Now that I’m about to finish my last semester here as an undergrad, I thought I’d share my experiences for all the courses I’ve taken! I remember going on reddit a lot to look for courses (and the profs) to take, so I hope this will be helpful to some of y’all with the course selection! :)
Some background about me:

• I’m graduating as a Biology Major and Math Minor
• I’ve spent 6 years here (5 academic years + 1 co-op year)
• I love ecology in bio
• I hate proofs in math lol
• Many of the courses were taken quite a few years ago, so I don’t remember everything…
• Obviously, everything is subjective and based on my own experience :)

Without further ado:
BIOL 121 (Dr. Bridgette Clarkston): my very first course ever taken at UBC, had a very fun time! Bridgette is amazing, definitely one of my fav profs as she is very knowledgeable but also very fun and a huge algae nerd. I found the content pretty interesting too, and the workload wasn’t too bad. I learned about a little bit of genetics, evolution, and ecology at what feels like a basic level, but that’s when I found out I love ecology (because it’s a lot of math in bio lmao).
BIOL 112 (Dr. Jared Taylor): another one of my fav profs! He is super relatable and really makes the class fun, he even streamed Among Us and played with his students/TAs during the COVID era as well! There is a lot of content in this course, but we got to bring a cheat sheet to all of our exams. I learned quite a lot about how genes work, like the promoters and stuff like that, which I think it’s interesting too.
BIOL 140 (Dr. Lynn Norman + TAs): this course was mostly run by a TA I think, and the course load wasn’t too bad. We did some field trips, and also took care of some beetles and did experiments on them. Not super memorable, but Lynn is such a sweetheart of a prof! I just remember doing some random labs, but honestly don’t remember what I actually learned…
BIOL 200 (I forgor): don’t remember who the prof was, but it was awful for me LOL. It was a lot of work and memorizing, and we even had to write an essay on our exams. I don’t remember what I learned, just remembered it wasn’t a fun experience. The only thing I remember is something about core histones, because that’s one of my groupchat’s name LOL. Too bad it is a required course…
BIOL 209 (Dr. Bridgette Clarkston, Dr. Jaclyn Dee, Dr. Shona Ellis): since this course covers algae, fungi, and bryophytes, we had 3 profs who specialized in each of those subjects. One of the reasons why I took this is because of Bridgette, who is a big algae nerd and made the class really fun for the algae unit. Jaclyn is also a very fun prof for the fungi unit! She incorporated quite a lot of memes and other fun material, so I really liked her too. For the bryophytes unit, Shona isn’t as fun, but she is still a very sweet and knowledgeable prof who taught well. Overall fun course, though the lab work was a lot of work. I got cheat sheets for the lab exams and the final!
BIOL 230 (Dr. Rachel Wilson, Dr. Rachel Germain, Dr. Laura Parfrey): one of my fav courses taken here, as someone who enjoys learning about ecology. Laura isn’t a great prof tbh, I didn’t feel like she cared about us that much lol. Though the two Rachels are some of my fav profs as well. Rachel W is the lab coordinator, and she led us on some pretty fun field trips. She even held meme contests before the exams, which was super fun! Rachel G is the second lecturer other than Laura, and she has some really fun stories and makes the class really engaging! This course is pretty much just ecology 101 with some lab experience.
BIOL 233 (Dr. ??? Rosemary): awful course, I hated it… a LOT of work and the content I found was pretty boring. I don’t see it on the SSC anymore, so glad nobody had to suffer like me hahaha. I think BIOL 234 is the same course, I don’t know the difference so maybe it’s better?? Also the prof I had was pretty mean, and didn’t really teach us anything tbh… I don’t remember what I’ve learned here also…
BIOL 260 (Dr. Caitlin Donnelly, Dr. Santokh Singh): took this for summer school during the COVID era (2020S), and honestly, it was a lot of work. This was the first full semester when COVID hit, so I’m sure a lot of courses were in shambles hahaha. Since this is physiology, a lot of memorization as expected, though it probably would’ve been easier if it’s in-person and not condensed into 2 months. I learned just general physiology of plants and animals, so things like the xylem and the gills.
BIOL 300 (Dr. Michael Whitlock): took this during the COVID era, honestly it was a lot of learning how to use R. I’m not good at coding, so it took me a while to learn, but it wasn’t too difficult. Though do be warned, there’s quite a lot of stats in this course, covering things like t-tests and chi-squared tests in the context of biology.
BIOL 301 (Dr. Sarah Otto): this is pretty much BIOL 300 with more math, since we are building mathematical models in biology, which I liked quite a lot given my background loool. We had to learn a new language called Maxima, but it wasn’t too bad. We got a chance to develop a biological model for our final project in this class (I did mine on the ecosystem from a video game called Subnautica), I had a lot of fun with it. I really like Sarah too, she is very sweet and relatable.
BIOL 306 (Dr. Sean Michaletz, Dr. Rachel Wilson): very excited to have Rachel again as the lab coordinator! Despite taking this during the COVID era, this class was super fun, another one of my favs since it’s just ecology with more ecology. Sean is also a very relatable and understanding prof, making him one of my fav profs as well. And of course, just like BIOL 230, Rachel held meme contests too, which was surprisingly a good review for the final for me lmao.
BIOL 325 (Dr. Philip Matthews): the class is pretty interesting, because it has a lot of math involved with biology. I honestly really enjoyed the homework assignments, since it was a lot of fun ways to use math to understand how animals work, like how much buoyancy does a blue whale have. The prof is alright, he just kinda reads off the slides, but he isn’t a bad prof at all. We got some cheat sheets too for exams.
BIOL 330 (Dr. Stella Lee): one of the sweetest profs I’ve had here :) She is super wholesome and very understanding, especially since I took this during the COVID era. She made the class interactive and always checked up on us over Zoom, and I thought her exams were pretty fair too. I don’t think this class is offered anymore, though I think BIOL 331 is the same thing. The content of this course is quite a lot though, a lot of memorizing for sure, but still interesting. I learned about how a fetus developed, so things like how hormones work to develop the spinal cord.
BIOL 335 (Dr. Craig Berezowsky, Dr. Stephanie Cheung): took this during the summer of the first COVID semester, had a horrible experience lol. The profs weren’t great, especially Craig, this man is not a good teacher LOL I would cut him some slack though, since it was the first COVID semester, but I struggled quite a lot in this class. I think I learned the PCR and stuff?? I don’t know lol
BIOL 336 (Dr. Wayne Maddison, Dr. Sarah Otto): I found this class pretty interesting, since I enjoyed learning about evolution as well. Wayne looks like Charlie Darwin tbh, and Sarah, like I mentioned for BIOL 301, is a very sweet prof and hilarious. Honestly, nothing else to say, I learned about things like natural selection and stuff.
BIOL 416 (Dr. Jonathan Davies): the class itself is cool, as I learned about how to conserve biodiversity and what is essentially killing life on the planet. There’s a LOT of writing in this course though, with a big report and a smaller report, and a lot of R, even though they didn’t really teach you how to use R during class. The tutorial was definitely a lot of work, and the prof just kinda reads off the slides, with some occasional dad jokes.
BIOL 398/399/498/499: four terms of science co-op. I worked at a biotech lab in Richmond and a summer camp on campus. That’s when I confirmed that I hated working in a lab and loved teaching LOL. I think I sent more than 60 resumes + cover letters overall, not a fun experience but it’s a lowkey numbers game with little to no experience.
MATH 100: I skipped this course because I took AP Calc AB in high school, kinda regret skipping this in uni since it would’ve just been a easy course to get used to university math. So I’ve nothing else to say.
MATH 101 (I forgor): this one was rough since I skipped MATH 100, as I don’t remember much from AP Calc at this point. The prof, who I forgot, was hard to understand and didn’t teach us much. It’s pretty much just calculus but harder (I guess it is Calc II), and it kinda traumatized me with the Taylor Series (I still don’t know what that is).
MATH 200 (Dr. Brian Freidin): I found this pretty interesting, since I learned about calculus in the third dimension. This class was only midterms, WebWork, and a final, so a typical math class lol. This course ended during the COVID era, so we had 95/5 midterm/final policy, and so I got lucky with the grade I got. The prof was alright, he wrote everything on chalkboards, so it was a bit hard to understand things. I think we did MatLab here too…? Struggled with that because I can’t code :D
MATH 220 (Dr. Jingyi Chen): I HATE THIS COURSE SO MUCH I HATE PROOFS SO MUCH. Yeah I took this during the COVID era, and I got like 57%... definitely hurt me mentally quite a lot… anyways, I thought it would be fun to prove maths, and now I’m traumatized by all the random greek letters in math. This is a required pre-req for a lot of the math courses here, so it may be unavoidable. Also the prof sucked lol, he was very dismissive with my questions and all.
MATH 221 (Dr. Daniel Coombs): first time learning linear algebra, thought it’s alright. It was hard to understand for me, but the prof is honestly pretty funny. I went to a few of his office hours, and he was quite helpful. The course load was alright, with exams, WebWork (I think..?), and a big final. Also had to learn python to do matrix calculations in this class, struggled a lot for that because I don’t know how to code lol
MATH 302 (Dr. Jonathan Hermon): didn’t have a great time here lol. Took this during the COVID era, with quite a few proofs and some pretty difficult homework assignments. I struggled quite a bit, but maybe it’s just the whole online school thing. It was definitely a lot of probability stuff, but I don’t remember anything I learned.
MATH 307 (Dr. Ming Zhang): he is very sweet and a great teacher, one of my fav math profs for sure! He checks up on us often, and is just an overall cool dude. It was hard for me to learn linear algebra over Zoom during COVID era, but still had an enjoyable class regardless. It’s pretty much just MATH 221 part 2 electric boogaloo, with some more definitions and stuff, don’t remember doing a lot of proofs though thankfully.
MATH 312 (Dr. John Macdonald): decent amount of proofs in this class, but it was manageable since it’s still a lot of arithmetics. Honestly pretty interesting class as well, as we learned a lot of cool theorems and learning about some niche questions that we can solve. The prof is alright, his lecture isn’t that engaging, as he just reads off of his notes, but he is super helpful in his office hours. The course grading was hella rough though, 5 tests each 10%, and a final with 50%.
MATH 317 (Dr. Sebastien Picard): THIS GUY IS A LEGEND. Honestly the best math prof I’ve had, a very relatable and hilarious guy. This man uses Taylor Swift references and talks about random concerts he’s going to in lectures, yet gets the point across as well. I also enjoyed the class itself as it’s all arithmetics and no proofs. We got weekly homework with a midterm and final, and the prof even dedicated the lecture before the exams to do practice exams with us. Honestly, can’t recommend this prof and course enough, it’s pretty much just Calc III with a bit more stuff.
MATH 340 (Dr. Mathav Murugan): this class kinda sucked LOL. The prof, as sweet as he is, isn’t a great teacher, and it’s hard for me to understand him with his unreadable writing. The homework is very tough, often involving proofs, while we don’t cover much of the content in lecture. Hated it for sure by the sheer amount of proofs involved, in a class where I expected it to be mostly arithmetics oops
MATH 446 (Dr. Costanza Piccolo): honestly a super interesting course! There’s a lot of reading, but not much actually doing the math at all. Most of the assignments are making presentations (my group did a presentation on how the Ancient Mesopotamians used clay tablets to do math) and writing a final paper on a math topic (I wrote mine on the history of the golden ratio, pretty interesting stuff). The prof is sweet and understanding, but her lectures aren’t the most engaging. Feels like a nice GPA boost too since I didn’t have to worry about a final and WebWork, just a lot of writing.
CHEM 121 (Dr. Erin Lindenberg): I actually wanted to do biochem in my first year, but this course made me just want to do bio instead LMAO. The prof is great, she’s super sweet and fun, but man the course was ROUGH. Going from high school chem to this is a humbling experience. I remember learning quantum mechanics stuff in like week 2, and was already behind by that point. It is a required course, so that didn’t help lol. The labs are a lot of work too, but it wasn’t too bad after going through the textbooks and lab manual.
CHEM 123 (Dr. Erin Lindenberg, I forgor): top 10 worst experiences in uni lmao. It is split into physical chem and organic chem. Erin taught us one of the sections, which was quite enjoyable, but the second prof SUCKED. He didn’t teach us anything, and felt like he just went there to get paid and go home (fair enough lol). The labs are a lot more work too, and our class was in the chem building basement. So yeah, very horrible experience for me.
CHEM 233 (Dr. Jason Hein): unfortunately, I didn’t end up in the GOAT Jay Wickenden’s class, but Jason is still a pretty good prof. I remember camping at the chem resource centre every week trying to do the worksheets lol, it wasn’t fun. I struggled with CHEM 123, so this course was hella rough. No lab though, which was nice, but I didn’t think it was that bad (maybe it’s because I was in second year, so got more used to uni?). I understand the meme of why nobody likes ochem now, and I still don’t :)
CHEM 235 (TA: William Primrose): this is just a once-a-week lab course, ran by one of the only TAs that I still remember by name. He is a legend of a TA, super helpful and super chill. Taught us quite a lot too. I actually had fun in this lab, since we got to do some pretty cool stuff, and the lab work was honestly not too tough. Again, could just be me getting more used to uni, but I still had some fun in this lab.
PHYS 101 (I forgor): I don’t think this course is offered anymore, but it was hella rough. A lot of work in labs, and pretty much grade 12 physics on absolute crack. The material is a lot harder than high school, but honestly still pretty manageable, just took a lot of time to figure things out. That’s all I remember tbh
PHYS 438 (Dr. Scott Oser): this prof is honestly so funny lol. He makes the class super fun, and the homework is actually really fun too, like calculating how much flesh a zombie would need to eat to stay alive. It’s pretty much just a lot of math in biology, like an add-on to BIOL 325. I enjoyed it a lot. We had a final project on any physics in biology topic, so my group and I did a presentation on how many Canadian geese it takes to fly Santa’s sleigh lmao (it was between 155,220,253 and 244,717,718 geese).
CPSC 100 (Dr. Oluwakemi Ola): fun prof, fun class, and not too stressful. I honestly don’t remember what I did here, since I took this in the first semester of first year, but I remembered it to be decently fun…
CPSC 110 (Dr. Oluwakemi Ola): now, if MATH 220 was the PTSD for me in math, this course is the PTSD for me in compsci. I needed this course for some of the higher level math courses, and yeah it sucked a lot since I don’t know how to code lmao. It was a LOT of work, taking up like 5 hours weekly. Got the same prof as CPSC 100, again, makes the class fun. One biggest W in this course is understanding all of the Gregor memes, and honestly, hilarious. Trust the natural recursion fellas.
MICB 201 (Dr. Jennifer Sibley): took this during the COVID era as a summer class, it was a LOT of information, but honestly manageable. Took it the same time as BIOL 260, so quite a lot of work, but I found it somewhat interesting. I don’t really care about microbes, but I ended up finding them interesting. We did a mini infographic for one of the assignments too, had quite a lot of fun. The prof was pretty nice, and great at teaching!
EOSC 114 (Dr. Lucy Porritt, Dr. Leah May Ver, Dr. Brett Gilley, Dr. James Kelly Russell, Dr. Douglas McCollor..?): got an Avengers cast here for this class, with each prof covering a speciality: general disaster (Lucy), extinction (Leah), earthquake/landslide (Brett), storm (James), and volcano (Douglas I think..?). So naturally (haha), I had some of the best and some of the worst profs lol. Leah didn’t teach us anything, James just read off of his slides, Brett is hilarious and a legend, and Lucy is super sweet and funny, and Douglas is knowledgeable and makes volcanoes interesting. Overall though, a LOT of work for a first year course, and a lot of exams for the different sections, but it’s all multiple choice with a lot of memorization.
EOSC 474 (Dr. Leah May Ver, Dr. Yevhenii Pakhomov): a lot of memorization in this class again, with Leah again unfortunately. She didn’t get better tbh :( Yevhenii is alright, he just kinda read off the slides too. The class is kinda boring, even though I found the content to be interesting. There’s a lot of work in this class, with a challenging midterm and final.
EOSC 475 (Dr. Curtis Suttle): hands down the best EOSC prof and one of the best I’ve had! THIS MAN IS HILARIOUS. He is very knowledgeable, and very kind and cares a lot, as he always checks up on us. He has some of the most unhinged stories I’ve ever heard, y’all need to take this course just for him lol. The material is kinda rough though, with a lot of memorization, but the exams are very fair. We also have a final project where we have to write a Wikipedia article on a marine microbe topic, which is honestly pretty fun. This is one of those courses where I don’t like, but the prof made it super fun :)
SCIE 113 (I forgor): don’t think this course is offered anymore, but it wasn’t that enjoyable lmao. A lot of work, and had to listen to some pretty boring seminars. Felt ironic because this course is about science communication, but it wasn’t done that well :/ it sounded so interesting…
ENGL 110 (I forgor): took this during COVID era, don’t remember anything.
ENGL 112 (I forgor): also don’t remember anything, I think I have repressed my memories of English requirements LOL
SWED 100/110/200 (Dr. Lena Karlstrom): I knew a bit of Swedish before uni, so I thought I’d continue learning it, it was so fun! Lena is super funny, and a great teacher especially in office hours. We watched quite a few Swedish movies in class, and did a lot of writing assignments. But I enjoyed it quite a lot, and still am keeping up my streak on Duolingo lmaooo. If you want a good teacher for a random language course, I would recommend those courses :) (sorry Lena, I don’t have time in my schedule to complete SWED 210…)
CRWR 208 (Dr. Taylor Brown-Evans): the highly suggested comic-book writing class, an absolute blast! I had a lot of fun in this class, especially with Taylor. He is a super caring prof, checking up on us and making the class very fun. There’s quite a lot of work (comics take longer than I thought to make), but I had a lot of fun going through all of them. There’s also a lot of great in-class activities, which feels like a nice break from my other classes. Like many people, I very much recommend this great class :)
Whew, thanks to anyone who has read through all that hahaha, it was a fun (with some trauma) nostalgic trip for me to reflect on my 6 years here. I hope that this helps y’all to pick your courses, and I will try to reply to any more questions! And of course, please leave your experiences too, I’d love to hear them as well :D

