paul

23 ms·

181.
by paul 12y ago
I love this idea. If someone figures out how to successfully run a company like this, it'll be huge, as it will attract a lot of top talent who would prefer these hours. In my experience, the biggest obstacle is the amount of time dedi
182.
by paul 12y ago
If the actual business is still centralized, what prevents the operators from simply ignoring the crypto-shareholders and keeping all profits and assets for themselves?
183.
by paul 12y ago
I agree that it needs to be clearly communicated (and perhaps they did not do that in this case), but there's no reason why equity must be liquid. I certainly have no expectations of immediate liquidity in my startup investments. Votin
184.
by paul 12y ago
Pre-ipo transfer restrictions are pretty normal. It never even occurred to me to try selling Google pre-ipo. It wasn't really a thing before secondmarket came along, and arguably trading on those markets is taking a company public with
185.
by paul 12y ago
That is totally false -- Google did not rip off Charlie. You're confused by the idiots at zynga who thought that a chef making money was a bad thing.
186.
by paul 12y ago
If only we could each contribute 4 minutes of our time towards building the Great Pyramids of Giza.
187.
by paul 12y ago
I feel like both the left and the right are trying to take us back to some idealized version of the 1950's. I want a political movement based on creating a new and better future, not hanging on to shreds of the past. We now have the te
188.
by paul 12y ago
Short answer: you can't (at least not immediately). Longer answer is that a good entrepreneur executes and exposes themselves to the harsh feedback of the market, while a delusional dreamer talks a lot and avoids contact with reality.
189.
by paul 12y ago
If you have a car and know the way to the nearest Safeway, then you have those first steps covered :)
190.
by paul 12y ago
It's easy to think of reasons why something won't work. The best entrepreneurs just do it anyway. I'm still impressed that Instacart is taking on Google, Amazon and others, and succeeding!
191.
by paul 12y ago
His comment on the TC article started by saying, "But, sorry, I am not going to read Techcrunch article about it.", so I replied in similar form. It's a meta commentary :)
192.
by paul 12y ago
I think a lot of it comes down to how you define "luck". Finding the right investor or employee involves a lot of luck, as does getting helped or hurt by a Google algorithm change. Google itself was lucky that it raised a lot of m
193.
by paul 12y ago
I think you could make a similar argument for YouTube, but I personally find all of these services to be tremendously valuable and I'm glad that they are working to evolve the law. Laws are written and interpreted within the context of
194.
by paul 12y ago
I didn't read your comment, but I can tell you you're wrong :)
195.
by paul 12y ago
I've ordered taxies by phone, and I've used Uber, and I can tell you that I have no doubt as to which is the future. As for network effects, is it really that hard to see that a larger network of vehicles will have inherent advant
196.
by paul 12y ago
Things do get better. Being gay used to be a major crime (and thus had to be hidden). Now gay marriage is becoming legal in much of the western world. I'm optimistic that we can continue building a more open and tolerant society.
197.
by paul 12y ago
I tell the founders in every batch that we invest in people, so if they are not taking care of their health, they are harming our investment :) Successful companies take many years to build. If founders burn out after a few years, they will
198.
by paul 12y ago
"Imagine being subject of public hate because you expressed a unpopular view when you were young." Rather than being able/forced to hide all of my unpopular opinions, I would prefer to live in a society that didn't hate
199.
by paul 12y ago
I agree with that. There's too much macho, "look at me work 24/7 and never sleep" nonsense in the startup world, and it's bad for everyone.
200.
by paul 12y ago
It's disappointing to see this as the top comment, as it fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents the point of Sam's post. Running a startup is a very difficult and stressful activity, especially when things are not going we
201.
by paul 12y ago
It's amusing to see how much skepticism Uber seems to generate. Apparently it's super-hard to understand how a tech company could possibly do something better than the decades old taxi industry, and that the resulting business cou
202.
by paul 12y ago
That's why I always tell them to get an LOI. Often people will say, "that sounds great, let us know when it's ready", and the founder will mistakenly think that's a sale. Even asking someone to sign a non-binding LO
203.
by paul 12y ago
Exposing yourself to the direct, harsh feedback of the market is key. I've noticed that bad founders will do just about anything to avoid this. Instead of selling, which is hard, they spend their time going to conferences and meetups,
204.
by paul 12y ago
It's not important know, and certainly not important enough to justify discarding half of our profits. It's also very difficult to get anything statistically significant out of the data when there are so few data points (there&#x2
205.
by paul 12y ago
Obviously we aren't going to intentionally reject good companies in order to perform some kind of study, but we do our best to keep track the ones we reject that later become successful. There are a couple of them, but so far they are
206.
by paul 12y ago
Exactly. There are other problems with the data as well, but the big problem is that he's talking about averages in an industry defined by outliers. You should start a startup if you think you have it in you to revolutionize an industr
207.
by paul 12y ago
It seems rather dishonest to imply that Google is giving (or selling) your data to marketing companies.
208.
by paul 12y ago
So exciting! This is actually a surprisingly difficult business because of the need to be so fast and efficient, and there was a lot of skepticism early on as to whether there was actually a viable business in this space. The DoorDash team
209.
by paul 12y ago
If Google killed someone, the people who ordered and executed the operation would likely go to jail. The government gets away with it because they are effectively above the law, despite the veneer of accountability.
210.
by paul 12y ago
The government also kills people with drone strikes, but that doesn't mean Google could get away with that. Where is this public domain that you trust so much and why are they more honest that Google?

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