Ask HN: How much do founders pay themselves? - <AUTHOR> This is something I've always wondered about...  When you take a VC round, how do you (as a founder) get your salary determined?  Is it purely up to the board and investors?  Is it up to you?  How does it compare -- is it the bare minimum to live on, so that everything can go into the company?  Is it comparable to an executive you'd hire?  Somewhere in between?<p>I'm very curious about the calculus.  I imagine it varies quite a bit by the type of investment made (e.g. angel vs. VC vs. institutional), but that's just a guess. <comment><USER3> In general VCs and investors are looking for folks who want to take the minimum salary necessary to live off of, while pumping every dime into the product.

Of course most VCs are making $250-$1M in _salary_ per year. That doesn't count their carry... that's just their base salary.

here is what VCs generally do:

1\. Pre-launch/Pre-revenue, 20-something founders: $50-100k

2\. 30 something with two kids in private school: $100-250k

3\. Profitable company having just completed a C round of $15-30m: $200k with a $200k bonus on hitting a huge milestone.

Also, the secondary market for stock has helped this... i.e. reports are the founders of Wordpress, groupon, facebook and digg got to selling a couple of million dollars in stock.

best jason

<comment><USER4> I think #1 is going to experience the most amount of scrutiny. I'll be more conservative if the pre-launch/pre-revenue amount is under 1m. It'll probably be closer to 40-60k

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is my experience: first 1.5 years, nothing. Then $60K for the next year. Then as profits went up, it reached $120K. Stayed there for several years. Then profits went up more, $200K. Now at $275K.

<comment><USER6> This is the first response giving hard numbers. Thanks for the candor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You pay yourself a reasonable living salary, based on location and living expenses. It usually has to be approved by the board, but so long as it's reasonable, you should be OK. The idea is that you're not getting rich off your salary, you should be focusing on growing the company to get rich off your ownership stake. At the same time, you shouldn't be starving, because that will cause you to spend more time focusing on your personal finances than working on the company.

<comment><USER8> You make a good point in your "You shouldn't be starving[...]" sentence -- One of the biggest productivity killers in my life is dealing with, or even worrying about personal finances. As a founder, if you decide you want to go get a few beers with friends and grab dinner, you shouldn't then have to worry about how you're going to recover the $30 you spent outside your budget. The key here, I think, is to pay yourself "enough to live in a manner that allows you to focus solely on your business and productivity."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We pay ourselves market salary for our field, but we're not VC funded.

When my other friends and I started Sonicity, we all threw money in to start the company, and then when we got funded we took better-than-market salaries out. In reality, unless you're being stupid, founder salaries aren't on paper going to make much of a difference.

(There's a whole separate argument to be made about the tone you set in your company with salaries, but that's between you and your deity).

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of people seem to be saying "market". But for us, it was based entirely on need.

After talking to our families, each of us came up with the minimum salary required to maintain our current lifestyle. The idea is that a founder should not be _saving_ any money, but they also shouldn't be forced to move into a smaller home or stop eating out.

What's interesting is that this produced 3 very different salaries, even though our "market" rates are roughly equal.

Our VCs were completely supportive of those numbers and did not push back at all.

<comment><USER11> Interesting--- salary based on need, while contributions presumably are based on strengths of each founder. I've heard that compensation strategy somewhere else... ;-)

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need))

<comment><USER12> I bet the above company does plan on some time in the future; having more "normal" and "market based" salaries; otherwise they could have worked anywhere for below market wages. They have to have a plan for making more money down the road that won't depend on their needs; but value.

<comment><USER10> Of course. If revenues begin to cover our own salaries, then we'll increase to market rates. But until then, we're all committed to making our seed round last as long as humanly possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> $400K...you are the CEO...you gotta get paid like one.

In reality it's how much you can afford. If you don't need money..pay yourself $1. If you need $15K to live on...pay yourself $15K.

At least until the company is profitable.

Once it's significantly profitable, you can afford to pay yourself more.

<comment><USER14> CEOs of small companies don't make $400k.

CEOs that have run a successful business before might make $250k-$300k in Silicon Valley (a high salary area, to be sure).

$250k would probably be the high end for a CEO of a 30 person company, if the CEO had not had a major success before.

<comment><USER15> This isn't the first time I've said this, but "CEO" sounds like a pretentious title for the head of a <= 30 person company.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but what would you suggest we call the guy who is in charge of a 30-person company, then?

<comment><USER17> Here in England, it's called a Director.

<comment><USER18> In the US a "director" is anyone on the board of _directors_.

<comment><USER19> That's true for UK companies too - there can be (and often are) multiple directors. In fact, unless there were a lot of founders, I'd expect all of them to be directors, at least initially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Off-topic from the OP's question, but if you're incorporating as an S (for example, although other pass-through entities are similar), you need to pay yourself a "reasonable and appropriate" amount as salary. That is, you can't just pay yourself $1/year in salary and take $500K off in K-1 distributions (thereby avoiding FICA and other payroll-only withholdings). The IRS will tag you for that in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER21> I would also like to point out that most Angel Investors/VCs won't invest in LLCs/S-Corps. I think this is because of preferred options... I'm sure someone else with actual experience could chime in.

<comment><USER20> Heh, and most LLCs/S-Corps won't bother looking for Angel/VC investment. ;-)

That said, AFAIK converts (which seem to be getting popular these days, at least among sensible angels) are perfectly compatible with typical S corp structure.

<comment><USER22> My company just converted from an LLC to a C-Corp. The result was delicious sausage, but the making of said sausage is not something we'd repeat if given a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I was in the VC world, the founder's salary vs. equity demands were usually used to gauge how invested they were into the company's vision and concept. If the founders spent a lot of time penciling in $200K+ salaries, elaborate bonus and commission packages, and exorbitant perks (a $5K/month 'car allowance' was my personal favorite) for themselves, then it was a definite red flag. If instead they were willing to take modest salaries but fought hard for equity, you knew that they truly believed in their idea and were fully invested in the concept.

</comment><comment><USER24> Check out <http://www.compstudy.com/>

It's an annual survey of private "high potential" companies (about 2/3 VC backed) executive compensation. You can find detailed data on base salary, target/actual bonus, equity and more for various stage companies.

It's the "Kelley Bluebook" of startup executive compensation.

<comment><USER25> Would be cool if it wasn't, you know, $999

<comment><USER26> Ya that's a lot of money. It makes sense that if you are concerned with VC backed executive salaries $999 is probably a minor expensive. Google had a link to an older one on scribd:

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/13743949/2008-Compstudy-Report- in-...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/13743949/2008-Compstudy-Report-in- Technology-Abridged)

NOTE: In the description it states this is an abridged version. It looks like the detailed version(s) are what cost so much money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know you mentioned VC funded startups in the original post, however it seems this is becoming a digest for all interested parties to share/get info on startup salaries, so I'll chime in with numbers from our bootstrapped company, <http://ridewithgps.com>

I am pulling $1k a month from our business, which is a bit under what we bring in right now. It allows me to focus less on outside money and more on the business, and, as soon as we get more, I will be able to take $2k. This is bare minimum for me to live off of, and I'll maintain it here until my cofounder is able to come on at $2k and make his bare minimum to quit his dayjob.

After that, salaries can increase as revenue increases, up to "industry standard" wages. We are currently an S-corp, so we have to figure this out, which is turning out to be kinda tricky. According to the IRS, is a founder considered a CEO if the business has no CEO? Does that mean if we don't take $150k a year in salary we are going to get the hammer from the IRS? Trial by fire!

</comment><comment><USER27> Usually less than everyone else as long as they are able to do a little more than subsist. They are taking equity. When other people who are hired on board find out founders are paid less than everyone else, it usually quells any negative attitude towards management

</comment><comment><USER28> You should think of it as equity, not money. Do you want to extract your equity (convert it to cash) now and buy stuff, or do you want to reinvest it in your business?

</comment><comment><USER29> I pay myself $33K gross annually. I'm the lowest-paid salary employee in the company.