TLDR: Good enough for me to continue for another week
I've gotten a LOT out of this experience so far. I can now mostly speak without fear or hesitation after only a week. Even if I do screw it up a bunch. I can 'negotiate' things in a store, restaurant, or laundromat - as an example, that's not the thing I want; I want something else instead. Or correct people, aka I don't need a bag; the bag is in the grocery basket right there. I haven't had to ask people to speak more slowly, which is my most significant 'bragging' point. It's been a great way to bring together much of my 'patchy' French.
B1 Level - Intensive - 21 hours
There is an excellent emphasis on pronunciation and phonetics, which is my favorite part of the class. We are also expected to read passages and discuss them. There is zero access to phones or dictionaries, so it really activates whatever existing vocabulary is available. You'll learn it from your fellow students if it's unavailable.
What I'd do differently after a week

• I'd highly recommend brushing up on Grammar and Vocabulary prior to coming.
• I will not attend the intensive next time. It's simply too intensive for me. After the morning exercises, I needed homework to help me organize my thoughts, and I could barely function on the days when we were intensive. It'll be interesting to see if week two is different.
• I would be less optimistic about jetlag - there is a significant difference between France's time zone and where I live most of the year. I had my butt handed to me last week due to jetlag and being sick. A day per hour of time zone difference seems about right.

Pros:
The School

• excellent teachers - just phenomenal if you're wanting to learn the spirit of the language, get over your fear of speaking
• can go week by week (I've had a lot of bad experiences in other programs, so I didn't want to commit for more than a week at a time
• fairly priced (330 Euro/week for 21h)
• they have an extensive enough library

The Town

• Tours is less expensive than Paris so it's decent value for money
• Tours is large enough as a city to have things to do, and central enough to enable a few day trips
• People will speak to you in French unless you're really struggling, and then they pull out the English. This is very different from my experience in Aix, Nice, or Paris, where people quickly switched to English. This has made a MAJOR difference in 'setting' the language for me and has been fantastic.
• People here are generally polite. This is important to me, but if it's not to you, then ignore it.
• The children here seem to run amuck compared to some other places I've lived (UK, Germany, Australia, Singapore).

Cons: I'm not sure if this is specific to this school or if, culturally, people tend to start with a no attitude vs. a yes attitude in the education space. Every single thing is seen as a 'big deal'. This is not the case outside of the school.

• extremely poorly organized - the administration didn't send information to most of the people in the class until 2 days after the class started so no one really knew when to show up
• their website sucks - there is really almost zero info - that's because most of their students are from other unis in the US and other countries so I got the impression that they don't really care if you're someone 'off the street'
• The administration doesn't seem to care if you're there or not
• Administration is inflexible. I wanted to change my second week to the less intensive class, and they said it was impossible because the teacher had already made plans, etc. This wasn't true since the teacher told me it wasn't true. It wasn't a huge deal in the end because the grind worked in my favor and gave me extra practice, but we almost fell over dead in last week's intensive session. We were so exhausted.
• not by the book - no idea where I am in the B1 ecosystem, so if you're here to prep for DELF/DALP, it is probably not the place to go - everything is via customized worksheets
• They claim to have a ton of 'excursions' (additional charge), but apparently, the people who were looking for this were told that there are only 1-2 per week. They were pretty disappointed. If you're looking to tour around the region, the tourism offices are FANTASTIC and will give you more practice with the language.
• The people in the home stay programs are housed pretty far from the school. One of my fellow students travels over a half hour to school every day. Just something to consider if you're thinking about that.

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Hello everyone! Does anyone have the following module's resources (worksheets) & 6Ps to share? I do not have any seniors in SOI to share with me. Below, are the list of module that i need. Thank you!
Modules that i need:

1. C206 (Software Development Process)
2. C237 (Software Application Development)
3. C370 (Distributed Ledger Technology)
4. C368 (Financial Ecosystem)
5. C369 (Financial Technologies)

If anyone could share these resources with me, I would be extremely grateful. Thank you in advance for your help! You can drop me a text or share it in the comment.

