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technotony

1,835 karma · joined February 11, 2011

COO at Wild Earth www.wildearth.com
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technotony··on Coinbase Digital Asset Policy Proposal
This is optimistic, it would require traditional financial service regulators like the SEC to ceed power to a new agency. That's very unlikely to happen. Most of the regulatory institutions in America work to increase their power not hand it off to a new agency. We see this in coinbases own fight with the SEC and other agencies about who regulates yield earning stablecoins.
technotony··on Peter Thiel turned a Roth IRA into a $5B tax-free piggy bank
Their claim that the shares were below market value doesn't stack up. They did this when they founded the company, the company has no value at formation so it's fair priced. Just because they raised money a few months later doesn't mean it was worth anything at formation.
technotony··on El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
It's very counterintuitive, but actually the more unbanked you are the more you needs loans/savings and the more complicated your personal financial balance sheet is. I'd recommend the book 'the poor and their money'[1] for the details on this, but essentially if you haven't got savings you are constantly borrowing and lending informally with your community to meet life needs like a new roof or school fees.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Their-Money-Oxford-India-Paperbacks/d...

technotony··on Apple asks staff to return to office 3 days a week starting in early September
Depends where you live and if you have to heat or cool your house to work from home. Homes are much more inefficient to moderate temperature than offices. That may or may not offset the benefit from commuting, and even less so if done on public transport with lower emissions.
technotony··on How People Get Rich Now
There's a ton of tech behind Beyond Meat. Their core science is based on research from an RNA professor at Stanford. That proteomics research is the reason their burger tastes so much better than previous generation veggie burgers.
technotony··on Coinbase S-1
Switch to Solana?
technotony··on Abundant Capital
> [3] When a company IPOs, it opens ownership up to anyone who can afford a share. Imagine, for a second, an investor arguing that this is a sign of low quality.

I thought this note was important, this is precisely what investors signalled when startups started being able to crowdfund equity under Regulation CF.

technotony··on Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing
How does the lay person get in on these test the market secondary offerings?
technotony··on Tesla spent $1.5B in clean car credits on Bitcoin
Energy is the largest cost in bitcoin mining. Mining moves to the cheapest electricity locations. Renewables are already the cheapest energy source globally, and getting better. So in the mid-term bitcoin mining will move to renewable energy sources, problem solved.
technotony··on Sci-Founder Fellowship: Helping scientists to start companies
It says you provide lab space, is that all in one facility or is it more that you help teams find lab space in the bay area?
technotony··on The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company
He's a major investor in my company, and can 100% attest that's true. What's most astonishing about him is how responsive he is even two years after making that investment. He must have so many companies and he's still always showing up and encouraging and providing value. He's pretty direct when he thinks we are doing the wrong things, but that's always appreciated. His super power is handling all that over email (mostly).
technotony··on Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims
It depends what happens in congress. Trump might win the whitehouse, but lose congress. congress makes the rules around social media and breaking up big tech.
technotony··on 1000 Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection
It's not just having the theory, Darwin's contribution was collecting data to prove his theory.
technotony··on How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup
What do you think you did that helped make that happen? I guess you guys worked hard but did you try a lot of things that didn't work before this hit?
technotony··on Jet Fuel Is Now So Cheap It’s Being Blended for Use by Ships
Price is relative to shipping fuel, not absolute values. So it's not negative!
technotony··on Oculus Quest 2
Zuckerbery has talked about the strategy here for ages. It's not about VR, it's about AR. The tech to build realtime, always on AR is just a more advanced VR tech.

AR will be all about the ads as facebook can serve them everywhere you go. That's where they will make $100BN in ad revenue.

technotony··on Rare plants that ‘bleed’ nickel
Yes, it's called 'biomining' and there have been several startups working to engineer organisms to do this. eg Universal Biomining working on copper (with bacteria) and a team at University of Washington who took an enzyme from rat's livers and put it in a plant to remove VOC's from the air (successfully!)!
technotony··on Lori Loughlin and husband sentenced in college bribery scandal
Does anyone know why the husband got 2.5x more penalty than the wife? Was the court able to prove it was his idea or he was somehow more guilty?
technotony··on A New Standard Deal
Curiously, you just listed a lot of good reasons to do YC. Until the last few weeks of the program you will be encouraged to focus on your business except for the Tuesday evening talks and short meetings with the partners. As this is remote you won't even have to waste time traveling to Mountain View from wherever you live.

