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spxdcz

2,025 karma · joined August 5, 2008

Built a few things. Most recent: https://docoh.com

Email: danzambonini@googlemail.com

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spxdcz··on Goldman Sachs shrinking its SPAC business amid regulatory crackdown
Related: I wrote some code that attempts to extract the latest SPAC data (which you can filter/export) from SEC filings as they're filed: https://docoh.com/spacs
spxdcz··on Our stock research platform is now 100% free
We've been building the freemium website for a few years. We launched paid plans in Feb ($19/m for additional features and higher limits), which grew slowly over the last 6 months, but not to a point where they were covering costs, or likely to any time soon.

The site is popular though - we get about half a million pageviews a month, and have about 7k subscribers to a daily newsletter, and growing every month. We just weren't getting Pro signups - the value prop wasn't there.

We could have put more of the free features behind the paywall, but the industry is getting ultra-competitive, with all our competitors reducing their subscription prices. So with the trajectory of "the value of the data is going to zero" together with "the best way to help everyday investors is to give everyone access to the same information", we decided to change business model and switch to ads/sponsorship (to be implemented soon), which estimates seem to suggest will allow us to much more easily cover our monthly costs.

Any feedback/comments/etc, please let me know!

spxdcz··on Show HN: Can’t afford Bloomberg Terminal? No prob, I built the next best thing
I won’t mention that website, but FYI I built it and I have no idea who posted that comment.
spxdcz··on Google Finance Finally Updated
We use XBRL data for lots of our underlying data on https://docoh.com e.g. financial statements at https://docoh.com/company/1326801/FB/financials and data charting at https://docoh.com/company/data-explorer/1326801

It's not perfect – XBRL is complicated and companies file with lots of proprietary metrics that aren't included in GAAP/FASB standards – but we hope to do more with it in the coming months.

spxdcz··on Ask HN: What are you working on?
Still a long way to go, but trying to make it easier (and cheaper!) to research public companies / stocks - with both quantitative and qualitative data. https://docoh.com/
spxdcz··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2016)
Bipsync | Customer Success Manager | New York, NY | ONSITE

https://www.bipsync.com

We're looking for a Customer Success Manager (Account Manager) to join our growing team in central Manhattan.

We're a growing, VC-funded fintech SaaS company building a modern platform for investment professionals (mostly billion-dollar-plus hedge funds) to manage their research and make better investment decisions.

As a Customer Success Manager (CSM), you will be entrusted with the relationships, strategy and well-being of Bipsync’s fund customers.

You need commercial experience with account management / customer relationship management, and an understanding of the internet technology and finance industries.

We offer a competitive salary and significant benefits (stock options, bonus, flexible working, travel) in an exciting and friendly environment. We are an equal-opportunities company that values diversity, and welcome all qualified applicants.

Email me at jobs@bipsync.com or read the full job spec at: https://www.bipsync.com/customer-success-manager-new-york-vc...

spxdcz··on The world's cities with the most bookstores and libraries per capita
Shame they only include cities; the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales has 24 bookshops for 1,598 people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay-on-Wye#Book_town

spxdcz··on Sorry, Elizabeth Warren, Women Already Have Equal Pay
No surprises, but the source is a right-wing think tank: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Manhattan_Institute_for...
spxdcz··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2016)
Bipsync | New York, NY | Senior Software Engineer | Onsite | Full-time | To $115,000 plus equity package, healthcare, dental, vision and flexible working

Bipsync is a fast growing, venture-funded SaaS startup with a product obsessively designed to help financial organizations manage their research. Most of our customers are multi-billion dollar hedge funds based in New York. As a Senior Software Engineer you’ll use your full-stack skills to develop the product on a range of platforms, including web, desktop and mobile.

Interviews will usually be a quick telephone call followed by an in-person meeting. We don't do crazy problem-solving whiteboard stunts.

* Email: dan@bipsync.com with questions, etc.

* https://www.bipsync.com to find out about the product

* https://www.bipsync.com/senior-software-engineer-new-york-in... for the job spec

spxdcz··on “The evidence suggests I was completely wrong about UK tuition fees”
I'm not convinced the "evidence" is suggesting anything without further data, and this article is glossing over "correlation != causation". Without a baseline (a situation where, over the same years, tuition fees weren't introduced/raised), how do we know what the equivalent situation would be? Perhaps there would have been even more people from poorer backgrounds applying.
spxdcz··on Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
Tesla: "prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization"

Who decides who is "unfit"? In the not too distant past, and possibly even today, that might include the non-white, non-straight, non-wealthy, etc. I find it incredibly scary that you could so easily agree that others should decide who gets to enact their human instincts. Let's face it, it would almost certainly be old, white, wealthy men that would make those decisions.

spxdcz··on A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed
Ah, sorry about that - I did a fairly quick (and lazy) conversion of one of the eBook files to make the website. Thanks for letting me know!
spxdcz··on A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed
Yes, you certainly can do that. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

You may adapt it for any purpose, including commercially. The only terms are that you need to credit the original source (the website will do) and indicate if any changes were made. There are no other restrictions. Have at it!

spxdcz··on A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed
Also, I forgot to mention, the last chapter - the marketing case study - is an interview with everyone's favorite HN user, patio11 !
spxdcz··on A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed
Surprisingly, at least to me, I think the chapters on marketing are some of the more interesting ones for the HN audience, and have aged pretty well.

It's quite a high level book, so doesn't go into anything in TOO much detail, but instead is supposed to give an entrepreneur - even non-technical - a good understanding of most aspects of building a web app (or at least, what that consisted of a few years ago).