<comment><USER30> $33K is pretty low in most places in the US, How do you manage to stay focus on runing the business?

<comment><USER31> When you're running your own business you'll be surprised at how few expenses you have, especially if you don't have an office.

I know for me, I absolutely must have $2000 to survive $2500-$3000 a month to be comfortable... anything over that is nice to have.

<comment><USER32> > When you're running your own business you'll be surprised at how few > expenses you have

That certainly sounds counterintuitive to me. What did you think would be a cash sink that wasn't? I'm guessing there were more things you thought you'd have to pay someone to do that you found weren't so painful to take care of yourself?

<comment><USER31> yeah ... people think they need to get an office, a phone, fax machine, virtual assistant, whatever ...

When its just you, or you and one other person, you can work from home, use skype (+rebtel if you do international remote work), direct calls to your phone ... get a cospace if you _really_ have to have an office. Apart from taxes, there isn't that much overhead if you play it right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My co-founder doesn't have a salary (though he does get our health benefits). I'm on an H-1B so my salary legally required to be "market rate", as set by the US government for my job title and location (a fact apparently not very widely known).

<comment><USER34> I've known several DBAs on H-1B's who were paid severely under market rate for what they were doing. How is "market rate" defined?

<comment><USER35> You're either trolling or _(may I politely point out)_ you risk coming across as one.

That's a whole different conversation, totally OT to the OP. I'd suggest you spin up another thread to debate that, or search the archives on hn.

<comment><USER34> I'm really curious. Imagine you were at a party, and engrossed in a conversation about food. Honey comes up, so somebody asks a question about bee raising. Would you tell that person,

"You're either trolling this party, or (may I politely point out) you risk coming across as a troll in this party"?

Clearly I missed the part of the social contract which states, "Discussions may never, ever branch".

<comment><USER35> I'm curious what's wrong with someone suggesting that you _might_ be coming across as trolling.

<comment><USER34> Might I recommend reading [http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/0671723650)

It's helped me immensely in getting over my geekdom, and learning how to relate to people easier. Your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You can't have money worries when trying to build your business. It's distracting and could well cost the VCs more in the long run if you have other worries/can't focus 100% on the job in hand.

If your expenses are $4000pcm, then take $5500/$6000. You're running a company after all, and that precious down time you have has to be maximised (generally costing money).

If you're financially happy you'll have no _need_ to work, but you'll _want_ to.

</comment><comment><USER37> Jason Calacanis had an interesting segment on this on his show. They say $50-100k. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kloJQ0EjgTE>

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't think founders should take giant salaries. At the same time, if you have funding, I think you should pay yourself enough to be comfortable.

People do short-sighted things when they are desperate. I think super low salaries increase the risk of burning out, giving up, or taking a more attractive offer. I think quitting for one reason or another is the biggest risk to a startup's success.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's directly correlated to your bottom-line net income and return on invested capital. If you can scrape by on nothing and invest everything possible back into the business (assuming you have a high ROIC).

It also assumes you have enough profit to pay yourself. Thus, the 33k is prob best if you're not living on ramen and tuna (go grab a beer as one commenter suggested). Because, if you're investing back into the biz then your future salary is exponentially higher.

For example, my interactive marketing company is experiencing triple digits ROIC so we have yet to take a dollar out of the company and continue to invest not only profits buy our own outside cash (and it's been well over a year) but we're getting to the point where we need to pay some bills and feed ourselves. Thus, we're going to keep our salaries as low as possible to cover our personal expenses like rent and food. We're doing this because we know a year from now we're going to much, much more profit to work with. So you want a hard number? Less than $30k per year. Pow.

</comment><comment><USER40> at wepay the founders are the lowest paid employees in the company

<comment><USER30> How much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> We didn't pay ourselves until the company was profitable. This was somewhat easier since we started the company while in college and had pretty much no standard of living to maintain.

We didn't take any funding, so it really wasn't possible to pay ourselves before becoming profitable unless we took on other debt. We decided we'd rather be individually poor with a company than individually wealthy with no company.

Once the company was profitable, the partners agreed on a goal-oriented pay structure. The base was under market value compared to other opportunities, but was still more than enough to easily live on. Then, by hitting reasonable revenue targets, salary would increase quickly.

</comment><comment><USER42> The advice I have been given is that the founder salary should be market rate for skills/experience, but the actual check should be for bare living expenses. Ramen profitable is when you have the cash flow to sustainably sign the checks; profitable is when you can pay your own salary with backpay. This way you spell out your commitment/opportunity costs for potential investors and yourself while keeping cash requirements limited.

As I understand it, there are also some tax/legal issues regarding setting salaries since corporate profits and wages are taxed differently. This is what an accountant is for.

</comment><comment><USER43> Generalization: Entrepreneurs, as a group, come out worse than VC's, as a group, on these types of negotiations. The CEO/Founder is taking a much larger risk, and is much more committed (deeply invested), than the VC's that fund them because the VC's spread their risk across multiple companies. It's a shame that an argument as thin as "taking less salary shows commitment" when the investors are not similarly committed (their salaries remain fat as ever, regardless of their performance). People can get more money, but they can't get more time. And the CEO/Founder generally devotes 3 to 7 years of previous time. The equity upside is not a valid justification for below market wages because investors get that without sacrificing theirs. There needs to be some symmetry in the commitment between CEO's and investors.

$180K/yr for a first-round company ratcheting up with each subsequent round. If you're not raising enough to afford that, then you're not raising enough. Consider delaying the round to create more value if VC's are taking too big a piece of the pie.

</comment><comment><USER44> In the UK there are two main sources of income for company directors and shareholders: Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and Dividends.

You have different tax thresholds so most self-owned directors I know tend to take an amount that leaves a minimum in terms of tax liabilities combined with a healthy fund for tax deductable expenses and so on. The company itself also pays tax, so in some cases it may be preferable to go PAYE as it moves the director's renumeration from profit to operating cost.

Most of the directors I know take between £41k (although I think the combined income/dividend efficient limits are higher this year) and around £60k, and spend anywhere from another 10 to 50k through the company.

Directors I know who are brought in to run companies they don't own tend to get paid over £100k with a bonus.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've been in business for 5 months and I pay myself $0.

</comment><comment><USER46> There is no fixed sum.

But if you are a skilled professional you should calculate "opportunity costs":

If you could get a job with 250k payment and you pay yourself only 50k - <USER2> are theoretically loosing 200k a year.

If the same startup generates 200k of profit for the first year and you own 50% if it you are still loosing 100k.

Then again if this startup could be sold right now for 500k - your up 150k.

Next step would be probabilities:

If you have no offer on the table but there is a 80% chance your startup could be sold for 1m, calculate with 800k. And stop adding this extra value if your exit probability is low.

</comment><comment><USER47> Varies from founder to founder depending on their psychology and their personal situation. While the board approves it, you make the proposal.

There's a lot of benefit to being able to say 'this is a great opportunity, but we're being careful with our cash right now - I'm the lowest-paid person at the company' when recruiting. That said, you don't have to be a martyr and drain away your savings after you've raised. Your board may vary, but after a Series A you can likely justify a low six-figure salary.

</comment><comment><USER48> I am a big fan of bootstrapping so I do what I think is a common mantra on HN is pay your self as little as possible to survive. Once the company is profitable you can start increasing your salary to market rates.

After all your a founder you here to make something successful not pull a fantastic salary. Your a owner!

</comment><comment><USER49> If you have a wife and kids... enough to cover expenses + some breathing room.

</comment><comment><USER50> I think 30% discount to what you would take in the open market.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think it should generally be inline with what other funded startup founders pay themselves. I've been led to believe in the past this was between: $50-70k.

</comment><comment><USER52> in the UK various funding bodies (eg. SMART) approve a founder salary of up to £40k, approx $60k, in line with other posts here.

</comment><comment><USER53> i have a bias against outside investment so i can maximize simplicitity and control, minimize risk of somebody fucking me over, and so i can choose my own pay.

