an online business. As travelers we are happy to share and trade our experiences and resources with others.
On Sunday there is a large street market at night. It starts on the Eastern gate of the old city, and goes east to the middle of the old city. It is very big. The vendors sell all kinds of things, tourist gifts, bracelets, Thai style pants, bags, statues and there are food vendors as well. It is a must see for any visitor.
During the week I visited the Angkaew Reservoir near Chiang Mai University (CMU) which is a spot where many university students hang out, walk around and sit on the big open grass field. The sunset was very beautiful, even though we just caught the end. We talked about things and made a loop around the reservoir. Afterwards we went to a ‘build your own hot pot’ kind of restaurant, and had delicious meal.
I continued my Muay Thai Kickboxing training on sessions every other day. It feels really good to be pushed to the limits of your physical ability and to learn in this formal training environment.
During the week I visited more temples and did meditation there on my own. They are very beautiful.
My Experiences with Quivr Ai Second Brain
This is an open source project on GitHub. I ran it locally and uploaded pdf documents of my past journals and was able to have chat with a chatGPT like Ai about the contents. Most of the answers were surprisingly good. The Ai understood and answered questions about specific events, topics and people in the journal. However some it missed. It is not perfect but in some ways it is scary good. I set it up on my local machine, added credentials to my Supabase account and OpenAi API key.
How to ‘make it’ as Freelance Developer?
First what does it mean to ‘make it’? It is critical to have a clear definition of your goal before you can achieve it. This means to be sustainable. Meaning that you are able to pay for your expense, your travel, your health insurance, all your taxes, and be able to save some amount every month. This doesn’t need to be on the same level as at a full time job, it just means to be sustainable.
To make it as a freelance developer, an important ability is communication. This means being prompt with your responses, communicating where you are in the process, and setting expectations.
I believe that the most important thing to realize and to keep in mind, is that you are there providing value to the client. That you are presenting and doing everything in such a way that they are able to follow and to know that you are indeed giving them the time and attention that they deserve.
We move forward really by building relationships with people, this requires a lot of talking, and communicating verbally.
It requires building up your reputation and experience gradually. This means that at first your pricing will need to be competitive.
Even though it is very hard, remember what was your reason for starting the freelance journey in the first place. For me it was because I wanted to escape the full-time job where I was not feeling fulfilled working for someone else and to experience and become competent in managing my own finances, reaching out to clients, communications, and seeing directly how my work has an impact from start to finish of a project. This process takes a lot of time and when you become competent in it, then you sense your own value and you are able to scale it and amplify your impact.
Imagine, what is a good app experience?
We use apps and software daily. Often we actually pay little attention to how something is made. For a developer, knowing how the app works behind the user interface, gives you a special peek behind the curtain.
Being a founder of a startup, requires a combination of technical ability - of understanding how the app is constructed and actually building it. Combined with the user experience and business side.
In the sense of the ‘medium is the message’ viewpoint, the app is a continuation of the user. Tools are are extension of our minds. Knowing how to make this kind of app that fulfills some need and is technically implemented is the sweet spot for a founder. Most important of all is the conviction to have perseverance and belief in building it, in making it a reality, while there is no one else that believes it. In this way founders and developers are like artists, they need to believe in their creativity and the logic of their creativity to make the work a reality.