Thank you for taking full responsibility.
Everyone makes mistakes, so what matters is how you deal with them. This was the right way to respond. Thanks.
1,693 karma · joined February 28, 2010
Previously Grouper (YC W'12)
https://michaelwaxman.com
http://twitter.com/wxmn
email: 'bWljaGFlbEB3YXhtYW4ubWU=\n'
Everyone makes mistakes, so what matters is how you deal with them. This was the right way to respond. Thanks.
I do think space could be an issue. To mitigate against this risk I've decided to only keep ~8 pages of each feed in Redis, and compress the values (including removing attributes that won't be shown in the feed). Also, Redis 2.2 is a lot more space efficient than earlier versions.
Our primary datastore is actually MongoDB, which has some similar (NoSQL) characteristics, but I've found that storing the feeds in Redis is actually cheaper than storing the same data in Mongo. That said, I really like Mongo for its richer querying (and greater persistence guarantees), and use it for canonical storage of users, posts, etc.
The question is, who will do it better: Google or Facebook? The search engine or the social graph?
The company that can best walk this tightrope will win.
Some of the areas we'll see this in are:
- social search
- location-based services
- personalized recommendations
- purchasing history (think Blippy + Amazon)
- social network ranking and filtering (along the lines of what Buzz was doing)
- it's super flexible (and schema-less)
- dynamic queries are fast and powerful
- it's very easy work with
Scalability is another issue, but I think Mongo can scale (and that's slowly and bravely being proven by Foursquare). And almost all startups need to drastically re-architect their datastores when they hit massive scale anyways, so why not start out with the easiest and most flexible option that will let you iterate the fastest?
The main differentiators in consumer web startups tend to be: the speed and creativity with which the team can iterate, the quality of the user experience and design, and, if all goes well, the ability of the architecture to scale. The capacity to do these 3 things well is relatively rare. Finding a person or a team with these skills is exceedingly difficult (especially in this talent market).
So yeah, I do stand by my assertion that the starting-point idea is the commodity, and the ability to build and design a decently scalable web-app in 4 hours (and then get user feedback and push another version later that same day) is a rare skill---especially on the open market, since most such individuals are either well-employed at companies or working on their own.
The cost of passing on the right person is far less than the cost of saying yes to the wrong one (e.g. passing over a good biz dev guy who goes on to succeed at another start-up vs. hiring a jerk who ruins your business then sues you)
As the owner of a mid-2010 Macbook Pro and a first-gen iPad, I think the new Macbook Air, which is a significant step in that direction, could replace both devices for me.
The iPad cannot be used for productivity work (coding, writing, even longer emails), but my 15" MBP is relatively clunky, especially for the type of consumption activities that the iPad excels at (i.e. reading on the couch, watching a TV episode, etc.) I wish I could have the best of both worlds.
The new iPad version of Garage Band really captures this: in some ways it's better than the Logic Pro I have on my laptop; I can play keys on it, I can trigger drums with my fingers, etc., but it's painfully underpowered (in terms of CPU, memory, I/O, etc.) to comfortably record a serious track on it (despite what Gorillaz accomplished).
I'm waiting for a Macbook Air with a full touch screen, and a new OS that fully combines the simplicity and interactivity of iOS with the power and breadth of OSX.
In 1996 some academics tried to re-imagine human-computer interaction, and they used the current Mac OS as a starting point (FYI: It was version 7.5).
How Their Predictions Panned Out:
First off, they got some relatively obvious things right: they correctly saw that computers of the future would be hyper-connected instead of isolated (but in 1996 this wasn't exactly a bold prediction), and that they would have hardware orders of magnitude more powerful.
Somewhat more insightfully they predicted that the purpose of computers would shift from mainly solo productivity-type work to games, multimedia, creative, social, etc. They also predicted the rise of alternative forms of I/O, and I think the I/O of Apple's iOS, for instance, is in many ways consistent with what they envisioned.