</comment><comment><USER54> A related issue that I don't see addressed in the comments is the trade off between salary, opportunity cost, and equity. If there are two founders, one who could earn $150k, and the other who could earn $50k, should the former always get three times the latter in compensation, given equal commitment? If there is no salary in a bootstrapped startup should one get three times the equity (or at least some portion of allocation)? If both have the same market salary, but one has greater need, should the one be paid more? Should they in consequence get less equity?

All difficult questions I don't have an answer for.</comment>


The Andrew Warner Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.quicksprout.com/2009/04/08/the-andrew-warner-story-how-a-21-year-old-created-a-385-million-dollar-business-by-returning-his-jcrew-clothes/

<comment><USER2> This interview is great stuff. Some great quotes:

 _"You think the teachers were proud? If a kid wanted to draw or write poetry or do anything artistic, they were full of praise. But as soon as they found out what I was doing, they shut me down. Sharing your candy with others is fine, but there was something disgusting to them about commerce.

...

Ever since elementary school, I wanted to show that businesspeople are the heroes and encourage others to become entrepreneurs."_

So true! It's rare that a teacher would appreciate the selling of goods at school. Interestingly, I got busted by my principal in middle school for selling something regularly (I don't even remember what; soda, probably), but he wasn't appalled by the selling, so much as just covering his ass. He actually said he appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit, but that he just can't allow students to sell stuff to other children. (Maybe he was blowing smoke up my ass to keep me complacent, but I got the impression he was generally impressed with the "entrepreneurial spirit")

But I can totally see an elementary school teacher being completely appalled at a student _selling_ (god forbid) goods, rather than sharing.

This quote in particular really strikes home: _I hate the pansies who whine that "it takes money to make money." No it doesn't! It takes a sense of mission. If you're on a mission, you'll find a way._

Sounds very much in tune with being "Relentlessly Resourceful."

<comment><USER3> Maybe that teacher was appalled at the gouging. Ten cents for a stick of gum??

<comment><USER4> That's commerce though. Each stick of gum comes from a sheet that's about as big as your living room floor and costs them about $10 to make, they then sell the entire thing for like $10,000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lesson learned: There is nothing wrong in copying other peoples ideas, just make sure you execute it better than they do.

<comment><USER6> _"Let's do the math. We paid webmasters 10 cents every time one of their users used our greeting card engine. We got paid up to $3 by venture-backed firms every time we got those users to register for these venture-backed firms' services. That's how we got our margins."_

I think the lesson here is that making money on the internet is greatly facilitated when other people are willing to pay irrationally large amounts of money for what you're selling. Product quality may have played a role in this story, but it sure sounds like the critical step was recognizing the ridiculous inefficiency that existed in the market for eyeballs (i.e. paying $3 for something acquired for $0.10)

<comment><USER7> I interviewed Jason Fried of 37 Signals on my site. He told me that his ebook made hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think his margins were even better than mine.

What margins like these don't take into account is the years of work that came before them.

In my answers to Neil, I tried to keep my explanations simple. But I don't mean to imply that I found a way to turn nickles into dollars by salesmanship alone.

Thanks for bringing this up timr.

<comment><USER6> Let's be clear: I'm not teasing you for your business model, nor suggesting that it was easy to do what you did. I also don't care that you bought something for ten cents, and sold it for 30x more than that -- that's capitalism. You exploited a market inefficiency, and made a lot of money from it.

I _am_ teasing the OP a little bit, because the comment that "execution" was responsible for your success is basically useless. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the critical ingredient wasn't the quality of your virtual goods or the writing in your newsletter, but the timing and novelty of your approach.

<comment><USER5> Isn't timing and approach _part_ of the execution?

<comment><USER6> Timing is part of execution, sure. But when people toss around the "execute better" cliché, the implication is nearly always that you can make your product better and succeed, even if your timing is abysmal and your approach is unoriginal.

This story isn't about making the better e-mail newsletter. It's about a guy who recognized that he could arbitrage traffic for massive gain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In case some of you don't know Andrew Warner, he has a ton of great interviews on:

<http://blog.mixergy.com>

and here is his Hacker News profile:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=AndrewWarner>

</comment><comment><USER8> "'You don't understand,' he told me. 'If I ran ads in it, it would taint my work.'

There were a bunch of email newsletter guys who felt that way. In their stupidity, I found an opportunity."

Amazing, they're stupid because they care more about the product than making money off the product. I wish most companies were that stupid, there would be a lot better products out there.

<comment><USER9> _I wish most companies were that stupid, there would be a lot better products out there._

No, there wouldn't. They'd gradually wither away and die because they're afraid of making money _from their business_.

I will never understand the reluctance of so-called "entrepreneurs" who have some philosophical aversion to the idea of making money.

Note: I'm not just talking about condor's comment...I see this attitude expressed constantly here on HN and throughout the "Web 2.0" world.

<comment><USER8> its not an aversion to making money, there's no way to survive without making it. I will never understand the glorification of making money as an end, its so obvious, it should go without saying, yet here we are with yet another big bucks lottery article. the energy and focus should be on making things better, focusing on refining the product, with the obvious profit constraint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Millions of people used our greeting card engine each month. Venture-backed firms paid us $1-$3 every time we convinced those users to sign up for their services."

Kind of reminds me of RockYou's Facebook advertising model. (If there is a gold rush, sell mining equipment instead of mining)

I wonder what the ROI was on the users "purchased" by the venture backed startups.

<comment><USER7> So one of our VC-backed clients accidentally showed me his investment deck. Turns out his investors were valuing his company at $7.50 times number of members.

It's part of a game that some VC-backed startups are involved with.

I bet their VC's had numbers that showed they could take the company public at $10 times number of members.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm much rather have a business I care about than clothes I look good in.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like he owes a lot to his brother.

<comment><USER7> I owe him more than I can say. It's not just that he's an incredible developer. In the early days, I had to deal with a lot of rejection when I pitched our company. Michael helped me stay optimistic.

<comment><USER12> Just curious was he a co-founder?

EDITED TO ADD: Just noticed, I guess his brother replied in one of threads below.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > I'm amazed that you noticed our margins Neil.

Why is that amazing? Isn't it plainly obvious?

<comment><USER7> I'm surprised that people don't look at financials beyond the top and/or bottom line.

<comment><USER13> But at that point in the interview you've just mentioned that you made $1-$3 per user, with millions of users active each month, and you were paying 10 cents for a portion of those users. Of course the first thing people are going to is the math and realize there's a lot of money right there.

But back to why I posted my original comment, it was more the condescending tone of the "I'm amazed" part of that sentence. My gut reaction would be: "Why yes, I can multiply in my head and it is amazing, Andrew."

Thanks for your reply though, nice to see you in this discussion.

<comment><USER14> Wasn't it that they paid $.10 per user, and then, if they converted, got $1-$3? Without knowing the conversion ratio you wouldn't be able to say what the margin was.

<comment><USER7> Great point. We didn't have 100% conversion.

I kept things simple to explain how the business worked. There were other factors like this at play.

By the way, a big one was fraud. I remember seeing my first washed check. That's where someone took a check our company made out for $25 or so. Washed our ink of it, and rewrote the check for much more money.

Crazy.

<comment><USER14> Supposedly there are special inks that help with that. But even so checks are hard to control, and the company I worked for switched to paypal for international payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Andrew, I had a similar experience in elementary school. I was in elementary school during the whole pokemon phase, so about 8 years ago.

I sold pokemon cards on the playground. Now, you'd usually go to the corner store and pay $3-5 for a pack of cards. I had the idea when I was at an asian night market that I could buy a box of cards for a lot less (I think about $1.50 a pack) and then resell those.

So I started out just selling packs for $2.50 or $3, a bit below the regular stores with a decent return. Which was pretty awesome at the time. I sold about 2 full boxes then realized there was more money selling single cards.

So I bought another box and some card protector sleeves and started ripping open packs. I found a bunch of valuable cards that gathered over $10 each. In total I spent about $60 on supplies and made a bit over $450 in a 3 week span.

And then I got busted by a teacher who confiscated my earnings for a day and a binder of cards. I was told that if they caught me selling anything ever again I would be suspended.

