arbitrage314

I've seen, with my own eyes, working prototypes deliver amperage. That's pretty easy, though--just crank resistance down to 0, and you can get as many amps as you want.

At my small, startup-ish company, we see great talent come through all the time. These are people who can write good code reasonably fast, and they are also people who simply love coding.

There seems to be no shortage of these people.

There does, however, seem to be a shortage of people like these who are willing to work for $100k and a small bit of equity, though, unless they make the mistake of valuing their stock options for way more than they're worth. In that case, we sometimes get them :).

Many weekends ago, I did a bunch of research on UBeam as I had an opportunity to invest.

I hope I'm wrong (because wireless power would be cool), but after ~5-10 hours of research, I think wireless charging is unlikely to happen at any scale that would make UBeam a good investment.

The amount of sound power required to charge even small electronic devices is enormous relative to the volume of the sounds we hear every day. Therefore, charging must occur at a pretty high frequency that we can't hear. Power efficiency begins to drop at these high frequencies, however, and sound at these frequencies might have other unintended consequences beyond human hearing. Power transmission efficiency is low pretty much regardless.

The only way for UBeam to work, I think, is for people to think it's so cool to wirelessly charge things that they'll pay a lot of money to try it out. "Killing the power cord" on any sort of larger scale seems very unlikely.

I don't really follow the logic of the article. Humans have optimized for "money" for a long time, and it's produced a lot of good and a lot of bad. Overall, though, I'd say we're very much headed in the right direction.

In the meantime, though, just try to be happy (as the article suggests).

I've heard many folks complain about TPP on the premise that it will destroy and/or degrade American jobs. I believe there is lots of truth to that--people in other countries are usually willing to work for less than Americans.

Even so, TPP will help job-hungry people in other countries (at least slightly) by dumping more jobs into their job markets. So, if we're going to help Americans by ditching TPP, we're going to do so at the expense of people in other countries.

Is that the right trade? Helping Americans by hurting others? Maybe it is.

Or maybe I'm missing something... Thanks for your thoughts!

Twitter has certainly carved out a nice niche--I love real-time information from important people, news sources, etc. They will be around for a long time.

Even so, I can't imagine them becoming more profitable any time soon. Still a short if I had to guess (which I typically try to avoid).

I just did the one in Nashville. It was a lot of fun, but it was very expensive (~$35), and they also made us solve the puzzle with a bunch of strangers (in order to fill up the room entirely).

The good part of this is that they're making $280 per hour (8 x $35) off of their escape room, and at those prices, there should be many, many more of them soon (which will bring down the price to its equilibrium, which I assume is far lower).

If this is passed, it'll democratize the fundraising process, and millions of Americans will suddently be able to invest alongside VCs.

On the other hand, history has shown us again and again that "small" investors make really bad decisions, and these rules initially existed to prevent such investors from harming themselves.

This is the most interesting and most intuitive set of lectures I have ever seen on this subject. I now understand things that have eluded me for years.

Why did this comment get downvoted? Is it because other people like Jack Dorsey, or because other people still don't like him? :)

I do think that, in general, charity is very reactive. Proactive approaches (e.g., education) are almost always better and more efficient.

I no longer dislike Jack Dorsey! :)

I don't think there's that much to worry about. If a VC wants a liquidation preference, that's fine--they'll have to pay for it by giving me a better valuation (in other words, giving me money money more cheaply).

The market corrects for all of these kinds of things.

Wealthfront is indeed a ripoff for the well-informed.

For most folks, though, something that makes saving simple is something that will lead to HUGE gains over not having that thing in the first place.

Without Wealthfront, most people would simply let that money sit in a checking account or in a user-made nondiversified portfolio (most people don't understand the incredible benefits of diversification, including myself most days, which is why we work at startups :) ).

Therefore, I still believe the value of Wealthfront is positive, and likewise, I believe the value of most financial planners is positive.

Agreed! Very nice and rare to see on HN! :)

Yeah, it was the .bash_history file. My bad.

He also encrypted the files, uploaded them to his remote computer, and then deleted the programs used to encrypt and upload them.

The value in the code is not the code itself, but the models it encapsulates.

For those interested, Teza uses (single-threaded) Java and Hadoop (or at least they used to), and Goldman Sach's high-frequency code was written in C++.

Haha your point is obviously valid. Without outing my friend, I can't prove it, so I hope you'll believe me.

