waxman

24 ms·

91.
by waxman 16y ago
Not really. For VC's perhaps that is the case, but for angels: $1 MM raised at a $3 MM pre, 2.5 years of work, and a (let's say) $12 MM median sale price? I think everyone is decently happy. This model fits with the ever-shrinking capital r
92.
by waxman 16y ago
The massive cash reserves of Google, Apple, and Microsoft are good news for startups.
93.
by waxman 16y ago
I agree that Facebook's attitude towards privacy and market position can be bad for users, but I don't think Diaspora will necessarily be better for users just because it != Facebook.
94.
by waxman 16y ago
Facebook has far better security, far better privacy controls, and absurdly better UI/UX, and after a few releases I have lost my faith in the Diaspora core team to ever close the gap on any of these areas. Diaspora was a nice thought exper
95.
by waxman 16y ago
Facebook's recent talent acquisitions sort of make sense to me from Facebook's standpoint (good, entrepreneurial talent is hard to find), but I wonder how the founders, employees, users, and investors feel about these relatively odd buyouts
96.
by waxman 16y ago
What are your thoughts on non-technical founders (or early employees) at tech start-ups (like GitHub)? Are there any non-technical people at GH? Would you consider hiring any? Why or why not? (Full disclosure: I'm an engineer just coming of
97.
by waxman 16y ago
I like not writing my ideas down, because it acts as a simple filter. If an idea is actually compelling, then it will stay with me even if I don't write it down (and I'll continue to think about it, expand upon it, tinker with it, etc.).
98.
by waxman 16y ago
Ha. Well, even though this mimics real social groups much more closely than social networking v1.0, I don't think the issue had become readily apparent until recently (as evidenced by the number of products that have appeared in the past 3-
99.
by waxman 16y ago
was just talking about this on HN the other day: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1691492 it's clear that contextual sharing is the feature of social networking, but I underestimated facebook's ability to implement such a drastic featu
100.
Facebook Adds Contextual Sharing via New groups feature (facebook.com)
1 points by waxman 16y ago|3 comments
101.
by waxman 16y ago
I also haven't had any problems (though only after 3 months). I am both aware and a little nervous about the issue, though, so I've run a few benchmarks, and so far, so good. I'll be sure to tell HN if this changes.
102.
by waxman 16y ago
Ask HN: Do you think bit.ly should be worried? Do you think they could feasibly switch to a backup url (like j.mp) without totally killing their service?
103.
by waxman 16y ago
Very interesting hack. For me, media files were a killer too, so I simply put my media collection on an external HDD, "cached" my favorite 20GB or so of content on my SSD (the stuff I put on my iPhone, essentially), and started relying more
104.
by waxman 16y ago
I have a SSD on my Macbook Pro. Totally worth it. Definitely snappier in booting up, starting up apps, and any disk i/o-intensive operations. It's certainly noticeable. Also, you don't need to sweat the higher price per byte, because more a
105.
by waxman 16y ago
Actually, to be blunt, if it's not sales it might as well be a million miles away. Startups need people who build, who create, who do. Things like "strategy", setting up deals, introductions, "almost sales", etc. are, by themselves, worth
106.
by waxman 16y ago
The site just went down again, awkwardly enough, only moments after they published their post-mortem on yesterday's outage. Clearly, as their blog post indicates, they were unable to trace the root problem. To me, the worst feeling in the w
107.
Ask HN: What's the cheapest and quickest way to incorporate a company?
1 points by waxman 16y ago|2 comments
108.
by waxman 16y ago
Great post! Another benefit, I find, of micro opportunities is that they provide momentum or "small wins", which can help to alleviate the frustration that often sets in when building critical path features, which almost always take longer
109.
by waxman 16y ago
I didn't see the point to begin with. Social Networks are and have always been interface challenges, not technical ones (at least until you get to massive scale). The more logical way to address privacy concerns would be through interface (
110.
by waxman 16y ago
At a start-up there are at most only two roles: Can you build it? Or can you sell it? In tech start-ups, building it means coding, and that might be only role early on. "Selling it" is broader than pure sales (E.g. Selling it to investors,
111.
by waxman 16y ago
I owned and briefly used a very similar German-made device called the Axbo: http://www.axbo.com/axbo/CMS/CMS.aspx?Language=E In my experience, it actually didn't work at all. I suspect one main problem was that you could only set the alar
112.
by waxman 16y ago
Yeah, that is what I meant. At it's core the plot is about a pretty specific experience (the challenges of founding a tech startup as a young, inexperienced hacker), but the emotions and the drama are universal, which is why I think the mov
113.
by waxman 16y ago
Lots of subcultures have their own movies. I'm just glad that ours is so damn awesome! Also: I think the screenplay, the directing, and the score (Trent Reznor!) will be nominated for Oscars.
114.
by waxman 16y ago
Fair points. Having raised money from angels before, here are some of my thoughts: 1. Advice: This is clearly extremely valuable, even for experienced entrepreneurs. That's probably why a company like Chartbeat (serious revenue, and part of
115.
by waxman 16y ago
I'm not losing sleep over it (too busy hacking), but it's easy for We Pay to say they don't care: they've already raised 3 rounds http://www.crunchbase.com/company/wepay . The essay was edited by PG, himself. Clearly the angels have trea
116.
by waxman 16y ago
Thanks for writing this detailed postmortem! The entire story, though, can really be distilled into one idea: expectation settings. You always want to under-promise and over-deliver, but it sounds like, in multiple domains, the Newstilt tea
117.
by waxman 16y ago
I feel you. I think the "drinking photos" example is illustrative because it's extreme, but I think the real, widespread pain points --- I know the ones I have, at least --- are more along the lines you mentioned. Sure, you can put up certa
118.
by waxman 16y ago
I agree with you that people don't want to micromanage (the means) but I do think people want to segment their social sharing (the ends). I think the trick will be to figure out an interface where you can share this way, without it feeling
119.
by waxman 16y ago
Contextual Sharing (and the new social network that figures it out) will kill Facebook. I'm convinced that contextual sharing is the next evolution of social networks, and I don't think FB is in a position to pivot towards it. Contextual
120.
Ask HN: Domain Hosting that 1) is cheap and 2) offers a full-featured API
2 points by waxman 16y ago|3 comments

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