Founder’s Guide to Personal Finance

I wrote this guide to help founders navigate the uncertainties of their financial lives. Your startup and its shares will certainty be worth unimaginably large amounts of money at some point but for now there are bills to pay and tricky situations to navigate.

See you at IPO!


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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.

See you at the airport!


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We Probably Won't Fight Wars over Water

A cost of $1/m3 for seawater desalination and $0.6/m3 for brackish water would be feasible today. The costs will continue to decline in the future as technology progresses.

- A study from 2005. We've more than halved the cost of desalination since then.

Much has been said about how wars of the future will be fought over water. This is probably true, but the scope of the conflict seem like they will be considerably smaller.


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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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