jim_greco

Jetbrains charges way too little for such a ridiculously good product.

I have some personal experience with this. Our company is Direct Match. We used to use the directmatchx.com website. Adding an X on the end isn't that odd in the trading world, but we would get comments on it all the time. directmatch.com ended up costing us $8k and well worth the purchase.

For me it came down to, how can I tell customers, recruits, or investors that I'm going to be this huge impactful startup if I didn't even own the .com of my name? I couldn't. And now I never get a question about if my company's name is "Direct Match X" or why there's an X at the end of the domain name.

Is it that surprising? What's the bull case for commodities exactly? Europe continues to slide in and out of recession. China is slowly significantly and is structurally trying to change it's economy to be more consumption based. LatAm is a mess.

It's true for W15.

The pro-rata provision is only for raises of $100M or more post-money. Is YC only going to do these transactions for post-money between $100M and $250M? Or will you ask to be part of raises below $100M?

Why not? Because it creates a maintenance nightmare and if it's not your core business that means it will never be a priority. Using Google and Facebook as a counter-example is silly. These are $250B+ companies and these tools are a significant part of their business.

A company should never build a compiler, database, or operating system if it is not their primary business.

What slack are you running? Slack or any web app doesn't take a second to redraw on resize.

Talking your book much? This story is so contrived that it hinges on a comically inept founder taking $200M to solely spend on an advertising campaign on the platform of the person investing it. If this is the best example a VC can offer to cram down valuations then I'm pretty sure founders are going to keep reaching toward those unicorn valuations.

There is a whole class of point and click trader out there that brings up the Bloomberg NEWS function (scrolling news), waits for the red flash (breaking important news), and steamrolls over unaware market makers. Most of those market makers are electronic.

It's been happening forever and of course it's now going to get automated. And the electronic market makers will use the same techniques to cancel orders so they don't get run over. The only people worse for wear will be the human market makers and the human point and click traders who can no longer compete.

LTCM was bailed out by the banks, not the Fed or anyone else in Government. LTCMs LPs got wiped out. The bailout was to contain systemic risks to the rest of Wall Street.

QE is actually more like trillions of dollars.

A revolving door is frowned upon when one party benefits directly to the deteriment of competitors. Citadel can't really get special favors from the Fed as there's little the Fed could even do if they wanted to benefit Citadel over other hedge funds

Yellen has worked at the Fed forever and knows how to speak to private citizens. She's not going to leak her press conference material because her old boss called her up.

Your two links are 1) Outright insider trading 2) An unrelated example where perhaps you do want to look at revolving door rules.

How is this a revolving door?

- Bernanke has never worked in private industry before

- The Fed doesn't regulate hedge funds or HFT firms (Citadel has both)

They're hiring him because he's going to be amazing in front of new LPs when Griffin raises funds. How do you not give a global macro firm that employs Ben money?

Not everything is a conspiracy.

How do you know what Foursquare's business plan was? Foursquare raised a Series D. They didn't go into that pitch telling VCs that they're just getting traffic and they'll worry about monetization later.

Struggling to build a sustainable business model is not the same thing as not having a business model. Again, it's difficult.

It's a good lesson on just how difficult building a startup is.

- Crowley built this product before and sold it to Google.

- Foursquare was an overnight phenomenon and had great user engagement. People were addicted to this app!

- They raised a ton of VC money and were able to hire some of the best engineers in NY.

- They're still struggling to build a sustainable business model.

Most YC companies aren't running call centers.

Just don't GC :)

Matt Levine does a great job of explaining scaremongering from the media (lately, mostly from the NYTimes) about Wall Street.

My favorite is the Goldman Sachs aluminum "scandal" from last year: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-03/the-goldman...

There's a lot of bad stuff that happens in finance, but we shouldn't be whipping out the pitch forks every time someone makes an accusation.

Here's my New Yorker perspective: Everyone I know who has a job that pays them $150k-300k a year doesn't have much work/life balance. Jobs in finance/law/tech are all consuming and the pay is commensurate with that. This seems little odd signaling out tech.

Have they changed this process recently? It was only 3 years ago they were trumpeting their brain teasers in the WSJ.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702045523045771125...

Of course there's a nonzero probability. That's an easy conjecture to make about any startup taking on something brand new. You'll always find hundreds of reasons to say no in venture investing.

But what if they're right? What if does become a hit? What if this is a great new communications paradigm? Then the $12M greylock put in or the $100M purchase of periscope is a frickin' bargain.

You have to appreciate the impact that Piketty has made on economics. It's one year later and columnists and academics are writing about the blog post of students that have minor quibbles with his data or conclusions.

You need more data. Just because 72% of apartments are under rent control doesn't mean that 72% of apartments are going for under market rate rent.

Even with rent control, San Francisco would benefit from being denser. There's a lack of all kinds of housing which is making it unaffordable. Manhattan is 70,000 people/mi2. Brooklyn is 35,000 people/mi2. SF is 17,000 people/mi2.

I don't really think people are leaving finance for tech because it's a gold rush. Most of these guys are making half of what they made as an associate or VP. Even with all the money pouring in, exits aren't exactly that common. Even if they were, most of these people aren't going into executive, or technical or founder roles that they could make that much money off the exit.

But you do get to do much more interesting and rewarding work. You get to work in a collaborative and supportive environment You can wear whatever you want and enjoy the SF weather. And the hours are way better.

It's a cool app, but there's been a huge degradation of my stream now that it's littered with |LIVE NOW| posts and out-of-context replies. Neither of which is fixed by this unfortunately.

The best part about Pinker's book is he actually uses data to backup his thesis. Gray is just rambling and appealing to emotion.

You don't have to rack up student loan debt at MIT or any of the other elite colleges in America. If your family can't afford it then you'll get a ton of grants from their endowments (and work study to supplement). It's the next level down in colleges, especially at liberal arts schools, where students get stuck with the bills.

He had to pay 25% of 2 years * $90k for this. This is a terrible trade off. MIT is incredibly generous with grants and work study programs. My girlfriend's family ended up paying ~$10k a year to go to one of the best schools in the world. And when you graduate you're looking at a job well north of six figures.

Edit: It was actually ~6k for her. Class of '05.

> We have this system because that is what people want. Maybe not you, but clearly the majority.

Laws and regulations are usually designed to protect the minority. Our country would have made very little social progress if we only enacted reforms that the majority wanted.

1) Underemployment is counted in the U-6 measure which has also trended down significantly this year.

2) The workforce participation rate number is meaningless unless you put it into context. How many people would be in the labor force that aren't currently? Is the drop because there was a lot of people retired early after losing their jobs or is it because a lot of young people gave up looking for work?

The economic improvement is undeniable. I would find better reading material then right-wing and conspiracy theorist "news" outlets.