I understand that they can't allow others to sell stuff to the students, but it really hurt my entrepreneurial spirit at the time. Until I got to highschool and started reselling illegal fireworks, but that story didn't end as well, although I made a lot more money ;)

<comment><USER16> _And then I got busted by a teacher who confiscated my earnings for a day and a binder of cards. I was told that if they caught me selling anything ever again I would be suspended._

Confiscated your earnings? The word is _stole_ your earnings. The crap that goes on in school sometimes drives me insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> And here I thought the story was about some sort of return & refund scam...

<comment><USER7> I cleared with J Crew. I told them I wore the clothes. Their policy was that you could return clothes any time in any condition. I don't think they expected anyone to take them up on it.

Laziness and embarrassment are two characteristics entrepreneurs don't have.

<comment><USER18> Amen to that last sentence. You gotta do what you gotta do to make shit happen!

<comment><USER19> okay. I am starting to JC penny right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always assumed those greeting card websites sold their mailing lists to spammers - and was irritated when someone sent me one. In retrospect, that's pretty cynical, bitter and curmudgeonly of me.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love Andrew's interviews and it's nice to hear more about his story.

I love the J Crew story.

I've returned Christmas gifts (electronics) to fund my startup, but I may have to look through the closet now, too... LOL

</comment><comment><USER22> Andrew's sister is "the Girl" of Keith and the Girl, the wildly popular podcast. So, the whole lot of them seem to be ridiculously talented.

</comment><comment><USER23> "businesspeople are the heroes"

No. Just no. Businesspeople are useful, but, by definition, not heroic. Heroic is something else: not counting the cost.

There is also an important difference between hacker and huckster.</comment>


A personal link mill - <AUTHOR> http://corte.si/posts/socialmedia/linkmill/index.html <comment><USER2> I would definitely use this, and probably (depending on just how much it improved my life) pay to use it.

One tip, to solve the "chicken and egg" problem of getting a good garden going while still consuming current levels of information, allow the user to choose to include some of those "low quality" sources as well.

For example, right now the vast majority of my info comes from HN and Reddit, both from links and comments. Ideally I'd be able to subscribe the service and keep getting all that info, then as I slowly build up my own more personalized, curated sources I could slowly start to remove the low-quality sources. I think if you could make this a pretty frictionless process you'd have a winner.

</comment><comment><USER3> I built a really hacky version of this when I was fresh out of university and looking for jobs. Searching for jobs by keyword sucks so I just chucked a whole bunch of feeds into a database, de-duped them and presented them through a bayesian filter with a like-dislike button. It worked well enough to be an improvement on subscribing to search results in an rss reader.

<https://github.com/jamii/pipes>

Most of what the OP describes could probably be done pretty easily in yahoo pipes. Especially if it could call out to external services for ML recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER4> Funny thing. I'm currently building one right now - disturbingly close to your product idea. It's currently a "generalized feed consumer" that presents a user with "stream of [de-duplicated] links to consume..."

I'm just starting to use it for most of my content consumption, so that I have a nice corpus of data about my preferences. The goal is to eventually develop a predictive model to start filtering content with...

<comment><USER5> Sounds cool, can you share a link/download ?

<comment><USER4> Sorry, not at the moment. Perhaps in a few weeks, once things have stabilized...

<comment><USER5> All the best with the stabilizing, please add me to your beta users list whenever you're ready :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The google reader stack I use is to use the share button to 'save' items. Those items get added to your own RRS feed. From that feed you can do your post processing as this link did for later reading.

(edit: to see your shared items go to <http://www.google.com/reader/shared/username>)

</comment><comment><USER7> I built something like this in 2005[1], got distracted[2] and still wish I had the tool today. My database was organized around links rather than feeds/items. Two stories that included links to the same thing were considered to be talking about the same thing and would be presented together as one part of the conversation. This was a low rent (but more accurate) version of what Google News does where they assume two articles are about the same subject by comparing the terms used in the articles.

I also used Bayesian classification to determine which articles were ones you were more likely to be interested in reading.

[1]: the marketing pages are still online for this ancient piece of code: <http://blazingthings.com/zestynews/tour1.html>

[2]: I created the TurboGears web framework while creating Zesty News, and ultimately decided to pursue the framework rather than Zesty News.

</comment><comment><USER8> At intigi.com we're trying to solve this problem and have a beta product working. It not only helps you find interesting links in the way described in the article, but it also helps curating and sharing them.

<comment><USER2> Your site is a similar concept, but it seems to (from the little info on the front page) be much more geared toward people looking for content to share with others. I think the OP is describing a system geared toward finding content to consume for personal use.

In addition, your system seems to be more about automatically finding content, whereas the OP's system is much more manual and curated by the user.

I signed up for your beta list because I actually think your idea is interesting, but I think they solve two different problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This project seems alright enough for a mini hackathon. I would be interested in building such a site, however I lack some knowledge in a few things that are needed.

Subscribing to Hacker News I have figured out it being simply parsing the RSS feed to generate links. How do I go about doing it for the other types of feeds? Does Twitter and Google+ feeds require integration with their individual APIs? Any help is greatly appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER10> Yahoo Pipes provide the fastest path to a personal link mill that I've seen.

<http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/>

Use Pipes to aggregate, filter, de-dupe, summarize, tag, and then feed your Reader.

</comment><comment><USER11> Enjoyed the article, but how is this sufficiently different from say NewsBlur?

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be really great if you would have some way to tie this into WordPress or any other CMS, so you can publish your personal links for the day.

</comment><comment><USER13> good idea..corte.si... I think adding a machine learning method on reordering/prioritizing the links would be a plus...the input data for the machine learning system would be the links user clicks to read as well as links to which user clicks as favorite... or may be pulling the keywords/tags from a given link's page and then checking how many links are clicked under a certain tag will surely help ordering the links by tags...its just my idea on how to help user to read his preferred links/topics....your inputs are welcome!</comment>


4chan founder Chris Poole will try to fix social at Google - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/07/mootgle/?ncid=rss&utm_content=bufferd29f1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> I can't decide if this is a stroke of genius or one of the stupidest things Google has ever done.

<comment><USER3> I put my money on the former. 4chan is... itself. But it is definitely a vibrant community. And Poole himself has some thoughtful, unique insight into what makes a community vibrant and what kills it.

<comment><USER4> Would you mind elaborating on his insight into online communities? I'd love to read his perspective in depth

<comment><USER5> His TED talk, for one: [http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...](http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Misleading headline aside, I doubt he will have much impact in terms of revamping Google's social platform. 4chan became a thing because of the community it attracted (and then evolved into), combined with the preservation of anonymity in a world becoming less anonymous. The site's success is not due to some crazy genius foresight, just a matter of supplying a need for an insanely niche community and then becoming a space for all sorts of inside jokes and (not so decent?) content to reside, again all catering to a niche community.

As much as I enjoyed lurking 4chan back in the day, it's very difficult for me to see most of its innovations or ideas actually transfer to the mainstream. Google may have been better off buying Digg and turning it into a more accessible version of Reddit, and even that's a terrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> I dislike real name policies, but I do want to push to fix some of the problems with using real names. This includes moving the business world closer to Cluetrain for example.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think techcrunch should be congratulated for not spelling it "4Chan" for once.

</comment><comment><USER9> Vacuous e-celeb worship. All noise, no signal.

"Mediocre coder gets a job at Google." Big deal.</comment>


Ask HN: I don't get the point of developing for Salesforce - <AUTHOR> So I'm reading this: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/force_com_dev_beginner/starting_force_com/starting_discovering and a far as I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong) I would develop on Salesforce if I wanted to build enterprise / company applications.<p>But I can do that with plain old Java + Spring or ASP.Net, why would I use Salesforce? <comment><USER2> Well you get transactional database, web server, runtime, api and few other business tools right out of the box. Like, you can register at their developer portal and be pushing public facing code in around 2 minutes.

I do think their positioning is quite unique in the market. AFAIK the closest that comes to such completeness is Firebase, however their database is NoSQL.

