Show HN: SideProjects.com - 37 Bootstrapped Profitable Projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.sideprojects.com/ Have been working on this for months, hope you guys will like it. Feel free to share your own side project in the comments. <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys,

I'm Laksman (@Laksman on twitter), author of SideProject book. I put together this project over many months with the help of the 37 participants. Launch has been pretty hectic but is going well, so far the feedback has been positive and I'm implemented a lot of changes suggested here. Also, feel free to shoot me an email personally if you have any questions, firstname at gmail.com. Hope you guys enjoy the book.

Laksman

<comment><USER4> Great work, Laksman — congrats on shipping this!

(this is Eric from Domainr, p18 in the book)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't want to be negative, but $34 for a 124 page book seems a bit steep. What's more, the fact it's 37 interviews over 124 pages means that on average it's only 3.3 pages (including pictures) per 'interview' / example.

If we expect a standard introduction / conclusion to the book, then I expect the average number of pages per example would be even less.

Looking at the sample on his site, it doesn't exactly go that in depth with the questioning.

I think the key attraction to this book and many other 'self help / get rich / be successful' style books, is that people get drawn in by the 'examples' and hope that somewhere in the pages there is the answer that they've been looking for, the golden piece of information that's going to guarantee them success. However, their time may have been better used trying to execute their idea, rather than just trying to read things which reiterate the success of others.

\- If this was $12 I would have not been so negative, but for $34 it just seems steep considering the potential lack of real value it will give.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but if it was $12 they'd have to sell almost 3 times as much to make the same money. If less than 66% of the customer base would not care if it's 12 or 34, then they get more money! e.g. if only 20% of people are like you and say "erk $34 no thanks, $12 is ok", then they'd make oodles more money.

Sometimes you don't make it up on volume, but on profit.

<comment><USER7> I should write an eBook called "How to get rich by selling ebooks on how to get rich for $34"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Purchased!

I'm launching my first book next month (<http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com>), which, like SideProjects, is based on many, many lot of conversations I've had with the freelancers/consultants who use my SaaS product.

The idea that developers don't pay for things - including infoproducts - <USER2> bunk. My book has netted just over $2,000 in prepurchase sales in the last week.

Kudos to the author for putting this together (the list of people you've interviewed is OUTSTANDING)

<comment><USER9> Likewise, there's a lot I learned from conversations I've had with YC founders and other startups in the accelerator space. I just launched the book yesterday: <http://sellfy.com/p/9j2z> Here's some background on myself and the book: [http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/29634915106/what- i-l...](http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/29634915106/what-i-learnt- from-yc) Loving what I'm reading so far. Very inspirational. +1.

<comment><USER8> To channel patio11, you should probably raise your prices.

If your book does what it says, it's going to mitigate some of the risk of deciding what path to go down when starting a startup. That's potentially weeks/months/years that you might be saving me from chasing after an idea.

That's worth a lot more than $15 (and _especially_ $3.75)

I'm selling my new book for $39 - and that's a discounted, prepurchase rate! But the value proposition is "if you read this book, and do what it says, and happen to raise your rates by even a $1 - that's another $2k in your pocket this year." Emphasize that your book will help people not waste time chasing the white rabbit, and you can charge a premium.

<comment><USER10> Anecdotally, I'll pay up to $5 for a book on a whim if I think I might be interested. If it's more than $5, I download a sample and _might_ by the book, if and when I even get around to reading the sample, and if I like the sample.

It doesn't matter if you have a great value proposition, without a solid sample I place it in the same bucket as unsolicited phone calls to lower my phone bill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: I've added a full length pdf sample to provide an idea of the questions asked in each interviews.

<comment><USER10> If I hadn't purchased it already, this would have helped me make up my mind sooner!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just a heads-up: when you buy the book, the PDF will be watermarked with your name, email address, and transaction ID in the footer of every page.

<comment><USER12> I am launching my own book in the next couple weeks and was planning to do the same. Is PDF watermarking something people find annoying? If so why?

<comment><USER11> I find it extremely annoying - if I'd known about it beforehand, I wouldn't have bought the book. It's intrusive, doesn't add anything to the reading experience, and communicates that you don't trust me enough to not watermark something I purchased from you legitimately.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the feedback. I think people (myself included) can get so caught up trying to limit piracy that we don't think about how it makes the user feel.

I think that having it on every page is definitely over the top. Would you still be annoyed if it was just on a single page? Say with a thank you for purchasing message?

<comment><USER11> If you have to do it, that's probably the least offensive option.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll turn off digital stamping when it's updated next week with the mobi/epub versions, or at least make sure its limited to one page unintrusively.

<comment><USER11> Cool - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Weird that the purchase link is not built with Gumroad, it's featured in the book and seems perfect for this kind of a sale.

<comment><USER14> I was just about to say the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying a few payment options, using paypal for now. I do plan to add gumroad, and try stripe in a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks interesting. I think the sample would work better as an image from the actual PDF. Currently, there's three snippets that don't make much sense out of context.

Also, Good Dog (the script font) is barely readable in Webkit Mac. -webkit- font-smoothing: antialiased; helps, but I think it's better if you change it for something more legible.

<comment><USER16> I agree with this first point -- the samples appear unimpressive as they are and actually hurt my chance of buying. A PDF or a complete sample of one of the interviews would be great. If I feel it provides me insight, I'll be excited to read the 36 other interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On Firefox 14, roll over on the project list is very broken. If I hover over a project in the first column, it shows in the second column instead. Same for the second and third column. And third column shows off the project list all together.

Otherwise looks interesting. I'll wait on what others say before committing the $25.

Also, if we purchase the PDF today, are we guaranteed the mobi/epub when its released in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you purchase the PDF you are guaranteed the mobi/epub next week as well as any future updates to the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been speaking with the author for the last year as he worked on the book and have reviewed it. Lot's of good material and a great read for anyone interested in building revenue generating side projects. I've got a few of my own side projects up my sleeve and this book helped inspire me to get going again. I'd recommend it, especially once the epub/mobi versions come out.

<comment><USER19> I will pay for it as soon as the epub/mobi version come out so I can read it on my kindle, I despise pdf's for reading books.

<comment><USER20> Just to make the contrarian point:

I absolutely hate any format that is not a pdf file. It puts way too much limitation on the content. Just as an example: I use three "systems" most of the time, one windows, one ubuntu, one android tablet. Pdf works with each one out of the box, I can hight text or copy/past it, edit them, heck even open them in some graphic editing software and extract illustrations as vectors, save it in different formats. In contrast to that, for epub/mobi I don't even know what their native editing tool is so I can convert them into pdfs.

<comment><USER21> The problem with PDFs is that they make a lot of assumptions about layout and formatting, whereas mobi and epub are HTML based, and therefore work on a much larger array of devices - from mobile phones to Kindle for PC, including, critically, eInk based readers which are _way_ better for sitting down to read than anything LCD based.

<comment><USER12> Though if you are writing a book about design you often want the level of formatting and design ability that a PDF gives you. It's hard to give that up with an ePub.

<comment><USER21> If you need something to be pixel-precise, you'd probably just include a .png file.

eBooks aren't perfect for everything, though. I think a design book, for instance, is something I'd rather read as a paper book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The price advertised on the site is $25, but when I go to buy it's $34 (which incidentally is incredibly steep for an eBook). At least where I'm from there are laws against that kind of advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> was updating some things, its fixed.

<comment><USER23> It's back at 34$ 40" after your post What's the official price?

<comment><AUTHOR> it's $34

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Please mention the price somewhere. Having to click the "Get the book" button, then waiting 5 seconds, then having Paypal finally tell me the price is a turn off for me.

<comment><USER25> It's $25 for now, probably will be switched to normal price of $34. I found it immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone know who the author of the book is? I can't seem to find his name on the website.

<comment><USER27> The WHOIS info on the domain (sideprojectbook.com) is under privacy protection as well. I find it a bit odd that the author is masking their identity.

The redirect domain, sideprojects.com, is owned by one "Houtan Fanisalek", but it's unclear if Houtan is the author of the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Did anyone read the book yet? Would you recommend it?

<comment><USER29> If the subject interests you, I'd recommend it since I've personally found it difficult to find detailed information about side projects. I purchased it partly for the information, but also to hopefully motivate myself to pursue some projects I've been thinking about. I do feel like $25 is a lot for any book, let alone a relatively short PDF file, but I understand there's a limited market.

