kunle

I've known Drew for a couple of years now and he's been working with travelers since before we met. Glad to see this take flight!

My brother just had a kid and he's taking a picture every single day as she grows up - he wanted a private way to record the photos and share them privately. Give him feedback!!

Absolutely spot on

They are sticky, but part of the rate of change is driven by people moving between companies and getting raises and such. That will just happen less and attrition over time will do the rest.

This is pretty spot on. We in the SFBA don't think about rates much but in a past life it was all I did. The moment the markets price in a long term expectation of rates rising, a lot of the current behavior we are seeing (eye popping salaries/valuations/home prices/rents) will correct themselves. It won't mean the businesses are bad - just that they're priced less richly. Until then, they are making hay while the sun shines and they're probably wise to do so.

Placeit.net

This is an exceptional deal. The hackpad team is awesome, the product makes sense, and I remember thinking after Box bought Crocodoc, that Hackpad would make sense as part of Dropbox, especially as it went enterprise and started competing with Word, Google Docs etc.

Congrats to the Hackpad team and to Dropbox here. Solid deal.

And here's the hackpad with all the bookmarks: https://hackpad.com/Design-Resources-for-Noobs-N6b2MJ6325w

Bravo for doing things that don't scale. Good luck here & I hope this works out. Happy to help read through your YC app as well. ayo at hipmob.

As an ex-trader I always wonder what the right attack vector is, but I agree generally. BB is not standing still by any means.

The flipside is, most of the money managed by firms is not handled over Bloomberg nor is Bloomberg the final point of analysis before trades are made. For example one group at my old firm (in fixed income) used a custom built set of tools on top of excel connected directly to their own bare metal sitting on the floors of all the exchanges where they traded contracts. They pulled in their own prices at their own frequency (which was much faster/accurate than available via Bloomberg). Same was true in our group - data came from the exchanges (though with not as custom/frequent a setup), and bloomberg was used as a quick and dirty way to look up historicals/trends, rather than anything live.

More recently I've thought the best attack vector is messaging. There isn't a Bloomberg messaging app on the appstore. Of all the use cases, this is the most irreplaceable - you can probably pay up for all the data flows (banks all pay exchanges directly for higher fidelity data flows than Bloomberg provides) but aggregating that 500k odd userbase of finance professionals? INSANELY HARD. If Bloomberg had an API though . . .

went through YC with these guys and I'm also a customer. I can attest to their awesomeness personally and as a company. Congrats and good luck!

A lot of this stuff takes longer than you'd liked and is more difficult/intractable (but that's politics). The bigger question is - without knowing what they could/can't achieve going in, can they afford NOT to try to make changes?

Imagine what the SF housing/policy landscape would look like if these companies double headcount over the next 5 years. What's happening with the buses will pale in comparison (and the worst part is the buses aren't even the issue, they're just visible).

This won't be a popular thing to say, but both Facebook and Google (and many others) are now at the scale where they can really effectively impact policy. They already do this at the national level (Eg immigration/SOPA) - and focusing on changing housing policy at the local level (to encourage more density & units) would go a long way to alleviate these issues.

This isn't for charity - the housing shortage isn't particularly pleasant for their employees either, as it makes everything scarcer/more expensive (parking, grocery, other cost of living).

Edit: A couple of references on housing: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-San-Fran...

Probably the biggest sign we're in a bubble[1] is that the Leveraged Sellout guy is back and has trained his focus on Silicon Valley.

1. Not saying we're actually in a bubble. Just pointing out that the last time he was around, he was poking fun at 22 year olds going into finance for absurdly high incomes.

Cocoa Controls: https://www.cocoacontrols.com/

The food metaphor definitely overcomplicates this. Translation:

1. The citizens of the Bay Area for years have limited new housing development, complaining they could change the "character" of their neighborhoods, for the worse.The limitation is baked into the democratic process at the local level.

