176 karma · joined July 22, 2010
But wherever there is truly low risk, multiple funding sources will compete, and returns will be driven lower. Companies that fit the profile you describe will generally use debt financing, which is not available to venture startups.
If you're working on a smaller, highly tactical idea then persistence is often a waste of time. Anyone who meets a lot of startups will see many ideas that just aren't going to work. The sooner the founders realize it and move on, the better off they are.
On the other, in any company as big as Zynga there are people who coast along and don't really earn their shares. Zynga isn't trying to take back what's vested, just clamping down on future shares for people who aren't doing a great job, maybe playing a lesser role than they were originally hired for. That seems like a perfectly valid thing to do -- in fact it's only fair to the employees who are pulling their weight.
BTW if you want nosql-style schema flexibility within an RDBMS, then a simple solution is to store XML or JSON in in a character blob. Keep the fields you need to search over in separate indexed fields. If you make incompatible version changes, then add a new json/xml field.
The main problem is that cheap medications are often out of date or have improper dosage. Also, people stop taking medication when they feel better, but before the parasite is eliminated. The result is resistant parasites survive the treatment, and then spread.
We have maybe a decade of artemisin usability in the hottest areas. Could be more or less depending on how efficient public health practices are. But no way is it a permanent cure.
Natural immunity to malaria is often limited to the local variant -- go a couple hundred miles, and you have no resistance at all. Vaccines rely on the body's natural immune system, so it is nearly impossible to create a single vaccine that is effective across the world.
For this reason, I'm highly skeptical that this initial test result will hold up with broader trials. BTW my spouse is a malariologist, formerly at WHO, and I've been a witness to much of the fight against malaria over the years.
For example, if the company hit a rough patch, it might have been recapitalized, with all current shareholders wiped out. Since your partner had 80% of the shares, and plenty of cash, he could have easily pulled this off.
Depending on what state you're in, you may no longer have any right to seek redress. If your partner knows what he's doing (or has a lawyer who does), the best you're going to get is a small amount of cash to go away. And if you guys are on bad terms, you may not even get that.
The fundamental problem is lack of competition. When there are only a small number of providers, none of them have an incentive to slash the price of texts to a more reasonable level.
If you start a startup, you'll probably fail. Most startups fail. It's the nature of the business. But it's not necessarily a mistake to try something that has a 90% chance of failing, if you can afford the risk. Failing at 40, when you have a family to support, could be serious. But if you fail at 22, so what? If you try to start a startup right out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Which, if you think about it, is roughly what you hope to get from a graduate program.
He seems critical of his customers and dismissive of his competitors, both of which are big red flags.
If you have very predictable needs, and already have dedicated servers running, then there's no clear reason to change.
One grizzled editor chain smoked cigarettes through our interview (you could do that in the office back then). He listened to me describe why I wanted to write. Then he leaned back, blew a cloud of smoke, and told me:
"You kid come into this business thinking you're going to make a difference. Pretty soon you find out, you're just filling the space around the ads."
He was right, actually. So I got into high tech instead, and have been doing startups ever since. Not sure I always make a difference, but at least I'm trying, instead of just filling space...
But YC is clearly going to do spectacularly well. They deserve big congrats for what they've accomplished.
Make it clear what your passion is, what you've learned already, and what you want to learn. Then apply everywhere that looks good. You'll do fine.
And we won't complain if they also get some engineers with world-class expertise in network attached storage.
On your broader question -- why not native 64-bit app -- I think the key reasons are 1) level of effort, 2) performance and 3) plugins:
1) Supporting 64-bits means a lot more than recompiling. It will need to be a separate development effort, probably doubling the resources required for the project.
2) 64-bit pointers are twice as large, and 64-bit programs take up more memory. Due to caching, this also means that the programs run slower.
3) All the plugin partners face similar problems of effort and performance. A 64-bit browser will necessarily ship with a lot fewer plugins than a 32-bit version.
Right now, a browser maker looking at a 64-bit version sees a lot of effort for a slower version with less functionality. And that just doesn't seem like a good bet.
Overall, EC2 is a very impressive offering, for which I commend Amazon. At times, I've been so frustrated that I'm ready to switch, but they fix things just quickly enough that I never quite get around to it. In the end, I'm willing to accept that what they're doing is hard, there will be mistakes, and it's worth suffering to get the flexibility and cost-effectiveness that EC2 offers.
Adding up the profits until it equals the sum of your investment is an extremely crude measure, because it leaves out what you most care about -- how much the company is worth at the end of the initial time period.
>Let's do some simple math here, folks. Assume you bought an entire company that had $100 in revenues and 50% profit margins. And that you paid just two times revenues, or $200. It would still take you four years to break even with revenues holding steady.
The company he describes is in fact a fabulous buy, with a PE of 4. His mistake is to completely discount cash flows past the fourth year. You still own the company after four years, so unless it is set to self destruct, it is worth a lot more than the $200 you paid for it. A non-bubble growth tech company with those margins would typically be worth $1000+.
He's also ignorant of history. Great companies like Google and Microsoft had very high PEs in their early years, which many investors balked at. Those who could stomach the valuations made a mint.
Another way to value companies is to look at comparables that aren't affected by the bubble. For example, Yahoo has been bouncing between 20 and 30 billion -- a valuation that has held up for years. Facebook has similar revenue potential but much better execution and vastly higher growth. Valuing it at 2-3x Yahoo looks reasonable in my book.
He may well be right that some of the companies in the article are overpriced, but he makes a very weak case for his argument.
It's even more impressive that YC helps founders succeed by rejecting their applications, and motivating them to try harder.
The latter is a truly scalable business model. Maybe YC should get a chunk of stock simply for letting companies apply to the program...
Another thing to watch out for is for unfilled seats that can change the board dynamic. If multiple parties have to agree on the board seat, then an intransigent investor can maintain an advantage by never approving any candidates. Don't put off filling these seats! Ideally, you should agree on a specific person before you sign the docs.
I suggest a "flame" flag for every comment, which can roll up into a user's rating as a "flamer." The flag would only be available to HNers with a low flame rating themselves and a significant history of comments.
By default, no one would see comments that have high flame ratings. Users that accumulated flame points would get a time out from commenting, leading to a permanent ban if the behavior doesn't stop.
The site is wonderfully minimal at the moment, but using a UI graphic such as a fireball or flame could draw attention to the importance of civility.