djyaz1200

Congrats on your launch! This sounds really promising!

How do you deal with the risk of severe reactions? Is that risk diminished with drops instead of shots?

I'm undergoing shot therapy now and had a life threatening anaphylactic reaction to a shot just a couple months ago. I'm concerned if I had been by myself at home I may have died?

I was at the doctors office but they still called 911 for "backup" because I got so sick so fast. What struck me about the experience was the speed of the whole thing. I was fine one moment, the next moment I didn't feel great, then I started dry heaving, then I got upset with the staff as I was insistent I be allowed "just lay on the floor" which they wouldn't allow. This whole deterioration took maybe 5 minutes? I felt very very tired like I wanted to sleep. When they gave me an EPI injection it didn't just magically fix everything right away. I was still very sick for another 15-20 minutes. I never had any breathing distress I was aware of and had I been alone I don't think I would not have injected myself with EPI, I think I would have just gone to sleep and not woken up.

I presume you all have thoughtfully addressed this risk but I didn't see that in my quick skim of your materials/website so I'm interested in how you handle it?

Your point is reasonable but if/when this information is widely known I'd expect many patients to demand the medicine. To each individual it's not the overall civic outcomes that matter anywhere near as much them personally living + thriving. Also, with all the emerging info about potential long term side effects like "viral vasectomy" I'd expect even younger/healthier patients would want this drug to limit longer term negative outcomes that fall short of death.

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more news coverage, here is a pretty cheap off the shelf drug that improves Covid outcomes in a good sized double blind trial. Potential side effects are non trivial but come from misuse and I would expect most patients at grave risk from Covid would be under professional care (hopefully minimizing misuse).

@Sean_Pedersen, I've been working in the messaging field for years and I share your frustration this hasn't been solved. I'm not a big Twitter user but followed you (@chiefexcitement) on there just now, if you DM me I'd be glad to setup a time to discuss.

Ordered several of these after studying reviews/summaries, thank you!

I say this with more shame than pride... I built our company's sales from 0 to $60K MRR but it took me years (way too long to be investable) and I made a lot of mistakes.

I'd suggest selling in person right now before it's done/launched. For a startup to take off big you need some pull from the market and right now is the time to gauge if that pull exists.

Some things that worked for me that may or may not work for you...

- Sell in person if at all possible. Even if you spend $10K worth of time selling a $9/month product you should learn enough to make it worth it. This is like when manufacturing companies manually complete tasks before they automate them. Also, however your clients dress, dress one notch nicer and wear your company name/logo with pride.

- Experiment with wildly different pricing, you'd be surprised what works. We struggled for a long time at $400/month but sell more faster at $999/month. Related, try asking for the most money you can without laughing, it gets people's attention.

- Extend HUGE discounts to buyers who decide fast.

- Get REALLY specific. You want to find the exact niche of people whose reaction to your pitch is basically "shut up and take my money". Most of us are exposed to very general advertising meant for everyone from huge companies, you can't afford that. Find a little pond to dominate.

- Create a buying process, forms, website etc that make you look like a big deal. Get input from others on this because it's hard to see your own materials objectively.

- Treat your customers so good they brag about it to others. Customer acquisition is expensive and if you have to make each sale you're in for a rough time.

- Read A LOT! Sales is like tech in that the best practices change all the time so to remain competitive and relevant you need to work at it constantly. I found the book "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff amazingly helpful in understanding how irrational people are. Best nugget from the book IMO is sales pitches enter the brain from the back (animal brain) rather than the front (rational brain). So step 1 of any pitch is putting people's animal brain at ease.

I wish you all the best!

Looks like it is obfuscating asymmetry. In addition to the intended effect it could also make people more attractive.

Human morals/behavior aren't like a fractal that's the same at every level. Let's see a study like this where much larger amounts are in play.

As a young adult, my dad warned me that people are basically honorable up to about $10K. In practice, I've found everyone's threshold is different and fluctuates greatly with their individual situation and the broader economic situation. For example, right now I'm seeing otherwise successful and decent folks do really ugly things over 4 figure money.

