johnrob

50 ms·

481.
by johnrob 14y ago
As part of the joint venture, Starbucks will invest $25 million in Square and hold an equity stake. Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman and CEO, will join Square's board of directors. With ~7000 stores, Starbucks can be a Walmart of sorts
482.
by johnrob 14y ago
Removing accredation requirements via a holding company - after a decade of bar talk in the valley, glad to see someone finally acted on this one.
483.
by johnrob 14y ago
You actually don't. One huge aspect of this is that they remove that requirement via proxying.
484.
by johnrob 14y ago
The paragraph titled 'Identifying a problem vs fabricating one' is a rewording of the most important lesson: make something people want. The problem is, we all know this one and have read hundreds of version of it. Experience is the valuab
485.
by johnrob 14y ago
If it helps at all, I'm pretty sure there was a period around 3:30 when http was working but https was not.
486.
by johnrob 14y ago
We live in an era when most companies are competing neck to neck on technology. This is a key insight. Design isn't any more or less "important" today - it has simply become a more critical place of battle. If two products are even in t
487.
by johnrob 14y ago
While this post is very informative, it has the potential to be quite dangerous. This type of marketing is like gasoline - it can take a small fire and make it huge. You almost want to conclude that 99% of the fire was due to the gasoline
488.
by johnrob 14y ago
Now that we've got the technical part nailed, we just need a five minute way to get 30 million users. I know a lot of people who would pay for that service...
489.
by johnrob 14y ago
To make matters worse, social media ad inventory is rapidly moving to phones, where advertising is even more challenging.
490.
by johnrob 14y ago
Investors are gamblers, and gamblers look for good odds. Until we can prove that the odds of success in the Bay Area are not better than other places, we'll have to often deal with required local operation. Lots of folks who aren't already
491.
by johnrob 14y ago
C programming interview questions are effective at detecting good generalist skills. I'm consistently surprised at how many people struggle with parsing an int from a string in C. Not that someone would ever do this on the job, but these
492.
by johnrob 14y ago
This site originally became popular because it felt like the opposite of what you describe (ironic as it now seems).
493.
by johnrob 14y ago
Number of startups is way up, number of financial events is up, number of links on the home page is still 30 ;)
494.
by johnrob 14y ago
I've noticed this trend as well. It's hard to miss for anyone who's lurked here longer than two years. That said, I think I know what the culprit is: money. Check out the headlines on the front page. How many titles contain a '$'? Yeste
495.
by johnrob 14y ago
Location based services could be big. Asking "what's nearby meeting criteria A,B,C" requires a non traditional backend.
496.
Hail A Fellow Human, Not A Taxi With SideCar(techcrunch.com)
3 points by johnrob 14y ago|0 comments
497.
by johnrob 14y ago
While most exits are indeed via acquisition, very few startups actually exit.
498.
by johnrob 14y ago
100 million is pretty high for a talent acquisition. How big is the team?
499.
by johnrob 14y ago
I can't see any point in signing the params - an attacker only cares about the CC info, not some hash value. The only use for a secret key would be to encrypt all the params. But SSL already does that...
500.
by johnrob 14y ago
Find and hire a baby sitter. Use the newly created free time for your projects. If you can't afford a regular baby sitter, then your project is figuring out how to get the money for it.
501.
by johnrob 14y ago
While I'm not going to say that facebook is worth 100 billion (or even the 66 billion it's at right now), it's easy to forget one fact: facebook is operating in almost every part of the globe. The companies that are referenced in the featu
502.
by johnrob 14y ago
A quick way of summarizing your point: the invisible hand is working properly. It's telling us that 1 social investment today plus 5 science investments tomorrow is better than 1 science investment today.
503.
by johnrob 14y ago
There has to be a better term than Ponzi Scheme. The point being made is that (in theory) a bunch of customers will buy ads on facebook, see poor returns, and not renew their ads. In the early days, this pattern will look like impressive
504.
by johnrob 14y ago
Interestingly, most bubbles end in a scenario where the decline of a popular asset causes a domino effect through out the system. Silicon valley might by in a 'facebook bubble' - we anchor all of our prices on facebook, and then hope like
505.
by johnrob 14y ago
I feel for you re the advice. Simple ideas are subject to the "bike shed" phenomenon. Since people are able to understand your product, they assume they know what you should do next.
506.
by johnrob 14y ago
Facebook is an awesome company. Instagram is awesome too. But when someone buys a 13 person company with no revenue for a billion dollars, it means that some variable in some equation got corrupted. Most likely that variable was the 100B
507.
by johnrob 14y ago
Great idea. Not only does this make for good audio content while I work, it's a godsend for when I'm driving. Thank you.
508.
by johnrob 14y ago
I once watched an ape-man try to use modern tools. He didn't get anything done, because he spent all his time trying to figure out how to use them. Simple people need simple tools. We thus can't complain about the existence of such tools
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by johnrob 14y ago
> Why, PayPal? To prevent fraud.
510.
by johnrob 15y ago
I've come to realize that the distinction between enterprise and consumer is trivial. There is one basic rule for all businsses: solve a problem that is important to someone. Wanting your phone's pictures to look better turns out to be a

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