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cienrak

752 karma · joined August 25, 2011

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cienrak··on Moonbase: A plug and play engine for making web animations
Very cool. Gonna help me step up meme game to the next level. Dig the plug and play engine.
cienrak··on Kickstarter to hit $300m this year?
If they wanted to, Kickstarter could be one the biggest and best platform for startup crowd funding. They have the infrastructure to capture the promise of the JOBS act/ crowd funding act
cienrak··on Meet New York Superangel Fabrice Grinda, Master of Digital Knockoffs
Do startups that aren't clones take money from this sleazeball?

The Samwers are bad enough.

cienrak··on Crowd computing taps artificial intelligence to revolutionize...
Because with crowd computing AI controls and optimizes the workflow and results. Human in, computer out.
cienrak··on Founders beware: accelerators offer upside, but only if you’re ready
Without a doubt the proliferation of accelerators means a lot more opportunity for startups. But keeping in mind that these are for-profit enterprises is critical to success.
cienrak··on Did Facebook panic?
This was a Geo-Cities-like price - not adjusted for inflation ;)
cienrak··on Facebook buys Instagram for $1B
Zuckerberg says they are keeping Instagram independent. Anyone buy that? And if so, for how long?
cienrak··on How cloud management startup NewVem is cutting its clients AWS bills by 25%
Can someone with experience tell me a little bit about the dashboard AWS provides to clients and why it would be worth paying for an additional service to manage the cloud?
cienrak··on New incubator for designer-developer teams launches
“The process of building software is getting cheaper and cheaper,” said Borthwick.”The production buzzwords of our era — ‘betas,’ ‘agile development,’ and ‘pivots’ — are all an outgrowth of micro-development, which makes it less expensive to build more. As the cost of building and operating software-based businesses decreases, increasing value will accrue to design.”

That's a scary thought, but I don't think developers are going to be commoditized anymore than designers. Web templates are just as plentiful as API

cienrak··on Startup War Story: When The Team Falls Apart (Profitably)
Agreed. Can the mods change the title so its clear?
cienrak··on Adobe launches Shadow, a new toolkit for mobile developers
Nice to see Adobe adapting to the slow passing of Flash with interesting tools for the new generation of mobile developers and their problems (device/os fragmentation).
cienrak··on A Classic Startup Horror Story
I don't understand why they didn't try to fight this based on the NDA or no-use. Wouldn't a good lawyer be willing to take this on retainer, if they could prove their tech was being ripped off despite the legal protections they signed going into the deal?
cienrak··on SOPA foe Fred Wilson supports a blacklist on pirate sites
I think what Fred is saying is that in the wake of SOPA's failure, the entertainment industry might be willing to come to the table with tech and work to ban the worst offenders, rather than pushing for the kind of overarching, draconian laws that the public rejects.
cienrak··on How Facebook Is Selling Your Timeline to Advertisers
The headline isn't misleading. The piece is literally about how Facebook is pitching this big change to marketers.
cienrak··on How Facebook Is Selling Your Timeline to Advertisers
Isn't this just how the sausage is made? It is interesting that Timeline actually makes it easier to disrupt the flow of personal information and privilege ads over friends. But this is how the marketing department of any big company would see it. Can't IPO without getting your hands dirty.
cienrak··on Conquering the CHAOS of Online Community at Stack Exchange
Stack Overflow is the kernel from which all of this has grown. That was a community by programmers, for programmers.

The question now is, can the structure SO built there scale across a variety of human communities. I tend to think not.

cienrak··on The Hushed Dangers of Startup Depression
When you are working at a large corporation there are people to commiserate with. It's fun to blow off steam bashing the boss over drinks.

When you run your own startup it can be hard to admit the stresses. You see yourself as the face of the company and don't want to appear weak.

cienrak··on Zynga to employees: Give back our stock or you'll be fired
yeah complete rehash.
cienrak··on Do Startups Create Jobs or Destroy Them
Let's take an example - Etsy has grown to 80 engineers in the last year. If 50 of these workers had decided they wanted to go their own way and create a startup, how many jobs would have been created and how many of those people would be out of work?

