birken

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421.
by birken 12y ago
For a bit of a more balanced discussion of some of the key points related to SF's housing problems, you might want to read Kim-Mai Cutler's (very long and very good) assessment of the issue: http://techcrunch.com/2
422.
by birken 12y ago
These are always tough pieces to respond to, because there are certainly a lot of gender inequalities in the startup world. But I wish the piece had spent more time talking about the trajectory of the situation instead of just a description
423.
by birken 12y ago
Oops, messed this up (too late to edit). Thanks choochootrain for the correction: >>> NestedDD = lambda: collections.defaultdict(NestedDD) >>> nested_dd = NestedDD() >>> nested_dd['a']['b&#
424.
by birken 12y ago
>> nested_dd = collections.defaultdict(lambda: nested_dd) >> nested_dd['a']['b']['c']['d'] = 'hello'
425.
by birken 12y ago
> And of course there is another possibly — maybe hundreds of startups collectively decided to stop announcing their funding rounds? There is also a much simpler explanation... there is a lag in when seed rounds happen and when they are
426.
by birken 12y ago
You are speaking in some really large generalities. Being an early employee of a startup isn't indentured servitude. If you are offered little equity as compared to the founders, don't join. If the founders won't share the
427.
by birken 12y ago
Startup employees have a lot of advantages to mitigate this risk though: - They can be much more selective of only joining startups that already has good traction - They generally can command a higher salary than founders pay themselves - I
428.
by birken 12y ago
I realize the actual nightmare is that after a few months of all-night coding the founders didn't launch the next facebook, but still: > We had much bigger problems than the piece, to be sure, but launching with an article that roun
429.
by birken 12y ago
This post really misunderstands what both success and failure are. Getting into YC or raising money isn't success. And trying an idea out for a few months before giving up on it isn't failure. Building a success startup takes a l
430.
Simple auto-login from emails using your favorite key-value store(danbirken.com)
2 points by birken 12y ago|1 comments
431.
by birken 12y ago
Yeah it really doesn't make sense to me. Amazon is already working hard to reduce the price of shipping, which seems to be the biggest thing jet.com is attempting to leverage to lower prices: - They'll combine different orders au
432.
by birken 12y ago
Or... Why you shouldn't use any ride sharing company. Numbers 4-6 are even more broad, they basically apply to any situation where you are required to use a credit card to pay (which identifies you), which is basically every single app
433.
by birken 12y ago
Yeah it was in this case. I've clearly got to know my audience a little better.
434.
by birken 12y ago
FWIW I would have never seen this movie but now I will due to all of the hoopla. Though obviously it will be harder to see if it isn't in any theaters, this is still a lot of free publicity for the movie, and I'm sure it will be
435.
by birken 12y ago
The Google search team actually has 3 weekly meetings with the deals team. The deals team keeps them apprised of potential deals they are working on, and then the search team tunes the weekly algorithm updates to either boost or penalize t
436.
by birken 12y ago
It is comical how often sources like crunchbase (and even the press) are wrong. Though it makes sense, private companies basically have no incentive to release any sort of data unless it plays to some narrative they are trying to create. F
437.
by birken 12y ago
You likely have more experience with this than I do, but it seems to me that getting access to 36,000 IPs (the quoted maximum amount per minute) to make a single request each would be extremely difficult. And even if you could do that, mos
438.
by birken 12y ago
My reading of that is they were splitting their crawling amongst a large block of IPs they had. If they are using proxies, that is much easier because you can just block them all without any worry of accidentally blocking real consumers (i
439.
by birken 12y ago
Result.ly are really a bunch of jerks. One of the most common sense things you can possibly do while crawling a website is monitor the response time and/or error rates from the sites you are crawling. If those are going up, your craw
440.
by birken 12y ago
City biking does have a bit of a learning curve, and I do highly recommend you look into those classes that I linked to above (or find similar ones in your area). You will get better with experience though, and the better you get the more y
441.
by birken 12y ago
There is no doubt that biking is more dangerous than driving. However, biking is still extremely safe. And for the safety conscious person, especially for a beginner, I'd suggest only biking routes that you are familiar with and that
442.
by birken 12y ago
If you live in San Francisco, you might consider getting a bike and/or using public transportation instead of ride-sharing services. Either of them are better for the city by reducing congestion and pollution, and biking in particular
443.
by birken 12y ago
Everything depends on your situation, but in general VCs are influenced by social proof and need a forcing function to make them make a decision. So an acquisition offer can be both of these things in the right circumstances. The problem w
444.
by birken 12y ago
If you are lazy you can just put your money into one of the 10+ Vanguard Target Retirement funds [1] which are just varying mixes of their stock/bond funds + automatic rebalancing. It goes from 90%/10% stock/bond mix (VTTSX)
445.
by birken 12y ago
I worked at a very successful startup, including getting it off the ground, and rarely worked more than 50 hours per week. I don't know how common my experience was, but I can assure you it isn't necessary.
446.
by birken 12y ago
This is not the reality of what is required to do great things [1]. This is one path, but there are many others. There are lots of people who work 40-50 hours a week and have incredibly successful startups/companies/whatever. T
447.
by birken 12y ago
Having an open bottle of alcohol and drinking it is legal on a boat. You just can't be intoxicated.
448.
by birken 12y ago
And to answer the first question, he probably has all of his equity. If there was no vesting schedule for his shares, he would already own them regardless of when he left. In the case he did have a vesting schedule (which is a best practic
449.
by birken 12y ago
Also there are many other variables that could affect this analysis that aren't explored or mentioned. Just two I can think of off the top of my head: - Users logged into stripe probably buy more stuff online. Maybe they donate more
450.
Don't pay for startup advice(danbirken.com)
2 points by birken 12y ago|0 comments

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