thegenius

Go fuck yourself

please fix article grammar

ebitda is not a poor metric for a stable business like duracell because interest charges (the most suspect component of ebitda) are not going to be wildly outside industry norms. it's also an interesting metric in general because it seeks to normalize true operating earning power across businesses if all other things were equal (tax rates, interest charges, fixed asset related charges).

if you're evaluating a business and they tout ebitda as the only thing you should care about, you should look at net income in relation to it. for example, a mountain of debt or stupid financing terms would lead to high, maybe unsustainable, interest charges and ebitda would obscure the businesses' true circumstances. otherwise, it's reasonable to consider ebitda.

best luck man. keep on building, your work speaks for itself

I didn't get the impression that Miles is naive to these things or that he was soliciting this sort of advice from internet strangers. Far from it in fact.

It looks like he knows exactly what he's doing and is very passionate about creating things. I got the impression he is looking to branch out and create value, have a good time with other people. If I was in S.F. Bay, I'd meet up and see what he has to say.

I opt for the less glamorous title owner/operator

Yes. This. The OP is NOT leading a team of programmers. He is asking HN to lead his team of programmers. "lead" is not a noun. It is a verb!

the best way you can improve the quality of code is to LEAD BY EXAMPLE. you're not alone in that you've been given a leadership position in a circumstance outside your control, and it's naive to think that even if you were given your pick of the litter, that they'd all be A players who respect you and don't want your job, have issues with your quality, etc.

You absolutely cannot control people. The only way to get people to do things, and i mean the ONLY way is to get them to WANT to do it. Therefore, you have to ignore the people who aren't cooperating with you and focus on the one's who do. Treat them like gold and be willing to make compromises with your quality standards because they will not be the same as yours. Then, as you make inroads on the project together, the rest of the team members either have a choice to get on board or get left behind. It is that simple.

How to be a horrible founder: SPAM your users and raid their inboxes.

doesn't provide much insight. it says to build a website and submit your apps to the blogs, which is pretty insulting actually. not surprised coming from dice, the recruiters' den.

i've probably watched every youtube interview, speech of both of them, and read most of the important articles and books (superinvestors graham doddsville, snowball, shareholders letters, on and on). this is a great summary of what i've gleaned from their wisdom as well. i couldn't say it any better

I have it and it's great. At first you think it's just some arrogant old man who is full of himself rambling on, then you realize you're dealing with a genius, and you can't put it down. The thing that resonated with me is his multiple mental models approach to life. He basically feels that one just needs a basic college education and the ability to apply the most important concepts from each course in a combinatorial way, and that if you specialize too much, you're likely to make an error (to the man with a hammer, everything is a nail). Lots of other stuff on human error.

The Almanac also pointed me to "Influence" by Robert Cialdini, which is one of Munger's most highly recommended books.

That is the quickest summary I can give from my ipad

In an interview today, Ginni Rometty sounded like a TechCrunch Disrupt participant on HBO's Silicon Valley. "We are reorganizing this company around analytics, around cloud, around social, local, mobile" I can't believe she actually said SoLoMo.

Then later in the same interview: "Clients asking for more flexibility in our software to deploy for new workloads — social, local, mobile."

If anyone else caught her in Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit just a few weeks ago (available on youtube), she appears anxious as hell with Warren Buffett in the crowd watching her. No wonder with a 0.02 EPS to report and a last minute ditching of the 2015 roadmap.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/10/20/ibm-ceo-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bixGVxcTLc

while the idea has merits, i would not trust you with my most sensitive data (especially if it is reversibly encrypted or plaintext), i would feel like i was paying for an added secuirty risk, of which there are too many already. also it doesnt seem like there are assurances against you abusing my data like there would be if you were a lawyer i had entrusted to execute my will. there's no personal relationship there, so i don't feel comfortable.

Just got mine! http://i.imgur.com/KcvlmZ3.png

Don't be so condescending.

often times startup ceos are accessible, so you might really dig into a company and its ceo, and write a few well thought out letters to the ones that resonate with you the most. be careful here - there's a ton of smoke and mirrors in this space and you could end up with a real egomaniac that's done better blowing smoke than delivering value. startup ceos want talent who will scale our their visions - the more that you can demonstrate that you just want to work hard learning how to solve the problems theyre working on, the more compelling you will be. good luck - theres a lot of opportunity out there.

Fair enough - I can appreciate your point of view and logic.

Not at all. You're discounting the fact that $50 is a month's wages to some people in some countries or that a loaf of bread cost a wheelbarrow's full of trillion dollar bills in Zimbabwe. A person might buy a watch like that because the amount is disposable, and they like the craftsmanship. It's you're assumption they're trying to impress people because you've formed a value system through your experiences in life, and you can't see it through any other lens that your own.

Someone who can buy a $2.75 M dollar watch likely looks at life very different than you do whether they go and buy a watch like that or not. Don't assume people who get what they want are naive, greedy, vain etc. They might have different reasons that on a relative basis are just as good as any you'd have.

