Show HN: Intriguing Python One-Liner - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/wvlia5/f57885972721aacfc5bca393f4771f32 <comment><USER2> Nothing really interesting. It just following python script encoded in binary mapped to utf-8 characters:

        song=b'<truncated>'

        class PlaysoundException(Exception):
         pass
        def _playsoundWin(sound, block = True):
         from ctypes import c_buffer, windll
         from random import random
         from time   import sleep
         from sys import getfilesystemencoding
         def winCommand(*command):
          buf = c_buffer(255)
          command = ' '.join(command).encode(getfilesystemencoding())
          errorCode = int(windll.winmm.mciSendStringA(command, buf, 254, 0))
          if errorCode:
           errorBuffer = c_buffer(255)
           windll.winmm.mciGetErrorStringA(errorCode, errorBuffer, 254)
           exceptionMessage = (' Error ' + str(errorCode) + ' for command:' + '  ' + command.decode() + ' ' + errorBuffer.value.decode())
           raise PlaysoundException(exceptionMessage)
          return buf.value
         alias = 'playsound_' + str(random())
         winCommand('open "' + sound + '" alias', alias)
         winCommand('set', alias, 'time format milliseconds')
         durationInMS = winCommand('status', alias, 'length')
         winCommand('play', alias, 'from 0 to', durationInMS.decode())
         if block:
          sleep(float(durationInMS) / 1000.0)
        def _playsoundOSX(sound, block = True):
         from AppKit  import NSSound
         from Foundation import NSURL
         from time    import sleep

         if '://' not in sound:
          if not sound.startswith('/'):
           from os import getcwd
           sound = getcwd() + '/' + sound
          sound = 'file://' + sound
         url   = NSURL.URLWithString_(sound)
         nssound = NSSound.alloc().initWithContentsOfURL_byReference_(url, True)
         if not nssound:
          raise IOError('Unable to load sound named: ' + sound)
         nssound.play()

         if block:
          sleep(nssound.duration())
        def _playsoundNix(sound, block=True):
         if not block:
          raise NotImplementedError(
           "block=False cannot be used on this platform yet")
         import os
         try:
          from urllib.request import pathname2url
         except ImportError:
          from urllib import pathname2url
         import gi
         gi.require_version('Gst', '1.0')
         from gi.repository import Gst
         Gst.init(None)
         playbin = Gst.ElementFactory.make('playbin', 'playbin')
         if sound.startswith(('http://', 'https://')):
          playbin.props.uri = sound
         else:
          playbin.props.uri = 'file://' + pathname2url(os.path.abspath(sound))
         set_result = playbin.set_state(Gst.State.PLAYING)
         if set_result != Gst.StateChangeReturn.ASYNC:
          raise PlaysoundException(
           "playbin.set_state returned " + repr(set_result))
         bus = playbin.get_bus()
         bus.poll(Gst.MessageType.EOS, Gst.CLOCK_TIME_NONE)
         playbin.set_state(Gst.State.NULL)
        from platform import system
        system = system()
        if system == 'Windows':
         playsound = _playsoundWin
        elif system == 'Darwin':
         playsound = _playsoundOSX
        else:
         playsound = _playsoundNix
        del system

        try:
         import base64, os, threading
         def play():
          try:
           fname='./rickroll018377.mp3'
           with open(fname,'wb') as f: f.write(base64.b64decode(song))
           playsound(fname)
           os.remove(fname)
          except:pass
         threading.Thread(target=play).start()
        except: pass

        a,t,m="ALERT!! : ","You've been RickRolled",'''Never gonna give you up,
        Never gonna let you down,
        Never gonna run around
        and desert you.'''
        try: from tkinter import Tk, messagebox;Tk().withdraw();messagebox.showwarning(a+t,m)
        except:
         try: import Tkinter,tkMessageBox;Tkinter.Tk().withdraw();tkMessageBox.showwarning(a+t,m)
         except: print(m,t)

</comment><comment><USER3> That is very interesting. Would love to know what is going on here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Stay tuned for updates</comment></comment>


Anonymous social networks - <AUTHOR> http://tomasztunguz.com/2012/02/22/anonymous-social-networks/ <comment><USER2> A purely peer-to-peer social network or even something like a photo-sharing website sounds quite tricky. How do I ensure that the node on which the picture I am looking for is available? Traditional peer-to-peer networks solved this problem my making redundant copies of files and hoping atleast one will be available. However that may not be a viable solution for private data like pictures etc.</comment>


Union Square gets 5,000% return on Tumblr - <AUTHOR> http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20130521/TECHNOLOGY/130529969 <comment><USER2> Total garbage. There is not one fact in this privco thing that is close to right. The numbers are good but nowhere close to that good. This is the same firm that predicted Foursquare would be out of business this year which will also prove to be nonsense.

<comment><USER3> The Series A USV invested in was only $775,000 and was at $1/share according to privco and confirmed by docs I've seen. So how much did USV invest? Obviously Tumblr sold for over $200/share, so please do the math and show what's off? Is it a few percent, in which case what does that matter when you've made 5,000%? You should be proud of that! As a VC I'm envious Fred.

But I've found the privco data reliable (but I'm a client), so I respectfully disagree with just throwing out ad-hominem attacks. So they called out your bad bed on Foursquare. (Foursquare was just forced to borrow $41 Million and even you blogged it would be massively dilutive. PrivCo said forusquare will be out of business by year's end absent raising "massively dilutive" funding.

So I respect you, I respect PrivCo from my working with their remarkably accurate data. You shouldn't take it personally, congrats on today, and if there's something we should all know and you DIDN'T do that well, well I guess tell us. If you did even better, tell all of us on HN and even more kudos! Just don't throw out attacks though something's "wrong" when it can be wrong by a penny or by alot and either way you're technically not lying...it's beneath you and USV and us VCs, c'mon you're better than that.)

Again hats off if you did even close to what's been reported on your Tumblr preferreds.

<comment><USER2> I take it personally when people write irresponsible garbage about our portfolio companies. I care about them and their teams a lot. Making money is nice but being a supportive and good investor is a lot better

<comment><USER4> To me, you are the first actual investor that has said something like this. My image of investors in general is tarnished from past dealings. Yet, I want to believe. I want to believe that there are investors out there who simply care about the people, about the goals. Who do not see an investment as merely a financial transaction, but as an addition to their own team. If this is really you, then congratulations. Its good to have people like you in the mess that is tech and SV.

Disclaimer: I don't need, nor am I looking for any kind of funding. These are sincere words.

<comment><USER5> Most of the top tier investors are pretty consistent with this message. Ironically, they're also the ones who get approximately all the returns, probably as much because the best entrepreneurs would prefer to work with them vs. mediocre investors, as much as because of the direct value these investors add.

<comment><USER4> I generally don't design or build with outside investment in mind. Given how I've seen how bad investors make good teams crumble in short periods of time. But, I would actually consider working with people who see value in me and my team, rather than only focus on the bottom line. May you mention other investors who share this same attitude?

<comment><USER5> It's easiest at the seed stage; Y Combinator for sure, and from what I've heard, a lot of people like 500 Startups and some well-known individual angels (but differ by sector).

Probably non-existent at the PE stage.

It also varies within firms -- it's down to the individual partner -- but the overall firm matters too (or else "your" partner gets blocked on doing helpful things).

The best strategy, IMO, is to get an early investor on your side who shares a lot of the same goals (e.g. YC), and then work with the early investor to find later stage investors who are compatible.

(There's one specific firm and one specific partner I really like, but I haven't taken investment from them, so I'm reluctant to name. I get better advice from him/them already than I'd expect from an actual investor, though.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to PrivCo [<http://goo.gl/AW7GD>], here are all the payouts of the 1,100 mn:

$286 mn: USV

$231 mn: Spark Capital

$253 mn: David Karp

$176 mn: Sequoia

$88 mn: Greylock, Insight Ventures, DFJ

$66 mn: Employees (6% of the 1,100 mn)

The math adds up to 71% of Tumblr being owned by VCs. Also Bloomberg reported that David Karp asked for as much stock as Yahoo would give him, because he sees himself working on Tumblr for the next few decades. It also reflects the sentiment that Marco Arment's blogpost yesterday expressed.

 _"This is something I've been building for the last seven years and hope employs me 30 years from now."_

<comment><USER7> The notion of 30 year old websites seems incredibly alien to me, but I suppose there is no real reason why that should never happen.

<comment><USER8> I empathize with that feeling, but would point out that if they were people, Intel would be getting yearly prostate screenings, Accenture would be retired, and Nintendo would be dead.

<comment><USER9> Accenture would be in the witness protection program or jail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Worth noting that "A spokeswoman for Spark Capital disputed the accuracy of the report"

Privco were the same guys who did the LivingSocial hatchet job a while ago which was proven inaccurate. Privco's MO seems to be wild claims to generate interest in their private company data.

It seems even major publications think Privco's claims and data are not very good. Here's a tweet from TechCrunch and AllThings D editors questioning the integrity of the company and their data - <https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/336949975634296833>

For those interested, I have found VCExperts data to be better for this type of shareholding info (not affiliated with the company) and definitely less sensationalist.

