brentm

> It amazes me that VCs find this type of business interesting

There are a lot of companies out there that aren't run of the mill tech companies but are still able to massage their way into that category (another example is We Work). There is so much money chasing outsized returns that companies/founder with a good plan, strong team, large enough addressable market and the right network are close enough for many VCs.

I love it

I have trouble believing a significant amount of the population truly doesn't believe in climate change (I guess I'm a climate change denier denier /s). I think the problems lie mostly with the voting population not prioritizing climate change when making voting decisions and major campaign donors who feel directly (or indirectly) threatened by environmental protection initiatives having the ears of politicians. The major problems almost always have to do with money.

But...If you want to do it very quickly and not deal with the quite dense ImageMagick docs this is way easier.

Eh that seems a bit harsh. Wasn't Ferris in Uber's pre-seed or seed round? Plus he mentions Facebook, Shopify, Twitter and Alibaba on his AngelList. I'm pretty sure if you're one guy making $25-$100k bets and hit early on any one of those it is more than enough for you to be considered pretty good.

> I wish articles like this would start with "hey, i come from a place of extreme privilege, and assuming you're in the same boat, here's what i did and it worked out ok for me given the amount of resources i had to take the risks i did."

I under your general sentiment but if you look at his Linked In (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisfralic/) it seems to me that he worked himself into his current position slowly over the years. There are twelve years between when he graduated undergrad and where the article begins. Point being that everyone has an opportunity to work hard, put themselves in the right situations and eventually earn the right to be in a "place of privilege".

If you're spending much on advertising I would give Amex Platinum a look. They offer 3x points on one category per year and advertising is one of the options. The points add up fast and come in handy for flights.

I don't think you can use PH to compare to any other deal, that was monkey business. No way in any world a message board that couldn't get beyond a niche audience, that (I think most would agree) was past it's prime, and had no obvious path to revenue is/was worth $20M+. It was only able to get that because of the people that had invested. The right people can make anything happen, it was not an ordinary deal under ordinary circumstances.

No way. A blog like IH is an internet business but it's still a small business and much closer to the suburban lawn car business you mention than something like Stripe. There is no big scale for something like IH in the future without it being reinvented. It would not command a multiple of 15x+. Stripe would need to justify the purchase price to their board. If you were running a company bringing in $72k a year and it was a total schlep dealing with the day to day and then also selling ads being able to sell to a great company for 1-4x + a good salary for you + 1 is an awesome outcome.

My number are all over the place but according to WakaTime about 152 hours last month was spent in the IDE.

The valuation difference between Uber & Lyft is staggering. Based only on brand recognition and valuation Lyft seems like the better investment today. Lyft's biggest risk is probably Uber's ability to withstand losses that would kill almost any other company but Lyft has refused to die. They might be the surprise leader out of those two companies 10 years from now. Unless Uber has made great gains in their profitability they seem likely to be messy on the public markets which will lead to all kinds of problems.

> Trump administration’s proposed changes may mean travelers from countries including UK, France, Australia and Japan have to share digital information

This is absolute garbage. Like everything rating machine DJT does this is hopefully only for headlines. If it does really happen though expect those countries to impose the exact same restrictions on us.

Like most Trump plans it doesn't make practical sense. If this password disclosure was to become a true process once people are aware they will take corrective actions to hide their online identities. This will stop nothing but it will impact all of us. I know I am not going to give up my personal details at the border of any country and it's not fair to expect anyone else to do that entering this country.

This administration is just so depressing day in and day out, absolute pandering to the most backwards looking Americans.

I haven't watched that much Gary Vee but from what I've seen he is at times informative & entertaining but mostly cringe worthy. He is a little too high on his own supply for me.

Unrelated to the payment subject but it always blows my mind when companies not just copy a business model (which is fine and expected) but also more or less copy the identity along the way.

> Why would investors be OK with losing power?

Everything is ok while everything is ok.

If the company was to run into trouble these restrictions would probably be another reason (in addition to the performance) for large investors to avoid the company. Long term it remains to be seen if this will matter or not but my guess is that as long as it is sailing high many won't care.

