Hans Gill

Money & Markets

HG — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 21:29:56 GMT

Money as most of us think of it is paper dollars. More we have of it the richer we are. From childhood we are told, go to school so you get good grades, so you can get into a good college so you can get a good job so you can save money so you can buy a house so you can go on vacations so you can have kids so you can give them a good life so you can…..

“So you can” never ends because money needs to keep moving and growing. If so you can never ends and population only increases then it must mean there MUST be more money to go around or it must go around faster. The creator of “Dollar Milkshake”, Brent Johnson , recently came out with a pretty good video explaining how money comes into existence, how its distributed and how it can also disappear. Please watch the video as its literally worth an admission to college.

Money in its current fiat form is not what we see in movies of 1600’s, or even early 1900’s. That money was usually hard money (Gold, Copper, Silver, etc) which were harder to manipulate or currencies backed by hard money (Dollar before 1971). Money now is credit, based on full faith in the producer of that credit, US for Dollars, Europe for EURO, Japan for Yen & China for Yuan.

When all these currencies, which function as money, are competing with each other the mechanism for the competition is the foreign exchange rates between the various currencies. If one “prints” too much, then it drops in value against another. Here’s what will really twist your noodle, a currency dropping against another can be a good thing or a bad thing, because it depends on if you are an exporting nation or an importing nation. If you are both then depending on if you are an exporter in that country or an importer you will either like or hate the change in the value of your currency agains another. It’s a game which is almost too hard for the human brain to comprehend at some levels.

It’s therefore more important that ever to really understand the fundamentals of money to keep you head on straight. I highly recommend listening to Brent’s views on how the current dollar system works.

Now, dollar system as it is today was created in 1971. China and the BRICS want to change that system. After world war II there has only been one monetary world order and it ran through the dollar. Now we are starting to see a push by BRICS for a second monetary system. Will they succeed or fail? It’s hard to tell, but I sure as hell wouldn’t put it past them to keep trying BUT I also wouldn’t put it past the incumbent (US) to make sure it inflicts max pain on the up and comer.

Markets are also watching this world class drama unfold, theres no one better to explain how its being absorbed than . The thread below on X is a masterpiece explanation on where we are. I won’t even try to summarize because it’s too important not to read. Enjoy!

https://x.com/Globalflows/status/1983182741450698829

Tesla FSD V14 & Robotics

HG — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:07:45 GMT

Today is the day, my tesla finally got pushed the long awaited V14 upgrade. It’s downloading as I type this. There’s a lot of hype about this upgrade. Remember Elon is betting the farm on vision where as Waymo and other competitors continue to focus on Vision + Lidar + other sensors. This is a huge bet with huge outcomes. What tesla lacks in sensors they plan to make up with compute and software (Ai).

Speaking of Ai, feels like Tesla is way ahead of the competition when it comes to real world Ai. Elon recently said that these cars are just robots which look like cars. I agree.

Robotics is also past the inflection point, we are no longer building specialized robots to do a task. Tesla and many competitors are focus on generalized robots like Optimus. These robots need more than just hardware, they need the full suite of things hardware, software (Ai) and energy. Feels like hardware and software will get solved, as always, but the limiting constraint is going to be the energy.

Quick search on Grok, reveals that right now we have a 12 GwH energy gap between what the US produces and what the Hyperscalers have committed to. Where is this energy going to come from? I recently saw an article that CrusoeAi and others are looking to space to build extra compute. They can have 24/7 solar energy which powers their chips in space. Distribute the compute and the push it back down for inference etc. I asked Grok if I wanted to generate 1 GW of energy in space how large the solar array has to be? At 35% conversion, we need 2.21 km² solary array. That seems large but not impossible to build. Especially when you look at the regulations associated with building nuclear at home.

Anyhow, clearly there are plenty of people who are looking into this issue. In the meantime, we are all going to face higher electricity costs. Those who have solar are gonna benefit until this energy constraint is removed.

Happy Sunday

Socializing & Disconnecting

HG — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 06:29:15 GMT

Spent most of the day today being disconnected from my phone. First I had to powerwash my car because our road is being reconstructed and that caused a whole bunch of cement like material to stick under and sides of the car. It was raining and I was at my sister in laws house and since I don’t have a power wash, she does, it was a nice excuse to wash the car and the added benefit was it started pouring rain. It was actually very surreal moment. The feeling of the hard rain coming down and being out in the rain reminded me of my childhood in India.

Beyond the disconnection from digital, I was then able to socialize in a manner far more engaged than usual. When you don’t know where your phone is, life becomes quiet engaging and stressless.

I plan to be lost in life without my phone a lot going forward. No watch, no phone just physical world.

Cheers.

Stories & Attention

HG — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 22:02:19 GMT

First some household items. I told you I would post my X usage so here it is below. I did realize that I am not able to capture my X usage on my laptop but really the one im trying to avoid is the one on my phone. Why the phone? because thats far more addictive than being on my laptop. Why isn’t it crazy on my laptop? Because I have a standing desk and I tire quickly. This naturally causes me to step away from my laptop from time to time.

As you can see my daily average on my phone is over an hour! That’s significant and I need to cut that down by 75%. Im on it. Next week’s plan is to be around 45 minutes.

Alright onto todays brain dump. I have been thinking about attention a lot as a continuation from yesterday. What is attention? How does the human mind focus it’s attention? How are we able to have meta thoughts to realize we are not paying attention?

Theres two concepts here Attention and Meta Cognition.

Per Gemini:

Attention, in the human brain, is the cognitive process that allows us to selectively focus on specific information while filtering out irrelevant distractions. It’s not a single mechanism but rather a complex set of neural networks that work together to prioritize sensory input and internal thoughts.

Metacognitive monitoring of attention is your brain’s ability to observe and evaluate its own attentional state. It’s the inner voice or feeling that tells you when your focus is drifting or when you’re no longer fully engaged.