The dev chapters probably won't hold much interest to HN visitors (as they'll know much of the advice), but the marketing ones, maybe some of the design ones, might have some new insights if you've been focusing mostly on tech in your day to day work.

spxdcz··on A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed
Yeah, that might actually be a good idea, thanks!

I'm 100% on http://bipsync.com (as I have been for the last year or two), a startup initially targeted at Hedge Fund analysts and other professional investors. We were lucky enough to raise a seven figure seed round, so have had the time to go through quite a lengthy customer development phase with some reference customers to really nail the product-market fit. We'll have a public beta out later this year.

spxdcz··on A Practical Guide to Web App Success (2011) – now free and CC licensed
Sure! Though I don't actually have much in the way of commercial performance details - it's all split between many quarters of receipts over the last few years, that I'm too lazy to aggregate...

I'd guess that I didn't profit more than a couple of thousand (British) pounds (of both paper and digital sales), after all the publishing costs had been paid for. I think there's still quite a bit of paper stock; I'm still waiting to find out how much is left (though I'm unlikely to try to sell it - I'll probably give them away at conferences, etc).

The parent company that owned the publishing company was acquired by Monotype, and they made the difficult decision to close down the publishing arm as part of the acquisition. The contracts with all the authors were nullified, and all rights returned. As the book was a few years old, and some of it out of date, I figured the best thing to do with it - especially as I'm 100% focused on my startup, and it was never going to make me rich - was to "give it away" to see if it could have any extra life.

It's about 80,000 words and I wrote it over the course of a full year (of traveling; I was also doing some consultancy, so it wasn't full time). So I'd rather that effort was 'available' for other people to possibly use.

spxdcz··on A spreadsheet in fewer than 30 lines of JavaScript, no library used
They didn't work for me either - the attempt to access localStorage on my latest Chrome/Mac throws a security error in the console for some reason (may be a plugin/blocker). If you're getting the same, it seems to work in Safari for me.
spxdcz··on DoorDash (YC S13) Delivers Food Quickly In South Bay, Hopes To Expand Beyond Food
Just ordered (from Oren's Hummus). We've used Seamless and others in the past and suffered the sometime two-hour wait. If DoorDash can get the delivery time down to closer to 'impulse' (as quick as going to the grocery store and back?), these guys will kill the competition.
spxdcz··on Svbtle Funding
Someone made a collection of the RSS feeds at http://read.subpug.com/shared-lhqi7 (see: http://peterwatts.net/post/27254383527/shared-rss-is-that-so...)
spxdcz··on [dead]
Does anyone have any background on who this "Donna Kline" is? Her brief bio paints her as a 'reporter', but her blog backlog looks like a constant and consistent attack against Facebook. I don't want to suggest that she is perhaps being paid to attack a particular corporation, but she doesn't seem to report on much else, or in any kind of balanced way.
spxdcz··on Websites That Did Really Well on Flippa (and What We Can Learn From It)
Many of the Flippa niche content sites (rather than 'service' based sites) are evaluated not just on traffic numbers, but on the product of traffic and topic-based AdWord CPC values, e.g. the top ones being: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/07/18/most-expensive-...
spxdcz··on Y Combinator Universe: List Of All Known YC Start-Ups (Includes Latest Batch)
Great list. (Minor note: you may want to consider changing "manquisition" to the gender-neutral "acquihired".)
spxdcz··on A+ for O'Reilly Customer Service: Keep the books and donate them
I had the fortune of visiting the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol a few weeks ago (thanks Mary!), and this gracious attitude permeates the building. It may be one of the happiest, friendliest offices I've had the fortune of visiting. Plus, the Make offices are just incredibly cool - like a real-life Willy Wonka factory, with hundreds of cool half-built gadgets scattered around.
spxdcz··on 67 Signals -- Bigger Number, Better Stuff
See also the blog parody equivalent: 47 Seagulls - http://47seagulls.com/ (disclaimer: something I wrote a couple of years ago)
spxdcz··on Applications open for Y Combinator's summer 2012 funding cycle
Related to that, I have a question that's been bugging me:

If the application is assessed primarily on the founders, is it really worth failed applicants applying again? Speaking as someone who has applied (and failed, with cause!) twice relatively recently, and as an experienced 14 year 'veteran' of web technology, I can't say that my experience, skills or business-savvy have drastically changed since the application from 6 months ago.

As there's (understandably) no feedback for previous rejections (e.g. "Your idea sucks" vs "Your founders suck"), it's difficult to tell whether it's a waste of time to apply again. (Having said all that, we will of course be applying again anyway!)

spxdcz··on Show HN: We just launched our MVP, a new RSS Reader
Thanks! I'm just going through all the comments again now and importing the requests/issues into Redmine.
spxdcz··on Show HN: We just launched our MVP, a new RSS Reader
Hi everyone. We've been away from our computers for a few hours but wow, thanks for the feedback (good and bad). We're going to go through all of your comments (and those that have been submitted by email and Twitter) and prioritize our efforts.

We know there are still lots of things that need improving (handling lots of feeds, how new items are displayed, organizing feeds, etc) - we'll do our best to get to these asap, but wanted to get this 'out the door' as quickly as possible to get your feedback.

spxdcz··on Code sober, get things done drunk
For those who didn't spot it, I assume that the title of the post is a take on the quote attributed to Hemingway, "Write drunk; edit sober."
spxdcz··on Help Us Buy Yahoo
Reminds me of this (which I built a couple of years ago) - http://zombievirusfund.com/
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