Also quite expensive in terms of trailing sales multiple.

> Twitter went public at valuation around 30x trailing year sales and 15x forward year sales. At $25 billion, Snap would be valued at a huge 62x trailing sales.

> Assuming they could reach $1 billion of revenue in 2017, the 25x multiple would still be steep relative to the two predecessors.

(via http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2017/02/02/snaps-ipo-filing-e...)

Much greater losses than Twitter's S1. Snap's revenue is 27% higher but 548% greater net losses.

Twitter s1: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513...

> A world without power because of damaged transformers would become economically stagnant

Economic stagnation would probably be the least of our problems. The cascading issues from a world without power for an extended period of time are incredibly far reaching. It would most certainly be a form of chaos.

> Not just that, the title is completely inaccurate. The most relevant part of the articles title, "OFFICIALS SAY" is absent.

For what it's worth I copy & pasted the title from Wash Po at time of submission. I had to drop "officials say" because of the space restrictions on the HN submission form.

> Who needs a Twitter account aside from journalists and attention-seekers?

Twitter is what you curate it to be. To me, Twitter is kind of the publishing platform Linked In was trying to build. Smart people posting interesting links (to their posts or others) and people discussing.

However since Twitter is what you make Twitter to be, garbage in garbage out. I quit Twitter for about 2 years but then unfollowed every account and started fresh. Now I use it all the time, way more than Facebook, etc.

I thought the public more or less rejected hang from the ear style Bluetooth earphones because they look awkward. I don't think making them white and giving you two is going to fix the perception. Although these may work much better than the old style I am not sure it offsets the reason a lot of people do not like this type of earphone.

I just want to say these people do amazing work. It's truly been a pleasure to work with JS in 2016. Thank you to everyone working on Babel and the countless other great OSS projects. One of my goals for 2017 is to find a way to get involved.

> Some basic UI changes could avoid all of that: e.g. instead of showing $123,456, show a range like $115,000-135,000

So true. When you know that you are not displaying an exact dollar amount you should not use exact dollar values. Exact dollar values afford exactness even though the branding is an estimate.

I think that's being a little harsh. If you started something and A16Z offered you 7M you'd probably take it on the spot regardless of what it was you built. I'm sure when Ryan launched this thing he never thought it would be more than fun. It ended up spiraling into something much more than that. He was offered an investment from a grade A firm who was willing to let him to try and figure it out so he took it like any of us would have.

Good for them, let them have their moment.

I have maintained the viewpoint for a while that if Uber's valuation is based on the inevitability of driverless cars and the reclaiming of that 80%+ revenue they are in trouble. Driverless cars even when the tech is ready will take many years to clear the political hurdles necessary for wide enough usage to help Uber. The same people that put Trump in office are not going to happily accept tech that will be painted in the political light as a tool to remove tens of thousands of jobs from the economy. The politics is going to be almost as big of a hurdle as the tech itself.

(Not to mention that removal of the driver opens up Uber's competition many competent tech companies with deep enough pockets and direct access to the masses.)

If that is accurate and the number is based on 7 days of revenue at about $500 per day average this smells a lot like growth hacking nonsense.

I'd say it is a net gain. The money went to pay the company that dug the hole who used the money to pay their contractors working on the project, equipment leases, gasoline, etc. It will also end up being mentioned on the various blog and news outlets all selling ads against the story of the hole. CAH will also sell more product because of the hole & subsequent publicity. It looks like an increase in GDP (aka net gain for the economy) to me.

I would bet that unless you're a person who willfully hid large capital gains in bitcoin or faked some kind of large tax deductible expenses by purchase of Bitcoin you probably will have anything to worry about. If you are among those two group then you've probably been worrying anyway.

I noticed this on Sunday but it seemed par for the course for a Google news result. I wish they would use better signaling on any domain being returned as a news result. A domain registered less than a year ago with a link profile almost all alt-right is probably not the best source.