The proposal that got me my $100/hour contract
This is something that a lot of asked me for.
A while back, I covered how I got my first 100 USD/hour contract, combining Machine Learning and analyzing investments over here. I created a follow-up YouTube video to that, giving more details about the journey itself, complete with screenshots of our conversations to give you a more thorough breakdown of my networking process.
In these, I mentioned that I sent The Motley Fool people a proposal to improve their services. It was that proposal, that lead to them being excited to work with me and ultimately that contract.
A lot of you that went through the article and watched the video wanted me to share the proposal I had written to them. That is what I will be doing in this email/post. I will be sharing it with you, as-is.
Points to Note
As you read through the proposal, consider the following things-
How the Motley Fool Service works- TMF sends out stock recommendations and analysis to their paying subscribers. Subs also get access to message boards to interact with other community members. When stocks take a downturn, many subs vent on the message boards.
The proposal- I noticed the stock analyses were restricted to the financial (earnings per share, stock valuation, etc.) By adding an analysis of a company’s technical competence, the analysis would be more valuable. It would also help investors stay in the market longer, as they would have a stronger conviction in what they were investing in.
Keep things specific- One of the reasons that this proposal was so appealing to the TMF team was because I kept things as specific to TMF as possible. I mentioned both the TMF subscriber experience and their competitors. When designing proposals, try to keep your pitch specific to your target.
Apply the Carrot and The Stick- The proposal hits upon both the carrot and the stick for TMF. It touches upon subscriber anxiety and subsequent churn in the bad times + how integrating a more thorough analysis would allow TMF to stand out from other competing services. When negotiating with someone, try to integrate both these ideas into your pitch.
Buy time- Ultimately, this proposal only worked because I could take my time and really figure out what value I could best add to them. This is key for all proposals. Make sure you have a lot of time when crafting your ideas. The internet and the fast pace of life can make you feel like things have to be done now, but all good things take time. Take it easy, don’t rush in, and spend time building the foundations. Once you do, your results will be much better.
If you have any interesting ideas/comments on this, you know how to reach me. Think of ways you would improve upon it, and/or change it to match your needs. Drop them in the comments and/or email it to me. I’d love to hear from y’all.
The proposal
The following section contains my unedited proposal.
Problem Statement:
Many subscribers to TMF stock advisor services are not financial people. They are more regular people. This means that they aren’t as used to market downturns compared to more seasoned investors. This problem is increased when investors are new (either to investing or to the service). Dips just as they start can be demotivating. This leads to loss of satisfaction with the product, along with additional churn for the service.
Proposal:
In the articles/content analyzing the company a more detailed look at the technical/value offerings should be included. This will help investors understand the details of the company better and ultimately have more faith in their investments. This writeup will give an example of such an analysis done over a year ago on Facebook. The results section will go into greater detail about the outcomes of this analysis (on FB and other companies).
Background
I started investing in Early Jan 2020. After going over several companies I decided to invest in Facebook and MSFT. I focused on tech because I understood it the best, and FB in particular had benefits that put them above the others. Shortly after I bought in, the markets crashed (my investment dropped by around USD 60, which to me was a lot). I kept holding because of my analysis. I even bought in more. The results now speak for themselves. September of last year, I was talking to a friend about why I thought FB was an amazing stock. He thought some of my reasons were interesting, so I articulated them in my article, “What Market Analysts Overlook about Facebook” (click to read). This article was written when I was still new to writing, so I will spare readers the pain of having to go through it (if you want to laugh at my lack of skills though, I can’t recommend it enough). Instead, I will refer to some of the analysis done there and update it with contemporary analysis. I am only attaching it as proof that I’m not rewriting history by attempting to pass off hindsight as foresight.
Improving Stock Analysis by analyzing the actual value provided.
Many people are attempting to analyze whether the Metaverse gamble will succeed or not. Detailed analysis talks about Facebook Reality Labs and how much investment goes into them. None of them mention ReactVR, the open-source coding framework created by Facebook. Last year, I mentioned this framework in the article since it was the ONLY viable public framework for integrating large scale virtual and augmented reality into your websites. I don’t need to go into too much detail about how important such an advantage is.
Knowing this (and ReactJS’s great reputation with developers) adds another perspective to the speculation about whether Metaverse will be successful.
I also mention how far ahead Facebook is for Machine Learning. Aside from the example in the article, people often use the Natural Language Processing Models used by Facebook in their projects. Uses range from text summarization to highly advanced, context-aware (huge deal) chatbots.
With so many developers interacting with their offerings they get a massive amount of developer hours for free (the people who interact with the open source will alert about bugs, fix things and add features). This allows them to have internal tools which also far surpass competition. All of these things snowball into very strong competitive advantages that can’t be regulated or copied. Combined with the solid financial/stock analysis that the writers of TMF have done so far make FB a compelling stock to buy.
Closing
By adding this layer of analysis to TMF content we have three benefits:
1) The deeper analysis is a differentiator for the analysis done by TMF team. I have looked into content from multiple sources, and none of them actually do this level.
2) This deeper analysis allows for readers to get a greater understanding. They can choose whether they think what the company offers aligns with their investing philosophy. For example, as I understand the technical aspects of blockchain, philosophy, and thoughts (math) behind Bitcoin. And even though I see how much money people can make with it, I personally do not find it valuable. So I don’t invest in it (ETH and smart contracts have more intrinsic value to me). This kind of thinking would not be possible with just financial analysis (what we see most often).
The greater understanding allows people to have more ownership in their investments. This means that in bad patches, they are less likely to be worried and less likely to churn.
3) More talking points->more conversations-> TMF network becomes more valuable.
Results
This proposal would be meaningless without the results to back them up. I did this kind of analysis on multiple companies. Some results of this analysis are as follows (9th Nov 2021)
1. Facebook (+65.51 %)
2. MSFT (+110.22%)
3. DDOG(+295.74%)
4. SE(+529.85%)
5. FCEL(+488.89%)
6. CRNC(+457.47%)
To prove that I’m not cherry picking, I am willing to throw open my investing account. We can into depth of each investment I’ve bought and answer any question.
As a parting gift I found an interesting writeup by a team of engineers. The work they did was brilliant. They are associated with the company Outbrain (ticker OB). I would suggest looking into them.
Deets about that: https://machine-learning-made-simple.medium.com/learnings-from-scaling-tensorflow-to-300-million-predictions-per-second-333d9488d0c1
Loved the post? Hate it? Want to talk to me about your crypto portfolio? Get my predictions on the UCL or MMA PPVs? Want an in-depth analysis of the best chocolate milk brands? Reach out to me by replying to this email, in the comments, or using the links below.
Stay Woke. I’ll see you living the dream.
Go kill all,
Devansh <3
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