So this goes into the whole concept of learning. There’s a thought that says learning is not enough, learning how to learn is the real secret. Ok so monitoring your attention is important and so is learning how to learn. The pattern here is that its always the second deeper layer where the real value is.

I read the great book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. In that book he sets the narrative that the Homo Sapiens survived because were able to develop parts of our brain which could tell stories. What did stories do? They were a mind virus. Stories changed behavior. Stories allowed a large group of HomoSapiens to band together to a similar cause simply based on the premise of the story.

Lot of times when my buddy and I are talking about markets or life, we come to the same conclusion, “eh which story do you want to believe”. That right there is the second layer. Once you realize EVERYTHING IS A STORY, you start to gain control over your thoughts, your attention.

There’s a lot I want to say today but we have family coming over and its a friday so I have to leave this short.

Attention is important. A good friend of mine has learned to master her attention using meditation. Similarly another dear friend is able to manage his attention during basketball. My wife is a master of attention because she keeps busy all day physically and with her sisters constantly calling. She rarely loses her attention to the tasks she has assigned herself. Me, im all over the place but I realize my attention keeps coming back to education, teaching and wanting to learn about how the world functions financially, politically and how money ties everything together as the greatest story ever told.

Stories are all around us, money, religion, family, going to college, saving into your 401k, etc. They can all be false or true for each individuals because they are just stories. Now that doesn’t mean they aren’t helpful. Infact stories are the reason we are so successful as the apex predator on this planet. Raw nature just is. We give it meaning with stories.

Restarting again

HG — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 22:27:19 GMT

Alright i’m going to commit to daily writing again. Whatever is on my mind is going to get published here. To start i’m going to commit to 7 straight days. Don’t care how long or short but I have to write for 7 days and by posting this publicly im going to commit to this. If i’m successful then, i’ll commit for 14 straight days and then after that I hope i’ve made this a habit which sticks. I have a poll at the end please be sure to fill it out.

So here we go. Whats goin on in my mind right now. I am not going to cover all these in this post today but enumerating here to discuss them later as topics in no specific order.

Kids
1. Socialization
2. Education
3. Attention
Capital Markets
1. Dollar
2. Stablecoins
3. Gold
4. Bitcoin
5. Equities
Unemployment / Retirement
1. Boredom
2. Clarity
3. Desire to do more
Geopolitics
History
1. World War I & II
2. British, American, & French Revolutions
Entrepreneurship
1. Next venture
2. Teaching
Being Content vs Having a Desire to do “something”
Revisit Success & Failure

Kids & Parenting

I have 2 beautiful kids age 11 & 12. I often think about their future, as im sure do most of the parents. Usually starts with a thought similar to “..what are they going to do with all this chaos and rapid change in the world?” As soon as this thought goes into my head, I have tried to train myself to muse on the following next thought. Did my parents and all the parents of who raised my generation look at the world and felt the same anguish as I do now? What has changed since we grew up? Yes mobile Phones & Social Media have totally shifted how kids socialize and engage today. Parents, myself included, usually resort to saying “When I was growing up (fill in how tough your life was and how easy they have it”). We all do it, just like our parents did it. The question I often end up at is not how kids are being changed in this world, rather, how has parenting changed over the years and affect it has had on socialization for kids?

Today, I drive my kids everywhere and can’t imagine a scenario where I don’t know where my son or daughter are any given time of the day. I have direct line to them via a watch, when they don’t forget it at home, or calling the school directly. I am able to contact them at all times when they are not around me. Should I be concerned about all this access? Does having so much access add more stress raising a child? Does it ruin the experience of childhood for the kids? “When I grew up…” my parents had to clue where I was most of the time. I’m certain if you asked my parents they will say i’m embellishing a bit in the carefree nature of my parents. Off-course they knew…right? “Off-course” they knew I was on a bike going up Jefferson Ave, to the top of the Redwood City hills cross. From where I was planning to play in the small forest (felt huge at the time) and then speed down all the way, without a helmet. “Off-course” they knew that I fell a few times and could have gone off the side of the road in a pretty deep fall on the side of the road.

Na, they never knew and that right there is the magic of my childhood: Curious & lucky. Lucky because I didn’t get hurt & side tracked into bad company, Lucky because I was able to follow my curiosities. I’m sure if my parents knew what had happened on my bike, I would certainly not have been allowed. What my parents didn’t know was probably a good thing for them, ONLY because it turned ok. Had I fallen off and been deeply hurt or worse, well then they would have repented their “lack of oversight”. They would have been scolded for not being present parents. What can you chalk this all up to? Luck. Parents get lucky. Kids get Lucky. Same framework can be applied but circumstances can make the framework look completely foolish in one scenario and distinguished in another.

So back to the question which I posed earlier: How has parenting changed over the years and affect it has had on socialization for kids?

I posit the following: We have more oversight, yet we are more fearful than our parents. We live in independent pods, so we read self help parenting books rather than have elders and community who can guide us. This creates stress because we are constantly questioning our parenting. Now checking the mirror and questioning our parenting style is not harmful, in-fact should be applauded but shifting parenting styles constantly is the issue. Many of us don’t have a parenting baseline or if we do, we want to avoid the baseline passed down from our parents. So we are constantly looking for the new age parenting handbook. It creates massive stress of the family and all individuals.

By being ever so connected and so in-tune with every happening of our kids we have become a helicopter, shall I say a lawnmower generation of parents. This is to no fault of our own. Never in history of humanity has a stranger been able to access our kids so easily as they can today. If we give our kids a phone the world opens up to them and they open up to the world. That indeed is stress provoking. So we do the natural thing, we close up, we protect, we oversee everything because we are not looking to be negligent.

Technologies today, specifically social media (Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts) are all designed to do one thing, grab attention. These attention grabbing virus’ have already infiltrated every adult reading this post. There are few who don’t have the listed platforms but then I sit on X reading financial posts all day, somehow telling myself its not as bad as the others (truth is they are all attention hogging virus’).

