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I tend to agree, and have always made a point of telling founders that their startup will most likely fail, because that's what startups do. Here's a good thread: https://twitter.com/immad/status/1335669459705458688

Yeah, it's so easy to convince yourself that you knew all along that a company would succeed, which is one reason why it's helpful to keep actual notes.

It's also a great example of a company that was not popular on Demo Day. This kind of success is so hard to predict.

I love watching these videos so many years later. Great examples for anyone considering applying to YC!

The best known treatment at the time the infection is detected. That can be as basic as rest and hydration, but hopefully we'll have something better down the line.

I agree that data is good, but the data you linked to seems to be for Italy only. Perhaps they had adequate PPE?

I'm kind of skeptical of the idea that the doctors and nurses in the United States are simply reacting out of irrational fear.

Perhaps you should contact these medical residents to remind them that they'll be "just fine": https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/terrifying-privilege-resi...

I also see a fair number of younger people on this list: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927976

Thermometers are better than nothing, but unlikely to stop the spread because of asymptomatic transmission (easy to catch the virus from someone who doesn't have a fever). This is why I think directly detecting the virus is essential.

It's a fully automated solution, like an airport kiosk or a subway turnstile. Maybe I need to make that more clear?

The saliva stays inside the tube for that very reason. The test specifically identifies the virus, not the antibodies, again for the reason you identify.

Currently most public buildings are closed, so adding ten minutes is a big improvement relative to that. Also, it probably took them more than ten minutes to drive to work, so I don't think it's completely implausible.

I'd love to hear more! Part of the reason I put this out is to encourage other people with technology for fast, easy, cheap testing come forward.

Is your protein test able to detect as soon as people become contagious? That's where a lot of ideas fail, but I think getting R0 < 1 likely requires it.

Exactly. More testing is good, but actually stopping pandemic will require orders of magnitude more testing, which in turn requires a different approach to testing because the current way we do testing can't scale.

Yes, he is the best I've found. This proposal is still at least an order of magnitude more testing though :) (on the order of 100 million tests/day, not 1 million tests/day)

No, I mean the door to the office building, shopping mall, or other place where groups of people gather and potentially transmit the virus.

That's why I think testing at the door is the more straightforward way to start. We can reopen factories, office buildings, even shopping malls, but no one gets in without passing the screen.

I have not found any mainstream sources that advocate screening everyone every day (which is very different from simply doing "more testing"). Would love some pointers if I'm wrong.

It's daily screening for exactly that reason. Is there something I should change to make that more clear?

There is no comparison between the two. Martha Stewart was running a real business and made the mistake of talking to police without a lawyer -- that's very different from running a giant sham operation that defrauded many.

My guess is never. I can't imagine any company that would want her on their board.

Yes, we absolutely fund companies at the idea stage, and often companies will pivot mid-batch -- in fact, one of our fastest growing startups from last year did exactly that.

One of the things I hear most often from our founders is that they accomplished more in their 3 months at YC than they did in the entire year before. Also, keep in mind that press is selective, and some companies wait years before publically launching as a YC company.

What's wrong with burgers? Expensive restaurants often have really good burgers.

I suspect the Waymo miles are not really comparable to the Cruise miles since Waymo seems to mainly test around Mountain View vs Cruise in SF.

VCs don't get to take their profits until after the company exits. If they invest at a high valuation and then it IPOs at some lower price, there is no gain and the VC gets zero carry.

That's a false dichotomy. Just because something doesn't end the way you would prefer doesn't mean that it ends fruitlessly. It is possible to enjoy and gain from the work even if the project or company isn't ultimately a success. Most of the projects that I've worked on never went anywhere, but that doesn't mean I didn't still enjoy myself or learn something valuable.

In '99 I left a relatively standard and easy 9 to 5 type job at Intel to join a startup. My assumption was that the startup would fail, because that's generally what startups do, but it gave me the opportunity to work on systems that I found interesting (specifically Linux, which was still kind of fringe back then) and learn from very smart co-workers. I spent more time at work, but I did so because I was enjoying myself and learning a lot. Personally, I'd much rather spend 12 hours doing something I love than 8 hours doing something I hate.

Just because you are aiming for the stars doesn't mean you can't still enjoy the journey. For me, it's more fun to fail at something audacious then succeed at something mundane. Of course others are free to feel differently, and I would never claim that this is the right decision for everyone.

If I believed that Clinton was going to start World War III, and that Trump would stop it, then I would vote for Trump despite all of his nastiness.

In reality, I believe Trump is much more likely to start WWIII, which is yet another reason to be opposed to him, but it is extremely uncharitable to assume that all of his supporters support everything that he does. I think most Republican voters simply believe he's the lessor of two evils. I strongly disagree with them, but respect the democratic process.

Again, if you had invested in the three companies that he calls out in that post (on the day he posted), you would have made good money. If you shorted the companies he was calling out, you would have lost big. So there is indeed signal in the noise :)

Also, I agree that most venture funds, like most startups, are poor investments. If you can't tell which are which, you're going to lose money.

Facebook sure seems to get lucky a lot :)

I don't need to cherry pick because DHH only wrote about 1 company. Also, given that fb is now worth $370B, you could have invested in all four companies and still made a lot of money, which is basically how venture works. You don't expect to make money on most deals, just the occasional amazing one.

You are watching a two year old youtube video and then confidently extrapolating to conclude that Cruise has no tech and that GM got duped out of a billion dollars.

This is a great quote: "Startups with no demanding customers can lose their urgency, with development cycles dragging on for years, says Rust, who worked at Google’s experimental research factory before joining Cruise. “We tried to accomplish what one of the most talented teams at Google did in two years and compress that into six months,” Vogt says."

This is one of the main reasons why "internal startups" at big companies fail. They lack urgency. The same thing often happens at startups that are over-funded too -- they think they can afford to take their time and that leads to compounding slowness.

This is a really great summary of the yc program for everyone, international or not! The main things I want everyone going through yc to achieve are clarity (lesson 1), focus (lesson 2), and boundless potential (lesson 4).