<comment><USER28> I feel the same way. I read founders at work before and I am not sure I want to spend $25 just for motivation at the moment :) Thanks for your replies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just FYI; the menu top overlay on the page makes browsing on a mobile device really bad. It covers more then half the screen, and I'm on a fairly large one (Galaxy S2).

</comment><comment><USER31> The listed price is $25 (<s>$34</s>), but when I went to PayPal, it was about to charge me $34. How do I buy for $25?

<comment><AUTHOR> email sent.

<comment><USER32> Would like to buy for $25 too. Can't wait for kindle version.

<comment><AUTHOR> price has just been updated to $34 since launch day is over :(

<comment><USER23> Ah saw this post after replying to your previous one above. This really is the tipping point (no go) for someone pondering about buying it like me since I saw it in class earlier this morning. Sorry I'm cheap :( college student status

<comment><USER32> Same here, $34 is a little steep, college student here too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Any plans to make this book available in iTunes/iBooks? It's just that i have a gift voucher that i'd love to be able to use.

</comment><comment><USER34> Big thanks for including our site! When I have some time over the weekend I'll be reading all the other interviews, but from the two others I've read so far, this book should be very informative for people getting into bootstrapping a business. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice work selling the shovels. :D

<comment><USER36> A lot of people pinning their hopes on the 99 cent appstore lottery are now probably pretending they didn't just read your comment :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "I don't really market it much but I working on that department."

Hey, before I pay $34 for your book, can you make sure its edited for grammar? If this is in the sample, I'm afraid of what the rest of the book will contain.

<comment><USER38> Well I believe that is my typo....So I deserve the blame for this!

<comment><USER37> Well, that's what editors are for! ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm interested in doing something like this (not same topic, just structure). Could you share something about your approach to convince the founders and the technicalities of the interview process.

<comment><USER40> _your approach to convince the founders_

Just ask.

Seriously.

<comment><USER41> Here's more detail into the process for compiling a similar book - <USER3> Open Sourced: [http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/05/01/startups- open-...](http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/05/01/startups-open- sourced-1-week-later-10000-in-revenue/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It could be just me, but judging by the sample chapter I cannot really justify spending $34 dollars on this book.

I am sure author has put a lot of work into it, yet still the price feels way too high.

</comment><comment><USER43> My business is part of this ebook. Had a chance to read the other interviews earlier this week and must say that there is a ton of great content in there. Definitely worth its price!

<comment><USER44> I'm featured in the book as well (BatteryBar). I can say that the interview in the book is exactly as I submitted it, so the author didn't take any liberties in editing the content. I assume that the other interviews are also exactly what the product owners wanted to put out there.

<comment><USER45> > _I assume that the other interviews are also exactly what the product owners > wanted to put out there._ //

So, poor interviewer? Or was that not meant to be as backhanded as it reads??

<comment><USER44> I just meant that they didn't take poetic license to edit the content, such as by shortening or summarizing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Thanks for the book. I bought it after reading some comments on here about it being motivating and have some good ideas and thoughts.

I figured even if I only learn 1 thing from this, it's money well spent.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> your welcome! the goal of the ebook was to be motivating, but a big part of the interviews contains actionable and tactical advice about getting started, profit numbers, metrics, traffic/growth charts, marketing, finding users, and other things you'll likely encounter. the intent is it will be as knowledgeable as much as it is a motivator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> What about these 37signals bootstrapped profitable projects? <http://37signals.com/bootstrapped>

<comment><USER31> it's a different thing. the book advertised by OP just happen to have 37 "study cases".

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm sure it's no accident that there are 37 projects. I'd be more interested to hear feedback from people who aren't featured in the ebook.

Looks interesting to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER36> @sideprojectbook, if you reprice for a day at $25 ("launch day pricing") when the epub version is released I'll pick it up. 34 bucks though? eh....

</comment><comment><USER49> You should try and get this in the iBook store too?

<comment><USER12> The iBooks store has a maximum price of $15 which doesn't make it very good for value based pricing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Will there be a sequel? I want to be in it! :) I'm sure there are lots of us here that would be happy to participate.

<comment><AUTHOR> consider this one volume 1!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Can't wait to read it - it would be really helpful if the chapters in the table of contents linked to the content

</comment><comment><USER52> Great job on this. Thanks for asking me to be a part of it. Very interesting thoughts from a lot of great devs.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for being a part of it :) hopefully more good stuff coming soon after mobi/epub, stay tuned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Just bought! I was looking for a book EXACTLY like this yesterday. I got lucky that HN pushed one into my lap.

</comment><comment><USER54> Great book and I just bought it. Is it possible to get a version with a white background for better printing?

<comment><AUTHOR> working on it!

<comment><USER54> Awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> It'd be nice to have a way to get notified when the Mobi/Kindle version is available.

I have no way to read a long form PDF.

<comment><AUTHOR> it will be available by the end of next week. it's already in process. anyone who buys the pdf will receive an update via email with mobi/epub asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> How do these things work? Do the interviewers get a cut of the profits? Or do they do it for the kudos?

</comment><comment><USER57> Seems like a great book. Please publish it on Kindle and I would buy it immediately ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> coming next week, if you purchase you'll receive the update

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Please please change the type. Otherwise, looks interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, yeah. Changed, should be clearer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> nice book. I've only glanced over a couple of the chapters but I'm looking forward to reading it!

</comment><comment><USER60> Great job. Humbled to be part of it!</comment>


Libya turns off its internet: this time it's a flatline - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/?r=LY&l=WEBSEARCH&csd=1299014407973&ced=1299241800000 <comment><USER2> I wonder if turning off the Internet will start to be treated as a reliable predictor that the government is going to fall. So far it's a pretty good one.

<comment><USER3> So far, North Korea hasn't fallen. All governments eventually fall; what timeline were you thinking of?

<comment><USER4> The Japanese monarchy has supposedly been around since 660 BC.

<comment><USER5> If they don't govern anymore, are they still a government?

<comment><USER4> The Japanese monarchy has gone through cycles of governance and non- governance, remember the shogunate? I have no reason to believe that it won't happen again 50, 100, or 200 years from now, without ever having broken the chain of succession.

<comment><USER6> The chain of succession has been broken a few times, most prominently by assassination, where the next candidate assuming the throne had, ahem, well, ample reasons to be glad they hadn't invented DNA testing yet. The unbroken succession is largely an article of faith, concocted in the late 1800s in the service of turning an often fractious bunch into a modern nation-state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Renesys' always excellent coverage throws some more light. They say the routers are all still up, there haven't been any routes withdrawn, but packets are just stopping somewhere on the way into libya. Firewalled I'm guessing, so privileged parties can still communicate.

[http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/02/libyan- disconnect-1.shtm...](http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/02/libyan- disconnect-1.shtml#latest)

[http://www.renesys.com/blog/assets_c/2011/03/latencies_Libya...](http://www.renesys.com/blog/assets_c/2011/03/latencies_Libya2_AllSources_c-275.shtml)

The second one is a plot of traceroutes into libya over 24 hours.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a way around it. Libyan activists, specially those in Tripoli are able to get the word out even if he powers down the whole country.

Fret not, all Gaddafi is doing is signal to those in areas under his control that he is losing control. Nothing could damage him now more than a mismanaged public image; that's why you see the cleaning crew sweeping streets and taking out garbage, to send strong signals of normalcy by attending to mundane chores. It's all poker bluffs; if a handful of generals _understood_ he is out, and accepted it, he will be out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks to certain senators, the US will have a similar killswitch soon too (they resurrected the bill and snuck it back in).

<comment><USER10> Imagine the increase in development speed of projects that aim to create a true decentralized internet, if the bill passes. The killswitch might not be so bad after all.

<comment><USER11> What does "true decentralized internet" mean to you? Surely if you want to communicate with people around the world, you need to rely on _someone_ to transport the data for you across the country and the oceans. If not government, then who? Why would you trust them more?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, that's flat!

But, perhaps they haven't turned it off: "Data after this point are still being finalized. Interpret them with caution."

We will have to wait and see.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Libya Traffic Divided by Worldwide Traffic and Normalized"

Maybe Google search volume just skyrocketed elsewhere on the planet? ;)

<comment><USER11> Maybe they just cut off access to Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Where are the nameservers for .ly? Will bit.ly be affected?

