johnrob

43 ms·

391.
by johnrob 13y ago
You can achieve almost anything in this world if you're willing to trade your life. However, the original comment seems to have the assumption that the cause in question is not worth dying for. The set of things that governments will kill
392.
by johnrob 13y ago
I smell a turnover strategy here: 1) Buy talent in the form of companies while they are still cheap because of both the startup glut and the booming stock market (and thus yahoo stock price). 2) When the inevitable downturn/crash happens, s
393.
by johnrob 13y ago
5 years ago, someone at google told me this: our biggest weakness is amazon, because we make a lot of money from google searches that end up with an amazon ad getting clicked on. If people take those searches to amazon (where the purchase
394.
by johnrob 13y ago
Isn't that just "security by obscurity"? Your home cloud server is probably more accessible to hackers than an amazon server. If you're ok with relying on obscurity, you already have it - you are one person among billions on this planet.
395.
by johnrob 13y ago
That's the fall back. And it's not as bad is you'd think for those whose companies ultimately failed. The goal is to make the company into something significant.
396.
by johnrob 13y ago
Money is just money. It can be squandered, mal-invested, taxed, or simply inflated away. However, the guts that all of those founders showed will forever be a reference point for their careers. Many can claim they would turn down 100M, b
397.
by johnrob 13y ago
Strangely fitting, SDF is the french word for homeless: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans_domicile_fixe .
398.
by johnrob 13y ago
They probably were hoping you'd prove them wrong during the interview.
399.
by johnrob 13y ago
The point of this whole debate is this: VC return = equity * performance. Optimizing for the former is much less leveraged than the latter, since performance can vary by 10000x. If asking for better terms means you lose out on any deals
400.
by johnrob 13y ago
Lottery tickets are a good example in this case. By definition, strategy A and B cannot both be winners (there is only one winning ticket). So the only thing that will set either apart is if one of the two strategies has the winning ticke
401.
by johnrob 13y ago
If the cache isn't required to provide a good experience to 1 lone user, then I would call it premature optimization.
402.
by johnrob 13y ago
Startup advice = limited world experience + over generalization. All arguments regarding startups have holes in them.
403.
by johnrob 13y ago
I doubt they'd do much better if the negative revenue companies all turned into zero revenue companies.
404.
by johnrob 13y ago
Related question: will not making this move affect a firm's ability to get good deals? I don't know the answer but it's what the firms should ask themselves.
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by johnrob 13y ago
Because, to investors, any revenue is better than no revenue. The latter implies the worst possible scenario: making something nobody wants.
406.
by johnrob 13y ago
What matters in this case is having a mission, not the specifics of what the mission is. That's what makes vacations tough - the trip can cause the same frustration that a speed bump does for drivers.
407.
by johnrob 13y ago
That was a valuable story to read. While there is plenty written about establishing product market fit before chasing the press, it's definitely worth wresting the "launch" out of our playbook. There are quite a few misguided habits subtl
408.
by johnrob 13y ago
There is evidence that stand-up meetings are indeed a social construct: the meetings are functionally useless and the content is redundant (or at least should be redundant - nobody waits until the next morning to address a blocking issue).
409.
by johnrob 13y ago
Wow, this sounds like much less cruft compared to iOS or Android development.
410.
by johnrob 13y ago
On that note, I'll throw out an idea - maybe the valuation of company stock is not accurate enough. If it were, the problem would be much easier: big co salary = startup salary + #shares * (stock price - option strike price). EDIT: diving
411.
by johnrob 13y ago
No solution was offered here. This generic advice could be applied to anything: "in order to solve XYZ, ask some of your peers and perhaps try some products whose stated purpose is to solve XYZ".
412.
by johnrob 13y ago
Maybe the title should be "You don't want to be Steve Jobs" instead of "You are not Steve Jobs".
413.
by johnrob 13y ago
I'm an advocate of even splits. IMO the logic behind having a dominant founder derives from classic corporate management where you have a boss and a team. I don't see that as a good baseline for a team of founders.
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by johnrob 13y ago
The obvious counter is all the other hurdles that penalize a single founder. That said, I think being a single founder is a little underrated these days. Especially if you make an effort to address the known weak points of being one.
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by johnrob 14y ago
Ok, here's one idea - unfortunately it's an altered product: I'd like to pick up a driver, take him to the terminal with me (where I get out), then have him drive my car to a flightcar parking lot. Instead of renting out my car, I'd rather
416.
by johnrob 14y ago
A lot of good points have been mentioned here regarding the downsides of renting out your car. I'll add a more generic one: "can of worms" resistance. In other words, I'd probably shy away from using this service because there's a small c
417.
by johnrob 14y ago
Traffic is something to consider - that might be one reason a customer would want to limit taxis.
418.
by johnrob 14y ago
That's correct - a passenger could use this service to send a timely reminder to their ride. This is doubly useful since, even if a passenger were to track the flight and determine the correct departure time (which the app does automatical
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by johnrob 14y ago
If this can really put high school students on track for 6 figure salaries, then we're going to see a lot less college students in the future. This could truly be a game changer.
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by johnrob 14y ago
Feature idea: let the passenger schedule a text message to the pickup person when it's time to leave. The same logic that powers the app could also send an appropriately timed message.

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