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2arrs2ells

2,153 karma · joined August 16, 2010

interested in:

   * education
   * edtech
   * data problems
Cofounder of Clever (YC S12) https://clever.com

@bytingtheapple

Email = hn username @ gmail.com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/dcc; my proof: https://keybase.io/dcc/sigs/wfL5WJH6FdQ-6UfpzKeBmoAHoeIHxFkuXOkGHmzPTFg ]

YC Badge: 0x05b3b86ad8d43a45b0ff1b3d4612861679cd22fc

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2arrs2ells··on Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
Check out https://www.modernbloom.org/
2arrs2ells··on Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12
When AI can handle the content, teachers get to focus on motivation, values and emotions.

I started my career as a teacher and spent > 8 hrs a day lesson planning, delivering content & grading. If I could have handed that off to a great program like Bloomy, I could have built far better relationships & my students would have been so much better off.

2arrs2ells··on Ask HN: How to solve the cold start problem for a two-sided marketplace?
+1 to the book, it's great
2arrs2ells··on We stopped roadmap work for a week and fixed bugs
This is a great example... except I think the right answer to "what exactly would you do in this case?" doesn't support your argument.

I'd document that mobile Opera with Javascript disabled is an unsupported config, and ask a team to make a help center doc asking mobile Opera users to enable JS.

2arrs2ells··on The National Design Studio is a scam
This has changed - at least for me, in the US, Airbnb shows all-in pricing.
2arrs2ells··on How to start a school with your friends
You’re spot on. Bootstrapping a reputation is really hard (and expensive), and the very painful accreditation process makes it much harder (need students to get accredited, can’t offer degree to students without accreditation).

Two good colleges who’ve overcome the challenges recently are Olin (engineering school in Boston) and Minerva (globally distributed college).

2arrs2ells··on New iMac with M4
I bought an M2 iMac for my parents. It’ll last at least five years for them - likely closer to 10. At that point, I’m happy to recycle or donate it and get them a new iMac - likely with some major updates (form factor? Display? Etc?) that wouldn’t get with a RAM / CPU upgrade.

Spending ~$150-$300/year for them to have an easy to use & fast computer feels very worth it for me.

All that said - I would love for the machine to be upgradeable as well! Just explaining why it’s not a dealbreaker.

2arrs2ells··on Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points
Congrats on the launch! Curious how you fit into the landscape of award travel tolls like point.me and seats.aero. What are you doing differently & who’s your target user?
2arrs2ells··on Why is it so hard to build an airport?
This is Coase's Theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem
2arrs2ells··on Claude 2.1
Have heard similar things from friends, who were then able to get access via AWS
2arrs2ells··on Aardvark'd: The Fog Creek documentary, 18 years later
The chili & other crockpot recipes were still going strong in S12 ("crockpots scale linearly with number of startups") - but pg was no longer cooking.

Batch dinners are catered these days and have been for a while.

2arrs2ells··on Procreate Dreams
If you back up the iPad locally, will it back up Procreate data? I would expect it to...
2arrs2ells··on Show HN: Litnerd (YC S21) – Kids Book Club Meets Gaming
I remember loving the "Wishbone" shows on PBS as a kid... this reminds me of that but 100x better (kids are reading along with the movie, not having the movie replace the book). Love it!
2arrs2ells··on Jessica Livingston (2015)
This podcast is wonderful – I'd recommend starting with the Paul Graham espisode.
2arrs2ells··on Someone stole my car and now I own hundreds of vinyl records
All sorts of things. Therapy. Psilocibin. A girlfriend (now wife) with a wildly different worldview than my own. Retreats. Meditation. ‘Conscious community”. Workshops. Yoga.
2arrs2ells··on Someone stole my car and now I own hundreds of vinyl records
The best part is you can. Not saying it’s easy (and certainly far easier for some people than others), but how you react to events is one of the very few things that’s actually under your control.

Some of the most useful self-work I’ve done, for sure.

2arrs2ells··on Bloated college administration is making education unaffordable
For Harvard, that's not true – financial aid covers the cost of room and board.

(There is a student contribution of ~$3,000/year, which is fairly easily met through on campus jobs).

2arrs2ells··on Product Market Fit
Making an app you spend significant time in every day more useful & powerful can be a path to PMF (see Slack vs Hipchat, for example)

I’d argue Superhuman does have PMF - just in a smaller market of email power users.

2arrs2ells··on Product Market Fit
Your argument is a “unique insight” isn’t enough to provide an enduring competitive advantage (or “moat”). But that’s not what the OP is talking about.

A unique insight (and great timing / market) is often enough to get to early PMF (and - like you mention - to Series A).

2arrs2ells··on What’s going on with security at PayPal?
I’ve seen sim swaps to get desirable instagram handles. I have to believe it’s easier to extract money from a PayPal account takeover than insta.
2arrs2ells··on What’s going on with security at PayPal?
FB engineer explained they always rolled features out to New Zealand first - similar user behavior as the US but outside the eye of the tech press & smaller market (so less risk).
2arrs2ells··on Life is not short
<nit> The philosophy behind hospice is that you are *not* hooked up to all sorts of medical equipment. Rather, you only receive the minimal treatment needed to make yourself comfortable as you let your illness run its course. </nit>
2arrs2ells··on How San Francisco became a failed city
It’s not that bad. It’s normal to have your car window broken overnight or to see people shoplifting openly at the pharmacy or grocery store. In certain parts of the city there’s fairly open drug dealing & use. And the homelessness is heartbreaking.

Violent crime / theft happens - but not at a noticeably different rate than other large cities.

Still the most beautiful city in the US (imo) and the natural beauty 30 min outside the city in any direction is insane.

2arrs2ells··on Tiger Global, hit by $17B in hedge fund losses, has nearly depleted its VC fund
That looks like holdings for their public equities fund. The article is about their venture fund, a separate vehicle.
2arrs2ells··on Show HN: Slow Social, a social network built for friends, not influencers
At Clever we include this in our privacy policy. It caused no problems when we sold our company last year:

> In the event of a change of control: If we sell, divest or transfer our business, we will not transfer personal information of our customers unless the new owner intends to maintain and provide the Service as a going concern, and provided that the new owner has agreed to data privacy standards no less stringent than our own. In such case we will provide you with notice and an opportunity to opt-out of the transfer of personally identifiable Student Data.

2arrs2ells··on Lapsus$ and SolarWinds hackers both use the same old trick to bypass MFA
This might be the individuals clicking to request edit access on the Doc: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6239515?hl=en&co=GENI...
2arrs2ells··on New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars
Gas powered leaf blowers are horrible - noise and air pollution. Electric ones aren't bad.
2arrs2ells··on I Quit Shopify After Five Months
I think you missed the “wasn’t” in this sentence:

> it wasn't based on my answers to soft questions

2arrs2ells··on Skillsoft Buys Codecademy for $525M
Congratulations, Zach! Codecademy was a huge inspiration for me and a whole generation of edtech founders. It’s been amazing watching the company transition from a wildly viral consumer company to an enterprise powerhouse.
2arrs2ells··on Ask HN: I’d like to hire a personal/executive assistant – any tips or advice?
“Here’s the link to my calendly. If you don’t see anything that works in the next week or so, just send me over a few times that would work for you & I can reshuffle things to make one of them work.”
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