So in a world where attention is the most prized possession, we as parents have been hacked. We have been told that we deserve a break at the end of the day, so go lay on that couch and scroll for 30 minutes, then go watch Netflix, you deserve it after a hard days work. Soon that 30 minutes starts to infiltrate dinner time, then bed then morning routine. Do we want to be infected with this kind of attention grabbing virus? This is what has fundamentally changed for us. We have been hacked. We need anti-virus so we can get out attention back. We owe this to our kids. This is how we change society and this is how we bring our kids back to having a childhood where their curiosity and luck can thrive.

Best of luck to all my fellow parents, i’m rooting for all of us.

Note: I commit to consume less and produce more. Wait less and more is not enough. I want to be commited to metrics as I told my girls tennis team. So I will post my current X usage in my next post and then strive to reduce usage by 25% each week until im at a point where its no more than 15 minutes of my daily usage. Then I commit to producing more posts, learning piano, another language.

Bitcoins Ascent

HG — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 03:30:51 GMT

Today is a big milestone, Bitcoin officially crossed $100k.

Even though bitcoin is now the seventh largest asset in the world in terms of market cap, so many concerns swirl around it. What value does it hold? What’s the utility? How is this even money? Yet bitcoin continually keeps rising and rising.

if you look at the markets right now, equities all-time highs, gold near all-time highs, real estate all-time highs. Essentially all hard assets are at all-time highs because Fiat based system is doing its job of debasing currencies and keeping the populous feeling like all is well. These inflation breakouts are symptoms of Fiat basement.

No one wants to hold on to bonds and they are one of the largest assets classes in the world. Money is and will continue to flow out of bonds because in real terms the bonds are not gonna hold value. What is the alternative? You throw fast debasing money into hard assets which people believe will hold value.

how can the rise of these hard assets stop? Fiscal and monetary responsibility from all of the treasuries and central banks of the world. Easy right? Do you think any politician will do what Argentina or El Salvador were able to accomplish? That’s a treacherous road for most of them, congrats to Argentina and El Salvador for pulling it off. El Salvador went a step further and adopted Bitcoin and wow just have a look at their treasury measured in dollar terms.

The easier path has always been to print, at least for the last 50+ years since the world moved to the petrodollar system. We moved to the petrodollar system because we printed too many IOUs on top of the worlds gold we were holding and when the world came asking for their gold, we told them oops sorry we don’t have it. Well we didn’t say it in that form but we said we are going to “defend the dollar”, sounds much nicer when you have to justify oncoming inflation to your population. But essentially, at this point, we reneged on our commitment of dollar gold convertibility to the rest of the world

Market is clearly telling you where the money is going and it’s not into the US bonds. US bonds is how the government funds itself because we run a massive deficit.

All the hard assets are telling you the same thing, we are hurtling towards system reset where the reserve asset becomes something other than the US treasury bonds. How then will the US government find itself?

If you look at what Janet yelling has been doing, all of the new debt has been Issued at the front end of the curve. This is done because if they tried to issue so much debt at the long end, the long end interest rates would blow out, and essentially the US treasury market would fail.

US cannot cut budgets because that would be politics suicide (social security & Defense). The only release valve is inflation and that is what we are seeing even while we are told that inflation is down and manageable.

Welcome to the new normal where you really must understand how the world is structured. It’s all about power at the end of the day and all these mechanisms are a form of power that the US has over the rest of the world through the US dollar and the US treasury bonds as the reserve asset.

Are we in a simulation?

HG — Sun, 20 Oct 2024 00:47:13 GMT

I read this post many, many years ago and every few years I seem to come back to it. Read it and let it sit in your mind and then come back to it again as the times change. I hope tickles your mind as much it tickle’s mine.

He leaned over her shoulder. "This universe is exactlylike ours in every particular, right?"
"Right," she replied.
"So what are they looking at?"
"A simulated universe."
"A simulation of themselves?"
"And of us, in a sense."
"And they're reacting the same way I am?" Tim asked. "Which means the second universe inside that has another me doing the same thing a third time? And then inside that we've got, what, aleph-zero identical recursive universes, one inside the other? Is that even meaningful?"
- https://qntm.org/responsibility

Organization of Human Society

HG — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 01:34:13 GMT

Military

Energy / Resources

Currencies

Nations / Laws

Work

Family

Assets / liabilities

Leisure

Turn off one of the senses. Workout with eyes closed.

HG — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 20:42:33 GMT

10 minutes, eyes completely shut. 20 jumping jacks. 20 squats. 20 push ups. 20 sit-ups. Repeat 4 times. All without opening your eyes.

why would I do this? I have been struggling and doing my best with meditation, trying to active mindfulness and presence.

I figured if closing the eyes can help during meditation why not during workout.

this was certainly presence “causing”. I can’t remember focusing this intently on each movement and action.

So, this got me thinking as to why. Its well known our brains are built to work, pattern recognition, images triggering thoughts and stories in our heads leading us to day dream, or be lost in thought.

By turning off one of the senses I am reducing the input to my brain in the hope that I can slow it down just a tad bit to find some calm.

Closing my eyes for that 10 minutes of exercise was as close an experience to being fully present for 10 minutes of meditation. I definitely plan to continue this experiment of closing off one of my senses and hope I can apply it to other aspects of my daily life.

Front loading 3 hours of my day

HG — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 07:49:13 GMT

I am writing today because I am doing something dramatic and a big change in my life.

I am going to spend 3 hours daily being selfish

Most of us (myself included) wake up, spend a few (or a lot more than few) minutes on toilet with phones in our hands scrolling through the days news, Whatsapp, and other important items we have missed while we were asleep. We brush our brush our teeth, take a shower and get ready for work. Depending on how the previous night was we may be groggy, tired and rarely well slept.

We hope the kids are still sleeping so we can make some breakfast and perhaps even attempt making lunch for ourselves. We tell ourselves, hurry gotta get to work. During this time, the kids wake up, they are hungry but we are rushing to head out the door, or in these covid times, Log-on to work online.

