sivers

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391.
by sivers 17y ago
Most of the talk is very directly from the book "The Art of Profitability" by Adrian Slywotzky. Notes here: http://sivers.org/book/ArtOfProfitability Very highly recommended reading.
392.
by sivers 17y ago
You're talking about punishing wrong-doers. Of course! But the real point is not punishing the rest. At CD Baby, we had thieves with stolen credit cards every single day. We'd usually catch them through a quick real-human scanning process w
393.
by sivers 17y ago
Interesting! Thanks for finding and posting that. I'd never seen that before. It must have been something I heard years ago and it's been sitting in my head so long I thought it was mine. :-)
394.
by sivers 17y ago
Good points. The enthusiasm is coming from musicians who like anything that might sell more of their music. (Most of the readers of my blog are musicians.)
395.
MeetInnovators interview: How Derek Sivers Sold CD Baby (as sole owner) for $22M(meetinnovators.com)
38 points by sivers 17y ago|8 comments
396.
by sivers 17y ago
I agree it's mostly rubbish now. I wrote that article in 2001, when “The Wisdom of Crowds” was not really in effect online yet. Still, in many places in the music industry, an artist is taken much more seriously when they are represented b
397.
by sivers 17y ago
Thanks pvg. You said it much better than I did. :-)
398.
by sivers 17y ago
No no no. That apsx crap running the existing site is absolutely not mine. I sold the company in 2008 to Disc Makers, a company whose internal systems are all Windows. After leaving the site as it was (FreeBSD + PHP + MySQL + Ruby) for a ye
399.
by sivers 17y ago
Ouch. My jaw dropped when I saw my old article on the front page of HN. To me, posting this article in 2007 taught me two lessons: #1: The goal of good writing is not to be understood, but rather to not be misunderstood. Judging by the hund
400.
by sivers 17y ago
He asks, "who are the people who care about this information?" - but forgot that CUSTOMERS often care, too! I never considered publishing financials until the dot-com-crash when so many companies were going under, we started getting daily e
401.
by sivers 17y ago
Hell yeah: Stumbling on Happiness is one of my favorite books I've ever read in my life. It profoundly changed the way I look at the world, and how I make decisions about what to do. I really like your essay about it! As you say: it "oug
402.
by sivers 17y ago
(The links here bring you to my notes from each book, and the ISBN number for each so you can find it easily at your favorite library/store/whatever.) How We Decide - by Jonah Lehrer: Brilliant book with one clear message: our emotional bra
403.
by sivers 17y ago
I agree! I did all this over a year ago, and didn't plan on telling anyone. I knew it would sound like smug bragging. But in a few entrepreneur-focused interviews since then, (VentureVoice, etc) - the interviewers seemed particularly inter
404.
by sivers 17y ago
Eh. I get taxed fully for everything that gets paid to me. (That annual 5%.) That doesn't avoid taxes at all. Only what will never touch my hands (direct from purchase-event to charity) avoids taxes. So this was just a way of making sure a
405.
by sivers 17y ago
Intentionally lost my ability to do something stupid with more than 5% the principal while I'm alive. :-)
406.
by sivers 17y ago
Exactly. I'm required to pay out 5% per year to myself, but then I don't have to spend the whole 5%. I can reinvest it or whatever.
407.
by sivers 17y ago
Unwise to passively assume. It's my responsibility to make sure it grows by at least 5% or that defeats the whole purpose! :-) http://sivers.org/book/SmartestInvestmentBook http://sivers.org/book/InvestorsManifesto http://sivers.org/
408.
Why I gave away my company to charity(sivers.org)
328 points by sivers 17y ago|83 comments
409.
by sivers 17y ago
"Most Japanese streets do not have names" from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system
410.
by sivers 17y ago
Thanks! Very conscious decision made 6 months ago, when I realized that writing these little articles was doing more for me than learning Haskell, going to conferences, or just about anything else. I've met more brilliant people because of
411.
by sivers 17y ago
I totally agree. Like Einstein's "simple as possible, but not simpler" - it's a challenge to present an idea so succinctly that people actually read it, but not too succinctly to where it's not convincing. Though maybe the counter-argument
412.
by sivers 17y ago
... and of course the comments at Hacker News are always the smartest. I love you guys. :-)
413.
Linux Compose Key(sivers.org)
149 points by sivers 17y ago|26 comments
414.
by sivers 17y ago
Agreed. The "trust" part of "trust but verify" is important, too. For me, it was learning to build ways where I could invisibly monitor someone's progress without bothering them. Setting up Subversion/Git to alert me at commits. Having t
415.
by sivers 17y ago
You could say it's like "Trust Allah, but tie your camel". http://www.google.com/search?q=trust+allah+but+tie+your+came... But really it means when you delegate, do it thoroughly. Don't just say it once and assume it's done. Confirm tha
416.
Hardest delegating lesson to learn: Trust but verify.(sivers.org)
55 points by sivers 17y ago|25 comments
417.
by sivers 17y ago
Like choosing Debian over Red Hat, or Solaris over Linux, some people just prefer the way it does things. You can geek out on millisecond benchmark performance comparisons with FreeBSD vs certain Linux kernels, but really it comes down to p
418.
Let pedestrians define the walkways(sivers.org)
60 points by sivers 17y ago|24 comments
419.
by sivers 17y ago
So you're saying that reading is just entertainment, never learning? Or are you just deciding in advance that all books about business are just worthless fluff? Not sure what bad book you might have picked up in the past, but it seems your
420.
by sivers 17y ago
Good point. Too much of either is dangerous! Too much confidence, and you think your shit doesn't stink. Too much humility and you think you're shit. :-)

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