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From https://blog.trafficwave.net/email-marketing-tips/email-marketing-ideas-for-life-coaches/

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So far, I've been able to get close by using Power Automate to read the excel file and then update the file in Google Drive but I've been unable to find a way to make it more granular using specific rows. The entire excel file is copied (including worksheets I don't need / want) and the entire Google sheet is replaced. I can get around this issue by first copying the original excel file and then running an office script to delete the unnecessary worksheets but this just feels overly complicated (and some of the worksheets are part of a vlookup for the desired worksheet so deleting them causes a reference error)
Has anyone tried anything like this or would they be able to point me in a certain direction? I'm relatively new to the MSFT ecosystem so I don't know if what I'm asking is crazy or straightforward to someone with more experience.

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2. Why I Am Pitching This / The Relevance of This Startup?

I am pitching this mental health startup because it addresses a pressing issue in my state, where 12.5% of the population suffers from mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, BPD, BD, and mood swings. I've personally experienced and witnessed the stigma surrounding seeking support for these issues. Many suffer silently, especially children. To bridge this gap, we are providing exclusive online access to certified psychologists, making mental health support affordable and accessible without the hesitation of direct visits to clinics or hospitals. Our goal is to create a positive impact on people's lives by offering timely and convenient online consultations.

3. What sets QHRS apart from similar startups in the mental health space, and does it propose any new form of mental health treatments?

QHRS distinguishes itself through a unique innovation known as 'Befriending & Psychology.' Unlike other startups, we integrate befriending as the first layer of treatment alongside professional psychology services. Our approach involves providing personalized listening support to all our customers. They can call us and talk, and we carefully listen, building trust with our callers. If they require professional support, we seamlessly connect them with our certified psychologists. This method offers a first-hand mental health support system, enhancing the consultation experience and fostering a trusting relationship with our clients. While we do not propose new mental health treatments, our innovative approach significantly enhances the accessibility and effectiveness of mental health support

4. How I Am Suitable for QHRS

"Those who have known pain can best comfort others in pain." This saying perfectly encapsulates why I am the right person to lead and drive the success of QHRS.
As a serial entrepreneur who has experienced multiple failures and breakthroughs in my career, I intimately understand the challenges and hardships of mental health struggles. Through personal battles with depression and imposter syndrome, I have emerged stronger, more resilient, and deeply empathetic to the experiences of others facing similar challenges.
Over time, I have devoted myself to suicide prevention activities, providing support to friends, families, and countless individuals grappling with mental health issues. This journey has solidified my belief in the profound value of mental health support and its potential to impact millions of lives.
With my background in multiple startups, diverse roles, and both successes and failures in my career, I bring a stable and mature perspective to QHRS. My experiences have shaped me into an empathetic leader, driven by a genuine desire to make a difference in the lives of those seeking mental health support.

I see QHRS as a platform through which I can be a catalyst for change, an agent of innovation, and a source of hope for those in need. Leading with empathy and understanding, I am committed to creating a positive impact on mental health, one person at a time.

5. The Problem: Addressing the Mental Health Treatment Gap

Mental health issues affect a substantial portion of our country, with approximately 14% of India's population, totaling nearly 150 million individuals, in need of mental health care services. Shockingly, only a fraction of them, around 30 million, are actively seeking care, leaving a significant treatment gap.
In Kerala, the situation is equally concerning, with 12.5% of the population, or around 45 lakhs of individuals, suffering from mental health issues. Alarmingly, only 15% of them, approximately 6.5 lakhs, are currently accessing treatments, illustrating the urgent need for better mental health support.
The treatment gap is driven by various factors, including accessibility challenges, lack of awareness, prevailing social stigma, and the high cost of care. The repercussions of untreated mental health issues extend beyond individuals, affecting workplaces as well. Reports indicate that around 80% of the Indian workforce has experienced mental health challenges, leading to significant costs of approximately US$14 billion yearly for employers.
Offline or in-person mental health treatment poses further obstacles, making it difficult for individuals to find certified clinical psychologists, facing prolonged waiting periods for appointments, incurring transportation expenses, and struggling with rigid appointment scheduling. Additionally, the expenses associated with traditional in-person sessions further hinder accessibility, leaving many without an option to seek help whenever and wherever they need it.

6. The Solution: QHRS - Transforming Mental Health Support

Introducing QHRS (Quality Hours), an innovative online platform that revolutionizes mental health support. We understand the critical need for accessible, convenient, and empathetic care for those seeking help, and our platform addresses these needs through a range of essential features:
1. Discover - Choose from Many: Access a diverse selection of vetted and certified psychologists, allowing you to find the best match for your unique needs and preferences.
2. Smart Matching & Easy Scheduling: Our intelligent matching algorithm pairs you with the most suitable psychologist, streamlining the process of finding the right support. Plus, scheduling online sessions is hassle-free and tailored to fit your busy lifestyle.
3. Emotional Assistance / Befriending: Experience personalized emotional assistance and befriending through our trained frontline psychology resources. We understand that compassionate support is just as essential as professional guidance.
4. No Need to Visit Hospital / Clinic: With QHRS, you can receive top-notch mental health care from the comfort of your home. Say goodbye to long commutes and waiting room anxieties.
5. Native Language Speaking Counselors: Language barriers should never hinder accessing mental health support. Our platform offers counselors fluent in multiple languages, ensuring a comfortable and inclusive experience.
6. Affordable: Affordability is at the core of our mission. We believe that mental health support should be accessible to all, and we offer competitive pricing to make it a reality.
7. Privacy Protected Online Sessions: Rest assured that your privacy is of utmost importance to us. Our secure online platform ensures confidential and protected counseling sessions.

At QHRS, we are committed to breaking down barriers and providing a seamless, empowering, and confidential mental health support experience for every individual.

7. The Market: Tapping into a Significant Opportunity

Total Addressable Market (TAM): The mental health landscape in India presents a substantial opportunity, with around 200 million people, approximately 20% of the population, suffering from mental health issues. This vast TAM highlights the pressing need for accessible and effective mental health support.
Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM): In Kerala, the Ministry of Health has confirmed that 12.8% of the population faces mental health challenges, representing a SAM of approximately 4.5 million individuals.
Service Obtainable Market (SOM): Currently, only 15% of those in need seek medical support, resulting in a SOM of 6.5 lakhs individuals. Our mission is to bridge the treatment gap and reach out to this significant segment.

8. The Revenue Model: Sustainable Growth

Average Revenue Per Client: Our revenue model is based on delivering eight sessions per client, each lasting one hour, at a competitive rate of Rs. XXXX per session.
Commission Structure: To ensure sustainability and growth, we charge a nominal XX% commission per session, amounting to Rs. XXX per session.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): By multiplying the average revenue per session with the number of sessions (X x Rs. XXX), we arrive at a customer lifetime value (LTV) of Rs. XXXX per client.
Target Markets: Schools, Colleges, and Corporates. We aim to reach diverse demographics, including educational institutions like schools and colleges, and corporate organizations. Our outreach strategy will be driven through organic and performance marketing efforts.

9. Growth Strategy: Scaling Mental Health Support

Marketing & Sales:

• Leverage Mental Health Awareness Programs on Social Media to reach a wider audience.
• Utilize a Brand Face / Brand Ambassador to establish trust and credibility.
• Conduct Paid and Free Mental Health Seminars in Corporates & Schools to engage with potential users.
• Implement Google Paid Advertisements (Google Search, YouTube) and Facebook & Instagram Advertisements to reach target audiences.
• Engage in Organic Digital Marketing Activities (SEO, Blog, Video, Social Media Posts) to build brand awareness.
• Introduce Tailored Corporate & Schools Packages to cater to specific needs.

Customer Support:

• Enhance the Customer Support System for easy access and swift query resolution.
• Offer Dedicated Psychologists / Befrienders to provide personalized assistance pre and post sign-up.
• Implement Customer Support Tools to streamline communication and feedback collection.
• Proactively Follow up with non-converted Customers to address concerns and encourage engagement.

Product Roadmap:

• Develop Dedicated Mobile Apps with Engaging Features for seamless access and user interaction.
• Introduce On-Demand Video Sessions for flexible and immediate support.
• Incorporate Self-Assessment Tests to offer personalized insights and recommendations.
• Facilitate Corporate and Schools Onboarding Process to cater to group needs effectively.
• Launch "Hire a Dedicated Psychologist" Feature for personalized long-term support.
• Integrate Worksheets / Activity Books to promote self-help and continuous progress.
• Provide Local Language Selection for a more inclusive and personalized experience.
• Offer AI or ChatGPT-driven Self-Help, Awareness Videos, and Articles to extend support beyond one-on-one sessions.

10. Funding Ask:

After successfully bootstrapping the initial stages, we are now seeking to raise Rs. 30 Lakhs in the Seed Stage of our journey. This investment will enable us to achieve the following goals:
Reach 1000 Full Pack Customers: With the funding, we aim to expand our user base and provide mental health support to a more extensive network of individuals.
Scale Sales, Marketing & Customer Acquisition: The investment will facilitate aggressive marketing efforts to increase brand visibility and attract more customers.
Enhance Brand Recognition: With additional funds, we can build a strong brand identity and establish ourselves as a trusted mental health support platform.
Scale Customer Service Activities: We plan to invest in customer support infrastructure to ensure swift and personalized assistance for all our users.
Drive Product Innovations: The funding will empower us to continuously improve and innovate our platform, introducing new features and capabilities to better serve our users.
We are passionate about making a positive impact on mental health and believe that this funding will significantly accelerate our growth and expand the accessibility of mental health support to those in need.
Contact me hello@qhrs.in or 9846536227 for further discussions and clarifications required. Through this open pitch, our aim is to engage with a diverse spectrum of participants, including seed/angel investors, both professional and individual investors, as well as potential investment partners such as psychologists, organizations, and anyone interested. We welcome investment contributions of any scale, reflecting a commitment to fostering a supportive ecosystem

Hey everyone! I have been in the data engineer parts for only a few months now but I think I have progressed quite far. I revamped the company data ecosystem into mainly a combo of Fivetran + Snowflake + SQL + Power BI. And things are just fine with this, however, I now need to find a way to extract data from a data source that is not avaiable in Fivetran. So I heard Python could do a simple API request to fetch the data and send it to Snowflake.
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But as a noob I have no idea where to start with Python. I have never used and I am not sure if it would be better to use a cloud tool? or the Python terminal itself? I do want a automatic solution and not rely on my computer to always update the data but I am not sure the best way to go.
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I have also seen that Snowflake has a Python worksheet but I am also not sure if it would be the best and how to begin using it.
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Unfortunately chat gpt has been not really useful at least the times that I have tried so here I am.

i have recently come into possession of a coupon that would allow me to purchase the kindle scribe for roughly 200 dollars, and while this is a nice opportunity, it is a pretty significant purchase, so i wanted to get some outside opinions.
i've always been a pencil and paper kind of guy, and as a stem student, my notebook usage mainly consists of taking lecture notes, using my notebook as scratch paper, and occasionally copying questions down and scanning them/uploading them to canvas.
i've read that some people think the lack of ability to annotate directly on books is frustrating, but i don't really do that, so that doesn't really bother me. i've also heard good things about the writing experience itself, which means that the note-taking and scratch paper aspect is fine as well. my main concern is how well it would fit into my workflow, and i'm left with a few questions/doubts:
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• it seems like you can't have multiple notes open at once, which is a bummer because i like to reference my notes and add/edit them as i do my assignments.
• how easy is it to import a file (ex: pdf/doc of a worksheet), fill it out, then re-export as a file that i can then upload to turn it in? my school computer is a macbook, if the experience is any different than windows.
• i have not heard the best things about kindle's OS/UI, but is the everyday experience really that clunky/janky?

i realize that an ipad can do all of these things (multiple notes open, direct download/upload with canvas, etc) and more (i am pretty deep into the apple ecosystem), but i have a few reasons why i am hesitant to go that route:

• cost: the current price to beat is $200, which an ipad + apple pencil will never beat
• feel: i really like pencil paper, and feel like the e-ink display is a good mix between digital convenience and analogue comfort. plus, i like to read the occasional book here and there, and would much rather read an ebook on a kindle than an ipad.
• i would procrasinate waaaaaay too much with an ipad.

i would love to hear the thoughts of the kindle community, especially if y'all have any alternative suggestions. this deal is a really good opportunity, but i fear i may be focusing too hard on the deal itself rather than if the scribe is really for me.
thanks!

