> it’s difficult to look at people like Graham — people who aren’t as bright as they think they are
Graham’s (alleged) arrogance about his brightness isn’t really the issue here. Let’s face it, he is bright. That’s not what is causing this boredom/dismay, though.
The issue is that somehow the rest of us became entranced by the “cult of Graham” and his thinking about startups/founders, and collectively we made his way into the way, ostracizing those that lived their life outside the idealized startup paradigm that Graham crafted. Creation of this dismay isn’t on him alone, it’s on all of us.
We should also be honest how much of it is due to HN itself (as in the existence of the website). Before it I never associated start-ups with hacking, if anything, due to free software ideology, I always thought it flirted with anti-capitalism really. But today, the hacker world seems to be centred in sf and it's likely due to reddit and HN.
Sugar Free Dark Almonds from Sees[1] has to be one of my favorite chocolate products of all time. Friends and family always gobble them up at my place so I sometimes buy them as little gifts. I normally abhor anything “sugar free” because substitutes like aspartame taste absolutely disgusting to me, but this uses maltitol, which is a sugar alcohol that achieves a more subtle sweetness with none of the gross fake sugar taste, and since I like my chocolate on the less sweet side, it strikes a perfect balance for me. Maltitol is a mild laxative, but I’m pretty sure you would have to eat multiple boxes to feel anything.
To me, the real issue is that content in apps is temporal with a lack of visit history, unreproducible feeds, and a lack of deep links. This means I often lose my place when a momentary switch to another app causes a refresh on the first app. Even worse, sometimes switches are accidental from a push notification popping right before I click something else at the top of my screen. Websites have this unreproducible feed problem, too, but it generally isn’t as pronounced.
Isn’t this because everything today is designed to be mobile first? That means hiding everything in endless context menus, testing how deep down the rabbit hole your user can go. I long for the days when apps for work had a single page with tons and tons of settings, filling nearly every pixel. I miss that because once you got comfortable you can fly through whatever you’re doing, like a bartender slapping their fingers over the POS machine at Mach 2.
> Isn’t this because everything today is designed to be mobile first?
Yes, that's an enormous part of the problem. Mobile and desktop are two entirely different worlds, and you can't have one interface that can deal with both and do so well.
I think it's a disgrace that desktop UI has been made worse because of the existence of smartphones and tablets.
I was in the highschool computer lab, working on a website for the school IT administrator. She wanted me to include a patterned background, blinking marquees, GIFs, the whole nine yards. Another student was working on the project with me, sitting next to me. We were both facing the window, away from the door. The admin left the room. I told my fellow student these choices were extremely tacky, and I questioned the life choices that led her to the point of thinking this looked good.
Turns out she came back into the room and was behind me the whole time. Boy, did I feel like a jerk. I apologized.
This argument falls into the trap of comparing the average home to the stock market. If I was primarily concerned with returns, I would never buy the average home. That would be a home in the middle of nowhere. I would only buy in major metro areas with diverse, heavily entrenched industries and a strong desire among people all over the world to live there (places like NYC). If you look at the numbers in those places, the story is very different. On home value alone, you see appreciation of 8-12% per year on average since 1990 (despite at least three recessions during that time). Covid will impact the desire to live in major metro areas but not enough to seriously impact these returns.
If I wasn't concerned primarily with returns and instead on just saving money over renting, the math is still way better in any of the top metros in the United States so long as you plan to reside there for 5+ years. And if you aren't living in a major metro, you still need to find a place to live, so you might as well make 1% annually on that money as opposed to just giving it away in the form of rent.
In my experience, renting makes sense when you need to pay for flexibility, because you aren't sure if you will stay rooted in one place for 5+ years. Otherwise, buying for many people is a win financially and has been for decades.
Did anyone else read this title as “NYC Pilot (that flies planes) Tries Mental Health Responders in Place of Police” instead of “NYC Tries Mental Health Responders in Place of Police”?
Yes, it can help you to issue shares to a certain extent. (I am currently waiting for my signed forms to be processed so have only read, not done that part.) You May be interested in this guide [0]. It discusses some of the considerations that go into the default vesting plan.
In Austin, DataFoundry is by far the best. It was overkill for me and went with something off the beaten path but they have an amazing facility.
I wound up at a facility run by a fiber vendor because they'd sell me a fixed 250mbps pipe for the same price that a data center would sell me 20mbps pipe that bursts to 1gbps. It only works for me because of the nature of my business -- most people would be better off somewhere else.
Choosing a co-loc facility is complicated. My recommendation is to tour and get quotes from 3-5 vendors in your area before choosing anyone. Ideally, take someone who has done it before.
