emmett

21 ms·

151.
by emmett 14y ago
Grants are always subject to board approval, due to corporate structure of literally every startup I've ever heard of. It's a rubber-stamp process (for normal-sized grants, anyway) and employees always get the options. Similarly, they can't
152.
by emmett 14y ago
You seem to be saying to contradictory things: "Equity is worthless, never work for equity, always demand cash up front." "Those darn investors and founders keep all the equity for themselves and get rich off your back!" You can't have it b
153.
by emmett 14y ago
Can you name some examples of successful startups which did not get big fast?
154.
by emmett 14y ago
There's a recuse button if you're conflicted.
155.
by emmett 14y ago
No, YC has always favored founders over ideas. But one of the main way you judge someone is what ideas they have. When drew was first applying to YC I didn't know him. But I'm going to presume that, like most young people, 6 months or a yea
156.
by emmett 14y ago
Or Facebook, mentioned CONSTANTLY on TechCrunch, which is currently at a market cap of $68 billion on the public exchange. Or many startups that get mentioned once on TechCrunch and never again and then fail. I agree that the scatterplot wo
157.
by emmett 14y ago
Name the billion dollar companies with no business model. The fact is once a company is successful enough to go public it's often still risky, but it's extremely rare for them to reach that point without a model.
158.
by emmett 14y ago
Of course, sometimes a billion dollars of startup stock is worth much MORE than a billion dollars, whereas a billion dollars of oil is basically worth a billion dollars. Equity in fast growing companies is high beta, but that doesn't mean i
159.
by emmett 14y ago
Waterloo is actually special (unlike Yale, MIT, or CMU). The internship program there is brilliant and does indeed produce significantly more experienced students on graduation. It's also not particularly prestigious, which just goes to pro
160.
by emmett 14y ago
I wasn't making a truth-claim, I was clarifying Justin's truth-claim. The comment was claiming that Justin claimed that education didn't matter. I was clarifying that his point seems to me to be that the prestige of the institution you atte
161.
by emmett 14y ago
Exactly! The price of iPhones is constant, but income is variable. So as a percentage of income, the price of iPhones varies hugely from location to location.
162.
by emmett 14y ago
Incomes are not the same in Atlanta and SF! The same person at an equivalent job will earn MUCH more money in SF. Let me break down the math (all approximate): SF: $100k/year income, $24k/year rent, $45k/year taxes, $31k/year disposable Atl
163.
by emmett 14y ago
Top schools do not teach the material differentially better. Yale teaches computer science quite well (I'm a graduate!) but not particularly better than any other school. CMU and MIT also have great CS programs, but they're not substantiall
164.
by emmett 14y ago
It's deceptive though. Making $100k/year in San Francisco means that rent is very expensive, relatively speaking, but that consumer goods are incredibly cheap. Living in SF: Eating out at restaurants, buying the latest iPhone, plane tickets
165.
by emmett 14y ago
Literally one sentence later: "Network engineers who started off as college dropouts but figured it out from years of on the job experience learning to be the best." So, he wants young creative kids, and also super experienced people. The o
166.
Your Credentials Are Worthless Here(iamexec.com)
245 points by emmett 14y ago|202 comments
167.
by emmett 14y ago
Generally really like your post, but I have to correct you about PG's essay. It's people who work at normal jobs that he calls caged animals, and founders are the wild animals. "In fact, getting a normal job may actually make you less able
168.
by emmett 14y ago
Almost everything is part of someone's identity. But I would venture for most people on this forum, they have a car but don't identify with a car brand. It used to be of course that you were a Ford man or a Chrysler man. But nowadays it's b
169.
by emmett 14y ago
But why do programming languages become part of people's identity so readily, whereas many other things do not? (What do programming languages, operating systems, and text editors all have in common? They're big parts of people's identities
170.
by emmett 14y ago
That's generally speaking, a bad tradeoff. But one that most people make. Yes, the rents in the city are high. But long commutes are one of the main things correlated with unhappiness. I'd rather live in a smaller place, or with roommates,
171.
by emmett 14y ago
It's different primarily because "co-prosperity sphere" sounds really funny as a phrase. He's also using it in a self-deprecating fashion, because he's inviting you to apply to join something that historically you would never want to be par
172.
by emmett 14y ago
Where on earth did you get the idea PG thinks libraries don't matter? I don't think I've ever seen PG say anything like that. Here's where, in fact, he says the exact opposite: Of course the ultimate in brevity is to have the program alread
173.
by emmett 14y ago
Right, I understand that pain points and solutions are not the same thing. I didn't ask for you to describe the pain points. I really am asking what you're building. In a concrete way, what does it actually do?
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by emmett 14y ago
Twitter was obviously a great idea, but it wasn't an obviously great idea. Just because no one (including the Twitter guys) could see the direction it would grow in doesn't mean that it wasn't a great place to start. In retrospect, clearly
175.
by emmett 14y ago
Can you explain, in one sentence, what it is that you're building that's different from existing movie ratings sites? Try this template: "it's like Rotten Tomatoes, except ..." It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except you rate on 3 axes instead of
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by emmett 14y ago
Because it's mean spirited and adds nothing of value to the conversation. Your comment is similar; your dislike of Patrick is based entirely on who he is and doesn't bother to engage with the content of the essay at all.
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by emmett 14y ago
Do you really believe that which characteristic is important about an animal is not a cultural question? If it seems "obvious" that's because your culture is invisible from the inside. http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html
178.
by emmett 14y ago
The ability to answer those kinds of ambiguous questions is extremely culturally linked. The whole idea about IQ tests is that they're supposed to be universal and culturally independent. The Cow/hen/pig/sheep question is clearly not cultur
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by emmett 14y ago
Justin didn't really know how to program much when we started Kiko, but he's smart and he learned quick. He was probably the easiest person to teach programming I've ever worked with.
180.
by emmett 14y ago
At what odds? This is an easy bet to make: just short-sell the stock or buy a put against it. Markets are anti-inductive. http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/

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