280 karma · joined October 11, 2009
http://blogs.reuters.com/japan/2009/11/14/japans-bulging-deb...
It's credit rating is ranked lower than Botswana:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/japan-falls-...
Meanwhile, the typical song is longer than 3 minutes. The user also must actively find the artist and seek out the song (rather than say mindlessly clicking a link from Digg because they're bored.)
Comparing a pageview to a song play is not a good analogy.
On a side note, I'm starting to get tired of all the anti-media view on YC. Group-think is very dangerous. There are a lot of insightful comments here but I make myself take everything with a grain of salt because of the social dynamics of the community.
The article mentions that the top artist was Lady Gaga. Why didn't Lady Gaga start self-publishing on Lulu.com? She would have been able to keep ALL her CD and concert revenue. Information wants to be free!
Contrary to the popular belief here, record companies DO add value. Gaga signed with Def Jam at the age of 19 after L.A. Reid heard her (who is responsible for building the careers of Mariah Carey, TLC, OutKast amongst others). She cut her teeth on writing and producing music for established artists before going out on her own.
"Better to just get on with building things."
I perceive a religious undertone from this. Racism and sexism can be solved by the PG/"Hacker" mentality "building something".
I assume you're not pressed for cash. The $14k you would get by PG/YC buying in is a drop in the bucket compared to the $1m you've already earned. The main value is the YC/PG brand name.
This is not a traditional VC deal where the main benefit of the startup is cash to survive/expand. Instead, you're giving up 7% of your multi-million dollar company to get the PG stamp of approval.
Not sure what industry you are in and whether the name would be worth it. I'm leaning towards no though.
If you want to seriously consider it, get a valuation done and see how much it's actually going to cost you in lost equity. Test the waters as well with angel and VC groups.
It's uncomfortable to be in the extreme minority. That's one reason why many small liberal arts colleges actively pursue Black students, they know that a small minority population will further hamper recruitment efforts.
Convincing people they need a carbon rock through a brilliant marketing campaign ("A Diamond is Forever" named best advertising slogan of 20th century by Advertising Age). This slogan convinces Americans and global consumers to change their courtship practices; that it is completely normal and expected to spend 2 months salary on a diamond engagement ring as a symbol of love.
Another ad urged consumers to hold on to family diamond Jewelry as heirlooms. This cutoff the aftermarket of diamonds and increased the market power of the firm.
De Beers then artificially keeps the prices very high. These carbon rocks aren't rare in the natural world. The company restricts supply through a cartel system. Less than 200 companies are allowed to buy from the firm.
Private equity offers the opportunity for management to make unpopular management moves and away from the quarter-by-quarter mentality of Wall Street. This is often exploited by firms. But some add real value:
How One Private Equity Firm Beat the Odds http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/nov2009/pi20091...
How Texas Pacific Cleaned Up at J. Crew:The private equity firm reaped many times its investment by giving the preppy retailer the freedom that few public companies enjoy http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2007/...
How the hell does someone lecturing us on social sciences have little-to-no math background?
The girl goes to Syracuse, which is a somewhat selective University. She would not have gotten in if she couldn't do the math (her SAT scores simply wouldn't be high enough.)
This question would have been easy for me and actually would have probably boosted my confidence during the interview. But that's because I'm a quantitative person. Throw a question I was completely unexpecting though and I could be stuttering and saying stupid things. I'm sure there would be some questions or exercises the author could complete far more smoothly than I could.
Calling her innumerate (and making the analogy of her being illiterate and thus incompetent) for this slip makes me think you haven't been on many interviews yet.
I know many introverts with very good social and emotional skills. Likewise, I know many extroverts who are terrible in this regard.
I will go out on a limb and say:
* The typical engineering/CS students I met at college had a noticeable lower emotional and social intelligence than the average student. Obviously there are exceptions. The kid with the best social skills could have been an electrical engineer, while the worst maybe was a finance major. But there was definitely a distinction.
And the effect feeds off of each other. Many people are under-socialized in high school but break out of their shell in college. I'd like to go out a limb again and say the opportunity for this is less for CS/engineering students.
