djyaz1200

Thomas, I like your work. Just joined your newsletter. Would be interested to talk. I'm @ www.sendsmart.com

To be generous to those proposing blockchain for health records I think their intent to suggest that it be used for the access/authentication layer of a more conventional secure database, but that's just a guess.

Good luck, FYI I think the other comments here are insightful. I believe a mistake we all want to avoid is assuming funding is fractal aka the same at every magnification. Smaller opportunities are handled much differently than bigger ones. The problem is sorting which is which, something everyone (including investors) have trouble determining. So I think it's on us (entrepreneurs) to decide whether we're aiming for the moon or more modest goals. ...and there is NO shame in building a company to millions instead of billions and keeping it all. Also no shame in aiming for the moon and missing (or better yet succeeding). The only thing I'd be ashamed of is letting someone else make or impose the decision on me.

Taking VC money is a lot like a record deal. You're giving up some amount of control in exchange for resources and validation now. Record deals and VC deals are not for everyone. I think the way to determine that is to decide what your personal goals are and ask your teammates the same thing. I think you also need to be very realistic about your market and idea, if you have a multi-billion dollar idea you're going to need backers... if you are already paying the bills and can dominate a smaller market without more funding that might be ideal for you? This all comes back to what you want, once you know what you want all the other decisions get much easier. Good luck! :)

If you're into this kind of stuff the book Skunk Works by Ben R Rich is REALLY good! IMO it carries a lot of lessons into software development and startups also. Like they did random startup type things where for example the external starter motor for the planes engines was made from a couple Buick motors. They spent lavishly where they had to but were frugal and kept it simple where they could. Fun + interesting read.

"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.

It's worth mentioning that 7.62 ammo weights about 3X more than .223. It's my understanding most US military units use .233 largely for this reason.

The whole concept of .223 is to put more propellent behind a smaller projectile. This gives the projectile more speed which makes it exceptionally lethal and accurate at very long distance. Unlike handguns that basically poke a hole, .223 generates a shockwave when it strikes at a multiple of the speed of sound.

Thank you for your service to our country.

"From a purely investment point of view, why would anyone invest in Lyft over Uber?"

In a word... price. Lyft's IPO will give public markets access to a rapidly growing industry at a lower valuation than Uber.

Post IPO I would guess being publicly traded would be an advantage for Lyft because they will have a broader base of stakeholders who benefit from their success.

They are going to fade into irrelevance for the same reason nightclubs do, they just aren't cool anymore. They know this which is why they are on a mission to buy, kill or copy every new social service that gets traction.

Interesting! Can anyone recommend similar tools/projects? Anything in Java?

Suggest the book "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff

Men are sexually harassed frequently but we don't hear about it often because there is a lot of shame in speaking about it... since you're admitting to being lower power/status.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a much very thoughtful analysis of the admissions process and it's bias here... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in

You might want to seek out some folks at Crowdcompass or other companies in your general category and see if they want to hire your whole team, maybe even pay you to continue doing what you're doing... that's kind of a middle option. If you decide not to move forward I'd be glad to consider you for a job at our company because I respect how you're handling this. Whatever you do I wish you the best of luck. If you'd like to chat I'm at... dave <at>sendsmart.com.

It's the receipts, they are printed on paper that has these chemicals and handed to people right before they eat. As a test try not to touch the recipe when they attempt to hand it to you and get ready to be just about assaulted by the clerks as they try to force you to take it.

https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal-paper-r...

Good point. Having a strong 3rd party intermediary moderating/backing transactions is a feature not a bug. This is why people bank with JP Morgan and similar huge banks. Although they charge fees you do get something for the money. They are governed by laws, have physical locations, people to talk to, fraud prevention and raw financial, legal, and regulatory power. I have no love for them but I believe they will guard my money effectively.