Unrelated to Privco, a big congrats to USV - disciplined, open and truly thesis driven - not just chasing what is the hot thing of the moment.

<comment><USER3> PKmehta "I dispute the accuracy of your post." Ha. No specifics. I just dispute the accuracy! lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> USV are such a positive force on the community, it gives me pleasure to see them do well.

This isn't just a 50x return on $5m cash/a good investment/ripe market/competent founder. It's a return on USV's approach to business: being open on their investment strategy and theories, having and voicing an opinion, and appreciating the tech as much as the business metrics.

</comment><comment><USER12> ""For Tumblr's employees, they will go on to start their own companies and create new jobs; David Karp and his co-founders will likely become active angel investors or VCs; and Union Square Ventures will reinvest much of its returns back into the next generation of New York City startups.""

So essentially the things that made the company "magic" will no longer be fully invested in it's future success. And the new hires won't have the lure of making loads of money either since there won't be any future payday to wish for.

<comment><USER13> Isn't this always the case with acquisitions though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> According to USV's blog, there were other investors in the first round: John Borthwick, Fred Seibert, and Jakob Lodwick

No mention of what they got.

<http://www.usv.com/2007/10/tumblr.php>

</comment><comment><USER15> > Tumblr's employees will also do well. The company's first 10 employees will > receive an average of $6.2 million in cash; the first 30 will receive an > average of $3.3 million in cash, and the rest of the 178 employees will each > receive $371,000.

Is it usual to announce these numbers for all employees with acquisitions like this?

<comment><USER12> "the rest of the 178 employees will each receive $371,000."

Interesting to keep in mind for anyone working for a startup as a metric.

You work and have a chance, if the idea hits (to the tune of 1 billion) of making low to mid 6 figures.

$371k is certainly nice but considering the amount of startups that not only don't succeed but don't succeed to the extent that Tumblr did ...

<comment><USER16> That said, being the 41st person at a startup is not exactly risky and I wouldn't expect you to be taking a below market salary in exchange for shares at that point. So market salary + $371k bonus isn't a bad deal.

<comment><USER17> > So market salary + $371k bonus isn't a bad deal.

It isn't necessarily a great deal either though. Somebody making market salary at a startup in one of the most expensive cities in the world may very well be saving less than somebody grossing a considerable amount less in a less expensive area, and after taxes that $371,000 bonus isn't a whole lot more than the base salary for a first year associate attorney at a major law firm in New York.

So while I wouldn't call the outcome here disappointing for anybody involved, I think it does highlight the generally poor economics of equity for startup employees: even when your company hits a grand slam, the windfall is rarely a short cut to the type of wealth that is frequently achieved by starting a successful small business or going into a lucrative profession.

<comment><USER16> That's neither here nor there.

For one thing, software engineering is a lucrative profession. It pays more than most other white collar jobs in New York, except some law, some finance, and some consultants. But it is certainly better than the large swaths of people in marketing, HR, PR, accounting, etc.

The choice of city vs not city is completely independent of the startup vs non-startup thing.

If you are intent solely on maximizing cash in your pocket, then I doubt startups are the best path. If you want that, just go work on wall street. I grew up around that, and I've known for a long time that no matter how much money there is in it, it's not a great life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Power law, big wins. This paid for the entire fund, and more.

</comment><comment><USER19> A cursory Googling reveals PrivCo and CEO Sam Hamadeh will say just about anything for an apropos headline.

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like VC finally gave actual #s to PrivCo. They honestly don't seem THAT different to me, +/- 5 or 10%. Don't think that calls for scorched earth credibility attack (yeah yeah I must be a shill). But those who claimed it's "all garbage" way over-reached IMO. Don't think anyone here would think their work should be called total garbage when it was that close and even the couple assumptions footnoted. Call me a shill, but I mean that's a low blow and makes you know who vc look like a bully whose bluff was just called dudes. Guess he's still peed about foursquare story from months ago. Win some lose some, don't stoop. [http://www.privco.com/tumblr-ownership-and-yahoo- acquisition...](http://www.privco.com/tumblr-ownership-and-yahoo-acquisition- proceeds) (updated)

</comment><comment><USER21> Mind that that's "only" 50x. Still not bad though.

<comment><USER22> Usually, when you have $5m to invest, you have to put it into something large and very real and quite boring like a shopping center. And if you get a IRR of 8-9% a year, you're doing well. USV turning $5m into 50x that is along the lines of Don Valentine and Cisco. It is a rare cosmic event.

<comment><USER21> I just wanted to put it in comparison with the 10000x, YC got with AirBnb and Dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Either way this definitely returned the fund for USV. If this was out of their 2004 fund ($125m) and the follow-ons came from reserves from that fund, getting $281m back on say $30m of paid in capital (upping ispivey's estimate and from his comments assuming Fred took more than pro-rata later) is a smashing success for a VC even if the deal was "just" ~9x overall for all capital. Congrats.

</comment><comment><USER24> Congrats to Spark Capital as well. They're our lead investor at Quantopian and their intelligence and helpfulness have been everything we could have hoped for.</comment>


HTC's handheld camera poses challenge to GoPro - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29544489

<comment><USER2> GoPro's advantage is it's technical specs (although they are pretty good, especially in the 4). It's the form factor. It's been designed to be easy to mount on things like helmets, boards, quadcopters, etc. A small handheld camera is not going to take much market share from GoPro.</comment>


Have Students Interview Someone They Disagree With - <AUTHOR> https://heterodoxacademy.org/viewpoint-diversity-students-interview-someone/ <comment><USER2> _He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that._ \--Mill</comment>


Major Ecommerce Sites Taking Up to Two Weeks to Remove Harmful Covid-19 Products - <AUTHOR> https://irishtechnews.ie/ecommerce-sites-taking-up-to-two-weeks-to-remove-harmful-covid-19-products/ <comment><USER2> Im sorry, but how people fall for that. If you see covid cure on aliexpress, why do you think it would be a legit thing

<comment><USER3> the fuuny part? people do fall for this shit. I personally don't buy anyting from aliexpress, wish and so on. Simply, it's a cat in the bag. You don't know what you get, ESPECIALLY the medecine stuff. But, due to it's price, people take the risk

<comment><USER4> but do you really trust medicine that costs few $ compared to store prices? i really cant understand this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> everyone is trying to gain profit while Covid-19. Since people are selfish, 80% are bad profits.</comment>


Great Software Entrepreneurs Are Artists - <AUTHOR> http://robertsaric.com/great-software-entrepreneurs-are-artists/ <comment><USER2> Great software entrepreneur MAY be artists, but it isn't a necessity. Just because you craft or make something doesn't inherently make you an artist. Are the people who make sandwiches at Subway really "sandwich artists"?

That said, an appreciation for the arts most certainly affects one's eye for design and taste. It is the difference between a good looking/feeling app and a great one. So much can and should be borrowed from the arts to build products, but perhaps such a loose definition of "artist" is unhelpful.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand I think this definition of art is too limited. Are sandwich's art, of course not but art is about creating and communicating beauty/emotion from were it didn't exist. Is software art, it's hard to say. I tend to think software/code is something else. Some that is newer and different than art but that borrows heavily from art. I guess the difference is that I think the code itself is the art rather than the output. That said I may be to close to have a fair viewpoint, I've named two companies based on variants of the name Code art.

<comment><USER4> > Are sandwich's art, of course not

Obviously, you have never had a masterful sandwich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> the-swa Don't get caught up on the word "art" or "artists." There's a great article by Carolyn Dean[0] that goes into depth about the history of the word and the problems with it. What I got out of it is that "calling something art reveals nothing inherent in the object to which the term is applied; rather, it reveals how much the viewer values it."

As a software developer, I consider software itself art because I understand the various complexities that arise when creating it, and also how it transforms hardware into something completely different (without software, hardware does nothing.)

Would I compare software to painting, sculpture, or music? Definitely. But that's just me, and before you can convince anyone else otherwise, you first need to convince them to value software as much as you do. The same goes for anything: fashion, cooking, even natural objects and phenomena.

[0][http://www.bucknell.edu/Documents/GriotInstitute/DeanArticle...](http://www.bucknell.edu/Documents/GriotInstitute/DeanArticle.pdf)

<comment> the-swa (And just to clarify, I wouldn't consider all software "art", but neither do I consider all paintings "art" \- it's really about the user's/viewer's experience interacting with the piece.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> To me engineering in general has a lot in common with art. Most customers never see the inside of a gearbox or a PCB. They don't marvel at the design of the lens or touchscreen in their cellphone. The difference between an "artist" and "engineer" is just the intent of the product and even that's a sliding scale.

</comment><comment><USER6> Excluding the most rarified fine art, every creative endeavor is a balancing act of money, materials, time, and effort. Good taste and a sense of art is going to guide you to the best result that balances all those factors. What's different about software is that _everyone_ who makes software for public consumption needs taste and artistry.

Once you have your creation, you just flip a switch and as many editions as anyone would want can be created. This makes the boundary between art and commerce in software almost friction-free, unlike, say, designing a car where a factory costing hundreds of millions of dollars is interposed between design and replication.

