jasonwilk

Congrats Pud.

It's not worth buying any of these 'Smart' TVs. I don't know whether it is a shoddy developer experience provided by the likes of Samsung / Vizeo etc or if it's the developers themselves (Hulu I'm looking at you) who do not maintain their apps which are constantly bug filled.

I much prefer my old dumb TV that has a Roku plugged into it. Oh yeah, and I know it's not WATCHING ME.

Instead of waiting, you can just order a small Writeyboard now which is exactly the same thing.

http://www.Writeyboards.com

To me these losses could be completely justified. It's a simple calculation of two companies (Uber and Lyft) who perceive customer LTV to be huge so they are tripling down on acquiring customers, drivers, etc.

The only way I see this as a disaster scenario is if rides are operating at a negative margin in hopes automation will eventually solve that problem as it's not clear either of these companies will even win the automation race.

Congrats Daniel! All the best.

Traffic in Los Angeles is in a sad state. I have moved my house and office to within 2.5 miles of eachother so that I never need to see a freeway. I am fortunate to be able to do so. There is heavy traffic all the time, even when you least suspect it. It's no way to live.

I'm a fan of Soylent but I wouldn't say things like 'Soylent prides itself on rapid product development—an ideal popularized by Google and Facebook Inc.'

Things that are going into my body should not be rapidly developed and released. It's slightly different than Facebook launching a new feature that may or may not break.

You should add a 4th V which is very important to why advertisers are liking SnapChat, which is Volume. SnapChat ads naturally have sound on and users expect it to be that way; another element to its similarities to television advertising.

Nothin wrong with a plain old WriteyBoard. Shameless plug, sorry guys.

http://writeyboards.com/

Congrats guys!

Not entirely. As you know, public companies fluctuate heavily on other factors than just financial news. Something like a summary judgment in New York or California that negatively impacts AirBnB's business could send it for a spiral. It is likely more responsible to stay private until they feel they have solid footing with the regulatory environment. Private investors are clearly willing to give them a huge valuation knowing these events will likely turn out to be positive, and as long as employees are able to get liquidity, might as well stay private for now.

They do seem to be spending aggressively on growth (and legal) so I suspect you are half right in that they are probably losing a lot of money.

This shouldn't hold up the deal. GM can write in the agreement that Cruise shareholders have an unresolved potential obligation which they will cover with proceeds.

I had to deal with this at a previous company and it in no way blocked or slowed down the sale. Just a pain in the ass and something that is unfortunately too common.

You can never be too careful with starting your business.

I've noticed that this has stopped working on WSJ if you've already hit the paywall and try to google the article to bypass.

The only fact I'd point to is that if A16Z were to raise a new fund, it would be wildly oversubscribed as with most other top VC firms. If I'm Andreesen, that's the only thing I'd point to.

This is an interesting deal. There was an article posted on HN a while ago that talked about investors pouring money into publicly traded companies who directly compete with private tech companies who have insanely high valuations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/technology/investors-find-...

HomeAway Vs AirBnB was specifically mentioned. Turned out well for the guys who made this particular bet.

Getting tired of these posts. It is so easy to say college is irrelevant. At a high level, it is a mostly generalized education that of course can no longer guarantee success due to the sheer amount of people who now obtain a degree.

However, college is still relevant. A smart man once told me that college is a place to learn how to learn. Managing a schedule, living on your own, succeeding in courses that you are not passionate about, showing up on time and just overall having your shit together are things you will need to be successful in real life.

Unless you have ambitions of being a sys admin for life straight out of high school, then maybe you should save your $$. Even then, I'd still probably go to college. It's 4 years that you'll never forget for better or worse.

I wanted HomeJoy to work and tried to use the service a few times. What the failure came down to:

1. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is manual labor.

2. People don't want to let just anyone into their home to clean. Especially for those that have valuables, you want someone you trust who is going to hopefully be your maid for years to come. I wouldn't want someone new every time and for that reason, I used HomeJoy only at our office but even that wasn't enough due to poor quality.

Someone on this thread further explained this well, which is that HomeJoy is at a high level, a match making service. Once you find a match, why do you need HomeJoy? Connect directly with the maid and have them come on your own schedule for a fraction of the price.

I used to feel the same way about Uber. If I found a good driver back in the day I would get his phone # and take him exclusively to the airport. Uber solved this with UberX and by having a wealth of seemingly skilled drivers that made it a true on demand service. Having to book an appointment like HomeJoy seems like it is not a true OnDemand service, just a nicer UI than any other maid connecting service.

