steve8918

I just came back from a 9 month break.

After being in the Valley since the dot-com boom, and going through the bust, and other personal issues, I was pretty burnt out, suffering from stress-related health issues, and after a couple of health scares, decided enough was enough.

I quit my job amicably, and spent 2012 just "doing my own thing". This entailed spending time on small, frivolous projects that I normally wouldn't have had time to pursue, and learning things that might help me in my career later on. I also spent a lot of time cooking dinner for my wife.

I don't spend a lot of money in general, but even so, I didn't curtail my spending at all, so I ate through a big chunk of my savings. I didn't care, and my wife and I even went on several trips. Obviously, having a working spouse helps, but one thing you learn after suffering through a few health scares is that money will come and go, but you're only young once, and your health (physical and mental) is pretty much the most important thing you have.

I didn't have any vast goals like creating a startup, or even creating my own iPhone app. I ended up not doing a lot except learn, but I really did feel refreshed and more important, I felt a lot better about myself and about programming in general. I spent 6-7 days a week, 6-10 hrs a day programming and learning, so I didn't waste any time at all, but didn't feel stressed out once. I even started working out again, although I didn't hit any of my weight targets.

After about 9 months, I figured it was time to get back to the world of the gainfully employed. Thankfully, no one cared that I took the time off, and I was able to get a new job at a company that I really am excited about within a few weeks.

This is why you need a dedicated and experienced sales person. Selling to a small company is one thing, but selling to a larger customer is an entirely different skill set. And then selling to enterprise is even more different. The sales cycles differ tremendously depending on how large the organization is.

If you are targeting SMBs, you can get away with direct sales, etc. But once you get into the "bigger fish", the sales cycle lengthens incredibly, as do the requirements from the buyers.

One of my previous employers made the transition from selling from SMBs to enterprise, and it was a difficult transition. Our product was usually bought by a department head that required it, and it would spread across the organization organically. However, once we entered enterprise companies, instead of talking to the department heads, we needed to talk directly to the CIO/CTO, who would make the decision on behalf of the entire company. This required a lot more patience, and a completely different skillset from our salespeople.

So in the case of the OP, trying to land a big fish by talking with contacts like this is likely a huge timesink, because experienced salespeople will eat guys like him for breakfast. If you're going to target bigger fish rather than smaller shops, it's best to get someone who knows exactly what the process is and is actually focused on sales. The charm of working with a startup is lost on bigger customers, who have bonuses based on uptime, SLAs, etc.

There are so many things wrong with this post, I would strongly advise you to delete this. Besides the libel, it doesn't really paint you in a good light either, especially if you're going to be looking for a job. I would suggest keeping your dirty laundry off the Internet, and delete this post.

Coinbase is neither Mint nor Paypal. We have no idea if they will survive 6 months, and we can't trust they don't store credentials on their servers, even though they say they do. Have they been security audited? Or do we just take a one-line comment on Hacker News as the truth?

If they reach a level of legitimacy, then maybe it might fly with some users. But I personally think it's way too premature to ask for usernames and passwords for banks, especially given how much fraud, hacking, security problems, and monetary loss associated with Bitcoin companies.

I find it absolutely incredible that they are asking for online banking username, password and PIN number to "instantly verify" an account.

I'm not saying this company is a scam, but if I wanted to create an elaborate phishing scam, this is exactly the type of setup I would create.

Hopefully no one is stupid enough to give this key online banking information to this company or anyone else that asks for it.

They need to sell around 1.5 or 2 iPad minis for every iPad they are replacing. They've already sold 100M iPads. They sold 14M ipads this last quarter, can the market support 22M to 28M iPad minis? I doubt it, but my guess is that a lot of people will go for the iPad mini because people don't want a tablet, they want an iPad, and they don't care which one it is. The fact that it's exactly the same but smaller and cheaper means most people will buy this, in my opinion.

I think that releasing Surface RT first will confuse a lot of customers. Many people are saying incorrectly that Surface will run Windows apps, but my understanding is that Surface RT won't, but a subsequent version will. If this is true, and if this gets Microsoft a lot of bad press, it will basically kill the Surface. Also, the iPad mini, despite my belief that it will completely cannibalize iPad sales and hurt Apple, will likely inhibit people from buying Surface as well.

This is great and really helpful advice, and why I still believe HN has the best signal to noise ratio of any site out there.