There are only a handful of big car producers and they only collectively need something on the order of hundreds to low thousands of trained designers. To these designers, art is part of their education. That's just not going to be the case for software developers.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this is very true. A lot of software engineers are very smart technically but are not good at designing products or understanding user experience. Everything is just 1s and 0s to them and rigid. I think the metaphor of a mural is a good one.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel like this article is close but slightly off the mark. Just noticing from casual observation, it seems like the point can be summed up even more succinctly:

Great software engineers are (something else).

</comment><comment><USER2> After a lengthy argument with my coworker, we have arrived at the conclusion that everything may be art. Commence discussion below.</comment>


Semantic Markup or Death? Part I - <AUTHOR> http://nateabele.com/semantic-markup-i <comment><USER2> Cool article. I wonder if he's considered the growth of the 'target' attribute itself. If implemented according the spec, there will be many cases where using this catch-all attribute won't be feasible.</comment>


Tweetbucks Brings Affiliate Fees To Twitter Users. Is That A Good Thing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/27/tweetbucks-brings-affiliate-fees-to-twitter-users-is-that-a-good-thing/ <comment><USER2> no.

products made purely for financial gain rather than making the world a better place are usually not a good thing. spam sux. so does mega-consumption.</comment>


Bitcoin's Killer Apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chain.com/post/99177371581/bitcoins-killer-apps

<comment><USER2> I fail to see how those examples wouldn't work just as well with a paypal like service for your money.</comment>


Status.Twitter is Also Down  - <AUTHOR> http://status.twitter.com/

<comment><USER2> status.twitter is hosted on tumblr, tumblr is down at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> twitter.com and everything else seems to be up?</comment>


Why StumbleUpon's Use of IE6 is Hurting America - <AUTHOR> http://eng.genius.com/blog/2009/04/22/stop-ie6/?jh

<comment><USER2> Surely it should be "Why Genius.com's Blocking of IE6 is Hurting Genius.com"?

<comment><USER3> If you read the article you should know they fully support IE6 for their actual product and only block it on the engineering blog.

<comment><USER2> I did, thanks. Their engineering blog seems important enough to them that they care how much traffic it gets from StumbleUpon. They are getting hurt and they are doing the blocking.

Imagine I said "Why Genius.com's Blog's Blocking of IE6 is Hurting Genius.com's Blog", if you like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> StumbleUpon should fix this quick and easy by changing the user agent string (overridable in the registry). The last thing the world needs is inflated IE6 stats.

The whole "companies need their internal applications" is bullshit. Firefox and Chrome do not break an installed IE6 on a computer. People can continue to use IE6 for internal sites, and a real browser for other sites.

Any IT department that forbids installation of Firefox needs to be brought outside and proverbially shot.</comment>


The first ever photograph of light as both a particle and wave - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html <comment><USER2> As I read the article, it seems to boil down to: "We've got this standing wave of light. We use electrons to interact with it. The pattern of interaction shows the standing wave..."

OK, I can buy that.

"... but for the electron to interact, it had to hit a photon, so there's the particle aspect."

Not so fast. That sounds like you're _defining_ the interaction as showing the particle nature, with no actual evidence from this experiment.

Or did I miss something?</comment>


Stanford Online Courses delayed - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/nlp_class/status/160536492932988928 <comment><USER2> Hey guys check out My weekend project <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496299> (Okay I am spamming! I don't have HN friends who would upvote it otherwise inspite of it being a descent website : ()</comment>


Fake UV disinfection lamp from eBay - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEVFKHiOfRs <comment><AUTHOR> Of course if it was real, it could cause serious eye and skin damage.

<comment><USER2> If you price out UVC LED's the price alone will tell you.</comment></comment>


All Things Sales: Mini-lessons for startup founders - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2018/09/02/sales-startups-technical-founders/ <comment><USER2> I just watched the series and posted my notes here: [https://tsenkov.net/2018/09/03/a16z-crash-course-on- sales](https://tsenkov.net/2018/09/03/a16z-crash-course-on-sales)

Thanks to a16z and Peter Levine for this course.

<comment><USER3> Awesome work. I'll always take print over video.

<comment><USER4> Usually I do to, but these videos are like 1-3 minutes, and there is vital information and explanations of what the graphics mean that would literally take as long to read yourself. :P

<comment><USER2> I agree, but I make notes not to speed up consumption of content - just search gets faster this way. Text search or even scrolling a few pages, is definitely faster than FF through 40-50m of content split into 16 episodes.

<comment><USER4> Oh sure, I agree it's useful for review, but not for initial learning. I read through your notes before I watched the videos because I thought I could really glean something from it, but it didn't help me at all (it was actually confusing) until I watched the videos...

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback. Useful stuff.

Is there any chance I can get a contact of yours? (I am always in the middle of a project that can benefit from the constructive criticism of smart people, so I will be happy to stay in touch)

You can use the contacts in my profile if you don't want to post yours' here.

Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Loved the 6th video - How, when and who of sales. I was pleasantly surprised how the generic advice to find a corporate sales guy to lead your early stage startup sales is so ineffective.

A similar analogy to engineering also applies I guess. One who functions well in a corporate engineering department - with a ton of support might not do well in an early stage startup and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER6> Super grateful to a16z and YC for these. I wonder as a founder doing their own sales, if there are resources about actual tactics, how to make calls, handle objections, etc.

These strategy videos are great. Does anyone have a recommendation on an equivalent for the day-to-day of working a pipeline?

<comment><USER7> My favorite book on sales tactics is Chet Holmes, the Ultimate Sales Machine. Here is a summary:

[https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/893/book-summary- the-u...](https://capitalandgrowth.org/articles/893/book-summary-the-ultimate- sales-machine.html)

<comment><USER8> I'm a big fan of Chet Holmes and _The Ultimate Sales Machine_ as well. He did a series of videos as part of some conference thing with Tony Robbins, and those videos have some really good stuff in them. I'm not necessarily a huge Tony Robbins fan per-se, but the stuff he did with Chet was solid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's awesome to a series on Sales from another top venture firm.

For anyone that's looking for similar resources. Here's another awesome series I came across (while searching for YC resources on this topic): [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1c0oEEXWIZiWzdtUOUh...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1c0oEEXWIZiWzdtUOUhlirJr2fXfbxX)

It was apparently a 'Sales School' for one of the YC batches in 2014. Hadn't heard of Steli before, his videos really give me a lot of energy. He also reinforced my belief that founders have to be great at selling their creation and gave me insights on what it takes to be great at sales.

<comment><USER10> Watching these videos made me realize how much I hate sales people. Every time I sign up for a trial or act remotely interested in something, I get inundated by assholes like the lecturer in these videos. Loud, aggressive and as he said "Hustlers". I immediately don't want to use that product or service and I look for alternatives if there are.

I feel like there is no better way to penetrate through the noise of the internet and products/services out there that Sales has to become aggressive. I don't think there is a solution to this? Is there?

<comment><USER9> It's easy to get annoyed by the aggression and the overall tone of the speaker, this happened to me as well.

However, when I look at what he is saying objectively, he is suggesting quite the opposite from what the tone implies. A good sales person is a great listener, one that doesn't make you feel like the way you described. Overall, I love the series because of what I learnt from it, on viewing it objectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a big fan of Fog Creek's "The Most Basic Things Your Company Needs to Know About Sales" ([https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your- co...](https://www.fogcreek.com/guide/The-most-basic-things-your-company- needs-to-know-about-sales.pdf)) It's roughly 25 pages about high level sales strategies. The PDF mentions the book "How You Make the Sale" by Frank McNair ([https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Sale-Frank- McNair/dp/1402204...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Sale-Frank- McNair/dp/1402204353\)which) was a great 101 level book on sales. It's high level so it could be applied to everything from selling cars and real estate to software.

I found these helpful because it was less "here's 10 closing tips and tricks!" and more about the sales process.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great stuff, there's always more than meet the eyes and that's true even for sales ;)

This being said, slight nitpick on #11 and #12. Include clawbacks, especially if you're fairly dependent on sales / more geared towards high touch deals.

This obviously goes on hand in hand with reasonable targets.

Otherwise you create an incentive for sales people to make their number in any way they can to meet their ridiculous target / driven by the usual greed.

The hidden cost of that can potentially be huge, especially if your pool of potential customers is -relatively- small.

</comment><comment><USER13> This lessons were very informative and nicely structured. Having these type of short, concept focused lessons are perfect for serving as introductory material.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think its worth mentioning that this is for mostly B2B type startups / enterprise applications / companys that rely on VC funding, not necessarily B2C, where sales is not technically necessary.

A good readup on B2C from a mostly 1 man successful startup is from peter levels here. [https://makebook.io/](https://makebook.io/).

</comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have the syllabus for the Stanford MBA course that these videos are based on [http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=STRAMGT%2B351&ac...](http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?q=STRAMGT%2B351&academicYear=20182019)?

</comment><comment><USER16> Great stuff - like many things in the business world, fairly simple and common-sense but it's highly valuable to run through.

</comment><comment><USER17> That was handy - if you are a Startup "Renaissance" sales rep interested in turbo boosting initiation sales currently happening in the enterprise + academic education space, please get in touch, I'd love to learn more about you and see if I can learn from you or we can work together. :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Great series. It mentioned salesforce.com a couple of times. Any other tools that we can use?