A few of their guesses have not yet materialized, though. They emphasize the use of "language" over point and click icons. Unfortunately, NLP and AI are harder than they anticipated. If we again look at iOS as an example, touch icons, it seems, are still much more useful than natural language.
The article provides a fascinating time capsule of HCI thinking at the dawn of the Internet.
Incidentally, just weeks after this article was published Steve Jobs returned to Apple and sparked the new generation of interfaces that they could only imagine.
The idea is basically that complex web 2.0 design patterns (ajax/comet/memcache/sql optimization/etc.) require a lot of tedious effort to build and maintain, and wouldn't it be cool if you could simply define models, views, and handler functions, and then have the framework take care of everything else.
I honestly think that Luna has the potential to change web development the way Rails did (i.e. by making it an order of magnitude easier), and could transform web apps themselves the way G-mail did (i.e. by emphasizing things like really-real time updating via comet the way G-mail initially introduced the world to Ajax).
I have no idea how Luna is architected, but the concept really resonates with me: javascript-based, web 2.0-abstractions that prevent repetitive things I do in Rails like having to redefine some of the same functions in ruby code and javascript code, and then having to manually keep them in sync.
It's so cool that I think I'm going to try to hack together my own, humble Luna knock-off built on top of Node.js, jQuery, and MongoDB (which uses a javascript query language and JSON-but-better (BSON) data models).
What's unique about The Beatles is the scale at which they transformed a simple foundation into such an unrivaled commercial and artistic success. Sure, there were earlier versions. But no other act went from shoestring to massive influence in the way that The Beatles did.
Google was obviously already on the iPhone (with search, its popular native app, gmail, etc.), but Google Voice is clearly different in that in competes with the core functions of the phone.
What do you guys think the impact of this will be? Could Google use this as a Trojan horse to hook people on GV then try to upsell them to an Android device with better GV integration? Or will it not matter?
I owe so much to FOSS it's not even funny.
It'd be nice to give something back (beyond bug fixes and my own, lame contributions).
To quote Tony Robbins' TED Talk: "it's about resourcefulness, not resources." (1)
Successful startups just make it happen with what they have. Unsuccessful ones tend to always look externally for solutions. "If we only had more engineers"... "If we only had VC"... "If we only had more users"... etc.
There is a long list of reasons why this mindset will doom any startup. Two, important ones are:
1) It makes you less creative (to look externally for solutions)
2) It slows you down (to wait on external resources)
And what do startups have going for them, but for creativity and agility?
(1) http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we...
I think the board seat requirement, in particular, will be rendered obsolete soon. But then again, the whole VC industry might be obsolete soon.
It doesn't bother me, though, because the truth is, it doesn't matter how many times you've met Fred Wilson, or how many times your name shows up in SAI. If you build something that people love, then the VC's and journalists line up around the block. And if you don't? I don't think Union Square has ever written a check because they saw a guy at all the right parties.
Chris Dixon draws the distinction between "builders" and "extractors," (1) which I really like. Are you building something? Or are you trying to take something?
And I do think that coders are in a different category, because even if you're a "scene-y" dev, at least you could build something of value, whereas most of the scenesters (who completely lack code/design/even business backgrounds) never will.
Btw... great post, Brad.
It's pretty remarkable how poor their social products have been, especially compared to other new product initiatives, like Android.
How can Google save its social strategy at this point (other than by trying to chip away at Facebook with tiny measures like this)?
The only "competitor" you should worry about is the Back Button.*
*http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html, http://mixergy.com/paul-graham-design/
The Founder and CEO had an incredibly clear and actionable vision: "we are THE low-cost airline."
This worked like magic both internally and externally. At the company, answers to even the most complex questions could be rendered relatively obvious through the lens of this mantra. Does it increase costs or not? (e.g. Halloween costumes for employees? Sure. Lunch on the Houston to Florida flight? Nope - would raise costs).
