A Cockroach guide: A practical surviving kit
A few years ago, I started a trip with only $300 and a two-week plan. It was just for a meeting at a university. I thought that it would be the end of a story.
Indeed, it was the beginning of 18 months around the world with endless challenges. In an effort of getting scrappy work done with the highest integrity, I lived like a nomad and operated as a lean startup.
Honestly, I did not know how long, how far, and how hard I could push through. However, I knew one thing for sure. The more I could save, the more a runway can be extended.
If you are a startup or indie researcher, this is for you.
I will take examples mostly from the Bay Area/ San Francisco. Why? This place is known as a tech capital. Not only it has all characteristics of a central hub, but also full of problems. Lots of things here are still applicable to other cities like Paris, Lausanne, Berlin, Montreal, or any city in our modern civilization.
Food
Where to find food? Five-star. Free. Cheap. Fresh.
Find free lunch at Friend’s companies. Whatever it’s made from the small or big kitchen. Thank them for giving you a seat with food.
Local reviews. Avoid fancy magazines. Read reviews in the local newspaper. Ask friends, roommates, colleagues living in that area.
Avoid fancy places, mostly for tourists, ex-pats, or foreigners. Downtown. Amusing park. Airport. Consulates. Temples. Attractions. Try to stay close to local schools and universities that have stable and low prices along with good quality.
Buy food in a local market. Wet/ farmer market. Read and review prices. For example: For noodles, ramen does not offer the best value in terms of economy, but Spaghetti.
Download the food app and hunt deals. Companies there run promotions a lot. Sometimes, there are either free deals or heavy discounts. Just download and learn their rules. For example, if you want to go to a bar, there is an event called ladies’ night during weekdays or happy hour on weekends. They will give you free drinks and a fancy place to hang out with friends. Most new eateries or restaurants will open special offers to introduce. Like one plus one.
Get tickets to Conferences or Hackathons. Big events might have AI-made chocolate and cocktail parties. Small events will have pizza and coffee 24/7.
Go to Youtube to learn how to cook cheap and fast in 10-30 minutes. Make your shortlist. Indeed there are not many. Eggs, soup, rice, and noodles.
Accessibility
How to get a ticket to a conference/ workshop/ fancy places and networking.
Have friends, hopefully, they are Platinium sponsors of events. Get an invitation.
Hunt tickets on Eventbrite and Meetups. Hackathon. Tech meetups. Expo. Workshops. There is something called an open ticket. Basically, you just need to fill in your personal information for security checks. Then, you are welcomed to join an expo or a few workshops during an event. If you are a dev, try to check with DeveloperWeek with their Open Pass.
Spot big events in the Bay and go to meetups. For example, Game Developer Conference. Or simply spot a long line of people and talked to some in the line.
Be a volunteer. Or just show up. People will let you in. First come first served.
Internet & electricity
I have a long list of criteria.
Have internet? Stable and secured internet? Good seat? Quiet places? Have toilet? Have coffee? Good coffee/ espresso/ French Vanilla? Cheap and good coffee? Free coffee? Good vibe? Have heater or air condition? Comfort seat? Have books? 24/7 services? The best combo value? Electrical plugs?
Below are where I dragged my computer and work.
Hall in big university or libraries. Preferred in Palo Alto or Berkeley.
Public or open co-working spaces like AirBnB, Linkedln or Galvanize in San Francisco.
Airports.
Coffee shops near schools. Starbuck. McDonald. Peet’s coffee. Philz coffee.
Accessibility
How to get a ticket to a conference/ workshop/ fancy places and networking.
Have friends, hopefully, they are Platinium sponsors of events. Get an invitation.
Hunt tickets on Eventbrite and Meetups. Hackathon. Tech meetups. Expo. Workshops. There is something called an open ticket. Basically, you just need to fill in your personal information for security checks. Then, you are welcomed to join an expo or a few workshops during an event. If you are a dev, try to check with DeveloperWeek with their Open Pass.
Spot big events in the Bay and go to meetups. For example, Game Developer Conference. Or simply spot a long line of people and talked to some in the line.
Be a volunteer. Or just show up. People will let you in. First come first served.
Utilities
Don’t waste money on things that you don’t need. Indeed, there are not many.
See a problem like locals. Go around and do a market survey. Do windows shopping first. Wholesale stores. Farmer market. 1 dollar or 99 cent shops.