<comment><USER9> [https://close.io/](https://close.io/) (YC W11)

Close is much simpler and BS free than Salesforce. Most sales teams I know dislike using salesforce as it is almost always configured to be more complicated than necessary.

<comment><USER19> If you're hoping to become a >100-person company I would recommend against Close.io. The reality is that Salesforce is what is what everyone is familiar with, and sooner or later you'll be glad it's as extensible as it is.

I've worked with two startups that started with Close.io and pretty much outgrew it by the time they had 3 salespeople. It's made for very small and simple sales operations.

I ended up migrating them to Salesforce. The migration is a mess because of Close.io's unconventional way of handling account and lead records, which is unlike any other CMS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> These are fantastic. Anyone know of similar resources for marketing or customer acquisition?

</comment><comment><USER21> I haven't had the chance to watch the videos yet (though I will) but I'm curious about the compensation aspect.

Why is it that sales teams are often paid via some sort of commission structure?

<comment><USER9> There's many reasons for this, one that's simpler to explain is relative performance.

If sales person A is working a lot harder/smarter/adaptive to get more clients that sales person B. It may lower his morale to see B get the same compensation as him. This affects sales people more than other functions because the output of a sales person is more or less quantified by the revenue they are responsible for generating (exact metric would be different of course).

<comment><USER22> As always, you get exactly what you are measuring.

I've experienced sales people who oversold more or less everything. They weren't measured on whether or not what they sold could be delivered.

Instead, product teams had to run around as if they were on fire, because suddenly the CEO got involved and made it a "company wide priority".

I hate KPI's / commission structures, and I have never seen it working. Not where the work required more than half a brain cell.

I guess my great hatred for KPI's is that they are often vanity metrics. What you want to measure is net contribution to the bottom line, and that is near well impossible. So we end up measuring what we _can_ , and Goodheart's law [0] being what it is, get absolutely no value out of it

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

Bonus info: I've had work, where I did not have KPI's, but where I could destroy the KPI's for other teams, and sometimes involuntarily did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are all these things applicable before finding the product market fit ?

<comment><USER9> Haven't gone through the series yet so I can't confirm whether the things discussed are applicable or not.

However, I can confidently say that founder driven sales efforts are important even before 'finding' the product market fit and will most likely even help a startup reach product market fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow this looks great, time to dig in!

</comment><comment><USER25> Command to download all 16 videos for offline viewing into a separate directory indexed by video order:

youtube-dl -o '%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s' [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4u6XbiXf5rtyzi7g-5O...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4u6XbiXf5rtyzi7g-5ObKubmZFiTIlD)

On Windows, the single quotes might need to be double quotes. The above uses youtube-dl (YouTube downloader) which is a multi-platform public-domain Python program available here: [https://rg3.github.io/youtube- dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/).

<comment><USER26> This is neat!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You know we've reached Peak Valley when VCs are advising to spend more time selling than iterating.

Outbound sales is short-term begging for money, period.

<comment><USER28> I watched a few of these videos and I didn't hear outbound mentioned once. Did he cover this in a video? I may have missed it since I skipped around.

I was watching/listening to it from the perspective that the company is generating inbound leads from a marketing team/channel.

<comment><USER27> I read a similar post from Peter Levine earlie this week too. And in this of videos, I think it is a bit more inbound focused.

However, I will say. The moment you start hiring sales reps and marketing reps, here is what starts to happen:

1) Any leads generated from Youtube or inbound email inquiries or etc are treated as "golden leads" and are typically given to the most politically connected reps

2) These inbound leads happen so infrequently that reps often just sit around waiting with "nothing to do"

3) So then marketing starts thinking about outbound massive email blasts to send out

4) and sales reps start thinking about outbound cold calling campaigns to "follow up on the email we sent you"

5) anddd now you've got 500k of payroll per year engaged in the least productive, most intrustive form of prospecting in the world

6) when you should probably just focus that on making your product and youtube presence so wicked that people bang down your door to buy</comment></comment></comment>


A proposal on patent reform - <AUTHOR> http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/11/proposal-on-patent-reform.html

<comment><USER2> Too vague to be helpful; only appeal is a seemingly-more-objective test for non-obviousness (nonobvious iff prerequisites developed AND not solved in previous 10 years), but vagueness of relevant terms negates any putative step forward in "objectivity". Also provides incentives to slow down the rate of innovation and has potential to be self-defeating.

I won't harass you about the vagueness as I think that's pretty obvious (do you really want either federal judges or, god forbid, a jury of citizens to be the judge of what is "commercially viable"?).

The incentive to slow down comes from your 10-year rule: if I have a good idea that is economically useful, ceteris paribus the longer I wait to patent it the likelier I am to actually get an enforceable patent (b/c the prerequisites aren't getting any younger). Now obviously in some cases there will be concern that rivals or competitors will jump in front and patent it instead, but in many smallish fields there really aren't that many people working on the same topic at the same time and what competitors there are will all be operating under the same overall incentive (and thus will themselves have some incentive to delay as long as possible).

So the incentive to file for a patent immediately is the same as under the status quo -- make sure you get out ahead of competitors -- but you add in a countervailing incentive to delay that the present system (for all its faults) does not have.

This is particularly egregious wrt brand-new technologies (like, eg, a transistor or the laser): anything making use of a laser or a transistor wouldn't be patentable for ~10 years after the development of that technology. This may help prevent some stupid patents -- land-grab stuff around doing stuff with a laser -- but it _also_ means that any invention that's mostly- done but missing something (like, eg, it'd work if only I had a source of coherent light) now has a 10-year time out on it, also, as it won't have been solvable for 10 years until 10 years have passed from the introduction of the missing piece.

You could try patching your solvability criterion to work around the "missing piece" phenomena but if you put a tiny loophole in next thing you know people will be driving a caravan of 18-wheelers through it.

Your proposal's criteria is also at the margins somewhat self-defeating, especially in the case of a trial in which a patent's validity is called into question.

The person defending it basically has to defend the patent by minimizing its novelty: all the constituents have to be old + well-understood and so on. So the ideal patent is minimally-inventive: it takes solves a known problem using well-known stuff in novel combination...but not _too_ novel, as something _too_ novel runs the risk of exposing you to arguments that the problem you solved wasn't solvable b/c solving it required too many of your own innovations.

The person attacking it has to attack it by maximizing its novelty: claim that the problem _wasn't_ solvable for as long as you're claiming b/c it depended on sub-inventions and so forth; rather than being a minimally-non-obvious recombination of existing technologies you're actually _inventing_ stuff, you see, which works against your patent's validity.

The 10-year period + commercial viability argument cuts both ways: on the one hand if it was solvable for awhile and was commercially viable you can use that as evidence for non-obviousness, but on the other hand your attacker can use the same facts to claim it either wasn't solvable before you went and _invented_ stuff, wasn't actually commercially viable, or some other reason; you're making an overbroad assumption about what seems like reasonable assumptions for other people to hold about the invention process.

So you wind up with inventors forced to downplay the inventiveness of their inventions -- and shy away from overly-novel areas of inquiry -- and attackers overplaying the inventiveness of the inventions for which they hope to invalidate the patents, which scenario is comical but unproductive.

<comment><AUTHOR> What you see as deficiencies, I see as advantages.

The point of the patent system (at least in the USA) is to provide incentives for people to come up with ideas that otherwise people wouldn't come up with. If you are racing to the patent office for fear that someone else will come up with the idea, then your actions demonstrate that you likely shouldn't be granted the patent.

For instance take the "mostly done" issue. If you have it mostly done, until that last piece arrives nobody has any idea how many other people had it mostly done as well. Which means that it is impossible to figure out how innovative your idea is, and therefore we don't have good evidence that you really deserve a patent. Given that handing out patents causes real economic harm to others, I don't think they should be handed out on such poor evidence and therefore don't want to see those patents handed out so quickly.

I am strongly against allowing an exception because it opens up a common form of patent abuse. The story is that a small company invents a new technology and get a patent on it. A big company would like the patent, but can't get access. Instead they get patents on all of the things the small company needs to do to commercialize their invention. Effectively they build a "patent wall" around the existing patent. And now the small company is forced to come to terms with the big ones.

The one issue you raise that I agree with is that often people build on their own ideas. The better mousetrap is often better in several ways, not all of which you think of at one time. But in that case I see two possibilities. One is that the subsequent innovations can be used without your other innovations. In that case you can get a patent on them. The other is that the subsequent innovations can't be used without your other innovations. In that case the patent you can get on your previous innovations will protect your subsequent as well. Either way things work out.

<comment><USER2> I'd say you're slightly misreading the point of the patent system; I'd argue the underlying "point" is what it says it is in the constitution -- to promote the progress of the useful arts + sciences -- which isn't _exactly_ the same thing as "come up with ideas that people wouldn't otherwise come up with".

EG: one aspect of the patent system is that it promotes invention of work- around, "me-too" inventions to get around patent restrictions (eg: PNG vs. GIF, for a computer example).

