tvladeck

12 ms·

61.
New York City in Timespace(blog.gradientmetrics.com)
2 points by tvladeck 9y ago|1 comments
62.
by tvladeck 9y ago
> 1) Random forests are by nature supervised learners You can run unsupervised random forests. The way this procedure works is to first make a "copy" of the original dataset (the reason for the quotes will be evident in a secon
63.
Segmenting customers using non-negative matrix factorization(blog.gradientmetrics.com)
2 points by tvladeck 9y ago|0 comments
64.
by tvladeck 10y ago
Not a very meaningful metric. Ford is still 3x Tesla in terms of Enterprise Value, which accounts for how much of the cap table is debt.
65.
by tvladeck 10y ago
yes this is commonly done in PE but for whatever reason it's not done in VC. usually they say it's b/c of compensation via options but i don't actually believe there is a principled reason behind it.
66.
by tvladeck 10y ago
The reason is that many of their LPs (e.g. pension funds) are non profits, and they can't have taxable income flow up to them or their Unrelated Business Taxable Income will threaten their nonprofit status. VCs are flow-thru entities s
67.
by tvladeck 10y ago
This is not true. It's very easy to convert from LLC to C corp but not vice versa. As a general rule it's easy to go from flow-thru entities to tax paying entities but not vice versa. This asymmetry of irreversibility, combined wi
68.
Unpacking the election results using bayesian regression(tomvladeck.com)
3 points by tvladeck 10y ago|0 comments
69.
by tvladeck 10y ago
Both of the points you brought up are not specific to c corps. Any company will list salaries as an expense on the P&L, and an LLC also provides a layer of protection between "business and business owner(s)". The first two Ls
70.
by tvladeck 10y ago
If you're just starting out, the worst decision you can make is to incorporate as a C-corp. An LLC makes vastly more sense, even for the tiny proportion of companies that want VC funding (and specifically institutional funding - fundin
71.
by tvladeck 10y ago
This is false (or at least a poor interpretation of the data). Ceasefires make it more likely that future ceasefires will succeed. Steven Pinker and others have looked into this extensively. Here is a write-up of the opposing take. http:&#
72.
by tvladeck 10y ago
The article mentioned they only had a dataset of 2,186 slides. Isn't this a _tiny_ dataset to do any learning on images? They also mentioned they blew up the predictors to over 10,000 features. This sounds like a recipe for overfitting
73.
by tvladeck 10y ago
I was more speaking to the origin of the term (as in, a society of people pooling their money to build buildings); not how it's used today. You may very well be correct and that would make sense.
74.
by tvladeck 10y ago
You're confusing different definitions of the "money". In theory, they retain enough _assets_ to pay off their creditors, but not enough _cash_. In the event of a bank run they'd have to be handing over their stake in mo
75.
by tvladeck 10y ago
This seems to me very analogous to preventing a run on banks. Traditionally retail banks would invest their depositors' savings in real estate by financing mortgages. Indeed - in England many banks are still called "building socie
76.
by tvladeck 10y ago
I'm very good friends with one of the authors (Cameron Blevins) and some context here is helpful: He is an expert at applying computational tools to historical records. For example, his thesis at Stanford is about using information abo
77.
by tvladeck 10y ago
> And you often do prepay for AWS since it saves you money over the course of a few years. I don't think this would show up as an expense. It would just shift assets from cash to prepaid expenses, and not show up on the P&L - un
78.
by tvladeck 11y ago
Nouns get verbed all the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(word_formation)
79.
by tvladeck 11y ago
Right - see my first comment. And you can always go from LLC to C if you're taking VC investment. And you should be able to stay as an LLC if VCs would learn to use blocker corps like PE shops do. VCs don't do that but not for any
80.
by tvladeck 11y ago
> You must be a C Corp to accept investment. This is not true. You can sell membership interest in an LLC the same way you can sell stock in a C corp. And in my experience it's fairly simple to go LLC to C. I didn't get confuse
81.
by tvladeck 11y ago
This is cool, but they should not offer a C corp as the default choice. An LLC should be the default for the vast majority of entrepreneurs. The only reason VC-funded companies are C corps is becaused VC LPs don't want to be hit with
82.
by tvladeck 11y ago
Right, but we have to assume that Good could not have gotten a better price from Blackberry. The alternative was even worse from the common shareholders - a price of $0 for their shares. They also could not have changed the waterfall. So I&
83.
by tvladeck 11y ago
You're making the point that if there were a liquidity event they'd be forced to exercise. I made the point that they didn't have to exercise when they did, and if they had waited they wouldn't have taken on any risk abo
84.
by tvladeck 11y ago
This would be relevant only if the better opportunity was contemporaneous with the one Good accepted. As you mentioned, that opportunity was six months' gone.
85.
by tvladeck 11y ago
> The common stock holders' interests were poorly represented in the price negotiation. You're mistaken here. Your point rests on there being a possibility that Blackberry paid the same amount for the company (the valuation), b
86.
by tvladeck 11y ago
Fair point. I did make that assumption.
87.
by tvladeck 11y ago
The valuation of the company and the waterfall of the payment are two separate things. Presumably this was the highest valuation they could have gotten (no reason not to believe it given that it was a distressed sale). And the tax on the co
88.
by tvladeck 11y ago
Regarding the fact that the employees had to pay tax on what turned out to be worthless shares: They could have avoided this by waiting to exercise their options on the eve of the liquidity event. In this case there would have been no risk.
89.
by tvladeck 11y ago
But using it for non-whole multiples of a year probably is. Also, it both obfuscates the price and creates the impression that you can trial the product without being locked in. If it didn't confuse people (even if only unconsciously),
90.
by tvladeck 11y ago
I know this is now "industry standard" but I hate the practice of quoting a yearly price as if it were a monthly price. There is a meaningful difference between $120/year (where you pay once, upfront, for the full year) and $

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