Help a good man get back on his feet

My topics are usually about technology, startups and entrepreneurs. This time it is about a friend, classmate and a great person. This time it is about Matt.

This is how I remember Matt. I took this photo back in 2010. But Matt is no longer like this. His life turned upside down and it could happen to you too. Read below why he needs your help now. You can also read the story directly at the fundraising campaign page.

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Matt played for Cambridge University in 2010 and 2011 while studying for his MBA and was 1st XV captain in 2011. He was also a member of the Canadian national rugby team in both the 15- and 7-a-side squads from 2002 to 2006 and was captain and MVP of the latter in 2005.

Matt suffered a neck injury in 2002 while playing for Canada. The extent of the injury was misdiagnosed and he was advised to play through the discomfort, which he did for the balance of his career, causing serious damage to his spine in the process. Additionally, Matt has recently been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a connective tissue disorder that leaves him prone to ligament and tendon tears and severe degeneration and arthritis. For further reading on this condition, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers–Danlos_syndrome.

Matt has been unable to work since completing his MBA in 2011. In order to survive, he has exhausted his savings and RRSP funds, accumulated significant debt, and now tries to live off his $750/month disability allowance.

Matt has significant earning potential as evidenced by his strong work ethic, business and personal network, and his status as an elite athlete. He is, however, caught in a cycle where he’s in too much pain and too fatigued to work or make much progress in his recovery since many of the treatments that help him are not covered by the Canadian health care system and he has no additional benefits coverage. 

Matt does well with low impact exercise in water and various modalities such as physiotherapy, massage therapy, chiropractic, and other similar treatments. We are arranging for Matt to see a chronic pain specialist and a geneticist to see if they can offer some fresh opinions and are planning to enroll him in a chronic pain management course this fall. 

We are raising funds to help Matt to access treatment, pay for a pool membership, and return to a state of health where he can work and support himself. Matt’s weekly medical treatments cost $450 (or $90 each) and a monthly pool membership costs $40. Your contributions will help him achieve his goals. 

Many thanks for joining our efforts to help Matt get his life back. 

We need to help him. We have set up a fundraising campaign. Please donate as much as is dear to you. Every contribution counts.

Thank you!

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories Fundraising
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Mentoring at Lisbon Challenge (Reloaded)

This is an article long overdue. I am happy I finally found the time to write it down.

As every year I joined Lisbon Challenge for their new batch of companies. The list was impressive with teams coming from all around the world including “the usual suspects” Brazil, Portugal and … Bulgaria (recalling Eventyard in 2013).

The selection increases in quality every year and for me this participation is no work but pure pleasure. The organizing team has not changed much and they do an incredible job. Kudos to @Pedro, @Ricardo, Bashara, Sofia and all the other great people there that make a difference – I am your fan since 2013!

Not surprisingly I took part in the last two stages of the programme – Product and Scalability. The companies made an even more mature impression than last year – founders openly discussed their idea, business model and growth plans. The businesses mostly had first clients and a clear idea what works and what does not in their field. Problems were being discussed openly and options seemed to have been weighted well before talking them over. Even my brainstorming skills did not have to come in use (which is a good sign!). In sum, could feel the pleasant breeze of my favorite no-nonsense culture.

The businesses I met included the extreme sports community Leap,  pet caretaker marketplace BauBNB and the smart pic web monetization service ClinkPic. It would be unfair to pinpoint what we discussed with each startup but the long list included performance benchmarking, industry metrics, customer acquisition, retention strategy, internationalization, perceived loyalty, behavioral patterns, product virality.

Wishing luck to all! Godspeed.

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories Ecosystems, Mentoring

Ups, Oracle dropped out from Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Based IT PPM Services

I do have exotic taste for nightly reads. But in my defense this one has to do with my interest in Enterprise SaaS.

This time I was diving in the “Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Based IT Project and Portfolio Management Services, Worldwide” report from Gartner, dated 20 May 2015 (ID:G00264757).

Building an enterprise solution takes time and many of the businesses mentioned exist for at least 7-8 years. What impressed me though is I have never heard of any of them. And the one I know – they were being dropped. Oracle included.

Now I am far from the idea that Oracle is in trouble but this just emphasizes the fact that Enterprise SaaS are on the rise and there is a lot more to come than just SalesForce, Box and few others.

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories SaaS
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Yep, you can lose your notes in Evernote

Evernote is one of the apps that shape my day. Keeping notes is easy and fast, categorizing and finding what you need is a no brainer. In sum, I love Evernote.

But I had quite a hiccup with it in February. Long story short, an important note of mine disappeared. Irrecoverably. So now every time I use Evernote I ask myself if my data is actually safe.

It all started one day in February when my Mac asked me to update some apps. One of them was Evernote. It is not something unusual so I said yes as usual.

The update started and Evernote crashed. After the update reopened and I could use it again.

Murphy´s Law

An hour later I was looking for an important business TODO note that I update daily. It was THE NOTE from all of my notes. Surprisingly was not appearing any more and I could find a version from December only. After some searching I had to revert to the support line.

Support Fiasco

What I was not suspecting at this time is that my support experience will take quite some time. After sending several support requests and getting no answer. I ended up in some kind of support forums where I got an answer almost immediately but it was not an answer that can solve my problem. After several days of waiting and re-sending my case I finally read that paid clients get better support. So I joined Evernote Premium.

This is where I felt – ok, I was not paying so obviously cannot expect special treatment. Yet, solving a technical issue and specifically data loss should not be something limited to paid membership. In the end Evernote is all about data and there is an established belief that your data is safe in the cloud.

Now that I was a paid member, I had the pleasure to talk to a human being and actually very amiable person by the name of Ben.

Data is Gone. With the Wind

In a matter of several days Ben walked me through all hidden places of the system, asked me to check logs, visit the web version, change settings. But in the end had to admit that my note was gone. Irrecoverably. Ouch, that hurt.

Apparently the note had no ID inside the Evernote cloud and once the app crashed and restarted the note was deleted.

As said, I love Evernote but this incident shook my flawless perception of the product. They lost my business planning from last months plus tasks for next several months. I eventually recovered stuff from here and there but there was serious damage caused.

In my humble opinion number 1 priority of a cloud company is to ensure its users data is safely and securely stored. All the rest of improvements and gimmicks I am getting for years are rarely having any impact on my usage or speeding up my work. I still don’t get it how is it possible to have such a problem in a mature and established product but shit happens.

End of Story

Ben gave me 6 months free Premium membership. I did not get use of it. Still using Evernote though.

Which alternative products do you use? And is there a good alternative to Evernote?

 

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories Hall of Shame, Productivity
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Living in times of wonders. Which achievement impressed you most?

In the last days you could find me feverishly checking the news to get yet another detailed picture of Pluto. Tuesday night (Berlin time) I could see the latest and probably most detailed shot of the 9th planet in our solar system.

It was spectacular (take a look at BBC.co.uk or NASA).

New Horizons’ flyby of 2,370km-wide Pluto is a key moment in the history of space exploration, science and humanity. But so is the Philae landing on a comet, or the discovery of the Higgs boson amongst other in the Large Hadron Collider (fyi: the LHC teams just announced discovery of new pentaquark).

We are living in exciting times and there is more coming. The era of tech started long ago but does not seem to be slowing down and my news feed turns more futuristic day after day.

Just out of curiosity 🙂 Which achievement in the last years impressed you most?

PUBLISHED ON Posted on in Categories News, Random Thoughts
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