flipside

YC is all about building something people want. Garry Tan clearly wanted a 6 pack of beer that day. Either that, or the other partners were jealous and wanted to know how they could order their own 6 packs.

Anyways, this guy got in because he built something people wanted. Do not try this unless you have an actual product.

Grid is redefining what a spreadsheet can do on a tablet. When building something new, might as well build and experiment with the new features first to see if people really want them. Demand for calculations is a given.

Nobody would care if they released a "new" spreadsheet app that did calculations, but with innovative features still on the to do list.

Grid is taking the right approach and personally I think it looks sexy as hell.

To me, the fact that Quora feels it needs to share passive views means they're failing to get enough people to actively engage with their content.

If I don't care enough click a button, either A) I have no meaningful opinion, B) I don't want Quora to know what I think, or C) there's a "problem" with the button.

Quora, if you're going to just make assumptions about why I'm looking at an answer, you will very often be WRONG.

(views disabled)

"Another important element in Netflix’ personalization is awareness. We want members to be aware of how we are adapting to their tastes. This not only promotes trust in the system, but encourages members to give feedback that will result in better recommendations. A different way of promoting trust with the personalization component is to provide explanations as to why we decide to recommend a given movie or show. We are not recommending it because it suits our business needs, but because it matches the information we have from you: your explicit taste preferences and ratings, your viewing history, or even your friends’ recommendations."

Well, at least they're trying to demonstrate awareness and explain their recommendations, even if they come up short.

Awareness? Am I missing something here because most people I've talked to (several hundred for the record) feel like Netflix recommendations are hit or miss, a black box that plateaus after a while. If anyone can explain to me how Netflix conveys their awareness I'd love to hear it.

Speaking of explanations, sure, showing that I'm being recommended a movie because of some other movies is sometimes helpful, but the rest of the time it just reveals how poorly they understand me. It's can be pretty obvious that the algorithms have no clue why I actually like certain movies, after all, how could they? There are tons of things to like/dislike about any given movie, but when that gets boiled down to 5-stars all that context gets lost. Diminishing returns and noise will keep them from really understanding my tastes with their current system.

Why am I ranting? Because I want to be understood but Netflix and other personalization services still feel so damn impersonal. It's frustrating.

Anyways, we're working on a solution, sign up for our alpha at http://tagbax.com or comment/vote to tell me how right/wrong I am. Thanks for reading.

Quality is important, but still subjective. Not to say this won't be a great curated list.

Anyways, I should have known better than to just throw that out there. My bad.

There is no such thing as "the best textbooks", just "best textbooks" for each person.

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce...

It's all about context and trust. Without both it's all pretty meaningless.

This is something I've given a lot of thought to and I'm working on implementing such a system.

Here's hoping that theory keeps holding up to reality.

Great guide! Was a good refresher for me and I could probably add to it (which probably means I've done too much research).

Now back to hacking on our alpha.

Grats on the launch!

Was awesome meeting you guys at AngelHack over the weekend.

Your stuff is legit and I'll be spreading the good word to my photo-centric entrepreneurs.

Less stuff for them to worry about.

-Mat

If you go to the nyt home page, you can watch the video for free. Just click the link then the logo.

The video made a very good, straight forward argument, highly recommend watching.

The solution is to align the interest of the individual with the group. I've run this past hundreds of people, it's pretty solid as theory but coefficients matter so it's gotta be tested.

You never know. What if your post leads to a tantalizing but cryptic offer of a solution?

Okay, I'm done seeding responses, time to sleep like the dead.

Sadly, we're reaching the limits of the karma system.

I'm working on an upgrade, details (or lack thereof) can be found lower on the page.

I didnt spell it out, but I'm working on a solution, see my comment lower on this page.

As for the prototype going over your head, first order it looks pretty simple, second, third and fourth, ... Hey, even I'm not sure I've mapped out all the possible dynamics but the possibility is unquestionably there.

Noisebridge is cool, hung out there a few times. I'm super busy now but maybe in a week or two though I am a sucker for coffee chats (hint hint). Basically I suck at writing and would rather connect through any other medium.