<comment><USER15> It'd be sort of nice if they did go down. Then maybe people would think twice before doing business with brutal dictatorships in the future.

<comment><USER16> Does your IPhone Made in China count?

<comment><USER17> Obviously you haven't asked many Chinese whether they think their government is a "brutal dictatorship".

<comment><USER18> I have to answer to this comment since this is the same argument governments had back in social and communist countries in Eastern Europe.

It is not about whether majority of people approve government or think their government is a "brutal dictatorship". It is about what that government does with people who doesn't approve the government.

<comment><USER19> Say what you want about the Chinese form of government, it's a lot more functional than most Western democracies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting, there is still some very low level gmail activity. I wonder why?

<comment><USER21> I suppose that traffic is under very close scrutiny by foreign intelligence services. It likely belongs to the regime, or close privileged persons that are not kicked off for some reason.

<comment><USER22> Network and system admins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does that mean we can't place job ads for the Amazonian Guard?

</comment><comment><USER24> <http://www.middle-east-info.org/gateway.html>

</comment><comment><USER25> Grim.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the patient is dead. Maybe someone cut some cables, or perhaps some critical infrastructure was destroyed in the fighting.

</comment><comment><USER26> FYI chart doesn't display fully on iPhone</comment>


The drug industry wants us to think Martin Shkreli is a rogue CEO, but he isn't - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/09/25/the-drug-industry-wants-us-to-think-martin-shkreli-is-a-rogue-ceo-he-isnt/ <comment><USER3> My daughter, like many kids, has an allergy that requires us to have epipens on hand. There was a good article the other day about how the owner of epipen have raised the price of epipen from $57/pen in 2007 to over $400/two-pack of pens today. I don't think you can get just one pen, btw.

I think the difference is they didn't raise the price in one fell swoop. Frogs in boiling water, etc, etc.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-23/how- market...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-23/how-marketing- turned-the-epipen-into-a-billion-dollar-business)

<comment><USER4> In my anecdotal experience, the price of asthma inhalers (Albuterol) have gone up significantly, which sucks since they have a limited shelf-life & it's common to have multiple (car, office, bedroom, etc). Like epipen-countered allergies, asthma is a life & death situation.

From a quick web search, this site[1] shows:

> To go from inhalers that cost 5 dollars to 60 dollars especially for those > who don't have prescription drug coverage has been awful.

As a consumer, I can either forgo inhalers or use expired ones (instead of spending $$$ to keep them current).

[1] [http://www.dailystrength.org/health_blogs/dr- orrange/article...](http://www.dailystrength.org/health_blogs/dr- orrange/article/your-inhaler-expensive-green-at-price)

<comment><USER5> Could you not buy them from another country? A quick trip across the border in either direction will save you a ton of money, and I'm sure you can mail order it too.

<comment><USER6> Not that it is frequently prosecuted in the US, but in many (most?) countries it is illegal to import pharmaceuticals without a license.

<comment><USER5> asthma inhalers are considered a pharmaceutical?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The entire health sector is rotten to the core. The fate of two of my friends is a great example of where priories lay.

One is a registered nurse. She has seen her overall compensation shrink over the last 5 years as hospitals merge into regional cartels and medical practices consolidate. These cartel entities play rough, breaking unions and shipping in visiting nurses to keep wages low. Fortunately, her husband got a job with better insurance -- her family plan on his insurance costs less than her individual coverage.

The other person is a pharma sales rep. She makes about 2-3x the nurse, gets a car, and usually wins 1-2 vacations to beach resorts or Vegas every year. For awhile it was peddling a viagra competitor, now she has a stable of different drugs to push.

So when I hear about of the money needed for "research", from companies with huge sales forces pulling down $100-150k plus cars, etc... My first thought is "bullshit"

<comment><USER8> A sales force amplifies what you are already doing. If a research company can hire a salesman that brings in $1M in additional sales, it makes sense to pay that salesman $900k in salary and benefits, because that's an additional $100k the company can put towards it's research. If you agree with the research, you should be happy they hired that salesman. Saying you agree with the mission of a company as long as it pays it's salesman less than $x doesn't make any sense, unless you somehow know that the salesman is bringing in less than $x.

<comment><USER9> Why should the employment question for salesmen be, "How generous can we afford to be?", when for everyone else it's "How stingy can we afford to be?"? The whole reason a company hires any employee, at all, is because it's profitable. The question is why employees who don't contribute to the core mission of the firm should receive 90% of the revenue they generate, while those who do receive a fixed salary irrespective of revenue (and also have to work long hours and take few vacations).

<comment><USER10> Because to the CEO and the board and the shareholders the _salesman_ contributes to the core mission of the firm (bringing in dollars) and the _engineer_ just contributes to the costs.

<comment><USER11> By that logic, just fire all the engineers - costs go down and the dollars brought in remain constant or increases - hence the company makes more profits.

<comment><USER12> This happens all the time. Engineering is outsourced or team is moved to another project and the same product is sold for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are lots of problems here:

(1) Medicine has a very inelastic demand function. If you need substance X to stay alive, you'll pay anything to get it.

(2) Costs are hidden from consumers. If insurance / Medicare is paying for it, it literally makes no difference to the end user if it's $5, $50, or $50,000.

(3) Free-market forces are distorted by patent monopolies and lack of diversity in the supply chain. With a patent, you can crank up the price as high as you want. Ditto if you're the only supplier and it'll take some time for competitors to bring production online, or you can deny them access to samples for the equivalence testing your competitors need to prove to regulators that their drug is the same as your drug.

(4) Broken incentives for developing new drugs. A patient's going to be taking a drug to treat their diabetes / ED / high blood pressure for the rest of their life, whereas something like an antibiotic is only taken for a couple weeks. Guess which one is more profitable, hence attracts more R&D money?

What's the solution? I don't know. Maybe market reforms to align the incentives; perhaps even bounding pharmaceutical companies' profit margin to some multiple of their costs (but of course you'd have to be careful about the wording of the regulation and auditing for compliance, to make sure it can't be gamed by e.g. deliberately inflating the costs). Or perhaps even some kind of socialism where the government tells people what to produce or how much to sell it for (agricultural subsidies might be regarded similarly -- the government is deliberately manipulating the market to push down the price and push up the supply of goods necessary to sustain life, so shocks don't result in lethal shortages).

Bernie Sanders at one point talked about replacing patents for new drugs with prizes, but I think he may have given up on that.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is a symptom, not a problem. Drug prices are a good measure of how we are doing on healthcare policy and insurance regulation. It looks like poorly. It costs 2.5B dollars to develop a new drug. The regulatory hurdles are MASSIVE. We have a complicated and extremely compromised healthcare system that is focused on providing insurance when it should have been providing better healthcare. There is no easy answer here, but companies are going to want to make profits and the system incentivizes them to spend money developing a few critical drugs, holding on to the patent and pricing it as high as possible, the dev costs are passed to the insurance companies which are passed on to you in premiums as well as inflation, as insurance companies operate much like a bank. This comes full circle into the role that banks play in lending and increasing the money supply.

Possible answers. Tighter fiscal policy, patent reform, smarter testing, looser regulations on known compounds, google x prize like gov't or private funding for cures, distributed computing using algorithms to evolve a cure (will be interesting to see what happens with that patent)

[0][http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop- ne...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-new- pharmaceutical-drug-now-exceeds-2-5b/)

<comment><USER15> I dunno. I don't think that in Europe the development costs or regulatory hurdles are smaller than in the US (if I had to make an uneducated guess I would say bigger), and yet the prices are way lower.

I would add to that list "heavy government regulation on medicine prices", they are not a common commodity and should not be left to the markets free whims.

<comment><USER16> That may be because the US is leading the way on drug development. After the drug has been developed, the drug company will be able discriminate on price to maximize revenue. I imagine the cost of getting approval to sell a drug in European countries that has already been developed and tested for the US is much smaller than the actual development.

It could be that without the US system, these drugs would not be available in European countries as well.

Mandating lower prices for drugs is unlikely to work as it hasn't worked in the past (Venezuela everything, US gasoline, etc).

<comment><USER14> > Mandating lower prices for drugs is unlikely to work

Not sure if you are saying this generally, or you mean it as a response. I did not mean to indicate this, I believe lowering regulations and dev. costs would be beneficial but not mandating lower prices.

