Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming in as a force that will change the world as we know it. No, we are not talking about Westworld revolting robots. ​

2018 is now gone and we’ve passed almost half of the first month of 2019. But while that may be so, you aren’t way past the year to launch your business. The first couple of months of the year are still here to offer you opportunities to reflect and plan to launch your business. But if you aren’t planning to start a business, here are 5 reasons why you should consider it.
1. Modern Customers Are In for More Personalized Service
With businesses further adapting to a modern customer, a new business that prioritizes a seamless, personalized service and fast delivery will be available. Modern customers today gravitate to online services that can provide them with better user experiences. Yet, most businesses fail to adapt to the modern times. The New Year would be an excellent opportunity to launch a business and take advantage of attracting these potential modern customers.
2. Improved Technology Will Make Business Operations Easier
Technology is more advanced than ever. You could probably build whatever you could dream of. Among the technologies to be expected this year include predictive analysis and AI, which will deliver fantastic customer experience. It will be a game changer this year, particularly in giving businesses greater insight.
3. Plenty of Small Business Opportunities
If your goal is to become wealthy, launching a small business might not give you that chance. However, small business might be able to generate you an income to live with instead of working for the man. This year’s forecast shows a bit optimistic on global trade growth, and the economy is leaning to positive. With that, starting a business this year might finally realize your dream of becoming your boss and making all the decisions.
4. Significant Changes on Banking is on the Way
Even before the end of the year, there are already significant changes in banking. These changes will no doubt create a massive disruption in how you make your payment. With more radical payment methods coming along with improved technology, your mobile phone will be your wallet. With this are many opportunities to bring a potentially profitable business closer to your target audience.
5. The New Year is a Time to Do Something You Love
Of course, besides the changes to come this 2019, there is no reason to launch your business that is more compelling than doing something you love. If it has always been your dream to start your own business and you think you it is time, then go for it. If you work hard running your own business and truly enjoy what you do, you have the stakes to make it a success.

If you are unsure if this year is the perfect year to launch your dream business finally, the reasons mentioned might be enough to start. But like what the last reason is all about, it matters a lot that you love what you do. It is essential to choose a field where you are passionate in so you can stay in the business to make it scale. 

Come by our modern coworking space to see how 2019 can motivate you. 

​Mindshare capture is the amount of space a company occupies a customer’s mind. According to Investopedia, “Mindshare is a marketing term that describes the amount consumer awareness or popularity surrounding a particular product, idea, or company. Practically, it is the consumer perception of a particular brand or product compared to their rivals as measured by the amount of talk or mentions generated by the public or the media.” The more mindshare a company has, the more market share it will convert and the brighter their future will be. It is not easy to capture the minds of people in the modern days as an average person at the computer probably has more than 5 tabs open at a time, plenty of messages coming through, and social media newsfeed being as hyped as ever.

If your company can successfully gain mindshare of your customers, it will lead to more sales. Once your company had gained the mindshare of your customers, probably 3 out of 5 tabs opened on your customers’ web browser are at your company’s web page. And as humans are social animals, your customers might chat with their friends via social media, texts, or word of mouth which will make mindshare capture even stronger. 

Here are 4 ways to ensure success in gaining mindshare. 
1. Have a unique and great product-
If you have a great product, your customers will for sure come back for more. For example, Coca-Cola has had the same great recipe since the 1800s. Another example would be Amazon, which was a unique way to sell books on the internet. Both Amazon and Coca-Cola were great for their unique product.

2. Offer great customer service- 
People definitely remember if they were made to feel special and they would definitely tell their friends about it. 

3. Have your product always be available-
Make sure your product is always available. Not only would your customers be excited about it, but also, you could only make money when your product is available unless you are running a Kickstarter campaign. But, you are building a real company so make sure it is always available. 

4. Make your customers feel something-
Your customers should be excited, happy, fascinated, or whatever feeling they have while using your product. The more they feel while using your product the more your company will occupy their mind. Apple was a master of this. Their ads would make people feel something and Steve Job’s presentation would make users feel like they are different just by using Apple products. 