Easy money at the seed stage means a lot of companies that are small ideas trying their hand at building a business.

cienrak··on Do Startups Create Jobs or Destroy Them
I think the Vonnegut reference is an apt one. But there is also a simpler question at hand. When we romanticize startups, do we actually undermine the larger, perhaps less interesting companies who are better at generating employment and economic growth.

In the same way that the American dream of home ownership came back to bite us, perhaps the cult of entrepreneurship could use a hard look.

cienrak··on Do Startups Create Jobs or Destroy Them
Startups have different goals. Some want to stay lean and disrupt old industries. Others, like Groupon, are inventing new kinds of comapanies and hiring like mad.

Whatever the net-net is in terms of jobs created or killed by startups, the US is better off for having a class of creative people in the technology space trying to create new business models.

cienrak··on Full Circle: SecondMarket Raises $15 Million From Former Facebooker
At this period, the public markets are a scary place. Tech companies that embody the new economy and have room to grow are going to become an increasingly interesting asset class.

It is strange, however, to see the same folks who were recently selling their shares on this market now becoming its backers. SecondMarket makes the market for FB stock, which Mr. Palihapitiya may still have quite a bit of.

cienrak··on Beta Test: New York Startups Think Occupy Wall Street Has a Bad Pitch
Not ironic. Sad. Pathetic that our patent system is so broken and abused by folks in the software space.

As per usual, these companies don't share a single line of code, and Kickstarter was in business for years before this guy's patent was even approved.

But somehow, he can claim to have invented crowdfunding for creative projects -- USING A COMPUTER.

BS.

cienrak··on Beta Test: New York Startups Think Occupy Wall Street Has a Bad Pitch
I get that #OWS could use some work on the message. But isn't their whole point to be outside traditional systems of capitalism and structure?

It's like saying, this anarchist mob isn't very organized. Well, yeah.

That being said, I agree with Meetup guy that sites like Kickstarter are exactly the kind of peer-2-peer marketplace that could help reshape our economy and empower the 99%.

cienrak··on Andreessen Horowitz Joins SV Angel, Yuri Milner in Y Combinator Start Fund
Everyone in the boat!
cienrak··on New Data Shows Why the WSJ is Wrong About the Startup Cash Crunch
Naval sees one small slice of a very large market.

Given the bleak macro economic picture, funding has probably fallen on Angel List, where a lot of doctors, lawyers, and non techie investors look for deals.

But the overall picture for early stage funding, as concrete data shows, did not get any grimmer over the last two quarters.

cienrak··on What It's Really Like To Pitch Lerer Ventures
Funny footage of PG speaking at YC NYC in this video.
cienrak··on 10Gen CEO Dwight Merriman Still Writes His Own Code
Would it bother you if he had shifted into a management role? Or just less inspiring.
cienrak··on Steve Jobs and The Value of Saying No
The crowd applauded this bout of honesty, and Mr. Jobs continued. "You look at the farm that's been created with all these different animals going in different directions and it doesn't add up. The total is less than the sum of the parts. We had to decide: what are the fundamental directions we're going in?"

With the gauntlet thrown, Mr. Jobs headed into deeper, metaphysical territory. "The hardest thing is, when you think about focusing, focusing is saying, yes, no, "he said, walking backwards as his argument changed direction, his hands splayed out wide. "Focusing is about saying no. Focusing is about saying no," he repeated, as scattered applause breaks out.

Jobs was not only reasserting himself, he was setting the stage for the way he would run the company for the next decade and half. He was articulating the essential vision, which he returned to again. "Focus is about saying no. And the result of that focus is going to be some really great products. Where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts."

cienrak··on Can Erick Schonfeld Keep the Techrunch Swagger Alive?
Does the editor in chief need to be the center of attention? Maybe he can just hire great talent.

I guess the real question is how much less information/scoops they will have with Mike and MG gone.

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