Unreasonable at Sea day 68: Financials for Protei & Tom Clayton

We had a 1 hour deep dive with the learning partners and mentors on the Protei financials. We brought them our projected inputs / outputs for the next years of Protei. We showed them our projected models of financial input and outputs. We got a lot of input and questions about transforming from scrappy moving forwards to putting the “gas pedal” down in order to raise capital to get big quick. It is interesting to hone in on which customers will help move our technology along the fastest for the next set of customers. For example, we must focus most on our core technology, then use the applications of the technology platform as the ASSETS of Protei Inc, and therefore, we will prosper from the community and must have a robust community website. Besides equity, what companies would be willing to be a corporate donor for big ocean data… Google? Shell? BP? We do not necessarily need a pilot because this will immediately put a limit around our technology. At first, most of the feedback was: more money, better team, make the market, create demand, focus, get 75% of your time back-have someone commercially out there creating demand / BD person; understand the market; give market feedback; commercially savvy expert; can create demand; give product feedback. So we got urged to change the customer: drop the hobbyist, recognize what you are doing is outside the value; push to do other markets for data and operations, and place value over advantages. the margin is HUGE because you’ve solved it at a big scale so the price point should come after (the price is MORE than the parts)

so for now:
everything is focused on small grants (scrappy), not big equity investors.

financial statements:
1. income statements; profit and loss;
2. balance sheet – shows your assets, specific point in time how much asset you have
3. cash flow statement – what cash do you have in the bank today and what’s it going to look like

Then we had a meeting with the ship captain about not disagreeing about bring stuff for building on the ship. How can SAS (semester at sea) and UAS (unreasonable at sea) work together?

ALso I am happy that Modi gave me some mango treats, thanks Abishek! I’m obsessed with salty Indian pickles. and I ate some fish from Heather, Thanks Heather!

In the afternoon, we had a meeting with Tom Clayton, and it was really helpful. One thing he said is that: if her were to do what we are, he’d think big, think fast: raise big capital, form a big team, move fast. If we want to change the world, you have to build it up big and move fast. It is ok to prioritize for a few years, and be scrappy and run a lower cost startup. Also, beware of “cultural attrition issues” with one person who might bring the entire team down.

Tom’s five rules to running business, especially in Singapore:
1. Be Positive
2. hire the ABSOLUTE BEST, always smarter than yourself
3. Be Scrappy – think of creative ways to do things.
4. Maniacal focus on the end user
5. take initiative, move fast, fail fast