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aorshan

785 karma · joined June 24, 2011

Personal website: www.adamorshan.com

Gmail: adamorshan

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aorshan··on Ask HN: How to make the most out of a summer internship at a SF startup?
Having interned in SF last summer, I would definitely recommend that you take as much time as you can to meet other people, especially those outside your company. The best way to do that is to join the "201X Bay Area Summer Interns" facebook group. I was in the 2013 one and there were almost 5000 members. Every day people were posting with what they were up to and looking for people to join them. Its a great way to meet other interns and experience all of the things that can be done in the bay area.
aorshan··on The end of the Facebook era
As a younger person that these types of articles are so fond of talking about (I'm 21), I don't agree that members of my generation are leaving and that we don't perceive Facebook as cool. I think what's changed with the new social media companies is the timeliness of when we do things.

Perfect example- I was out for a Secret Santa dinner with a bunch of my friends. While we were at the dinner, we took tons of pictures, some of which ended up as Snapchat stories or on Instagram. But later that night, every single one of those pictures went up on Facebook. Cover photos were updated aplently. Why? Because all of us are on Facebook and Facebook is still the best way to permanently store and share the experiences you've had with your friends (while also tagging them in the photos).

aorshan··on Ask HN: What is good swag in Hackathons?
I'd definitely say a t-shirt if you can afford them. I have t-shirts from multiple hackathons and wear them all the time. They get far more mileage than any sticker or pen I've received.
aorshan··on Ask HN: What is your favourite podcast at the moment?
ESPN Fantasy Focus Baseball, Behind the Dish with Keith Law, This Week in Startups, Nerd Poker: Dungeons and Dragons with Brian Posehn and Friends (A bunch of hilarious comedians playing D&D together. It is very entertaining)
aorshan··on Ask HN: Best note taking software?
I use Evernote every day at school. It fills just about all of my needs. The only place where it struggles is when I need to write out math. In those cases I'll usually just use pen and paper. Everything else goes in Evernote though.
aorshan··on Expected arrival times for Apple products
I just bought a MBP 15-inch retina display with a 2.3GHz i7, 8 gigs of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM, 256GB Flash Storage, and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. What about that is outdated?
aorshan··on Expected arrival times for Apple products
You could also buy a refurbished mac. They tend to be about $300 cheaper than the retail version and tend not to have any problems. I just bought one and so far its been perfect.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac

aorshan··on Solve the Problems Your Parents Have
I think this absolutely makes a lot of sense. Particularly the idea of getting outside the tech echo chamber. For me, I maintain a group of stringently non-technically inclined friends. They use facebook and that is about it. So I use my time with them to recalibrate my senses and understand where normal people are in terms of adoption. I always gain new perspective from those conversations.
aorshan··on I Don't Do That Job Anymore
I think the thing about this that is most remarkable is how much better this is going to make Danielle as a founder. Being able to really focus on different and new aspects of the business (and gaining experience in those aspects), when combined with the skills she already developed at Twilio, will surely help her tremendously.
aorshan··on IGN Acquired by Ziff Davis
OP here, I'd just like to point out I'm a real person who submitted the article on my own volition.
aorshan··on Accidental Office Manager: The Complete Guide For Outfitting Your Startup Office
Wow this is an incredibly extensive list. Definitely wouldn't have thought of little things like a safe or acoustic panels for calls. Well done!
aorshan··on New Coursera class, "Startup Engineering"
Definitely signed up for this. Should be really interesting.
aorshan··on Codecademy introduces API lessons with YouTube, SoundCloud, Parse, and more
I'm curious as to why they wouldn't include lessons on the Facebook and Twitter APIs. I would think that would be a primary example of APIs to be familiar with.
aorshan··on Ask HN: Who were you before you were a silicon "valley-type techie"?
For my entire life, I've always loved science. It was never a doubt for me that I wanted to study science in school. But when I got to school, I was accepted into an accelerated honors program for science students. So I was taking a lot of hard science really quickly. At first it was great, but soon I started to get really burnt out. I realized that I wasn't enjoying my classes anymore and that I was starting to loathe the concept of studying the material. I refused to allow school to ruin my love for science, so I changed my major.
aorshan··on Ask HN: Who were you before you were a silicon "valley-type techie"?
I was dead set on becoming a neuroseurgeon. Spent all of high school taking science classes. Majored in Neuroscience for my first year and a half of college, decided I hated everything about it, and decided to change my major. Attended a hackathon or two (including one sponsored by Twilio) and haven't looked back. I'm still in school, but I work for Freshplum as well. Hopefully I'll be spending this summer out in the valley.
aorshan··on Is Poke Proof That The Facebook API Is A Trojan Horse?
The big thing with poke/snapchat is that they send pictures that aren't stored anywhere and can only be viewed for a few seconds, after which they are inaccessible. This makes it easier and less worrisome for people to do things like sext or send pictures of themselves making silly faces.
aorshan··on Ask HN: how do I hire a marketer for my technology startup?
As a Marketing student who has worked in a few different marketing jobs I think there are a couple things you should be looking for.