Get started on capturing the mindshare of your customers today! 

Time is a valuable asset. As the old saying goes, “Time lost can never be regained.” One must take ownership of one’s own time to never waste it. Time management is a super important element in productivity to achieve what you want in life. We are going to explore ways to have better time management to take control over our own productivity. 

1. Prioritize your day
Always prioritize your day according to your goal in life. List the activities that will bring you closer to your goals in life. Once you align your life goals, it is a lot easier to know what your priorities are for the day, week, or even months. 

2. Make a  to-do list
After you prioritize your day, make sure to list them out with a to-do list. A to-do list helps with reminding what needs to be done through the day. On top of that, crossing out items on your to-do list is very satisfying and it can boost your will to go on being more productive for the rest of the day. If you had put the same item onto different to-do lists in different days or weeks, that means that is an item that is either unnecessary for you to do, or it is a very important item for you. Make sure you determine what it means and go forth with it. 

3. Stop checking your email
Checking your email is counterproductive. Make sure to set a limit for yourself so you are only checking your email once or twice a day. There is no reason to constantly check your email. People who sent you emails could wait for your response. Remember, if someone wants something from you, that is their problem, not yours. 

4. Do all your work from the same device
Doing work from the same device means no wasted time trying to find documents you are trying to find from a random device. 

5. Use the time blocking method
Essentially, break down your tasks down in 25 minutes batches as that is how long a human mind could spend focused on something. This way, you could time yourself and make sure you are maximizing your blocked time. 

6. Schedule social media posts
Especially if you run a business, stopping everything to post on social media could be a waste of your time. Try to find an app such as Hootsuite to schedule your posts throughout the month so you don’t have to waste time posting on social media daily. 

Time management is all about cutting down time for productivity so you could enjoy your life a lot more. Sitting at the desk longer doesn’t mean you are producing more work out of it. If you are unproductive after more than the desired amount of time of sitting at a desk, consider taking a break or going out for a walk. Make sure the time you spent at your desk is actually laser focused and productive so you are not wasting time sitting in the office when you could enjoy doing other things and living life.

by ​Alan Waxman MLA

Black Box Cryptography: 
Of Zen Noble Truths and Blockchain
You are a black box (空).  More appropriately, you and I together, in this shared space, are (in) a black box right now.  Big data (縁) flows through, informing our context and ourselves. In this sense(念), we form a cipher (円相) between us, a cryptographic (法) void (無) of potentiality (如来).    
​
Sharing Economy 
We can share(業) certain things, our clothes, our food, even our “time”(時).  These things are possible to share because we can shed them, alienable.  When we’d rather not actually bother to take off our clothes or meet to share food, we can make images of our clothes, food, and time, and share this simulacrum(空想).
​
You and I can decide(思) to quantify the value of this exchange, of this present.  We can slap price stickers on our clothes and our time, or even more easily price our simulacre versions(行) of our “things”(事). Monetize.  

Better to put a price on an image(像) of yourself than on yourself(我), right(正)?  The image, the on-screen(写) persona of yourself, is not only easier to market, to become a personal brand, but it also keeps you safe.  Why not toss around digital messages, images, selfies in and out, slick and protected?  Pretty soon we’ve got all these mega chat rooms running around the world, multiple online businesses and characters going(行).  And the digital flows into the digital.    

Heck, if we add up(欲) all the dollar signs into a ledger we have a running tally of our digital community value - line graphs on a screen tracing a speculative online digital market.  Now, we know Satoshi’s folks bodied(此縁性) the flow(流), by putting something more to “crypto” - the garden in the machine(露地).  

Cryptography 
This “something”(埃) makes the code a bit more solid, a bit more embodied(現). Ever extending lines that make up the blockchain are verified by shared processes (公案) - the data mining cipher(円相).  Suddenly, the digital is looking a little more locked down and unknown(不思).