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*Sorry this is long* LOL
We do cub scouts and I want to add more to the adventures to turn them into unit studies. I'm asking here to add a homeschool touch to it. 4th grade kid at a 2-4th grade level. Open to all (but we're a secular family) materials, websites, and suggestions. I'd like to stretch most units to at least 2 weeks minimum. Also if you have any fiction books to recommend for these units I'm all ears. He liked the Who Was, I survived, Magic Tree House type chapter books. We plan on doing My Side of the Mountain and Hatchet as a step into bigger kid books.
Adventures they'll be doing are as follows. Would love book/video/worksheet/ideas for each:

1. Cast Iron Chef: They have to plan a menu of a balanced meal, with a budget, prepare the meal, build and demonstrate cooking over a fire.
2. First Responder: Explain first aid. Demonstrate hurry cases, choking, treat for shock, treat for a list of ailments, put a first aid kit together. Create and practice emergency plan. Visit first respondehealth care professional.
3. Stronger, Faster, Higher: understand/explain/demonstrate warm up before exercising and cool down after. Make exercise plan with at least 3 activities and carry out the plan 30 days, recording progress. Try a new sport. With den prepare fitness course or games with objectives, help younger scouts participate.
4. Walkabout: Plan a hike or outdoor activity. Assemble a first aid kit suitable for situation. Recite/discuss/demonstrate outdoor code and leave no trace principles. Hike 3 miles preparing and planning meal/snack. Describe and identify dangerous plants/animals you could encounter. Take on a leadership role.
5. Aquanaut: Water safety such as swimming/canoeing/safety
6. Art Explosion: Visit art institution, different techniques for self portraits. Try two new mediums different than ones used in self portraits. Make a digital or hard-copy of projects to share with others.
7. Aware and Care: learn about challenges that visually impaired/mobility impaired may face. Help others who may face challenges. Attend an event or learn something in ASL, do a community activity.
8. Build It: learn basic tools and safety. Pick a carpentry project and build it. Record what you did during the project. Explore a construction career.
9. Castaway: Cook two different recipes that don’t require pots or pans. Demonstrate fire safety, build a shelter. Learn about outdoor survival kits, assemble your own, discuss what you picked and why. Explain what S-T-O-P means and how to signal for help. Discuss qualities that make a good leader.
10. Earth Rocks: Explain and discuss geology. Find and identify different rocks on a hike. Use a handbook to help identify rocks and how they formed. Use tools to explore rocks and record findings. Use a map. Talk about how we use geological building materials, more specifically local materials.
11. Engineer: Explore types of engineering. Learn design principals. Explain how engineering has helped our past, present and future. Pick and demonstrate two engineering skills you learned and exhibit them.
12. Game design: Design and create a game, teach another to play it.

13: Into the Wild: Collect and care for an animal (observe and release). Make an aquarium or terrarium. Bird watching/behaviohabitat. Identify species of animals in your area. Learn about aquatic ecosystems and wetlands. Visit a museum of natural history/nature centezoo. Make a video of a wild creature doing something.

1. Into the Woods: Identify two dif groups of trees and their parts. Identify 4 common trees in your area and if they are native or not, talk about animals and human impact. Plant a tree. Talk about how wood is used. Talk and practice aging a tree through rings, how trees grow. Visit nature cente nursery/tree farm and talk to someone knowledgeable.
   
2. Sports: Show and explain signals used in sports. Participate in two sports. Explain what good sportsmanship is, demonstrate it and talk about when we’ve seen others using good sportsmanship.
   
3. Protect Yourself Rules: Video lessons include cyberbullying, online safety, protecting yourself, identifying safe adults in your life.
   

Does anyone have a single list of all Cosmos ecosystem airdrops? Preferably one that filters out malicious drops?
I see this one https://www.cosmosairdrops.io/claimable but there must be a single worksheet somewhere.
I have a local list of around 75 drops but very few of them actually came to be

Hi there,
This may be out of the scope of this subreddit, but we're getting more involved in helping our clientele achieve various compliance goals and are facing a challenge with centralizing progress tracking on this.
What we're thinking about is having 2 dashboards/worksheets, one specific to each customer (that displays controls, cost, and completion tracking), and one internal (where we can edit values, goals, and track our team's progress). We would want everything to share the same data with different filters per customer. As we get better at this, we'll probably want to tack on more granular attributes.
To us, this would be a good use-case for an app. Some teammates of mine are competent with this sort of thing, but I'd like to ping you all to see if this is a good use of our efforts.

1. Is this a good way to handle this? Is there already a winning out-of-box solution that plays nice with MSP's?
2. If an in-house app is the route, we'd probably want to keep it in MSFT's ecosystem. Would a Power App manage this or should we pursue something custom hosted in Azure?

Okay, so this is really random, and maybe kind of stupid, but I'm curious about this.
My daughter is 9 and in 4th grade. She currently does:
• math every day. She has a verbal lesson where we discuss the topic that day, then she does a Spiral Review of 5 questions, plus 2 or 3 randomly drawn questions from her math center, which changes every 3 or so weeks (just finished +-×÷ whole numbers, currently on factors/multiples, starting fractions soon, etc)
• English 3 days a week. Slightly longer lessons here, since it's only 3 days. It's still the same amount of curriculum as a normal "week" of English, just done in 3 days. She does a spelling/vocab worksheet everyday, a Spiral Review of 5 grammar questions, and sometimes an additional worksheet to fill in the gaps on some things- prepositional phrases, context clues, conjuctions, etc.
• science 3 days a week. I am currently using a science program that has 13 different units (ecosystems, weather, plants, space, etc) and each unit has 9 different "stations" (read, watch, explore, draw, create, etc.) She does 1 station per day, so 3 a week, therefore each unit lasts 3 weeks
• social studies 3 days a week. This subject is the hardest for me, because it's like history/geography/everything all in one. We did the basics of democracy already, plus the founding of America (you know, American Revolution, founding fathers, 13 colonies, all that), and the basics of geography (reading maps, latitude/longitude, landforms, equatoprime meridian, etc) and now we've started to do the history of California (our state.) She's just started a project on the gold rush.
• art 3 days a week. My kid is an art fanatic and spends every spare second drawing/painting/creating SOMETHING. So this is her favorite. We follow online tutorials for drawing and painting projects, models, etc. She spends most of her day doing something artistic, so I'm not worried about this area. So much so that I'm fairly sure her future career will be an artistic one.
• P.E 3 days a week, technically, even though she's an active 9 year old and only stops moving to paint, anyway. But I still schedule in 35 minutes of yoga or Just Dance or something 3 days a week.
My first question is, am I doing enough, first off? I worry about that a lot. (Should mention here that I'm a stay at home mom of her and a 9 month old, and she also spends her day playing, helping me cook, doing chores, etc. She likes to do art and dance and build Legos in her free time. We also go to the zoo a lot and when it warms up more, the park. We're getting library cards soon as well.
My second question is, for those of you who do less paper and pen stuff, how do you document it for your records? Do you just make a note of "went on nature walk and discussed wildlife" for science that day? Do you not even do that? I'm just curious, if someone from my school district decided to show up and cause trouble and I was asked to show my records to someone, how do you keep a record for non-written work?? My daughter is very active and creative, and I think next year she'd love a less pen and paper curriculum, so I'd like to try. I'm just not sure how to record keep for that. Help! TIA 😊

Introduction:
I have a company that has been sitting in my portfolio since the very beginning of 2021 and that company is Dropbox (DBX). This is one of the companies that aren’t crazy exciting and you may not see it talked about a ton when looking for all those new, sparkly stocks. This company has a great portfolio of offerings and a great sticky recurring revenue business model along with a founder that has been with the company since the beginning. Plus, they have been making strategic acquisitions to ensure that they can offer a competitive suite of different products to fit the need of their small and large customers.
TLDR: I currently own shares in this company and would likely only add if we saw a significant drop in the valuation relative to what I think its fair value is (Obviously assuming fundamentals remain the same). At around $16 - $17, I would start to get interested in buying some more shares of DBX.
If you would like to watch my Youtube video explanation click here.
If you would like the article with pictures click the Substack link here.
Disclaimer: I own shares in Dropbox and it currently makes up 11.5% of the equity portion of my portfolio. This is not financial advice and you should do your own due diligence when looking into a company.
DBX - Dropbox:
“We generate revenue from individuals, families, teams, and organizations by selling subscriptions to our platform, which serve the varying needs of our diverse customer base. Subscribers can purchase individual licenses through our Plus and Professional plans, or purchase multiple licenses through our Family plan or our Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise team plans….We typically bill our customers at the beginning of their respective terms and recognize revenue ratably over the term of the subscription period. International customers can pay in U.S. dollars or a select number of foreign currencies.
We offer DocSend as our secure document sharing and analytics solution. DocSend offers paid subscription plans, including a personal plan designed for individuals and Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise plans designed for business users and teams. Similar to Dropbox plans, pricing of DocSend's plans is based on the number of licenses purchased. Customers can choose between an annual or monthly plan, with a small number of large organizations on multi-year plans. We typically bill DocSend customers at the beginning of their respective terms and recognize revenue ratably over the subscription period. DocSend primarily sells within the United States, and the majority of sales are in U.S. dollars.
We also offer HelloSign, as our e-signature solution. HelloSign has several product lines, and the pricing and revenue generated from each product line varies, with some product lines priced based on the number of licenses purchased (similar to Dropbox plans), while others are priced based on a customer’s transaction volume. Depending on the product purchased, teams must have a minimum number of licenses, but can also have hundreds of users. Customers can choose between an annual or monthly plan, with a small number of large organizations on multi-year plans. We typically bill HelloSign customers at the beginning of their respective terms and recognize revenue ratably over the subscription period. We sell HelloSign products globally and sell primarily in U.S. dollars. ” Q1 2022 10Q Filing
Product Offering Screenshot
DBX breaks its revenue down into the following segments:
Segment Revenue Screenshot

