ryanlchan

9 ms·

31.
by ryanlchan 14y ago
There's a great point here - the VCs are just like any good start up, and are investing only in things that help make them more successful. The difference here is that the VCs are likely satisfied focusing on qualifying inbound leads, where
32.
by ryanlchan 14y ago
Allow a short vignette from a former academic and now management consultant. We spent six months at a major pharmaceuticals client examining their reimbursement data. Poring over many millions of rows of transaction data and thousands of pa
33.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
It's part of an increasing awareness and importance of habits in a business context. The surge in popularity for game mechanics was largely directed at creating habits for consumers, creating an entertaining and engaging use case where they
34.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Tangible things are not the only way to add value to a start up. Popular start up methodologies, and I speak specifically of Lean Start Up and Customer Development, all have a strong focus on making sure you're building a minimum viable bus
35.
Zynga launches Zynga.com as it expands beyond Facebook in a big way(venturebeat.com)
2 points by ryanlchan 15y ago|0 comments
36.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Instead of asking PG for ideas he'd like to fund, why don't we get back to focusing on solving a real problem with a great team in a growing market? What kind of unfair advantage can you get working off someone else's idea?
37.
The problem with hackathons(ryanlchan.com)
3 points by ryanlchan 15y ago|0 comments
38.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Read up on the Vigenere cipher on Wikipedia. If you still aren't getting it, reconsider which direction you are shifting the cipher text in accordance with the key. Good luck! (Or do some social engineering and figure out which db company h
39.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Great (and extremely thorough) summary of Great By Choice - a book I think everyone building sustainable businesses should read. While a lot of the points Collins makes will be familiar to those familiar with the Lean Startup, GBC provides
40.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Finance (hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity) jobs can have bonuses that are several multiples of the base pay, especially at the higher levels.
41.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
The recruiting funnel isn't supposed to be perfect. In fact, most of these 'elite firms' know that their recruiting funnels bring in, essentially, statistical noise. And that's just fine. Your chances for being hired at an elite firm are ro
42.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
If you read the article, it doesn't actually ever mention how creativity benefits from having tight time constraints (the drill sergeant metaphor). The closest I saw was a theory that Richards' agency didn't go bankrupt when Hyundai ended t
43.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Do you rent your house, or did you buy it? Cloud is renting servers: low cap-ex but high op-ex, minimal risk exposure, highly nimble. Dedicated hardware is buying servers: high cap-ex but low op-ex , more risk, and more consistent. There's
44.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
The way the question is phrased makes it sound like you assume that being 'hard' is required to be a transformative CEO. I don't think this is true. A great CEO has many tools in his repertoire to motivate and influence people; cut-throat r
45.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Key insight here is right at the middle: "People will not adopt a technical solution that serves to replace a manual task, if that solution is less efficient than the manual task it replaces. How could we think that QR codes for marketing w
46.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
I think calling it a "new" hiring strategy is deceptive - the more innovative companies in the valley have been hiring based on ability instead of status or education for quite a while.
47.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Groupon sells marketing. The daily deals sites, and everything on them, is finely honed marketing. It's a beautiful psychological play. The % off, the timer, the social pressure - an automated version of the used-car salesman pitch. It does
48.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Strategy consultants are extremely highly paid, extremely specialized temp workers. We only create as much value as the client asks us to get. It's a time-money play. We do the work that creating or scaling a corporate strategy group would
49.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
This is a really important step to remember. The 'decreasing discount' method is only really effective when you not only decrease the discount but increase the concreteness. The steps should be from oral agreement -> non-binding LOI -&#
50.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Looks similar to RescueTime ( http://www.rescuetime.com/ ). What's the differentiation strategy?
51.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Cal Newport is a champion of a very different viewpoint: following your passions doesn't necessarily make you happy [1]. His theory is that you can't just drop everything and start over - you have to leverage the assets you've built up over
52.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
It's not about respect. It's about taste. Ira Glass was once asked about how he became a great radio host [1]. His response was that he continued to work on his craft even when he knew it was terrible. Knowing your work is terrible is cruci
53.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
I read once that the surest way to identify an engineer driven company was to look for user elements that work like data structures. Between the @'s, the #'s, and the other various syntactical quirks, Twitter sure seems to fit that descript
54.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
I wonder what business model the valuation is based off? They could make some pretty good ad revenue based on their page view numbers, but it seems like a waste to have these exquisitely high engagement websites make most of their revenue o
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by ryanlchan 15y ago
Sometimes it takes a bold move in order to convince your customers about change. See: news feed, box wine, and nearly every apple product. In fact, I've never figured out why first class has to board first. When I rode on Cathay Pacific on
56.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
All great reasons, but there's one I would add as an MBA: Learning to program makes you a better business person. How? Made to Stick has a great story about a math teacher who struggled to convince his students of math's importance in life.
57.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Is this getting blown a bit out of proportion? The correlation with birth order is 3 points on an IQ test - for reference, texting has been shown to drop your IQ by as much as 10 points [1]. Much like a MBTI, this is probably useful in the
58.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Your intro clip mentions that the intelligent routing will send foreign payments to foreign merchant accounts - I take it that that part is more of a 'coming soon' portion?
59.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
For all the talk about SF being a great start-up culture, what's true everywhere is still true here: No one wants a roommate who can't make rent. Damn near every place I went to with a photocopy of my job offer did I get offered a spot. Try
60.
by ryanlchan 15y ago
Bit of a chicken and egg question, isn't it? IP trolls only really come after you once you have enough success to be worth suing. The value that IV gets is from a license or a settlement, both of which require money. And to have money, you

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