rexreed

I know this is (was) downvoted a lot, but I understand this sentiment. If you read the comments above, it's a "sky is falling" situation for many startups in the Silicon Valley sphere of influence. How is it that the silicon valley tech ecosystem could be in a position where one singular bank failure could wipe out so many startups? Pretty remarkable how fragile the ecosystem is if that's all it takes.

Go figure, one singular bank failure could wipe out so many startups. Pretty remarkable how fragile the ecosystem is if that's all it takes.

A rational person would indeed ask that. Is that what we're dealing with tho?

The over-confidence in clearly irrational positions, the bluster and bluffing and bullying are all coping mechanisms for what their brains detect as cognitive dissonance. "How can my life be so bad, dreary, miserable, and inadequate?" "It must not be my situation, but it must be everyone else, so I will fight everyone else, as I can't change my situation." Rather than improve their own lot, they seek to destroy other's, because improvement is so difficult, if not impossible, and destruction is just so much easier.

awesome - thanks - going to pull this together!

I found this one: https://www.instructables.com/PCB-Business-Card-With-NFC/ Looks closer to yours? Not sure how you did the 24k gold part tho ;)

I'd love to make that as well or find a source for it. Curious as to costs to manufacture and ease of reproducibility. Any tips / pointers / guides?

Is it for a mailing list or for a website archive? You can self-host a listserv on many shared hosting sites for pennies.

VCs, who on the whole underperform the market and fail to provide returns to their limited partners and investors, seem to think that as a group that have the best insight and feedback in the industry. Singularly, they believe they are the smartest and most profound people on the planet. This despite investing in companies that mostly go under, have down rounds, or themselves face disappearance. All the feedback in this article is trite, obvious, and easy to say in hindsight. Where were these smart VCs in 2021 when it was all about burn, burn, burn and spend, spend, spend? How smart it is to say that if you have 12 months of runway, cutting 50% of costs saves you a year. Where was that advice a year ago?

VCs are money managers, managing mostly other people's money, investing in startups primarily as financial products, not as long-term business concerns. Take the advice with a grain of hindsight is 20/20 salt.

The net sum of this wise money manager's feedback on how to "manage cash for early stage startups": raise more money (if you can), spend less money (if you can), make more money (if you can), and run your company better (if you can). All that without a fancy four-letter framework.

Employees should fight for something that is of value to them, not their employers. Maybe there's a fear of losing their job when they aren't seen in the office? Or maybe the fear is if that they are the only ones in the office, they are more noticeable, so there's safety in numbers. If more of the herd is there, then it will be less obvious the ones who stand out. I for one am glad I work for myself.

I'm waiting for the enraged article that talks about how bad a language Python really is.

NYC definitely has urban density and good public transport, but it's much bigger than Boston, and more car-friendly than Boston.

The closest you'll get to that European-style city in the US is Boston. It's very walkable, high density public transport, and quite a bit of charm in my opinion. Also cars are clearly an after-thought in Boston proper.

When ChatGPT bots or AI systems start generating or modifying content here, I absolutely will. Perhaps it already is happening.

I'd use the double old man filter and look like a raisin screaming at the younguns.

Social media is a scourge. In 20 yrs, we'll be reading about the harm it's done as much as smoking and alcoholism.

Get. Off. Tiktok. Get. Off. Social media. I feel like an old man screaming at kids to get off the lawn. But am I the only one? What's the draw on Tiktok really? I never got it. Then again I never got Twitter either. In my day, we had Usenet for social media and BBSes. And when we cried, it's because we were flamed hard. I have much respect for AI researchers who are some of the most talented in the world, and yet it's cognitive dissonance for me to see them working for social media and advertising companies.

From the Copyright Alliance, a copyright notice isn't needed to retain full copyright protection, including on new works, since 1989:

https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai...

"A copyright notice does not need to be affixed to a copyrighted work for the work to be protected under the law.

Prior to 1989 including a copyright notice on a copyrighted work was required under U.S. law, but that is no longer the case. Although copyright notice is no longer required, a copyright owner would be wise to include a copyright notice because it prevents an infringer from raising a defense of innocent infringement."

Furthermore, a copyright year may not be needed if a copyright notice with (c) mark is included.

So the copyright notice is primarily useful as a notice to others with regards to your work, but has no real use as a legal construct to establish ownership.

I use PHP with SQLite just fine. In fact, been doing it since before the non-boomers picked it up.

Why not PHP on a shared or dedicated hosted server?

Is there a website or link for more details on that Lockheed store?

How is it possible SAP is still such a poor product after almost 4 decades? Time does not cure all ills with software. The powers that purchase software are not swayed by arguments about user experience or even efficiency.

It's a fabulous farcical melange of quite a few tech execs. It's all about the box.

If you haven't seen that one scene in HBO's Silicon Valley, it was a fairly casual reference to that. Do I dare link it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GCtEXbOezM

A picture is worth a thousand words. This would be the literal case for this article. Perhaps 2,000 words.

Thousands of YouTubers beg to differ

That approach is called the "fast follow" strategy in business vs. the "first mover" strategy. There are some advantages in fast follow vs. first mover but also some key disadvantages, especially in markets of winner-take-most, or when you need a large amount of capital and the early leaders generally take the haul.

That being said, for bootstrap projects, side hustles, and other projects, I've really come around to your way of thinking. For those projects where being another alternative does have good economics, "copy first, innovate later" is a solid strategy.

Sure that might be the case, but what about Twitter, did it even launch until they went public?

A 21 minute video and the term launch was never really defined. What exactly is a launch anyways? Is it a press release? Getting a website up? Email blasts? A big PR blitz? Or are each of those things separate launches in themselves? There seems to be an implicit expectation that the audience of this video understands what a launch is, and that might be part of the problem.

Now there is a section that goes over the types of launches, but perhaps that should have been first in the presentation and go over what exactly is a launch and when do you do it?

Launches originate from the idea of a boat that's ready for sailing, and the first launch comes out of the dry dock. But even in that case, ships need many more months before their first sea trials (a different kind of launch), and then something else before ready for whatever their purpose is.

Like many other YCombinator videos, I think these assume much more understanding of terminology, lingo, and perception than the audience might actually have.

Also, I have a major problem with launching to "friends and family". In my experience, friends and family provide very poor advice and they're much more prone to be encouraging or want to provide emotional or moral support, without actually telling you if your business idea sucks. I burned years doing something that sucked, and when I stopped doing it, my friends and family told me they never thought it was a good idea. I asked them why they didn't stop me. And they said it would have been not nice to be completely honest. Ever since then, I've ignored friends and family and focus where it matters: on the customers who I want to buy stuff. I don't get why the recommendation for the 2nd launch after an MVP landing page is Friends and Family launch.

The point is to allocate money for yourself first, and if there aren't sufficient funds to fund operations then you know you have a problem. Clearly paying necessary expenses must come first from a cash perspective but in terms of the business, if allocating for what you want to make results in the company not being able to cover expenses then you know that you are working for your business and not the other way around. It's a common trap.