• The two items you should understand are how this business model recognizes its revenue and incurs expenses. “We recognize revenue from subscriptions to our platform over the terms of these subscriptions. Our subscription arrangements generally have monthly or annual contractual terms, and we also have a small percentage of multi-year contractual terms. Amounts that have been billed are initially recorded as deferred revenue until the revenue is recognized. As a result, a large portion of our revenue for each quarter reflects deferred revenue from subscriptions entered into during previous quarters, and downturns or upturns in subscription sales, or renewals and potential changes in our pricing policies may not be reflected in our results of operations until later periods. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through additional sales in any period, as subscription revenue from new users is recognized over the applicable subscription term. By contrast, a significant majority of our costs are expensed as incurred, which occurs as soon as a user starts using our platform. As a result, an increase in users could result in our recognition of more costs than revenue in the earlier portion of the subscription term.” 2021 10K Filing

Financials:

• Total Revenue TTM as of Q1 2022: $2.209B
  Revenue TTM Screenshot
  
• Profit Margin was recently between ~16%. A big reason 2021 was unprofitable was due to a 1-time impairment of their property in San Francisco.
  Gross Margin, Operating Margin, and Profit Margin screenshot
  
• Current P/E: ~22
  
• EV/EBITDA: ~18.06
  
• Current Cash as of Q1 2022: $445.5M, but they have 1.05B in marketable securities
  Cash and Marketable Securities Screenshot
  
• Total Long Term Debt as of Q1 2022: $1.370B
  Total Debt Screenshot
  

Industry

• According to Allied Market Research, “The cloud storage market size was valued at $46.12 billion in 2019, and is projected to reach $222.25 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 21.9% from 2020 to 2027. Cloud storage is a next-generation system that interacts in human language and helps experts to make better decisions by understanding the complexity of unstructured data.”
  Strengths:
  Key Metrics Screenshot
  

1. Average Recurring Revenue (ARR) Growth and Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) Growth
   1. Two of the key performance metrics you should look to when reviewing a company like this one is its ARR and ARPU. The ARR shows us how their recurring revenue is growing YoY along with the ARPU to give us a better insight into the efficiency of revenue per user. An increase in ARPU means that we are capturing more sales in dollar terms per user added into the Dropbox ecosystem. The key metrics screenshot above from the investor day presentation shows that they went from $123.07 at the end of 2019 to $133.73 at the end of 2021 while their latest 10Q continues to show that increase in ARPU. Quarterly ARR and ARPU Screenshot
   2. Paying User Growth
      1. They currently have 700 million registered users across 180 countries with 17.09 million being paying users. This paying user number continues to increase over time and as they are able to add to their offerings it will convert nonpaying users. Paying users Screenshot
   3. Open Ecosystem
      1. One of the competitive advantages that Dropbox has been building out over the last two years is its own ease of access to work with other applications. They have also set up an easy-to-transfer process so that new clients can move their data over to DBX’s own platform with little to no hassle. Partners Screenshot
   4. Stock buybacks
      1. “In February 2020, the Company's Board of Directors approved a stock repurchase program for the repurchase of up to $600 million of the Company’s outstanding shares of Class A common stock. In February 2021, the Board of Directors authorized the Company to repurchase up to an additional $1 billion of the Company's outstanding shares of Class A common stock. The Company completed the February 2020 stock repurchase program of up to $600 million during the three months ended March 31, 2021. In February 2022, the Board of Directors authorized the Company to repurchase up to an additional $1.2 billion of the Company's outstanding shares of Class A common stock...During the three months ended March 31, 2022, and 2021, respectively, the Company repurchased and subsequently retired 11.0 million and 18.6 million shares of its Class A common stock, respectively, for an aggregate amount of $259.9 million and $431.9 million, respectively. The amount for the three months ended March 31, 2021, includes $200.0 million in repurchases of 8.6 million shares of our Class A common stock in conjunction with the issuance of the Notes, which was outside of our stock repurchase program.“ (Q1 2022 10Q)
      2. The current amount left for repurchasing as of March 31st, 2022, is $1.2 billion which means that if they were to use it all today it would be equal to ~15% of today’s market cap (1.2 B Buyback/ 7.58B Market Cap = 15%). Obviously, they won’t spend it all in one quarter, but it just shows how much of an effect the buyback would have. Buybacks for Q1 2022 Screenshot

Risks:

1. Competition
   1. There is a lot of competition in the ever-growing cloud storage and the online team collaboration software space. Whether you look at large offerings from the likes of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft or individual software that the small to medium enterprises rely on like Adobe, VMWare, Box, and DocuSign, there may be some more competition in this space. While Dropbox is not considered number 1 in terms of market share, its take on an open ecosystem may allow this to complement other systems rather than forcing businesses to choose only one or another cloud storage, provider.
2. Cyber Security Risks
   1. While I know this is a risk for most, if not all, companies I feel like I still want to mention it. Since companies are hosting their files and information on Dropbox’s servers, it is very important that Dropbox does not have any major security leaks that come out because a lot of the information is sensitive information to the business. A large data leak could truly hurt the reputation along with bringing on legal suits that will likely follow a security breach. This could cause the recurring revenue to slow down significantly and possibly have companies/users move their data from Dropbox to a competitor’s offerings that are seen as “more secure.” Part of this may be caused by the open ecosystem due to a breach through a third-party application like Microsoft’s or Google’s offerings.
3. Changes in Data Regulation
   1. Since this company operates with other companies’ data, it is very possible that data regulations become stricter which could cause Dropbox to incur costs that are not currently being forecasted. While this is more of a shot in the dark because you truly never know what changes will come until they get signed, it is a real possibility. We have seen many countries start to take steps toward data and privacy regulations. Dropbox operates in over 180 countries with about half of its sales coming from the US alone, so if we have any significant changes in regulations here in the US that could mean some short-term hurt.

Discounted Free Cashflow Model
If you would like to see my worksheet the link is here.
DCF1 Screenshot
DCF2 Screenshot
Closing Thoughts:
As we have seen over the last two years, being able to work digitally along with making file storage easier to access for external and internal users is becoming increasingly important. While the company is not growing crazy at 30% YoY for their sales, they are continuing steady growth along with buying back shares to give back to shareholders. Also, this being a founder-led company truly gives the management more incentive to continue growing the business over the next 5 - 10 years.

Pleasantries, pleasantries.
Wanted to take a look at the average $GME shorted per day since this whole can of tuna kicked open Jan '21, mainly to reality-check my 1.5 year long mental tracking against the actual numbers.
First, I want to make sure people, especially if this manages to reach those not in Superstonk, aren't misunderstanding the ability to short a stock (sell a stock you don't own to someone on the agreement you will purchase said stock at another time and return it to the person who lent it to you in the first place to sell) with a concept you may have learned in math(s) class, which is that of a frog jumping from a start-point 50% (or 90%, doesn't matter) towards an end-point an infinite number of times will never actually technically reach the end-point (it's the common way of explaining limits & the fact there's technically an infinite number of points between two points since you can always add another by adding another decimal digit). Shorting stock DOES NOT work like that. There's a finite number of stock. It's really that simple. It may not be so simple if there were days where shorting was only at 5%-30%, but that hasn't happened a single day in the pasts ~330 days. It's possible no one has confused simple finite supply & demand with one of Zeno's paradoxes, but wanted to make sure that's understood.
I implore you if you haven't been here since last Jan, especially if you're new, to quickly read through the day-by-day data in the following image (move through it by following initial arrows). Try to keep a mental track of what you think the average is, because if it's 50% or less, even 51%, maybe all the theorizing and facts don't actually add up, suggesting you're out on a limb with this investment you've made. However if it's not, then there's been, and still is, an active effort by a group of folks in the financial industry, as well as the press, who've been knowingly lying (e.g. Melvin covering, or the SEC not including certain entities' data points in their report in Jan '22), who've been using the term 'memestock' to both mask -- even out right hide and bury -- critical news pertaining to GME to prevent interest / avoid lawsuits (e.g. SEC's press release just yesterday is a perfect example of this) and to pretend GME is somehow inherently a joke rather than being a security invested in within the same ecosystem that Berkshire Hathaway trades in, ultimately to get people to lose sight & confidence while at least one of them do in fact still need to buy back an absolute dickload of shares.
It'll do you well to remember this is how the retarders of humanity always operate as it's as essential to their useless continued existence as food and water is. I digress though.
Here's said image for each day of each month for the past 16 months (including May '22), with the URL included for each image so you can check anything you feel may be off (the few days missing at the start of February isn't a trick; I more than compensate for that in later calculations): here
Now since you've done that, where does your mental average end up? Check it against this lil' worksheet, see how many times each share has been shorted in comparison to the number you feel (don't alter your number though): here. You probably won't be far off, trust.
So, what's the real shorted percentage? Overall = 59.64% a day on average. The following is the month by month breakdown if you want to double check the numbers entered. I went ahead and included a modified February for those who think dragons may lay in those missing days. So to over-correct in hopes to put those at ease who think I may be trying to pull a fast one, I pretended shorters did 5 whole days of nothing but buying back, during the highest volume / most traded month, (which DID NOT happen) and 4 days where they only shorted 20% a day (which, again, DID NOT happen) ... it was never even under 30% for a single day, actually, so realize this modified February is being extremely generous and isn't even attempting to represent reality. Here ya go.
Putting it all together now, is GME absolutely overshorted or what? Yes, even when we pretend they did 5 days of nothing but covering in February (which is the top table, the one most close to reality is the middle table): see. You can see in the middle table how the moment those grace days I gave them go away, those shorting $GME have easily shorted each share 5x over and drown on contact with reality.
If you are new here, you may not realize we have official records from GameStop letting us know the actual amount of shares that are out there getting locked-up by mostly people on this sub (well over $1.5B, likely, currently illegally reduced to half that), which has the effect of truly taking that share out of circulation from fuckery (it's akin to having it printed out and keeping it in a vault rather than allowing it to exist in a virtual landscape). You may wonder why all shares haven't been locked-up (DRS), it's mainly because people aren't having their shares delivered, or they aren't allowed to move them from their brokerage, are being subjected to mob tactics like having to pay a certain amount to get their brokerage to transfer the shares out, or because they seemingly don't show up until the price has dropped another non-sensical amount (like at the end of last week), etc.. This is why the number 61.1 appears on the images I presented in the "Total Available Shares" column. You should know the actual number of available shares is way less than what I presented, meaning each share is shorted even more times over, I just wanted to show the most extreme potential case against our thesis to prove the theory has tree trunks for legs on which it stands steady. If this post gets any attention just check the comments and I'm sure people will have presented the latest fact-based best guess at different figures like available shares, etc., but also be aware that any time a GME specific post gains traction where outsiders of this sub may see it, it's standard to see it get heavily shorted (high-60% to mid-70%) to discourage those wanting to make decisions that'll better their lives.
Apologies for keeping it so matter of fact, I usually like to add a bit more fun into my posts. In that spirit, here's an easter egg from 'Catch Me If You Can' that's not been pointed out anywhere online: the shortest suit doesn't make it out. Don't get distracted by the pinstripes, enjoy these last 7 days in May, make sure to vote your shares, and get ready for next week when Cohen picks up the split card <3

Hi! I'm looking for some best practices with how you share your spreadsheets/workbooks with leadership. My company uses Office 365, some very ancient non-Microsoft tools for databases and I'm trying to move the company into a weekly reporting structure to Excel for a few reasons:
1 - People are familiar with Excel
2 - I feel like if we can publish on SharePoint it will be a nice central location (but is that common? Do you recommend this?)
3 - Data doesn't need to be a live feed, so I don't mind moving it to Excel
4 - Easy to govern and keep track of updates
5 - If it's ever needed to visualize, we can publish in tandem with Power BI. But for straight numbers: Excel.
There are people who will be pushing the non-Microsoft databases, but I think this company is embracing the Microsoft ecosystem and it's probably wiser to go this route. I come from the G-suite world, so my mind went to publishing worksheets to the web, but I'm new to Excel capabilities. These are just my opinions but I'd love to hear what you're doing and if there's a better way I could be thinking about this.

