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283 karma · joined August 12, 2010

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forgot_password··on The Second Wave of Blockchain Innovation
I'm not trying to be snide but that article is very difficult to read b/c of the white text.
forgot_password··on Boxee wants a buyer
In situations like this, do startup founders leak the word that they want a buyer? It seems like they wanted to put the word out there, but doesn't that kill their leverage in acq discussions?
forgot_password··on Inbox Zero for Life
Boomerang is a life-saver but its doubly wonderful when you practice inbox zero
forgot_password··on The Three Hour Hackathon to Cure Facebook Addiction
Heh, I found this amusing "We also obviously built this on Node.js, anything else and it would take to much time to configure or setup." Couldn't you just use a lightweight Ruby or Python framework (e.g. Sinatra)? And wouldn't any simple data-store do? I'm surprised you even considered MongoDB...
forgot_password··on Startup founders reveal their #1 user acquisition tactic
I can see Buffer getting a lot of traffic via their guest posting strategy. I've seen several of their posts on HN. However, I would have a hard time imagining that these posts convert since they cover topics totally unrelated to their app. Also, I think their strategy it's generally dilutive for their brand. I recognize that startup blogs are a great way to get traffic but I'm turned off by it. Maybe I'm the only one though
forgot_password··on Why Startups Die
I hadn't seen Chris Dixon's post on what startups need and don't need before. I disagree with vacation policy being unnecessary for startups. I know some startups don't have one and I feel like it's done to create friction whenever employees want to take time off which feels a bit insidious. And it creates the feeling that some folks are freeloading. I don't think it's overly "corporate" to have a well-defined vacation policy
forgot_password··on Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, & acceptance: The A/B testing lifecycle.
Off-topic but what do you guys use to run A/B tests?
forgot_password··on Munchery Is Trying to Reinvent The Personal Chef, And Early Signs Are Promising
Are there any legal issues here? Aren't these chefs acting as a restaurant and wouldn't they need a license?
forgot_password··on What Percent Are You?
The color-coding on this map was an interesting choice. Bright, stop-sign red is used for people whose income is in the top 1%. I almost felt as if being in the top 1% was a bad thing...
forgot_password··on Sell to Teachers
If the author sees this as a way to get product market fit, his points make sense. If a teacher with such a limited budget likes the software enough that he / she is willing to pay for it, then you are probably on to something. However, banking on teachers spreading the word and having a sales force focused on teach outreach seems like a terribly unscalable sales strategy.
forgot_password··on Bada Bing, Bada Boom: Culture inside Bing
Is Google+ considered a flop? It seems early to render a verdict on this.
forgot_password··on Humble pie.
There's a distinct writing style among today's tech entrepreneurs that becomes hard to stomach. Many blog posts have this authoritative and overly confident tone. It's only after an entrepreneur experiences success that they admit how they "did everything wrong." (see Suster, Mark) This pattern makes sense; as a startup CEO you need to always be selling. Once you "make it" it's hard to disabuse people of the notion you are competent.

Jason, as he'd probably readily admit, hasn't "made it" on this scale yet. That's what makes this post so courageous. At some point, Jason will be raising money for 42floors and a potential investor will ask him about Flightcaster. He won't be able to spin the story of Flightcaster in a way that makes him look like a dot com hero. I'm impressed that Jason put this out there.

forgot_password··on "How To Write Good" by Frank L. Visco
Splitting infinitives is done so frequently today that it sounds more natural. Consider: "I was hoping to completely finish the project before the teacher called on me"
forgot_password··on The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed
Doesn't AirBnb require a credit card from the renter? Wouldn't it be straightforward to find the vandalizing renter using their credit card information? I'm sure that I'm missing something here...
forgot_password··on Send a file to your Dropbox from its URL.
Out of curiosity, what use case do you see for this?

Future features would be being able to let users specify which folder they want the file to go to and be able to change the file name. Also, just FYI the example link is broken for me. But I'm more interested in the use case, since this seems cool but I don't know when I'd find it helpful.

forgot_password··on Advice for startups on how to make money from online advertising
Are ad impressions in emails only counted if the person accepts images?
forgot_password··on Advice for startups on how to make money from online advertising
I'm no expert, but I bet few publishers command $12 CPMs. That seems outrageously high.
forgot_password··on White Hat SEO: It F$#ing Works
Rand assumes that the top ranking sites today that produce great content got that way through white-hat techniques. I have no idea whether Zillow, Oyster, or Zappos never engaged in shady SEO practices and I doubt he does either.

Also, one minor addition...if your domain is naturally uninteresting, that should affect your competitors as well. One can argue that having an exciting domain that breeds lots of natural links is actually a bad thing for a startup because it's harder to rise over your entrenched competitors.

forgot_password··on How Two American Kids Became Big-time Arms Dealers
IMHO: The printer friendly version isn't particularly easy to read. Go here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-stoner-arms-de...
forgot_password··on Bing Partners with Kayak
Odd because Bing bought Farecast a few years ago and Kayak is Farecast's biggest competitor
forgot_password··on Anything is Possible (in a Startup)
The author glosses over the sacrifices that a non-engineer has to make in order to get employed at a startup. First off, there's the enormous pay cut. Expect to earn 1/2 of what you'd be earning in another job ASSUMING that you were able to land a job at a funded startup. Second, what jobs are available at funded startups for fresh college graduates? Sales, marketing, business develpment? Sales is a tough gig, and not necessarily an intellectually inspiring process. There simply aren't that many PAID marketing or business development jobs at startups for recent college grads, and the competition for those jobs is fierce.

Being at a startup can be an incredibly rewarding experience. But I hate to think that students (already idealistic) are getting into a startup without the proper understanding of what it's like.

forgot_password··on We Built Interactive Seating Maps Using Raphael; Please Give Us Feedback
SeatGeek pulls from the same ticket sources as Fansnap so we have the same priced tickets. Try sorting by low price :)
forgot_password··on Staying Healthy and Sane At a Startup
whoa this seems a bit dangerous and flies in the face of what we get drilled into us since children about weightlifting. Do you have any authoritative source for this?
forgot_password··on Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich
I feel as if this problem is exacerbated in the tech community because your credibility comes from having a big exit. For example, Chris Dixon is definitely an insightful guy but would he be as widely consumed if he hadn't sold a company for millions of dollars?

The commenters seem to agree that freedom and independence are the only things worth coveting. In VC-talk a tech founder can usually get financial independence for life with a "double" However, its the guys who hit the home runs that are respected and looked up to, and I imagine that drives a lot of tech founders.