Also to add a few details, I'm doing this as a startup (Tagbax, don't mind the landing page, I'm really not trying to drive traffic yet). Community comment moderation isn't necessarily my first choice to apply the tech $ wise (I really ought to drop by disqus one of these days), but it was designed specifically for user-generated content.

There is only one possible way to solve this problem that has a shot at working and I'm developing/testing it as quickly as I can.

It requires a combination of crowdsourcing and machine learning (NLP is cool, but optional).

It is part rating, voting, tagging, reputation, recommendation and more.

It sounds complicated, it isnt for users (~2 clicks from ~10% of readers) but is for me to build (3rd week with rails, so relative).

It is mostly still theory at this point but the math checks out and user tests have exceeded expectations but are very early stage.

If you've read this and think I'm crazy, you're right (best to accept it).

If you think I'm naive, it's a possibility that's kept me up many nights over the past year.

If you are interested in learning more on the off chance I'm right, you can reach me at (Mat . Tyndall at gmail).

I am in San Francisco working on this full time after dropping out from grad school.

I will tell you in excruciating detail in person or via Skype how it works and why.

I have not slept very much in the past week so I have no idea if posting this is a good idea but I doubt I'll get even 5 votes or any takers but thanks for reading.

I'd love to be able to explain my identity this way:

Asian [x] - If you're more "white"

White [x] - If you're more "asian"

Both [x] - If you open minded or PC

Neither [x] - If you want me to pick a side

Hapa [x] - If you'll allow me all of the above

Identity depends on where you stand.

Just because somebody doesn't do what you're doing doesn't mean they can't be right. Good advice is good advice, whoever says it.

Asking "why?" in general is a good place to start, because there's also:

--Why isn't anyone else doing this? (Depending on your idea, they probably are. Hint: if it's idea A + B = C, they are.)

--Why me? (If you can't answer this, then it shouldn't be you.)

--Why this and not something else? (If you can't muster up some passion, save yourself the time.)

In other words, "why?" is one of the toughest questions to answer, and keep answering because you can always ask "why?" again. But if you CAN answer it, you may just have something.

All good pg, we know you're busy and we appreciate it.

Personally I'm planning on dropping by Scribd and maybe Greplin if I have time. I'm hoping it'll be a bit more intimate than the craziness I expect at Airbnb and Dropbox.

This was actually only the opening for Silicon Valley Bank CEO Summit: Defining Moments. All the other speakers were fantastic so figured I'd post links to their presentations as well. This was an all day event, but extremely educational.

----

Avery Lyford (Partner, Blueprint Growth Partners): "Big Brother" Alliances for the Win - http://video.svb.com/video/Big-Brother-Alliances-for-the-W

Brian Wong (Founder and CEO, kiip): Moments-Based Marketing - http://video.svb.com/video/Moments-Based-Marketing

Bob Wiederhold (Founder and CEO, Couchbase): Being Part of the Venture Ecosystem - http://video.svb.com/video/Being-Part-of-the-Venture-Ecosy

Sunil Nagaraj (Bessemer Venture Partners): Customer Discovery - http://video.svb.com/video/Customer-Discovery

Panel Discussion: The Convergence of Technology and Hollywood MJ Eng, Founder and President, ShoeDazzle Jeremy Liew, Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners Moderated by Lizette Chapman, The Wall Street Journal - http://video.svb.com/video/Panel-Discussion-The-Convergenc

Eric Ries (Entrepreneur, Author): The Lean Startup - http://video.svb.com/video/The-Lean-Startup

Ron Gutman (Founder and CEO, HealthTap): The Hidden Power of the Smile - http://video.svb.com/video/The-Hidden-Power-of-the-Smile

Duncan Logan (CEO, RocketSpace): When to Pivot - http://video.svb.com/video/When-to-Pivot

Leslie Bradshaw (COO and Co-Founder, JESS3): Disruptive Marketing - http://video.svb.com/video/Leslie-Bradshaw-Disruptive-Mark

Q&A with Gary Kremen - CEO of Sociogramics, Founder of Match.Com, Founder of Clean Power Finance - http://video.svb.com/video/Clean-Tech

Peter Byck (Founder and CEO Winery Exchange): Continuous Entrepreneurship - http://video.svb.com/video/Peter-Byck-Continuous-Entrepren

Linda Jackson (Founder and President, Team TIBCO): Defining Moments - http://video.svb.com/video/Linda-Jackson-Defining-Moments

Greg Becker (President and CEO, of SVB Financial Group): Closing Remarks - http://video.svb.com/video/Closing-Remarks

As you'll hear from Guy, he rewrote his presentation thursday morning as a tribute to Steve Jobs.

