SandersAK

yeah i think the issue isn't with the decision, it's more understanding the context around why that may or may not be an option.

Not 100% analogous to addiction treatement but think about how "just quit" isn't really a great way to start that conversation for many addicts. Obviously if they could, they would.

With that said, if there was an open and receptive community that worked to understand the situations of all these people (ie, their financial / family / mental situation), then you create a space where people feel empowered to "just quit"

But creating that space is where actual progress can happen.

I honestly really do understand your situation in many ways. I know what it's like to fight for something better, and to feel like you're enduring all the stress you can because you think it's worth it. It's really hard to hear people who don't seem to have this mentality and to see them suffer. "IF only they'd just make this one choice" I find myself saying. But that's not the whole story, and I know that now after a lot of failure to reflect on my own situation.

I don't think you should throw that passion away. But I do think, as much as you have learned and gained by getting yourself to a good place in your own way, there's a lot you can gain from pushing yourself to see other angles.

Empathy is like a muscle - the more you use it, the stronger and more effective it becomes.

and I mean yeah, I think everyone has a lot to figure out, no matter their age!

You're creating a scenario where there are two options. In my experience that is almost never the case. Sometimes you have many options, sometimes you have none.

You're making assumptions about how family comes to be, who you would define as family, and making assumptions on what a person's obligations to family should be.

In all these cases, you're positing a sort of hegemonic perfect person who has total free agency and no history to contend with.

If that's truly you, that's fantastic. Cherish and enjoy that liberation. But just remember that to have that agency, millions of people have struggled without such things.

I think it's great that you've made a decision about whether or not to have kids in a purposeful manner. Many people don't, and I wish they would. I have a kid and I wouldn't trade him for any fancy startup or company founding in the world. Different strokes.

But it also leads me to believe (and correct me if i'm wrong) you've never had to, or thought to, work and live to serve and enable the lives of another.

I think that's totally ok. I'm not judging you there. But I am asking you to consider that others find value in that path, and in our current society, that path is often derided and consider "unsuccessful."

It's a little disheartening that people on HN fail to understand that some people don't have a true choice sometimes when it comes to a job.

I'm not posting this to shame anyone, but I would ask that before you say things like "well just quit" or "it's on them when they made the choice," consider that not everyone in the world can make the same choices you can, or have the resources, or know-how to make those choices.

Self-reliance is obviously important, and something that our community values, but I think being empathetic to those who either cannot or don't know how is crucial to creating products and services that add value in the world.

good luck out there, y'all.

Honestly this is a very strange metric for me. It doesn't account for things like the frothy conditions of 2011 - 2014 where people were raising money like crazy.

It doesn't speak to trends where investors were actively looking to nourish alternatives to YC since there was a perceived monopoly on investor mindshare at YC.

It doesn't explain what the series A cumulation means for investors, nor startups, nor the incubators themselves.

If this article is for investors, wouldn't it better to understand and compare the total valuations of startups from each accelerator (by batch would be best.)

If this is for startups, wouldn't it be best to compare percent of batch that went on to raise series A?

edit: I don't mean to suggest that the data isn't interesting. But given the extremely human nature of startup investing, I think it's worth speaking to qualitative factors when trying to bring insight.

saved you a click: "We did nothing to promote the bot. No ads. No paid promotions. No splashy launch. We just put it in Kik’s Bot Shop and waited. (Full disclaimer: We work for Kik, and Roll has been our side project.)"

Great sales people have great networks. They know how to maintain those networks to discover more clients. They also understand timing and "pain" from potential accounts. One of the best sales people I ever met started working for a 4 person startup because he knew he could bring in about $1mil in sales in the first year. He ended up doing $1.9mil in sales that year.

All this talk of "who to hire first" is totally case-sensitive, but if you're dealing with entreprise or high-value things, a great sales person can make your company.

The lack of flair and ingenuity in youth soccer in America is why our teams are so bad. We drill kids in what we think are core fundamentals because we treat soccer like US Football instead of the fluid dynamic game that it is.

In one case you're talking about a person and their personal actions in a personal situation.

In another, you're talking about a person who is tasked with carrying out orders and directives to do what they think is in the best interest of the country regardless of their personal feelings about the decision.

I'm not saying I condone what our government has done, but I do understand that people in government are carrying out the will of an elected governance, even if they make stupid decisions in doing so.

There's nothing binary about a nuclear attack. Ask any survivor or family member of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Go get em' Ahab!

This was my thought exactly. In America very little of the big name mayo uses egg as a primary ingredient.

I can see how JustMayo could be a category winner for the whole foods niche tho and that could be really profitable.

same

This article could have been called "here's all the thoughts I have after watching anime for the first time"

I think this is a neat idea but I wish they would explain this in a simple sentence on their site instead of all the mumbojumbo.

Something like

This is a Donor-Advised Fund that is completely free to participate in. Donor-Advised Funds are the best way to give when you have a major liquidity event because: Reason 1 Reason 2 Reason 3

Join a community of people who want to do the same. This is useful for you because: Reason 1 Reason 2 Reason 3

For me, the issue is that intellectuals, futurists, etc constantly downplay the crucial cultural role that cars play as part of our identity in America.

