710 karma · joined January 13, 2012
Previously co-Founder of data analytics firm, Edge Solutions.
https://twitter.com/nwenzel
Registration is a barrier to getting users. Save it for the end or as late as possible. Look to TripIt for inspiration on the registration process. You can create a travel plan without registering. Once it's created, then you have a reason to register, so you do.
I agree with you that pg's point about startup growth is not invalidated by the realities of enterprise selling. But I think te way past those realities is to change the rules of the game. The "sale" should be a low-friction agreement to do business at some cost per unit/user/GB/etc. Growth is the. The ability of the product to go viral within the account. Essentially, it becomes the same process as a consumer sale with the one additional step of getting approved to sell into that batch of consumers.
While that might seem to be a big negative against starting an enterprise business, the advantage is that you're then convincing people to spend someone else's money which is easier than convincing them to spend their own. How else could a $.99 app look, feel, perform better than a $100,000 peice of enterprise software.
B2B or so-called Enterprise Companies, especially industry-specific new companies, would have a hard time qualifying on several fronts (market size, growth rate, growth interval). I am particularly interested in the B2B style of startup because I run an Enterprise Startu-er... Enterprise New Company focused on serving the insurance industry. A B2B Startup, it would seem, would have to link customer charges to something that can grow without a new sales contract. I guess, the trick to achieving high growth rates is to create viral growth inside an existing account. Growth in the B2B space will be large jumps (with a new contract) followed by organic growth or not (within the bounds of the existing sales contract). It seems to follow then that since the purchase agreement is the painful and tough and slow part, a B2B Startup would want to have a Freemium or some other type of contract with low/no startup costs and higher per user/GB/account/server/unit costs.
Gives me some new direction on pricing.
On an unrelated note, I'll disagree with other comments of "favorite pg essays" and say that "Wealth" was the best by an order of magnitude. http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
I'm sure there are levels of access that can be granted to slowly introduce users to your app.
I learned Octave first, then R, then Python.
Octave to me feels like Python + NumPy. I'd say Octave has more in common with R than with Python.
Given the choice between Octave and R, I'd choose R for the more robust user community and incredibly diverse and thorough selections of libraries.
There's an entire section devoted to new, or future Page 1 articles.
The inclusion of the link must mean that there was either a demand for it or a belief that readers would want to know about the articles with future potential to make the first page. Anecdotal at best, but it seems to support the idea that there is some innate bias toward the next new thing.
I found it helpful to start by over-representing the rare class and then slowly bring the balance back to the observed percentages.
The main reason for my over-representation of the rare class was that rare case was often not correctly identified (many false negatives) in the so-called "Gold Standard" training data. By over-representing the rare case, I was able to build a better training set while tuning your algorithm.
I'd be interested to hear if others flush out false positives in a similar/different manner (for the Skewed/Rare Class problems described by the article).
I have had that conversation with each of my new hires (we're at 10 people). I want them to know up front that they're taking on some risk and that there's no free pass in a small company in the same way that there is in a big company.
That all may seem obvious to anyone reading here. It may seem to be an implied part of joining a small company (or any company). But that part of the conversation is important. It also reminds people that their work has actual value.
Monsanto says that because their seed and their plants are growing on a farmer's land, that farmer must have stolen the seed and is benefiting from stolen property. So they want a cut of the gain from the stolen property.
The farmers say that pollen goes where the wind blows it and plants and their DNA spread naturally. The farmers say that they did not intend to grow a Monsanto product but because the Monsanto products grow in greater densities and are more robust than naturally growing soy and other crops, the Monsanto products crowd out the farmer's naturally growing products.
As for the lawsuit, Monsanto sues a farmer because a farmer's land contains some of Monsanto's product. Fine, their product is essentially DNA, but they're allowed to call it their product. Fighting the patent is a losing fight. Right or wrong, it's a battle that won't be won until Kucinich is in the White House.
I've wondered why farmers don't file a counter-claim of trespassing since Monsanto allowed or caused their agents (both the patented DNA and whomever discovered the Monsanto plant) to enter a farmer's property. Additionally, it seems like there would be a case for destruction of property since the genetically modified seeds and plants crowd out the farmer's seeds and plants. Lastly, if the farmers really wanted to hit Monsanto with some irony, they should sue to have Monsanto pay for the removal of the modified seeds and plants. The farmer would have to argue that it is Monsanto's responsibility to prevent the outward spread of their crop. I'm sure the right judge could be found who would draw the comparison to breaking and entering someone's home.
But I'm reminded of a couple simple facts. You don't have to be right to sue someone. You don't have to be in the wrong to get sued. Win or loose, it's not cheap to go to court.
Also found the "large urban districts" comment interesting. I understand it's an Orange County paper in which an Orange County supervisor is telling his constituents that the story isn't representative of Orange County. But it shouldn't be okay for "urban" kids to be 47th in science?
Sounds like Square can take care of their core business with decent competency, but as with many young companies, they may not have all the kinks worked out when something gets outside their normal decision tree.
Smart people move on and the big companies are left to wonder why it's so hard to find good talent.
As if they'll agree to take the lower return option just because someone has expressed their preference. Not sure if they're trying to be nice, or just trying to make you think you have some choice in the matter.
I'm not saying that to bash HN. I love HN. I learn more from the stories and comments than any other source. I think "regular news" (RN?) is mostly a mix of garbage and entertainment. I like having like-minded individuals to learn from. I don't want to spend time in groups that talk about which Hollywood celebrity of the month is getting married/divorced/hired/fired/honored/dissed.
I think a diversity of participants, diversity of opinion, and diversity of passions is a good start. I think we have that here (even if in a somewhat narrow slice of diversity). After that, do we just hope for the best?