182 karma · joined March 24, 2014
Uber and Travis Kalanick don't seem to be failing. They may have some negative publicity, but their growth is strong. Uber is probably worth more than any single yc company including Airbnb.
I rather have a business that has that type of growth than get into YC.
I wouldn't burn too many candles hoping to get in or trying to figure out a reason why you did not. There is a benefit to applying in that it makes your commitment to your startup even stronger.
Focus on what is important and that is your business. I truly believe building something sustainable is better for YOU, than trying to make the next Dropbox, Facebook etc. But if you already gaining Facebook like traction I am sure YC will already have heard of you.
Worry about your startup and just focus on making it sustainable. Becoming popular with customers and maintaining that relationship. has more benefits for more people than getting into YC. Focus on what is important.
How come no one asks where do old chefs go to? What about old artists? What about old musicians? What about old plumbers? What about old construction people?
I want to add that stability in deciding to use a language in an application is very important. How good the standard library is and how much traction the language is gaining in projects and particularly open source projects is also important.
What happened in 99 is already factored into the market. The public stock market is dying to short sell over hyped companies that under deliver.
The situation right now is unprecedented. With the Fed keeping interest rates low for so long. LP's have no other choice but to invest more of their money into public stock market and the private markets through VCs. I can't seem reduce their exposure until there are viable options. The Fed won't let that happen.
I can see a scenario where if somehow startups burn up all their capital and go under. Somehow the entire VC fund goes under. LPs might have to pull money from public equities to cover their startup investment losses.
If one or two big startups like Airbnb or Dropbox go under. The worst case scenario could be really bad, as it could have sever ripple effects through the start up ecosystem. Eventually hitting the public markets and normal people.
However here is one additional counterintuitive point. Not all startups work hard. The good ones are focused and might not have all the answers but you at least know what your going to be doing. Some startups are just there, they don't work consistent hours and spend allot of time doing fluff stuff and not productive stuff. Some startups are just there because it's the cool thing now and they come in at 12:00pm and leave at 4:00 pm.
For reference I have worked few startups, some small companies and one very large company. I am currently working out of a co-working space. I see very few startups here working any type of consistent hours. I don't mean 9-5 , I mean consistently being here and working no matter what hours they prefer, even though they are full time members of the space.
I can reference companies like Apple in which people are basically working as much as humanly possible[1]. Their work culture is actually more intense than allot of startups. Even at a small-medium company I worked at I would see executives up at 3am, even after they have been at work all day long.
[1] - http://9to5mac.com/2014/10/01/former-apple-managers-talk-of-...
However these lectures are pretty good. I would highly recommend to watch them even if your skeptical about all things silicon valley. Some of the lessons and points of Lecture 2 about focus and intensity also apply to small businesses and large businesses as well.
I thought the ending quote from Henry Ford was great.
"The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time"
The only reason Beats headphone is still around, is because it is generating revenue and will offset the cost of the acquisition. As soon as they are ready to start producing new headphones in production, you will see Beats headphones shut down quietly.
"Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous. Ever since Marissa Mayer became CEO of Yahoo! in mid-2012, she has worked to revive the once-popular internet giant by making it cool again. In a single tweet, Yahoo! summarized Mayer’s plan as a chain reaction of “people then products then traffic then revenue.” The people are supposed to come for the coolness: Yahoo! demonstrated design awareness by overhauling its logo, it asserted youthful relevance by acquiring hot startups like Tumblr, and it has gained media attention for Mayer’s own star power. But the big question is what products Yahoo! will actually create. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he didn’t just make Apple a cool place to work; he slashed product lines to focus on the handful of opportunities for 10x improvements. No technology company can be built on branding alone."- [1]
[1] - Zero to One Book by Peter Thiel
"Playboy: Maybe we should pause and get your definition of what a computer is. How do they work?
Jobs: Computers are actually pretty simple. We’re sitting here on a bench in this café [for this part of the Interview]. Let’s assume that you understood only the most rudimentary of directions and you asked how to find the rest room. I would have to describe it to you in very specific and precise instructions. I might say, “Scoot sideways two meters off the bench. Stand erect. Lift left foot. Bend left knee until it is horizontal. Extend left foot and shift weight 300 centimeters forward…” and on and on. If you could interpret all those instructions 100 times faster than any other person in this café, you would appear to be a magician: You could run over and grab a milk shake and bring it back and set it on the table and snap your fingers, and I’d think you made the milk shake appear, because it was so fast relative to my perception. That’s exactly what a computer does. It takes these very, very simple-minded instructions—“Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number”—but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.
That’s a simple explanation, and the point is that people really don’t have to understand how computers work. Most people have no concept of how an automatic transmission works, yet they know how to drive a car. You don’t have to study physics to understand the laws of motion to drive a car. You don’t have to understand any of this stuff to use Macintosh—but you asked. [laughs]"
Leverage the power of scale. Unions 2.0
I had my doubts about @sama but he is pretty much on the right track and and seems to be the right person for the job. They are fighting the typical SV stereotype about not funding big ideas. Go YC keep on disrupting!
It's super easy and fast to transfer money between BOA account and the Merrill Edge. This is the killer feature. There are limits but its faster than other brokerage accounts to get money in and out of your brokerage accounts.
Depending on how much money you have in your combined BOA account + Merril Edge accounts. They will give X number of free trades a month. The highest is 100 free trades a month.
If you have over 100k combined (brokerage + checking + savings), they upgrade you to preferred rewards platinum. Biggest benefit you can use any non-BOA atm in the US with no fees.
The media over hypes these things and really the celebs involved should of used stronger passwords and/or 2 factor authentication. They should of known better.
People get "hacked" this way tons of times by using weak passwords and/or security questions. You'll never see that appear in the media.
The inequality here is the importance the media places on Kate Upton, Jennifer Lawrence, etc. It a waste of tax payer money to get the "FBI" invoked. I see it also has a waste for the government to chummy up with these "celebs". Some of them are great entertainers no doubt, but what have they done to really deserve the popularity they have.
Have they build something that tremendously improves people lives. Are they key decision makers on items that effect people? Yes Jennifer Lawrence is a great actress but c'mon.
Stop giving importance to celebs by not reading news about them. Radaronline, Tmz, etc.
That is interesting. Did you work at twitter or was this in the news?
Last August, the condo association signed 1 year contract with a property management firm. 6 months into the contract they suddenly gave us their 3 month termination notice. Apparently due to the co-owners divorcing.
As soon as we got the termination notice we started searching on Angies List and Google for other property management firms. The search was not that fruitful.
Came across Thumbtack, entered in our data. Like magic we got 2 solid leads. Interviewed both companies, both were good, but we ended up choosing one of those companies. Both of the companies were better than the companies we interviewed last year; and we got leads for those through references and Google.
I use non-YC companies on https://news.ycombinator.com/show, ProductHunt, and AngelList for comparison. In comparison the quality signal of recent YC companies (the ones not mentioned above and some others) is not that high* compared to Non YC companies. I looked at the profile of the founders, their twitter and github pages and most importantly the product; nothing stands out so much.
*I am not saying the YC companies are bad, I am just saying they seem to be of the same quality as what is out there. I would expect recent YC companies to have a higher quality signal than what is out there.
Out of curiosity, where do you pull the movies from?
Thanks