Hi! I'm looking for some best practices with how you share your spreadsheets/workbooks with leadership. My company uses Office 365, some very ancient non-Microsoft tools for databases and I'm trying to move the company into a weekly reporting structure to Excel for a few reasons:
1 - People are familiar with Excel
2 - I feel like if we can publish on SharePoint it will be a nice central location (but is that common? Do you recommend this?)
3 - Data doesn't need to be a live feed, so I don't mind moving it to Excel
4 - Easy to govern and keep track of updates
5 - If it's ever needed to visualize, we can publish in tandem with Power BI. But for straight numbers: Excel.
There are people who will be pushing the non-Microsoft databases, but I think this company is embracing the Microsoft ecosystem and it's probably wiser to go this route. I come from the G-suite world, so my mind went to publishing worksheets to the web, but I'm new to Excel capabilities. These are just my opinions but I'd love to hear what you're doing and if there's a better way I could be thinking about this.

Hi I apologize for the world's longest money diary!! This is a follow up to a diary I wrote in December 2020.
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance: I pay into a state pension, CalSTRS, which comes directly out of my paycheck. I also pay $500 a month directly out of my paycheck into a Roth 403b. Now that I am leaving my public school district I am considering cashing out my pension to add to my existing 403b. According to Equitable I have $7,480 in my 403b right now, but I don’t put a lot of stock in this because the market has been so bad. I just kind of leave this alone and keep contributing.
Equity: lol
Savings account balance: $1400 in a super old Wells Fargo account, $50k in an Ally HYSA.
Checking account balance: $4,700 across two accounts, which I now realize is kind of a lot.
Credit card debt: $418 right now, but I put basically all expenses on my card and pay it off each month.
Student loan debt: I have about $4.5k left on a parent plus loan from undergrad. In grad school I was able to get away with taking a single no interest Hebrew Free Loan for $10k, which has since been paid off.
Investments: I put $10k in a Vanguard brokerage account last month which I’ve been scared to look at because the market has been very low. I was honestly scared to start investing initially. I should set up a consistent contribution but haven’t yet. Ty to commenters on the last diary who told me to start investing! I know I should be putting more into this.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: This is my 3rd year as a public school teacher. I work on a salary schedule, which is based on both your education level (I have a masters, which I did directly out of undergrad) and your number of years in public education. I worked in another district my first year and actually got to the last step on the salary schedule by taking a couple community college classes to bridge the gap between steps based on advice from HR. I was let go due to a reduction of workforce after my first year and went to my current district which is substantially worse pay than the surrounding districts. Even though I was at a higher step and had more years, I took about an $8k pay cut. I was able to make up some of this balance by teaching summer school, which is why my salary increased from my last money diary. As you will see during this diary I will be having a substantial pay jump next year.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: Ranges between $2.8-3.3k depending on the length of the paycheck, if I subbed, etc. I get paid monthly.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: nothing consistent right now.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: Other than some expenses my family covers, at much continued protest from me my parents give me $350 a month. I would be fine without it, but I do appreciate it. I don’t ask for much from them.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent / Mortgage / HOA fees: $1176.41 for my part of a two bedroom one bath, which includes a parking spot, that I share with a roommate. I think it’s a great deal. It’s an older building but we love the location so much that as I look at moving to my own place this summer it’s hard to think about moving neighborhoods.
Renters / home insurance: Roommate covers this because her dad covers it and was able to get both of us covered somehow.
Savings contribution: Nothing consistent, but I usually but at least 1k from each paycheck into my high yield account.
Investment contribution: I send $25 a month to an Ellevest account which is mostly just a fun account for me.
Debt payments: have not been paying my student loan for most of COVID.
Electric: Approximately $15-40 a month, which roommate and I split.
Wifi/Cable/Landline: My roommate is out of a job right now but when she worked she paid for this because her job covered it. I have no idea how much this costs monthly. Sometimes she sends me a bulk venmo request lol.
Cellphone: covered by family
Subscriptions: Nothing technically because I finally canceled that stupid Doordash subscription from my last money diary.
Car payment / insurance: covered by family. I drive a 2008 Honda that my sister bought when she graduated college, then sold to my parents who eventually gave it to me when I moved out of their house after grad school. Before that I drove the cashared it with my dad through high school and college. I love her. I’m responsible for all regular maintenance, which is low key a lot because I’m not a great driver.
Paid hobbies: I pay $80 a month in dues for a competitive dance team. I actually volunteer at the dance studio in exchange for free classes which covers most of my dance expenses. I also paid $270 for a ten pass at a local climbing gym in November, which I am still working my way through. I love climbing and had a full gym membership in grad school but haven’t done it regularly enough to justify it in years, so the ten pass is my negotiation. I hate most other forms of exercise. HIIT is my nemesis.
Any other expenses: I spend a lot of money on my classroom and students.
Money Diary
7:00 happy Thursday! I get myself out of bed after snoozing.
7:50: I get on the road after getting dressed. I live 20-25 minutes from my school, which I know isn’t a lot relatively but I really don’t like my commute. I usually get to school around 8:10. I come in, sign in, say hi to the office manager, and go to my classroom.
8:30: First class of the day! I’m teaching stoichiometry right now. We finish guided notes and 3 boys come in 45 minutes late. Sigh. I have them finish the guided notes from chrome books. We’ll do an activity next week surrounding it.
9:45: periods are shortened this week for family conferences so I email the school I’m interviewing at next week. Surprise! I’m looking for a new job. More details on this later. It involves me taking a day off next week so I email my admin that I’ll be taking a personal day and also schedule a second interview for that day by texting a vice principal. I also finish planning my elective for next Monday since we’re starting a new unit. I also need to renew my drivers
license so I send off the payment online for $39 directly on the California DMV website.
1:20: we usually don’t end this early, but again we have family conferences. Thankfully all of mine are over zoom today. I have a quick one at 1:30 and then wait for another half an hour later. I email the counselor to come to the zoom call because the student needs to transfer to continuation school, but the student doesn’t show up and we’re just twiddling our thumbs. She promises to reach out to her individually so I drive home.
3:00 3 more conferences! Then I start cleaning. It’s nice to be home earlier but I don’t finish until almost 5. Between conferences, I get a text from a grad school friend who works at the public school I’m interviewing at to give me some intel about the position. He gives me the number of the person currently in the position as a long term sub, so I text them both thank you and figure out a time this weekend to talk to the long term sub.
5:00 more job talk. Another grad school friend works at the private school I’m interviewing at so I talk with her for a while and catch up while I wash dishes. We make plans to see each other when I’m there for the interview and to hang out soon. She makes the school sound great, but there’s a really tough emotional attachment to working at public schools…
6:15 Bf is supposed to be picking us up for our anniversary dinner and the restaurant is like half an hour away with traffic and he texts me to tell me his mom called?? I complain to my roommate.
6:30 he picks me up. It was not his mom. He was getting me flowers lol. I bring clothes with me to stay the night. I’m out of lunches so I make plans to buy Starbucks lunch in the morning.
8:30 dinner is amazing and we accidentally order half the menu. It comes to $180 with dinner, 3 drinks, 2 desserts, and tea. He pays $120 and the tip, and I pay $60. Bf makes much more than me but his family doesn’t help him much. I’m the opposite. He pays more than me in general because of this but I still pay.
9:00 BF grew up Mormon so we cuddle up at his place and watch a documentary on Netflix about Mormon history. I’ve been completely exhausted all week because of the possible job upheaval and we go to sleep early.
Day one total: $99
6:40: Wake up, don’t want to get out of bed so we cuddle for a while. I mention to my BF that I plan to stop by Starbucks on my way to work because I didn’t pack a lunch, so while I get ready he makes me a big breakfast and a London fog (!!). He is very sweet and works from home. I’m on the road by about 7:50 to get to work by 8:15.
8:30: During my prep period I make copies and try to find a sub for Tuesday. Friday is my most stressful day by a lot- I have my most challenging class, so I’m kind of dreading them. I stop by one class where I know there’s a sub but don’t get a straight answer, so I email and text a bunch of them. Unfortunately with the sub shortage this year it’s been difficult to get subs and I’ve ended up subbing a lot during my prep period. I also hate having morning preps. I much prefer afternoons, your day goes by so much faster.
12:30: Day is mostly smooth and easy thankfully. I overhear some kids ask each other if they’d rather be mermaids or birds, and when one boy says bird a girl replies “Oh, that’s because he’s chismoso, he wants to see everything.”
1:30: 5 conferences scheduled today. Thankfully they should be pretty easy ones. I try to finish my slides for Monday in the meantime- I’ve finished them for my elective but not for my chemistry class. After 2 in person conferences I head home to do the rest on Zoom.
4:30: My dad texts me in the family group chat that they’re getting take out for dinner and asks me to come over. My sister has been with my parents for a couple days helping out a family friend, so it’ll be the four of us. I have a conference from 5:30-6 scheduled but they don’t show, so I quickly pack a bag and head to my parents house that's usually about half an hour away. With traffic it takes a while today.
10:30: We spend the night gossiping and we all go to bed pretty early. A lot of it is about my cousin’s new fiance, who is from a different cultural background than my family, and I worry about my parents finally meeting my BF who is from a very different culture than us. I text him that talking to them is basically a crash course in what not to do when meeting my family- turns out they just don’t like her for a variety of reasons.
Day two total: $0
10:30: My sister and I stop by a couple chain stores that are easier to get to in the burbs before heading home, including me stopping by a lululemon to see if there’s a pair of pants I like so I can look for them on ebay. Afterwards, I drop her off at BART and I drive home. Lunch is a Japanese egg salad sandwich using what I bought at the Korean grocery store last weekend. I went a little overboard and spent $120 so I’m trying not to buy groceries till Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Afterwards, I text my mom to have her and my dad grab lunch with me and my BF next weekend. Through a total comedy of errors we’ve been dating for nearly a year but they haven’t met him, things have just kept popping up. We make plans to have dinner in their town next Sunday.
5:00: Friend and I are going out to dinner so we solidify plans. I give her the options between two Thai restaurants and she picks one that’s known for being a little more festive and fun. I’m excited to go but also kind of wish I hadn’t given her the option because this one is pretty expensive. She offers to pick me up, but it’s just warm enough that I’d like to walk and I’ve hardly moved all day, so I walk the 40 minutes the restaurant to meet her there.
7:30: I get green curry, she gets pad see ew, and I venmo her for my part of the bill and tip which comes to $28. Afterwards, we go to a dessert spot in Chinatown and split an egg puff waffle with ice cream, which comes to a little under $10. My half is $5.45, I venmo her for the other half. We finish talking in her car for a while after she drops me off since we get lucky with a parking spot.
9:30: BF lives really close to me so I ask him to come by to spend the night since my roommate is out of town. He ends up bringing dessert, but I’m still super full from the waffle, so dessert is just for him lol. We talk and go to bed late a little after midnight.
Day three total: $33.45
9:00: Wake up and my BF tells me that YET AGAIN we made out in the middle of the night and I have zero memory which is honestly so fucking weird!! He’s hosting a picnic at his place so I kick him out around 11.
1:00: I make lunch. My weird hack is pre baking things like eggplant and tofu and then just heating them out instead of frying them because I am lazy. I make Szechuan style eggplant and tofu with the baked food and make Korean-style purple rice in the instant pot. I drown it in a local chili crisp.
2:30: I need to get ready for the job interviews this week but don’t feel ready to do that yet so I quickly make sure my slides are done for Monday. Usually this takes me around an hour to 2 hours on a Sunday night but I was finally productive during my prep periods last week so it’s not too bad today.
6:00: I stop by Crossroads Trading Co just to see if there’s anything interesting. I find a dress that with tax comes to $21.
7:00: I pick up an existing Target pick up order I made earlier in the week so that my students can make smores in class.
7:30: I call my BF on my way home and he tells me to come over since I still need to eat dinner- he has leftovers from hosting a picnic earlier in the day. We end up super awkwardly running into his roommate and the girl that he’s seeing. It’s only awkward because his roommate has a weird issue with me and has for the past year that we’ve been seeing each other. I work on interview prep and he writes a paper while we watching Great British Baking Show.
8:30: BF comes up to my apartment to help me bring a TV up to my apartment. An elderly family friend recently passed away after many many years of illness, and they gave me her TV that I’m hoping to put in my bedroom. My roommate, BF and I play around with how to arrange it before finally figuring out an arrangement on the wall with it that makes sense. I loosely shop for wall mounting hardware and remind myself to contact my apartment management. They’ve been pretty nice about letting me mount stuff on the wall and often the handyman just does it for me, which is so nice.
11:30: Late night stress shopping. Gap has a pair of shorts that are similar to the ones I sized out of last year, and a 40% + 10% discount, so I place an order for a few colors and sizes which comes to $175. I live near Gap so I plan to return these to the store which helps a lot to get the returns quickly.
Day four total: $196
7:00: Daylight savings is so rough.
10:30: The biggest impact that the sub shortage has had on me is that I am constantly subbing during my prep period. Today it’s for a friend who has subbed for me multiple times, but it’s still tough to lose my prep. I do get paid for it, but I’m not sure it makes up for it. I look on Teachers Pay Teachers for some materials for my classes for later in the week and spend $7.50 on it. I immediately regret it because when I open the materials I don’t like them at all. I recruit a student I trust to choose between two activities for us to do next time I see her class.
3:00: So tired that I put on a movie for the last half hour of my last class.
4:30: I take a staff meeting at work from my phone while I print out materials for tomorrow’s interviews. I still have some prep I need to do at home which I’m not looking forward to. I usually try to leave work right at the bell so I know I’ll feel overtired by the time I get home.
5:00 Detour at the cheapest gas station in Oakland. I have literally no idea how much I spent because I don’t think the payment went through on Apple Pay but gas is $5.29 a gallon (a bargain right now unfortunately) and I fill up half a tank for my small sedan.
7:30: Home is frozen gnocchi, stress baking blondies, and finishing interview materials. BF comes over to drop some stuff off and I cry.
Day five total: ~$57.50
7:00 The nice part about taking the day off is I get to wake up late for me. I asked BF the night before if we could have breakfast together so I go to his place for breakfast. He cooks. My first interview is at 10 am at a Catholic school and involves a demo lesson. I get an email from the sub asking how to open the Chromebook cart so I email her back but otherwise don’t hear from work. The first interview is about a 15 minute drive away.
12:00 I finish a marathon interview with a demo lesson and interviews with multiple people at the administrative level. I am totally exhausted and the interview is intense, more than what I’m used to at public schools. The assistant principal tells me to expect an offer the next day. The salary range is a lot more than what I’m making right now, $77-80k. However the benefits in my district are great, even though our pay is low, so I need to balance that out. As soon as I leave I go directly to my next interview, which is 15 minutes away back in the direction of my apartment.
1:30 Second interview done. I am so tired. This school is much more relaxed and includes students which is more of the vibe that I am used to. I visited a couple classes and I am trying to figure out whether this school will be more of the same as what I’m dealing with at my current job- lack of support, crazy issues across the school, etc. It’s so hard to tell.
2:30 Make mac and cheese, call my mom, sleep, cry a lot (a lot) about leaving my current job, which feels inevitable. I post on instagram to see if anyone is willing to talk about the job decision since I expect to get offers from both schools.
5:30 I volunteer at the dance studio in exchange for free classes and I traded shifts last week to get my Thursday off so I work tonight. On the way to the studio I really want a food pick me up; I end up getting a pack of sushi at Whole Foods for $16.
8:00 Thankfully the studio is nice and chill. One of my dance teammates is at the studio so we work on some pieces. She’s from China so I spend some time explaining to her why teachers are so poorly paid in the US and why it’s a tough job here, which is kind of a crazy conversation. She shares about her own public school experience in China, which is so interesting. I text BF to see him because I am feeling needy and am still on and off crying. It's hard to explain but you feel very tied to a school as a teacher, and especially here it’s a small school so you feel extremely tied to the ecosystem. Which is good in some ways but also completely exhausting. I spend the evening fielding input from some friends about the job offers and sleep at BF’s place.
Day six total: $16
6:40 BF has a 7 am call so we both wake up relatively early. I get ready while he’s on his call.
8:15 Get to work and chat with my work besties about yesterday’s interviews. I feel solid in my decision to leave the school, as heartbroken as I am to leave my friends, but am struggling with what to pick. I get a text from a teacher at the public school for us to schedule a call in the afternoon.
9:30 I hate morning preps. During my prep period I get a call from the assistant principal at the public school with an official offer. I make a plan to speak with a current teacher this afternoon so I can get a better idea of what’s going on at the public school.
3:00 Today has gone surprisingly smoothly. A couple kids fight me on my decisions based on the sub plan, but oh well. The school has a wellness day for our staff professional development today and they brought an acupuncturist to school. I try it and am not a huge fan.
3:45 Call from the president of the private school with an official offer and a salary. It’s $79k- $15k more than what I currently make, which includes working summer school. I’m looking at moving into a studio or one bedroom this summer and can’t help but think what a difference that extra money a month could make.
5:00 I finish my phone call with the current teacher at the public school and after talking to some friends and my mom, I am strongly leaning toward the private school. I text my college friends group chat and they congratulate me. I still have a little bit of work to do so I finalize the worksheet we’re doing tomorrow during class and my slides so I don’t have too much to do in the morning before work. I also email my principal to tell them that I will be taking another job and I cry just at the thought of it. In so many ways your identity as a teacher becomes so tied to where you work, not just the work you do.
7:45 Dance practice! I dance on a competitive team and we practice once a week. Our practice is 8:30-10:30 but we’re casting our upcoming piece so lots of us get to the studio early to practice together. I get a ride over from one of my teammates who lives close by. Right before practice I remember to pay my dues, which comes to $80 for the month.
10:45 I’m home after several hours of dancing. So tired. I call BF to chat with him about my job decision, shower, and go to sleep around midnight.
Day seven total: $80
Total expenses
Food + Drink: $109.45
Fun / Entertainment: 0
Home + Health: $80 (I count dance in this)
Clothes + Beauty: $196
Transport: approx $50 for the gas
Other: $46.50
Reflection: I don't have a lot to say except that this was an extremely emotionally and physically exhausting week, so I don’t have opinions about most of the spending. As of writing this I am still waiting for the official paperwork at the private school but plan to accept the job offer, and already told my current principals that I will be leaving, which involved a lot of tears. It’s so hard to leave my school which includes so many wonderful kids but I work at a very challenging school and I don’t think I can deal with the high stress levels much longer without leaving the profession.
I went to a grad program that specialized in urban education and I think looking back on it we were pushed to take some really challenging jobs, as long as we felt it was a good fit. When I took this job I feel that I was fairly naive about what it entailed. It’s hard to leave public education but I need to reduce my stress levels and the extra pay would make such a difference for me. As one of my friends told me when I was going through all of this, “There is no rule that teachers have to make the ultimate moral decision when we’re being treated like shit.”