Marketing materials. I am very lucky to join lots of events where people give gifts very spontaneously and out of my expectation. I collect a lot of free things: a bottle of water, clothes, bag, bubble tea straw, hat, pens, notes, stickers, a ticket to see an amusing bark, electrical charge bank, USB and etc.
Borrow things. Second-hand market.
Housing
In San Francisco and the Bay Area, this is a huge pain point. Find a good place in the long term to stay is even more difficult than applying to a company or a university. Rents keep rising and push residents to be homeless or live in a car. Well, even if you work for Google with a six-figure salary.
Find a trustworthy place to search. Airbnb, booking com. Learn how to use the search engine. Understand their promotion program. No guarantee to search on Craigslist, e.g. be kicked out of the house even after a negotiation.
Ask for help. Start with a group of people you know well or share similarities. Be helpful and try to be useful during your stay. And don’t complain about being in garage, kitchen, empty house, dirty house, parents house. Wherever you can be as long as it’s safe. Couchsurf.
Be in a public place. Most of the time, it’s safe. 24/7 convenient stores.
Live in a car. Whatever it is. Fancy car or school bus.
Funding
Find your alliance.
If you are still in a research phase with ideas, try to have proof of concepts and unknown deadlines, the best place is university and grant. They have machines, technicians, and a team to help you move progress. Avoid investors or any kind of equity fund. Cash only help if you have a plan in a period of 12-18 months, often for growth (or marketing)
Find an accelerator at the pre-seed or seed stage. For me, it was when I need more resources that a university can not support., e.g. computing power. My accelerator, Pioneer, plays an important role. They gave free good books. $100K AWS. $100K Google Cloud. And much more.
Hunt deals. For example, Stripe, Segment, Airtable have their partnership with many other startups. They heavily discount or give you free service or credits. In overall, it could save up $500K-1M in the first 2 years.
Transportation
Be a superuser.
Travel like locals. Public transportation. Try to take a bus from the airport to downtown the city. Most of the time, it’s slow but it will give you a baseline of how life looks like from the bottom.
Choose electrical bikes to climb the fancy steep hills of a city.
Understand how to buy a ticket. On which platform, which currencies, which program would offer the best values. This rule is applied on the internet for long-distance transportation like air or rail trips. If you travel to Europe, this notion will be significantly clear between countries, like Italy to Switzerland.
Uber/ Grab - Be nice. The more you use it, the cheaper it would be. The more stars you have, the more discount for your trips. I get 35-50%. with a free upgrade to premium classes. A discovery after I made several small bets.
The next part is about the experience. I would say those are life lessons.
Crisis management
When you are doing something new, people don’t understand what you are doing and make assumptions without ground checks. Misunderstand happens. The unwanted bad situation happens. Always.
Most of the time, the way to solve problems is not an exaggeration. Pick one solution and goes for it. Not about winning or losing. Not about who is right or wrong. Not about who feels better or not. The goal is just to get out of a mess as soon as possible. For examples,
What shall you do when somebody tries to kick you out of the house at midnight or right before/ after you enter because of greed and jealousy?
How to make friends on a trip full of strangers even no one speak the same language as you?
How to navigate a situation when you travel alone with a strange man in a strange place far away from a city?
How to manage a situation when you are all by yourself in a deep forest, strange country, and empty (ghost) house?
How to enter a building when you have no key or enter an event without a ticket or an invitation?
In general, how to proactively approach a problem, not react to it?
Budget control
Learn to differentiate between what really matters to you and not. Live frugally and spend money on what you need. What to keep or how to let things go.
Solve problems in a creative way without using money.
Understand economy and finance in practice.
What’s money and what’s for?
How does pricing work in the consumer space?
How to negotiate in a fast and effective way.
Knowledge
Build real knowledge by authentic connection and scarcity.
During trips, very few people tell me in advance what it is good or not. If people tell me, an option is always out of my ability.
My past experience with failure turns into lessons. They help me re-shape knowledge of the world from a much different angle. Solutions are seen obviously most of the time. I don’t even have to think.
Understand what determination is with real context.
Paint a picture of the world by an experience as a nomad/ traveler to see the world from the bottom.
Detect common patterns.
Develop empathy & aptitude
Learn how to give and earn in a broader context.
Realize how lucky I am with a privilege. Born in Peace. Have good education. Cheap travel. Treated by the kindness of the world.
Learn other culture and language to see how the world looks like from their eyes.
Get out of the bubble of perception. Stay away from inflating illusion. Become street smart as a geek. Less complaining, focus on actions to solve problems.