johnrob

29 ms·

331.
by johnrob 13y ago
I think Amazon is simply reinvesting in growth while avoiding corporate income taxes. Since they tend to move into proven industries, they are not likely to lose any of the re-invested money. They are effectively taking profit in the form
332.
by johnrob 13y ago
Don't forget a physical shell to keep the U.S. marines at bay.
333.
by johnrob 13y ago
Lyft and Sidecar do a good job of vetting drivers. This helps prevent passengers from dying while using the service. The high quality of vetting is shielding you from seeing the real issue: what if they didn't vet drivers? Wouldn&#x
334.
by johnrob 13y ago
I'm just looking for something to replace the daytime job where I don't have to be at an office 5 days a week Wouldn't it be easier to simply find a job that lets you work remotely? Not every employer would allow that, but
335.
by johnrob 13y ago
Thank you - that is good, hard earned knowledge from the trenches. We don't often get that these days. I would offer one piece of advice to anyone trying to stay on course: when you experience those early highs (launch, fundraising, e
336.
by johnrob 13y ago
60-70 Million for talent? Wow. I suppose Yahoo is trying a novel approach to recruiting: target startup founders/employees, give generous equity offers (via acquisition price) as well as a 'win' on the resume (successful ex
337.
by johnrob 13y ago
It seems like eating a repetitive diet tends to come with risks. The safest approach, IMO, is diversity (few things will harm you in moderate doses).
338.
by johnrob 13y ago
It seems like one large breakthrough in programming could simply be using the features of a language in a manner that best suits the problem. That's what I get from your blog post: design for what makes sense - not for what looks norm
339.
by johnrob 13y ago
Perhaps a better name for MVP would be FVP: "Fastest viable product". The end goal is to get something in a customer's hands as quickly as possible. There is no reason for the product to be minimal (or cheap). Renting a pl
340.
by johnrob 13y ago
The founding dates for those companies are something like 2006, 2008, 2009? Rent in SF was probably half of what it is now.
341.
by johnrob 13y ago
Well, it's still relevant but high rent could easily send it on a downward trend. High cost of living is a dangerous thing for startups; I doubt silicon valley would have formed and prospered if rent prices (relatively speaking) were
342.
by johnrob 13y ago
The instagram number was just a numerator on top of facebook's valuation. To say instagram was overpriced is just an indirect way of saying facebook was overpriced.
343.
by johnrob 13y ago
Unfortunately, a billion minus one is still a large number. Thus, the penalty for annoying individual users is pretty much nothing unless it turns into bad PR.
344.
by johnrob 13y ago
If you're willing to do whatever it takes, you can probably round up a group of early users (unless your idea is terrible). I think few founders really doubt their ability to do this. What the founders are really looking for is some
345.
by johnrob 13y ago
I don't agree with the point about later stage options: But what this misses is that you don't get paid in percentage points - you get dollars. A $100 share going up 20% to $120 means you make $20 per share. A $5 share going up 1
346.
by johnrob 13y ago
For all of its critique, Atlas Shrugged surprisingly seems to predict where our government is headed.
347.
by johnrob 13y ago
No matter where you are in life, there's always something a lot worse and something a lot better. I can imagine jobs much worse than washing dishes and much better than making 6 figures sitting in an office chair.
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by johnrob 13y ago
Probably the biggest risk to crowdsouring is a reestablishment of the middle class. That will drive wages up to the point where these services end up too expensive or too poorly executed (by bottom of the barrel labor). On a positive note
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by johnrob 13y ago
Nothing done at that level of scale is trivial. Also, the founders are in pretty rare company given the success of dropbox - definitely something to aspire to.
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by johnrob 13y ago
Grammar check: "These days, your app need to store and sync more than just files."
351.
by johnrob 13y ago
I feel no guilt. Buying food is expensive and preparing it requires a lot of labor (not just cooking, but cleaning too). This could be a huge time saver for busy folks - and many of them might use the savings on sleep instead of work.
352.
by johnrob 13y ago
The first list is missing one bullet (at the bottom): * Possibly get arrested
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by johnrob 13y ago
Urban sprawl is bad from an energy (and consequently environmental) perspective because people and supplies require longer trips.
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by johnrob 13y ago
HTTP lets you inherit a large and diverse body of infrastructure - load balancing, monitoring, testing, logging, etc etc. Also, some combination of websockets and/or keep-alive would yield most of the benefits of using just TCP.
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by johnrob 13y ago
I agree, that didn't make much sense. It seems like the post was targeted more towards LPs than startups.
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by johnrob 13y ago
It would be a very straight forward assumption that a DDG mobile app would laser focused on quick search. I'm curious: how did the stories feature come to be?
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by johnrob 13y ago
I think PG told them to work on (what became) the reddit idea instead of the food ordering idea. The redditors came up with both ideas.
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by johnrob 13y ago
You're probably right. If so, please don't think any less of the 'hidden' company - they would simply be the one that got caught (a lot of successful companies have pulled of similar stunts).
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by johnrob 13y ago
Unfortunately, the influence of the large and powerful group has already been written into law. Asking the city to ignore its own laws is probably not going to be a solution for these new transportation services.
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by johnrob 13y ago
If that argument were valid, none of the current taxi companies would buy transportation licenses or commercial insurance.

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