The internet of things lends itself to this because the physical world and it’s panoply of expressions of context over time (縁起) constantly creates new, unforeseen data flow(泡). When something in the system breaks(侘) it comes to suddenly triangulate even more value in the constantly updating(化) blockchain. Example (礼) is derived by exception (陰陽). Whether math problems, or personal health decisions, it’s the unknown variables that derive the greatest value in the cryptography.  The risk.

On the blockchain there is no going backwards.  You and I and our data mining internet of things(縁起), a distributed ledger updating in real time.  The blockchain is “digital”(裏) but it mirrors the change in the physical community of value, repudiated in the mining processes, a black box of momentous proportions(空). 

This feedback continues quickly ad-infinitum(無常), blurring into real time(心相續).  Pretty soon, the intricacies and patterns of unknowns; the breaks in the norm(不正常), come to inform the code(法).  Deep learning(深層学習) in the neural net(神経回路網).  

Artificial intelligence to Intelligence 
Perhaps you’ve been preoccupied(苦) with smoothing out the anomalies(不正常), with creating seamless feedback loops(廻) where you know what goes in to create what comes out. Control(配).  Make a brand(名).  A reliable product.  This is the old artificial intelligence approach: make a machine learning model that fixes things and maintains “good” feedback, no big waves. This is the old closed-system approach.  Minimize the variables.  Make a nice selfie. Get likes. Monetize that shit.  

Now imagine a particular cluster of these intricacies, risks, anomalies.  Imagine this as a literal black box. From the view outside the box, we see what’s going in and what’s coming out - We see a steady stream of data representative of what’s inside the box(空想).  We can paint the box with any image, any simulation we choose to see, and this may affect the inputs and outputs of the box. We can even paint a human face on the box, perhaps even a selfie of ourselves. But, we will never know what’s inside our box(無心相續).

When we realize we are this black box (無心) - we realize that we are the machine and the machine is us, a man/mirror mix.  Suddenly Moore’s Law has not slowed after all, just reached an asymptote. Computers shrank from the size of a town, to a building, to a room, to a desk top, to a pocket, and then suddenly vanished entirely. We ARE them, the other, I and thou, in ecstasy.  No more man vs nature, with “resources” and “manufacturing.” Enter the anthropocene, the primordial(阿吽), the tea ceremony(茶の湯).

This leap into the unknown stands to release us from the bounded thinking of controlling variables.  It stands to transform the act of “programming” into a sensitive opening of intersubjective vulnerability (慈悲).  It stands to unleash us from laboring in the dry factories of closed systems to play in the wet lush fields of open system ecologies. 

Many startups are stealth mode nowadays due to the fear of others stealing their startup idea. If anyone at a coworking space asks them what they are working on, they normally say, “We are a stealth mode startup.” Of course, there are horror stories of others stealing startup ideas, but ideas are only ideas if there is no execution behind them to turn them into a business. Here are 5 reasons why sharing what your startup does might help you.


1.Get immediate feedback-
If you have a product to showcase, let others in the coworking space to use your product and see what they think. Since there are so many people, you can immediately get some feedbacks on what potentials users might think.

2. Gain resources-
Maybe other coworking members are connected to companies, individuals, or influencers you need for your startup. Members of Treehouse love sharing information and resources with each other.

3. Potential recruit-
Are you looking for someone to help you out on building your product or potential salespeople? There could be drop-in daypassers at a coworking space or at a networking event who is excited about what you are building! Even if they aren’t looking for a job, someone from the coworking circle might also know someone with the talent you are looking for your startup.

4. Collaborate-
Maybe there is another company in the coworking space looking to collaborate with someone in your field! You will never know unless you connect with them.  

5. Share knowledge-
You can learn so much from talking to others at a coworking space. People love sharing their knowledge over coffee or lunch.

If you are still not convinced to talk about what you are working on, share only a part of your business idea especially if you are on the early stage of your startup.