Then at the end you focus on demo day which I promise you is the most concentrated and efficient way to meet investors and raise a round on the terms you are looking for (caveat being I don't know how it works remote). Then it's back to grinding on the company. The further along you are by demo day the easier and more efficient your raise will be.

Is that worth 7%? Lots of founders think so. In our batch we had a company that had more than $8MM revenue previously that went on to raise millions on an uncapped note that converted really high. Pretty sure it was worth it to them.

technotony··on Show HN: I made an app for large group video calls where people shuffle around
How to create a social networking event remotely for a happy hour or business networking event or party is an interesting unsolved problem. Here are a few other early protypes from teams working on it. Both of these have a UI where you walk around a 2d space and can communicate with groups nearby:

https://theonline.town/

https://www.highfidelity.com/

technotony··on Pharaoh Ramesses VI Tomb
Last year High Fidelity took one of these tombs and built a VR version that they had an Egyptologist doing tours in. Was pretty cool, sad that they closed the platform.
technotony··on Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people
It's less that they won't spend it, and more they won't invest it. As you point out if you can get exposure to global capital growth by keeping your money in cash you will do that. This starves the world of risk capital being invested in new projects, the net benefit of which is responsible for capital growth. So nobody invests and technological progress drives to a halt (well maybe governments invest in military technology ands whatso but net investment in risky tech drops).
technotony··on Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends
This comes up a lot, nobody is literally chained to their desks. Democracy in the workplace comes from voting with your feet and taking another job at another company. It's not perfect, particularly for lower income people, but it's also not slavery and generally the arc of worker rights is improving through time.

You could make a case that some of the current anger in the united states is because COVID's destruction of the economy has removed that freedom to switch jobs (as the jobs have gone) demonstrating how important it is.

technotony··on Virtual tour of the tomb of Pharaoh Ramses VI
Before High Fidelity VR shut down they were doing tours with an Egyptologist tour-guide of another tomb which was really cool.
technotony··on Coronavirus Vaccine Prospects
That's what the article says, human trials in fall this year and then a regulatory filing a year later. There is basically no chance of a vaccine for this being widely available before 2022. That assumes that one of these vaccines works, despite no vaccine for a coronavirus ever passing regulatory approval (hence this is a hard problem, and plenty of incentive to vaccinate against things like common cold which would be a nice money earner for a someone).
technotony··on How YC will be funding the S20 batch
It will be interesting to see what they fund and how much the companies fit the current environment. I'm guessing quite a lot of remote working tools. The one I really want is something that allows 'many to many' conversations. I haven't found a tool for social events that get above 5 people. Normally in real life groups dynamically break into smaller groups and it's hard to replicate that at a networking event or friends birthday or something. That would be powerful to prototype at the Tuesday night dinners as well. Someone's going to get funded with a tool that becomes a default networking tool for the batch and that will then see huge success from getting that group of early adopters using it.
technotony··on Singapore is spending 12 times more on coronavirus than they did on the GFC
The military or the dollar (which might be related)?
technotony··on Airbnb’s loss nearly doubles in fourth quarter, before virus
There must be some difficult conversations happening at Airbnb leadership/Board right now. IPO has to look like needing to be postponed and I guess they will need to start figuring out ways to reduce their burn-rate until market conditions improve.
technotony··on YC W20 Online Demo Day moved up due to investor interest
This is smart. If coronavirus is growing by a factor of 10 per week then we are all going to be in lockdown/isolation in two weeks time and probably not focusing on doing seed deals.
technotony··on Sequoia gives away $21M investment in Finix as it walks away from deal
There's probably some hidden clause that's costing them something with their Stripe investment. Any tiny effect there is going to cost them way more than $21MM.
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