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Trung Phan 🇨🇦

@TrungTPhan

18 Sep

Found a glorious TikTok account: "Design Secrets", which explains the technical and psychological design rationale behind everyday things.

Here are 14 gems 🧵

1/ MOVIE THEATRE SEATS & CURTAINS are red because it is the first color the human eye loses sight of when lights dim (or in darkness).

With this effect, people focus on the show instead of surroundings.

2/ DRAIN PIPES are U-shaped to create a one-way valve that lets water flow but also traps dangerous gases.

◻️ Water flows down
◻️ The U-shape collects some water, creating a "seal"
◻️ Gases from the plumbing can NOT pass up to the sink because of the "water trap"

Read 17 tweets

Trung Phan 🇨🇦

@TrungTPhan

14 Sep

Mailchimp just sold to Intuit for $12B.

The Atlanta-based email marketing firm has taken no VC money.

Even more impressive, its CEO and co-founder Ben Chestnut has the cleanest “Experience” section in the history of Linkedin:

Built it for 21 years!!

💎🙌 should be renamed to 🌰 🙌

@alexrkonrad

Great nugget from @alexrkonrad.

In 2015-16, Mailchimp valued at $2B by a NY PE firm.

Chestnut left that number on peice of paper in his safe for his wife to use (and shop Mailchimp) if anything happened to him.

🌰🙌

https://twitter.com/alexrkonrad/status/1437534216116375553

Read 6 tweets

Trung Phan 🇨🇦

@TrungTPhan

12 Sep

This is Lex Greensill.

He founded Greensill Capital to disrupt "supply-chain finance", a $500B industry supporting global trade.

A year ago, Greensill was headed for a $30B+ IPO. Now, it's worth $0 (oh, and Softbank was a big backer).

Here's the story 🧵

1/ First, what is supply chain finance (SCF)?

Let's say you supply widgets to a car company. Typically, you give CarCo 90-120 days to pay its invoice for the widgets.

Waiting for the money sucks, though. You have working capital needs that the CarCo money could help cover.

2/ Let's say your invoice to CarCo is $1000.

A bank or finance firm will offer you this SCF deal:

1⃣ Advance you $990
2⃣ Take on the credit risk of CarCo's bill owing
3⃣ At 90-120 days, the bank/financier collects $1000 from CarCo and profits $10

Read 25 tweets

Trung Phan 🇨🇦

@TrungTPhan

11 Sep

When a startup claims it has “AI” or “ML” and then you take a look at the actual tech

@elonmusk

Or as @elonmusk would say:

“I discourage the use of machine learning because it’s very difficult: 99.9% of the time, you do not need it.”

“AI”

Read 6 tweets

Trung Phan 🇨🇦

@TrungTPhan

9 Sep

You've def heard of "The Hero's Journey", the narrative structure dating back to Homer's Odyssey in ~7th century BC.

A great way to learn the framework is comparing scene-by-scene images from 2 modern classics of the story type: "Star Wars" and "The Matrix". #TheMatrix

THREAD🧵

0/ The "Hero's Journey" was coined by Joseph Campbell, an American literary prof.

He studied ancient myths and found many shared a similar character arc (AKA the "monomyth").

It follows 12 stages, with a hero venturing from an "ordinary world" to a "special world" and back.

1/ Ordinary world

The hero's normal life before the adventure begins:

◻️ Luke Skywalker lives on a farm in Tatooine
◻️ Neo is a corporate slave in The Matrix

Read 18 tweets

Trung Phan 🇨🇦

@TrungTPhan

6 Sep

As you know, Elizabeth Holmes is on trial for defrauding investors and patients.

Her blood-testing startup Theranos raised $700m+ and reached a $10B valuation before imploding.

Why exactly did Theranos technology (nanotainer, Edison, miniLab) fail, though?

Here's a breakdown🧵

1/ Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford at 19 and founded Theranos in 2003.

One of Theranos' founding myths is that Holmes had a "traumatic fear" of needles and blood.

Her idea: create a system that could run all medical tests on a single drop of blood (via a finger prick).

2/ You're def familiar with the more common blood test method she tried to disrupt.

Known as venipuncture, a phlebotomist draws "whole blood" -- aka blood with none of the components (plasma, platelets) removed -- from a vein.

Then, these samples are sent to a lab for testing.

Read 24 tweets

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