We go about our day for 8-9 hours some more some I know a lot less (you know who you are if you are reading this). The work day ends and we are exhausted from the day, from "work", from everything that happened today. So we checkout from work and want some peace and quite, we need it, we crave it. BUT, we have kids and they certainly need attention. As excellent parents we do our best to spend time with them all in hopes they will tire out.

9pm rolls around and the kids are finally in bed. This is now our attempt and chance to take a breather and just relax. Time to open up Netflix, grab your phone, check those social media feeds and relax!

The next 3 hours are going to be mindless time we have been craving all day.

I find that these next 3 hours are my laziest and I don't want my most tired 3 hours for myself. So I am changing this. This new change is big, it's going to change the way I wake and sleep.

My one rule for this to work: Focus on myself and be selfish.

I want to that you take the 9pm-12am time which I crave daily and move it to the front of my day.

Benefits of doing this

My 3 best hours are allocated to me
Peace and quiet.
I might just find yourself twiddling your thumbs and end up meditating or reading a book who knows.

Here's the plan

Go to sleep by 9pm
Wake up 5am.
From 5am - 8am do the things I always want to be but can't find the time or energy in my day. My hope is I will start to do activities which will provide me personal satisfaction.
1. I plan to reduce distractions (social media, Whatsapp, news) while focusing on gaining knowledge and bettering my personal mindset.

My first day

I went for a walk and did Paath for 30 minutes
Came home and used headspace app to meditate for 30 minutes (nearly fell asleep doing this).
Started reading this https://www.readthesequences.com/
I want to hold myself accountable so I wrote this post and put it public. Please feel free to ask me how this is going and hold me accountable to this.

Cold showers

HG — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 02:10:18 GMT

I read a post by James Clear a few weeks back (6 to be exact) and in it he was speaking about taking cold showers and how it was the perfect start to his day. The benefits are numerous, increased blood flow, high metabolism, and more energy to get the day going. Without thinking twice, I decided to try it.

First few days were hard. I would stand there and think for minutes at a time, trying to convince myself just 5 more seconds and i'll be ready. When I did finally jump in, it was a shock to the body. I made loud noises, jump around a bit, start talking loudly even singing.

That was week one, after that I ended up in South Lake Tahoe for a camping trip and decided to continue my new adventure of cold showers. This was the shock, camp showers have hot and cold water so I decided to put it on cold. Boy was it COLD. But I was determined. So after thinking about it for 30 seconds I was all in. My body cringed when that 50 degrees water hit, but 20 seconds in, it started feeling really good. I started enjoying the cold water, the feeling of my body shivering a bit. When I walked out, my body had started trying to warm itself up and the cold morning felt warm all of a sudden.

I have maintained my cold showers for about 6 weeks now and don't have any plans of stopping. It's gotten much easier, I don't think twice. I jump in on most days. Some days are colder than others, but overall I LOVE IT. I took on a challenge didn't think twice and it's been amazing.

The real test will be in the winter. I'll be sure to post my status then =)

Failure, happiness and success

HG — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 09:10:48 GMT

I turned 35 this year and for some reason this year feels very different. I say that every year but this year is special. I've had a lot of opportunities to analyze my life, and more importantly to LIVE MY LIFE. To spend time with my precious babies and my beautiful wife. I have no income and no itch to try changing the status quo. I'm basically retired. I'm at peace with my life like I have never been before. So I decided to start jotting down my thoughts on the blog which I have neglected for a long time.

Why is it so easy to fail? When someone says "key to happiness is...." do you really believe them? When they say "he's so successful he has sold two companies for 100's of millions of dollars" does that make you feel empowered to do something? Sad because you haven't achieved the same? Jealousy because you know "he got lucky" twice". In this post i'm going to speak my mind on my last few years and things I have learned being in the startup epicenter, Silicon Valley.

My recent failures

I think about failure a lot. In-fact, in my professional career, last few years have all been failure after failure.

At Stubhub, I just wasn't motivated enough. No matter what Navin tried I was a lost case. He was a good manager. I was a poor worker. I didn't like what I was doing so I didn't think much. But I also didn't know what I liked.

At BP-3, I enjoyed the independence of making decisions backed by an amazing friend and boss, Scott Francis. This however is when I also entered into my mid-life crises. I still remember the detailed conversation I had with Scott telling him I needed to do something different. I loved working with the team.

Next up was HashGo. Damn what a good time this was. I moved to SF paying $4500 a month! It was worth every single dollar I spent. Working with Chris, Bob, Bernardo, and Alex was probably as good as it has ever been. I would take this team and put up with against ANY startup team, just top notch. But here again I had to step away because I had an itch to do something on my own and we were soon expecting baby Bani.

I started SimplyMatchMe because I thought there was a need for a better way to find someone, something better than Shaadi.com turns out it's almost impossible to make money in dating unless you have a huge database (Shaadi, match, etc). Anyone can create a new process of meeting people but the main asset is users. SimplyMatchME still runs, though I don't really give it much attention.

Mountary was somewhat an anomaly, because this was my first foray into a real business where I saw REAL MONEY coming in. We were accepted into 500 startups (Batch 11) and things went well until we had a tough fund raising cycle. I needed to step away because the bank account was knocking empty and I also needed to spend more time with my kids (now two because Aades was born in July).

Happiness

Honestly I know the recipe for happiness for myself and its easily attainable on a daily basis.

Turn off my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram feeds. Stop reading article headlines and endlessly scrolling through Instagram pictures. Oh, and totally ignore Techrunch.

To me the happiest times are when i'm so absorbed in my own life that I forget to eat, have no clue where my phone is, and when i'm laughing because Paul just told the funniest joke in a long time (no clue how he comes up with these jokes which are so timely). When i'm planting new flowers in my garden, taking evening walks with the family or going away to Sacramento to see Sunny and Sonal.

