porter

Eric Schmidt used to say: "Our goal is to have more at-bats per unit of time and effort than anyone else in the world."

Death.

No. At a certain point it won't make sense for a software engineer to code and also to manage the books, recruit, do sales, or manage a marketing budget.

You'll find that as you grow it's best to maximize the time people can spend on what they are best at. Maybe the leadership could all have engineering backgrounds, but it'd be dumb to make them both engineers and in charge of some non-engineering thing at the same time.

Congrats. You put a lot of American job seeking college kids to shame.

When my grandfather's caretaker embezzled multiple 6 figures from his estate and his kids mismanaged it...I stepped in, took over, and fixed everything. Knowing how thankful and proud my grandfather was made the feeling of success and accomplishment so much more visceral than anything else I've done.

The day after the Pearl Harbor attack my grandfather literally dropped everything he was doing and enlisted. Why? A visceral disgust that resulted in a sense of responsibility, or duty to take action. I know a lot of people who did the same after 9/11. War is dumb but a strong military is necessary, and I'm sure others here can explain the game theory behind it all.

It's always darkest before the dawn. 6 months is not enough time to know. You will probably feel like this several more times on your journey. Welcome to startups.

Since you are broke my suggestion would be to focus on one thing: go find a customer who will pay to use what you built. Delight that customer and then go find others.

You could start consulting (sell websites or seo or something else related to what you do, that virtually everyone needs). That can give you some cash if you aren't yet ready to find a customer. But seriously, 6 months is not long enough. Plan on a decade, and in the mean time just focus on your next right step. Get to $1000/month.

I don't think any company here will tell you it'd be a deal breaker. Certainly it will have an impact though. You could testify but still have a plan for controlling what comes up when people search your name. For example, by doing SEO on yourself.

Also, if the law that was broken was actually a major thing then I'd be hard pressed not to testify. It might affect your career, but only with companies that themselves have questionable ethics. You probably don't want to work for them anyway.

Don't forget about MR MARKET as described by Ben Graham and popularized by Warren Buffet. Also, you are not distinguishing between price and value. Markets can be quite irrational at times, but intrinsic values are not irrational. There is a difference.

Well that killed my morning routine.

How late of a hire? What kind of % did you get?

What does "worked out very well" mean? Also, what do you mean by watching the sausage get made? Not sure I follow.

I'd rather just get a digest email of all recalls that day or week. Anything critical text me.

I was actually reading this and thinking, "man, I wish baremetrics broke churn out like this"

Didn't realize you guys were a competitor. Maybe I'll give it a try.

All on postjobfree?

Gosh, there is no reason to be embarrassed about your mission. Your mission is more inspiring than any other I've seen in the startup world. While all the other 'cool' startups are doing things like "enabling people to watch other people play video games all day", you guys are literally saving and changing lives. And if it works you'll be doing it at scale. It's inspiring, it matters, and you should be damn proud.

What exactly would imply causation in a study like this? What should people look out for so they don't get fooled?

Great psychological insight here. The intimidation factor can make you deeply want to step up your game, but it can also lead to some odd behavior that results in less transparency. Manager beware.

If they actually cared about their shareholders then they'd also care about their employees and customers.

Wonder why the most successful YC founders are there and not at YC?

Has there even been a market as big and as fast growing as PCs since then?

is there anything else out there that I can pay for now that's like screenhero? This actually looks like something I need, but now I can't sign up.

This is awesome as a saas owner, but maybe more so as a consumer. I HATE updating my credit card after getting a new number or new expiration date. It's seriously a major pain and I hope everyone I pay ends up using stripe by 2016.

Sounds like they are targeting a jr programmer who learned java/c++ in school but absolutely loves python in comparison, which is easy to love coming from java or c++. Nothing wrong with that, just sounds like you are not their target for this job.

The problem is that most founders would sell for the right price. Everyone's got a price. How do you know what someone will offer you if you don't engage in these conversations?

People want to do a startup to get rich. Solving interesting problems keeps you motivated, but it's the profit motive that pushes people to actually do a startup. It's the profit motive that drives capitalism, not the "solve interesting problems" motive.

How much do you want to sell it for?

I found a great developer by first finding his open source project. It's a great plan but will probably take a while. What's your skillset look like?

Thanks Patrick, you always write great and actionable content.

Sure, if you can invest your excess cash into the stock market and earn more than your interest rate on your debt, it's a net win. The problem is that he is ignoring his downside. On a risk-adjusted basis he made a poor decision, which he'll probably discover if the stock market crashes again and he loses his job.