2. There arent enough homes to accomodate the job growth and influx of people (both renting and buying)

3. Jobs are growing and workers are moving in, competing with longtime citizens and each other for a limited amount of housing (and groceries, and parking, and public transportation, and city services etc).

So it gets more expensive. We protest buses, but long after the buses are paid for, homes will still be expensive.

Whatever we do, we need more homes.

So what happens to the other products?

Hey HN - we discovered these blogs by reading HN and we're always looking for more. Would love your thoughts.

Hey HN - we (Hipmob.com) are launching a way to add your FAQ/Knowledgebase/Help Center into your iOS or Android app. (Basically Zendesk for apps) Benefits are:

1. works for iOS/Android/Phonegap

2. syncs with your Zendesk/Desk knowledgebase (if you don't use these, we'll port whatever you use manually)

3. helps reduce your support emails

If you're a mobile dev/team getting a ton of support emails, this will help you cut it, and give you diagnostics on what kind of help your users need.

Hit me with questions (ayo at Hipmob dot com)

OP Here - this is the first of a few posts where we share some twists and turns in our story (particularly around our failures, losing customers, botching product launches and the like). Hope it helps and if you have any questions direct them to me (ayo @ hipmob).

Government subsidizes all sorts of things in all sorts of ways: Teslas/Priuses with credits, home loans with the mortgage deduction, student loans, Twitter moving to SF, and so on. Not saying these are good or bad, just indicating that subsidies are a pretty core part of our society and a case could be made for justifying or denying each.

Some rationales for subsidizing affordable homes specifically: fewer slums, greater social mobility for low income families (expensive areas also tend to have good schools), more stability for the elderly (who make up an astonishingly large proportion of low income folks as they can often no longer work).

A society where the raw effects of market forces were allowed to act on people would be really unpleasant (I grew up in one and have been to several) - free markets are a fantastic way to generate wealth but a poor way to ensure balanced social outcomes.

Yeah I thought that was striking as well. I'm generally skeptical of stats like this but I'd love to see the paper and see the structure of those gigs (eg which industries, where geographically are they concentrated etc)

The most striking figure in here is this one:

"The hard truth is that the Bay Area's housing and transit systems are bursting at the seams. According to the San Francisco Apartment Association, last year the city added 68,000 new jobs and just 120 new housing units. Silicon Valley's rental vacancy rates are even lower than the city's."

That's math that just undeniable.

For a modern day look at that competition, Heineken gave it a try earlier this year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NyVO5fP8-0

Interesting - I'm wondering if maybe this would fly more in Europe? Any idea what % of tickets that is?

> doesn't this go against the modus operandi of the airlines? I was under the impression that they don't want you to see the fees when you purchase your ticket.

Correct, they definitely don't.

> In some ways, I don't think Kayak/Expedia/etc. want to show you the full fare either. They want to show you a price you'll pay. Too bad for you if your flight ends up costing considerably more.

Here's where I'm conflicted - I think someone in travel search is eventually going to solve this. As the fees grow in size and complexity it's going to be a significant competitive advantage to someone to price these fees, because doing so would change actual buying decisions at some point.

It doesn't really compete with Manager.io. Manager.io looks like a full suite (just judging from reading the site) which isn't what this is for. This is useful if you're a freelancer or consultant, or are in the market for new invoicing software. It definitely won't replace your accounting system.

I'm biased as I'm related to the creator (he's my brother and co-founder) but this is incredibly easy to use. We've used it at Hipmob to process all our invoices (whenever a customer requests one).

Femi (the creator) is also super responsive so drop him a line if you have feature requests! (fomojola@ideasynthesis.com)

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the Chinese Central Bank action (discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853305) prevented Chinese citizens from converting RMB into BTC directly from their bank accounts? Might be behind some of this (from what I understand, BTC was one of the only ways mainland Chinese citizens could /legally/ convert RMB into other currencies above the daily limit).

Hey everyone - OP here. Have been thinking of a way to do this for a while - would love any ideas.