If someone tells you money is the source of all evil they are wrong. Money is a necessity and much needed to secure resources for survival. It becomes a tool for evil when our desires overcome our thoughts. When we constantly desire for more and more and more. I don't require a lot of money, because my lifestyle is simple. I still drive a 16 year old mustang, i'll probably keep it around till it turns into a classic. I don't carry debt because I hate owing anything to anyone. Message me if you have issues with finance I would love to see you get out of debt and live a free life.

I want to just say one more time, PLEASE PLEASE if there is one thing you have control over, it's debt. Exercise control and live within your means, whatever they are. Change your lifestyle until you are out of debt, you'll get a great night sleep like you have never had.

Keys to my happiness have been : Amazing wife, seriously. A top notch mom and dad. No Debt. Good understanding of finance. Frugal lifestyle. Great friends. Lots of fun, crazy, and outright stupid experiences to cherish. Realization that i'm ordinary. Knowing that my time on earth is a easily overlooked decimal compared to the entire universal clock.

Success - to each his own

Really success for me is living a life in which I am proud of my actions and constantly learning from mistakes. I look back at and think about the proudest moments of my life.

13 years - my first tennis tournament and I won - Ok I didn't really but they gave me a trophy and that was such a great feeling as a kid.

16-18 - MVP of the tennis team and top 20 ranking in Norcal Tennis.

UC Davis Men's tennis & Computer Science - I got into UC Davis purely on the basis of Tennis and luck. I called Darly Lee just to talk about the tennis program and he was interested in me joining the team. 2 weeks later I had a letter of acceptance to UC Davis. I joined as Computer Science though I didn't know a lick about computers.

UC Davis Graduation - This was success because I don't really know what I learned academically. Really the success was on the social side. I made lifelong friends Sunny, Paul, Balli, Gugu and Rob to name a few. I learned how to socialize. How to be a good friend. What it means to have best friends.

Quitting the corporate world - I never belonged in the corporate structure from my first job to the last, I was never motivated, never really happy. The hardest part in quitting was the fact that I didn't what I wanted to do. In-fact I still don't know what it is that I want to do =)

Daddy day care - I am currently full time dad taking care of my babies. If you think startups are hard, or your job is tough, then you have never spent a full month taking care of a kid. A total emotional roller coaster. I'm up and down in a day multiple times. Raising a kid is hard work, and to all the parents who stay at home to raise wonderful kids, A BIG HUG. You are a trooper like no other and I have the utmost respect for you.

The thing is this

This is my life, its been filled with failure, tons of happiness and lots of success. What else can we can ask for in life? I'm a failure, im happy and im successful.

Notifications are evil, unless you follow this rule

HG — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 15:38:34 GMT

We've all liked and commented on photos like this one below, yet rarely do we go out and experience this for ourselves. We experience life through other people and forget to produce these experiences for ourselves.

View image | gettyimages.com

Lately I have come to recognize the valuable time I am wasting in the virtual world when the most important things I want to do are being pushed aside. I questioned how I am constantly being sucked into this world. What happened to sitting idle and looking out the window? It's been replaced with sitting idle with my left thumb scrolling up non-stop with a few double taps (if you're wondering, that's a like on Instagram).

Think about the last time you walked into a room and thought to yourself, "wow this is crazy, everyone is on their phones". Every one of us has seen this happen in our lives multitude of times. Many times over, we have been part of the "on their phone".

Did you know that over 22 billion photos are posted on Instagram each year? An average person views a small subset of those photos but I gotta imagine its on the scale of 100's of pics a day. Some insane stat can also be created for Twitter and Facebook. Fear of missing out (FOMO) on all this stuff being shared is probably a good reason alone to enable all notifications (as is usually the default and recommended by the apps).

I believe that improperly giving all the apps the ability to notify us whenever anything happens is part of the problem of constant state of distraction away from things we want to do.

Not all notifications are created equal

Distracting notification

Your friend Jenny just shared that amazing picture of the sunset and tagged you in it, blooopppp notification, better go like it. I just mentioned you . Is this really more important than the amazing in-person conversation you were just having with your best friend? or the email you were writing to the college professor to enroll in his research project? Couldn't seeing this sunset image have waited afterwards? Perhaps when you were headed to the bathroom and had nothing better to do?

Valuable notification

You just ordered an Uber while walking out of the subway and were told it was 10 minutes away. So you pull out your book and decide to read. 10 minutes later your phone goes off that the Uber is here. That my friend is you putting your phone and app to work for you.

Take control away from apps and empower yourself

Notifications work best for us when they work for us. Every app does not need to notify you. In-fact make it a habit to ask yourself this question next time an app asks you to "allow notifications". What purpose will allowing notifications serve? Is it critical to my short and long term goals? If the answer is no, then do not enable notifications.

I know it might sound a little extreme to suggest that somehow notifications have an effect on your goals, but that is exactly what i'm suggesting. Notifications work to take your focus from things which matter to you.

I'll give you an example. I recently turned off all notifications on Instagram. Before doing this, I was constantly in and out of the application whenever I was tagged, someone liked my photo or commented due to being well informed by notifications. NO MORE. Here's where it gets good for me. Now when I go to Instagram I always have the unknown waiting for me. It's a nice, way to utilize Instagram for my need of "online rock kicking" or boredom rather than being tied by a virtual tether. I've noticed my enjoyment of Instagram has gone up because i'm in it once every few days and when I get there, I have lots of content to look at from my friends.

1 rule to follow (+2 more)

Turn on do not disturb

Every phone has the option to turn of all but the most critical notifications. Suddenly your phones goes dark. Your mind is silent. It's really an amazing feeling. If not during work hours (i'm crazy like that), do it at night time and weekends when you're with your family and friends.

This simple modification to your smartphone will change your life

Bonus rules to follow

[wc_highlight color="green"]Keep only the most critical notifications needed[/wc_highlight] (here's a great tutorial by 9-5 mac on notifications in IOS).

[wc_highlight color="green"]If you still need your fix of virtual social world, dedicate time during the day to visit non-critical apps.[/wc_highlight]

Thanks for reading, you are now in-charge of your day and your smartphone. Go out and do something amazing like this guy below.