I feel for you, that's an unfortunate situation. We are around that price point and selling into a niche industry and also got these types of offers/demands earlier in our journey. I am very thankful we declined them although they were tempting. Part of building a company is building a customer acquisition process that is repeatable and scalable and bribery doesn't qualify. If you build a product without a repeatable and scalable sales system you will fail. If anything the customer acquisition is more important than the product. This is why companies like Dropbox famously faked the product demo video, got a big waitlist of customers and then made the product. You can solve just about any problem a company has so long as it has scalable + repeatable system for profitable customer acquisition.

There are other problems with this...

1. People who actually have connections and power typically also have money, and understand the rules of investing. Respectfully, I think you're dealing with lower-level people who may not be able to deliver on their promises.

2. Once you start bribing it's never enough. People who extort bribes from you in any form will always ask for more. In my experience, this is rooted both in their greed and desire to conceal their inability to actually add value. Rather than saying... "sorry I can't actually make valuable connections" they will ask for bigger incentives.

3. It will hinder your company long term, other investors and/or clients who become aware that someone got equity for free will then be anchored at free. Be confident, you're worth something.

4. There are rules around this, blame the rules. Laugh it off with them and say unless they are accredited investors individually and/or their company wants to pay $70K for the legal it's a no go. Say this nicely and they may back off. The "shit sandwich" is a great way to deliver bad news like this... say something nice, say no, say something else nice.

5. I handle most the sales for our company and you can take heart that you are probably onto something valuable, congrats. Most people have a logic flaw I exploit as a salesperson that when they want something they want it completely. Humans are very bad at indexing desire, further if you have something unique they can't get anywhere else then you are in charge. That's great, part of what you're going to have to learn is how to get customers excited enough to try/use/buy your product without being so crazed with it they insist on owning it.

6. If you can't beat back people's desire to own a piece of your company stall. Tell them you'd love to have them as a partner but all the legal details would cost a fortune. Make it clear to them that you can't "paper" a deal of any kind without money. This might make it their idea to get you some money.

I hope some/all of that is helpful. Sorry I didn't distill it better. Others may disagree with some or all of this and they are entitled to their view. Best of luck!

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO PEACEABLY ASSEMBLE."

-The First Amendment to the United States Constitution

I fully agree and this documentary illustrates your point well. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/american-patriot-ins...

My mother took her own life when I was a teenager towards the end of a tough fight with cancer (it's likely she would have died eventually). I'm about to turn 42 so I have some distance from this. She did it with a handgun and because it wasn't legal for her to get help so she had to do it alone in secret. I came to learn later that my parents fought about this because my dad is a doctor and understood how to help her but would have gone to jail for it and lost his career. I also think he just couldn't bring himself to do it, so having legal medical help available might have changed things?

This obviously derailed my life and my sisters and my dad for many years. I have some skepticism about if/how assisted death would have been better but I suspect it would have been. I imagine (perhaps wrongly) we would have been able to say goodbye and give her a peaceful end. Maybe have counseling leading up to and through it?

I'll respectfully skip the 1-4 specifics. I just believe that people who want to die should be allowed to do so peacefully, and no one who objects should be obligated to help. With the hundreds of millions of guns in the US, violent suicide is widely available here, the debate is more about if a peaceful death is available and I think it should be within thoughtful constraints. Those that disagree with me are entitled to their opinions though.

Can anyone at Google even pretend they aren't evil any more?

I'd suggest that JPM and other companies typically go through the 5 stages of loss when encountering a disruptive technology. Denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance. I'd guess this stage is bargaining. Their past statements were denial.

"Except unlike people in other professions, when police get scared, angry, and make mistakes, other people die."

Fair point, hence the edit.

I agree some of them are bad hence my edit. The problem is two sided and we should address problems on both sides.

My sister is a DA so I hear the other side of this. Police are people and they can get scared, angry, and make mistakes.

Deaths at the hands of police are always horrible but an important message that is not broadcast clearly enough in every community is... NEVER RESIST ARREST!

Never! When a police officer instructs you to do something just do it. If you disagree with the order there is a mechanism to voice that disagreement called the court.

If you defy a police directive they will use rapidly escalating force to make you comply that can endanger your life.

This used to be pretty well understood and I think we need better public communication about this. We also need to make sure the courts are more accomodating to underprivileged communities because if people don't believe the courts are fair then disputes are going to get settled in the street with violence.

EDIT: On the other side I believe if a police officer contributes to the death of someone in the line of duty they need to surrender their badge, even if they played by the rules. If the other person loses their life you should at least lose your job. That kind of incentive might discourage some of the cowboy culture on their side that's not helping here.

