devanti

The problem I find with most philanthropic efforts, most namely charities, is that it's a black box with little measure of accountability. You don't know how exactly the money is spent, and how effective it was.

If someone can start a 100% transparent charitable organization, where each line item of expense is open to the public, it would give people more confidence in giving, and it would give the organizations more incentive to make effective and efficient decisions. Kind of like a manager overseeing your moves, except it's the public since they provide the funding.

In terms of where to focus the efforts -- I find providing education is the only short term effort that can lead to long term and everlasting gains.

DynamoDB?

The problem with understanding trends is that people naturally tend to think that the past predicts the future. What they forget is that what goes up, usually goes down. This is true in the vast majority of cases except for certain occasions (rise of internet, mobile, cloud). This is why hype such as 3d printing, VR, AI, IoT, chat bots, are just that -- hype, until we arrive at the point in time where the exact necessary breakthrough occurs for each, but I don't see it yet in many of todays cases.

They'll run out of liquidity long before driverless cars go mainstream. There are huge legal and logistical hurdles to face.

"extremely smart people" also caused the 2007 mortgage crisis, and 2000 tech bubble

Did Uber really win yet? They haven't exited yet. Their valuation is insanely high and they are not looking to IPO, as they won't get a favorable price in todays markets. They are spending billions in China where they are not leaders yet (and unlikely to be). I don't see how they have won yet. They are walking a dangerous path with no exit in sight.

I suspect the same will happen to all the p2p lending startups soon

I wonder if Lee Sedol were to start as white again, and follow the exact same starting sequences, would AlphaGo's algorithms follow the exact same moves as it did before?

Product vs Service. Huge difference.

no it's because they don't make enough revenue

It all sounds like hysteria to me. We're not even close to this level of AI.

You kind of have to. The vast majority of them are obviously fake. If you look at the wording / grammar there is a lot of similarity (uses of the word "Great", etc)

though not yet proven, I believe we may have found the Enron of our decade

Security aside, I would argue that 98 and XP were the best versions of Windows during that period

Is there a way to start a name consultancy?

I'm fairly good at coming up with names, and wouldn't mind offering my services, but I'm not sure how to secure my idea before selling it.

I would also be open to testing my skills for anyone looking for a company name.

I agree. It seemed more like an angel round deck. A startup asking for $10M series A should already product validation, meaningful traction, and starting their growth phase. This had none of that. The only thing they had going for them was YC and a strong brand of previous investors.

not surprised. the pitch deck didn't seem very convincing tbh

It seems they used to have more employees and 2 other co-founders. Wonder what happened

Don't worry about it.

He's trying to motivate his employees by showing his dedication. If he wants to work in the middle of the night, let him do so. It's normal for startup founders to work late or wake up in the middle of the night with random thoughts.

I highly doubt you're expected to respond to it immediately anyway.

Also, it's not really your job to worry about his cognitive capabilities. That's his responsibility, and some people can get away with less sleep than others.

If you don't trust in his ability and the future of the startup, then you should simply leave the company.

So they give you a couple grand. What other value do they provide? Seems like a bad deal for people who actually have good ideas and can execute.

libraries are fine of course. in higher profile and more competitive hackathons, i've seen quite a few teams who complete the whole project (or re-use the same project from another hackathon).

I've done a lot of hackathons, and even the most high profile ones usually suffer from one of the following:

1. Internet and Working space

If you're expecting a high turn-out. Make sure the facility has a comfortable work environment and enough tables and chairs for everyone to work in. Ensure that the internet will not overload due to too many connections. This is a very common problem

2. Judging

Different hackathons have different purposes, and make sure the judging aligns with it. Some hackathons focus on business-viable projects, while others aim to build something "cool". Make it clear what the criteria is. If you're looking for cool projects, make sure the judges don't elect a winner because their project made the most business sense, especially if it's just a front-end hack, where the back-end doesn't even work (very common).

Have a way to check that projects weren't built ahead of time. Fraud is a major problem in hackathons.

Good luck

I didn't go to Waterloo, but I predominantly hire from them, and I work with their graduates on a daily basis.

Yes. They get the best work experience. They will have no problems finding a secure job in engineering.

A problem I see is their lack of "university experience" and social growth. For some people with natural social abilities this is not a problem, but for others, university is a once in a lifetime experience to cultivate all aspects of personal growth.

This is very important especially for engineers, where the majority of us are introverts. I was one myself, and I learned invaluable things in university not related to work or school.

These days, it's actually quite easy to find a good job in engineering, no matter what school you're from, as long as you're smart enough to pass technical interviews.

there's a fair amount of nudity/sex in game of thrones and it's very mainstream

it's perceived as a small raise because we're in a bubble

If there is design, then there is art. So yes, a certain part of it is artistic.

same. never heard of them before

do you plan to support founders who come to SF to seek funding?

So they basically took PokerStars and IPOed it for them, since the owners didn't want to, as that would mean they would get stuck in the business.

In that case, there are "InfiniteX" programmers. The worst programmers will get stuck on complex problems and may never complete the task without help. It all depends on the task.

And I say "average" programmer because average is fairly bad if you look at the workforce on a global scale.