Hacker News Reader

kurtvarneron Colourlovers Buys Forrst

Thank you for not closing the site. It's an awful feeling to invest time into a community and product only to see it get shut down when they're acquired.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

For the record, the poster of this is not Kurt. I am Kurt. I have no idea who the poster is and why it was double posted from yesterday.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

I think you're missing the point. I will be staying in Palo Alto full-time. I won't be commuting to LA very often.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

I absolutely agree, Doug. My wife is completely on board and supportive of this. We reached this decision together. At this point, if I tried to stay in LA she wouldn't even let me.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

Because I know the value of being in the Silicon Valley, and I'm doing whatever it takes to be in that environment. And surprisingly, my set up is not uncomfortable for sleeping.

As for working, most of my time will be spent in coworking spaces. Spending 16 hours a day in a workspace won't hurt my productivity.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

Thanks for the Advice. However, I'm going to disagree about your point on productivity. I'll be spending all my waking hours in coworking locations, and the only time spent in my car will be for sleep. Finding showers are the only thing that may become a distraction. If that proves to be the case, I will get a gym membership.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

It doesn't matter the distance. The fact is that LA is cannot compare to the Silicon Valley. See PG's posts on the topic http://www.paulgraham.com/startuphubs.html and http://paulgraham.com/hubs.html

kurtvarneron Living from a car in Silicon Valley

Thank you for sharing. It's nice knowing someone else was has successfully done this over an extended period of time.

kurtvarneron Living from a car in Silicon Valley

This was a concern I had, but it turns out that it is legal in Palo Alto. You can see the details of how all the logistics will work on my original blog post: http://kurtvarner.com/post/19347794553/man-car-startup

kurtvarneron Living from a car in Silicon Valley

Original post: http://kurtvarner.com/post/19347794553/man-car-startup

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

I understand why you'd think that, but I really feel that my current situation will allow me to focus completely on work. I'll be spending all my time in the co-working spaces, and simply sleep in my car. It's looking like there are several better options for showers than I wrote about, so that's not going to be much of a distraction.

But again, I really don't know what the daily routine will be like until I'm actually doing it. So if the situation proves to be having a negative affect, then I'll look for alternatives.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

Thanks so much for the advice, Ben. You make so good points. And yes, I expect to catch some negativity towards my situation. But I'll deal with that as it happens.

Let's for sure meet up. I'll shoot you an email next week.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

I've looked into this issue. It is in fact illegal in all Bay Area cities except Palo Alto. So that's where I'm planning to park.

kurtvarneron I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

Haha, yeah well the co-working spaces are 24/7 so I guess that's where I'll be doing my business.

kurtvarneron Milk Inc. to shut down Oink on March 31st

Not a surprise, but I for one am not signing up for another Milk app. Why take the time to use an app that will most likely be gone in a few months.

kurtvarneron Milk Inc. to shut down Oink on March 31st

Oh God. Queue this as a forthcoming trend. Sucks because this trend is really going to have a negative affect on new startups acquiring early users. People are no longer going to invest themselves into a product if they think it's simply going to close up shop a few months later.

kurtvarneron Homeless as Wi-Fi Transmitters Creates a Stir in Austin

I think you missed his point with that comment. It's not about minimum wage, rather, he was making an example of literally paying homeless people to act like furniture.

kurtvarneron Justin Kan Launches Exec (YC W12) For Real-Time Mobile Jobs

Plus he's a part-time partner at YC http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-sam-garry-emmett-an....

I'd love to have this question answered.

Edit: Apparently, he just changed his role at Justin.TV to an advisor. So I think most of his time is spent on Exec, while on the side advising YC companies, Justin.TV/Twitch.TV, and Socialcam. But still definitely a lot for one person to manage.

kurtvarneron How To Choose Your Co-Founder

All of this is good to keep in mind, but the most important thing you can do while co-founder dating is to simply work with the person. You can talk together all you want, but when you start working together on something hard it will become clear whether there's a potential co-founder fit.

kurtvarneron Your Product Needs an Engine of Growth

Virality is the engine that’s powered many of the biggest sites on the internet (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc). If you’re aiming to have a huge user base, user to user spreading is the most effective, if not the only way.

It amazes me the number of people trying to build consumer internet products that don't get this.

kurtvarneron How I discovered Hacker News

HN is definitely a great community and source of quality info. But opening and reading every front page story seems a bit excessive. Just a friendly warning that HN (just like other news aggregators) becomes very addictive and can have a significant negative impact on your productivity.

The following article addresses this issue and is worth reading. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3604907

[Edit] I'm not sure why this link is not showing on the HN front page anymore. It was initially there, then it vanished. It's not a matter of upvotes either. When I scroll back several pages from the front page, it still isn't showing. Any ideas?

kurtvarneron Forget Self-Improvement

Forget the naysayers. They're missing the point. This was one of the most enlightening articles I've read in some time.

Most of us want to finish the race, but see running as a chore.

The take away - Do what you love and "running" becomes enjoyable.

kurtvarneron Bump 3.0 launches today, pared down to just two features

Sometimes the best iteration is removing most of your features. Kudos for overcoming feature creep.

kurtvarneron Sleepyti.me

Here, this might help. http://www.drinkdreamwater.com/

kurtvarneron To raise or not to raise

The decision to raise capital should be an intuitive one for entrepreneurs. Most founders know if they're going to need funding to ultimately reach a level of success.

That being said, there are still some good points here. It can't hurt to make sure you're examining your needs from both sides.

kurtvarneron Sleepyti.me

Cool little hack, however, I'm not convinced of its accuracy. There are a lot of assumptions at play here. The biggest being that you need to be able to control exactly when you fall asleep.

I have no idea how long it normally takes me to actually fall asleep, and I think the average 14 minutes you refer to will highly vary among people. Basically the entire calculation is ruined if it takes a little longer than I expect to fall asleep. Plus, if I knew that I was being timed, that small sense of urgency would keep me awake.

kurtvarneron How To Crash A Party

Wow, nice common sense analysis of the cost of his attendance.

My point is that it's unethical. I realize it's not going to make or break the charity.

kurtvarneron How To Crash A Party

I don't think this party crashing has brought him significantly closer to his success goals. Not once did he give an example of a time he was able to successfully leverage a new connection to his benefit. He basically name dropped a handful of famous people that he met one time, but that's it.

The only benefit I see is that he's actively stepping out of his comfort zone. This is valuable, however, it's at the cost of charity. There are better ways to go about exercising this character trait.

kurtvarneron How To Crash A Party

This guy is definitely a hustler... but something doesn't sit right with me about crashing events for charity. Every drink or meal he consumes is money taken directly out of the charity's pocket. He tries to justify his unethical actions by saying that crashing these events will make him much more likely to become successful (rich), and therefore he'll be able to buy lots of charity tickets in the future.

Sorry dude, crashing parties and ripping off charities is not going to make you successful.

kurtvarneron I Have No Idea [Why Apple Featured My App]

I'm sure there was some spike in downloads because of the feature, however, it wouldn't be more than a few thousand. This isn't very significant considering that Halftone probably has over 100K downloads (extrapolating from the assumption that 1% of downloaders submit a review). Of course this is a very rough estimation, but I think it puts Halftone's traction into perspective.