i got an email by contrary saying they could interview me. i was ecstatic. i haven't an interview-type call in a while. i spent the morning dealing with hackathon details, and went capital one at 3 something to grind. i prepped for two questions: background in writing, and why join this fellowship.

below is the summary from the call.

3 sprint cycles

• 1st is on a new company
• 2nd is a current company and the work is to improve it
• 3rd: market map, niche that has not been covered before
• for each sprint
  • outline at 2-week mark, comments and edits
  • submit draft at the end of sprint, 5-10 minute preliminary reading
  • a month or two, full-read through, 4-8 hours editing and rewriting
• biggest mistake
  • not spending enough time on the guidelines, it enforces a discipline on how the writing should be, enforces the way you think, that makes you end up as a researcher and writer
• on reaching out to companies:
  • enforce the same standards of communication to all the companies

my intro i prepared

• born and raised in KL, went to Iowa State for undergrad, got the opportunity to intern with Tesla, fell in love with the bay, came back SF to do my masters in data science, now i’m doing cancer research with AI at UCSF

my background in writing

started in freshman college writing on medium about data science and AI, tutorials, explainers, newsletters and tweets for a startup, writing for HP and nvidia. most recently i’m writing a paper for my research with UCSF. i’m also writing everyday on my own personal blog to develop a muscle of creating rather than just consuming. i have this practice of collecting 10 interesting links i come across every week and post them on Sundays.

why interested in being a fellow?

• better writer:
  • clear writing = clear thinking
    • it is hard to write well, because it requires you to think, and there’s a quote that goes like
    • “If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking”
  • to have clear writing, you need a feedback loop: rohan’s experience as a fellow: shared how the feedback for his first draft, was as many worse as his essay
  • i love that, i’m someone who is not afraid of feedback, i remember for my research paper, after receiving the revisions and comments from my professor, and i was admiring the amount of clarity in her writing. that’s what is trive for. PG. says there will be good writers and people who can’t write, and there’s no in between. i want to be the former.
• build a startup:
  • business: i’ve always had an itch to build something, i’ve won a few hackathons with my cofounder, we’ve done prototypes but we’re lacking business skills, researching about companies, reading about the founder stories can fill in the gaps of my knowledge of what it took to go from zero to one.
  • techincal: researching about sesame ai because we have interested in voice agents, help me learn more about the current limitations, competition, and risks, and the market we can capture.
• connections:
  • maximize my surface area of luck, key to success in building anything is to just keep doing what you love + surround yourself with the right people
  • i only found out about this fellowship when i reached out to Maxx Yung who wrote about Cerebras, encouraged me to apply to write as well

"Write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” on Kyle's website

even though i was well-prepared and i was overall just curious and glad to be chatting with them, my hands were shaking and i was holding my breath the entire time. i need to have more coffee chats and apply to more things. there's no downside to rejection, only upsides. i'm in sf, the best place to be for someone like me, and i have to utilize that better.

an hour after i taught v0 for chinatown hacks. i need to get better a teaching. what i do not understand, i cannot teach. what i cannot teach, i do not understand.