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wasd

3,031 karma · joined October 19, 2011

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/wasd; my proof: https://keybase.io/wasd/sigs/DmqAw-MJw71AAHFbctvzlT2jS4LiKJeSRWtTN4hd-AM ]

email me at jr dot sunny at gmail dot com

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wasd··on Ask HN: Considering leaving my job at a startup? What should I consider?
I was in your shoes just over a year ago and decided to go with starting my own startup. I thought having started two startups prior with some success would make it easy but I was wrong.

The reality is that the default of any state of any startup is failure. You probably won't understand the magnitude of the problems you'll face until you see them directly. At this point, your ideas are just ideas and you should work on validating them.

There's a lot of ways to go about doing this and it'll really depend on the market you're chasing. It's likely that a combination of customer interviews and sales will let you gauge which of your ideas have promise and which won't. Something that really helped me was thinking about questions VCs ask when they're evaluating a startup. What's your unfair advantage? Why hasn't this worked before and why will it work now? These questions are incredibly important even if you're not interested in raising venture. There's a lot of books and literature on the web so I won't get into this deeply.

You probably noticed that I didn't say writing code. Sometimes writing code is how you should be validating your idea but most of the time it isn't. You should get in that mindset. However, when you need to write code there's a few ways to get over that commute drain:

1.) Wake up earlier and put some time in before you start your day.

2.) Live closer to your job. It'll alleviate a lot of the problems of coming home and not wanting to do more more work.

3.) Write code on the weekends instead.

Also, whatever you do, don't do it alone. I did it alone for the first time and it's awful. Your job is a great place to find future cofounders or employees. Do hackathons with them on the weekends. Tell them your ideas. See what they excited about.

A year later, I'm doing some consulting on the side to pay the bills and getting into a pivot that's finally moving the needle. Even though most of this year was a total failure, I couldn't be happier and I'm glad I did what I did. Feel free to shoot me an email at jr.sunny at gmail dot com if you have any questions or need any help.

wasd··on Welcome Michael, Jon, and Ilya
Could you tell us a little more about how they do 1?
wasd··on RoR, Django or both?
There's plenty of great shops that run .NET or will value your .NET experience and expect you can learn on the job.

Instead of choosing between RoR or Django, just find a startup whose product you love and apply to work there.

wasd··on Why Asana Is Switching to TypeScript
I don't want to keep adding to the comments about why not X so I'll ask a more generalized question, what other options did you consider and why did you abandon them?
wasd··on We Make Mistakes
I think your overreaction of being denied reflects precisely why you were denied.
wasd··on Meteor hits 1.0
Hey Meteor Folks, https://www.meteor.com/main says Preview 0.9.4. First place I went after I checked the git repo.
wasd··on Awesome React – A collection of React resources
My suggestion is to skip flux until you feel pretty comfortable making simple apps with just react. Ignore the links here and just focus on understanding the code on https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Examples
wasd··on Remarkable – a JavaScript Markdown and Commonmark parser
Awesome project! Just an FYI, your project shares a name with Linux Desktop Markdown Editor

http://remarkableapp.net/

wasd··on Twitpic blocking archive team from backing up pictures
Can you put him in touch with Dustin Curtis?

Dustin Curtis: "Can anyone put me in touch with the founder of Twitpic?(I'll pay to backup all of the photos, and even host them. Ridiculous situation.)"

hi@dustincurtis.com

wasd··on Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac
Anybody have any suggestions on how to do this on a Windows PC? I like Ninite[1] a lot but I would prefer something more customizable.

[1]: https://ninite.com/

wasd··on Reddit
Sorry if this is obvious but how does this work if Conde Nast/Advanced Publications is the primary shareholder?
wasd··on C for Rubyists
This is really, really cool. If I could make one recommendation, after finishing the tutorial it wasn't clear to me what do next. I want to keep learning more C and about the Ruby source code but it just sort of leaves me hanging.
wasd··on Show HN: Soothe – Uber for Massages
There's an inherit assumption that people would rather build loyalty to people over companies for specific services and its unclear if that's true. A perfect counter example to your cleaning example is Homejoy.
wasd··on Ask HN: How was your experience using parse.com?
As some people mentioned, you're over estimating the number of requests per second for the number of users you have. I would recommend writing a small application to get a feel how it feels to develop on the platform.

I personally found it to be incredibly valuable to be only writing client side code. It let me focus on my end users experience and iterate mich faster. After writing an application on parse, I found myself missing it on non parse projects. I used the parse js SDK to create a SPA.

