kloncks

Kout is part of the latest AngelPad class. Our investors include six ex-Googlers and two top Silicon Valley VC firms.

We're looking to hire our first employee. Offering a real equity stake, competitive salary, and a chance to revolutionize eCommerce.

Kout is a dead-simple eCommerce platform that enables anyone, anywhere to be a merchant across any platform with ease, elegance and simplicity. We make it fast & easy to both sell items and collect money online and do this by generating a simple one-page checkout that corresponds to a unique URL. We're also doing really cool things with dynamic pricing, payments, as well as social & mobile commerce.

We're simplifying eCommerce and removing the barriers to entry, enabling anyone to be a merchant. We'd love to do that with you; let's talk about the details.

Contact hany@kout.me. Mention you're from HN :)

Interesting point. Was at Coupa just this weekend. Couldn't get Wifi :)

From Wikipedia:

Pavlina was a student at University of California, Berkeley in the early nineties. He performed extremely poorly in his studies, because he devoted his time to shoplifting. Pavlina claims he then went on to earn two degrees (computer science and math) from California State University, Northridge in three semesters (also incorporating advanced placement credits for courses he had taken in high school).

1. He's claiming this and it's never been proven, despite how easy it is to actually prove. If he truly did this and people didn't believe him, he can simply show proof. (if you read the post, just like he showed proof to the people that doubted how many classes he was taking).

2. IF it is true, then it's widely fudged. The guy had APs and (bad apparently) college credit. This "3 semesters" claim is akin to someone going to school for a couple of years, accumulating a lot of credit, transferring to another school and graduating in 1.5 years. Seriously not that impressive.

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There are great blogs with successful students that went to extraordinary lengths in college. But this just isn't one of them. He also seems to be someone who got rich by talking about how to get rich; excuse me for not admiring that.

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Aside from all that, here's the really important point I came to HN to make: instead of a 'do it now' attitude, don't rush it Seriously.

College is a few years of your life and an amazing experience. Our society has this issue of rushing things and making races out of events that weren't meant for that. This reminds me of Norvig's rant on books with titles like "Learn Advanced Java in 24 Hours".

Challenging oneself with more classes in college is one thing; taking so much that you couldn't possibly retain such knowledge is another. Slow down, concentrate, and actually learn the material. College isn't a race; it's a journey. I say make the most of it.

Take that rant however you want. As a recent college-dropout (start of 4th year), a lot of the celebrated and arbitrary things in college (from how many classes you're taking to how many majors you're studying to how fast you're finishing college) just don't seem that interesting 99% of the time.

Making sure Celsius happens is much easier than other international problems. (Say, different currencies, a problem my startup is dealing with now).

Sunday, October 30 · 2:00pm - 5:00pm

PA Hacker House is awesome!

Dropping out isn’t an accomplishment, any more than money is a sign of achievement. Sometimes, but not always, it’s simply a symptom of success.

Steve Jobs might not have completed much college, but the company he created wouldn't have been successful without Woz who more closely resembles the model I wrote about.

Steve dropped out of college without any plan. That (miraculously) worked.

But it wouldn't have worked if it wasn't for Woz (and others)...Jobs really couldn't have done anything he ended up doing without others. Woz, like others, only left when it was clear something else would be a good option and that point only grudgingly.

Thought that's by far not all we do, my startup ( http://www.kout.me ) has the ability for people to do that. A lot of interesting problems in this space.

Dr Land was saying: “I could see what the Polaroid camera should be. It was just as real to me as if it was sitting in front of me before I had ever built one.”

And Steve said: “Yeah, that’s exactly the way I saw the Macintosh.” He said if I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator what a Macintosh should be like they couldn’t have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it so I had to go and create it and then show it to people and say now what do you think?”

Both of them had this ability to not invent products, but discover products. Both of them said these products have always existed — it’s just that no one has ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them. The Polaroid camera always existed and the Macintosh always existed — it’s a matter of discovery. Steve had huge admiration for Dr. Land. He was fascinated by that trip.

http://www.cultofmac.com/63295/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-th...

I think it has a lot to do with just how down-to-earth most people are in Silicon Valley. You can be in any place full of "celebrities" - say Hollywood - and spot a lot of familiar faces/names. But "running into" so many and interacting with them seems to be a Silicon Valley thing. Certainly the level of help that people are willing to extend, gaining nothing but karma in return, seems rare outside of this area.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/03/mg-siegler-will-become-our-...

http://www.kout.me

Kout is part of the latest AngelPad class. We're VC-funded and looking to hire our first employee. Offering a real equity stake, competitive salary, and a chance to revolutionize eCommerce.

Kout is a decentralized eCommerce platform geared towards micro-merchants. Think of it as an eCommerce version of Square. We focus on simplicity and great design. We're also doing really cool things with payments, dynamic pricing, and deals. We have a few patents pending for our implementation/s.

Make no mistake, we're going to disrupt eCommerce. We'd love to do that with you; let's talk about the details.

Contact jobs@kout.me or email in my profile. Mention you're from HN :)

Very amazing concept and something that we've needed for a long time. The best thing is the developer focus behind it; it's clear from the beginning that this came to fruition with fellow developers in mind.

Over 100,000 movies and TV shows, including thousands of new releases and your favorite TV shows, are available to stream or download, purchase or rent - all just one tap away. Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows.

As a Netflix user, I know first-hand that quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality. Any idea on what this list actually contains?

so I respectfully have to disagree

Lovely. See you in two years.

Offer surprisingly good customer service.

Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see.

http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

It's of interesting timing - this ousting - especially with the theatre that we're about witness at the UN.

But what do you expect from Arianna and AOL?

He'll have a pretty personal personal blog - something like AVC - and I look forward to him bringing his expertise and style to investing. Good times.

My thoughts (based on my very limited experience) are that East Coast VCs seem to be more risk-averse.

Which makes sense. It's easier to be more risky when you know investors down the street who have made 1000x with the who's who of the Internet.

Looks like this will validate that. Now, if only webOS could chime in and make this an interesting battle. That would be special.

In the vast majority of cases, the "rules" are just a starting guideline. There are always exceptions.

Just like there have been (rare) cases of single founders, the opposite of four founders is likely an option.

The one thing that matters is the same thing that has always mattered. Are you rockstars? YC - like others - invest in people.

If you're an amazing set of people and work great together on an idea that you've been working on for two years, but all means apply. You literally have nothing to lose.