As an aside, I agree with you but would be interested to see if America can continue to compete in the drug market long term. Obviously, it is a big market, but with countries like China and India and their growing middle classes, if they have a more attractive development cycle with less regulation and tighter feedback I wonder if biotech would move overseas. America has really great biotech and science sectors because engineers move out of those countries here. If this stops, other markets become more attractive, and/or the patent system remains broken I would be pretty concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The colchicine story reminds me of the Red Yeast / Lovastatin story. Red Yeast is a traditional Chinese medicine that can lower cholesterol due to several compounds it contains. Lovastatin was identified in it, put through trials and is now the standard for lowering cholesterol. Meanwhile, the gov has said you can't sell Red Yeast Rice with lovastatin in it, so they allegedly remove it.

As a single datum, I was told I needed to be on statins, and when I balked, my heath care professional said I could try RYR for 3 months and if it didn't work I'd need a prescription for statins. My cholesterol dropped 97 points in 3 months. I said "so I don't need statins?" She said shes never seen that kind of drop with statins, so no.

So yeah, take stuff from nature, patent it, then get the natural version banned, profit!

<comment><USER18> Red Yeast has not been banned, you just can't sell it as a treatment for high cholesterol. Why? It hasn't gone through clinical trials.

You might argue what's the difference between a tablet of lovastatin and Red Yeast? Well, I don't know and the FDA doesn't either that's why you can't make medical claims about it.

I'm glad it worked for you! Also, lovastatin went generic a long time ago and it now costs a few hundred dollars (if that) a year to treat a patient.

<comment><USER19> "Red Yeast has not been banned, you just can't sell it as a treatment for high cholesterol."

Wikipedia disagrees with you. It says, if a product has a measurable amount of monacolin K, i.e., lovastatin in it the FDA will stop it's sale even if there aren't any claims of cholesterol reduction.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_yeast_rice#Regulatory_rest...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_yeast_rice#Regulatory_restrictions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am not arguing for or against the drug industry, but naming a few drugs with price increases is meaningless.

Telling me some random generic has gone up in price means nothing to me . For all I know, that might be an old fashioned drug hardly any doctors prescribe and the price increases is required in order to keep it available for the few people who require it... or it could just as easily mean the company has a monopoly and is price gouging consumers.

There needs to be a weighted index, or multiple indexes, of drugs weighted by how important they are. Not sure how to define importance in this context, but quantity sold would be a good start, maybe another index weighted by average expenditure per patient per year and another weighted by lives saved.

Edit: Downvoters, I did read the article. An unweighted group of any product is not very useful from an economics perspective. That is why the CPI is weighted.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index)

<comment><USER18> You raise a good point and percentage increases can be deceiving. If a drug cost $0.01/tablet and now it's $0.03/tablet, yes that's a 300% increase, but it still costs pennies per day to treat someone.

Unfortunately I can't find it right now, but the Us gov't did a study into generic drug price increases. There is no one reason why they went up. For some drugs it was because a company decided to stop making it and there were shortages. For other companies, they had manufacturing problems and shortages resulted.

<comment><USER21> Shortages don't seem like they should a valid reason. Choosing to no longer produce a needed drug shouldn't even be a legal option - free market shouldn't be allowed to trump health. I don't know how you write laws to require a corporation to produce a drug they own, and perhaps that isn't the right approach; but it doesn't seem morally acceptable to let this happen. Capitalism should be taking a back seat here compared to the common good. "Manufacturing problems" just seems ripe for abuse. "Oh, we fired 90% of our production line, and now we just can't seem to pump it out anymore". Manufacture should have safeties and redundancies in place to prevent the sudden inability to produce whatsoever. It's unfortunate that money trumps all, even for the health industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's likely more nuanced than this, but at the end of the day, he's getting paid a lot of money to be the bad guy. He'll be "fired", and then he'll go on to do it again somewhere else. He even flat out admitted it (before deleting the tweet):

"@matthewherper great question, I guess we will find out. I take the pain for my investors"

-Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) September 21, 2015

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/hedge-fund- trader-m...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/hedge-fund-trader- martin-shkreli-hits-back-at-critics-after-raising-price-of-hiv-drug- by-5000-10511960.html)

<comment><USER23> I fully agree with your notion but I'm note sure how that tweet "proves" it.

<comment><USER22> Ah yes, I meant that it "proves" the first part ("My job is to take the heat"). You're right, the "being fired" part is just a theory.

<comment><USER24> Well every CEO's job is that, so it's not really proving anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looking over the anecdotes here, i find myself thinking that big pharma is just an example of the "profit uber alles" mentality that has been rampant in the corporate world since at least the 80s (if not before).

An interesting set of documentaries in that regard may be The Mayfair Set: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mayfair_Set)

It recounts, from a British point of view, the rise of a type of finance capitalist that revolved around strip mining established companies.

I think part 3 touched on how by the time the people that started it got cold feet about it all, it had become institutionalized thanks to pension funds and similar.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm sorry, but I have to nitpick on the AARP graph showing the average annual rate of price increases for 227 drugs.

Anytime I see data that is a _subset_ of the real data set, I have to wonder why they did that. Why not the average annual rate of price increases over all prescription drugs? Why only 227 of them?

Also, I disagree with this quote: _" Only when a 46 percent discount was applied to a pricy Hepatitis C treatment, Harvoni, did it become a good health care value -- at about $40,000 per year."_

That's patently untrue. Hell, CTAF (California technology assessment forum, which assessed drugs for MediCal) found that Harvoni, at it's full price of almost $90K _was_ cost effective. The real problem is that it would cost too much to treat everyone.

<comment><USER26> The drugs were chosen simply as the most significant ones for the AARP's membership. The methodology is thoroughly discussed in Appendix A of the study:

[http://member.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/ppi/2014-11/rx- price...](http://member.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/ppi/2014-11/rx-price-watch- report-AARP-ppi-health.pdf)

Also note that the drugs were chosen _before_ they started tracking prices.

I totally understand your skepticism, but rather than just wonder why they chose those, why not find out?

<comment><USER27> They did find out. Why go digging when you could just make a comment and get all the work done for you.

<comment><USER26> That's the internet for you. Ask a question and nobody answers, state the wrong answer and you get the right answer instantly. It's not my fault, I'm a victim of an oppressive system!

<comment><USER28> Cunningham's Law: [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Public utilities which have monopolies set prices according to a regulated process: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_ratemaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_ratemaking)

Given the patents and difficult FDA approval processes, it might make sense to regulate drug prices similarly to public utilities.

I'm all for free markets. But when there's zero competition, you can't still treat things like a free market.

<comment><USER30> Nit: Patents are state-backed monopoly rights, patent supporters argue that free market would result in too much competition.

<comment><USER31> I've never heard any patent supporters say anything about "too much" competition. What they say is that anytime a competitor can freeride on your investment of resources, it is not _fair_ competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Generally, when massive price oddities become commonplace, it's evidence of government distortions of free market operation. Trying to blame it on 'rogue' CEOs is an exercise in futility.

<comment><USER33> In fact Daraprim/Pyrimethamine shows some interesting features of markets:

* the market in the United States is so small, that there is a single manufacturer

* Generic drug manufacturers try to come in the market, the brand-name holder has made it extremely hard for them to do equivalence testing by making the drug available only through a restricted channel that excludes them.

* Even if them manage to get the drug to the market, the brand-name manufacturer can lower prices temporarily, ensuring they exit.

* The same manufacturer can have doctors prescribe the expensive brand-name versions of the drug by buying them off.

Instead of leaving patients in the hands of such natural or almost natural monopolies, the government can fix this situation in a variety of ways - <USER2> ceilings, subsidies, even government production of drugs for rare diseases.

You can argue that, some regulation somewhere has given these companies a monopoly, but without any regulation, there would be no market to speak of - the off-NDA drug market isn't one I and assume most patients trust.

<comment><USER32> The way around the trust issue is to make the "and effective" part of FDA regulation optional. Drug companies can only market "and effective" if they get the FDA approval of it. The rest can only market it as "safe". This can dramatically reduce the prices of drugs, and it is the user option whether they want to pay extra for the "and effective" certification or not.

<comment><USER34> It was optional until the 1960s. It was changed to be mandatory because the market was full of safe but useless drugs. Considering how mere differences in marketing requirements have not stopped a flood of useless homeopathic remedies, I expect that useless drugs would come back in force if that change were reversed.

