adamw2k

Perfect timing with Dreamforce this week.

So much to relate to here. Midwest, HardOCP (and their folding team), local store was MicroXPress (Indianapolis), just sub Staples for the pizza gig.

Also vividly recall buying my first Bigfoot HDD, which I think was multiple GB, thinking I'd never have use for any more storage...

Now worth more than Snowflake at current market price.

It's actually common practice in many parts of the country. The practice is called Economic Development. Rarely used for residential purposes, but does finance commercial development and promote hiring. The funding typically comes from the calculated/expected incremental tax revenue to the area (State, Local, etc). Newark, CA in the Bay Area did this for a while (may still?).

Too funny - did the same thing in 2009 for a print on demand greeting card site. Wonder how many of these are still around. Cardstore, Greeting Card Universe, SendOutCards, etc. There was a moment ~ 13-15 years ago...

Good to see more of these coming out. I've toyed with https://www.koyfin.com/ in recent months too, quite good for macroeconomic data.

Also known as sandbagging... Just a way to game the next round's valuation if you find strong demand.

Funny enough, on the completely opposite end of the spectrum, I was once surprised that after you close an account (post M&A in this case), you can typically restore the resources for ~90 days if you decide you want it back and don't nuke before you request the closure. Can be useful or scary depending on the contents of the account...

Many folks are talking about bus schedules, but California hardly offers transporation in most districts. Only 9% of children take a bus to school [1] and that's been trending down for decades. Pay more, get less; sad state of affairs.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-03/californ...

Was going to say it reminded me of noms, only to realize it's a fork...

https://github.com/attic-labs/noms

just signed up here and already unsubscribed. way too kool-aid.

Yep, brings be back... + AIM, MSN, they even had a primitive IRC connection if memory serves me right.

Brings me back to the days of using Word Perfect with a keyboard overlay...

Founders get golden handcuffs via the deal (if they're desired). At the end of the day, just about every "material" trigger is renegotiated in an acquisition...

I bought one of these on eBay for like $75 and use it as a running companion, which I pretty much love. Using Google Fi, I throw a data only SIM in and it runs Spotify and acts as an emergency phone. After an hour run with next to no screen time, the battery is usually close to 50%, but definitely beats carrying a jumbo phone along. I wish they could improve on the battery, even if it was 10-20% larger (typing is really tough), but I don't know of anything else like this save for the Pebble Core, which never saw the light of day.

Appreciate that the company's founder and leader is on here replying... Even if the OP.

Did you consider a Pixel 3a?

Slightly different kind of jailbreak, but quite a bit larger than this one over the course of 28 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Feld_Carr

So many companies have come and gone in the "print on demand" space. The barriers to entry are low and the market, while shrinking, is still quite large... If you consider the market those that send stationary (cards, letters, etc.). Having started a company in the space (engreet.com, since renamed https://www.thegreetingcardshop.com by its new owners), the fallacy is that most folks that send offline won't make the jump to digital. It's a different demographic that is slowly dying (sadly). From cardstore.com to Minted, there's still a market out there, but it's a fraction of the offline spend.

Surprised at Sales and Marketing expense given the low number of Enterprise (>$100k) contracts. Wonder what's baked in there beyond AE compensation? I don't see a whole lot of traditional advertising, but maybe it's out there?

Thinking through this a bit... So the end result of this move is less SPAM and higher quality content. Great! But if SPAM is a form of activity (albeit a less desirable one) and activity represents feed liquidity - which directly impacts revenue - how does this not significantly hurt the bottom line? Time to short TWTR in Q4ish.

Wonder why they chose not to host on GitHub...

Really thinking Jetsons here, but won't we simply be able to print most items either at home or at the neighborhood print shop at some point in the next 100 years? I recall efforts in the food, metal, and body part space. Shipping and warehouses become irrelevant, you just buy recipes that can be created in a very short time. Or maybe I'm living on Cloud 9?

Another sign of the times. I remember when Oppo's were one of the few (if not only) players to play burned CD's. There's just not enough of a "mid-market" enthusiast crowd left - someone that wants a hardware player, won't splurge on the big names, but willing to spend more than what a local retailer (or Best Buy?) has. Wonder what that says for mid-range speaker makers?

Ugh - Bloomberg buys Businessweek and then throws all of the content behind a paywall.

Here's a better link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140514054305/http://www.busine...

Incredible human. Gates + Buffett credit him with helping come up with The Giving Pledge they so famously established. Such humility. Was honestly a sad moment when he was outed (1997, Time Magazine if memory serves me right) - felt like he deserved to give in private if he wanted to. Gives more than others but always lets someone else put their name on it (eg: Benioff Children's Hospital in SF - he was the largest single benefactor).

Only other similar philanthropy I've ever seen - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-08/three-mys....

Couldn't agree more. Was trying to make that my second point - how founders (and early employees) getting diluted and end up not having the gains to pump back into investing when exits actually do happen. They may be able to retire, but they can't also invest $10M over 10 yrs - it's one or the other.

I don't see it changing in the short term, though I think there's potential in the long term. In between, I feel like towns need to organize around a particular niche / focus. For example, Indianapolis is a hub of marketing technology (ExactTarget, Aprimo, etc.). It's hard to compete w/ the (PR?) machine the coasts give you, but if you have a competitive advantage in some market - don't ignore it just because it's not SaaS. Examples include autos in MI, Medical Devices in Northern Indiana, manufacturing region-wide, distribution, real estate (Simon Malls, General Growth in Indy, Chicago respectively), etc. Build for those local customers and then spread geographically. I feel like that's overlooked far too often in the "David" (non-Goliath) markets.

As someone born and raised in the Midwest (and who takes great pride in that) now leading a company in SF, the difficulty truly isn't lack of capital, it's lack of founder talent (and ideas). People with big ideas that can inspire the best technical leaders to join their crusade. There are plenty of great schools (Michigan, Purdue, IU, ND, U of Chicago, Northwestern, Rose Hulman, Depauw, U of I, and many more) churning out folks that are hungry to work hard and get ahead. What's missing is a sufficient population of 25-45 year old inspiring founders with enough of a nest-egg to take a big risk, willing to put a hold on family life, and with a big idea.

There's a second problem that comes about when these rare combination of things come together - which has to do with cap tables... In that good teams get pummeled on early stage valuations compared to the coasts, resulting in exits that return far less to founders than investors (and thus stunt "the ecosystem" growth that exists in SV), but this is secondary to above IMHO.

That assumes some of this isn't baked into the price already. But yes, if you think the market hasn't factored in any one or more of these potential actions, then buying the stock would be the most logical way to profit...