I'd argue that's more often a bug than a feature: worthwhile inventions would happen anyways, and engineering-around-a-known-solution is far more often a deadweight loss than a benefit to the economy as a whole; there many others (mainly members of the patent bar) that'd argue that such work-arounds are a _feature_ , as they promote "new invention" that otherwise wouldn't happen (since you'd just use the known-good solution).

I'm sort of assuming you usually see this "my way" on this issue; if you do, then framing it as "think of stuff that wouldn't be invented otherwise" doesn't give you much to stand on (as clearly most workarounds wouldn't be thought of without the patent system...).

Sticking with the promotion-of-progress language gives you a much firmer frame for your arguments.

Your framing also is making you overlook the importance of _disclosure_ in the patent system; it's not an accident that a patent not only describes _what it does_ (separate alumina from bauxite) but also _how it works_ (supposedly in enough detail that someone else could implement the invention by reading the patent, though in practice there's a strong incentive to obfuscate that as much as you can get away with).

The argument here is that this promotes the progress of the useful arts and sciences as it makes the knowledge underlying a particular invention available essentially _immediately_ \-- as soon as the filer rushes to the patent office -- allowing work on derivative inventions to start _immediately_ , thereby increasing the rate at which new ideas are come-up-with, etc.

So while on the one hand you're kind-of right -- patents that have lots of simultaneous inventors probably are too obvious to be useful -- you've not addressed the real thrust of the delay issue (which I admittedly could have made clearer):

\- for "good" patents in your system there's an incentive to wait as long as possible (as the longer you wait the greater the odds your patent is valid); this'd be especially true for the ones that _don't_ have much to worry about from co-filers b/c they're legit inventions

\- this means that the rate of _disclosure_ of the genuinely-novel inventions would be expected to go down, as ceteris paribus there's more incentive to delay filing and therefore delay disclosure of the underlying ideas

\- so the calculation what is the effect on the rate of progress of the useful arts + sciences under your proposal is roughly ("increased progress due to lack of bogus patents no longer gumming up the works") - ("reduced rate of disclosure of truly novel inventions"), and imho the latter term would be quite substantial and would need more arguments to justify it

The simpler hack to get what you want is removing the presumption of validity (too lazy to check if I mentioned it already or not); this would change the patent-infringement workflow from:

\- file lawsuit; patents assumed valid until (or if) defendant successfully challenges every relevant claim in every relevant patent

to:

\- file lawsuit; filer must successfully "validate" each relevant claim in every relevant patent, and only then will proof of infringement imply damages are merited

...and this can be phased in in ways that'd not be crazily disruptive (eg: phased introduction and/or the presumption of (in)validity is on a per-area basis, so pharma is presumed valid but not software).

<comment><AUTHOR> I accept your correction that there is a difference between "promoting progress" and "coming up with ideas". (By coincidence I just reread <http://arxiv.org/abs/math.HO/9404236> which argues, among other things, that progress in mathematics can be helped by _not_ proving facts too quickly.)

I agree with you on the intent of the design of the patent system. However in a world filled with overbroad junk patents, where accidental infringement is much better than willful infringement, there are real incentives for innovative people to _not_ read patents. Because reading them opens you up to liability without teaching you anything you couldn't have thought of on your own.

As for the cost of waiting, you are right that the incentive to wait is an inefficiency in my proposal. However the aim here is to achieve a good trade- off. Obviously more detailed analysis is required to find whether it achieves as good a trade-off as I think it does.

However for many years we blindly accepted very large increases in how easy it was to get a patent without substantive debate, and there is now substantial evidence that this has been a bad thing. So it seems to me that it shouldn't be hard to improve on the current state, and I think my proposal would be an improvement.

Finally I have to say that I don't understand what you mean by "presumption of validity". The way things work now is that if IBM wants me to enter into a cross-licensing arrangements, we both know that they can threaten me with a large stack of patents. We both know that most of those patents won't stand up in court, but fighting it will impose serious costs on me and they are likely to get me on something. So even though we both presume the patents are invalid, the threat is still good.

How would you change that dynamic? If your idea is that they spend their money to validate their patent before I spend a dime, how will we know it has been validated to my satisfaction? In theory that kind of validation is the job of the patent office. However regulatory capture has made that review a joke, and would eventually eventually ruin any other level of review you could add. But if I have to spend money in the process of getting the patent validated, then IBM still can threaten me as they would today.

<comment><USER2> I am agnostic on the platonic notion of patents but generally would agree that what we have now is sufficiently far from optimal that the status quo ought not be accorded much deference.

I think generally the little-guy versus big-conglomerate isn't a winnable battle; if you "level the playing field" the elephant stomps the mouse, and if you try and give the mouse a hand grenade you usually wind up giving the elephant a nuke. Thus where I'm coming from there's a background assumption that the little guy will always and everywhere be prone to get screwed, and the only sensible discussion is "how many different ways?" and "what're the systemic effects of such-and-such-policy".

Thus in that light switching to a presumption of invalidity isn't a panacea -- and has its own drawbacks, as any "solution" would have -- and is mainly addressed at mitigating the effect of junk patents, which is what your proposal is also aimed at.

In writing my response to your IBM scenario I found what seems to be one of the ways the 18-wheeler would drive through your proposal so I've put it below, before I get to explaining how the IBM scenario plays out under reduced-presumption-of-validity.

Incidentally, one area where your proposal _would_ fail is that the IBM scenario. So you invent something novel (patentable under your regime). For this to be patentable it has to be a nonobvious combination of existing tech that's been around and commercially viable for some duration of time.

Now IBM looks at it and figures out some other components you need to actually implement it and files junk patents on those in order to force you to cross- license. IBM argues:

\- the technology needed has been around for however long your proposal requires (or else your patent wouldn't hold)

\- the overall product your invention enabled has been commercially viable for as long as required (or else your patent wouldn't hold)

\- their patents are thus "nonobvious" (lol) combinations of preexisting technology that solve problems related to bringing to market a technology that for a long time has been commercially viable if brought to market

In theory you can patch this by tweaking the notion of commercially available or solvable to be sufficiently narrow, but in practice that's very hard language to draft in a loophole-minimized fashion; you'd think it ought to be the case that you can set up criteria that'd make it such that "mechanism for transforming lead to gold" ought to be easily recognizable as "unique" and commercially viable and "mechanism for absorbing shock from spontaneous- change-of-weight during transmutation from base metal to gold" isn't (eg: b/c it is only viable as part of a device that itself is commercially viable only due to your recent patent), but the more you start predicating your notion of "commercial viability" on "independent of any other invention" the more you undercut your likelihood of getting a patent at all.

In some ways your proposed criteria makes this worse: the kinda of stupid patents they'd look for are going to be super generic and useless (like the shock-absorber) and thus not sought after _until_ they're needed to try and screw you out of your invention; thus their uselessness works in their favor (they won't be invented yet b/c they're so dumb) and being generic they have a pretty easy time proving commercial viability (b/c shock absorbers already have a lot of uses, and ours is better than others in some way...).

So you wind up falling back on the same-old pretty-useless nonobvious criteria to defend against IBM if they actively seek to encircle your patent with their junk. In theory they would potentially have a much smaller of junk patents laying around but without patches they'd have a much easier time rounding up junk patents once you got your non-junk patent.

OK. The validity thing plays out like this. In the IBM-threat scenario the threat is that IBM has a bunch of junk patents in technologies around whatever it is you patented, so to actually produce a product using your patent you need to get licenses from them or risk being sued into oblivion; they use the threat of that outcome to compel a cross-licensing agreement, and then run off and make the product you were going to make, leaving you in trouble.

Introducing the presumption of invalidity changes that negotiation slightly.

On the one hand, IBM's threats become a lot more empty; if you go ahead and build your device -- IBM's patents notwithstanding -- then they might well sue you but they'd have to prove their BS patents are not-BS before the trial gets very far, and if they're actually BS then they probably can't get them proven not-BS (judges self-select to take directions about stuff like "presumption" very seriously).

On the other hand say IBM goes and makes a product incorporating your invention, and leaves it up to you to go and sue them. Things here are a little less clear, which is why it's not really a panacea (but what is?). It's easy to say something like "if it's really a good patent it'd hold up in court and you'd be fine", but with any change from the status quo predicting how things actually turn out is a little tricky.

So at the margins the lone-wolf / little-guy inventor has a harder time winning an infringement suit b/c they have to prove their patent is invalid; it's thus a systemic tradeoff between far less "bite" for BS/junk patents in exchange for at the margins having some patents wind up practically unenforceable.

The compare/contrast wrt to your proposal is that your proposal leaves patents harder to get -- thereby cutting back on the BS paten threat -- but doesn't touch the strength of issued patents; the presumption of validity tweak is intended to undermine the utility of issued patents and not have _too_ deleterious an effect on strength.

As far as validating your own patent -- if it held up in court already it's known-good. Some variants of this proposal include a notion of patents-plus (essentially, patents subject to extra scrutiny) available for patents undergoing heavier scrutiny; I'm not a fan of that for a number of reasons, but it's another option (essentially pay extra to get more research done and have your patent enjoy stronger presumed strength).