Introduction:
If you would like to watch my Youtube video explanation click here.
If you would like the article with pictures click the Substack link here.
Disclaimer: I own shares in FB.
I am taking a second look at the various positions that I currently have within my portfolio and wanted to talk about one of the FAANG stocks. Today we are going to be looking at Meta Platforms (previously Facebook) and why I think there is an opportunity in this company even though it is one of the big mega caps. The Metaverse is a new key buzzword that we are hearing about today, but that is not the only opportunity we may have. This company is heavily reliant on their ad revenue, but they cash flow very well which can help them spawn new ideas and business ventures.
TLDR: There are many opportunities for a decently valued company if you believe the story and if they can continue to use their ad revenue to add more growth levers. I don't think this is worth speculating on just the Metaverse opportunity if that is what you trying to do.
FB - Meta Platforms:
“Our mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. We build useful and engaging products that enable people to connect and share with friends and family through mobile devices, personal computers, virtual reality headsets, and in-home devices. We also help people discover and learn about what is going on in the world around them, enable people to share their opinions, ideas, photos and videos, and other activities with audiences ranging from their closest family members and friends to the public at large, and stay connected everywhere by accessing our products, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Facebook Reality Labs. Facebook Reality Labs' augmented and virtual reality products help people feel connected, anytime, anywhere. Oculus Quest. We generate substantially all of our revenue from selling advertising placements to marketers. Our ads enable marketers to reach people based on a variety of factors including age, gender, location, interests, and behaviors. Marketers purchase ads that can appear in multiple places including on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and third-party applications and websites.” 2020 10K Filing
I would be shocked if you use the internet and have not heard of one of these platforms before. Although, Facebook Reality Labs is a more recent growth lever for the company so you may have not been aware of the augmented and virtual reality opportunity that this company will have. As you will see in the points below this company is primarily an ad revenue driven company, but their interest is in connecting people through various social networks and monetizing that free service through their ads.
Starting Q4 2021 Facebook will break itself down into the following segments:

• Family of Apps (FoA)
  • FoA includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other services.
• Facebook Reality Labs(FRL)
  • FRL includes our augmented and virtual reality-related consumer hardware, software, and content.

\Note: I will give an update via video and a follow-up article when we receive the 10K for 2021. I am looking forward to their FRL segment being the growth lever while their FOA segment has steady growth with amazing cash flow for new businesses.*
Revenue Segment Screenshot
Financials:

• Total Revenue TTM as of Q3 2021: $112.330B

Revenue TTM Screenshot

• Profit Margin is floating between ~30% - 35% recently.