View image | gettyimages.com

Hans

Hello Verizon and (unhappy)bye Sprint

HG — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 18:30:45 GMT

Why I will never return to Sprint, even though I was once an admirer of the company. Sprint has amazing customer service. That’s where it ends.

They are seriously awesome and work well in the city (san francisco) and with unlimited data + talk this is a no brainer!

That was part of my Sprint pitch to my family, and 4 friends who all trusted me to move to the Sprint network. The sprint network was OK in SF. In-fact it was below par. As I moved back to east bay and started commuting to the city on the bart, I would sit there and wonder am I the only with no coverage? YES. There were people facetiming on the bart with Verizon, while I sat there hoping to load the ESPN homepage!.

Yesterday I ported over my family to Verizon, yes and so far I am impressed like nothing else! I feel like I can actually use my phone when not on wi-fi. Trust me I plan to facetime on bart very soon =)

Amazing (customer) service, bad phone service

Before you read any further, I want to note that the customer service team of Sprint is top notch. Never had issues in-terms of respect and willingness to help. No long waits and everyone was super courteous. So thank you SPRINT CUSTOMER CARE FOR A JOB WELL DONE.

Bad Breakup! No prorated Bill!

Now that I am on Verizon, I called customer service so I could return my Airave. It’s a device with Sprint sent me because the reception is too poor in my area. Airwave connects to my home wifi and all the calls get made through my internet line (why was I paying for Sprint?).

At the end of the call, I got the smackdown. My total bill for Month of November would be $173! That is the full bill amount!?! Even though I am leaving with 20 days to go. Turns out Sprint charges you the full bill no matter when you cancel service.

So basically they expect you to do the following if you are leaving their service. Wait till end of your billing cycle, for me that is December 7th. Then order a new phone with another carrier on that date. Sounds like nothing wrong with it? Realize, it’s impossible to move on end of your billing cycle because deals on other carriers, waiting for pre-orders (iPhone6 is what i’ve been waiting on) all have their own timelines. These guys know this and know you won’t want to sit around without a line for a few days to weeks.

Move on the 8th and you’re going to pay for the full month!

Why i’m upset

Yes I signed the document on which in some fine print it said “your bill is not prorated”. Really I didn’t read the fine print so definitely i’m to blame. If you are shaking your head, i’d be damned if you read every single line of that contract. This sounds like a big deal and something which is clearly not on anyones mind when they are starting a new relationship. So SPRINT puts this in fine print. Want to know exactly where? Read the second to last line of general terms. Again, it’s my fault, I didn’t read the terms.

https://shop2.sprint.com/en/legal/os_general_terms_conditions_popup.shtml

Poor Practice From Sprint

Anyway you look at it, this is a technique to make it harder to switch carriers, similar to how at one point we couldn’t port over our numbers.

Why is is hard to switch with this practice? Think about it, there’s a deal which shows up on the other network but your billing cycle just started. What are you gonna do? Better start pricing out the cost of moving to them, paying your entire monthly bill. Still worth it? For me it cost me $130 extra because I moved mid billing cycle. So I should have waited? Couldn’t wait because the deal would be gone on Verizon by the end of the month, not to mention it’s impossible to get the iPhone on a simple time table.

BULLSHIT is what I call this practice. COMPLETE BULLSHIT!

I was told this is an industry wide practice, if so SHAME ON ALL OF YOU. One of you is going to change this practice at which point the rest of you will follow. Become the leader and keep me around with honest to goodness great service!

For me I hope i’m never moving again because this was a poor experience and for better or worse Sprint it wasn’t that much fun knowing you with the poor service which I endured and even worse how you made me feel when I left you.

Hows Verizon?

I now have 3–4 bars consistently in my house. My LTE consistently hits 6mbps download and 2mbps upload. Not a single dropped call.

Went to my daughter’s swim class, dead zone for Sprint, 4 bars with Verizon.

I’m a happy customer, thank you for awesome phone service Verizon! I hope you’re customer service is just as good!

Ups, downs & Uncertainty

HG — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 12:30:44 GMT

“Nanak dukhiya sab sansar” — Sikh Kirtan

The translation from Gurbani (language of the Sikh gurus) to english translates to this.

O nanak, every person in the world has pain and sorrow.

Think about all the people you meet in your life. When you engage them in a conversation more so than not the conversation will turn to the struggles of life vs how amazing our lives our. Most of us (putting myself in this boat) see the glass half empty. We see our phone screen breaking as bad luck, rather than an opportunity to learn how to fix it. We see getting fired as being worthless rather than an opportunity to try something completely new.

The last few months of my life have been a great roller coaster filled with ups, downs, and uncertainty . I look back at the beginnings of these uncertain times and remember thinking “I can’t wait for all of this to be over”. It’s still so vivid that feeling deep in my stomach which pointed to troubled waters ahead.

The sentences below are from the following wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction

“This too shall pass”

I have heard my mind saying this a lot lately. My wife and I try to remind each other this sentence regularly. When things are good the sentence above reminds me to enjoy the moment because “this too shall pass”. When things are bad, the sentence above reminds to stick it out because “this too shall pass.”

My current startup, Mountary, was recently invited to join 500 startups incubator. This is an amazing accomplishment for Neil (my co-founder) and I. It’s validation of our hard work over the last few months. Yet as I am jumping up and down, I am reminded “This too shall pass”. I quickly immerse myself in the experience of enjoying this moment and taking the most from what’s been given to us.

This just happened

I hit my foot by accident on a backup hard drive which houses all my photos and the drive is no longer connected to my laptop. Why I put the hard drive right next to my foot is mystery to me, but i’m worried that my hard drive might be gone.

This too shall pass…….