It basically trades where we are now -- too easy to get junk patents and use them to extort money from productive enterprises -- for a setup where the junk-patent-extortioneering becomes much harder, but at the expense of leaving some lone-wolf holders of valid patents less able to make use of their patents then they are under the current situation.

There are some counterbalances you can throw in -- eg, jacking up the infringement penalties => if you DO win against IBM it'll cost them a ton more money, thereby keeping the expected outcome in the same ballpark despite the reduced likelihood of the little guy winning -- but you can't get around the marginal effect of pushing some patents into the unenforceable range.

I tend to think that's probably an improvement over the current situation, but opinions can differ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a much simpler proposal:

Let's abolish _all_ patents, both on software and 'regular' ones for a 50 year period and then re-evaluate, if it led to more innovation then we'll keep it, if not we will go back to the old system.

Simple A/B testing. I highly doubt that the lobby would go for it though...

<comment><USER4> Isn't Iran free of immaterial rights laws?

<comment><USER3> Are you suggesting that a society without patents would immediately devolve into something like Iran ?

<comment><USER4> No, but the effects of not having immaterial property laws should give some kind of indication on how it changes business strategies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A patent is a privilege.

I have a right to make a living and there are finite ways to do so, if my right to make a living is blocked by others privileges then we don't have much of a free society.

Privileges are directly opposed to rights. Either we have all have rights or some have privileges. The real argument is about what kind of society we want to have.</comment>


Google Wave: ahead of its time. - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20012698-56.html

<comment><USER2> This appears to add nothing to the official announcement which was submitted here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1575892>

and which is referred to in this otherwise content-free piece.

From the guidelines:

        In Submissions

        ...

        Please submit the original source. If a blog
        post reports on something they found on another
        site, submit the latter.</comment>


Austin Is Building a Mini Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-08/austin-is-building-a-mini-silicon-valley-with-some-of-the-same-problems <comment><USER2> I lived in the Valley for 10 years, and have now lived in Austin for 7.

While certainly Austin has its problems (traffic, heat in the summer, and allergies would be my top 3) I find Austin is handling high growth far better than California did.

We do have older, homeowner NIMBYs here, including my local neighborhood association. The difference between here and California is that the NIMBYs don't have as much power here. They fought an apartment complex in my neighborhood and lost--now hundreds of new people are able to live closer in to downtown.

The current fight over zoning is allowing "granny flats", or back yard buildings. It does look like the NIMBYs are going to lose on that one as well.

There are also a lot of older houses being torn down, developers splitting the lot, and building 2 houses on the lot. These older houses aren't historic; they're 1950's-1960's suburban sprawl. I did not see California allowing these types of development as easily in the 10 years I lived there.

Overall, Austin has a compelling mix of factors that keep people moving here. The weather is great 9 months out of the year, and if you're in tech, it's not uncommon to work from somewhere else in the summer, or take some time off.

You're actually able to raise a family here without insane waits or crazy prices for daycare.

The community overall is more laid-back than SF because you don't feel the need to work 90 hours a week just to be able to afford a 1BR apartment.

Plus, we have breakfast tacos. :)

I've traveled through most of the US at this point, and lived in several different areas, and still think Austin has one of the best communities of people I've ever seen...which is why I continue to live here and advocate for smart tech folks to move here.

<comment><USER3> You're right about everything but the weather. It's only good for about 2 months of the year. 10 months out of the year it's either too hot or too cold. Air conditioning is a must. If you love Bay Area weather, you might want to stay in the west coast instead. Portland seems to be a good alternative.

<comment><USER4> As someone who moved to Portland from the Bay Area ~2 years ago the weather is significantly more variable. It gets colder, has a longer (and wetter) winter, and has fewer overall sunny days. I love Portland and I don't doubt that it is a smaller variation from the Bay compared to Austin, but I just didn't want people to get the impression that Portland has Bay Area weather.

<comment><USER5> Are you in SF or Daly City or something? Most of the bay area has vastly more sunny days than Portland (??). Hell, even SF proper should have more sun than portland.

Actually, from google, Portland has 144 sunny days vs 205 national average vs 259 in San Francisco. And only 257 in San Jose (?).

<comment><USER6> I think those descriptions are meant to be about Portland rather than SF (where the commenter moved to a couple years ago). Would be perfectly accurate in that case. :)

<comment><USER4> This.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Austin is great, lived there for 4 years, and I think it's healthy to have alternatives to Silicon Valley - both geographically and taxation-wise.

My observation is that while there are plenty of startups - helped by Joshua Baer's Capital Factory and Techstars - it seems that most of the big tech companies are more taking advantage of the state's business-friendly tax laws and cheaper labor force than anything.

A lot of companies - Apple, Oracle, etc - are more using it as a customer service and sales team base than for engineering, R&D, etc.

Of course there will be plenty of counter-examples (HomeAway, Dell, BazaarVoice, RetailMeNot, Indeed), but that's just a macro observation to keep in mind.

<comment><USER8> I lived in Austin for the past two years and was quite disappointed by the people, the city, and the schools. Glad to be out of there and I have no interest in moving back despite it being my hometown.

Number one complaint, the city has feeble public offerings (no zoo, no aquarium, no subway or light rail, small museums).

Number two complaint, the schools are overrated (and Texas math is one grade year behind most other states).

Number three complaint, I encountered a lot of people with a remarkable lack of integrity. Sorry to say that as it was the most surprising and disappointing.

<comment><USER9> Do you have anything to back up your claim about math?

I see here: [https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/02/08/geog...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2018/02/08/geographic- disparity-states-best-and-worst-schools/1079181001/) \-- that Texas ranks pretty low in math. But it's hard to say what that really means.

I've been under the impression that Texas's k-12 education is much better than California's and on par with New York and Illinois.

Texas has something crazy like 1/5th of all k-12 students in the country. That number has shot up faster than any other state, so I think it's reasonable if they're having some "growing pains" so to speak.

<comment><USER10> ==I've been under the impression that Texas's k-12 education is much better than California's and on par with New York and Illinois.==

Your own source disagrees:

9\. New York

16\. Illinois

35\. California

40\. Texas

==Texas has something crazy like 1/5th of all k-12 students in the country.==

It's more like 1/10th. Texas has 5.4 million in public k-12 [1] and there are 50.7 million in the US public k-12 [2].

==That number has shot up faster than any other state, so I think it's reasonable if they're having some "growing pains" so to speak.==

A good way to get past those growing pains would be to invest in education. Again, from your source on Texas "Public school spending: $8,485 per pupil (4th lowest)".

[1] [https://tea.texas.gov/Reports_and_Data/School_Performance/Ac...](https://tea.texas.gov/Reports_and_Data/School_Performance/Accountability_Research/Enrollment_Trends/?LangType=1033)

[2] [https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm largely biased since I grew up within 60 miles of Austin, but I never got the hype. It's hot as hell, has the worst traffic I've ever seen, is geographically lame (you don't get to claim the hill country, and no, barton springs doesn't count either), and super weak public transportation. The only thing Austin has on just about any other city in the US is world-class BBQ and a fleet of Richard Linklater wannabes.

<comment><USER12> > _has the worst traffic I 've ever seen_

I really can't understand this common trope of "Austin traffic is bad" (much less the worst you've ever seen, wow!). If you've lived anywhere like LA or NYC, that's bad traffic. Traffic during rush hour is expected. I've never seen a midnight traffic jam in Austin in my 6 years of living here. That was a daily occurrence in LA.

> _is geographically lame (you don 't get to claim the hill country, and no, > barton springs doesn't count either)_

Why does the Hill Country not count as amazing geography? It's gorgeous, by any definition.

> _It 's hot as hell_

As for the heat, I grew up in Miami. Austin has nothing on Miami summers. Even NYC, for that matter, is less comfortable in the summer than Austin is.

<comment><USER13> Austin traffic isn't the worst there is on an absolute scale. But it's frustrating because it's so much worse than it should be for a city of this size.

The people in charge of it seem to be kind of checked out and ineffectual. They don't always even try to solve problems, and when they do, they do stuff that doesn't seem to be thought out very well.

A well-known example is I-35. It is a huge pain point and has been for decades. A few years back, they started talking about doing something to solve that, and rather than trying to improve I-35 itself, the idea of building a parallel toll road really far outside of town was pitched as the solution. The toll road (SH 130) was built, but surprise, nobody wants to drive on a road in the middle of nowhere. The toll road was used so little it went through bankruptcy, but more importantly, all this didn't help fix I-35.

<comment><USER9> Will be interesting to see if Austin takes the typical Texas laissez faire attitude toward parking and lets developers build whatever they want and let the negative spillovers of traffic get worse and worse, or if they go the Los Angeles route and require absurd amounts of parking to artificially inflate the price of land as much as possible.

<comment><USER14> They've already gone "the Los Angeles route". Austin requires a parking spot per 275 sq ft of office space[1]. Given that most parking lots or garages take 300-350 sq ft per space, that's a bigger garage than the office. They did eliminate parking requirements in the Central Business District, though[2].