And externally, customers know why to fly Southwest: it's cheaper.
If your vision isn't as succinct and actionable as Southwest's, then it's not clear enough: both for employees and for potential customers.
Also,
1) Only larger companies can sponsor H1b's, not startups. The so-called "startup visa" would be a small step forward, but it sets a pretty high bar.
2) We rank towards the bottom of developed countries in math and science, and by college it's too late; by then you either got a good education in these areas, or you didn't.
3) I agree that government is super inefficient, and in some ways it may appear incompatible with the near-opposite agility of the startup world. That said, small businesses of all kinds need capital, and often credit, and the short-term effects of banking reform was to tighten capital markets even more.
1) Immigration reform. If smart engineers from abroad want to study here or work here we need to let them, and let them stay as long as they want.
2) Better science and math education. It might be a long slog to catch up with some other countries, but we need to start. One suggestion: A national "learn to program" initiative in low-income elementary schools.
3) Focus financial industry reforms on making life easier for small businesses (i.e. startups). We create the most jobs and account for the most innovation, and yet the bulk of Obama's economic policy has helped big incumbents. Easier access to credit, federal startup grants, and small business tax reform would all go a long way.
This model fits with the ever-shrinking capital requirements to launch a tech company. Conversely, portfolio strategies that rely on huge exits (and huge investments) are increasingly threatened.
Diaspora was a nice thought experiment, but there is simply no reason to switch and will never be. Your data is going to be much more exposed on some rando's hobby Diaspora server than it will be on Facebook's.
Also, social networks are not tech problems; they're interface problems, even for a subproblem like privacy. And the UI/UX of Diaspora is pretty poor.
A real, viable Facebook alternative would focus much more on a novel interface that makes sharing and privacy more intuitive, not some technical solution that will be less secure than Facebook anyways.
I have a ton of respect for them throwing themselves out there, but i think they should hire a designer or two and refocus their efforts on interface rather than features.
This drop.io deal sounds a lot like the Hot Potato acquisition from a few months ago: in both cases the startups were well-funded, but didn't have much traction, and then Facebook paid 8 figures to essentially buy the main founder (Sam Lessin at drop.io, Justin Schaffer at Hot Potato), and essentially let everything else die (the sites were shut down, the technology scrapped, other employees weren't hired by facebook, etc.)
A few questions for HN:
- Is Facebook paying too much for these founders? (They're basically shelling out a $10 MM signing bonus that lets these entrepreneurs placate their investors, and then come to Facebook. (Accept the founders only get a fraction of the money, obviously). Is it worth it? What are other new Facebook executives paid in signing bonuses?)
- What do the investors think about this? (Are the investors in Hot Potato and Drop.io happy to get a modest return instead of nothing (because these companies hadn't taken off yet), or are they frustrated that these companies ended somewhat abruptly?)
- How do the employees feel? (Does it feel like success for them when the whole point of the acquisition is really just to buy their boss? Obviously they get money for their equity, so maybe that trumps any other feelings.) [Full disclosure: I actually work with one of the co-founders of Hot Potato (who didn't go to Facebook), so I know his opinions on this issue, but I'm still curious to hear others' thoughts].
- How do users feel? (Are these buyouts fair to them?)
- And lastly, Isn't there a slight paradox with the fact that these founders are being plucked at such high premiums because they're brilliant leaders, and yet, in both the cases of Hot Potato and Drop.io, these startups weren't runaway successes? In other words, doesn't the lack of clear success of these startups undermine the basic premise that the founders deserve $10 MM "signing bonuses"?
Are there any non-technical people at GH? Would you consider hiring any? Why or why not?
(Full disclosure: I'm an engineer just coming off of a bad experience with a 'business' co-founder)
If an idea is actually compelling, then it will stay with me even if I don't write it down (and I'll continue to think about it, expand upon it, tinker with it, etc.). If I don't remember it, then it probably wasn't that interesting to begin with.