andrewparker

Yes but couchsurfing wasn't a business... it was more of a "movement". that was the concern: could couchsurfing be commercialized.

That terseness is how Fred writes every email, it's not unique to this thread with Paul. When you try to reply to a couple hundred emails a day, this terseness is the result.

Note that there is zero mention of VRBO or Homeaway in this entire email thread. That's the real opportunity (not hotels or bed and breakfasts) and neither Fred nor Paul saw it.

The theme of all four of those methods of breaking from the 200-300K/yr income level is: leverage other people to work on your behalf. The most direct way to do that is to start a business. A slightly less direct way is to invest in existing businesses.

FB finances leaked in the Goldman deal. They did something like $2BN in revenue and $400MM in ebitda in 2010.

Is there an investment opportunity around this number?

For example, $43,100 in consumer debt per capita seems totally unsustainable, and one way it might get corrected is through very high inflation, which would make our past debt more reasonable by comparison. So investments that perform well in inflationary periods would make sense... Other ideas?

Would LOVE to see this weighted by the each user's HN Karma score. For example, a user with 1000 Karma who follows Harj should be worth more than a user with 10 Karma who follows Lessig.

Interesting chart, thanks for presenting. A few issues with your methodology:

1. I'm sure compounded returns would be nice to do, but you don't know the start date for any of those investments. A 2004 vintage fund does not mean the investments are from 2004. Instead, it means the fund made it's first investment in 2004 and will continue deploying money over ~7-8 years.

2. In the VC industry, a wipeout is a wipeout. Call it Zero, not 0.5x.

3. LPs care more about cash-on-cash multiples, not compounded returns (aka IRR). There's an expression that will help explain this point: "You can't eat IRR." VC is a 10-year horizon business and GPs call do special moves to improve the IRR (calling down capital as needed, and then returned capital upon exit even if it's going to be called down again and reinvested). But, at the end of the day, the best measure of the success of any fund is the gross cash-on-cash multiple of the entire fund.

The Kiko price is known because it was sold on eBay.

Also, the "date" column doesn't sort properly. It sorta alphanumerically instead of chronologically.

Here is a usable API that's live for accessing government data: http://wiki.sunlightlabs.com/Sunlight_Labs_API

Doesn't support write quite like that yet ;)

By viewing the source code you can see that the author intends to add a "More Videos" features, but it's currently commented out. http://feross.net/instant/instant.js

I'd personally recommend not finishing this "More Videos" feature. I think the simplicity of just 1 video per search is awesome and creates beautiful serendipity. But, I know such a suggestion is very subjective.

Likely the best comment you've ever posted... Did you take it or someone else?

Fair point. Most of my posts drift like that because I write my way into ideas. It's like thinking out loud... and then I hit "post".

Drill down in the comments to find this pic that Fred posted of himself ROFL'ing in response to one of his commentors... very entertaining: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredwilson/4887958978/

Joining a startup is not inherently impressive. The characteristics of employed developers that I most admire are: intelligence, loyalty, and ability to execute (read: ship code). Being employed doesn't affect my opinion of someone regarding those characteristics.

M means 1,000. So MM is one thousand 1,000s or 1,000 X 1,000... which is 1,000,000.

Security through obscurity is inferior to security by design, and for that reason I agree that the voting policy should be transparent to all.

That said, I have not noticed the quality issues the original author laments.

I purchased and setup a MiFi a few months back. Changing the SSID and WPA Key was easy. Done via web interface into local server on the device.

Given all the upvotes on this post, I'm guessing I'm in the minority. But, I'm not a fan of wikileaks' ethics. Whistler blowers are important, and I have a lot of respect for their bravery, but wikileaks feels like a metalayer on top of whistle blowing that feels slightly gamey and a little celebratory.

Navigating to old.sixtyone.com brings up a big red "hacker" warning in Chrome. I tried to dismiss it an go anyway, but I couldn't proceed. Just FYI.

Sergey and Larry hold a controlling stake because there is a dual class of Common stock where the Founders' stock has 10x the voting power per share compared to normal Common stock.

Sergey and Larry have something like 30% of the equity combined but held 85% of the voting power.

Union Square Ventures has a portfolio full of companies that are hiring. This query at Indeed.com will show openings across our entire portfolio. If you have any questions about any of these roles, I'm to either answer them or point you in the right direction: andrew@unionsquareventures.com

Jobs at portfolio cos: http://bit.ly/8ueLw8

Do you respect the people for whom you work? Working for and with smart people is far more rewarding than a 25% boost in salary. Surround yourself with people you respect and really want to work with, and I think that money concerns will be less important to you. You'll feel more motivated to go to work and help the people you respect (and they'll likely help and teach back).

Sorry if this is obvious, dusting off the math mind here... How is this solved without brute force computation?

I don't know whether or not the Seedcamp T&Cs are legal.

But, they are logical IMHO. You get about 25 hours worth of advice from Saul's high-value network of entrepreneurs and investors. In exchange for this advice, Seedcamp gets an option to invest at a reasonable valuation given the stage of the companies that attend.

Rather than make this option a legal Security in your company, they take you at your word. Seems better than wasting everyone's time with legal fees to actually formalize this option.

According to Saul's post, you were not a mentor and you said yourself you were not an investor, so I don't understand the misunderstanding... Why were you there?

Is Saul's post true? Where's the ambiguity?

Aaron is now the lead on the Quicken Online product at Intuit. He'll have to work there for 2 years (or possibly 3 or 4) in fully vest in this exit and unlock his golden handcuffs. So, yes, he has FU money on paper. But, he's got another couple years of working for "the man" first.

I've heard that roughly 30% of Google search are searches for domains, just like this cnn.com example.

This is simply survivorship bias.

Kickstarter is Brooklyn-based, not Chicago based.