AirBnB I feel had a similar problem. For frequent business travelers, finding the right place at the right price is awesome and I would usually try to stay at the same place and connect with people directly. AirBnB solved this with overwhelming demand for the service (the place I like may not always be available) and with their insurance policy and scheduling tools for renters.

In any event, I don't feel like HomeJoy failing is indiciative of a bubble in the On Demand economy. There were inherent principles of this business that made it destined to fail that others in the space won't have a problem with.

You guys need to come to Los Angeles

I am not a college student anymore, but I can only imagine the time savings of searching for answers and/or keywords in an ebook when writing a paper or finishing a take home test.

As for the ebook vs print argument as a 29 year old, I always order my books on amazon in paperback or hard copy. I stare at a screen all day, and don't want to sit down for an enjoyable read using the same medium. I also always order used copies of books and the prices are often times $.99-$2.00. Far cheaper than a digital copy.

The way Google seems to be approaching self-driving cars is the right one in my opinion. Self-driving cars will be on-demand, booked through something like Uber and will not be owned by the end-user.

I feel that the other car companies working on self-driving car technology for consumers are wasting their time. The main reason I enjoy owning a nice car is that I like driving it. If I wasn't in control of driving my car, what would be the point? Vanity of course has to be considered but in the future, I see self-driving cars which we don't own will the the status quo in cities, and owning a manual operating a car will be either a novelty or something for people outside of major city hubs.

Fabian, I'd like to chat as well. We too have had troubles finding reliable affiliate traction and have worked with companies like CJ to no success. jason@allscreenhq.com

Notable commment: "“An app developer earning $5,000 bucks a month as an example might be thrilled to get a check for 50K"

Assuming a small app developer doesn't have many expenses, this amounts to a 1-2x ebitda price. Seems like a bad deal.

This is a far better deal for BrightRoll than going public. Tremor and YuMe, arguably similar businesses, are basically trading for the cash they have on hand. Todd (BrightRoll CEO), had told me he thought ad networks were not meant to be public companies. He certainly followed that mentality through to a nice exit. I'd take $640M outright exit any day versus going public at a slightly higher comp.

Legal really will depend on the firm. For my exit, I used a boutique firm that ended up costing around $75k, but when I spoke to even my friends at the larger tech legal firms like Orrick, they wouldn't even consider it for under $250-300k.

It can be pricey.

It would be hard to debate someone about paying management fees for mutual funds vs no fees on index funds like NASDAQ. This graph should say it all (10 year graph): https://www.google.com/finance?cid=13756934

While I do invest in index funds, I have the majority of my money invested in Google, Apple and LinkedIn. I truly just believe in these companies and ignore short term speculation. I am no investment expert, but these stocks combined have by far beaten all the index funds by a significant multiple. Go for the long term, ignore stock tips and earnings reports and you can be successful at investing too.

Instead of having my company pay 50% of our profits each year to the US government, I should get a massive rebate if I can offset those profits by hiring new employees over the following 12 months. I would hire 50% more people if this were the case. It's a major incentive and one that should be put in place.

How does one monetize a 10% ownership of an entity that is majority owned by a public company? Unless there is a spinoff, or the public company sells that particular asset, I don't see how Sean makes his money on this. IAC can just continue to use Tinder to grow their own market cap, which in turn helps IAC shareholders but not Tinder shareholders or 'founders'

This could be the worst cap table of all time.

$206.5 million of that loss was for share-based compensation expenses and issuance of common stock below fair value -TC

This is a poor headline.

Good article. I really agree with his comment:

"It's directly competing for the same real estate (i.e wrist), where as if we had seen a bracelet of some kind announced yesterday, those early adapters, myself included, would be begging Apple to take their pre-pre-pre-order"

I really did want the apple watch to be more of a bracelet and something that could be complimentary to an analog watch with all the messaging, notification, health aspects in tact. More than anything, the health tracking seems to be the most relevant for myself, and for that, I see a JawBone Up or something comparable that I can rest next to my analog watch as a potentially better option.

The design is brilliant, it's just not for me. However, iPhone 6 looks great so not like Apple won't be taking my money :)

Very interesting to see this possible acquisition especially considering last year their CEO was quoted saying regarding a 2014 IPO.

"I consider an IPO an entrance," he tells us. "We don't have a choice, our volume is too high and our scale is too big for anyone to absorb us."

They've raised over $60M, so maybe they have cooled off quite a bit and seems they are about to get 'absorbed'

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/flurry-ipo-and-ceo-simon-khal...