SandersAK

This idea that "truth" and "facts" was ever a profitable business comes from a very naive place. With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit.

Newspapers historically were not driven by facts but by classified ads and cartoons.

TV, even in its golden age, was always about advertisement. And as much as we pine for the days of Walter Cronkite etc, the truth perpetuated in media has always skewed white (fear of the minorities), status quo (fear of a revolution), and capitalist (fear of commies).

Tweet storms and pontifications like these are grand standing but devoid of any real grounded perspective. Just because you're 40 now, and realizing that there's a bunch of bad shit that you don't have control over (and maybe even contributed to) doesn't mean that "tech" or "media" has "gone away from truth."

Every 10 years someone posts this. The message it sends is this "I don't actually take time to understand the unique situation of being a kid in today's economy and culture. I do not acknowledge that the experience is rapidly changing. I am uncomfortable with this new world and would rather put the blame on kids being 'coddled' without any data to suggest this than confront my own lack of understanding."

All the people in this thread arguing about the "right" of water should sign a waiver of liability, then abstain from water for a few days to show how it's not a right, but just "a nice thing someone should have."

I don't understand why this article is on HN nor how it fits into the HN mod guidelines.

I dunno if this is satire but it's pretty great. I for one, am ready to invest in DoorDash for prosthetics and Greenshoe (cash for your every day needs) for commercial banks.

Is this really an article about polymaths that doesn't mention a single Islamic polymath?

The whole concept of polymath is not that you're a genius or even knowledgable about a bunch of stuff. In the Islamic tradition the concept insists that you can't understand math without knowing poetry. Can't understand medicine without understanding geometry etc. All elements of human interpretation and expression are linked and help you explore the other.

Here's a list of polymaths that the article didn't mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

This is awesome! I remember when B Corps came out and I was stoked to look into it but it just seemed really complicated so we bailed.

One question - have you talked to any VCs about b corps and what apprehensions (if any) they might have?

Resources aren't actually that scarce and haven't been for quite a while. The Breadbasket of America can feed everyone. Population growth isn't really a scarcity problem, it's an organizational and structural one. Unless you think we're at max efficiency!

Please educated me!

Err, I'm none of the things you described. I'm not speaking for you, but myself :)

Everyone is taught to compete. But I don't think competition is the sole driving force, or even the major one that makes sense for humans. Collaboration seems to always be better for people than conflict.

There are no hard rules for raising money. Let's say Parsley took $40m but at like $200m post - that means it's about 20% of the company.

Depending on how that deal is structured - liquidation preferences, board seats, voting rights of the preferred stock (which the vcs would get), you're probably giving up some control here.

It also raises expectations that, well you got $40m to deploy, go out and do it and eat up all that market share.

This assumes that your product / market fit is not only super bulletproof and solid, but also that you've assessed every type of market up to your valuation (ie $200m worth of value) and have a go-to-market ready for each.

Ok let's say you even had some semblance of that - deploying GTM on each vertical at that speed puts pressure on the sales team to close aggressive deals. This means that some deals might not be 100% fit but maybe 90% fit. Well if you're expected to grow at 10x what you initially thought, those 10% inefficiencies start to stack.

Ok NOW product team is starting to feel the heat to accommodate for all these not 100% perfect fit deals. So what do you do? Start hiring people on product to try and keep up.

The problem with rapidly scaling growth, esp in enterprise, is that inefficiencies and edge case situations compound significantly at scale.

In frothy markets like right now, it's up to the founders to figure out the right amount of money because not enough can kill you but so can too much.

I can't think of a better place to legitimize your argument than alt-right YouTube.

I don't remember but between hunters, hippies, logging, blm, and forest service it can be a real bureaucratic nightmare. Irony is that they actually all want the same thing.

They do have conferences. I think the bigger issue is that there isn't really a good budget for this stuff.

Most of the budget goes to handling fires that are really out of control, and there's more and more of those every year.

If you doubled the budget, hired fuels teams with scientists at the head of the teams (instead of fire fighters) and applied that budget to thinning and controlled burns, you'd probably have much safer more defensible forests areas.

Also, there's a huge gray area around what fires to prioritize and when to fight them. A good example of "letting it rip" and "let them log" was the Egley complex fire in 2007 (one of my last fires!): https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2009/nf...

Some forests are self-regulating when it comes to fire. Some forests are not. What defines forest is actually pretty complicated, even for Federal and state agencies. Controlled burns work in conjunction with thinning practices and bone-piling (stacking big burns away from other areas).

The root of the problem has been and continue to be that structurally we separate "fuels" and "prevention" teams in the forest service. Where Fuels deals with assessing when and how to burn, and Prevention operationalizes it and also does fire fighting.

Lastly, fire management suffers from a lack of talent and shared learning as fire career paths involve people moving to different regions which are geographically incredibly diverse. You don't fight fire in the east side of Oregon like you do in Florida.

The lack of cohesion, mixed with a serious lack of funding, and a lot of common misconceptions publicly leads to a mishmash of fire management across the country.

source - was a firefighter. left because of all these issues.

I think so! So does Justin Kan apparently ;)

Priced equity means you're actually transferring ownership of shares. It's going to involve a lot of diligence and negotiation around rights, etc.

The short answer: lawyer time.

thank you for bringing your story forward.

Er no that's not often true. I guess it depends on what you mean by "better" and "small" exit but often an acquihire or low cash exit isn't better than if the company ipos. Consider liquidation preferences, ratchets etc.

Do they also have a bridge they want to sell me?

This is a textbook version of "what you eat don't make me shit."

the delay is about 30 seconds. and yes. people text and talk about esports all the time. it's the fastest growing market of entertainment for men 18-35.

>Point being that everyone has an opportunity to work hard, put themselves in the right situations and eventually earn the right to be in a "place of privilege".

I don't actually think that's true. And the fact that the vast majority of tech investors and wealthy elites are white men is proof of that.

Either it is that everyone else doesn't "work hard and put themselves in the right situations," or there's some other factor (like prejudice and extreme privilege) that is creating barriers for others.

I'm not arguing that white men that have "made it" haven't worked hard to go that last mile, I'm just pointing out that these types of blog posts often fail acknowledge that their starting point is far ahead of everyone else. That lack of awareness is what contributes to the myth of "here's how to do this, and it's a meritocratic process."

I wish articles like this would start with "hey, i come from a place of extreme privilege, and assuming you're in the same boat, here's what i did and it worked out ok for me given the amount of resources i had to take the risks i did."

Instead, it gets treated as a sort of recipe which further exacerbates the problem of selection bias and network bias.

A lot of this type of thinking is shielded by the immense wealth and agency that the kingmakers have. But the reality is that these types of networks are fraught with horse-traders and backchannel power exchanges.

I'm not hating though, I understand the game plays out like that. But if you're not cultivating a community of real people connected to you, you'll get chewed up.

Now that is a thing I haven't heard since my grandpa was still alive.

I respect Rollins but a more useful and informative interview for HN and entrepreneurs would've been Ian Mackaye. That guys is a business legend for me.

Imagine spending $49,000 on this boxhouse, and then seeing this 72 airstream go for $35k: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/tro/6036307617.html

I thought this would be about how we have prioritized the advancement of technology for the few over the welfare of the rest.

Maybe it should be titled "Still asking the wrong questions"

Privilege is king.

A role model for us all.