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schnaars

24 karma · joined August 13, 2008

VP Sales - Cloudinary scott@scottschnaars.com
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schnaars··on List animals until failure
This is awesome. I made it to 100, but I know jack about animals.
schnaars··on The Old Robots Web Site
Missing Pulsar from Pulsations Night Club outside Philadelphia. In the 80's, it would deliver cocaine and cocktails to people. I think that it was also the robot from one of the Rocky movies too.

https://youtu.be/uB4FqfIX9JY?si=VokrpZM8xAhLxdVN&t=184

Crazy times growing up back then.

schnaars··on Lazarus (a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE)
My first job was selling Delphi at Borland. People still use this?
schnaars··on 19 days to build a 57-storey tower
Amazing story, but reminds me of the buildings in Manna by Marshall Brain.
schnaars··on How to find your Uber passenger rating
I've just asked my driver and they tell you.
schnaars··on Show HN: Bitcoin Pulse - Tracking Bitcoin Adoption
This is great. Thank you very much.
schnaars··on Show HN: Bitcoin Pulse - Tracking Bitcoin Adoption
This might be a dumb question and maybe not the right forum, but there is a huge spread between MtGx and Coinbase. Any reason I couldn't transfer my BTC's from one to another to capitalize on that?
schnaars··on Ask HN: Should I tell my boss/employer I have depression?
At the beginning of 2007, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. At the end of the year, I left my company and was looking for a new job. Good healthcare was critical to me and my family, so it was naturally one of the things that I asked about early on during the interview process. Beyond good insurance, I was also very clear that, while her illness wouldn't impact my performance, there are going to be unique situations where I was going to have to leave or not show up and was that acceptable?

I opted to be really transparent about it because a.) I didn't want it to be a surprise when I texted in the middle of the night that I wasn't able to make it in to the office and b.) I wanted to work for someone that would be supportive when things went sideways. I was lucky and found a great person to work for who became a very good friend.

There are enough people today that either deal with depression personally or know someone that deals with depression on some level or another. If I was hiring you, I'd want to know about it upfront. I've always told my employees that I can deal with bad news, but I hate surprises.

I'd own it and I'd explain how you handle it and how it won't impact your performance and this is why. I'd be pretty impressed with someone coming to me saying BTW, I've got this issue, but let me show you how I handle it and assure you that it won't be an issue if I work for you.

schnaars··on Ask HN: What have your learned from your failed startup?
It is better to be too late to market than too early.

It is better to sell to early than too late.

It sounds cliche, but focus on building a great, easy to use product.

Don't let a single customer be too much of your revenue.

Disqualify quickly.

I wouldn't do remote teams.

Let the market dictate your product direction, not the engineering team.

Vital few is so insanely important.

Avoid shiny things syndrome.

schnaars··on How we got to $1,000 in recurring revenue
When we launched our company, we spent quite a bit of time identifying, based on the concept, who are the top 100-companies that we would like to do business with, who in the organization would buy this and how do we get to that person.

From there, we cold called / emailed like maniacs - 'here is what we are working on, here is the problem it will solve, here is why you need it, can we have 20-minutes of time to walk you through this?' We leveraged every possible network connection that we had.

When we got people on the phone, we actually showed them mocks of what their site would look like with our platform (lots of Photoshop). Explained that about how we wanted to get them in a beta program, and how much would they pay?

It was a ton of hustle, but we had 10-customers when we launched that were generating a little bit of revenue and willing to give us quotes in the press or get on stage at events.

It is more of a larger, enterprise sale, so it won't work for all companies, but we were essentially selling something that we were building in parallel and wouldn't accept free for an answer.

schnaars··on "Let's ban tiny phones" - UK Government
Like banning guns.
schnaars··on San Francisco to L.A. in 30 Mins. With Proposed New Transportation System
Just as in fighter jets, wouldn't 4000 MPH put a tremendous strain on the body?
schnaars··on Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag
This is a great point, but raises issues around the entire US public education system that often times crosses the line of babysitting vs. education (I know nothing about this school).

Managing a bunch of 15 - 19 YO's is pretty challenging and as schools continue to get their budget raised or cut, based on attendance, it will be more important to manage attendance vs. GPA / performance. Having kids safely in school, with butt in seat in class, will be continue to be a driving KPI.

Human beings aren't cattle, but an education system built around preparing kids for a 9 - 5, factory job, is essentially a cattle farm.

schnaars··on Judge temporarily saves girl facing suspension for refusing to wear RFID tag
I'm not sure I see the difference between this program and a company that distributes a similar system for employees to track all the same information?
schnaars··on Jam With Chrome
This is very cool, but would love to see an easier way to strum the string instruments. It is hard to get a good rhythm going while holding the button down and fighting cursor drift.
schnaars··on What to know before working at a start-up
++ for calling it the Satanic Trinity.
schnaars··on Pentagon releases results of 13,000-mph test flight over Pacific
The technologist in me says that is pretty awesome.

The cynic looks at $320M price tag and wonders why I don't have better schools for my kids and DARPA doesn't have a better video of this thing.

schnaars··on How Not To Sell Software in 2012
Are you kidding me? SFDC is $125 a month per user. Even a small company is paying $15K a year for their licenses. Salesforce is doing okay.
schnaars··on How Not To Sell Software in 2012
I'll take 1 person giving me $1M over 100K giving me $!0 any day.
schnaars··on Obama Seeks 'On-Ramp' for More Startups to Go Public
Awesome, I was beginning to miss that little Pets.com sock puppet.
schnaars··on SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an "abuse of power"
"...stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns"

But totally cool to pay for government pawns.

schnaars··on What If Google Does It? - How To Think About And Crush Your Competition
Do you have a precedent for this? Generally the lawyers are all about this.
schnaars··on Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
In no order: - Word Catcher - http://amzn.to/s1Ykku - The Postmortal - http://amzn.to/rpaQyL - Moonwalking with Einstein - http://amzn.to/tDkRkY - The Post American World - http://amzn.to/4ex38B
schnaars··on Ask PG: 2012 Startup ideas you'd like to fund?
Friendster.
schnaars··on iPhone 4S First Weekend Sales Top Four Million
I wonder what a warehouse with 4M iPhones in it looks like. That is a huge stack o'phones.
schnaars··on Ask HN: How would you save Yahoo and bring it back to top place ?
I'd vote for that.
schnaars··on Why people irrationally reject cleaned sewer water, and how to change their mind
psychological contagion - why i don't want my mashed potatoes touching my turkey, but I'm cool with my gravy being the mediator between the two.
schnaars··on Why people irrationally reject cleaned sewer water, and how to change their mind
Ugh, I just ate a sausage. Chicken Apple Sausage, but still. It's a perfect analogy.
schnaars··on Sequoia Capital invests $10mil to let you order grilled cheese over the Internet
What bubble?
schnaars··on What Really Keeps Poor People Poor
That's crazy! I thought that it was just my parents that did that. This past April, my dad told me that I didn't pay enough in taxes and that I should paying much more. Thanks, Dad!

I remember reading a quote from Bono where he talked about the crab mentality of his home town (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality). One of the reasons I avoid Facebook is that it is just an easier way for that network and the poison thinking that you mentioned to flourish.

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