R? Everyone doing most anything interesting has been using Python for a while.
798 karma · joined March 9, 2009
We all did a 6 hour tour of super metroid, it was great. There is something to this for sure. Hearing original Zelda music transports me back to being a kid instantly.
Our startup wasn't really successful. We didn't return money to our investors. We were 'bought' by another company, but that was just a talent acquisition. Since then we have been successful at the new company...again...because of nothing more than we will stick to what we believe is right longer than others. I'm able to withstand a lot of resistance and I only take a few people's opinions seriously. So other people not liking me or not wanting to be apart of what we are trying to do has little effect on me. Not everyone is like that. If you aren't this startup/running companies is not something you should indulge in...the stresses will break you down.
It's really important to have a people you work with that you can rely on and commiserate with. Without that it could get to anyone, save a true psychopath.
Paul has given reasons for why he didn't want to invest in single cofounders, but I'm not sure he ever articulated it that way. For me having a partner made this experience bearable. It wasn't what I would call fun though.
Not everyone can handle stress like that...I'm not sure I could ever do that again. You have to know what you can handle and what you can't.
I'm sure there are abuses of engineers in the valley, but it's not indentured servitude. This article makes it sound like these people were slaves with no options...that's categorically untrue except maybe in Aaron schwart's and Turing's cases.
Also, how many software engineers in the valley or other places are happy with their jobs? I bet it's a higher percentage than say work at McDonald's....
I'm not knowledgable enough to comment, but he takes a lot of exceptions to the author's characterization of string theory.
Seems convenient to use a pretty lame reference engine to make yourself look good. 3 liter engines have made near 1000HP for years now.
Regardless of the truth, there are a lot of open questions and this man was put to death with all these questions still not answered. This is not who we should be.
Fitting a 200lb dog is a matter of perspective too. What do you mean by fitting? I have a 100lb dog right now and he fits into my crv just fine, but he fits into our Odyssey a lot better. He can lie completely spread out, doesn't have to curl up, etc.
Sites that have tried to do things like this in the past have been very cumbersome and ultimately unuseful.
You need to decide if you dog can fit into a compact SUV or if you need a medium sized SUV/crossover. There is a big difference in size/mpg/and cost between those two categories of vehicle.
If you want a compact SUV look at ford edge/subaru forester or outback/mazda CX-5/toyota rav4/honda CRV or subaru tribecca on the compact, but larger size. The CRV will have your best real world mpgs there, but gives up a lot in power.
If you get into larger crossover/SUVs you should look at the honda Pilot/toyota highlander-4runner/subaru tribeca/mazda cx-9/ford explorer or flex (if you don't care about off road at all).
The problem is they all have their good and bad things and some of the stylings are way off. Also, reported mpgs and real life mpgs are sometimes very different. The best thing to do is to troll user forums for these vehicles and learn as much as you can. Good luck!
I doubt she wanted to get them fired, but her hyperbole (joan of arc reference, and her comment on her blog "Yesterday the future of programming was on the line and I made myself heard") and complete lack of remorse tell me there is a lot more going on her then a one or two 'off color' jokes.
Can't tell if serious? This happens all over the valley all the time. You show investors something they would use many of them would invest.
I have heard "oh, that's cool I would use that," many times for a lot of bad ideas. VCs have egos that cloud their judgement all the time.
No offense (well we know where this is going), but anyone saying this has no f*$%ing idea what they are talking about.
What we found in those years with IMSafer and later with the company that purchased our assets was mindblowing in a terrible way.
In the US we weren't allowed to really do anything with the data we found even in the most awful cases. When the patriot act was in affect there were opportunities to turn some of the data over to the gov agencies that deal with exploited children, but it was unclear.
In the UK they were allowed to more freely use what they found to put pedophiles behind bars...which they did on more then one occasion.
In some cases it appeared that children had installed the software as a desperate cry for help against their abusive family members.
In one particular egregious case the offender was involved in group chats where he would try to normalize the behavior to his child by having other sick individuals tell her it was OK. Then, they would setup times for her to be online with them while terrible acts were perpetrated on her.
No one is acting as if this was common. But, it did happen. And we weren't selling the chat, running ads against it or in anyway trying to monetize the 'fear' or grief of our users.
A lot of people here do not have kids and don't understand how hard it is for parent's to talk their kids about all sorts of issues around sex and drugs and rebellion etc.
In many cases IMSafer was their last hope and it was very helpful to a lot of people.
We never started it because we wanted to spy on kids or know people's gossip. We did it because we realized that parents were ill equipped to deal with the new online world.
Porn was a not a concern. To us that was your child viewing something. What we were concerned with was someone coming into your child's world and talking to them without your permission. If the child was having an issue with their parent's these kind of people would pick at that and try to show the child they were on their side to win trust.
