Founder’s Guide to Credit Cards

I wrote this guide to help founders get the most from their business and personal spending. As a founder, money has always been tight, but setting up simple systems for my business and personal spending has allowed me to travel the world for free, reward employees, and reduce our company’s burn.


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Founder’s Guide to Hiring an Operations Team in the Philippines

I wrote this guide to help founders work with global talent (generally in the Philippines). At my last company (Rent the Backyard YCs19), we built an operations team of nearly 20 based in the Philippines. The team helped us with everything from payroll to sales proposals to procurement. The team helped extend my capabilities as a founder while extending the company’s runway and our chance of success.

My team and I

The below methods are a combination of what’s worked for me and what I’ve seen others use.


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Some Thoughts on Where to Travel

This is a list of the difficulty I perceive it to be to travel (as an English speaking American) to different parts of the world that I have been to or am familiar with.

These rankings are probably most useful if you haven’t done much international travel. There are a lot of pretty easy-to-visit places that are still very interesting, so you should probably start there. I wouldn’t advise going more than one level higher than you’ve been before unless you’re visiting a local friend.


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Founder’s Guide to Building a Second Brain

Founders spend their days putting out fires. Context switching is constant and it’s important to step back and make sure the tasks you’re doing continue to line up with your long-term strategy.

The best way I know of working through these challenges is to be in a clear headspace. Clear headspace facilitates focus and enables you to do your best work.

When you are worried about forgetting a task, insight, or other important piece of information you aren’t able to fully dedicate your brain’s resources to a task.

The solution as Tiago Forte’s book lays out is to build a “second brain” when you log projects that need to be done, areas you’re responsible for, resources you can quickly reference, and an archive to look back on.


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What happened to Pippin / Rent the Backyard

In 2018 I co-founded Pippin, a housing factory startup, and our backyard home (ADU) brand Rent the Backyard. Our goal was to use California’s new ADU laws to build a lot of homes quickly by helping homeowners make the most of their unused land. After 4 years, 10 homes built, and a $10m+ contracted revenue annual run rate, we announced that we’re shutting down.




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