From personal sources, the $3m price is off.
318 karma · joined June 22, 2013
1. live police scanner, typically sf
2. light thunderstorm sounds via rainymood.com
3. Blade Runner Blues
Feels incredibly film noir.
Further, several of their properties are specifically relevant to the HN community, including TechCrunch and Engadget. Not saying these are the highest quality sites out there, but they are the original source of reporting for many things discussed on HN. In fact, I see 3 different TC articles in the first 2 pages just right now.
I'm on the more progressive end in a coastal city, but have been in a uniquely diverse environment when it comes to political views, international views. People that are more socially liberal tend to have changed their stances because of a change in the general understanding of what is proper or acceptable. People who are more socially conservative have also changes their stances, but specifically blame the fear around #metoo. And I totally understand why they feel this way - it's difficult to place that shift on some nebulous generational change of social mores. It's much easier to place that shift on a specific, well-defined, well-publicized movement. That's not to say anyone is blasting that movement by saying this is how people feel. Neither is it blaming the movement for actually doing anything. However, it is likely what this change is mentally attributed to for many people.
Most people who will be making substantial sums from an IPO, and therefore stand to gain substantially by minimising taxes, likely live comfortably in the area. They may have a strong community of friends and family here, well developed hobbies here, enjoy the benefits of living in California, etc.
Most people who will make that much money from an IPO likely want to be in a position to make new moves, take on new opportunities, and will want to be in the ecosystem where they can take on meaningful challenges. Establishing a new network in a new geography takes time, and there aren't that many great geographies to do so. Only a handful of states have no cap gains tax, so your options are pretty limited, though states like Texas or Washington could be good new starting places.
My van was nicer than may of the places one could rent around the bay area. Oak floors, oak countertops, modern high end sink and faucet, designer light switches, high gloss push open cabinets (with electromagnetic locks when in motion).
I did it because I wanted to build something and I had the time to do it nights and weekends while working. There's nothing like learning multiple disciplines from woodworking to electrical, from insulation to plumbing, and applying it all to create something physical and comprehensive.
I parked mostly in my company parking lot during the weekdays. On the weekends, I parked in the Mission, where many others in vans did as well. In SF, it was clear that I was abusing a public good, but couldn't easily find a way around it. I would have happily paid for a monthly parking spot if there was one around the area, but there was no monthly surface parking available in the area.
I don't think van life is an answer to the untenable housing situation in california. It's a niche lifestyle, unsuitable and undesirable for most. However, I do think we need to get over this obsession with space. Space efficiency is something so entirely foreign to most Americans. Having excess space is culturally desired and fetishized. This is a cultural phenomenon, not necessarily good or bad. In a less densely populated region, having extra space is not a luxury. However, when space is so sparse, I do think we could, as a culture, benefit from a shift towards loving space efficiency more.
Society has been structured so that increasingly few people accumulate most of the wealth. To many, it has reached a degree that is unethical, unjust, unkind, particularly because those who are not along the privileged are suffering as a result, therefore the scale of human suffering increases over time, while wealth concentration continues to increase. You may not agree that the degree of wealth disparity is worthy of such descriptions yet, but that is just a matter of where to draw the line, not whether it is an understandable thing to draw a line on. After all, if in say a few hundred years, unrealistically and strictly as a thought experiment, the current system has lead to a single individual accumulating as much wealth as every other individual in the world combined, and having done so in an above board way, while every other person in the world lives in abject poverty, would this be unfair to you? If so, then we only disagree about the degree of wealth inequity that informs our belief on the fairness of our economic and societal systems.
However, that confusion within categories has increased is undeniable. Try to buy a bath towel and be flooded with similar items with similar reviews. The ability to search and sort efficiently has definitely declined dramatically. It takes a lot more effort to make sure you're buying what you wanted for certain categories, particularly soft ones. I can no longer trust that the best selection is going to be on the first page of results.
I wonder if Amazon will draw the line somewhere on how wide, how encompassing of a platform it is for third party vendors. It seems to have pushed itself over a limit.
The amount of energy required to build and maintain 500,000 people spread across suburbs is far more than 500,000 in a dense city. The amount of material needed for construction, especially cement goes up massively. Services are able to serve less people, so require more quantity of doctors, grocers, power stations, etc per capita, requiring more land and space and waste. The fact that individuals need to use cars in less dense environments vs many exclusively using shared services such as public transit in dense cities, which are ridiculously more ecological.
Traditional background checks are very blunt tools, where decisions are very binary. If an individual is a felon, there is typically zero room for negotiation. This is often the case even with just a misdemeanor. There is usually very little trusted, low cost, easily accessed data, which can balance out or provide a more nuanced view. A service like Checkr is able to provide a much more comprehensive picture, with more depth and nuance, so that employers can be more discerning and less binary.
Also, it's not as if applications don't already specifically ask for information on criminal record. The standard is that employer has this information, without doing any actual background checks. I imagine a comprehensive background checking service would mostly serve to incentivize an employer to hire a subset of previously convicted individuals that they otherwise wouldn't have, and not the other way around.
But of course, that does not detract from your sentiment being 100% accurate. No one planned the timing of the consummation of the deal around random contemporaneous news events.
From what I can tell, outside of the extremely tech-centric realms of society, smartwatches like pebble will not find any success.
Watches are both a utility device, as well as a fashion accessory. For most people, it has become mostly a fashion accessory first, a utility device second. Pebbles really don't look fashionable to most people, both on style, and on brand perception. People will put up with a bit of questionable styling if the brand signaling is good enough, but the reality is, the vast majority of people will not recognize a pebble, and instead will just see a not very stylish device on your wrist. As a fashion accessory, the pebble fails incredibly, and to build a scalable standalone watch company around watches which don't pass as fashion accessories is just a recipe for failure. Even the pebble steel isn't good enough.
So while people claim that the idea is good, the product is good, my opinion is that the product fails to do what most consumers actually need it to do. Sure, it had a big presence on paper because it was one of the first to bring the concept of smart watches to many people on kickstarter, but like that cooler which had a boom box, charging ports, and a blender, sometimes what gets people excited when they first see an idea online, doesn't actually translate to a product that fits their actual needs.
I think this may be why almost all the smartwatches are transitioning to fitness tracking as the main feature - the idea of what a fitness tracker is, looks like, and signals is very different from a smartwatch. Additionally, it's helpful that fitness tracking is actually a utility that generally can't be done well in other devices (smartphones).
https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/guidance/cfjumpstartfa...
Normally, if the company does not qualify for confidential filing, we would be able to go and see the draft S-1 on EDGAR 6 - 9 months in advance of the actual IPO.
Naturally, there are areas where we know the algorithms are not translating the inputs to real users with 100% fidelity, but we know that the discount is relatively minor, not nearly as substantial as youre suggesting.
Multiple counter-parties had their teams diligence our user figures and associated algorithms and found them to be generally accurate representations.
Unless you're using a different definition of "active, monthly user" that deviates from the industry norms?
Consider that third-party tracking still places Yahoo as one of the top trafficked websites in the world, with only Google, Baidu, and Facebook higher.
Full disclosure: I work for Yahoo.
I knew nothing about insulation, wiring, woodwork, power tools, etc. and learned everything as I built it.
Was not cheap, because I didn't want to give up any luxuries, so breakeven is in a matter of years, not months. However, its been treating me well. I have spots that I prefer in South Bay and in San Francisco depending where I'm working out of.
Unfortunately just having fascinating premise and good story is not good enough for me. I'd almost rather it be an essay, a thought experiment, than a book.
Personally saw tons of sketchy things going on with MDs on IB side influencing research analysts ratings.