What did the question mean by "8 digit decimal number"? Did that mean anything from 0.0000001 to 99999999?

This post turned out to be much more interesting than I initially thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be another post-mortem on why a particular startup failed, but this was in fact much more interesting.

The idea that this community bootstrapped itself, and self-evolved to the point of including things like trolls and "white knights" to me is extremely fascinating.

The other thing interesting is the idea that it was able to get 10k users without any effort. There was definitely a market for this particular app, but only because it's free. I'm curious how much a monetization attempt would have hurt the bootstrapping effort, and whether or not it would be translatable to things like Instagram or Pinterest, which has zero monetization but a lot of users.

30 free levels is still too much. You need to drop it to about 10 levels, and then start charging. Level 10 is where you get a lot of people eager to keep playing, and the rate of abandonment doesn't drop, so to me, this is the best place to make them pay. If they won't pay at level 10, they won't pay at level 30.

And I think you are right, you are being nice. It's strange that you don't want to use standard monetization techniques, yet you complain when you don't make any money. It's sort of like the "nice guy" who gives everything to the hot chick in class, and then when he asks her out, he's shocked when she declines, saying that she wants to be friends.

There has to be a give-and-take between producer and consumer, and the best producers know how to balance that properly.

If you give your users a good experience, then they should pay to support your development costs. Saying you don't like pop-ups or you don't like ads is frankly nonsensical for someone who is trying to make money. There are ways to do both tastefully, and at this point, people realize that in-game ads are a necessity of life for a free product.

From what I've seen, wepay.com is pretty easy to use and has more functionality.

Actually I can't eat aspartame because it severely upsets my stomach, so I need to avoid it completely. Even things like chewing gum with aspartame cause my stomach to get really upset. I think the best solution is simply not eat as much sugar as possible. I was on South Beach diet several years ago, and I actually lost 20 lbs in 5 months, so maybe I will do something similar.

I 100% agree. Actually I have done almost exactly that, switched to tea, or ice tea. I'm not completely off the sugary drinks, but I'll drink things like Honest Tea with a lot less sugar than Coke, or just plain Tea.

The thing I'm actually most worried about is pancreatic cancer. I'm not even sure if there's a link between that and soft drinks, but I read one study where having 2-3 soft drinks a week doubled your risk of getting it. Well I was having 20 a week, which scared the crap out of me. And more and more people appear to be contracting and dying of it, so it's my secret fear.

I have deep grooves in my teeth right above my gums on both sides of my mouth from drinking 3-6 cokes a day for 10+ years. For some reason, I have a habit of swishing the drinks on the bottom of my mouth and I think this is the reason why my teeth are so jacked up. In the past year, I've largely stopped drinking Coke, partly because of this, and because of the other health problems associated with drinking so much soft drinks. I've switched to water and have a sugary drink maybe once or twice a week.

I think another term that is appropriate is "Survivorship bias". That is, you always hear about the success stories, but you never hear about the failures, so you think that the chance of success is higher than it really is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Personally I would spend all this excess emotional energy and put it into either your startup, or a relationship with a significant other. Or exercise.

Sure, there are plenty of stories about people who were desperate and became successes. You never hear about the hundreds of thousands of people who were desperate and became abject failures. There are also people who are successful who were born with silver spoons in their mouths. So I would not make any type of correlation between some extreme emotional state and being successful. If anything, it might make you squirrely and detract from your obligations at your startup.

I don't think an app based on likely illegal use of copyrights/trademarks is something that is sustainable.

My guess is that people may be able to transfer money into accounts, but if this app get shutdown, customers may lose some or all of their money.

Based on US GAAP, whenever there is an "indication of impairment", ZNGA is required to present a model to the auditors justifying any goodwill and some intangible assets attributed to things like OMGPOP. If Draw Something suffers a user drawdown of 50% or 66% (not sure what the current daily users are) since the acquisition, they would be hard-pressed to justify to their auditors the value of the assets are anywhere near what they have on the books. They might have some wiggle room, but not nearly as much as people on this thread appear to believe.

I guess you didn't go through their financials. You do realize they can cut expenses like R&D, SGA, etc, and probably not affect their revenues immediately. To me, they are like YHOO, where they have a bunch of people using the products through sheer inertia. YHOO in the past few years has been doing exactly that, which is cut costs relative to their revenues, and shown a decent profit, without affecting their income drastically.

