abcampbell

Well, it raises the question of whether it's legitimate to ask applicants to list the equity stakes in the first place.

Seems like YC is asking people to hold to that structure when it is in their interests, but ignore it when it is not.

To be clear, don't think this is terrible. Just, if you are going to claim the split means nothing, then why force applicants to create one in the first place?

If memory serves, Google did this with Word2Vec as well, which is a bit sketchy.

If you open source something, there should be a reasonable expectation that it is contributed to the commons. Otherwise a lot of people will build off your stuff, which you can then turn around, file a patent, and claim infringement.

Not a lawyer, but seems like a problem.

This will happen to Google. Sooner than people realize.

(From another story on the front page) http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/general-news/20160513/uc-st...

"Every quarter, hedge funds and institutional investors managing more than $100 million are required by law to reveal their US long positions to the SEC. These 13f filings include only long US stock positions, ADRs, equity options and notes."

http://www.octafinance.com/13f-filings/#ixzz48YTGbIeH

Good idea, but search isn't great

The question isn't 'are profits too high?' But rather 'where do profits come from?'

The question isn't are profits too high...but rather, where do profits come from?

It's not sentiment that connects public to private markets, it's the literal capital pipes that allocate money across assets.

When people realize there is a risk they will not get liquidity for their investment, they try to sell to get cash.

That sale sucks liquidity out of the market, the dollars have to come from somewhere.

Which is why what's going on in energy markets, or China, or Europe, matter for startups.

Startups are by their nature consumers of liquidity, as founders sell equity to get cash to build stuff.

When other assets (public market stocks, energy bonds, CNY, European bank stocks) are being sold to get cash, this competes for those dollars.

When there is enough selling that asset prices fall, then assets that compete for the same capital/liquidity also have to reprice lower to attract capital. Not to mention investors realize they are literally less wealthy than they thought yesterday.

It's not something as ephemeral as sentiment , it literally works like a machine. I call it #theCapitalCycle

https://medium.com/@alexanderbcampbell/a-turn-in-thecapitalc...

Well, first, I would try to understand what "AI" you are talking about and why you have so much confidence it will be big.

It's a pretty broad category, and a lot of it is (still) very far from commercialization.

It's almost like asking about "the Internet" in 1992.

Here are some categories that may help to dive into...

-Computer Vision

-Natural Language Processing

AClustering vs classification in machine learning

-Neural nets (convolutional, recursive, hyerparameters and optimizTion techniques)

Read "how to create a Mind" by kurtzweil

Related (but distinct topics)

-Understand rise (and fall) of semantic web

-Open/Linked data

-Relational vs NoSql databases

-distributed/parallel processing (MapReduce ->hadoop-> spark)

*edit - typo

Already did.

https://medium.com/@alexanderbcampbell/more-than-500bn-of-we...

Good to see the community is working through the technical (and political challenges) for the future of bitcoin.

At the same time, the level of technical jargon being batted around highlights how far bitcoin is from being money.

Look at the first point of agreement. As long as "SegWit forks" are still important news for Bitcoin, it will not be money.

"We understand that SegWit continues to be developed actively as a soft-fork and is likely to proceed towards release over the next two months, as originally scheduled."

Agree. Think it more just speaks to how hard it is to generate alpha in investing.

It's like being the MVP of the NBA. The competition is fierce, and you are playing a zero-sum game, hence generating returns greater than available by putting money 'in the market' is hard and (sometimes) ephemeral.

This just isn't true. You can see the Reuters VC index is up around 300% since the sector got flooded w capital.

http://imgur.com/cYSjFRj

Am not an expert, but think Twitter is struggling because the signal to noise ratio has deteriorated significantly.

Solving this isn't just a matter of some UX tweaks, it literally speaks to the heart of a very hard problem...how to you structure relatively unstructured information in a way that enables machines to help humans navigate it

The biggest problem with these business models, in the long run, is they all target the same labor supply.

This is good for wages, but bad for their margins.

You are missing the broader system.

It's about #theCapitalCycle of an entire ecosystem...#theUnicornEconomy

Disagree. Your linkages are backwards.

This is about liquidity.

Lower rates are a way to create liquidity (as it makes is painful to hold onto cash).

My take: https://medium.com/@alexanderbcampbell/a-turn-in-thecapitalc...

My follow up to the Unicorn Economy piece (link below) given the recent market moves

https://medium.com/@alexanderbcampbell/more-than-500bn-of-we...

agree (to some extent).

Sometimes it looks like the role of education in america is to sort people into relevant socio-economic classes. Not through any nefarious scheme, but rather, our system just depends on (and creates) some degree of inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) #theUnicornEconomy

y, it's an interesting trend.

Decision making processes evolving to machines talking to machines, and humans talking to humans.

Well, you can think of your life portfolio being a combination of idiosyncratic risk (the particular business or unique exposures you have) and systemic risk (exposure to the broader system).

For example, way too many people were piling into SF real estate, right at the time when they felt the most rich from their employee stock options. http://www.snow.ventures/blog/2016/1/13/stopbuyingsfrealesta...

We have a systemic hedge product, and are working on building out the capabilities to create unique portfolios to hedge idiosyncratic risks.

agreed. I call it #theCapitalCycle https://medium.com/@alexanderbcampbell/more-than-500bn-of-we...

Honestly, I started www.snow.ventures back in October to be an answer to this question.

You have to seek diversification, one way to do it is to short the system so that people can feel safe in their particular idiosyncratic exposure.

That's what we do.

Great article.

Think the thing about the kids from upper income families is extremely interesting.

Points out that they are more concerned with generating (and earning) capital income as opposed to labor income.

Just about what side of the divide you end up on...

seems interesting that everyone is so concerned with the fallen unicorns than the ones that are still riding high with little to no revenue...

Do you think no one has fixed email because the problem is too hard, or because there is a lack of creative/ambitious founders?

The US ACH system is actually what killed bitcoin as a currency fwiw.

It's like the system acting in self-defense

Chinese investors are putting money into SF real estate with the goal of exporting capital to safer havens.

Were China to choose to depreciate their currency (especially at a faster rate than they are currently) this could lead to an acceleration in attempts to export capital.

It's not clear which way this linkage works (at least to me)

I am not sure this is how that works.

Yes, this is what I am saying.