On a bigger picture, I think Salesforce has a lot of empathy for the customer/client/user - they take away a lot of technology and lets you focus on information needs. Sort of a bit like Apple.

</comment><comment><USER3> You are correct, the Force.com part of the Salesforce platform is particularly well suited for database centric business applications, that may or may not be related to Salesforce's Sales, Service or Marketing clouds (the core SaaS of Salesforce).

To do it with POJ + Spring or ASP.net means there is a ton of wheel that you need to re-invent, especially around security, reliability, data protection/sharing, user management and so on.

If you go ahead and to a couple of the trails in Trailhead this will start to become more obvious.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because you can say Salesforce and buy instant Credibility with every sales exec.

<comment><AUTHOR> :/ Really? Do you know what the job prospect for Salesforce dev's in the upcoming year is?

<comment><USER4> These are not meant for "beginner self taught developers". The salesforce platform is meant for people who are already involved with salesforce in some way. Either businesses selling to the enterprise or salespeople trying to add some devskills or god knows what.

If you want to "learn programming", this is obviously a pretty stupid idea.

I do not know what the job prospets of "salesforce devs" are. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a "salesforce dev". You will certainly be better off studying java if marketability is your concern.

<comment><AUTHOR> I generally know programming I just can't get a job doing it.

<comment><USER3> Full disclosure: I have been doing Dev Relations at Salesforce for the last 14 years.

Salesforce is more than a sales application. Indeed, platform aside, there is customer service, marketing automation, ecommerce and productivity (like google docs et al) as part of the core plug an go application suite.

Developers come into the picture when it comes to customizing Salesforce core applications and, due to the platform exposed as Force.com and Heroku, creating new b2b/b2c applications. The developer skills that are effective in this environment are Javascript/HTML/CSS, understanding of oauth and integration technologies (REST, SOAP), database concepts such as triggers and stored procedures. Salesforce provides a server side language, Apex, that is derived from Java.

Mobile SDKs are available as well. So, it is a combination of skills that could have been acquired doing development on other platforms.

There is a ton of opportunity for Developers in the Salesforce eco-system, indeed demand currently outstrips supply. For a taste [https://www.indeed.com/q-Force-Com- Developer-$130,000-jobs.h...](https://www.indeed.com/q-Force-Com- Developer-$130,000-jobs.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think it's possible for a self-taught and (primarily) hobbyist developer to make his way into the market. I figure it might be smart to get into a niche market

<comment><USER5> It is definitely possible. I know of a number of people who have done exactly this. In addition to learning the basics with Trailhead, I'd also suggest looking near by for a Salesforce developer group. There is even StackExchange for Salesforce that is completely community driven for having questions answered. (salesforce.stackexchange.com).

FYI, I'm another one of the devrel team at Salesforce. Dave went on vacation just before you posted this.

Cheers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


iHeartMedia Nearing Paid Streaming Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/7517874/iheartmedia-nearing-paid-streaming-service <comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I was a bit harsh on the article the iHeart media employees posted here about how they were using tech for 'fan' reasons (counterpoint: audience retention). Well now they're possibly going their own way. Not official yet I suppose, but will be interesting to see if/when it develops.</comment>


The Haskell user experience - <AUTHOR> http://rickdzekman.com/thoughts/the-haskell-user-experience/ <comment> david-given My experience with learning Haskell was:

When it works, it's magical. Finally realising that monads allow little bubbles of cause-and-effect. STM, which is utterly magical. Realising that not having side effects is freeing, not restricting. Collapsing huge chunks of code into little bits of pattern matching. Finding myself casually using a higher-order type because it was the easiest way to solve a problem.

When it's warty, it's really warty. Namespaces... oh god, namespaces. About three different rather poor ways to handle exceptions. A billion little unmemorable functions with symbolic names. Total lack of debugging tools. Trying to find where an a out-of-bounds list error was happening. Trying to debug a memory leak caused by insufficient strictness --- why do I need to care about this? The runtime should just take care of it for me; the whole point of a lazy language is that I shouldn't have to care when evaluation happens.

Some of the warts are just embarrassing, and need fixing ASAP. Lack of information on a runtime exception is the biggest. Even BASIC would at least give me a line number!

<comment><USER2> > A billion little unmemorable functions with symbolic names

Pretty much. If you though Common Lisp was bad, this is much worse. And that makes for a major (re-)learning curve every time you stop programming in Haskell for a couple of months.

<comment><USER3> It'd be nice to be able to search by type declaration

<comment><USER4> Hoogle lets you do exactly that, with fuzzy matching:

[https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=a+-%3E+[b]](https://www.haskell.org/hoogle/?hoogle=a+-%3E+\[b\])

It's as useful as you might hope!

<comment><USER5> I am not a Haskeller, but you can use "!h searchterm" on Duck Duck Go.

<comment><USER6> OMG thank you, this was the thing that got me to finally permanently set my toolbar search in FF to Duck Duck Go...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Haskell has all the features of languages that become mainstream and mandated top-down on workplaces. I wouldn't be much surprised if in a decade people start complaining about Haskell-shops they way we complain about Java-shops now. (But then, no language could get there without a marketing budget...)

Haskell lets big teams collaborate very well, makes it hard to bad coders to destroy an entire project, consist in a good enough filter so that HR won't hire obscenely bad developers, gives enough space for software architects do their thing, and gives plenty of objectively measurable points to make managers happy.

That said, it's completely immature. Haskell lacks packaging, environment tools, and even a complete standard library (hell, I had to put a package[1] at Hackage because no available TLS library would work!). It has all kinds of interesting advanced features, but the basics are simply missing.

[1] [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/uniform- io](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/uniform-io)

<comment><USER8> That package looks useful. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER7> Just keep in mind that it's not very mature. In particular, expect the TLS settings to change in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Personally I switched from learning Haskell to learning Racket and couldn't be happier. On the other side of banging my head I think Cabal is the biggest disappointment of my experience and it was the worst package management headaches for my own private builds.

Now that I am done with a book of Haskell and being a total hack at Haskell with very little skills (I did learn quite a bit of Lambda Calculus along the way) I think there is a BIG reason why Haskell has not grown in popularity in language usage and is beat by Scheme and almost beat out by ML. The experience pales to the praise and mind share in the vocal community of Haskell users.

<comment><USER10> Your comparison isn't sound. LISPs and MLs are as close together as Apples and Oranges on the functional family tree.

Cabal has its problems and it primarily stems from a lack of any good "this is how you should use it" guides. Cabal is not a package manager!

I cannot force you to like something but I will say this in the hope that you re-evaluate your judgement: if you still think Racket is a much better experience than Haskell and its ecosystem, you likely haven't experienced Haskell in-full. I know both languages and I've used both in production software (including many other functional languages) and I can say without any doubt in my mind that I will never select Racket over Haskell for writing software, if presented the choice.

Are there glaring warts in the language? The ecosystem? The tooling? Sure, nothing is perfect and one can easily point out many more warts in other technologies that are far more popular.

<comment><USER9> RPL has been the one killer feature for my choice of Racket. I wanted to learn Functional programming and do a few scripts. Just after reading a book and a half and trying to get a few things done I really liked Racket when I went through a MOG on Programming Languages on Coursera. It went from ML to Racket and it just clicked for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Stack is great, but the public beta only started on June 9th. Stick with it, and I think it will solve many of the package management problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> The Haskell Platform obscuring Cabal's existence bit me. I didn't know how to use Cabal, so for a while I didn't install any packages, or know the correct way to build them.

<comment><USER13> That's intentional and good. Bleeding-edge packages are a headache to manage, due to complex dependencies. You should really wring everything you can out of Platform, and feel like an advanced Haskell programmer, before dealing with Cabal.

<comment><USER14> I think that sentiment adds to the list of things that make it hard for someone to go from an intermediate level of skill to advanced level of skill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I'd really appreciate (as one of those people who's read LYAH and is struggling to get going with real code) is a Haskell equivalent of Effective Java or Effective C++.