Gross Margin, Operating Margin, and Profit Margin screenshot

• Current P/E: ~24
  • If you look back at the P/E over the years this has been driven down because of the net income expansion PE Screenshot
• Share Repurchases:
  • “As of December 31, 2020, $8.60 billion remained available and authorized for repurchases under this program. In January 2021, an additional $25.0 billion of repurchases was authorized under this program. During the nine months ended September 30, 2021, we repurchased and subsequently retired 77 million shares of our Class A common stock for an aggregate amount of $25.63 billion. As of September 30, 2021, $7.97 billion remained available and authorized for repurchases. In October 2021, an additional $50.0 billion of repurchases was authorized under this program.” - 10Q Q3 2021 Page 25

Share Repurchase Screenshot

• EV/EBITDA: ~16
• Current Cash as of Q3 2021: $14B
• Total Debt as of Q3 2021: $0
  • Non-Current operating lease liability: $11.5B

Industry

• Post COVID-19, the value of the internet advertising market is estimated to grow from $359 billion in 2020, and is projected to reach $1,089 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 17.2%. The current estimation of 2027 is projected to be higher than pre-COVID-19 estimates. The COVID-19 outbreak has [a] low impact on the growth of the internet advertising market. …Asia-Pacific is expected to observe [the] highest growth rate during the forecast period as the proliferation of mobile, social media, and apps is the major driving factor for the progressively growing internet advertising market across the region. Particularly, in countries, such as India, China, and Indonesia, apps are growing [in] importance due to the ubiquity of smartphone usage as well as gaming. - (Link is on the substack since Reddit did not like the link)
• EMarketer sees Facebook as one of the largest digital ad revenues (Link):

Emarketer Screenshot
Strengths:

1. Brand Name and large population adoption -
   1. The various platforms owned and grown by Meta Platforms are some of the top players in most countries. Interestingly, there are still many opportunities for growth even though platforms like Facebook are starting to hit a plateau with users. This will come in the form of improving the average revenue per user (ARPU) where the US and Canada are primary drivers of ARPU at the company. If Facebook is able to work out a deal with India and penetrate the Indian market, there are significant gains to be had with a population rapidly growing in the technology space. ARPU Screenshot
2. Also according to Statista.com, Meta Platforms owns 4 of the 5 most popular social platforms(Link): Statista Screenshot
3. Metaverse
   1. CEO Mark Zuckerburg wants to build out the FRL segment of their business a lot more and that is why the company decided to switch its name from Facebook to Meta Platforms. He sees this as a big opportunity and they have been allocating a lot of the R&D spend towards building out this segment of the business. The Oculus Quest 2 application was one of the top downloaded this Christmas which indicates that there were big purchases within this last quarter. According to Quartz.com, “Downloads of the app to support Oculus, Meta’s virtual reality brand, rose to the top of the mobile app store charts after Christmas, suggesting its headsets were popular gifts this year. Before this week, Oculus was a top 10 iOS app in only one country—the US—but by Dec. 26 became a top-five app in 14 different countries and the number one app in the US, according to Justin Patterson, an equity research analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. The app topped the Google Play store on Android devices as well” (Link). The opportunity to build out the platform is similar to the ecosystem that has been built off of the Instagram and Facebook platforms.
4. Large Cashflow and Spawner mentality
   1. This company is using its ability to generate cash flows via the ad revenue portion of the business and plowing it into R&D projects like the Oculus opportunity. This sort of spawning will allow them to pioneer platforms and establish a moat via the first-mover advantage that they have. Luckily for them, they have so much data from their users on the current platforms that they can dictate what is needed on the new upcoming opportunities. Also, they can better serve ads to increase the efficiency of companies spending on running ads. Although, the new IOS update from Apple will hurt them at least in the short term for the ad spend efficiency.

Risks:

1. Political Risk
   1. As one of the big tech companies, Congress has set its sights on Facebook and Instagram due to the censorship and advertisement where kids are concerned. There could be laws or regulations that negatively affect the value of this company and out of all of the big tech companies, FB seems to be the biggest target of the negative press.
2. Big Spend on R&D
   1. As is normal with tech firms, FB spends a lot on R&D and the risk is that it does not convert to another growth lever. Luckily, the FRL portion of the business seems to be working very well, but if there are any spending holes that happen it will hurt the company. More than likely, this R&D will be beneficial to the company’s long term growth R&D Screenshot
3. Dependance on Ad Revenue
   1. The company relies heavily on Ad revenue from other businesses which may see huge pullbacks if we go into a recessionary cycle where companies need to pull back their marketing spend. They are trying to branch out where their revenue comes from, but until that point comes it is important to watch other large ad companies like Google. This will tell you if there are any slowdowns in the industry as a whole or what part of the cycle the ad spend is in.
4. Privacy Changes and Lack of Control over Devices
   1. One of the downsides with Meta is that their platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram all use Android or Apple’s IOS as their system software. Due to utilizing another company’s software, Meta is going to receive privacy changes like Apple made in 2021 to their IOS 15 update. The impact was discussed by Graham Mudd, VP of Product Marketing, where he stated “We've heard from many of you that the impact on your advertising investment has been greater than you expected. The cost of achieving your business outcome may have increased and it’s also gotten harder to measure your campaigns on our platform” (Link).

Discounted Free Cashflow Model
If you would like to see my worksheet the link is here. My youtube video's DCF numbers will be slightly lower, but I am still looking to add if we get below $290.
DCF1 Screenshot
DCF2 Screenshot
Closing Thoughts:
Out of all of the FAANG stock, this is definitely my favorite company to be holding right now and if it drops below $290 due to overall market weakness I will definitely be adding to my position. I think the valuation and current fundamentals should be focused on viewing the ad revenue segment of their business, but also understanding where the metaverse may go in the coming years. For me personally, I am buying for the ad portion of their business because I think it is a healthy and growing industry.

Rolls-Royce publishes new data bias detector and reveals music and oncology AI collaborations

More about:

• Press release
• Sustainability
• R2 Data Labs
• Artificial Intelligence
• Digital
• Global

14 December 2021
📷
Rolls-Royce has released a simple and effective new data bias tool to its pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and trustworthiness toolkit, The Aletheia Framework. We have also announced AI ethics collaborations with music cataloguing start-up, Musiio; and with international AI oncology experts.
Bias in the requirements, algorithms and data used to train AIs impacts the effectiveness and trustworthiness of AI and is one of the hardest challenges to overcome. It causes inaccuracy and negative bias in the way the AI analyses data and subsequently makes decisions, eroding trust in a technology that should be a valuable partner in our daily lives at home or at work.
Sitting as part of The Aletheia Framework 2.0 ecosystem, released today, the new tool is based on a tried and tested method of identifying and managing risk in very complex and novel systems. It has been adapted to perform the same role in AI, helping developers and organisations achieve highly accurate and fairer outcomes from their use of the technology.
Caroline Gorski, Group Director for Rolls-Royce's data innovation unit, R2 Data Labs, said: “We’re excited to be adding even greater practicality to The Aletheia Framework, which is uniquely concise and focused on navigating the day-to-day intricacies of applying AI in an ethical and trustworthy way, such as bias in data.
“In the year since we first published the framework, we’ve been humbled by the level of interest, feedback and enthusiasm for something that started out as an answer to an internal challenge – crucially in a business-critical context.
“To enhance its effectiveness, not only are we adding this new AI bias tool, but we’ve also sought out collaborations with Musiio; international AI oncology experts to test how the framework performs and to hear how it can be more user-friendly and flexible. All these lessons have been included in The Aletheia Framework v2.0, which is released today and we believe that it can be applied to any use of AI, either as a template or a general guide for organisations to structure their thinking on this complex topic.”
The new data bias tool also extends the ability of The Aletheia Framework to enable organisations to apply rigor across the entire life of their AI product: from pre-development ethical considerations; to training data bias mitigation; and then the trustworthiness check on the decisions an AI makes after it has been deployed.
Crucially, The Aletheia Framework does not scrutinise algorithms themselves, which are highly complex, often commercially sensitive and always evolving. Instead, it focuses on the inputs to and continuously checks the outputs from those algorithms. This makes it simple and fast to use, as well as being applicable in any AI context.
Examples of how The Aletheia Framework has been used
Music
Hazel Savage, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Musiio, said: “There are more than 60,000 songs being released on to streaming services every day, which is an unmanageable amount to process manually. We’ve trained an AI that can listen to music. I was already having many of these thoughts and ideas around ethical AI and when I saw The Aletheia Framework, I thought someone has a and we’re now using The Aletheia Framework to guide our product strategy in terms of how we think around using AI from an ethical perspective.”
See Hazel’s full story here and how she used The Aletheia Framework here.
Oncology
Massachusetts, USA-based Matthew Katz MD, Partner in Radiation Oncology Associates, said: “As a doctor, my purpose is to help people with decision making, they are often difficult decisions in cancer care. We have to trust the tools that we have, including artificial intelligence. The data in healthcare mostly relies on clinical trials and research often published in elite institutions. The selection bias in that process means many people may not be included in those data sets, so what resonated for me about The Aletheia Framework was the potential for transparency in how data works; in making sure that the data available applies fully to the person in front of me, even if it’s incomplete data; or if it requires my clinical judgement to be included. I am accountable to patients and the artificial intelligence systems should be also and the framework captures that.”
Dr. Marianne Aznar, Senior Lecturer in Adaptive Radiotherapy at The University of Manchester, UK, said: “When I heard about the Aletheia Framework and that Rolls-Royce was working with artificial intelligence and ethics, I thought this was yet another chance for us in the radiotherapy community to learn from that field and to apply their work to our own processes. So far, a lot of our research has been around the accuracy of the solutions. But what The Aletheia Framework is going to help us to do it to start discussions in the other areas so that we can bring AI solutions from research and really into the daily clinic workflow. “
See the full story of the oncology collaboration here and the oncology version of The Aletheia Framework here.
The AI in oncology working group also included Dr. Raj Jena from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Dr. Matthew Williams, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; Dr. Issam El Naqa, Moffitt Cancer Centre; and Clifton David Fuller MD from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Education
Lord Tim Clement-Jones, chair of The Institute for Ethical AI in Education, said: “I commented on the original version of The Aletheia Framework, and it deals with many of the same areas in education as it does for Rolls-Royce in manufacturing – ethics, impact, compliance, data protection. So, I saw an equivalence there and we adapted The Aletheia Framework for our needs.”
See Lord Clement-Jones's full story here and the institute’s recommendations here.
The Aletheia Framework v2.0 can be downloaded from Rolls-Royce.com website, along with the data bias tool, which is a pre-configured Excel spreadsheet, as well as an FAQ. User guides and other case studies can also be accessed.

About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

1. Rolls-Royce pioneers the power that matters to connect, power and protect society. We have pledged to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions in our operations by 2030 (excluding product testing and joined the UN Race to Zero campaign in 2020, affirming our ambition to play a fundamental role in enabling the sectors in which we operate achieve net zero carbon by 2050.
2. Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 150 countries, comprising more than 400 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces and navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
3. Annual underlying revenue was £11.76 billion in 2020 and we invested £1.25 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 28 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
4. Rolls-Royce Holdings plc LEI: 213800EC7997ZBLZJH69