Selling private shares / options on the secondary market is near impossible if the company isn’t on something like SecondMarket. Right of First Refusal, Co-sale Agreements, and the challenges of sharing information with a 3rd party make this difficult. That said, has anyone succeeded and written about their experience?
If company is valuable enough smart investors will flock around the shareholders who even have very minor ownership. I was sceptical at first but then saw it happening with a profitable company I was following. I thought people were stuck with their shares, but since the company was profitable it attracted investors looking for better returns than public stocks.
De-risking is something a company will go through progressively.
1. An idea? Risky.
2. + funding? Less risky.
3. + proof of concept? More less risky.
4. + an MVP? Less risky still.
5. + paying customers and metrics? Less risky again.
Right. And when there is a bunch of illiquid stock around but the risk has reduced enough people will sniff around for (or create) a secondary market. Usually well past your #5 though.
If the risk is too high they are all happy to let you carry it for a while.
If the risk is low then the rewards will be low as well. I think the problem that VCs face in seed is the deluge of pitches. In A rounds, things have settled down.
With illiquid/unlisted stocks it is not so much about risks but transaction costs. It requires much more work to purchase the stocks, and often you need also lawyers.
From stock market investors seem to happy to be paying a lot for companies that are unprofitable or turn out only small profit. For unlisted companies, if you are willing to scout around you will find profitable companies where employees are holding stocks that they don't really see much value in - or they would prefer to have cash in hand instead of the future dividends. For smart investors who are willing to do a little bit of snooping, leg work and negotiations, these situations can be sometimes quite fruitful.
We are specifically talking about secondary markets, though. They only really happen I think when the risk is fairly low but people are illiquid, or occasionally when the hype is insane.
This is a separate thing from the natural evolution of risk over startup life. That happens to every one. Viable secondary markets letting you take some money out early don't happen in most cases.
Yes, you're right and I wasn't following that. I haven't had experience with secondary markets. I had to wait a few years for an IPO and then there's the lockup.
> Yes, you're right and I wasn't following that. I haven't had experience with secondary markets. I had to wait a few years for an IPO and then there's the lockup.
If the company is valuable and you want cash out fast, then you can just send messages directly to investors, if you have any contacts. There are always some investors looking for that kind of deals. However it has to be significant value, like 100k +. And naturally the price will suck, if IPO is in the horizin it makes almost always sense to wait.
It’s hard in theory, easy in practice if your options are worth millions. I have friends who did it. I don’t know too many of the details but they made some kind of contract with a financial firm to sell the upside from the stock without actually “selling” the stock. The fees are not terrible, like single digit percentages. These firms don’t want to talk to you if you have a small amount of equity because it isn’t worth the overhead to make a transaction.
I should clarify that it is certainly doable for widely recognized companies, but it’s very difficult for the majority of startups that no one has heard of even if they have some success. Also, getting on these marketplaces also goes much better with company cooperation and many startups don’t have the time or willingness.
An alternative way of looking at it: whether or not face to face is important for the specifics of the job, it might be important for emotional connection between humans, fulfilling a common human desire to connect with peers and be happy on the job and _outside_ the job. In other words, we might want to be around peers for social (non-job) reasons.
Exactly. I wouldn't even say that's a non-job function - I've worked at companies with low morale and social cohesion before, and it directly impacted the quality and amount of work that people could do. We're smart primates that are still heavily dependent on social cues and a feeling of inclusion.
If only we had the knowledge to plan cities so that it's possible to live near where you work. Perhaps it sounds crazy, but we could even stack dwelling units on top of one another.
Seriously though: It'd be great if apartments were better sound-proofed. My only gripe with apartment living was inadequate privacy and being woken up at 3 AM by a lead-footed upstairs resident.
In places like Europe where more people live in them, they tend to do a bit better job of privacy, because they're not just 'cheap housing for people without the means to live in a "real" house'.
Yeah right, next thing you'll be telling me there's a better way to move large quantities of people than each one sitting on the highway in their own personal metal box
This is a really good argument. It is the same reason why authors instead of staying in their homes by themselves writing all day, will go to public places to be around other authors/people. We are social animals.
I agree wholeheartedly. This is important and will provide balance. That said, often people have some sort of passion, their job might be a manifestation of that passion, and they want to connect with peers.
Graham’s (alleged) arrogance about his brightness isn’t really the issue here. Let’s face it, he is bright. That’s not what is causing this boredom/dismay, though.
The issue is that somehow the rest of us became entranced by the “cult of Graham” and his thinking about startups/founders, and collectively we made his way into the way, ostracizing those that lived their life outside the idealized startup paradigm that Graham crafted. Creation of this dismay isn’t on him alone, it’s on all of us.