<comment><USER16> Not sure if it's relevant, and unfortunately it's a bit outdated, but have you seen Real World Haskell? Also related is Beginning Haskell – A Project Based Approach.

<comment><USER13> Real World Haskell is obsolete and is about libraries, not the language.

The "Effective" stuff is language-level lessons like:

* [http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/](http://dev.stephendiehl.com/hask/)

* [https://twitter.com/haskelltips](https://twitter.com/haskelltips) (someone should organize the archive)

* [http://www.slideshare.net/tibbe/highperformance-haskell](http://www.slideshare.net/tibbe/highperformance-haskell)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Agreed about the SEO of the documentation... I'm learning Haskell, and just last week I was trying to parse binary files using Data.Binary.Get. I spent a fair amount of time looking for a way to handle parse errors outside an IO monad. It turns out that the function I needed exists (runGetOrFail), but I couldn't find it because the first Google hit for "Data.Binary.Get" was for an old version of the package.

I don't know how one would tell Google to prefer the latest docs, but it would certainly help if the Hackage documentation page header warned you if you were not looking at the latest version of the docs.

</comment><comment><USER18> > But at the end of the day I'm still a Developer in an Academic world. And > more and more Haskell is attracting the kinds of developers who don't know > Lambda Calculus or Type Theory.

Haskell's ability to become a major language depends on its ability to attract, _and keep,_ that kind of developer. There aren't enough developers who will learn all the theory in order to learn a programming language for Haskell to become one of the dominant languages.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is... certainly a learning curve. The Haskell community is still tiny. Per capita, it's one of the best language communities out there. It just hasn't had the thousands or millions of person-hours necessary to make everything pretty and intuitive.

I generally say that, all else equal, and if I were to use a GC'd language-- obviously, there are projects that mandate C or other low-level languages-- then I would use: Python for a short-term (days) project, Clojure for a medium-term (< 3 months) one, and Haskell for a long-term (> 3 months, or multi-developer) one. You don't find yourself needing static typing if you're doing a small, self-contained, line-of-business task like a script. You start to really want it for multi-developer programs and for infrastructural jobs that'll take months to complete (and, at age 32-- that's ancient in programming years-- the only programming challenges that really interest me are the hard ones where Haskell's type discipline pays off in a major way).

Haskell will probably never beat Python in terms of ease-of-use, and (while I would prefer Haskell over other offerings for hard-core machine learning infrastructure) it has a ways to go before it can take over the exploratory data science world (we need data frames, and it's not at all clear what the "right" way to impose type discipline on such beasts is).

All of that said, Haskell is _way_ better than it used to be in terms of user experience. It's gone from god-awful (circa mid-2000s) to hard-but-acceptable, and in the context of a longer-term project (i.e. at least 2 months) the uptake is a rounding error and the pain is paid off.

Furthermore, I don't think that Haskell's opt-out approach to laziness is more than a cosmetic issue. You can have as much strictness as you want; you just have to ask for it. However, high-performance programming in other languages (e.g. Clojure, Python) is also deeply technical and warty. When you start adding type hints and using Java arrays in your machine learning code, it doesn't look like Clojure anymore. My point in all this is that HPC is technical and rough in all of the major languages, and Haskell's laziness is just a small part of that.

<comment><USER4> _" You don't find yourself needing static typing if you're doing a small, self-contained, line-of-business task like a script. You start to really want it for multi-developer programs and for infrastructural jobs that'll take months to complete (and, at age 32-- that's ancient in programming years-- the only programming challenges that really interest me are the hard ones where Haskell's type discipline pays off in a major way)."_

IME, this seems to be roughly, "What are the odds you'll need to refactor significantly because the world changed around you?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> That is a great band name.</comment>


Memories of Steve - <AUTHOR> http://donmelton.com/2014/04/10/memories-of-steve/ <comment><USER3> Back in 1999 or 2000, shortly after Steve had rejiggered the cafeteria staff, I was walking back to my office in another building with an "afternoon doughnut" \- that is, one that hadn't sold in the morning at the coffee place in the main lobby, and probably sold at a discount.

I passed Steve in the hall and he glared at me as I walked with my doughnut. Steve was in great health in those days while I was pasty and obese. (Still am, sad to say.).

But I was happy with my doughnut. Steve glared at me but didn't say anything. I slunk away.

The next day, there were no more doughnuts at any of the cafés on the main campus. I don't think it's a coincidence.

<comment><USER4> salgernon, Please check out the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. You can change your life, get in shape, get healthy. It's so important.

<comment><USER5> If he's already aware of the idea that being fat and pasty is bad for him, he probably doesn't need people on HN telling him that.

I used to be fat. I knew it was unhealthy. It was incredibly obnoxious and, frankly, unhealthy, to hear people tell me that I needed to get healthy like I didn't know better. What I needed was to get away from poisonous relationships (I eat to cope with sadness) and hellhole suburbs that make it impossible to walk or cycle anywhere. Moving to the city and going out more instead of keeping a freezer full of crap made a world of difference. The assumption that a stranger on HN knows more about health than he does is insulting and counterproductive.

<comment><USER6> "What I needed was to get away from poisonous relationships (I eat to cope with sadness) and hellhole suburbs that make it impossible to walk or cycle anywhere."

Agree with this. In many (but of course not all)[1] cases there is a root cause to overeating in order to mask pain or give you pleasure.

The unfortunate part though is that not everyone can make a lifestyle change to remove the pressure or geography to allow them to make the needed changes. For example someone might be in a relationship and/or have children and need to work where they are or need a certain amount of $$. (But for sure that is not everyone.)

[1] While it is definitely true that there are people that have body types that prevent them from losing weight when this is not the case it usually boils down to some other issue that is causing the overeating or lack of control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had to stop reading. I also worked for a micro managing CEO/President and I HATED EVERY MINUTE. Knowing that if you did the slightest misstep or were falsely accused you were fired and there was a morning meeting the next day to tell everyone that so and so was no longer with the company. NO THANK YOU!!!

<comment><USER8> Slow down. Breathe. It's over. You no longer work there. You are safe now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like some people like Steve are charismatic enough to get the complete devotion of very talented people. It's a great personality trait to have and pretty much guarantees success. We all know geniuses in our everyday life like Wozniak, Bob, cook. But how many of us can get these guys be terrified of us, make them change their lives for our visin and make them give us their complete attention... That's the beauty of Steve. Despite flaws in his character, people seem to be feel previliged working for him.

<comment><USER10> It's probably common in technology area that due to Dunning-Kruger effect many super talented engineers have low self-esteem and real-life skills, and are attracted by "magical" personalities, forming narcissist-codependent pairs. I see it all around, it's sad, but unless engineers fix their broken "insides", it's going to happen. It's then pretty logical that the narcissistic part of the pair gets all the fame, spotlight, power, and the co-dependent part gets used, squeezed, depleted and thrown away once not useful.

<comment><USER11> Dunning-Kruger is the opposite (when unskilled individuals think of themselves as being much more talented than they actually are).

<comment><USER10> D-K goes both ways - unskilled think of themselves highly, highly skilled lowly. I often wonder if this is the ultimate joke of the Universe embedded deeply in the fabric of "matrix".

<comment><USER12> MarkTee is right - DK only goes one way. The other direction is called "Impostor Syndrome". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

<comment><USER13> I don't see how it's invalid to argue that they're just two sides of the same coin. If no-talent hacks think they're better than they are, how could the opposite not be true for the same underlying reasons?

Not logically ironclad, of course, but we _are_ talking pop psychology here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always love to read Don's stories, they're always pretty great, and this post is no exception. The last few paragraphs are poignant, and not because it's about Steve, but because the emotion is real and you can relate to it.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this, you should read the history of Safari posts he did a while back, also a podcast he was a guest on one time, though I forget who it was with -- ah, Debug I think -- that was really excellent and well worth listening to.