<comment><USER32> Americans have paid a heavy price for this in terms of large reduction in the number of new pharmaceuticals coming to market, long delays for new cures, and, of course, huge price increases.

See "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" by Sam Peltzman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Meanwhile, Obama nominates Robert Califf as FDA chief. A guy who has been feeding at the pharma trough for several years:

[http://hcrenewal.blogspot.sg/2015/09/turn-that-door- around-p...](http://hcrenewal.blogspot.sg/2015/09/turn-that-door-around- physician.html)

<comment><USER36> I'll just remind- remember everyone's skepticism of Wheeler. Judge each by their actions, there is time to tear them to shreds.

<comment><USER35> On what basis could you judge Wheeler favorably? Because he backed down after a monumental backlash from the public combined with several very powerful and wealthy corporations?

Wheeler can't claim credit for net neutrality after attempting to destroy net neutrality and losing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The colchicine case is an interesting one if you dig down into the details.

Colchicine has been used for hundreds (?) of years. It never went through phase 3 trials and it was never officially approved by the FDA. Instead it was grandfathered in.

This made the FDA pretty uncomfortable [1] and I can't blame them. How do you properly regulate a drug where there is little to no data outlining it's efficacy and safety? So, the FDA decide to dangle a carrot in front of drug developers. If you formally take a grandfathered drug through the approval process, you will be awarded with something call "data exclusivity" (it's not a patent). For a period of 3 or 5 years (it depends on the filing), the FDA will not approve another form of the drug. In addition, they will tell/force all the other grandfathered manufacturers to stop selling their versions.

Statement from the FDA: _Colcrys is the only FDA-approved single-ingredient oral colchicine product available on the U.S. market. Approved by the FDA in 2009, Colcrys' prescribing information contains important safety data and recommendations on drug interactions and dosing not available with unapproved products._ [2]

Of course this is a pretty attractive carrot for a drug company. Spend $X now and you've got a captive market where you can recoup your R&D spend and make a profit over 5 years. Plus _the heavy hand of the FDA will help you get rid of competitors!_.

Due to the the FDA regulatory process, it shouldn't be surprising that the cost of colchicine went up, it's pretty much had to in order to pay for the FDA approval. Did it have to go up 5000%? No, probably not. But it did have to go up if the FDA wanted an approved version since producing a grandfathered, unapproved drug is pretty cheap compared to an FDA approved one. What made the colchicine case particularly unfair was that the company didn't actually run any trials. They just collected all the trial data that already existed (mostly published papers) and submitted that data.

Another great example is Mr. Mucus, the cold medicine, it was the exact same play. In fact, a VC firm backed the entire process. The got the active ingredient approved by the FDA (again, it had been grandfathered in) and the FDA forced all other competitors off the market. This blog post has all the details [3]. Suffice to say, Aisling Capital made a 15x return off that investment. And that's why you see Mr. Mucus ads all over the place.

[1][http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulat...](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/EnforcementActivitiesbyFDA/SelectedEnforcementActionsonUnapprovedDrugs/ucm119899.pdf)

[2][http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/uc...](http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm227796.htm) [3][http://biotechtranslated.com/2011/08/09/how-to-make-the- fda-...](http://biotechtranslated.com/2011/08/09/how-to-make-the-fda-your- friend/)

<comment><USER37> Mr Mucus? You mean Mucinex/guaifenesin?

I'm confused about this example since guifenesin has been approved by the FDA since the 1950s. But it was the _time-release_ formulation of the molecule that was given data exclusivity to Reckitt in 2002 (after purchasing it from Adams). There was no "unknown efficacy" tag attached to this medicine.

I asked a similar question about Ambroxol a while back (Europeans know this as Mucosolvan). For some reason nobody will take up this one in the USA? I find ambxorol works _way_ better than guifenesin on my kids.

<comment><USER18> No, you're correct, it was the time released version of guifenesin.

The problem was, all the current time-release products were not FDA approved. You can't just create a time-released version and keep your fingers crossed, you need a clinical trial to actually show how it is time released. You wouldn't want a time-released version to release 24 hours of drug in 5 minutes!

<comment><USER37> So, by induction, I can take any currently approved molecule and apply a new formulation to it (time-release, liquid vs tablet vs aerosol, etc) and get exclusivity this way?

I thought the point was to take old drugs with no clinical data and get them back into the mainstream - this exclusivity was the carrot on the stick. But this seems more like a twist on that idea.

<comment><USER18> To your first question, the answer is yes. You could take any approved molecule and apply a new formulation and get exclusivity on it. There are many companies that are trying to do just that.

Of course, your new formulation actually has to add some value (1 tablet per day instead of 1 table three times per day).

To your second point, the Mucinex example is "taking an old drug with no clinical data and getting them back into the mainstream". The difference is that instead of it just being the active ingredient, it's a time released version of the active ingredient. Prior to Mucinex being approved, there were unapproved versions of long-acting guifenesin out on the market.

You're right it's not exactly the same as "no one has tested this drug at all", but rather "no one has tested this formulation of this drug".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Wouldn't all these problems disappear if the entire drug industry was nationalized? Once you remove the profit angle, there is no more incentive to raise prices dramatically, make minute changes to a molecule to extend your patents, or only focus research on medicine which is the most likely to make money.

<comment><USER14> I suspect the opposite. The Scientific American estimates the cost of rbinging a new drug to market is 2.5B and that number has doubled over the past 10 years[1]. We need to find a way to allow tighter feedback loops, better data flow and less regulation without purpose. We have amazing technology that allows continual monitoring of vital signs and rapid blood tests etc. If our laws could evolve with our technology we would be in great shape. That would, of course, require elected officials to be qualified in various disciplines, act in the public's best interest and not accept money from lobbyists.

[1][http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop- ne...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-new- pharmaceutical-drug-now-exceeds-2-5b/)

<comment><USER39> > less regulation without purpose

Everyone agrees with that; all regulation that actually exists or has been proposed has/had a purpose behind it.

Individuals may disagree with whether the purpose is desirable, whether the regulation effectively serves the purpose, and whether (assuming they agree that the purpose is beneficial and it is actually served in effect by the regulation) the beneficial effect of serving the purpose is worth any costs that the regulation creates, but those are different issues than "regulation without purpose".

<comment><USER14> of course. I was implying that regulation without a purpose:

1)That is logical, and makes sane tradeoffs.

2)Is in the publics interest instead of lobbyists.

3)Is divined using evidence.

We need unbiased medical experts to propose a system that works which has the following charachteristics:

1) Promotes the creation and development of drugs and the advancement of medical science.

2) Allows for a tight feedback loop and quick sceintific evaluation of new drugs, possibly allowing less dangerous drugs quicker feedback cycles.

3) Lowers the cost to get to market.

This is a VERY hard problem to solve as an exercise, but particularly difficult within the current political framework.

<comment><USER39> > We need unbiased medical experts to propose a system that works which has > the following charachteristics:

Unbiased medical experts are not particularly likely to be experts on three points you suggest are critical, since none of those are actually even remotely medical questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I worked for Johnson&Johnson in Belgium years ago. On each desk of the open space I was on, there was a small "manifesto". The title was : "we work for the good of our patients and investors". Yes, patients and investors put on the very same level.

</comment><comment><USER41> Me and my siblings have a genetic mutation that requires us to take Colchicine 3 times/day for the rest of our lives so needless to say I am glad to see the drug industry being exposed.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's refreshingly that we are losing our appeal for pure moneymaking. I'm not sure the attempted t was to portray him as a rogue so much as a jerk. And the article doesn't refute that.

</comment><comment><USER43> I, for one, would like to see drugs increase very sharply similarly to what this guy did.

Reason is we need a consumer reform, and not a government reform which is a temporary solution.

The entirety of pharmaceutical R&D is $161 B globaly. If half of Americans were contributing $100 monthly to a pool, we could fund it entirely and make every drug available for free.I would love to see this done outside of the government.

We MUST stop depending on government for Health, and Education. While they intend well (I truly believe they do individually as people), as an aggregate they are not able to solve these issues at scale.

<comment><USER26> What sort of organization do you propose would obtain and manage those $100/month contributions, and how would that organization differ from "a government"?

<comment><USER43> Your tax dollars do not fund drug R&D. Think KickStarter for issues that matter to us.

<comment><USER26> Regardless of whether the government currently funds drug R&D, your idea sounds a lot like government-funded R&D, thus my question of how it would be different.