Places where parent's thought their kids should be safe just weren't and still are not.
Also, some kids are susceptible to these kind of attacks by predators. In some cases parent's had kids who had been sexually assaulted in real life already and they were very afraid, because of their child's mental makeup now, that they would make easier targets.
We had adults buying plane tickets for kids and working out details to get them to fly across the country to meet under the guise of some camp the kid was going to, etc.
It's real whether you want to deal with it or not. We did our best to balance online privacy while helping people.
I feel like we did a phenomenal job and we didn't sell fear. It was never part of our marketing or selling.
Was it a billion dollar business? Probably not, unless we owned most of the space if not all the space. This was inconceivable when you looked at the players.
I worked at the company that was bought by HP in Oregon and then later in Texas. It was called RLX technologies and created the first blade server. After it was purchased by HP I stayed on for a few months before moving on to a startup in Oregon. It seemed like a great idea as they moved me back to Oregon.
My best friend, who got me on at RLX after my first startup (NEI: high speed telecom startup) had crashed and burned, had taken a position at this startup in Oregon (we both were from there and had met after graduating from Oregon State). It seemed like a way to continue the work we had started at RLX and would get me back to Oregon. So win-win.
Long story short: the startup had issues and he moved on to found IMSafer. I would of liked to but needed to stay on for another 6 months, so I wouldn't have to pay back half of my moving expenses.
Once I finally moved on to IMSafer the company was still small with only 6 of us. It was a great time and we built something truly exciting and helpful. We had a wonderful time at the Techcrunch 40…, but that's a story for another time. :) I believe Paul knows this story too, as it was one of the big reasons we got into Ycombinator!
I will skip to the end as Jason supplied much of the interesting info and the color to that debacle. But, I will add, just as you don't count your chickens before they hatch you never, never invite your new 'partner' (board member, investors…whatever) to a board meeting until the money is in the bank.
Once the assets were sold only 2 of us stayed on with the new company that bought us. It was a trying time, but my best friend did get to move back to Oregon and it was just us, keeping a rather complicated site up and running while working on creating the 'new' product that was to make all the money.
While, at IMSafer we had realized that there could be big money in using this software in a more enterprise fashion. We realized that many virtual worlds for kids were popping up and they had use for software like this. He, I and another one of our friends from our old RLX days set out to create a real-time piece to the software that was much better at moderating less dangerous content like curse words, etc. It would quickly mark words they found objectionable and pass the text on to the more complicated software outside their enterprise to look for the truly dangerous things.
From the point that IMSafer crumbled to when he and I decided to leave or got fired…depends on who you are asking, we had grown the business to a million dollar run rate in 8-9 months. But, we had been bought by a startup and we had very different opinions on how to run it with the purchasing company…and we lost!
About that time we left/got fired we decided to do something new. Both of us had vary different experiences buying a new car and decided we wanted to fix that. After getting in a small fight with our former employees we got them to relinquish all rights to CarWoo! and proceeded to build it. At the time it seemed a bit crazy to fight for something that wasn't much more than a landing page and a bunch of crazy ideas, but in hind sight…seems like genius….I have decided to tell it as a stroke of genius!
After we got into Ycombinator we told Paul about this story and at the time he said it was the worst 'pulled funding' story he'd ever heard. It's possible he's heard worse since, but somehow I doubt it.
5 of the 6 of us were married at the time and 4 of us had children. As we were in the tussle over CarWoo!, which was almost nothing at the time my wife had our second child.
Tommy and I got our call that Ycombinator had accepted us while sitting in benchmark's parking lot in the spring of 2009. We had come full circle i guess you could say.
We moved down to Palo Alto, left our wife and kids behind for the time being and the rest is history.
The pay service allows dealerships to see data and have access to tools that help them be more competitive and make better decisions.
NO one ever gets to pay for placement or for access to our customers.
Acting as a buyer's agent is tough as you are considered an autobroker and there is a ton of state level laws around this kind of business. Some of them are extremely archaic, but are kept in places by an extremely powerful lobby organization.
If you are interested look up the battle TrueCar became embroiled in recently because of some decisions they made in their business model. The end result was they lost over half their paying dealer network and half their revenue in a matter of a couple of weeks. They were disallowed from operating in a dozen or more states over night.
They have recently had to completely change their product to come into compliance. Their aint no lobby like an auto industry lobby! :)
It's a very complicated industry to move into successfully. We have done a good job (IMO) of navigating the mine field while offering a compelling service to Consumers and Dealers.
Your points are valid and well articulated. I appreciate something being said about the lack of women that isn't just complaining about it, but instead sees it as opportunity.