<comment><USER15> [http://www.imore.com/debug-11-don-melton-and- safari](http://www.imore.com/debug-11-don-melton-and-safari)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stories like this one and Glenn Reid's essay[1] about working with Steve on iMovie seem to be vastly more informative than any movie or book on SJ.[2] One of the biggest takeaways from both of these essays is that working with Steve was an iterative process. Pop culture always highlights "eureka" moments where a problem is solved all at once in a brilliant flash of insight, yet when you read these first-hand accounts, the story is the opposite: that making something great is a slow and repetitive process, with lots of follow-up meetings and gradual improvement towards the final product. Eureka moments look good on TV, but in the real world, great things are built by long-term focus and hard work from highly talented people with uncompromisingly high standards. I have no idea how or even if that could be shown in a movie, but I'm very thankful we have these accounts. I hope more people who worked with Steve during his second tenure eventually put their thoughts down in writing and share them so that we can all gain more of these types of insights.

[1][http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really- lik...](http://inventor-labs.com/blog/2011/10/12/what-its-really-like-working- with-steve-jobs.html)

[2]There's also Andy Hertzfeld's folklore.org, however that is focused on Steve's original tenure at Apple, not the "comeback" from the late-90s on.

</comment><comment><USER17> This story says more about the insecurity of the Safari guy than it does about Jobs.

Sounds like people at Apple spent too much time worrying about what Steve thought of them, whether he'd remember their names or invite them to meetings.

While everyone is worried about what one man thinks, the man himself was thinking about design and business issues, trying to solve problems.

Funny how bookmarks was never really solved in Safari. On my iPad, I hate the bookmarks functionality, it confuses me pretty much every time. When I try to find a bookmark, or add a bookmark, every time it seems I have to "figure out" and remember how to do that. It's not intuitive or snappy. And now with iOS7 flat design, all your bookmarks and history appears as one big list - <USER2> text on white background. The lack of interface delineation mean elements bleed into other elements and make it harder to mentally remember where things are found.

If Steve were still around, he'd be kicking someone's ass over the half-baked iOS7 flat design.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was reading and hoping there was an explanation why Safari for Windows discontinued. It is the only popular WebKit browser ( after Chrome fork to Blink ) on Windows.

Otherwise another great piece.

<comment><USER19> Back in the iOS 1.0 days, the iPhone development platform was web apps. These were pushed by Apple as the "right way", which negated the need for an App Store. As the browser engine on iOS is basically identical to the desktop WebKit, I always assumed Safari for Windows was a push to enable iOS development on Windows.

With the release and success of the App Store, that became unnecessary. I guess killing it was a function of its relative lack of popularity; Apple in the Jobs 2.0+ era justifiably don't like keeping dead-weight projects around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's certainly interesting to read this sort of reflection. The author discusses Jobs' mannerisms without either worshiping or demonizing him, which is refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER21> Don has always been such a positive person to be around. Great memories. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Some great stories there. Wasn't sure on the Apple stores presentation joke though, can anyone explain the reference?

<comment><USER23> It's not really a reference - read it over a bit more carefully and I think you'll get it. Basically, Phil is meant to believe that Steve actually was serious about putting the slide in the presentation.

<comment><USER24> Here's the image, for anyone curious: [http://c0la.s3.amazonaws.com/nice_cup.jpg](http://c0la.s3.amazonaws.com/nice_cup.jpg)

<comment><USER25> Yep, that's it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I enjoyed the recollections. I probably would have been afraid of his shadow if I was there.

On another note, it would be interesting to see if a website containing all these memories of Steve Jobs ever comes about. A crowdsourced biography if you will: storiesabout/stevejobs .

<comment><USER27> [http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&cha...](http://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?project=Macintosh&characters=Steve%20Jobs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> At the National Air and Space Museum reception during Washington DC EduCom in 1988, I took a big bite out of one lobe at the bottom of a three lobed red bell pepper so it looked like an alien's face, and held it up to Steve Jobs, and said "Earthman, give me your seed!"

He looked at me funny, but I couldn't tell if he got the reference to Bizarre Sex #10: [http://silezukuk.tumblr.com/post/3151672333](http://silezukuk.tumblr.com/post/3151672333) [NSFW]

</comment><comment><USER29> This part sums up why I quit using OS X for my personal projects: "And if your software crashed, you didn't make excuses. You just made damn sure that particular scenario didn't happen again. Ever."

In making sure nothing ever crashes, Apple has moved more and more to an OS that is too restrictive for my taste.

<comment><USER30> I fail to see how making sure your code doesn't crash is related to OS X being restrictive. We've just experienced Heartbleed, a prime example of a poorly- reviewed piece of software, in one of the most entrenched OSS libraries. I'd certainly appreciate a stricter process of code review and testing, considering the cost of patching it.

You being not a fan of OS X apparently clouds your judgement in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great stories. It says a lot about Apple that time, in addition to Steve. The personal side is good too.

 _Yes, Steve could be intense at times. But he was also a real person. He had to deal with the ordinary and mundane aspects of life like everyone else. Maybe even enjoy them._

</comment><comment><USER32> If after working with him for a decade you have to take a deep breath before you can give him your honest opinion on something, then he's not a busy executive who prioritizes efficient information exchange, he's an asshole.

<comment><USER33> I honestly can't think of anything I've ever read about the guy that doesn't make me think that.

I also don't get the hero worship on HN for the guy, there are other actual hackers for worthier (in my opinion of course) of respect (as an aside I think Wozniak is worth far more respect than someone like Jobs).

Pretty trinkets combined with aspirational marketing and a form always beats function attitude and somehow this guy is a hero, never could figure it out.

<comment><USER34> Well, many people who _actually_ worked with him disagree with you. I'm not sure what that means, there are definitely a few possibilities, but I think it's worth at least acknowledging that maybe you're wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[65] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.[66] \---

End of story. Before continuing celebrating Jobs, ask yourself a question, do you want to promote that kind of behavior in the Valley?

<comment><USER36> I agree with you on principle, however, the story does not end here. Woz himself said the following:

"What Steve does on the good side — like the music scenario [in which] we didn't bring just a music device called the iPod, we brought a whole music system: a store that sells it, a computer that manages and organizes it. And an iPod is just a satellite to your computer. Plug it in and it works. You don't have to do anything. You've got to admire Steve for that kind of thinking. Nobody's perfect. [Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later."

Specifically:

"[Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later."

I think that's a more enlightened point of view.

Source: [http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/steve-wozniak- on-...](http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/steve-wozniak-on-apple- steve-jobs-and-the-value-of-a-good-prank/)

<comment><USER35> I agree with you absolutely. If you are _yourself_ encountering lies and nastiness from your partners, an enlightened way would be trying to understand them. And forgive.

But my point was different. We just can't afford to _celebrate_ lies. It is very very very harmful.

<comment><USER37> If you think Steve is the only person in the Valley to have lied to a business partner...I have a bridge that might interest you.

As for the specific event in question (the Atari money), do we know what Steve did with the extra money? Seems to me, maybe he really _did_ need it (for rent/food/etc.) and was too ashamed to ask Woz for the extra. Maybe he figured he would re-invest it, and that it was easier to do behind Woz's back than to try and explain his plans.

Steve was no saint, but in my experience he was generally a nice guy. He also thought he knew better than everyone else, and so it would not be unusual for him to leave out explanations, make snap judgements, and be rather brusque in general (when dealing with business decisions). Why should he have to explain himself when he was obviously right?

I'm sure it didn't help that the world so often (especially toward the end) only reinforced the notion that he knew better than everyone else...

<comment><USER38> > If you think Steve is the only person in the Valley to have lied to a > business partner

So, if someone else did it too, it's somehow not that bad?

Great world to live in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Alternative title: Hagiography of a Dead Psychopath CEO

<comment><USER39> Hilarious! Every comment critical of Steve Jobs has been downvoted. Groupthink methinks!

<comment><USER33> I suspect a lot of it has to do with Self identification with Steve Jobs and people like him, so an attack on Jobs is an indirect attack on them.

Personally I think Jobs was an over hyped marketing manager (with perhaps a true gift for getting talented people to do the work).

There are dozens of people in the computer industry that I respect far more who will never get 1/100th of the adulation (and I'm not sure most of them would want it).