<comment><USER43> 1) We can dictate price: $0.00. 2) We can decide what drugs to develop (i.e. do we need Ibuprofen, Advil, Tylenol, This, That, or do we need the best). 3) When the price is $0.00 we ensure no one dies because they can't afford a drug. 4) When the price is $0.00 well physician can focus on providing you with the best drug, and not the one they get kick back from.

Shall I continue?

This idea does not stop at Pharma. Wherever Gov fails, we can try this.

<comment><USER26> Sounds just like a government medication R&D scheme plus a government medication purchase plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> people are jerks, they justify it by saying its business. Have I had an option for medicine provider I would go with the one thats not abusive to its employees.

but i grow all my medicine out of the ground.

<comment><USER45> If you really "grow all your medicine out of the ground" it's more than likely if you ever get truly ill or injured you yourself will be in the place you grow your medicine out of. Accept science. It works.

<comment><USER44> Not sure about that brother, I mean people have been growing this stuff for thousands of years man. I got mine on that good good extra potent ja feel?</comment></comment></comment>


Unlicense Yourself: Set Your Code Free - <AUTHOR> http://unlicense.org <comment><USER2> Why not CC0?

Btw: is there a license that excludes military use?

<comment><AUTHOR> The closest would be the JSON licence.

"The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil" [http://www.json.org/license.html](http://www.json.org/license.html)

<comment><USER2> haha. But both sides allways fight for the good side. Well at at least the death-star might be out of question.</comment></comment></comment>


As coronavirus cripples supply lines, more U.S. firms looking to leave China - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-04/spreading-coronavirus-tears-apart-global-supply-chains <comment><USER2> Sorry if this is a naive question, I don't work in supply chain, but do companies usually know the suppliers of their direct supplier? Or have ways to manage that kind of indirect risks ?

Because if you move your factory from China to Mexico, but some parts of your Mexico factory are still sourced from China, you have only masked the problem.</comment>


The Too Big to Fail Whale - <AUTHOR> http://marojejian.tumblr.com/post/35939081891/the-too-big-to-fail-whale <comment><USER2> A conceptual problem with this analogy is that when a corporate whale dies in a community the people that live their wouldn't be represented by other separate organisms - they would be the cells of the whale and cells of other whales.

This article is just much like the theory of social darwinism, in that it willfully twists valid scientific knowledge to push a social agenda that has little in common with the analogy. "We need more [vulture capitalists], not less" my foot.

<comment><AUTHOR> I may be wrong, but I can guarantee I'm not willfully twisting anything! Like any analogy it works differently depending on how you interpret it.

As I see it, people don't 'live' within the corporation they work for, therefore they are not like the cells. They are better understood as the energy that made the whale tick. 'Decomposers' are helping those resources become re-deployed somewhere else.

In the economic end of the analogy, they're not dying, they're getting jobs in another company that is growing, not dead. Just because a company fails, it does not follow that net jobs in the economy need to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This was my disappointment with the auto and banking industry bail-outs in the US. We spent a lot of money and effort that just kept the status quo.</comment>


C++0x Final Committee Draft Published - <AUTHOR> http://www.justsoftwaresolutions.co.uk/cplusplus/c++0x-now-at-fcd.html

<comment><AUTHOR> At the above link, you can comment on this draft even if you're not a member of an ISO national body. Herb Sutter's post: [http://herbsutter.com/2010/04/02/how-anyone-can-comment- on-t...](http://herbsutter.com/2010/04/02/how-anyone-can-comment-on-the-fcd/)</comment>


Y Combinator Top Companies List 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ <comment><USER2> I am surprised that reddit is on #13.

It's alexa rank in US social media websites is #2 behind Facebook. Apart form their redesign shenanigans, people actually like the product they offer (in contrast to facebook) and they are still growing.

I wish Reddit stays in the kind of "grey" area where it never gets as "official" as twitter, despite the popularity. If anything, that might be entirely its appeal.

That predicament will eternally present a glass ceiling for reddit's revenue, but as a consumer I'd rather see that than it going the full facebook -> hyper growth above anything else approach.

<comment><USER3> > I am surprised that reddit is on #13.

Reddit might be a #1 _project_ out of all the startups ever funded by Y Combinator, but it's unlikely to ever become a top 10 _company_.

Because as an ad business it can neither match Google at targeting audience by exact user intent, nor Facebook at targeting audience by exact user profile.

In fact, I see reddit more like Couchsurfing: a project which would do _much_ better as a foundation rather than a corporation, based on the role it plays in the society.

At its essence, it's a highly scalable CRUD application, which requires a simple user interface, respectful community moderation, and as little user tracking as possible.

<comment><USER4> > "It's just a CRUD application"

If I had a quarter every time I heard this. You can say that for half of the companies on that list. If Facebook and Google can make so much money from ads, heck even Twitter. Reddit can do the same if they really put in the effort in building a strong ad platform. They are quite comfortable.

<comment><USER5> Twitter, so much so that it has been a typical "example app" for MVC-framework intro books and tutorials for the last decade and a half!

<comment><USER6> Calling Reddit a CRUD makes me think of saying an airplane is "aluminium and a bit nails with glue"?

One can fold paper planes too (example airplane app)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly six of the top ten built on Ruby!

Python is also strongly represented, but zero started with back-ends on Java, .Net. PHP, or other more broadly popular options.

This is strong evidence that the startup world is dramatically different from that of enterprises and businesses where tech is ancillary (which dominate total numbers in popularly shared statistics). In many ways it's a vindication of PG's old essays. Though we're not all using Lisp, startups lean towards it.

<comment><USER7> Having worked at a few of the top ones, many of them are now investing huge $$$ to rearchitect their tech platform to Java and services. I understand that Ruby allowed them to grow fast, but I am wondering if starting with Java to begin with would have allowed them to avoid massive investment to address tech debt at the expense of growth and profitability at a late stage.

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate further? Why is Java better than any of the other languages commonly discussed in hn?

<comment><USER9> Types, among the most performant garbage collected languages out there, very mature dev tooling that can speed you up in many ways, large library set, history of being more open than C#. Also many data libraries are made with it and interface well with it, such as kafka, hadoop, etc.

And there are many good engineers who are well versed with the language.

<comment><USER8> Why not Scala then? Only issue might be getting Scala engineers, but then I'm assuming good java devs can quickly catch on Scala..

<comment><USER9> Scala has bad build times and a compiler that people have a hard time understanding AFAIK, so it's future development is more suspect. And it has as reputation of large companies moving away from using it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_(programming_language)#C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_\(programming_language\)#Criticism)

While something like kotlin has a small learning curve and gives you a lot of the benefits of scala. And it's backed by google, jetbrains & the investment that goes into android. Most people understand ADTs, nullable types, lambdas and data classes fairly readily.

I think it basically comes down to a company making a system out of a dynamically typed garbage collected language of either php, javascript, python or ruby, and suffering the perf issues (~8x slower than C/C++) and lack of type safety that it gives. Also those languages typically have ecosystem issues as far as the robustness of their libraries go (like javascript).

A more mature company settles into a typed GC language (Java, C#, Golang) and a typed static language for perf benefits when needed (C++, Rust). Yes there are typed versions of various dynamic languages now, but you don't get the speed benefits that the typing gives you, and a large part of the library ecosystem that you will interact with will still be untyped under the hood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vanilla-almond Here is a breakdown of the locations based on the HQ

      US:          85

      Remote:      4

      Europe:      3

      S. America:  3

      S. Asia:     3

      Canada:      2

      Africa:      1

      SE Asia:     1

      Middle East: 1

Two companies have HQ in two countries hence why the totals above equal 103 and not 101

<comment><USER10> Aren't all three companies from South Asia Indian: Razorpay, Meesho, and ClearTax?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Psyched to see Meesho up there. Ecomm over WhatsApp is huge in India and they've acquired a significant customer base judging from the # of app installs (~10M+). My prediction is, it won't be long before they grow too huge to be acquired or get acquired themselves.

I count three startups from India in YC S19 batch that rely on WhatsApp as an auxillary platform:

1\. [https://vahan.co](https://vahan.co) does recruitment over WhatsApp for low to medium income jobs.

2\. [https://digi-prex.com](https://digi-prex.com) is a subscription service for medicines.

3\. [https://mahamela.in](https://mahamela.in) a group buying e-commerce business.

