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jelmerdejong

216 karma · joined January 29, 2012

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jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?
* 'Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup' by John Carreyrou

* 'Who is Michael Ovitz' by Michael Ovitz

* 'High Growth Handbook' by Elad Gil

* 'Principles: Life and Work' by Ray Dalio

* '1491' & '1493' by Charles C. Mann

jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: Best tech for a web site 2018? (PHP, Rails, Django, Node, Go, etc.)?
Flask (a Python micro-framework) + all the available Python toolkits/libraries/plugins it works with, comes very close. It's easy to learn, and quick to spin up.
jelmerdejong··on Launch HN: Solve (YC S17) – We Save International Travelers Hours of Time
Like the idea! Especially on airports that are famous for their lines and waiting time (JFK...) winning time at immigration and avoid standing in line for a taxi quickly saves you 2 hours. For the business traveler that is almost 2 extra meetings, and for the family traveler that is 2 hours less stress and crying children.

I registered a domain name a while back 'DeliveryOnArrival.com' with the idea to also accelerate business travel. The plan was that you could travel with less stuff (and therefore could bring only hand luggage) and get what normally use and need delivered on arrival: at the airport gate, in your Uber, in your Hertz rental, or at your hotel. Never executed on it though, maybe a nice add-on service (I would use it).

jelmerdejong··on How our fake business won a Customer Service award
It can be even simpler. I'm working in the enterprise software space and get multiple emails a week stating we have been selected as on of the 'Top X vendors in X' and won the award for Y by a certain magazine or by a local 'trade association', or can be part of a 'prestigieus' Top 100 list. The only thing we need to do to get the award is to buy some advertising space to cover costs. Normally this is between $3 and $5k.

The conversation pretty much stops after I indicate we are happy with the award and the nomination, but will not buy any advertising with them. Funny thing is: a few weeks later some of the vendors in the space will show of their new award of place on the Top X list on their LinkedIn pages :)

jelmerdejong··on BBVA acquires Finnish banking startup Holvi
BBVA is expanding, first the acquisition of (Bank) Simple [0] and now Holvi.

One thing i'm not sure about: is this a sign that BBVA has a good digital strategy by acquiring these neo-banks. Or does this show that a stand-alone neo-bank is not a easy / realistic thing to accomplish (yet)? Most, if not all, neo-banks struggle to get real customers (e.g. regular users, outside the 'TechCrunch PR wave group') and are either acquired (BBVA doing well here) or becoming software vendors to banks, vs a challenger to banks (e.g. Moven (bank) [1]).

[0] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/bbva-buys-banking-sta... [1] https://newsroom.accenture.com/industries/banking/accenture-...

jelmerdejong··on Guide to Personal Productivity Methods
Personally I always use articles like this to yet again change my personal to-do-list strategy, select a new fancy app/tool, pay for a year long subscription, start entering all that is on my mind, open it the next day, look at it, and close it.

I know the strategy, I have plenty of apps with an active subscription, but really making it a daily habit is the struggle.

Any thoughts on that?

jelmerdejong··on Uber employee arrested in Amsterdam
Transport Inspection arrested an Uber employee in Amsterdam for not coorporating with providing the Inspecting documents Uber says are classified and helping competitors. Currently being detained. This after a raid in the Uber offices by the inspection last week.
jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: Startup School Europe: were invitations sent?
Nothing so far in my email and also no happy tweets, probably not.
jelmerdejong··on Which English?
Creepy :)

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:

1. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics 2. American (Standard) 3. Canadian - See more at: http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/#sthash.yDkuaast....

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:

1. Dutch 2. English 3. Norwegian - See more at: http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/#sthash.yDkuaast....

And yes: I'm Dutch.

jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: I'm visiting SF for 3 days, what do I do?
I really enjoyed just driving around: visit the multiple campuses (Facebook, Google), checking out Steve Jobs old house and neighbourhood.
jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?
Recurify - http://www.recurify.co

With Recurify you can make any order a recurring order. Subscribe to anything!

jelmerdejong··on So someone "stole" your idea
Something I noticed a while back: many people have the same idea at the same time since the timing is just right and things come together.

A few years back I had the idea for Dashboardy (and still have to domain name): a simple tool that just consumed multiple saas apps and their statistics in one beautiful looking dashboard. No one could offer me that. I did not built it, but a few months later Geckoboard and others where there and deliver exactly what I was looking for at the time.

Earlier a few friends launched Avertize, a simple app to get overlays on your Twitter picture: no one doing it when they started building it. But on the other end of the world a day before our launch someone launched the exact same app.

And more examples like this. People, completely unknowingly of each other have the same idea at roughly the same time. Strange? No: the timing and trends are right and the market is just asking for these things.

The uniqueness therefor is not in the idea. The win is in the execution.

jelmerdejong··on [dead]
Atlanta, GA. Full Time.

Backbase Portal is designed to create a totally customer-centric online environment, populated with powerful widgets that provide unlimited flexibility and functionality to engage your customers and empower your business teams.

Choose Backbase and transform your existing online and mobile channels into a dynamic Customer Experience Platform.

Backbase is looking for Java Solution Architects, Back-End Consultants and Front-End Consultants for our new office in Atlanta.

More info at: http://www.backbase.com/about/careers

jelmerdejong··on [dead]
It's a dog. Wet from the water, the owner next to it. Dark wood due to the water, big pool where the dog shook itself dry. Nice day. Probably playing catch.
jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: What code-editor do you use?
PyCharm, so Phyton :)
jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: Any other readers Not working in a web-based start-up?
Working at a software company that builds portal software for banks. We are not a startup, we are building enterprise software, software that runs on premise and is not sold as SaaS.

However, HN is great inspiration and a valuable source. IMHO enterprise software or enterprise is the market place that is missing innovation and real challengers. More and more companies should fight the status quo and challenge the big dominators (e.g. IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, HP). And I hope to see 2013 as the year where we see more Y Combinator startups and also HN discussion around startups that do exactly this.

jelmerdejong··on Sorry, this blog post is not available in your country.
Thanks for the feedback. I use Museo for regular text in an attempt to differentiate from the 'default' styles. However, it should not bother you when reading.
jelmerdejong··on Ask HN: How To Prepare a Site For Hacker News?
Next to use a good caching plugin like W3 Total Cache, you can try CloudFlare. This really reduces your server load, speeds up your website and lowers spam comments on your blog.