A Day in Napa Valley

HG — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 19:38:30 GMT

Interesting Rooster

Amazing Bouchon Bakery

Macaroons Bouchon Bakery

Artesa Winery

Home on a Napa Valley hill

Artesa Winery

Nails, Demand and Startups

HG — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 14:50:11 GMT

[iframe src="//embed.gettyimages.com/embed/104320179?et=N-aM3kgl0EaDFavKoD_zpg&sig=5iw_yZgpa5hEOiidknG1B151IKJW0RpTIlzDb8iyjvU=" width="507" height="407" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">]

Every so often I think back on something my cousin said to me a long time ago while I was visiting India. This memory randomly just popups in my head so this time I wanted to write down my thoughts. I think there is also a good takeaway for startups.

We were driving on a fairly busy road and I noticed there were a few people pulled over checking out there cars and scooters. When I pointed out that this seemed unusual he replied (conversion from punjabi to english in full effect here) :

Notice all the repair shops in the area? Don't you find it ironic so many of them are in one area? They have a few kids down the street who throw nails on the street. You get a punctured tire and the tire repair shops are conveniently located nearby.

What a nice business model (tongue and cheek). It does make me chuckle and think about a few things and how I could utilize this knowledge of demand creation at its purest. These shops sure know how to create demand. Is it immoral? You betcha! Is it falsely manufactured? off-course.

Side note : Most of the Indian streets are manned by amazing and creative entrepreneurs. I just had a discussion with a friend about how so much of India is entrepreneurial out of necessity and its truly an amazing scene to witness. Don't believe me? Here's one model currently making the rounds and fascinating Silicon Valley but it's been done for decades in India. Fresh cooked food delivery for busy people. Sprig & SpoonRocket. Now read this https://worksthatwork.com/1/dabbawallas

Back to my post: I'm not advocating you throw nails on the road because a user of the road will sooner or later catch on and avoid that road, effectively reducing your demand. What I am trying to say is that think "creatively". Think outside the box. Think like you are on the street. Recognize naturally occurring vs falsely manufactured demand. Then create your "repair shop" close by and watch the business grow.

Easily said than done? For sure! but it can be done. Have I been successful at taking my own advice? Not yet, but one day.

Do something, throw nails, pick them up, service the damage, whatever it is, go out and do it now.

Casino and Stock Market Participants

HG — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:38:28 GMT

I am writing this article because after 14+ years of investing, for the first time I feel like i'm in a FIFO crowd (explained below). I bought in to Facebook at $19 and rode it out to $70+ today. This is my exit before the herd also leaves. Am I leaving early, very likely. Am I going to be annoyed when Facebook hits $90, probably. But being able to dictate to the market my belief and be able to walk away is an amazing feeling and having a 3.5 bagger (350% return) is not a bad time to walk away.

Market is like a casino

[iframe src="//embed.gettyimages.com/embed/93453966?et=_MDoYikbHEmeKd1wNcLUrg&sig=_hSwhCuYWAYy1Vl7Zui5gwIDyQfg6uWvuq8_itSxn6k=" width="507" height="407" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"]

Ever walked away from a casino happy that you came? How many times have you won? lost? I am willing to bet you think you have won more than you have and in-fact most of us have lost money in aggregate. A few painful events at the casino and we tell ourselves

ok this time i'm going to spend $100 and if lose it I walk away (100% lose) or If I am up anything more than $100, I walk (100% return).

We set these boundaries because we know our pain tolerance of losing money, but we rarely know when to walk away, even when we have triggered the 100% return threshold. Stock market reminds me of a casino where losers are abundant and winners far and few. Three personalities which come to mind, two are long term losers and only one a winner. I am going to use accounting vocabulary to help explain each personality. In accounting inventory can be managed in many ways as long as you are consistent.

LIFO - Last in first out FIFO - First in first out LILO - Last in last out

Market participants

Beginners luck - LIFO - This is the person who came in pretty late to a stock (last in), has caught the trend and is also going to be selling very soon (first out). It's this person's first real whiff of the market and the candy sure tastes good. Next time around he is going to lose more than his total payout this last go. He's the guy that is jumping around at the casino because he won.

Seasoned winner - FIFO - This person has been invested in the market for a long time (first in) and knows clearly his triggers to walk away (first out). He has set clear limits and has the discipline to execute on his beliefs. He is rarely persuaded by marketing hypes of CNBC and Bloomberg. He makes his own choices. The beginner previously mentioned just caught wind of this FIFO crowd and made money as well. This is the quiet, calm guy who just hangs out with a Scott glass and a big pile of money at a table.

Seasoned loser - LILO - This person knows the markets but chases trends, buys IPO's on the secondary market, listens to Cramer for advice on the latest stock to purchase. He get's in late on the stock price and perhaps the stock goes up and he is happy but he doesn't know when to exit. He has never setup an exit strategy. He doesn't know when to walk away from the casino even when the FIFO dude is packing up. The stock crashes and he is furious and says

"I should have sold when it was higher".

Takeaway from this article

I watched a SEAL's documentary in which one of the SEAL's said, "we never walk into an arena in which we haven't already planned our exit".

Don't be a LILO. Always know when you need to sell even before you buy.

The Greater Fool

HG — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:55:08 GMT

[iframe src="//embed.gettyimages.com/embed/75650805?et=3Bgvb50lzEG0c3GXkxuVpA&sig=ebD6YV1llhRYjdVttQv3to1fXnBPuXSgNorTjxZX-V0=" height="500" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"]

Hello startup entrepreneur, let's start off with flashy headlines like these which inspire and depress us both at the same time :

Ultra-Hot Secret Sharing App Whisper Raises $3 Million From Lightspeed, Trinity, And Others http://www.businessinsider.com/secret-versus-whisper-2014-2 Secret Raises $10M At A $50M Valuation http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/09/shh-secret-raises-10m-at-a-50m-valuation/

Our VC's, advisors and "smart people with exits" always start their conversations with "this is a great app but...."

Where's the revenue? If there's no revenue how are you going to make money? What's your differentiator and value proposition?