He finishes the 12 points by 28 minutes, the rest is Q&A (still good).

12 points:

1. Experts are clueless

2. Customers cannot tell you what they need

3. Biggest challenges beget the best work

4. Design counts

5. Big graphics, big fonts

6. Jump curves, not better sameness

7. "Work" or "doesn't work" is all that matters

8. "Value" is different than "price"

9. A players higher A players

10. Real CEOs demo

11. Real entrepreneurs ship

12. Some things need to be believed to be seen.

Speaking as a nanoengineer now doing a web startup (in SF for 2 weeks now), this is just the way the world works.

Startups and nanoparticles can spontaneously form anywhere under the right environmental conditions, but they can just as easily break up in isolation. But if the local concentration is high enough, something magical happens. Even when a person or a molecule jumps ship, another one fills its place almost instantly. Suddenly, these things are "stable" but not only that, they can grow, sucking up bits from the surrounding environment and merging with others.

Critical mass, in SV it's the right kind of people, in nanoengineering it's the right kind of molecule, either way, once it gets going, you just hang on for the ride.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_micelle_concentration is one nanoengineering example but there are others.

I appreciate the post, I'm hoping to get my app in by tomorrow as a solo founder (though I am interviewing a potential cofounder, hopefully we can work something out within the next month).

I particularly loved the part where you asked pg why he let you in. If nothing else, I understand my startup backwards, forewards, inside out and upside down, and I'm getting closer to conveying all that in the app.

Life keeps getting crazier and crazier, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I could potentially position my startup under 1, 2, & 7, but since it forces me to pick one I'm skipping it since none of those is likely to be our explicit focus. Story of my life, I've never fit nicely into one box and I'm not gonna start now.

I guess I'll just leave it up to them to make sense of a universal feedback/recommendation engine that's a mashup of Pandora + Delicious + 20 Questions (aka Pandora for Everything).

Flat ground marathon running is for big companies that can just throw resources at a problem. For a small company to get ahead, it needs to take some creative shortcuts.

Sure, a lot of parkour is "frivolous" and "flashy", but so are most startups. For the serious traceurs and entrepreneurs though, finding a shorter path can be the difference between being a success and an also ran.

In short, do what it takes to get to where you need to be, obstacles be damned.

Interesting articles, sure, but I wish you'd addressed societal and generational impact (you can skip overpopulation concerns).

Sure, we age because the world changes, but in case you haven't noticed, the rate of change in the human world is accelerating. It strikes me as a bad idea to bet on trends that are on a collision course by their very nature. Maybe there is a way to reconcile extreme longevity with human society, but if there is, I sure haven't heard it or found it on that website.

For a game to be bigger than religion, it must take on a life of it's own that transcends the "lives" of the players.

Chain World sounds very cool, but it's lacking one crucial element, replication. An online version sounds intriguing, but would most likely need substantial tweaks to create the right incentive structure.

Children only come into their own after their parents have left the picture, however it is that happens.

Can you imagine being a part of the younger generation when immortality is discovered or extended longevity? Would jobs ever open up, or promotions be available? Nobody will retire at the top, so there will be extremely little turnover. How can the young hope to surpass the old if the old hold all the keys and never let go?

Sure, aging is scary, but have you really thought through all the implications of curing it? Heck, have you even thought about why it exists in the first place? There are many cancer lines that never age, so why haven't organisms evolved that never get old? If you have an answer, I'd love to hear it.

Say what you want about human perception of randomness, but I definitely find the raindrops to be more visually appealing than pseudo or quasi random.

As was said in the other comments, it seems to me that the distinguishing feature is the average spacing around each point, most likely caused by droplets aggregating when too close.

This is one of those things that always drives me crazy with iTunes shuffle feature with the dj thing, repeat frequency. Yes, I want random, no, I don't want songs to repeat immediately. If someone could fix this with a pseudo-quasi "random" algorithm I'd be eternally grateful.