So This Is My Why | Issue 32

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Hey STIMYers,

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It's been a hot minute.

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While I don't tend to go political here, it'd be remiss of me to not touch on an earth-shattering event in Malaysia:

What happened?

Malaysia's former Prime Minister, Najib Razak, was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment & a fine of RM 210 million (USD 47 million).

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According to the Chief Justice:

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Why?

Najib was involved in the $4.5 billion graft scandal at the 1MD state fund (over $1 billion went to accounts linked to Najib).

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The US Department of Justice even ended up opening its biggest kleptocracy investigation. 🤦🏻‍♀️

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It's Surreal

Most Malaysians didn't think this day would ever come. There were plenty of shenanigans involved in the court proceedings, where the defence tried to:

• ​adjourn the case;
• ​seek further extension of time to file fresh submissions (based on personal experience, each court filing gives you an additional 2 week extension ad infinitum, if granted. Sorry to shatter the fancy Suits dream of anyone out there, but real life litigation is very administrative & tedious); and
• ​recuse the Chief Justice on grounds of conflict.​

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But could the sentencing be overturned?

Yup.

1. Via royal pardon (he must apply within the next 14 days)
2. An application to the Federal Court to review the verdict - it'll be heard by a different of judges in the Federal Court, but this rarely succeeds unless e.g. there's been a breach of natural justice

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TL;DR

Stay tuned. A "Get Out of Jail Free" card might still be around the corner.

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Alright enough politics. Let's move on to the next part!

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​STIMY Episode 87: Startup Success if Worse than Startup Failure?!​

STIMY Ep 87 featured a guest I never thought I'd get: Phil Libin - co-founder of Evernote.

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Yes, that green-coloured note taking app.

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What I loved was how contrarian Phil's views were and how, frankly, he didn't care that he went against the grain. Things like how being a co-founder is frankly the worst thing a person can do - it's brutal & traumatising (and honestly, why put yourself through that when you can just read Wikipedia?).

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Oh, and he also thinks blockchain is bullsh** & that he hates the metaverse. 🙊

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Lots to unpack, but here are some highlights:

• 4:52 Being fired from his job selling ice-cream
• 6:11 Taking 30 years to complete his degree?!
• 8:15 Working with essentially the same core group of friends to build 5 startups
• 11:13 Selling Engine5 for $26 million, Hollywood-style
• 15:52 Building something for himself (Evernote)
• 18:19 Startup failure is brutal; startup success is much worse & much harder
• 20:57 Three types of regret
• 22:48 Maintaining his principles & ethics
• 26:30 3-year game plan for mmhmm
• 31:07 Why Phil hates the metaverse
• 32:27 Crypto blockchain is bullsh*t
• 33:45 The promise of blockchain is just communist propaganda?
• 37:14 Training himself to like what he hates, including durians!
• 39:57 How listeners can help Phil Libin

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Places to listen to: Website, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Listen Notes​

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Looking for past STIMY guests to listen to? Check out:

• ​Eric Toda: Global Head of Social Marketing & Head of Meta Prosper, Meta
• ​Nicole Quinn: General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners; investor and/or board member at Calm, Cameo, Lunchclub, Haus Laboratories (Lady Gaga), The Honest Company (Jessica Alba), Goop (Gwyneth Paltrow), Girlboss (Sophia Amoruso) etc.
• ​Tibor Merey: Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group - on how companies can enter the metaverse

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Favourite Finds of the Week

1. The "Honest" LinkedIn

Let's flip the topic of corruption on its head & talk about one of the hottest "honest" apps around: Blind

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What's Blind?

A South Korean app where - after registering with your work email - you can anonymously scroll, read and submit questions relating to your work/life/career.

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Kyum Kim, co-founder & Head of Blind's US operations, said:

Personal Verdict

The majority of users seem to be FAANG software engineers.

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Everyone is very open with their YOE (years of experience) and TC (total compensation).

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Some topics that have surfaced:

• Not happy with appraisal hike - next steps?
• When will LinkedIn lift hiring freeze?
• Which offer should I choose?
• Highest paying companies based in Austin
• Just joined a new startup, and matched with one of the co-founders on Bumble
• Climbing the corporate ladder with young kids
• Do you regret joining Robinhood?

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As you can see, a pretty fascinating range of topics, albeit rather US-centric!

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Links: Blind​

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2. BeReal

BeReal is the anti-Instagram or the ultimate anti-social media.

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What is BeReal?

Every day, you get a random alert from BeReal telling you to take a photo of your current surroundings in 2 minutes. When you do so, the front-facing camera also takes a photo of you.

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Why this matters?

People are spending far too much time on social media. Way too much effort on filters, curation & "trying" to be authentic.

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But if you get a random alert in the middle of cooking, frazzled hair and all, and less than 2 minutes to get that shot - that's arguably far more "authentic".

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Personal thoughts:

• Interesting concept; but it didn't have any stickiness factor for me. I wasn't bothered whether I missed a day or not but that might be because my "community" isn't on the app and I wasn't interested in scrolling through my feed
• While the alert does tell you to post in 2 minutes, you aren't barred from posting a photo hours later (until the following day's alert comes). So... curation can/does still happen

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Link: BeReal​

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3. This Person Does Not Exist

We had Honest LinkedIn, then BeReal.

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Now, let's BeFake.

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What is "This Person Does Not Exist"?

This is a one-click, AI face generator.

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How To Use:

1. Go here​
2. You'll get an image of a random person. It looks realistic BUT the person does not exist!!
3. Click refresh to get another real-fake image served up (it updates every 2-3 seconds)

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Fun Fact

The creation of photographs of non-existent people was never the intent.

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Instead, the main goal was to train the AI to recognise fake faces & faces in general. But since the code was publicly available, a Uber engineer took it & created a random face generator that blew everyone's collective minds.

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Link: This Person Does Not Exist​

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4. BRAVE Podcast: Ling Yah​

The irony of having released 89 episodes... I'm still shy when it comes to listening to myself speak!

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Jeremy Au, a VC at Monk's Hill, recently interviewed me on my podcast journey (Episode 190 on the BRAVE podcast).

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If you'd like to know the genesis behind STIMY, my main learnings & why one of the questions I always ask all my guests - what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? - means so much to me...

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You'll find it all in the BRAVE episode.

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If it's not too much, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too!

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Just smash the reply button below.

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Link: BRAVE episode​

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Upcoming STIMY Guests

• Ian Lee, Syndicate DAO
• Alejandro Navia, founder of nft now
• Chrissy Hill, General Counsel at Parity Technologies

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See you next week! 😊

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Ling Yah

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P/S: If someone forwarded this newsletter to you, you can sign up here.
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