In the book Deliver from Distraction the authors (at least one of whom has ADHD and is a psychologist) describe everyone else as having "Attention Surplus Disorder". They go into some detail describing how odd it is for someone to be able to sit still for 8 hours a day doing something really boring. It was an interesting counterpoint to the idea that ADHD is even a disorder... but rather a set of traits that have always been useful in some areas. Similar point to this article. I recommend the book btw, it was helpful to me in embracing the unique gifts that come with the challenges of ADHD.

CEO of communications company here. We send/receive millions of messages with Twilio. It is our go to solution because it is the most reliable in our experience. Plivo is their most direct rival in my view. We've considered them but again Twilio is reliable so we are sticking with it for now but remain open minded.

FYI Short codes don't interchange well internationally. Also sending MMS has all kinds of challenges/limitations. If I can be helpful at all I'm... dave @ sendsmart.com.

Cheers

I'd suggest you and your team go to a bunch of Startup Weekend/Hackathon events. When I've gone I've found a lot of cool people come to those who have the other side of your problem, good idea but no tech/bizdev/capital. It's also a great test to see if 54 hours of dedicated work on the problem yields something that is interesting... if yes great... if not you may be on the wrong path? (Note: there are some important rules about IP at these events you should research/understand fully).

I'd also change your thinking/language from looking for an "idea" to looking for a problem. The distinction may seem slight but it is important + helpful. The idea is really the solution, which often isn't clear until after a lot of sustained thinking/experimenting around the problem.

I'd try to find problems that genuinely personally piss you off. Building a company always takes longer and is harder than anticipated... so you have to be completely committed.

Finally, sell it in person right away... like day 1. Go sell it to people you don't know for real money even if it's not ready yet. When you go around asking people for money you'll either get it or get a lot of really brutal feedback on why not. Either outcome is helpful at this stage.

Good luck!

Yes it's simplistic because it's a HN comment not a a doctoral thesis, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. The fact that most software is very cheap favors companies/VC's that already have money... because it means you have to go for scale over margin. That's a game for people with deep pockets.

Example. Joe Smith builds innovative software. He sells this to 10 local businesses for $5K/mo each. He is able to take care of his family, hire a couple folks and live the american dream... no VC required. Then someone goes to his website, signs up, studies what he's done and copies this innovative software and sells it for $2.5K/month profitably because they don't have to incur the R&D costs or the lifetime of work experience Joe needed to come up with his innovations. Joe is forced to cut prices dramatically or be out of business. Joe's default path now is he must grow to $200K/month at all costs... sell a portion of his business to VC, then try to grow it to millions a month. Then sell more to VC. Rinse, repeat. This is nuts. People should be able to have innovative businesses that aren't copied and don't have the aim of scaling to infinity to enrich VC's. This is important because unlike other businesses such as construction the marginal cost for providing software is so close to zero you can (and many companies do) round it down to zero.

I don't care if any of you agree with me. ...but ask yourself... is the tech landscape serving the guys in the garage right now? If not why not? I believe part of the reason is there is no strong protection for IP anymore. This case was an example of an egregious rip off and the offender was rightly penalized to the tune of $80m, then that penalty was upheld by an appeals court. I think that is a just outcome based on the limited info I have about it... and I am encouraged by the precedent. I hear many of you disagree, and you're certainly entitled to your opinion.

They sell support really, the software is free.

It sounds like you are like many others in tech who believe everything should be open source. Good for you but some of us need to make money off of our life's work in innovation.

Time will tell, I view this in a hopeful way as a shift in direction.

I think companies that invest in innovative products big or small should be able to defend those innovations against being ripped off.

Yes, fights over this will be resource intensive but there are ways to fund expensive litigation if winning is plausible. And of course the expense of litigation touches on all kinds of unrelated problems.

"This also works to inhibit innovation, as companies can lock out competitors via legal machinations, as opposed to needing to innovate continuously."

You're flat out wrong here. Companies will need to create their own innovations rather than ripping off others. This will give power to the the people actually innovating and encourage companies to invest in their own R&D.

RE the 4th circuit, yes it's not the Supreme Court but it's a big decision in the right direction in my view... and suggests this and/or related issues may be heard by the supreme court.

