The Update: Cheap Engineering, Forged Documents, and Inflation

Keeping an active internal discussion about the things that interest us at Geocene builds trust and makes it easier to have conversations about harder topics. I summarize our most interesting internal discussions for this newsletter, so you can be a part of our community too. Please hit respond and type what is on your mind. I want to hear your thoughts!

• I wrote an article about why cheap engineering is expensive. The high cost of cheap engineering is the lesson that built Geocene. I didn’t set out to run an engineering consulting company. At first, I just wanted to build some stove use monitoring sensors. When I started out, I cut corners and tried to do the engineering cheaply. That was slow, buggy, and cost me a lot. Eventually I hired the best engineers I knew and paid them their worth to do the job right. That ended up costing me less. Soon, people started asking to borrow my team to do the job right. Thus, Geocene was born and I’m still preaching the gospel of doing it The Right Way.

• We work with startups and we’re highly effected by macroeconomics. High inflation led to a monetary crunch, which led to a change in startup funding. We are really glad to now see a steep decline in inflation. It seems to reflect a positive change in the mood we’ve been feeling in the startup world. The deluge of investor money being dumped on AI startups doesn’t hurt either. We hope these trends continue.

• We have a warning for people considering forging documents. In 2017, a Pakistani official was caught forging documents. He submitted documents dated from 2006 which were typed in Calibri, a font Microsoft debuted in Office 2007! Well, Microsoft is changing fonts again. Be sure to choose an appropriate one while backdating documents.
   
• I’m back in the office, and while it’s terribly hard to be away from the joyful sounds, sights, and smells of my new baby daughter, I do enjoy hearing from all of you. Our Fall schedule is starting to get booked up, so be sure to reach out soon if you have some questions about engineering your product (or potential product) The Right Way.

Have any other thoughts about this email? Hit reply and let me know!