Not really. It's all very relative. I don't see what difference it makes if you have 3 billion dollars and spend .09% of your wealth on a watch vs. having a net worth of 10 thousand dollars while spending $50 on a watch, which would be over 5 times the amount relative to net worth. As a first-world inhabitant of moderate means, you could argue there are better ways to put that 2.75M to use, but so could a third-world inhabitant of lesser means with your $50 watch.

awesomeness

I've often wondered what made Steve Jobs say that "Programming teachers you how to think" and here's what I've come up with. Programmers think in terms of orders of magnitude and have a strong ability to branch out.

Here's a good example:

My friend has a business selling essential oils (Eucalyptus, Lavender, Sandalwood) on Amazon. This turns out to be a pretty decent business for one simple freakonomics'ish reason I believe. Let me illustrate:

You can sell 10ML of oil:

http://www.amazon.com/Lavender-100%25-Therapeutic-Grade-Esse...

For nearly the same price as you can sell 3 times the amount:

http://www.amazon.com/Woolzies-Lavender-100%25-Pure-Essentia...

I think the reason for this discrepancy is people can't do conversions between milliliters and ounces in their head, and since they can't hold the oils in their hands and only have a picture for reference, they use the price itself to determine the value of what they're getting.

Now back to thinking like a programmer: Upon hearing this, a programmer's first instinct wouldn't be to start a competing line of business but rather would be to come up with a systematic way of scouring Amazon's entire inventory for a multitude of such arbitrage opportunities. He'd branch out to using weight in addition to volume.

In addition to exploring the details, programming gives you practice in seeing the big picture and branching out at all levels of the system.

Sure thing. It won't be as much of a problem so long as it's an employment agreement. My comments really only apply under a co-founder arrangement.

I saw that. What is your point?

TLDR; Show you are willing to put in effort and labor aside from generating ideas/spending/raising capital

Hi Nick -

I can speak for myself. I am a primarily technical, sole founder of a 3+ years profitable company who had to develop the business know-how along the way.

With the ability to see both sides, what I've found is the business-side components are equally as important as the technical components; that is, neither can live without the other. But here's the rub: The technical side is a thousand times more laborious to become proficient at, and there's not even a comparison.

If you're able to take that with more than a grain of salt, it implies while your contributions are equally as important as a technical co-founders to the overall business' success - the technical co-founder is not likely to see it that way because they won't be looking at things in terms of value (which is what matters most from the business man's point of view) but in terms of value + effort.

The way you can make developers feel good about working with you is to emphasize something aside from money (risk) to contribute which shows you will be putting in a substantial amount of effort which then has tangible, measurable results. For example, if you are a good writer and willing to write lots of content for SEO.

You say you are a sales and marketing focused person, so really stress what it is you will be doing work-wise that will compel the technical co-founder to want to work with you. Will you be cold-calling 100 people with a 5 percent conversion rate every day? Will you be spending 4 hours a day using X, Y, and Z tool to come up with keyword permutations for AdWords campaigns? Will you be reaching out to a minimum of 3 potential affiliate / rev-share partners a day to maximize those types of relationships? Show what makes you good at what you do and the effort you will be putting forth to achieve your results.

on mobile, did anyone else catch their responsive menu? the animation and transition back and forth from a close button to hamburger is brilliant.

Yes. I've already taken that leap.

What they need to do instead of getting rid of stuff is instead supporting it for a long time (10+ years) and just not putting any new features into it / letting new people sign up.

Otherwise, they'll continue to lose developers' trust.

I want to comment on this. While many people do envy Elon Musk, you're talking about the ones who admire him, and there is a big difference as you mention before that.

I don't know why I'm wired the way I am, but I'm just not susceptible to envy--at all. However, I hardly think that most people successful or otherwise are like me. In fact, I'd say a good bit of successful people are so because of their envy.

Envy is the worst of the 7 deadly sins. It's like Charlie Munger says, "It's the only deadly sin you're not going to have any fun with."

It wasn't so simple for me to tell myself that and feel better as I wish it were.

For example, one of the people who won't speak to me anymore is a family member who was my biggest hero growing up and the reason why I got into computer programming. I was very angry that he stopped talking to me, and he gave me all sorts of excuses as to why, but his criticisms told the truth of what was really bothering him.

Over time, what I've had to accept is that he has limitations, and he's not the hero I had made him out to be. It's takes time coming to terms with reality that way, especially when you thought so highly of the person to begin with.

The hardest thing about entrepreneurial success for me personally is the envy it has generated. I wasn't prepared for it.

When I first started seeing results in my business, I quit my job and was able to spend a lot of time doing whatever I wanted. My wife would post pictures of us constantly going on day trips and vacations. It pissed some important people in my life off, and they became very passive aggressive towards me.

It's easy for people who haven't experienced it to assume it's easy to ignore, but when your family members start off by criticizing you, then doubting you, then watching you succeed beyond what they could have imagined, they can end up feeling extremely violated.

I spent the first two years feeling sorry for myself that so and so wasn't talking to me. Now, I've moved on and am stronger than ever.