Living The Dream

It’s been ten years since my paleo superpowers post. And while paleo is good, carnivore is even better. It’s like having double the amount of superpowers, including but not limited to the following:

• More mental clarity and better problem solving.
• More more because less sleep is needed.
• Fewer sport injuries.
• Faster recovery from flu/cold, sickness, if I ever get it (typically not).
• Being able to skip meals and do multi-day water-only fasting.
• More energy, no sluggishness after meals.
• Calmer mood and better handling of stressful situations.
• Meal prep is 1-2 minutes because there are veggies that require most of the time to peel, slice and cook.
• It’s easier to live because grocery shopping and restaurant menu choosing are much, much faster (less is more).

Carnivore diet and their variations (Lion Diet) are probably the best life hack out there. The facts are obvious:

• Carnivore is the evolutionary diet, that’s how our ancestors ate and how humans evolved to eat.
• Animal food (i.e., meat) is the most nutrient and bio-available food.
• Carnivore is the ultimate elimination diet for autoimmune conditions.

It’s been already proven to be the original human diet but sadly most doctors and people don’t know about it. And even if they have heard about it, they dismiss it as dangerous or a fad. It’ll be funny to look back in 20-40 years when the popular opinion will change to favor carnivore-like diets.

Here are my key impressions from a recent trip to Colombia, to the cities of Bogota and Medellin.

• Nicer parts of cites like Park 93, Verrey or El Poblado are very walkable and very European and less “American” (i.e., big roads, must have cars, not walkable).

• The food is more european with less salsas and spices

• Bogota is cold but again it reminded me of European cloudy skies in Scandinavia, London or Russia.

• There are a lot of hookah places in El Poblado and in Bogota they have small shops with tables on the streets to smoke

• There are a lot of peddlers and beggars on the street that are very persistent and annoying.

• People love bicycles, running and their dogs.

• There are a lot of greens (trees, bushes, grass).

• Meat is superb and has a very natural grass-fed flavor.

• Avianca tries to be a low-cost airline charging for everything extra (seat selection, soda, juice, small roller suitcase).

• Roads are good and tunnels are moderns but traffic in rush hours suck. Even Pico y Placa doesn’t help. It’s better to walk or take a bike, or ride motorbike if you’re local.

• Bogota restaurants are better than Medellin restaurants.

• Bogota hotels are cheaper than Medellin hotels.

• Uber can call a regular taxi.

• Cash is not needed for a week-long trip except to buy fruits from street vendors who are too lazy to get a card terminal.

It’s good to be a big fish in a small pond. It gives more visibility, uniqueness and influence that bring more opportunities. Also, it’s easier to migrate to a larger pond when you grow to a big fish in a small pond. So first, we all should focus on becoming a big fish in our current (probably small) pond. Stories of success of growing to a big fish in a large pond are mostly survivor bias type stories or overnight success stories that took 10 years in the making… and a lot of jumps from small pond to bigger pond and then eventually to open ocean!

If the pond is too small, if you think that it’s not thrilling, motivating nor exciting to grow into a big fish there, then please take a second look. Probably, the pond is still big enough to be a stepping stone. A lot of startups try to launch straightway in the US or at least Europe while being from developing countries. That’s a big mistake because they are far from their customers and have all sorts of disadvantages of not playing on their home-field.

1. Civilization II
2. Transport Tycoon
3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
4. Fallout and Fallout 2
5. Dragon Age: Origins
6. Mass Effect 2
7. XCOM: Enemy Unknown
8. Jagged Alliance
9. Europa Universalis
10. Command&Conquer
11. Hitman: Codename 47
12. Heroes of Might and Magic III
13. Tropico: Paradise Island
14. Max Payne
15. GoldenLand 2 (Златогорье 2)

This is the summary of my 2 years doing the master’s program. I received my paper diploma last week. I was awarded Master of Science with honors (only 10% of students get this high recognition). A few weeks ago, we had a virtual graduation ceremony. I hope to visit the campus next year to reunite in person with my classmates.

While waiting for the diploma, I had a previlige to host a webinar with one of our professors, Prof. Etienne KRIEGER — MSIE Webinar : How to Overcome Conflicts Between Associates. I shared my tips on forming a team and working out conflicts between startup founders.

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The team project for my master’s degree in Innovation and Entreprenurship from HEC Paris took about a year. First, we were a team of four people. Then one person dropped out of the program and we were left just three of us: two guys from Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area and one guy from France.

Anyone could have pitched their own idea to the whole cohort so that the most popular ideas attract teammates to collaborate. Some team had as many as six people!

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Today, I just finished the last (20th) course for the MSIE program. The course was on Venture Capital and Private Equity and it concludes the academic part of the masters program. I wrote academic because the courses weren’t just theoretical. We did had a lot of practice preparing our assignments and working on business cases.

Now, the only thing is left is to finish the team project that my team of three worked on for the pretty much the entire year. My team and I have to present the pitch deck for our product to the jury in a similar way how the startups pitch investors. We’ll get our grades and finish our Master of Science degree.

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Many of you know Maslow’s pyramid of needs. Actually, Maslow’s never came up with a pyramid. He had a ladder. Other people took his ladder and created a pyramid that is now used in management books.

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Rich people can and do risk more than ordinary people. And they do so intentionally. This puts them at a disadvantage. Ironically, these risks and dangers are rarely experienced by middle class or poor people, because these risky activities require expensive equipment, machines or gear.

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I’m 3/4 into the Master of Science in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MSIE) degree program at HEC Paris, and it is a time to write a reflection on my experience. I’ll think about whether it was worth the time and effort, and of course if I’m getting what I expected.

It’s worth mentioning that a lot of universities and colleges moved to virtual classes. We, at MSIE, had a 100% virtual/online program from the beginning. Our cohort is number four which means HEC and Coursera figured out a lot of issues that they might have had before, like in any version 1.0 product. My cohort started in Jun 2019 so this post mark a year into the program.

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