barretts

9 ms·

31.
by barretts 12y ago
Felix conveniently assumes a startup has a binary outcome: Immense riches or ignominious failure. In reality, there's a spectrum. I know a lot of people who sold their company for $1 million to $10 million. Depending on how the cap t
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The most expensive lottery ticket in the world(blogs.reuters.com)
202 points by barretts 12y ago|94 comments
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by barretts 13y ago
This seems like a lot of work for a joke.
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by barretts 13y ago
I've become skeptical about bitcoin for remittances. The biggest cost in remittance architecture isn't the electronic transfer, but distributing cash. Western Union, e.g., maintains a network of over 1 million agents - banks, post
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by barretts 13y ago
Agreed. And hyperinflation is terrible when it happens, but quite rare in modern economies. Double-digit declines in bitcoin values are, however, quite common. It would be profoundly irresponsible to encourage the poor of Africa to make the
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by barretts 13y ago
It's not just about selling. I was a journalist for many years, and the worst kinds of visualizations and charts were just data dumps. The best kind had a point of view, or tried to make sense of the data and tell a story with it. Now,
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by barretts 13y ago
Your snark is unwarranted and unfair. Few people have been to a Tufte conference, but many more are (at least vaguely) aware of his distaste for PowerPoint. Making the tool/use distinction explicit will help more people think criticall
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by barretts 13y ago
Good for you for assuming the best in people.
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by barretts 13y ago
Well (if verbosely) said.
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by barretts 13y ago
I'd suggest you re-read the review. She only points to one inaccuracy -- the timeframe when Bezos read Remains of the Day . Stone has acknowledged and corrected that fact for future editions. Everything else she says is subjective. Sh
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by barretts 13y ago
She actually only refers to one specific fact that can be checked -- when Bezos read Remains of the Day . Everything else is just her attempt to re-characterize the environment at Amazon, which is subjective, not factual. (She also has som
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by barretts 13y ago
I totally agree that "thought" verbs are tricky, and different news organizations have different rules regarding them. But I wanted to correct the notion that it is "unprofessional" to profile someone without interviewin
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by barretts 13y ago
If you'd read the article you'd note that he barely addresses her or her status, and primarily responds to her review and elucidates his reporting process. I quoted that line because I think it usefully reframes the conversation.
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by barretts 13y ago
There's something slippery about the way Mrs. Bezos writes as well. She says: "Readers should remember that Jeff was never interviewed for this book." She conveniently elides the fact that Brad Stone has interviewed Bezos s
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by barretts 13y ago
You are 100% wrong. Stone interviewed Bezos many times over the years, just not expressly for this book. (Bezos refused.) Bezos did give permission for many of his friends and colleagues to speak to Stone, so he did cooperate in a fashion.
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Author of book on Amazon.com responds to Bezos's wife's one-star review(businessinsider.com)
2 points by barretts 13y ago|0 comments
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by barretts 13y ago
The book author Brad Stone (who I used to work with) responded to Mackenzie's review and I think his comment is spot-on: "I'm certainly less biased than Jeff's wife." http://www.businessinsider.com/j
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by barretts 13y ago
Pogue is an okay journalist, but great at building a personal brand, which now extends to books and the conference circuit as well as writing. I spent seven years as an editor at top NYC magazines, and saw time and again that great journali
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Trailer for upcoming Guardian US series on "NSA Files: Decoded"(facebook.com)
1 points by barretts 13y ago|0 comments
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by barretts 13y ago
My initial reaction to this headline was, "Orwellian doublespeak at its best," which is of course the hoped-for response. On second thought, I don't see why this matters. Facebook transparency matters only to Facebook account
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Avoid the NSA with Mesh Networks(m.motherjones.com)
2 points by barretts 13y ago|0 comments
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What is Medium? It's YouTube for Writing(gist.github.com)
2 points by barretts 13y ago|0 comments
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Your protestations about “literally” are literally wrong(medium.com)
10 points by barretts 13y ago|7 comments
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by barretts 13y ago
That doc looks great, definitely adding to Evernote. Thanks.
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by barretts 13y ago
It's a jump to go from saying it's not "everything" (which it isn't, and which I don't claim in the post) to saying it's bad advice. From my experience helping friends who had no idea how to manager their
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by barretts 13y ago
That's a fair point, I didn't really take AMT into account. Feel free to leave a comment on the post, it's useful information.
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by barretts 13y ago
Agreed, that VentureBeat article is very useful.
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by barretts 13y ago
That's fair, but my understanding is that employees don't get liquidation preference - investors do. So yeah, if there's a lot of stock out there with liquidation preference, your employee options can be worth a lot less. But
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by barretts 13y ago
That's good advice, but I still think it's useful to know the company valuation at grant time -- just as a baseline.
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What you need to know about employee stock options(medium.com)
94 points by barretts 13y ago|60 comments

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