If any of that is profit you've surpased WeWork! Congrats! :)

It's in the interest of the super-rich to advocate for a strong social safety net to prevent millions of hungry people with nothing to lose from taking what they need instead of waiting for it to be shared. ...at least until they can build a colony on Mars or something?

They keep announcing this as if it's a new thing but it has been in beta for a couple of years. If/when they are serious about this being a real communication channel between companies and customers they should provide a simple API and registration process like Twilio.

If true this N.O. theory could explain some of the dramatic differences in Covid 19 outcomes based on age.

"...production of NO declines steadily with increasing age..." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3390088/)

It could also explain why heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure are comorbid for Covid 19 as they are all associated with lower N.O.

Totally agree, he should accept orders from any org willing to sign a long term deal at his usual prices and run the factory 24/7.

Heads up to small business entrepreneurs, SBA and other emergency financing options may be more readily available to you with 2019 tax returns completed so you may want to get them done ASAP if you haven't already.

It's not even that they are using "extracted rents from A to significantly undercut prices below competitive level in market B to gain share" they are locking us and other companies out of the market altogether. This is a crime and it's happening right now.

I would suggest that monopolies in one area are not that harmful in tech because tech changes so rapidly that monopolies are quickly undermined by "the next thing". What's damaging is when tech companies have a monopoly in one area that they leverage to extend their monopoly into "the next thing". Famous example is Windows bundling Internet Explorer. Google is now doing this kind of thing... Example... Google used to allow businesses to add their own SMS capable number to their "My Business" profile to allow customers to message them. They have since removed that option pending the release of their own API for messaging. They are using their monopoly in search to extend their power into communication. This harms the businesses (like mine) that were assisting companies with this messaging and that harm generates damages. The way for the legal system to stop these monopolies indefinite expansion is to find the actual places where they are restricting competition/innovation and generating monetary harm to others in the process... point out these issues and make them change their behavior, pay or both. If you disagree I'm interested in how you think the power of these tech giants can be constrained?

If passed this would immediately give all California schools a big recruiting advantage. Other states would need to follow suit. It would also set an interesting precedent if California unanimously resolved this issue that's been discussed for years. Like emissions regulations before and the GDPR like law coming in 2020... one could argue California is setting much the legislative agenda for the country.

I agree, I have yet to see hard data on this but academic research tends to shed light on things long after the fact... while a big part of making money is about what is happening right now. Anecdotally I've seen (and you probably have too) that I can buy many of the items I need for daily life for dirt cheap online, and when I need labor for my company I can hire nationally/globally on sites like upwork for a fraction of what local talent would cost. Both have low transaction costs and because of ratings I waste much less time and money buying the wrong thing or hiring the wrong person... which is an aspect of inflation.

That final point is probably worth study. My thesis would be that when the economy is hot everyone is in a hurry and more likely to hire people/vendors and buy things that aren't ideal. Online rating systems tend to direct demand to the vendors who can successfully satisfy that demand. The web also makes discovery of new vendors and products very quick lowering the switching costs.

5 months ago on HN...

10 points by djyaz1200 5 months ago | parent [-] | on: U.S. personal income posts first drop in over thre...

"We can't sit there and leave interests rates low forever" ...says who? What force dictates that the equilibrium for rates must be higher? Yes that's historically been the case but that doesn't mean that's the right path for us now and in the future. I would argue that low interest rates will be and need to be the new normal.

Interest is the ultimate rent seeking activity. The fed funds rate is a form of price fixing for banks whereby they collectively decide how much interest they can extract from the economy without killing it. Why must this be the case, the economy should be allowed to run much hotter for much longer.

Inflation is less of a risk now because of technology + globalization, right now we are experiencing significant deflationary pressure as products and labor converge towards global pricing/wages.

Our economy and government will be in very serious trouble if we have to pay higher interest on our significant national debt, so the government has a big interest (pun intended) in keeping rates low to protect its own financial solvency.

Finally, high interest rates imply money is scarce and that's far from the case now. Having large sums of money is not what it used to be, you're competing against a lot of other people and organizations seeking to deploy that money productively for a return. This generates downward pressure on market interest rates as evidenced by European Central banks going below zero to negative rates.

LOL! Can we have a new subcategory on HN for comic relief stuff like this! :)