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It's been a wild ride of a month! Let's talk about 3 distinct points to wrap the month up before I move on to what I've got planned:</p>
<ul>
<li>First enterprise customer</li>
<li>Rejected by YC</li>
<li>Lots of soul-searching</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="first-enterprise-customer"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#first-enterprise-customer"><span class="icon icon-link"></span></a>First Enterprise Customer</h2>
<p><strong>Lessons to learn:</strong> Early beta users are vital and enterprise acquisitions are complicated. Find a solid initial lead or two to guide you through the acquisitions process with patience. It's not just "you want my thing, here's a form to fill out to buy it." It's a lengthy, complex process, even for cheap tiers. So finding a higher-up exec at a small to mid-sized company helps a ton.</p>
<p>GrabbrApp landed its first enterprise customer this month! That means we're officially post-revenue, which sounds a lot more exciting than it actually is. My PoC at this company is a friend, an awesome guy and spent a lot of time walking me through the acquisition process, what's going on on the other side of the curtain, what I am missing that would make the acquisition process easier, etc. If you can find this type of initial customer, I highly recommend it. It took a lot of stress out of the process and let me learn a ton along the way.</p>
<h2 id="rejected-by-ycombinator"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#rejected-by-ycombinator"><span class="icon icon-link"></span></a>Rejected by YCombinator</h2>
<p><strong>Lessons to learn:</strong> YC is not the end-all-be-all. If you're chasing funding, it's not a huge deal to get rejected. Most places do. I don't really have any opinions on the application or review process, chances are it's flawed but at the end of the day, what I can control is my business and how I pitch it, not investors reaction to it. That said, I'm very likely not going to pursue funding anymore, more on that below.</p>
<p>I applied to YCombinator a while back while I was laid off. In my mind it was an awesome opportunity to build a network and get GrabbrApp funded quickly, getting it off the ground and gearing up for big time growth. I found out this month that my application was rejected.</p>
<p>I'm not going to be lame and pretend like it didn't affect me. It really sank my self-esteem for a bit and really bummed me out. I think I had gotten my hopes up more than I intended and to see the rejection email, without even one round of interviews, sucked.</p>
<h2 id="soul-searching"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#soul-searching"><span class="icon icon-link"></span></a>Soul Searching</h2>
<p>I sat down and did some soul-searching after the YC rejection, as I discussed in <a href="/01_RESEARCH/VIDEO%20SLIDES/Goodbye%20Golang%20Microservices,%20and%20Hello%20Rust%20Monoservice" title="Goodbye Golang Microservices, and Hello Rust Monoservice">Goodbye Golang Microservices, and Hello Rust Monoservice</a>, and decided not to actively pursue funding anymore and to try to go the slower but surer solopreneur route. I can build GrabbrApp, and maybe some other upcoming ventures, into an awesome company that supports me (and maybe some contractors some day) without needing it to blow up. I think this is a bit easier and less risky, even if there isn't the bajillion dollar reward of starting a unicorn that IPO's or gets acquired some day.</p>
<p>I really think it's kinda cringe to get rejected from YC (or anything else) and pretend like it didn't affect you or you're too cool for that program anyways. I see a lot of folks on <a href="/reddit.com/r/ycombinator">/r/ycombinator</a> act this way and it's super annoying.</p>
<h2 id="whats-next"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#whats-next"><span class="icon icon-link"></span></a>What's next?</h2>
<p>Well, if you've been reading the blog, you know I've been converting the backend from Golang Microservices to a Rust Mono-API.</p>
<p><a href="/01_RESEARCH/VIDEO%20SLIDES/Goodbye%20Golang%20Microservices,%20and%20Hello%20Rust%20Monoservice" title="Goodbye Golang Microservices, and Hello Rust Monoservice">Goodbye Golang Microservices, and Hello Rust Monoservice</a></p>
<p>After that's done, it will be time for new features! Right now on my list I've got a couple bugfixes, finishing off the intel feed service offering and a few smaller features before I redraw the roadmap a bit. I'm going to be putting out more educational info as well, as well as some FOSS contributions for GrabbrApp integrations.</p>
<p>I will say this will be the place to go for updates on GrabbrApp. I'll keep the blog fairly updated as time goes on and many/most feature announcements will happen here.</p>

Vectors in Rust are fairly similar to arrays in just about every other language.

Rust Vectors

Making My Way Through the Rust Book

Rust's poem_api makes REST API development easy and swagger documentation even easier

Backend API's with Rust's poem_openapi

Creating a DigitalOcean Droplet with Golang

Delaying GrabbrApp's Launch

Full-Stackism and Being a Well-Rounded Developer

Golang Microservices - How to Make a Golang Lambda Function

Pushing the Pico - D3d_Dr0p and Hyperlocal E-Graffiti

There are a lot of languages to pick from. Here is why I think you should pick a couple, and be open to experiment with more

Should you learn multiple programming languages?

Terraform - The Basics

The Gin Framework - REST API's with Golang

Writing is Dead and Meetings are Killing It

CODE MOC

Go Routines - Wicked Fast Concurrency in Golang

Atomic Habits

01_BOOK NOTES MOC

WIP Antifragile - Nassim Taleb

WIP Revolt - Nadav Eyal

Digital Gardens

Junior Developer's Resume

We'd love to believe that we're logical thinkers, but I think there's danger in it

Logical vs. Critical Thinking

Disruption Isn't Just Moving Money Around

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

On making a move away from research blogging and toward just research

The Obsidian Switch

The Tightening Belt

Zettelkasten Method

01_NONTECH MOC

WIP - The Qakbot Takedown

Detection engineering isn't just stopping badness. Unfortunately, false positives and false negatives, as well as mis-detections, make it much more complex

Detection Engineering: False Positives, False Negatives and Mis-Detections

1 November 2023 GrabbrApp Update

Rewrite-It-In-Rust seems like it's become a meme, but I started to see the light pretty quickly

Goodbye Golang Microservices, and Hello Rust Monoservice

26 September - Poking around with the Go compiler

22 September - Initial Irritation

16 October - Awesome SANS talk on Golang RE

WIP - Reverse Engineering GoLang Binaries

01_SECURITY_MOC

01_Research MOC

02_DATA_MOC

29 August 2023 - Check Point Shares Analysis of Qakbot Malware Group - Check Point

13 July 2023 - Avast - Go Malware on the Rise

30 August 2023 - Qakbot Malware Takedown and Defending Forward - John Hammond via Huntress

29 September 2021 - Reversing in action - Golang malware used in the SolarWinds attack

29 August 2023 - Qakbot Malware Disrupted in International Cyber Takedown - US FBI