America has really shitty public transit, so on average, you're driving (or being driven) somewhere and seeing other people driving.

America is also a place that encourages and celebrates individuality (for better or worse). At the same time, it's a country of sub-cultures and mixed cultural identities.

So you get people buying cars that they think fit their personal identity and their sub culture.

Prius(i?) were a statement for the conscious movement, but it's damning that Toyota never pushed the bar further and explored (until recently) other cultural identity vehicles as eco-conscious (like Tacomas, imagine how awesome that would be!).

tl;dr - cars are critical to American culture, and not just as practical tools for moving around. Even if you think you buy a prius because you "don't care" - that unto itself is a cultural and style decision you are making to express yourself. Hoodies forever.

side rant: Why Tesla is the only car company to make an electric (or even hybrid) that doesn't look like vanilla boring practical dogshit is beyond me.

I guess I don't know what you mean by functional business. For me they have built an incredibly valuable asset that has grown enormously and will probably continue to do so.

Amazon is another company with opportunities to make profit, but they traditionally haven't done much of that, eschewing that for just growing value.

In the years when Amazon was not turning profit, would you consider it a non-functional business?

I actually disagree that Discord doesn't have a functional business. They have massive growth and many many top teams, streamer personalities etc use their services.

If Discord becomes a critical component to the content creators of the whole gaming ecosystem, there's going to be plenty of revenue opportunities.

Think of Discord as like TeamSpeak and Slack combined. Streamers use Discord as a place to house their viewers and community when they're not streaming. Having a TwitchChat outside of TwitchChat is actually pretty powerful for streamers and a potentially crucial part of their setup. Twitch needed to invest in something like that.

Discord is starting to reveal their ability to pull streamer communities off of Twitch.

This is most likely a bulkhead acquisition to anticipate the growth of Discord and to try and keep those same streamers in the fold.

Twitch gets the massive community reach of Curse, plus they also get all the current momentum Curse has to be a Discord competitor.

It's a fantastic acquisition, if a little defensive.

I get that parts of NYC have been affordable at different times, but there are parts that get gentrified and taken advantage of by a very specific class of people (primarily white middle class) who use the depressed value of the area to have more space and time to do arts and culture stuff.

I lived in Sunset Park for many many years and saw artists moving into the studios down by the docks. They came from SOHO, DUMBO, and Williamsburg. In 25 years, they will move somewhere else.

Many New York artists talk about NYC as if it was cheap but it is simply not true. There is no other place in the US that concentrates so many different types of people. Patti Smith, David Byrne etc all benefitted from there being billionaires, millionaires, celebrities, thespians, high profile doctors, lawyers, and more than a century of civic dedication to arts and culture. There is a shared communal love and support for creative things in NY. Like all cities that grow, gentrification happens. But if you think the LES or east village was cheap in the 80s it's because you were white and middle class. When this author speaks he's talking to white middle class liberal arts types (like me!) and bemoaning the fact that getting direct access to world class culture isn't "cheap anymore" when the reality is if you want that in NY now you move to crown heights. And there will be some myopic look back in 25 years saying the same shit about that place too.

Ask Patti Smith what happened to the Puerto Ricans who lived there before her. Was it too cheap for them?

Are oranges more flavorful than apples?

"and we're gonna hire the best people, let me tell you about hiring, and by the way, also firing. we're gonna fire the worst people and we're gonna replace em with the best people, 10x people. You know, I have a friend who I hired, who's 10x, and let me just say he's more than 10x, he's maybe 100x, so right there, you can fire 99 people. And this friend he knows firing, let me tell you. he knows it more than anyone else I know. And that's why firing is so important."

Yeah i mean, this is basically why we switch to Slack. Right as we were deciding if we should start investing more money and time into Hipchat.

I think people are scared of the very real financial implications this will have on London. What interest does the EU have now in keeping the key finance entities in London now that Britain has made clear its not interested in controlling or actively participating in The EUROPE economy.

I just hope they find that last vending machine that has Mingus Dew...

This is awesome. I think so much study goes into anger management and trying to understand why we get angry, but it seems that other emotional outburts are often shunned in discussion.

As someone who comes from a family of people (read: Chinese and Southern) who house an intense stigma around crying, it's been a struggle for me to better empathize and understand crying for other people.

I think the author nailed the use of personal logging here - it's not about extrapolating onto others, it's just another form of self-reflection.

Yeah, I'm definitely not in disagreement. I just think often in tech we are so excited for a future that we see is potentially very close that we overlook some of the ramifications of those actions.

It's not that I don't want a world where automation makes shit-work go away, it's that I want that future to be empathetic to, and understand that it needs to incorporate a solution for those who don't have the power to change their situation. Otherwise, what's the point?

I can't project what your life situation is like, but it would be very very hard to find someone who could make a statement like this who has ever done or known someone who depended on a job like this to survive.