In fact, even if you don't believe me, that's okay--Goldman Sachs deserves to be given some crap!

Thank you! I certainly enjoyed this conversation, and I certainly appreciate your point of view. I can't disagree that people expect the big banks to get bailed out if anything bad happens again--big bank CDSs trade artificially low!

My best friend works at Goldman, and used to sit next to Sergey. Three things:

1. There were definitely NOT daily updates about the progress of this case

2. He WAS absolutely trying to steal code. Goldman high-frequency code isn't great (except in options market making). The thing that ultimately flagged him was that he kept trying to clear his .history file.

3. He wasn't planning on selling it. He was planning on taking it to Teza, a place that has a notorious reputation for poaching people and code.

I'm truly very sorry if I upset you. I'm just trying to make sure we're on the same page. Goldman is indeed guilty, but not in a way that we agree.

Goldman had CDS against AIG imploding, had CDS-of-CDS against AIG's counterparties imploding, etc., etc. The solution to this hedging problem turns out to be the eigenvector of a CDS/exposure matrix, which is kind of fun.

Anyway... Goldman's bet was that the whole world would not implode. If there had been no bailout of anyone--you're right--everyone would've failed, including Goldman. In this scenario, there's no doubt in my mind unemployment would be higher today. But, given that someone was saved--anyone at all--Goldman turned out just fine. The cost of this hedge was ~$2.5 billion. For this, they were able to recover $10 billion. So, 75 cents on the dollar. More than they deserve!

The real crime has nothing to do with "needing to be bailed out"--this is just the story given to the public--it's the fact that Goldman may have had material nonpublic information about AIG. I think this article sums it up pretty well:

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/01/13/goldman_...

(In other words, Goldman bought $100 million of credit default swaps against AIG failing.)

People like to rip on Goldman, and indeed, they deserve it.

One thing which should be noted, though. There were two banks that didn't need a bailout back in '08-'09: Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. They were forced to take the money by none other than Goldman's ex-CEO: Hank Paulson.

"This credit disguised as a swap didn't show up in the Greek debt statistics. Eurostat's reporting rules don't comprehensively record transactions involving financial derivatives."

Sounds like Eurostat needs to hire some smarter people.

I haven't ever tried that, but I'll certainly consider it if I ever feel strongly enough! For early-stage ventures especially, the quality of the people seems to matter a lot. Therefore, there's a high probability I'd know the founders (or at least some employees) before I put in any money, and therefore, cold emailing wouldn't be necessary.

I can't think of any important ones. As always, manage your risk. Even if you believe 99% in something, you should not put all of your money into it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

Even if your competing offer is ~$150k, it still makes sense to not work at the startup ALMOST every time (given that you are trying to maximize money--most are not). I've seen a few exceptions, but startup offers are usually that bad.

Also, based on my convsations with literally hundreds of startup engineers, I have seen three trends:

1. They care very little about how much they are getting paid due to being passionate about their work (awesome!)

2. If they do care about money, they are under the false belief that their startup options are worth more than than that startup's investors were willing to pay for them in the secondary market (i.e., the price of a nearby round)

3. They are almost always talented enough to get a high-paying job somewhere else

Although it's sometimes a bit of work to find these opportunities, there are enough people with good ideas who need money these days. Friend of a friend-type stuff.

Occasionally, after talking to a startup about a potential employment opportunity, I'll ask if I can simply invest. They are usually flattered that someone would be so excited, and they are usually quite happy to take your money.

A final option is to invest in one of these new index funds that track startup performance. E.g., the SharesPost 100.

I've made this point before, but since it's a bit relevant here, I'll make it again (sorry to repeat):

If you're primarily interested in making money, or if you love the startup but not the compensation, you should NOT work at that startup.

If you're a good developer, you can get a better deal by working at an established company and simply investing. This has been true for every startup offer I've ever seen. Ever.

I've considered lots of startup jobs because I believed strongly in the companies. Every single time, however, I was able to get a larger chunk of the company by keeping my current job and simply investing.

To give an example, my current job pays about $250k, and one year, I invested $100k of that into a startup, leaving me with ~$150k of salary. This $150k + startup equity was a better deal than the startup was offering in both salary and equity. Plus, equity bought as an investor is much less tax toxic than equity options received as an employee of a startup.

On the other hand, most people who work at startups aren't interested in money. If that's you, that's totally cool! I wish I could care less sometimes.