Next time I get asked these questions I plan to ask a follow up on if they invested in Whisper or Secret or 100's of other products which have no revenue model, fairly similar to products already in market and only play is a buyout. Anyhow, I digress. I totally respect this conversation with "smart people" because it grounds the entrepreneur to think about the key components of the business. The investors are analyzing the business to see if there is value. In particular they want to know if this product makes money and hence an easy metric to determine value (less risk), or does this business derive value from what other's will be willing to pay for the whole business at someone point even if it doesn't make money (high risk). They want to be on the ground floor when this puppy goes to floor 101. Ultimately, however far down the road, the entrepreneur needs a payout. The team needs a payout. The VC's need a payout. You must be asking if everyone needs a payout who is paying? Ah yes, the greater fool theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory). Here's the basic idea behind the theory (from Wikipedia)

The greater fool theory states that the price of an object is determined not by its intrinsic value, but rather by the often irrational beliefs and expectations of market participants. A price can be justified by a rational buyer under the belief that another party is willing to pay an even higher price. Or one may rationally have the expectation that the item can be resold to a "greater fool" later.

In layman's terms : Music is playing. Object is a hot potato. Everyone is standing in a line ready to take a piece of it and pass it down. You don't want to be at the end of the line when the music stops.

[iframe src="//embed.gettyimages.com/embed/165930354?et=xFBkYVrW10Cyh1HLQu-7fQ&sig=b5khFgWib6pAyh1hzisxI8pxeVFjX-cs8jWG2HpY-Ww=" width="414" height="483" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"]

The greater fool theory in action : billion dollar journey

An entrepreneur creates a product and needs capital to grow.
$1 million seed round. Company is worth $4 million - Woohhooo from the entrepreneur and team. Gasp from the competitors. Investor see's value AKA investor see's this as an opportunity where he bought something for cheaper than what it will be worth to someone else (the greater fool).
$5 million series A round. Company is worth $40 million - Company founders start planning purchase of private jets. The new investor has made the previous investor and founder very happy but this investor knows theres gold in them hills.
$25 million series B round. Company is worth $100 million - Company founders submit order for the private jet. The new investor has made the previous investors very happy but this investor thinks there's even more gold in them hills.
$100 million IPO - Company is worth $500 million. Company founders are dancing on top of yachts in San Tropez. The new investor (underwriting bank) has made all the investors very happy but this bank and it's clients think all the others were stupid because there's diamond in them hills!
Secondary Market - Company is worth $1 billion. Company founders are sitting court side next to Jay-Z and Beyonce. All the previous investors are happy as can be. The new investor is a dude like me sitting in-front of his computer looking at stock tickers when he see's a new IPO opportunity, except that it's no longer an IPO it's trading in the secondary market (stock market).

Hello Greater Fool, we found you.

Apps this week - Secret & NBC Live Extra

HG — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 20:42:06 GMT

I like to download, use and delete lots of apps and new products. In this weekly column, I write about two products which caught my attention. This week I am looking at Secret, an anonymous way to speak your mind and NBC Live Extra, a way to watch all the Olympics and other content live on your devices.

Recap from last week

You can read last weeks post here, http://www.hansgill.com/apps-this-week-facebook-paper-flappy-bird/

Facebook Paper has established a permanent spot on the main page alongside snapchat, google maps, whatsApp and chrome. It's my goto source for news now, so long google news!

I played Flappy Bird everyday this week multiple times. If I had to put a time on it, I would say I spent about 10-15 minutes each day on average. I rarely spend any time on games so the fact I wasted more than an hour in a week on this game is a amazing. The big news out today is that Dong Ngyuen has decided to remove the game from the app store citing concerns that he cannot "..do it anymore". Who knows the real truth about this. Perhaps he was bought out and buyer wants to keep the purchase underwraps or perhaps he is being strong armed by someone, whatever the reason he created an amazing game!

Secret - speak your mind anonymously

Initial thoughts

I wonder if I know any of these people who are posting?
There's a lot of nonsense being posted in here. Wait a minute this is part of my network 1 to 2 links away, I know most of these people.
Not everything being shared in here could be real, could it?
People make up lots of stuff.

What is Secret about?

Ever had the need to share something deep, dark, exciting but weren't sure how people would react? Scared that if you post a picture of a kitty kat your manhood will be questioned? Then this is the app for you. Assuming you want to share your opinions with the world and be judged by strangers whose opinion you have to take with a grain of salt then this seems like a great app.

I started using the app last night and right away the first red flag was my wife's comment

Ya you're too busy on secret posting who knows what

It didn't matter if I tried to explain to her that this is about anonymously sharing your thoughts without the worry of ridicule. Even though that is just one use case i'm sure its one of the prime reasons people will use this platform.

What I do know is that this is not something my wife will use. Since I give each app a week test drive, i'll have to continue along on the secret app.

Making money?

Seems like a cool app to build but definitely a buyout play and no other way I see them make any money.

How are these guys going to make money? The last two apps I featured both are money making machines. Flappy Bird was pulling in 50k a day from in-game ads and Facebook Paper enables further reach for advertisers who pay Facebook billions!

I can't imagine user's wanting to pay for this. Neither can I imagine that this platform is going to get the critical mass to sustain on ad revenue alone.

NBC Olympics - Watch all the live events in Sochi

Initial thoughts

Awesome, I can watch all the olympics on my phone now since I don't have cable anymore
Oh wait, that's not possible because in-order to watch the games you still MUST have a subscription to the games. Time to call a friend with comcast :)
The streams freeze a lot.

What is the app about?

NBC knows people want to consume their content on many devices other than just the TV but the cable networks control all the consumers, so this app allows you to consume the olympics on all your devices IF you have cable subscription. That is a big if these days because the movement towards "No TV Home". My household falls in that category. We subscribe to Netflix and also get Amazon instant because I have a prime subscription.

The app has a slick interface and I can see myself using this for other events on NBC as well. 2016 olympics in Brazil perhaps? I have already put the my notifications for all the men's hockey games, Go team USA!