I did think the on boarding experience could be a bit better. The docs are good, not great. I haven't had any issues with down time but my app is probably much smaller. I would definitely use it again.

wasd··on How to Start a Startup: Fall 2014
That's awesome. Is the wifi network open for non students? This is an issue at UC Berkeley :(.
wasd··on Show HN: Pixyll, a minimal, mobile-first Jekyll theme
In that case, I'll be using your theme. :)
wasd··on Show HN: Pixyll, a minimal, mobile-first Jekyll theme
I'm a fan. Reminds me of mdo's http://markdotto.com/ theme (which isn't open source). Slight nitpick, I find the navigation bar to be too small/unreadable.
wasd··on Interview with Steve Klabnik
Steve is a really great guy. He's super friendly and incredibly accessible. I've emailed or tweeted him a handful of times and he's always been very helpful. I don't agree with everything he says but he has turned me onto a lot of issues I didn't know anything about especially feminism.
wasd··on Show HN: Tmuxomatic – An intuitive and flexible session manager for tmux
I'm not surprised since managing ruby versions doesn't always go perfectly. I've been using tmuxinator for a while and been very happy. Didn't have any issues installing on OS X/Ubuntu.

Do mention how you like tmuxomatic vs tmuxinator once you get settled in.

wasd··on Welcome new YC team members
Hey Qasar, how do you recommend someone become a better product manager?
wasd··on Late night shuttle service that makes Caltrain 24/7
Public transit in the Bay Area isn't ideal and I appreciate every effort attempting making to make it better. Would you guys consider connecting with the East Bay? Going from EB -> PA takes a very long time between BART and Caltrain.

If you find this exciting you might also enjoying Night School: http://www.night.sc/

wasd··on Sourcegraph: Search code, jump around source, see real usage examples
One of the co-founders of Sourcegraph came to UC Berkeley and spoke at entrepreneurship event. He was very engaged and gave lots of real practical advice.

I've tried Sourcegraph and think it solves a real pain point but I have had problems integrating it into my workflow. I'm not sure when I should be using it. I've been meaning to use it to read more open source code code but it seems like they recently disabled support for Ruby.

wasd··on Show HN: Kaffee Bitte, specialty coffee delivery for Germany
B.) Try Indian coffees. They are very low acidic profile. Specifically Monsoon Medley or Mysore Mystic from Josuma Coffee Company. Josuma's espresso is very good too.

Learn more here: http://www.josuma.com/monsoon-medley/ http://www.josuma.com/mysore-mystic/

You might find a place that ships it online but if you can't, email me and I can pick it up for you at a local coffee shop. If you're in the Bay Area, the coffee shop is in Oakland.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/black-spring-coffee-company-oakland

wasd··on LG G Watch
I was curious too about the battery life and then pleasantly surprised.

"When asked about battery life, reps told me that it should last 36 hours in always-on state, and even longer if you opt to turn the screen off -- there's a companion app that you can download onto your Android device, and it gives you a few settings."

From http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/25/lg-g-watch-hands-on/

wasd··on For Sale 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins
My mistake. I'm not sure how or why this got through the filter.
wasd··on Ember Tutorial
Would you consider Parse/Firebase?
wasd··on Show HN: A collaborative newsletter for product managers
I would love an example newsletter.
wasd··on Google's XSS game
Using <script> ... as a payload won't work because the browser won't execute scripts added after the page has loaded.
wasd··on Rails Google Summer of Code students and mentors
Hey Vince,

Most of the work I do is in java and ruby web apps. I've seen a lot of Railscasts, about 1/4 of DAS, and none of Ruby Tapas. I try not to binge on DAS because I prefer watching them one at a time and fully applying them before moving on. I think my problem is how big the codebase that Rails is and where to start contributing. I see your point to more experience but I'm not sure that's the crux of the issue.

wasd··on Rails Google Summer of Code students and mentors
You know what kinda bums me out? There's probably nothing more I would like to do than help contribute to Rails but I have no idea where to start. I've read books [0] on a basic idea of how it works, subscribe to every mailing list, answer questions on stack overflow, emailed 2 core contributors on tips, and read a dozen blog posts but I haven't even scratched the surface. For me, the code base is is incredibly intimidating. Every once in a while, I muster the courage to go through pages and pages of Rails issues to try to understand what and where but usually I have no idea what's going on or how to fix it. I think really is a huge problem in OSS. I'm only two years out of school but I'm not allowed to participate in GSoC/Facebook OSS Academy.

Anyone have any suggestions?

[0] Rebuilding Rail - http://rebuilding-rails.com/

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