Amongst the jurors, I was the youngest, but during 4 days of deliberations, I became a senior voice. After we delivered our verdict, what stuck with me — is how scared I’d be to face a jury.
Author’s note: My understanding is that it’s legal to recount my jury experience as there were no confidential materials shared during the proceedings. However, in the interest of protecting the parties and jurors involved, I have obfuscated some details.
Readers should also be aware the case involved a graphic description of the Complainant and Defendant having sex and I will detail what I remember in this article. I think it’s necessary to recount as much detail as possible if I’m going to publicise an honest reflection of my time on the case as a juror. …
Building Streamplate for the finish line tomorrow.
Apparently 90% of startups fail and I think this is generally due to operational insensibility. “Co-founder infighting”, “running out of money”, “poor market penetrance” and “weak product market fit” are some of the commonly listed reasons but I think these describe symptoms and not causes.
The average age of a successful founder is ~33 years old which suggests that for most, the passing of time and most likely, the experiences that come with it, are what’s actually needed. It’s not running out of money that’s problematic, but when most people begin working on a startup, they fundamentally don’t know how…
Why are most smaller tech companies most likely to use better technology than far larger, more financed competitors?
This is one of my favourite charts. Note — it’s quite long.
After speaking at a panel, I was asked by a lecturer at USYD to share my thoughts on how computer science could be better taught at the university.
Context
I’m studying electrical engineering with a major in computer engineering and neuroscience at the University of Sydney. I’m a subject away from completing my neuroscience degree and I’ve completed about 60% of my engineering degree, with the remaining subjects being electives in computer engineering. I’ve deferred the past 3 semesters (have deferred a total of 4 semesters) and with the way Streamplate has been progressing, I’ll probably drop out to focus on work. …
After receiving feedback about Streamplate’s pitch, we’ve realised a change in sentence structure has unblocked a lot.
Last week we pitched Streamplate at Fishburners and learnt how unattractive the term “food-ordering” was to some people. They think it’s a crowded market, a space unable to change because of how well capitalised the incumbents are, and effectively a “dead” market.
So when a venture-capitalist (VC) heard the words “food-ordering”, she admitted to “switching off”. Not good for Streamplate.
We spoke a bit more to this VC and she explained there were other vectors about our idea that we should lead with. …
Notes from the Blue & Gold Army, a TV Pilot called “Flux” that I wrote/directed and a film-project that ended in a lawsuit.
In a few months, I think Streamplate will become sustainable and in doing so, become the first project that I initiated, to sustainably grow. When I say sustainable, I mean I think we’ll be able to secure a few million dollars in investment during 2021 which will finance what’s needed to continue building the App and the Orb. We’re in a bootstrapped/pre-seed stage now.
I realise that the App isn’t even completed nor is it available on Android, but I think part of my job is to think a few months in advance and accordingly adjust the company so its…
The conscious mind adheres to a sense of understanding that’s designed by the subconscious and this has precipitated a magnetism in religions showing a universal demand for spirituality.
I’m not religious, but I do think there’s value in how religion is a vehicle for a lot of people to become spiritual. And the value of mindfulness that arises from spirituality seems to have been valued across most civilisations. From Abrahamic religions to the Indigenous beliefs in Australia and the pagan ideologies in antiquity, there’s palpable evidence that no matter the time, people have always sought more than just physical sensibility in this life.
The brain normalises itself over time, meaning as we age, the mind settles into a self-reinforcing cycle that can only be described as making us run in circles throughout our life.
This is an observation I keep noting and I’m going to briefly describe it here.
I’ve always believed that for the majority of the Western world, the two most life-defining events for anyone, excluding birth are;
- Getting married,
- Securing a mortgage.
This is because of how consequential both of these are. Marriage typically brings with it a host of new fundamental new responsibilities that emerge when a couple begin raising a family. A mortgage forcibly changes what most people will spend most of their waking lives doing — working.
What’s strange about this, is that so much of this traditional…
The virtualisation of the real world is restitching the physical and spiritual states of living to overcome the body’s temporality.
Consider the following:
- It only takes 3 minutes to bleed out,
- Ischaemic heart disease remains the leading cause of death, and,
- 1.9 billion adults are overweight or obese.
For all the human body has offered us, it remains, and always will be the Achilles heel of our livelihood. As the mind ages, our body degrades and while modern medicine has done much to keep us afloat into our 70s, 80s and beyond, there is an inevitability of death that no one can escape. This obsession with avoiding what must happen is founded on the fragility of the human body. …
A lot of pain points throughout the year but we still love building the App and Orb, and are only going to move forward faster in 2021.
One year on and Streamplate has grown exponentially. With nearly 20 team members, a completed App and an Orb ready for manufacturing, we’ve gone through a lot to get here. As the year closes, I spent some time reflecting on what we achieved and what we failed to reach.
It’s worth clarifying some guiding philosophies though that I’ve been adhering to:
- Action Creates Opportunity — Doing nothing creates nothing and so even in the face of everything stacked against us, we have to do something to change the odds.
- Keep Moving Forward — We’ve had a lot of setbacks, but…
Bryan Jordan
Electrical engineering/Neuroscience at University of Sydney. Aspiring neuro-trauma surgeon with a few software/hardware goals. www.streamplate.com