[1] [http://www.gatewayplanning.com/uploads/COA_Airport_Blvd/back...](http://www.gatewayplanning.com/uploads/COA_Airport_Blvd/background%20information/zoning/park_require.doc) [2] [https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/02/2019-could- be-...](https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/02/2019-could-be-the-year- to-end-city-parking-minimums/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The actual title of this article is "Austin Is Building a Mini Silicon Valley, _With Some of the Same Problems_ ", and indeed, when this post was first submitted to HN, the post had the same title. It appears as though an HN mod removed the "With Some of the Same Problems" part from the post submission. Why? The entire point of the article (and discussion in this post) is talking about the common downfalls of both areas.

</comment><comment> pickle-wizard I moved to Austin in 2008 when I was working at IBM. I was working at the IBM site in Dallas at the time, and my team was moved to Austin. I nearly didn't go. I knew I didn't want to stay at IBM forever and figured it would be harder to get a tech job in Austin since it is a smaller city.

Well I was wrong. I left IBM in 2012 and have had no problems finding jobs since them. In fact I was laid off at the end of last year. I wasn't even really looking as I wanted to take some timeoff, when a recruiter called me for my current position.

Overall I like Austin. It is more expensive that other Texas cities, but not ridiculously so. The winters are a bit warmer than Dallas so I like that, and the summers are about the same. Lots of stuff to do in the cites. Lots of smaller bands play here and you can get into those shows for not much. However we are also big enough to draw some of the larger acts to.

We have a minor league Hockey, Basketball, and Baseball team. Which is nice because the tickets are still affordable. UT College football is a bit of a religion here, if you like football.

A couple of the things I don't like. Our public transportation is terrible. The population is growing faster than the infrastructure can handle. Any new roads that get built or expanded are toll roads, because the state refuses to raise taxes so it doesn't have money to pay for them. Lastly people in this town drink a lot, and I mean a lot. It is pretty much a sport. DUI is a big problem here. Thankfully Uber and Lyft came back after the city ran them off.

<comment><USER16> > Thankfully Uber and Lyft came back after the city ran them off.

Uber and Lyft voluntarily left after refusing to comply with new background check policies that the city passed, and the citizens confirmed. They spent $7M (a record on a local election in TX, btw) on a failed referendum campaign that the citizens of Austin voted on, and then they acted like children and left. In the meantime, new companies sprang up to fill the void.

<comment><USER17> The companies and facebook groups that sprang up were an interesting experiment. Also your comment leaves out that they came back.

Why the city can't figure out public transport is still pretty baffling though.

<comment><USER18> Lyft/Uber came back after the state legislature passed a law that nullified Austin's background check requirement. The same thing happened with Austin's plastic bag ban, btw - some say the state legislature exists just to punch Austin government.

I use the bus service (Capital Metro) occasionally and I have to defend them a bit: they try and they keep getting better. They have 1 rail service that runs from the NW parts of town to downtown, and it runs full during commute times, taking a few hundred drivers off the road in the process. They created dedicated commuter buses for remote neighborhoods (e.g. the 980 and 985 service) to enable office workers and students avoid the traffic; these also are quite full every day and help keep traffic saner - the park-and-ride that I use is full of hundreds of cars daily. In addition, the Metro Rapid service and the Every 15 initiatives have looked like improvements to me for the few occasions that I used them.

I haven't tried the public transportation in Dallas or Houston so I can't say they are better but Austin Capital Metro I think has tried to do a reasonable job.

<comment><USER17> I haven't tried Houston, but it looks ok for such a sprawled Texas city. DFW's is a joke. That area lives and dies by the very Texan belief that you should get where you are going in your own truck by yourself while sipping a beer and also the poor are poor because they are lazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1283 I've considered moving to Austin (like so many others). I think my biggest concerns are 1) lack of good public transit 2) scorching humid heat ~5 months of the year 3) not a major airline hub.

I honestly wish Vegas became the tech dream that the Zappos founder had tried to build like 10 years ago. I would move there in a second.

<comment><USER19> The fact that neither Vegas or Reno have become major tech hubs is confusing to me. Both are closer to the Valley (Reno is a 4 hour drive away), they're in the same time zone, and Nevada is super business friendly. That being said, Texas does have a lot more people than Nevada, which could definitely be part of the draw.

<comment><USER20> Folks on the east coast are often hesitant to move to the west coast because of distance from family. I think the west coast already has plenty of tech hubs so who do they draw talent from? Who wants to leave the Valley for Reno? Outside of gambling and tourism what major anchors are there?

Austin became a tech hub over decades due to anchors like UT, National Instruments, Dell, Intel, IBM, etc.

<comment> throwaway-1283 I think there's more appetite now because the housing crisis in CA has really reached a tipping point (IMO). There's plenty of inflow into cities like Vegas from CA. Housing prices have rebounded but still relatively speaking cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if there's a way to start from scratch. Build a planned city with a focus on having a dense urban environment and lots of public transportation. It must be more cost-efficient than trying to keep adding to existing cities that don't really want the growth.

<comment><USER22> The world is littered with examples of this, mostly showcases of what urban planning of the time didn't understand. So much so it's a recurring theme on 99 PI:

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bijlmer-city- future-p...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/bijlmer-city-future- part-1/) \-- ended up as slums outside of Amsterdam

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/soul- city](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/soul-city) \-- a city for and by blacks

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fordlandia/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/fordlandia/) \-- ford's company town to build tires

There's also Brasilia that was supposed to be full of monumental grand plazas, but they learned people don't want to walk 3/4 of mile through a grass field outside their apartment tower just to get to the local market bodega.

Today I think Google is making one outside of Toronto, and I heard of someone doing something around Boulder. Economic Opportunity Zones (ie regional tax breaks for development) are kinda in this realm.

Personally I'm waiting for Elon's planned city where he will MVP all his social and organizational concepts before blasting off for mars.

<comment><USER23> > There's also Brasilia that was supposed to be full of monumental grand > plazas, but they learned people don't want to walk 3/4 of mile through a > grass field outside their apartment tower just to get to the local market > bodega.

As if people ever walk there :) It's only walkable if you are going from one apartment complex to another.

But the major problem is that there isn't much room for expansion. There is _space_ , but it would mess up the planning. So they push people to 'satellite' cities.

<comment><USER24> I've read it has 4 to 5 times the number of pedestrian accidents per capita compared to other large cities in Brazil.

I've been there once, I can confirm that it's not pedestrian-friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Odd reference to Juul: 4 dozen new employees juxtaposed with Apple's possible 15,000.

> "Apple's presence in Austin is the biggest after its headquarters in > Cupertino, California, and the company said it would invest $1 billion in > Austin to build an office park capable of holding 15,000 additional > employees, roughly double the current workforce there. Juul Labs Inc., the > San Francisco-based maker of a popular e-cigarette, said it will open an > office in Austin for some four-dozen employees to start."

<comment><USER26> Especially since Juul is not a tech company.

<comment><USER27> They are somewhat a hardware company. The design of their e cig is the best I've ever seen

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've lived in Austin for 42 years. I've seen alot of change, but the traffic has stayed the same. They wait until the traffic becomes unbearable, and then add a solution, and it's back to just plain bad. The drivers are very rude. As for the weather, you can have it. I'm done with 3/4 year being overly hot. I hate having to run AC all the time. I hate having to water the lawn. The look and feel of Austin has been lost. In the old days buildings couldn't be higher than the capital, and they had to allow for views to the capital. Now buildings overwhelm the capital in size, and block the view. It's all about money. The downtown is becoming vastly overbuilt, with 50+ story condo's. I used to work for the city. I know the infrastructure is just not there for that. There is exactly 1 grocery store downtown: Wholefoods. There is exactly 1 fire department station downtown. It simply can't handle the high rise condos. The burbs are ok, if you don't mind a hour each way to work, which is what I do daily. Forget mass transit in Austin, its a joke. We put our house up on the market TODAY (really!), and plan on retiring to Portland and living a livable lifestyle walking, biking and using mass transit. No more AC, just have to use the heater once and a while. Oh, and it's much prettier. I like the last sentence: "The cool people are going off to live somewhere else."

<comment><USER29> Not to be the bearer of bad news, but Portland's roads are already overwhelmed with traffic, its mass trasit past capacity, and its former "cool" residents have already left for less popular destinations.

Also, they get hot in the summer at times—think 90s...so you'll end up getting a box air conditioner unit at the very least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> All other things aside, as long as we have less NIMBYism than SF I think we might be all right.

<comment><USER31> It's certainly an entirely different cost universe at present. A quick price scan through realtor.com for Austin TX listings, shows that you can buy housing in Austin for $500k-$700k that would cost more like $3m-$5m in SF.

Given the nature of real-estate in Texas in general, and the way that Austin has an enormous amount of room to free-sprawl (ala other TX cities), I'm very skeptical Austin can ever end up with a comparable housing situation to SF or Seattle.

As a plus, in the next 20 years Austin will be connected via high-speed rail to Dallas, San Antonio and Houston (HSR triangle). You can still do infrastructure in Texas cost-effectively.

<comment><USER32> I bought my house for 130k 15 years ago. It is probably worth about double that now. People who can afford a 100k house used to be able to get a home in Austin, even 10 years ago, and in a few pockets of the city even 5 years ago.

What SF considers affordable, is way overpriced.

<comment><USER33> Double? I would guess triple or quadruple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> With even fewer viable public transportation options!