Another interesting point, I think, is both startups from Zenefits co-founders are in top 100: Rippling and ZeroDown; the latter with just 15 employees.

Of the startups on the list, I personally like what Flexport and RigettiComputing are doing.

Here is a similar list of _top companies_ I stumbled upon a year or so back (not just limited to YC): [https://breakoutlist.com](https://breakoutlist.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you look at the diffs between this and the last list, there are def some companies that opted out of listing. Some of them had so much funding that there's no way that they could've just fallen out. For example, Machine Zone, Zenefits, LendUp, Soylent.

Also interesting, are supposedly well-capitalized companies from the 2018 list that shut down: uBiome(with a fair amount of attention) and Meta.

Other fun observations might just be how much money people are raising. Memsql was 40 in 2018, and is 67 in 2019. I'm guessing they didn't raise money in the time between, and a bunch of companies did so in the meanwhile.

Also kind of interesting? CoreOS(2018 #42) was above Heroku (2018 #46), but in this year's list is above them (Heroku #71, CoreOS #73). But both were acquired by the time that the 2018 list was made. I'm not sure what this is about, but maybe it's because the acquisition terms weren't all cash, and there were fluctuations in the intervening time in Salesforce vs RHT(and then, RHT got acquired by IBM so who knows how that factors into the present value of what used to be CoreOS). Fun.

<comment><USER12> Lendup fell of cause it fired most of it's staff after running out of funding. They renamed themselves too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like Sam is close to closing at least #1 and #2 on his bets [https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk](https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble- talk)

With Gitlab perhaps closing #3

<comment><USER14> Pretty solid predictions.

1) The below 6 companies will be worth >$200B by 1/1/2020.

public: \- uber 50 \- pinterest 14 \- dropbox 8

private: \- airbnb 35 \- spacex 33 \- palantir 26

$166B so very close so far.

2) Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, Teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase, Docker, and Weebly will be worth > $27B total by 1/1/2019.

Stripe alone was valued at $35B, so this one looks like a lock.

3) Winter 2015 batch will be worth >$3B on 1/1/2020.

GitLab $2.7

So looks pretty close.

Impressive.

<comment> edouard-harris The top 100 list includes 6 other companies from W15 (Equipment Share, RazorPay, Ironclad, GrubMarket, Notable, and Atomwise). So prediction 3) has definitely come true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am completely out of the loop so might be my ignorance, but why is Brex worth so much?

The founders are super smart and accomplished, I even know some people that worked at pagar.me which was big success in Brazil and can say the guys are super hard working and smart.

But I fail to understand why Brex is such a wonderful idea, I worked for years on the payments sector and all features listed are fairly common to all major providers.

<comment><USER16> Because it's hard for a lot of startups to qualify for traditional corporate charge cards with no personal guarantee even though the venture backed ones have a lot of money in the bank.

Personally I think the fact Stripe launched a competitor will make it hard for them to grow as fast as they might have prior.

<comment><USER17> Not sure if this is the case in the US, but here in SEA we had an unbelievably hard time getting corporate credit cards.

In my previous company we were actually building credit card authentication systems for banks and schemes, a private company with years of operation. And still - we werent approved for a card! Never-mind being provided a solution for managing them correctly.

In the end, like everyone else, we had to take out personal cards. The problem was, the company was so prompt repaying our personal cards we could never get approved for credit limit increases. Apparently you have to rack up some accruing debt...

PS Obviously not related to valuation (perhaps?) but Brex has the most refreshingly clear description on the list "Brex does corporate credit cards."

<comment><USER15> nice to know. Thanks for the reply

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Question for YC: How does the list rank companies like Zapier that are growing very fast, but haven't raised in years to set a current valuation? I'd imagine that revenue is factored into play but perhaps not shown.

<comment><USER18> The list only uses their last valuation, so YC just acknowledges it's not a perfect metric and publishes the list by last valuation.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes sense and thanks for the reply, Austen. Also, congrats on making the Top #100 for Lambda School.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Where is valuation? Why isn't it listed? Also, what's up with the weird name "jobs created" for employees? I feel like these details must have been chosen deliberately, but I can't determine why.

<comment><USER20> The minimum valuation is 150M, and as for the number of employees hired, I would venture to say that they are trying to use it for PR purpose. Employees are a big cost center for a business (a few thousand can cost 100M a year or more) so it sounds like they really want to highlight all the favors they are doing for the world by employing so many people.

<comment><USER21> > really want to highlight all the favors they are doing for the world by > employing so many people

Um, well, yes, in a democracy, jobs created is _the_ most interesting metric for politicians, particularly if those jobs are in their district. Those are their constituents. Do you want policies that are friendly toward tech companies and tech workers alike? Because connecting the jobs with the companies is how you do that.

<comment><USER19> I still think there are subtle issues with the semantics. Does "jobs created" necessarily imply "careers started" or is the case something else? Where are the boundaries? How much of its personnel contributions are part-time workers or independent contractors?

Nonetheless, I think you have a great point here. There's a subtle positioning difference between "employees" and "jobs created" \-- the latter most directly connects a company's economic impact/participation with its contribution to the domestic labor market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 2018 list is available here [1], it's interesting to see what the big jumps are.

[1][https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190904014058/https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/v)

<comment><USER23> Can I snipe someone into diffing the two and listing "biggest jumps"?

<comment><USER24> Just shared a google sheet with you.

<comment><USER22> Do you mind sharing it with me as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> interesting fact - out of the top 100 companies, (only?) 4 are remote.

<comment><USER7> The dominance of San Francisco is mind blowing and flies in the face of the narrative of "decentralizing tech" that I have been hearing over the last decade

<comment><USER26> YC is based in the bay area, so that's not too surprising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hmm, how is Cruise #3? It seems like their acquisition was for around a billion dollars, but DoorDash and Coinbase should be above that on the list.

<comment><USER28> I've never even heard of them... I tried googling and just got cruise.com lol

<comment><USER29> [https://getcruise.com/](https://getcruise.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> TIL reddit is a YC company. I had no idea this whole time.

<comment><USER31> In fact, isn't HN pg's version of reddit?

<comment><USER32> It certainly started that way! At this point it's pretty different though. I enjoy both for different reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I know that social and environmental good organizations historically trend towards the "not as profitable or even profitable" category which makes them less likely to be funded and consequently on this list, but I wish more of the companies on this were driving more important change in the world.

<comment><USER34> so you wish the list were something it's not.

<comment><USER33> What's your reason for such an antagonist reply?

I wish that those types of companies could find ways to generate more revenue and job opportunities and get on lists like this. In the same vein, I think YC has the opportunity and resources to really elevate those types of companies and help them make it big.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Surprised Stripe ranked ahead of Airbnb. But thinking about it makes sense, Stripe eventually will skim a percentage out of every transaction on the internet... Also only one ad-supported consumer internet company, all are either Saas or marketplaces

</comment><comment><USER36> I'd love to see a list like this sorted by gross revenue (i.e. net GDP contribution) or total paid compensation. Contrasting either of those vs. invested capital would be particularly interesting.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a certain irony in a investor (YC) perpetuating the myth of private valuations. Haven't we learned from WeWork and Juul etc that private valuations are mostly meaningless?

<comment><USER23> WeWork I've heard a lot about. Why is Juul's valuation meaningless? Thanks in advance!

<comment><USER37> The current vaping-related lung disease crisis, plus alleged sloppy marketing practices at Juul, plus expectations of increased FDA regulatory oversight. They're still worth something, but Altria's investment is unlikely to yield a great ROI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> English is not my native language, but this sentence looks really weird to me:

"Helion Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to clean, safe, and low-cost commercial electricity."

<comment><USER39> The weird part of this sentence is that "...will be the first to..." has an implied "arrive at" or "develop" after it -- so it could be read as "Helion Energy is breaking the fusion barrier and will be the first to develop* clean, safe, and low-cost commercial electricity."

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The descriptions of some of these are hilariously SV.

</comment><comment><USER41> Surprising to not see Zenefits in the list

<comment><USER42> Perhaps this is why: [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires- nearl...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/zenefits-fires-nearly-half- its-staff)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Jobs created seems off or I misunderstand it. Docker has more than 400 employees for the past few years.

<comment><USER44> i think these numbers are based on whenever the last valuation was

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Is there a slow down trend in the number of successful companies funded more recently, say in the last 4 years?