ZNGA could do the same thing. They could cut R&D by 1/3, SG&A by 2/3, and even cut down on things like customer support, etc, and their current earnings for at least a few quarters wouldn't be affected immediately. They still need to create new games to entice those same users

You cannot depreciate a write down. If you have an impaired asset, like OMGPOP, you have to write it down to whatever the new value is. Depreciation doesn't enter into the picture.

The same thing happened to me, but in the US. I think it was one of my credit card companies calling me, and they started asking me to identify myself. I refused, and I asked them for a number I could call in to. They gave me a number, I googled it to ensure that it was legitimately them, and then called the number.

You have up to 60 days to dispute anything taken out of your bank account via ACH. If I were you, I would pursue that route.

A company that generates $300M per quarter has a "real" business, despite your disdain for their business model. ZNGA isn't like a business that spends $100 in ads to make $80 in ad clicks. They are making real games that millions of people appear to enjoy. I myself don't enjoy them, either, but I'm not going to just dismiss their business as having no value.

The main problem for them is that they haven't grown their revenues as quickly as they need to. But in order to turn themselves into a profitable business, all they need to do is cut costs. I've been to their offices and talked to friends that worked there, so I know there's plenty of room to cut costs. That being said, if their revenues drop, they could be in for real trouble.

That being said, I just dumped my entire position today (with my luck, right at the very bottom). My biggest fear is that their revenues keep falling, and they die death-by-a-thousand-cuts. If this quarter is a kitchen-sink quarter, then I might pick some up after they release their official numbers.

You don't perceive value the business? They still generate $300M in revenues per quarter. That sounds more like an emotional valuation rather than an objective valuation.

And if you're a programmer, sometimes you fix the big bug that a huge sale depends on, and sometimes you create a feature that your customers love.

And, I take it you've never ever been in sales.

What many companies do is put everyone's name on a board, and everyone's sales are complete public knowledge. Every time you make a sale, you walk up the board and add another tick to your column. It's a way to shame people into not being the worst salesperson in the company. And at the end of the month/quarter, you start all over again. My closest friend as well as my cousin went through this process, and quit after a couple of years of having their self-esteem completely trampled upon.

I get what he's saying, but I think he answered it himself, when he questioned if he was being overly dramatic. He is being really over-dramatic.

I would love to hear about any occupation where the negatives aren't run into in a similar way that he describes programming.

That being said, the one thing that I dislike about programmers in general is that I think we believe we sound smarter if we figure out ways how an idea won't work. It's annoying when you come up with a new idea, and all you hear is a litany of reasons why it won't work.

The most important lesson I learned was soon after I had moved to the Valley, and I gave a suggestion to one of the senior engineers. Instead of shooting it down immediately like others loved doing, he simply said something like "Okay, I'm not sold on it but give it a shot." I had been prepared for a lengthy argument over why my idea was good, and I was taken aback at his immediate open-mindedness. It's something I've taken to heart since then.

It's very sad that instead of trying to figure out how and where this person went right in terms of preparing food, and trying to adopt those practices across the country, they chose to stifle it instead.

That's classic bureaucracy at its finest.

It's easy to say that it's because Sweden has a socialist nature, but I have a feeling this type of thinking is common in the US as well.

Start building it now.

That's the only answer. Get off your butt, stop taking in more feedback and other excuses for you to actually do something, and start building the prototype now. There are always reasons for you to wait, gather more data and feedback, etc, but all that will do is stall you and make you lose momentum. Start coding now, and don't worry about what you do or do not know, just do it.

I agree with the author, but I don't think that dissolving the SEC will solve the problem of the SEC. The SEC is corrupt, but no one cares enough to fix it.

I think the way to do it is to create an new exchange whose primary focus is to create a level playing field for all participants. This means that things are done fairly, and people won't game the system. Anyone who games the system will be forbidden from trading on it. This also means that they will enforce their own rules at a stricter level than what the SEC would regulate at.

If investors are truly concerned about fairness in the system, then eventually, an exchange like this could get enough liquidity to compete against NYSE and NASDAQ.

If you read "Dark Pools" by Scott Patterson, he describes how Island was created by a lone hacker, Josh Levine, and he completely disrupted the industry. Maybe there's room for another disruption, along the lines of fairness.