<comment><USER35> I believe the last time anyone outside of Austin heard anything about transportation in Austin -- public or otherwise -- it was that they had banned Uber for some reason. What's the latest on that?

<comment><USER36> It wasn't literally a ban, but it was at least a serious impediment to their operating in the way they want to operate. The TX legislature overturned Austin's regulations with superseding, much more Uber/Lyft friendly regulations, and they are back now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Lots of people here complaining about the traffic, but is there any major metro in the US where people don't complain about the rush-hour traffic? Off the top of my head, the people that I know in/from Boston, NYC, DC, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Nashville, Dallas, Austin, Houston, Denver, Seattle, Portland, SF, and LA _all_ complain about rush-hour traffic, and many will insist that their city is "the worst" on some specific dimension.

My impression is that if you're living in a desirable metro area, your drive to work will be on congested roads, and there's no real way to avoid this. Your choice of location _within_ a metro area (e.g. living close to work, on the same side of the city as your office) matters more than your choice between different metros. Some metro areas make these choices more desirable/affordable than others.

<comment><USER38> you can not drive in many of those metro areas

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I left the Bay Area almost 5 years ago now to start a company that I spun out of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Everyone - investors, my friends & family, our founders, even me - thought we would move to San Francisco within a year.

Four years later, Descartes Laba is almost 100 people strong, $38M investes, and thriving in the Land of Enchantment.

The reality is that if you have a strong mission, a viable company, and a great place to live, you can build a company. Sure, we can't hire anyone from Silicon Valley, but that's ok. Our recruiting team looks in all of the places FANG isn't looking - and we've found some incredible talent.

I hope that it's not just major cities that see this Renaissance of tech, but cities across America and the world. This is how we transform society with technology - by bringing a wider audience into the conversation.

</comment><comment><USER40> Yes, please come ruin this fine city with hypersensitivity, elitism, and 'disruption'.

<comment><USER41> afraid it might be too late :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> From another Bloomberg column this week:

> I lived in Austin, Texas, in the mid-1980s when it was a comfortable town > with a population under 300,000. During that same time, however, a college > student named Michael Dell was building computers in his dorm room at the > University of Texas. The success of Dell Computers — which now has its > headquarters in nearby Round Rock, Texas — utterly changed the character of > Austin. Austin's population today is around 1 million, big tech companies > are everywhere, traffic is unbearable, and entire neighborhoods have been > razed to make way for high-rise office buildings. People who live in Austin > bemoan what's happened to their city.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-06/jaffra...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-06/jaffray- woodriff-thinks-charlottesville-can-be-friendly-tech-hub)

<comment><USER28> The character of Austin was already changing when Dell arrived. TI, IBM, Motorola and others were already there making Austin a tech hotbed. They named 183 "Research Blvd" long before Dell arrived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Texas may not have income tax, but property tax is very high, and property values are pretty high by Texas standards.

<comment><USER35> The SALT deduction cap removes an important incentive for perusing (using mortgage leverage) high value residential properties. Now we just need to cap mortgage interest deduction to a much lower level.

It's going to be a lot less appealing for high income people to pile into a few coastal areas when they can no longer deduct away most of their Federal tax liabilities by borrowing a $700K house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Reminded of this article, today:

[http://marketurbanism.com/2017/01/27/the-disconnect- between-...](http://marketurbanism.com/2017/01/27/the-disconnect-between- liberal-aspirations-and-liberal-housing-policy-is-killing-coastal-u-s-cities/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I have been tracking Austin's hype as a tech hub for over a decade. And I have to admit that is waay overrated. For example, Austin startups only raised $1.5bn VC funding in 2018 [1] Compare this to the $45bn [2] raised by SF Bay Area companies and you get why Austin is all hype. The only true next SV in US are NYC, Seattle, and Boston. Everything else is a PR piece from that city or state government.

[1] [https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/01/10/austin- co...](https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/01/10/austin-companies- hauled-in-1-5b-in-funding-in-2018.html)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/ventur...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/venture- capital-still-flowing-to-silicon-valley-and-bay-area)

<comment><USER46> Why is VC funding your only metric? I work in Austin and we don't take much VC funding. You know why? We're _profitable_. Yes, a tech startup that actually makes money. We don't feel the need to grow at some arbitrary and ridiculous rate in order to please VC's looking for an exit. I have the added bonus that my cost of living I less than half of what it would be in SV, but I don't make half as much.

Certainly there are more meaningful metrics to consider. Like... number of tech jobs.

<comment><USER45> It is just a proxy for other tech metrics. If VC funding is that high, number of software engineering jobs will be as high. And you can also conclude that public company presence will be equally high. I just did a quick LinkedIn job search and filtered by location. My rudimentary math suggest that there are over 12,000 "software engineer" jobs open in Bay Area, compared to ~2500 in Austin. Keep in mind, the Bay Area number is actually underreported as Google, Facebook, and many others just use a representative job posting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's funny, I read this as "Austin is building a Mini in Silicon Valley." It had me thinking "But Austin hasn't operated since I was a kid..."

Go figure one word missing changes the whole context of the sentence.

</comment><comment><USER48> As a Texas native, living in Austin for over 5 years now, here's my take on the complaints I'm seeing in this thread.

Traffic: It's a common complaint, but I find it's really not as bad as everyone says. Though, the key to beating traffic is to reside as close to work as possible, and avoid 35 at all costs. Alternatively, live off MoPac or 183. I worked for a few years in downtown Austin, and lived up near Apple's campus. Getting to work was not bad at all (~20 min, given no accidents). My advice, stay North West to give yourself the option of traveling 183 or MoPac. Worst case, hit MoPac's Express Lane and you'll fly past the traffic. Outside of rush hour, the roadways are generally clear.

Heat: Being a native, I actually enjoy hot summers, and hate winter. All of the waterways between Austin and San Antonio are fantastic. My typical summer weekend is spent on the river with a beer in hand. If you want to beat the heat, you have to get near the water. Go-tos: Lake Travis, Canyon Lake, the Guadalupe River, Barton Springs, etc. Summer nights are warm, so camping is do-able without all the cold gear.

Housing: It's not "cheap" to live in Austin, but far more affordable than the Bay Area. Typical apartment rent per square foot hovers around $1.00-$1.50 (1br, $1,200/mo is typical). Typical home rentals closer to $1.00. To buy a home, you'll be hard pressed to find anything decent under $250k. There's a ton of new developments in the far suburbs, where prices are more reasonable.

Tech Scene: There are plenty of meetups, conferences, and coworking spaces to enjoy. Most of my neighbors are in the tech industry. Nearly every Silicon Valley company has a presence in Austin. The job market is very hot.

Public Transportation: I do miss this, having lived in SF for a few years. I live right near the Metro Rail line, and I've used it once. It takes forever to get downtown. I'd rather pay for a ride share and get there in 1/2 the time. As much as everyone complains about the lack of public transit, Texas is huge so having a car allows you to visit all of the towns between and around the major cities. We have Lyft/Uber, which is available even in far out areas like Cedar Park/Georgetown/Round Rock, and between Austin and San Antonio. Considering the cost of living, and your take home pay, you can easily afford a car.

Air Travel: There was a mention of Austin not being a hub, however, there are many direct flights from Austin to great destinations (including international destinations). I've never had a problem here.

Geography: This is lacking. You won't find beautiful mountains or redwood forests here. We have lakes and rolling hills.

Allergies: It's manageable. Daily allergy pill and you'll survive.

</comment><comment><USER49> I got very excited reading this title... until i reached 'silicon valley'. Was hoping for a revival of the classic Austin Mini.

</comment><comment><USER50> San Antonio is pretty much like an hour away. The small retirement towns between them are now over-fucking-run by mommy vans. Crazy traffic. I was seriously considering putting down a rental in that area until I got there. I thought tailgating was pretty much a western thing, but Texas is no different it seems. Why is everyone in this damn country in a rush? How can we get back.

<comment><USER51> >The small retirement towns between them are now over-fucking-run by mommy vans.

I don't understand this. Are you upset that communities of retirees are being displaced by...moms? Not criticizing at all, just no idea what this sentence means or why "mommy-vans" are bad.

<comment><USER18> Not the OP but I wonder if they meant that the small retirement towns (presumably Buda, San Marcos, Kyle, etc.) are now mostly single family commuters and thus much more expensive and crowded than before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> So where's the next Austin for tech?

<comment><USER53> I'm thinking Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill. Lots of good universities there. I've never been but I have heard good things.

<comment><USER54> Three good universities within <30 minutes drive of each other, each in a city of a different size and feel at each anchor point, with a business/job center smack dab in the middle in Research Triangle Park, which has plenty of room to grow. And still a great COL at the moment. I'd agree that we could/will be the next Austin (but I live here so of course my perspective is biased) as long as we don't self-sabotage, which is a real possibility. For example: Duke University just effectively killed the planned Light-Rail between Durham and Chapel Hill for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Austin is still in Texas and no matter how hard you polish it's still there.

Some talent will want to move there but where is the ocean and where is the lake tahoe / skiing?

</comment><comment><USER56> Just in time for SXSW...</comment>