98 karma · joined February 1, 2011
Between Instacart (which in it's "final form" is basically amazon for groceries) and Amazon (don't forget the Echo, which was basically built for the same usecase) grocery stores don't really have long left. Certainly less than 10-15 years?
So whatever Apple is building, it's definitely not an "also-ran" because the category doesn't exist yet. Whatever wins this category will look and feel markedly different from a smartphone, just like how the first real smartphones looked and felt different from their predecessor "smart"phones like the razr and blackberry.
Whether Apple can bring a viable product to the market remains to be seen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27s_delayed_choice_expe...
Take a modern convertible note to an angel investor from the pre-bubble 90's and they'd laugh you out of whatever coffee shop you happen to be sitting in.
All of the "examples" shown in the blog post make irrational arguments. Show me one scenario (in numbers) where using a convertible note for a seed round was suboptimal compared to an obtainable equity deal.
If I didn't know better I'd think this was an example of a VC trying to smear an awesome instrument so hopefully they won't have to compete with investors willing to write them.
In addition, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a generalized framework, it's not a guide on how to day to day manage your employees. Saying it's "outdated" because its previous misinterpretations no longer apply to today's world is irresponsible.
Is Streem going to continue to live on as a separate product?
If you are running a startup I don't know of a better way to convince yourself not to listen to the haters
"Employed Americans" isn't a typical survey category, and the author makes no attempt at explaining why "Employed Americans" was a more relevant demographic to survey than all americans, all adults, all adults between ages of x and y, etc. Nor does the author present equivalent statistics for the more commonly surveyed demographics.
"Nearly one in two employed Americans" really just means almost 50%, and could be misleading on quick glance.
I think it's fairly obvious that providing 1 computer exponentially more resources isn't much different from creating exponentially more brain simulations...
Here's a better answer - Lending Club and Prosper both lost their shirts when they first entered the market, and now they are both making their investors money. It just takes time and, more importantly, data.
I don't understand why politics can't be a tool to achieving those ends. Especially when the DNC is aligned with the startup community on many of the key political issues, like founder immigration reform, that can affect all of us.
If you sue your company, you increase its chance to fail by an order of magnitude. If you lose, you can laugh as your former founders and friends struggle to recover to pre-lawsuit levels but probably fail. If you win you would've won worthless shares in a company that's shortly going to fail.
Be pragmatic. You even admitted yourself that you are not a great coder - be the bigger person and do what it takes to help the company succeed.
Oh and when you exit, negotiate for an automatic vest for 25-50% of your remaining unvested shares.
Everyone shits on bankers but the reason there's so many successful ex-bankers outside of banking is because they're goal oriented people who don't take no for an answer. Very similar to startup founders.
And I'm talking purely about bitcoin. I'm a lot more bullish on the future of crypto-currencies in general, but bitcoin has a lot of flaws that are probably deal breakers at this point.
Bitcoin doesn't have this defense mechanism.
1. There's a finite amount of them that can ever be mined
2. There's no central governing body control the rate of inflation/deflation through monetary policy.
By definition this creates a deflationary currency. Meaning as a currency it gains value the more goods and services it can be redeemed for, and the more valuable it is the less likely it is that people will redeem it for goods or services.
Meaning if all of a sudden more merchants started accepting bitcoin then bitcoins will appreciate as it's underlying "value" grows, but people will stop spending bitcoin because that coffee you bought for 3 bucks today might be 30 bucks next year. In turn merchants will spend less money building infrastructure for bitcoins since no one uses it.
Does that make any sense?
By the way, as a male founder I've heard every single one of these multiple multiple times.
data-points gathered by most "quantified self" tools are completely useless in the hands of anyone except yourself (or someone who has weird fetishes about your insulin levels)
It reads more like a leveraged sellout (leveragedsellout.com) piece than commentary on quantified self...
Was thinking about selling it for 3 months already but just takes so much time.
Groupon, Grubhub, Braintree, Orbitz etc.
Let's go through this logic again. So a hedge fund comes in, buys a company, levers it up with a partner's money, leaving a pile of toxic debt on their neighbor's lawn.
With you so far.
The company issues more junk bonds in order to pay it's existing creditors, and that gets snapped up by other PE firms / Hedgefunds, who need it in order to fulfill a never-ending quest for returns.
Yup got it.
GC then goes bankrupt and the banks are evil.
Whoa, wait a minute. Where is this whole process did anyone get hurt? The author seems to think Guitar Center, and YOU, the average consumers. But in order to really understand that, let's look back in time.
Guitar center, if were any other company, were started by a few enterprising individuals with a passion for what they do. In turn, they were able to build a great business, and grow it to serve the entire country. After a while, wanting to cash in their success, they sell the company to a buyer, knowing very well what they planned to do with the company. The rest is history.
Not as clear anymore is it? Now lets look at what happens in the future.
GC goes bankrupt. Or it doesn't but becomes irrelevant. The 800-pound gorilla in the space dies, and there's room in the space now for another innovator, a new group of passionate individuals who can now bring their vision to life.
And the cycle starts anew.
Simply put, I was frightened by how much I was forced to rely on my 10 year old C++ programming abilities to understand the principals behind what this online course was teaching me.
Someone without any programming experience would get more out of learning principals of computer science with almost any language than a high level MVC framework like rails - there's just too much magic that you'll never understand.