georgespencer

92 ms·

781.
by georgespencer 14y ago
I'm in the UK, using couriers (people who come to my place to pick stuff up) rather than post office (I take my heavy item to them and they weigh it and ship it). > I've never had to call someone. This is a broadly applicable CS issue w
782.
Somebody please, for the love of god, fix shipping/couriers
160 points by georgespencer 14y ago|130 comments
783.
by georgespencer 14y ago
> (ie. literally every street and corner in the city is covered by a camera) Many street corners have CCTV cameras. The vast majority of them are run by businesses rather than the government and are decentralised, as has been pointed o
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by georgespencer 14y ago
His comments on Steve Jobs spring to mind.
785.
by georgespencer 14y ago
He worked in marketing and had ideas, so he learned to code to build them. Then the idea for Instagram came along, he built it, marketed it and sold it. "Management/finance" doesn't mean anything, other than excluding Systrom as a specific
786.
by georgespencer 14y ago
Yes, if only Kevin Systrom existed. Oh, no, wait, your argument is flat out wrong.
787.
by georgespencer 14y ago
Investors want a return on their fucking investment. That isn't just an app built by an asshole engineer who lives in a myopic world. It isn't just a spreadsheet showing projections for growth and a strategy behind it. Investors want a retu
788.
by georgespencer 14y ago
Probably that the people assessing the sales team at a hiring stage made mistakes. You're right, though: it is hard to hire sales/marcomms people. In the same way as a layman hiring a technical guy might not know what to look out for ("This
789.
by georgespencer 14y ago
I'm sick of this sort of crummy linkbait. The exact same thing crops up every few months on HN. "Ideas are a dime a dozen! Engineering is the one true way! Execution is paramount! Reddit, here's a picture of my cute cat!" It's not black and
790.
by georgespencer 14y ago
It's either a Red Dwarf or H2G2 gag, can't remember. "We're slowing down?" "Sort of. We were accelerating so quickly that we're now just accelerating slightly slower than we were before." My point is that Groupon is the sound of a bunch of
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by georgespencer 14y ago
A fairly tawdry argument in this article. Dustin said, simply, that you shouldn't become an entrepreneur just for the sake of becoming one. You should have an idea that you're energised about and want to build. The fact that Zuckerberg had
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by georgespencer 14y ago
> We improved our GAAP EPS during the year from a loss of $0.48 per share in the first quarter of 2011 to a loss of $0.12 per share in the fourth quarter of 2011. Groupon is still accelerating towards demise. It's just now accelerating
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by georgespencer 15y ago
> They have Azure to compete with AWS, and now they want to make a run at the Kindle. I get Azure, but I don't see why Microsoft are starting a fight on another front. The US ebook market could be up to $7bn by 2016, but B&N will ha
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by georgespencer 15y ago
Can anyone think of any compelling reasons as to why this won't be another headstone in the graveyard of average acquisitions/investments made by Microsoft? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...
795.
by georgespencer 15y ago
Thanks. Incidentally your startup is in a spookily similar field to mine. Email me? mistergeorgespencer at google's email solution dot com.
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by georgespencer 15y ago
I was addressing the part where it said "it's the photo app". It isn't "the" photo app. You can make the case that it's the most widely used mobile photo app after Facebook. But that != $1bn valuation or YouTube-like status.
797.
by georgespencer 15y ago
The assertion is that, for a billion dollars, Facebook should be able to create a significantly better app and market it better (or 'at all') than Instagram do. Facebook have got 721m users and all the data they need to constitute incredibl
798.
by georgespencer 15y ago
It isn't the photo service: Facebook. Flickr. Picasa. Imageshack. Twitpic. Imgur... To name a few. Instagram doesn't have more users than Facebook. Hell, it doesn't even have more users than Flickr (51m) or Photobucket (50m). Instagram is
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by georgespencer 15y ago
> Google is doing just fine out of Android. By what metric? > iOS may be better marketed, but there are a hell of a lot more Android phones out there. Yes. And Google has made more money out of those fewer iOS phones than it has fro
800.
by georgespencer 15y ago
> This is very reminiscent of Google/YouTube circa 2006. In that it was a startup acquired by a big company? Yep. > When Google bought YT it was a small team of people and a pretty nascent product that people really loved, and the u
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by georgespencer 15y ago
How many times do I have to click "Create my Robot" before you take me to the page which actually lets me do that? Too many times.
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by georgespencer 15y ago
My company has been working on this since June. Email me. George@rentify.com
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by georgespencer 15y ago
Judging from the post on their homepage they're not stopping development.
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by georgespencer 15y ago
Edit: If that link doesn't work for you: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150344003354357....
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by georgespencer 15y ago
> Palihapitiya agreed that there should be a secondary component to the financing. Agreed. I think what OP meant was "founders cashing out [using this method rather than a secondary sale]" is a big red flag.
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by georgespencer 15y ago
Most intelligently run startup should do the same thing. You should be hiring people who will add more value to the business. Often you should be hiring people who are smarter than you. It's the same principle which means if Steve Jobs came
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by georgespencer 15y ago
Best engineered machines on the market. POSIX-compliant. Simple to spec. Great OS and easy to add others. Outstanding battery life. High quality components (trackpad, screen, keyboards).
808.
by georgespencer 15y ago
It looks like you lost your drive after about three months (judging by the messages in your Twitter stream). That's not long enough to build a self-sustaining community. You did the easy part which was within your expertise (coding a site),