Ultimately software is not the open source cooperative utopia that many people like you hoped for. It is a ruthless for profit marketplace, and if you ever want to give the guy in the garage a chance you have to give him a mechanism to protect his ideas... and the patent system is not that mechanism right now. Perhaps terms of use will be?

Maybe not, in any case the status quo is letting giant tech companies power and influence grow without limits... and that needs to change.

This is one of of the biggest developments in the software industry ever because it incentivizes innovation (good for innovators, bad for copycats). It also fills part of the void left by a broken patent system. We all know many software companies are ripping off other companies ideas on a regular basis. In many cases it's big incumbents taking ideas from upstarts competing with them (example: Facebook via Instagram ripping off stories from Snap).

This decision should allow more competition from innovative newcomers and higher prices in software generally. Right now software is priced artificially low because very few vendors have any pricing power... because competitors can just rip off what they are doing. If that's not as easy companies with innovative ideas protected by strong ToS should be able to compete more aggressively and price their products much higher.

I believe you're going to see many companies put all their content behind an "agree" button.

This shift should also make acquisition prices go WAY up since companies will have to be priced more by the opportunity/IP rather than their replacement cost.

This is a big deal.

Run this study again and put a prominent blinking light on the camera and I bet the result is different. It's not the fact that you are being watched that changes behavior, it's being aware of the fact that you are being watched. This is why many stores show you the video of yourself as you walk in. The mere presence of cameras is not enough... people have to be reminded they are there.

It's not binary. There are some questionable patents out there for sure, but that doesn't mean that innovators shouldn't be able to get reasonable patents to incentivize risk taking. It's a complicated problem.

Why is anyone surprised these big tech companies become monopolies? They are explicitly granted that power through patents. Amazon and Google have been granted long monopolies by key patents they hold for things like one click buying and bidding on search results respectively. 17 years is too long for a patent in tech IMO. Something more like 6/7 years seems more appropriate. The patent office (run until recently by a Google alum) basically stopped issuing new meaningful software patents. The judicial system makes it very expensive to enforce patents and the media has labeled rights holders trolls (in fairness some are bad actors). The aggregate of these forces... making patents last too long, making them expensive/difficult to enforce and rarely issuing defensible/valuable new IP is DRAMATICALLY favoring the interests of big tech giants. Therefore, a key step in limiting monopoly power is thoughtful patent reform. Let small startups secure IP faster/easier and defend it without labeling them trolls. Make patents expire faster so companies can have a head start but not own a market for nearly a generation. Those changes would provide a steady stream of new challengers the opportunity regularly try to come "kill the kings". That's how to limit the otherwise inevitable aggregation of money/power that comes with entrenched/unchallenged success.

All the dependencies that make urban density relevant are being eroded by technology. Self driving cars will be one part of a trend that makes remote living a lot more pleasant and popular. Amazon will deliver most of what you need to live (and soon eat). SpaceX is working on low orbit and therefore low latency high speed global internet so you can work and/or get entertainment anywhere. Tesla can sell you solar panels and a battery to power your home. You can do a septic system instead of a sewer hookup. If you insist on gas you could get propane delivered inexpensively. If you want to mingle/meet people you can do that online. Then with a level 5 self driving car you can send your kids to far away schools everyday easily, or work at your "desk" during a long commute in the car. Or say if you want to drive 90 minutes into town for a basketball game that's no big deal if a computer does the thinking while you watch movies in the back. I live in Oregon where I expect a profound impact. There are so many amazing places here that are incredibly beautiful/cheap and within 90 minutes of a major metro area/airport. I think the real driver of this change will be cost, younger people (myself included) are getting priced out of owning a nice home in a major metro area. I'm seriously considering moving to Sweet Home Oregon and building a mansion on acres for half the cost of a modest townhouse in portland. High speed Internet is the missing piece for me.

Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and there won't be any tolerance for testing unproven autonomous systems in the wild soon.

Related... it will be interesting to see how well autonomous cars handle mechanical failures as they (and their tires) age. Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out).

Website still says copyright 2016, not a strong signal regarding their attention to detail.