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csmajorfive

4,343 karma · joined February 20, 2008

My name is Ilya. In the past, I was a YC founder (Parse, S11) and part-time partner. I'm now a VC at Matrix Partners.

Hit me up at ilya.sukhar@gmail.com

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csmajorfive··on Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
I find it especially baffling considering he has Russian citizenship.
csmajorfive··on Raise Less Money
I think you're largely right -- a lot of founders get trapped in mediocrity because they raise so much that they don't feel enough pressure to execute. And that frequent, high-resolution fundraises are much more viable than they were ten years ago.

On the other hand, I'll offer two countervailing observations to keep in mind:

* In well-understood categories (e.g. horizontal B2B SaaS), there has been so much brainpower and cash deployed in the last ten years that customers are overwhelmed by noise and expect much higher quality products before they'll meaningfully adopt and pay. My experience is that founders are spending much longer in the initial build phase getting to an MVP than they were ten years ago.

* The oversupply of venture dollars is not evenly distributed. If you're building something that needs years in the lab (chips, batteries, robots, hardware, etc), the investor herd thins out quickly and many of the folks willing to make a purely conceptual bet are much less comfortable judging whether some-progress-but-no-product is worth continued investment.

Sometimes it can be smart to raise a lot from a true believer to bridge you to the spreadsheet jockeys.

csmajorfive··on System76 Launches Threadripper Workstations
Perhaps but we’re talking about buying pre-built systems. I have a silent liquid cooled machine from a few years ago and I have not opened the case even once. So it seems possible if a little pricier.
csmajorfive··on System76 Launches Threadripper Workstations
I bought a System76 workstation last year. Everything about it is great except for one big thing that makes me hate using it: the air cooling is terrible and loud.

My room sounds like a wind tunnel even at idle. The response at the time was to futz around with fan controller firmware and I never got anywhere.

I don't understand why they don't move to liquid cooling.

csmajorfive··on Mirantis acquires Docker Enterprise and Docker raises $35M
It sounds like a full recap so it's not exactly the sort of fundraise you necessarily want to announce at all. Unless you made your other press release accidentally sound like you were going out of business.
csmajorfive··on Nike Says Its $250 Running Shoes Will Make You Run Much Faster
If you subscribe in the mobile app, you can self-manage the subscription through iTunes just like any other app.
csmajorfive··on Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
Very cool, congrats guys. I am a Monkeybrains customer with a bunch of their equipment on my roof (I signed up for their enhanced "FTTH" campaign) and have wondered about replicating the service for myself and my neighbors if I were to move elsewhere.

Do you have an operating model for these small ISPs? Specifically I'm curious what the breakeven point is.

csmajorfive··on Algorithmic Solution to My Insomnia
Ah, yeah, I found the CBT-i regimen naturally helped with that.
csmajorfive··on Algorithmic Solution to My Insomnia
No, I wasn't napping prior. I did get an urge to nap when the CBT-i started.
csmajorfive··on Algorithmic Solution to My Insomnia
Good question. In my experience there is a danger of over-optimizing, trying to get too much sleep, and then regressing again. Some of the literature agrees with you though.
csmajorfive··on Algorithmic Solution to My Insomnia
I would recommend finding some evening activities that you enjoy but are less stimulating. For example, I find it much easier to drift into sleepiness when I'm watching Netflix on the couch rather than sitting upright at my computer actively engaging in a quest for more information.
csmajorfive··on Algorithmic Solution to My Insomnia
- Do you mean how to wake up best? If so, I can share some techniques I learned.

- That's a really good point. I forgot that I was screened for it. I'll add that to the post.

csmajorfive··on Algorithmic Solution to My Insomnia
Thanks for the feedback. I'll add that to the "common wisdom" invariants to clarify that's an assumed prerequisite.

FWIW, I live in California and spent four months on the beach prior to undergoing this regimen.

csmajorfive··on Algorithmic Solution to My Insomnia
I'm not sure what part you found to be pseudoscience. This technique was prescribed to me by a healthcare professional and can be found in medical journals.

And, I fully agree -- light is important. Maybe I'll add an addendum on that.

csmajorfive··on Amazon guts affiliate program, cuts fees for electronics in half
Me too. Great, unbiased reviews are going to be even harder to come by now.
csmajorfive··on The AWS and MongoDB Infrastructure of Parse
Can I suggest you edit your title? I thought someone on our team had written this but, in this context, "lessons learned" is kind of misleading.
csmajorfive··on Parse is shutting down today
We did have many technical challenges (as would be expected, really) but that wasn't why it ultimately went away.
csmajorfive··on Parse is shutting down today
This is wildly wrong.
csmajorfive··on Parse is shutting down today
I just want to say thank you to the HN community. We learned a lot in engaging with folks here over the years.
csmajorfive··on Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M
It just really depends on whether the scale/revenue of the acquired is immediately and clearly accretive to the acquirer. WhatsApp and Waze were pretty far along that path (and their prices reflected it!). Younger companies are more vulnerable.
csmajorfive··on LiChess: Learn from your mistakes
lichess.org and the corresponding open source project[1] are really quite something. If you're at all interested in chess or code, I recommend following it -- their great execution will inspire you.

[1] https://github.com/ornicar/lila

csmajorfive··on Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi
Well my current solution works fine. I have an AC87 in each closet. The one with the gear runs in "wireless bridge" mode. I'm attracted to the prosumer Unifi stuff but there doesn't seem to be a simple solution to bridging. The airFiber units in our hallway is a little too much. And there's no easy way to run cat5.
csmajorfive··on Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi
I need as much bandwidth as I can get over a pretty short distance -- let's say 30 feet. I'm bridging two closets at opposite ends of a hallway. One closet has the WAN connection. The other closet has a bunch of hard wire gear (NAS, home theater, etc).
csmajorfive··on Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi
I found them to be slower than my ASUS AC87 in good coverage areas. Improving areas with spotty coverage was nice but outweighed by the speed hit.
csmajorfive··on Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi
I've had bad experiences with other mesh products (Eero, namely) but perhaps.
csmajorfive··on Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi
For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in between.
csmajorfive··on U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from airing moves
Do they hold the rights to recounting what happened play-by-play without using any images or media from the event? That seems more comparable here.
csmajorfive··on Response from Google Tech Lead, Re: “Google May Be Stealing Your Mobile Traffic”
It's nice to see Google investing in direct responses to the community. If you build a developer product, monitoring HN for criticism and responding is very high ROI. Few companies actually do this.
csmajorfive··on Ask HN: What happened to Facebook graph search?
Normal people didn't care for that functionality so it was deemphasized in favor of different types of search. A lot of it still works, though.
csmajorfive··on I got arrested in Kazakhstan and represented myself in court
Yeah, I think it can go either way. I've had a few situations in Russia where speaking the language evoked "You idiot. You should know better and let me set you straight." while speaking English evoked "Stupid American. Here's how we fix it."
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