stevenj

I remember reading "fornicates" as well when I read the book. While I'm not able to find a direct online source to the quote, I did stumble upon this old HN thread where multiple people quote the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=681167

As a side note Matt Levine's column is my favorite thing to read each day.

It's often funny and quite informative.

>How do you get the word out about your product or service if you have only $1,000 in the bank? In the words of Seth Godin, "by giving people an abundance of confidence which will create an abundance of value and all I’m asking in return is to be trusted."

The quoted part from Seth Godin sounds like it goes against what the author stands for, as it sounds very salesy.

Why do you think Stripe will get acquired (and soon)?

I personally think it'll stay a standalone company because its founders already have plenty of money (from Auctomatic and presumably from taking money off the table during Stripe's funding rounds) and seem intensely motivated to change the world by having a pivotal role in increasing the GDP of the internet (as stated in the article).

That, coupled with its (both the company and its founders) integrity, culture, and care & empathy for people (employees, investors, customers, partners, underserved and underestimated people and markets, and really almost anyone) seems to indicate to me that its core values and objectives will be best served and achieved as an independent entity.

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code

Wow.

>An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath.

>“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit they have a better sense of what’s there, what it’s for.”

I fear this major re-design will be a mistake. HN is designed similarly to Reddit and if HN ever tried to do a major re-design, I think I would visit it less. I keep coming back to it because of its stories, comments, and its simplicity and minimalism. It has good content and is very easy to use and navigate.

I use Venmo at least weekly, but I didn't think it was owned by PayPal. But then I looked it up and saw that Venmo was bought by Braintree in 2012, and Braintree was bought by PayPal in 2013.

TIL.

I wonder if they talk to Jeff regularly, or have direct access to him if they want to discuss something.

That series was really well done.

Interestingly, I just listened to a decent podcast with Ed Thorp (an interesting man in his own right) who briefly talked about his work with Shannon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-07-14/ed-thorp-the...

Good writing is great editing.

Very interesting, thanks for responding.

Are most angel investors focused on finding the 1000x companies (i.e. the NBT) that VCs are?

I guess my question is what's a practical, good outcome for an angel investor when a company exits? Or what rate of return do the most successful angel investors have?

Interesting read.

I'd love to hear from other angel investors with (perhaps) different experiences and opinions.

I thought several of the questions asked were unique and interesting. It would have been nice to hear Marc answer them in more detail.

Question for the Sourced Adventures founder: do you know what happened with LivingSocial's acquisition of Urban Escapes in October 2010?

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/livingsocial-buys-ur...

A part of me thinks that the VC industry will see a flight-to-quality type of event sometime in the near future. In this scenario, I think it'll be increasingly hard to raise a series A (and later) round. Instead, firms will back more big, promising startups (e.g. series C,D,E) that have paying customers, a defensible position, cash flow, and are still growing or a path to growth.

On the other hand, I think there are several "unicorns" that are still private that will do well as public companies -- Dropbox, Lyft, Stripe, and Airbnb. The success of these in the public markets will help the startup ecosystem and encourage venture capital funding.

With that said, I find the case of Blue Apron interesting. I have a hunch that it may have thought its best chance to go public and cash in was now -- that the environment for "unicorns" like itself (one that faces substantial competition, a weak product, fickle customer behavior, lack of customer retention and unstable cash flow) will only get worse.

I think Snap's stock price will continue to fall (to under $10) and then at some point it'll be acquired, possibly by an asian company or investment group.

What do you think is a realistic goal for its production (numbers wise) of the Model 3 by the end of the year?

The sexual harassment allegations that have pervaded the tech industry this year is really awful to see.

I hope each and every person is exposed and held accountable for their actions.

It's inspiring to see all the women who are standing up and speaking out about these issues.

Holy shit! I thought this guy was making 50k, maybe 100k at most. But 4 million - wow.

And that was an interesting interview, thanks for the link.

At first glance, this seems silly and something that is unlikely to ever take off.

But feeling that way, at least initially, about a startup that becomes big often seems to share that characteristic.

Is there a live blog of this happening anywhere that I can read later?

About $200k per year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14438221

Paul's thoughts after his first three years angel investing (2011): http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/01/angel-investing-my-...

"It took Amazon 18 years as a public company to catch Walmart in market value. It took less than another two years for Amazon to be worth twice as much."

That's astounding.

I think the design of this is really interesting.

It's designed in a way to make the user (e.g. anyone who likes music) just want to play with it in a way that's very intuitive via its simple, visual layout. And it provides instant feedback that makes you want to continually tinker with it to make something that you like more and more.

Web development/programming training tool makers should really take note of this.

I think it's important to note that Ted's bet was in fund of funds, which require additional fees that would negatively effect his investment return regardless of its performance.

I'd love to read another edition of Founders at Work -- it's one of my favorite books.

Some of the companies I'd be thrilled to see included:

Airbnb Stripe Uber Lyft Slack Robinhood Palantir Snap Instacart SpaceX GitHub DraftKings Warby Parker OfferUp

He is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=alankay1

I'd love to have a Techmeme for the finance industry.