First, as previously mentioned, please do not make your decision based on the individual's social media followers. Instead, you might want to look at some of the growth they've helped to engineer in their previous jobs. For example if they tell you that they helped a company grow from 500 to 50,000 twitter followers, that is pretty impressive. However, even then it is important to take those numbers with a grain of salt. Ask how many were purchased vs earned. Ask what specific techniques they used to gain those followers and how they would apply those techniques to your company. Try to determine how much impact that specific person had on the growth.

Second, just like many people suggest assigning a coding project to a candidate to determine if they fit with the company's engineering style, you can assign a project to a marketing candidate to see if the work they do fits with what you're looking for. Ask them to write a sample blog post for you. Ask them to write a sample email they would send to potential customers. Ask them to outline some ideas they have for how to market your company and how they would implement them.

Third, if you want to attract good marketers, please don't treat them like second class citizens. There is a large resentment among many in the tech community towards "Business" people and "Marketers". If you and your company show similar resentments, the person you are interviewing will be turned off.

aorshan··on Try R — A new online course, for free
Udacity has a intro to statistics class that you might like.
aorshan··on Ask HN: How do I find a CMO/Marketing Expert/Consultant for my startup?
If your site is only open to Stanford students, why don't you find a marketing student at Stanford who would be interesting in working for you? Go hang out by the marketing department and introduce yourself to students. Or contact the career center and see if you can post an intern opening.
aorshan··on Evernote 5 for Mac
I'm a college student, so I use it to take notes in all of my classes. Since it all syncs between devices and I can access it from the web, I have access to my notes wherever I am and with any device I have. It makes my life easier because if I'm going to the library to work or meeting with a group to work on a project, I don't need to lug binders or even my computer around. The photos feature makes life easier as I can just take pictures of whatever is on the board.
aorshan··on Ask HN: What where the key inventions in the history of mankind?
The Wheel is probably pretty important. Also I would argue the transistor is pretty up there. As would be the nuclear bomb.
aorshan··on Ask HN: What's your favorite Science Fiction book?
Ender's Shadow. Most people will tell you their favorite was Ender's Game, but for some reason I've always had a much stronger attachment to Shadow. Maybe it's because I read Shadow first, but more likely it's because I identify with the protagonist Bean more than I do with Ender.
aorshan··on Dear Internet: please move the share buttons from the web page to the browser
Rockmelt actually does this. It's a browser built on top of Google Chrome. Along with a bunch of other features, it has one button in the top right where you can take any page you're on and post it to Twitter, as a Facebook status, or on a friend's Facebook wall.
aorshan··on NFL opens Pandora's Box by offering All-22 tape to public
Well there are leagues that do both. I prefer daily for the precise reason that it requires my daily attention. I tend to forget about things that only need be dealt with once a week (Ie fantasy football) and often end up with abandoned teams. As such the daily format of baseball works better for me as I am paying attention to it every day.

I understand your concern about the full time job thing, but honestly the point of it all is to have fun. Also don't we always say on here that when you're doing something you love, it doesn't feel like work?

aorshan··on NFL opens Pandora's Box by offering All-22 tape to public
Fins up! Gotta love being a dolphins fan, nothing like year after year of disappointment. At least we're not the cubs.
aorshan··on NFL opens Pandora's Box by offering All-22 tape to public
You should try Fantasy Baseball. The stats go so much deeper and there is so much more data to process than with football. The strategy involved for informed players can be quite incredible.
aorshan··on Kickstarter is Not a Store
Though I completely understand where kickstarter is coming from with their decision, I have a bit of a gripe with their choice to prevent projects from showing renderings and requiring actual photos.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked the purpose of kickstarter was to help people get their ideas off the ground. Some types of products, especially hardware, can cost a lot of money to produce at a prototype stage. Not everyone has the cash lying around to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to build a functional prototype. So normally what that person would do is put together some renderings and a video and go to kickstarter to raise the funds to expand into prototypes and production. Now what are they to do?

Ultimately I think this decision by kickstarter gives a tremendous advantage to design shops with the budgets to build prototypes, while leaving the little guy behind.

aorshan··on What A Hacker Learns After A Year In Marketing
I can absolutely attest to this. Rob came to a hackathon I participated in a few months ago at the University of Miami. He did a great job and really made Twilio seem totally awesome. He was great to work with and really pushed my team to reach above our potential.
aorshan··on Visualizing How Referly Works
I love everything refer.ly has been doing lately. They are really on the right page and are putting together quite the service. Can't wait to see where it goes.
aorshan··on Ask HN: Great book that you read recently?
I just re-read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Always makes me laugh and is a great read.
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