I went to a large state university. Engineers/programmers at my school really tended to be exclusive. Like there was an engineering floor in my freshman dorm and they all kept to themselves. The few engineers I'd run into at parties would sometimes joke about not hanging out with his peers. I had a pretty diverse group of friends in college but very rarely ran into them outside of my math classes.
People learn their social and emotional intelligence from their peers. With CS/engineering groups, there's aren't many tribal leaders to learn from.
* It's pretty evident that Google execs are having trouble understanding how others perceive them:
Eric Schmidt recently suggested to a group of reporters that Google's culture was the strong hand that kept it from engaging in anticompetitive behavior: "If somehow we went into a room with the evil light, and we announced an evil strategy, we would be destroyed," he said. "There is a fundamental trust relationship between Google and its users." He shared similar comments, according to Wired, with Varney's predecessor at the Justice Department, who apparently was floored that "trust" was Schmidt's legal justification for pushing through the Yahoo/Google deal.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/21/technology/obama_google.fort...
BTW if you have a CS/engineer background and have good EQ/SQ, props to you! I truly believe people with a diverse skill set have a tremendous advantage. The people who rise to the top of Hollywood don't tend to be the pure artists but business/artist (or artist/business).
It's a nice idea but to be honest this is out of reach for 98% of internet users. I've probably explained to my mom what a blog is half a dozen times and still doesn't get it. She also refuses to stop double clicking on links...
A search engine for savvy people would also not be a great business position because those type of people don't click on ads. There was an article last week on Hacker News that 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArtic...
When Murdch originally bought the WSJ he said he would bring the pay walls down on WSJ.com:
"(WSJ.com) is an excellent site but we charge for it, which limits it to about a million in circulation. We are studying and we expect to make that free, and instead of having a million, having 10 or 15 million people in every corner of the earth keeping up to date minute by minute with all business and economic news from around the world. We think that will attract very large sums or, relatively large sums, anyway of advertising revenue."
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-nws-dj-murdoch-we-expect-...
I'm very curious to see what convinced him to do a complete 180. It was only two years ago when he made that statement.
http://www.itworld.com/business/63085/lastfm-tech-crunch-and...
He's a very opportunistic person. Ranting against popular business practices produces great publicity. So does posting a very damaging but completely unverified rumor. Arrington has done both, which is why he is hardly the Robin Hood of web2.0.
Yes, occasionally Arrington's flamebaits produce some good. But overall TechCrunch is a mediocre and irresponsible "publication". I think it's a tragedy that the network effect has resulted in a clown running the most important blog about web start-ups. Imagine if the WSJ or NYT was run like TC.
* You are one individual that averages 6 trades in month . GS has hundreds of traders, many of which do average that amount in a week (if not a day). The law of averages applies to GS, while your experience is anecdotal evidence.
In fact, if after 3 years with an average of 6 monthly trades you haven't liquidated a single negative position I'd say that most probably are making a classic investment mistake - holding onto your losses too long.
* GS trades much more volatile investments than you - futures, derivatives, etc. Traders have a much shorter time-horizon than you as well. You sell when you need the money while they're trying to meet their quarterly numbers.
GS has turned into a giant hedge fund. And their numbers are consistently better than any other fund or investor. Better than Warren Buffet or George Soros. They're impossibly good.
It would be naive to think that it did not have any advantage because of its position in the financial industry.
Having only one losing trading day in a quarter could not be accomplished without insider information.
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-el...
The article is long but it's a very good read. I like to reread from time to time.
A point I liked especially:
They [his graduate students] were talking about trying to write poetry, how friends of theirs from college called it quits within a year or two while people they know from less prestigious schools are still at it. Why should this be? Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They’ve been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure....
I have to say I lost a tremendous amount of respect for Mullenweg after reading his SafeBank post. He enthusiastically posts his ideas to make the bank stand out (Recommend Firefox to customers! Build an iPhone app and sell it for $2.99!) while demonstrating a clear lack of even basic business principles.
Warren Buffet on Gates: "If Bill had started a hot dog stand, he would have become the hot dog king of the world."
Mullenweg on the other hand would go bankrupt selling umbrellas on a rainy day...