I know it takes time for startups to become successful. it just seems that the pre 2015 era had more successful startups. That would mirror the broader trend we see in the marketplace of fewer and fewer successful startups.

</comment><comment><USER46> Maybe I missed something obvious but what are the ranks based on?

<comment><USER47> Very first sentence? (still ambiguous)

>Here is a list of the top Y Combinator companies by valuation as of October 2019.

<comment><USER46> Whoops thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The URL for Embark is actually embarktrucks.com, not embark.com

<comment><USER49> thanks for catching

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Breakdown by industry:

B2B Software and Services 53

Financial Technology and Services 16

Consumer Goods and Services 11

Education 4

Automotive 3

Biotech 3

Consumer Media 3

Aerospace 2

Construction 2

Healthcare 2

Real Estate 2

Energy and Environment 1

</comment><comment><USER51> Go Nurx!

</comment><comment><USER31> Gone are the days where innovation means a new invention.

<comment><USER52> When was that ever true? Businesses have always improved something that exists. They don't really exist to create "new inventions".

Sometimes they start that way, but those are the exception, not the rule. For example, Xerox (xerography) and Google.

Apple did a lot of inventing, but they also clearly stood on the shoulders of Xerox PARC, which did a lot more inventing.

Every other company I can think of is not based on "inventions", but more "bringing to market". Netscape was a great tech company, but they didn't invent the web, etc.

<comment><USER31> Sure, lots of the big tech companies used tech invented elsewhere, but still, they were bringing new technologies to market that hadn't been seen before. Internet access through browsers was big and new. Google was a huge step over the competition. Apple iPods and iPhones big and new. Lower down: databases, network hardware, and so on.

Now it seems like a bunch of micro-optimizations, ways to avoid legislation, or lifestyle products. Not new forms of technology entering the market that really do change everything. The 'change everything' technologies, like Musks' ventures, seem to be a bunch of moonshots (or marshots).

<comment><USER53> Like you, I assume, I'd love to see more remarkable innovation, but the reality of innovation is that it's mostly a slow grind where most of the value is in optimizing the current paradigm until it breaks and we have to figure out a new 10x paradigm.

There are also dynamic effects where incremental innovation makes future radical/disruptive innovation easier.

Since most technologies are combinations of previous technologies, it's rare to find completely new technologies/inventions, and that's ok.

The fact that to reach their potential, innovation must be diffused through society also bounds the pace at which it can go. As that infrastructure develops, standards emerge that allow for innovation to be distributed faster. But then, in turn, as the underlying technologies improve incrementally, they also ossify as an infrastructure, which might delay bigger innovations.

The question of where the disruption/incrementalism equilibrium lies and what its ideal position can be is very interesting and, I find, understudied.

<comment><USER31> I think the previous round of breakthroughs produced a collective brain drain that is making the next round more difficult to come by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Is Brex some kind of tongue-in-cheek reference to Brexit?

<comment><USER55> No. Unfortunate coincidence.

<comment><USER56> doubly so: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X)</comment></comment></comment>


Coronavirus Disrupts U.S. Court System - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-disrupts-u-s-court-system-11584445222 <comment><USER2> It's almost like when ancient Rome had a pause in winter and life resumed in springtime. The calendar ended in December (October) and resumed two months later in March.

Alas, the modern world has no time for pauses and is obliged to march on.</comment>


Theranos continuously failed to comply with CMS on several counts documents show - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/25/theranos-continuously-failed-to-comply-with-cms-on-several-counts-documents-show/ <comment><USER2> It looks like they pulled their product claims directly out of Theranos.</comment>


With unprecedented force and speed, a global recession is likely taking hold - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/14/recession-economy-coronavirus-jobs/ <comment><USER2> It's important to keep in mind that the current state of things is temporary. When the virus blows over, there will be a significant rebound. This situation is V-shaped, it's just unclear how high the right side of the V will be. And in the meantime businesses will have to weather a period of hardship, and some of them will fail to.

But there is nothing fundamentally _wrong_ in the long run. The analogy to a hurricane seemed correct. 2008 was the total collapse of an enormous financial house of cards. Things _broke_ that could not be repaired. The things that are broken at this moment, on the other hand, will repair themselves. They'll just really hurt in the meantime.

<comment><USER3> This would be true now, but over several weeks and months serious damage will be done (layoffs, bankruptcies, regulatory disruption) that will result in a permanent reduction in economic activity. The economy will repair itself, but the longer it takes, the less likely we will get a V-shaped recovery and the more likely it will take us much longer to get back to where we were.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. By this rationale, any recession or depression is V-shaped. Which is true (or has been so far), but it doesn't help those who suffer from it.

I'm also struck by the analogy to the Smoot-Hawley act and the theory that the breakdown in international trade contributed to the Great Depression. We don't yet see restrictions on cargo trade, but:

1\. We could. 2\. There seems to be some imperfect analogy to the effect of remote work (in the case of knowledge workers) and paused work (in the case of retailers and the like).

The degree to which a number of developed economies have come to a practical stop in recent days is shocking. Will we recover, like, eventually? Sure, quite likely. Will there be lasting effects for the economy? Definitely.

(I am, however, heartened by one other analogy to the Great Depression-- perhaps, as in that case, an economic decline now will serve to reduce skyrocketing inequality, though it's hard to see that as a sufficient silver lining.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When US injects 1.5T into the markets, it seems a lot like the US theoretically can absorb 1.5T of goods and services from the rest of the world with money that didn't exist the day before. It seems absurd if true. Can anyone with knowledge on the matter clarify?

<comment><USER6> Money only has meaning during exchange. If it's sitting in someone's coffers and not being traded for goods or services then it is essentially removed from the market. By dropping 1.5T into the market the fed hoped the financial system would increase circulation enough to stimulate transactions. They seem to think that if you're hoarding X dollars then an additional Y dollars will be less valuable to you to hoard and more likely to be traded for goods and services. Except they gave it to the wrong people. It appears that instead companies bought back stock or otherwise didn't stimulate trade. People who have little money to hoard are more likely to spend an additional dollar of income than people already able to hoard money.

Edit-there are about 128 million households in the US. That 1.5 T would be about 11,718$ per household if given straight to them.

<comment><USER7> That money wasn't given, it is lent overnight. What is a US household going to do with a collateral-backed $11718 loan made today that they have to repay tomorrow morning?

<comment><USER6> Continue on with the full details of the loans please.

<comment><USER8> What precisely are you looking for? They're overnight duration and nearly riskless: they're repo-market loans collateralized with treasuries, so even if the bank just runs away with the money the fed still has made a profit.

<comment><USER9> It's a overnight loan, backed by US Treasuries of some type (ie Bond's guaranteed by US Government). Bank gives Bond, Fed gives $$, swap back a few hours later.

The closest analogy would be a homeowner offering their house as collateral for a ~12 hour loan....

<comment><USER10> Payday loans are another analogy, with some added price gouging on top because f*ck the poor.

Here's my previous pay check (s), so the payday loan place knows how much money I make; here's some sort of proof that I haven't been fired yet, so they believe that my next pay check is coming within a few hours/days; and heres's some legal-equivalent of the title to my car, for them to repo in case I'm not able to pay back the loan.

A 12-hour loan of $12k might seem ridiculous but an entire industry has been built on top of $300 loans for 72-hours, at great profit (until regulations came in to cap the profit).

<comment><USER6> They're not really apples for apples comparisons as people don't have the same abilities to make money in 12 hours that businesses do. Overnight loans serve a purpose to businesses that people or households don't have a direct analog to use. I'd recon it's more useful to offer a household or person a 1-3 month loan or credit line to help cover any lost wages due to sickness or fallout from the covid response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Paywall prevents me from reading the article, but from what the title implies I'd like to posit that there is precedent for the scale of this shift.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bummed I didn't see this so obviously before my 401k lost 25% :(

<comment><USER13> Are you retiring tomorrow? If not, it doesn't really matter does it.

<comment><USER12> Some people are. And I will one day, so not sure why you think it doesn't matter. Will it return? Sure. But that still leaves 1-2 years with no growth.

<comment><USER14> Your portfolio should already be no more than 60% equities if you're near retirement.

If you're not ready to retire, you have much time for the value of your portfolio to recover and continue to grow.

"Time in the market" is the primary consideration, but also proper diversification (less growth, but also less risk) as you get closer to retirement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>