paul

12 ms·

91.
by paul 12y ago
Yeah, I'm not convinced that's a good idea, but I think they are at least putting some extra limits in place so that they won't gamble their whole 401k away.
92.
by paul 12y ago
On the other hand, the .com bubble was driven in large part by the ability of VCs to flip junk onto naive retail investors. The fact that venture investors now need to wait many years for an exit (and the startups can really only access ins
93.
by paul 12y ago
That rec.photos thread is great. I love reading old predictions. For some reason many of them got hung up on the idea that there would be crazy compression schemes that eliminate all the creative parts of photos. > O.K. Chemical films c
94.
by paul 12y ago
My brother-in-law quit a traditional job to drive for Uber, so he must think it's better. (also, he told me that for the first time, he's excited to work in the morning) It's a pretty competitive market -- if a service doesn&
95.
by paul 12y ago
I've talked to the drivers for a lot of different services, and they seem to enjoy the work. In particular, these on-demand services offer a lot more flexibility than traditional jobs where you are expected to show up every day and sit
96.
by paul 12y ago
Time will tell :)
97.
by paul 12y ago
In that case you should assume that FedEx will put them all out of business. There's a lot more going on than "delivery".
98.
by paul 12y ago
Many things look similar from a 1000 miles away. At the actual business level, Uber and DoorDash are different in almost every way. This is one advantage that investors close to these companies have, and one reason why it can be so hard to
99.
by paul 12y ago
And which of these products do you have actual experience with? My guess is "none of them".
100.
by paul 12y ago
I was also told by the HN crowd that Facebook is a fad that would never make any money :) The best investments always take a long time. Fortunately we are very patient investors, happy to fund "crazy" things like nuclear fusion an
101.
by paul 12y ago
Care to give a few specific examples? Also, these are companies, not "projects" -- it's important to understand the difference.
102.
by paul 12y ago
No two are the same, but generally a good sign is if they have outlier behavior in their past. For example, if you won a gold medal in the Olympics, there's a good chance that you would at least get an interview -- the level of determi
103.
by paul 12y ago
Please don't let the lack of a cofounder discourage you from applying. It's definitely a huge help to have a good cofounder, but we accept great founders regardless. There's a tendency for people to want to reduce the world t
104.
by paul 12y ago
http://www.livblends.com/ and http://www.soylent.me/ are both YC companies.
105.
by paul 12y ago
This article is delightfully thoughtful. Her other post is also worth reading: https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-time-we-had-a... It makes me wonder though how much nerd culture is driven by forms of autis
106.
by paul 12y ago
I hope not! Many of our best startups are disliked by hn...
107.
by paul 12y ago
I believe there is truth to what you say. It's very difficult to prove of course, but I've definitely noticed that certain founders seem to face a lot more skepticism than others. The great part about this business is that I can m
108.
by paul 12y ago
One of the problems we have in the tech world is that there is a lot of respect for the analytical "left brain" skills (which is great), but a great deal of doubt and skepticism directed towards the more subjective "right bra
109.
by paul 12y ago
I'm talking about the very early days, so there was no stock to tank, the company was largely unknown and not yet "successful".
110.
by paul 12y ago
That definitely makes it harder, especially since norms for what is or isn't honest or ethical are far from universal (e.g. what kind of copying is ok and what kind is stealing). This is another reason why it's beneficial to have
111.
by paul 12y ago
This is a fair question, but like most things with humans, almost impossible to answer in a definitive way. There was once an accidental control group though. Jessica missed about half of the interviews and PG, RTM, and Trevor were left to
112.
by paul 12y ago
Exactly. We're painfully aware of our mistakes.
113.
by paul 12y ago
Culture is one of those factors that is very difficult to quantify, yet incredibly important for success. At companies with great cultures, employees are eager to show up and get things done because they genuinely care about the team and mi
114.
by paul 12y ago
How large is the market for short term housing, and how close is airbnb to saturating it? I didn't say you were astroturfing, but I am curious what motivates you to create an account for the purpose of commenting on this story.
115.
by paul 12y ago
Or an understanding of exponential growth rates. I also notice that you created your account just now, presumably to comment on this post. Who do you work for?
116.
by paul 12y ago
Fascinating that neurons derived from stem cells derived from nuclear transfer exhibit the same dysfunction as his actual brain. It's not obvious when the two twins diverged though. If they have always had different personalities, mayb
117.
by paul 12y ago
There are many other immigrant populations that are not nearly as successful and usually end up in very low-paid positions wherever they land. Also, your explanation doesn't do much to explain why Chinese control 60% of the economy in
118.
by paul 12y ago
OoPs :) I would fix, but the edit link is gone :(
119.
by paul 12y ago
It's difficult to explore this question without being accused of racism, but I'd like to better understand why some cultures are so much more economically successful than others. The Chinese are such a great example of this. Where
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by paul 12y ago
Everyone has the odds stacked against them. Successful founders are by definition outliers. If we didn't accept solo founders, we wouldn't bother having them apply.

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