Look at the contributions of people like John Backus, Edgar Codd or Maurice Wilkes and of course Kernighan and Ritchie, those people (to me) are worth far more respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> this is hilarious

</comment><comment><USER41> Sounds like you have to be a sycophant to work for him.

</comment><comment><USER42> Am I the only one fed-up with Steve Jobs stories ?

<comment><USER43> I am absolutely bored of Steve Jobs stories in general, and I'm quite surprised at myself that I bothered to read this one.

This one in particular, though, was a human enough perspective that it would have been interesting to read if every single mention of the particular terrifying-and-respected-CEO were redacted. So I'm glad I read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why are we still talking about this guy. I'll bet my life savings that when Woz dies, we'll talk about it for around 2 months.

<comment><USER45> Or not at all. "Jobs' sidekick died. The end of an era. That's it"

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Lol, some of it seems a bit stockholm syndrome-y, but hilarious nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER47> Thanks for posting this!</comment>


Billionaires vs. The Press in the Era of Trump - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/magazine/billionaires-vs-the-press-in-the-era-of-trump.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20161122&nl=dealbook&nl_art=8&nlid=65508833&ref=headline&te=1 <comment><USER2> Alternative View:

The New York Time is at the heart of a network that controls a huge part of Washington's mindshare. The paper itself is something like the top portion of a considerably larger iceberg.

Consider for a moment the possibility that if state controlled media is a problem, which of course it is, then a corollary of that thought is that if the media controls the state then it is also a problem. Is that a realistic proposition?

To be non-abstract; the New York Times makes no secret of the fact it sees its role as an agent of change within the Western world. It is not merely reporting the news in an information discovery process. Former NYT employees like Michael Cieply state that the NYT has a plan it calls 'The Narrative' which it plans years in advance. Stories are wrapped around this to keep on message. It is functionally identical to the concept of a party line, except a political party does this publicly and these memos are not made overt to their readership. They are a newspaper coupled with a think tank agency which operates together to form opinion.

Perhaps just as important, I believe the NYT also determines the _priority_ of news headlines across the world. Without fail, if I spot a certain news headline in a local Dublin paper, you may be sure the agenda was set by the NYT. I am reminded of how so much Net culture is downstream from 4chan and Reddit. There's an organization that determines what 'colour' is in this year for fashion. NYT does that for the 'issues'.

What I am describing here is not just syndication. Every major broadsheet in the West has many of the same stories and offers similar conclusions. Much of this is inorganic. When enough people think the same thoughts, even using the same phrases and words, using the same chains of logic, then they are either in the same culture or they are being unwittingly subscribed to a narrative.

I noticed this myself because I used to be belong to a proselyting cult. They have periodicals which they spread across the world in many different languages. The local context would change, but at the end of each article, whether it is religious or general interest, there will be a remark alluding to or tying in a 'faith based interpretation'. To a non-believer this is tediously obvious. Believers are but dimly aware of the tactic. The new thought slides into their mind well greased. Later they are impressed that other believers had similar parallel thoughts. How much I have in common with my fellows! Warm feelings result and a sense of _being special_.

This is how you traffic shape human thought across a population. The fact is that for persons of normal intelligence and experience there are only so many possible branches in human reasoning when presented with limited data. I'm not calling it pyschohistory, but I think a clever Narritive caretaker is well able to predict the trajectory of thought in advance.

The simple truth, and I think of this as our dirty little secret, is that we're not as unique as we popularly imagine ourselves to be. I think the Internet has made that much clearer than before. I imagine for example, that while reading this you thought: "yeah this is not new information, we knew that already".

I am not calling this all bad. I think some of what I'm describing is a natural outcome.

The basic problem with this is that every once in a while, they get something really, really wrong. The Narrative stops matching reality. I'm sure over your lifetime you've spotted this happening under a wide array of circumstances.

My suspicion is that mindshare coordination is useful to society up to a certain point of complexity, and thereafter it is better to be less coordinated for reasons Taleb outlined with his anti-fragile concept. If you live in a world where everybody is going along the same path, then having a strong contrarian bias is going to continually pay off even if you get some commonsense things wrong.

One item that struck me as interesting is that Chomsky and Moldbug had a problem with the NYT. They have different takes on what is wrong with the world, but I think their basic intuition is bang on.

tldr; The New York Times is a political actor. If you want to be different it is easy. Throw away your newspaper and television. Stay on the Net with your fellow weirdos. We have hivemind too of course but don't you prefer organic mindfoods?</comment>


Microsoft Surface 2 is real and it looks amazing - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/01/06/microsoft-surface-2-is-real-and-it-looks-amazing/ <comment><USER2> The future is here. It's a big-ass table.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY>

</comment><comment><USER3> VentureBeat has a video of the presentation here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C36rm5yS4c4>

<comment><USER4> For a presentation on product that looks as incredible as this, the transition of the presentation on to Ballmer was slightly awkward.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly what I thought. If Steve Jobs had been presenting he would have been constantly interrupted with applause. Instead, a botched presentation on a very cool product.

<comment><USER5> But are Apple fans just more vocal, is Ballmer not as good on stage, or are Microsoft's products less interesting?

Or all of the above? Just asking...

<comment><USER4> To me, it appears to be more than just Jobs vs Ballmer (though that would be a hands-down victory for Jobs, no doubt).

The product was fascinating; it is well worthy of thunderous applause instead of the smattering of claps it received. The way the presentation ended: "I got 10, you got 10!" was pretty cringe-worthy, if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's my first shot at a theory of how Pixel Sense might work

There is an IR LED backlight as well as the regular white backlight. They have an additional per-pixel LCD shutter that blocks IR. The display repeatedly displays sweeping horizontal and vertical patterns on the IR blocking shutters. At the edges of the display there are a series of IR light detectors. When an object is placed on the display, some IR light will bounce off the object and be internally reflected in the plane of the panel glass. The light is received by the detectors.

What think ye?

</comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft paid for the company I work for to show off the first Surface at a consumer event last year, and from our experience they seemed pretty indifferent.

There were microsoft staff on our stand to promote it, but they really couldn't be assed, instead spending their time around other Microsoft products that were much more consumer friendly.

We thought it was a pretty cool device, but visitors to the show seemed to side with the MS staff, mostly showing indifference to what appeared much like a glass table.

</comment><comment><USER8> Surface is a cool technology but it seems very cumbersome and obsolete compared to capacitive multi-touch screens and things like kinect. It's form- factor relegates it to only a niche of the potential market for touch-only UI computing. And that I think will ultimately doom it. Market forces alone make it more likely that Surface's niche will ultimately be filled by perhaps oversized Android or iOS tablets than by Surface itself.

<comment><USER9> RE: "seems very cumbersome and obsolete compared to capacitive multi-touch screens"

There are fundamental advantages that the surface technology has, but obtaining them (currently) requires the fundamental form factor disadvantage. These would probably balance out, but Microsoft has failed to capitalize on the advantages properly.

The advantages stem from the infrared camera hardware.

Advantage #1: Multi-user, not just multi-touch. You can see the direction that hands are coming from, even when they aren't touching the table. This lets clever software identify people, so that you could have UI pop up to face that person. Different people can do different things with multiple focal points and varying UI orientations.

Advantage #2: Identification of non-capacitive objects. For example, imagine a car customization app. The idea being that you'd sit with a salesperson and work through options together. Place a key on the table and a 3D model of the car that matched that key would drive onto the scene and then park next to the key.

Hopefully someone can figure out a form factor and price point that can capitalize on these advantages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> lol. Does this mean my Surface projects are relevant again?

<https://github.com/indexzero/surface-raw-input>

<comment><USER11> used to work at MS and shared a building with the Surface team. Those people were doing some REALLY amazing shit but I don't think it ever saw "the light of day" (read: beyond demos) because the device was so damned expensive.

I did hear that a bunch of places in Vegas have active back orders, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it has the potential to revolutionize drawing and resemble the traditional drawing table. Can be very comfortable and efficient for anyone designing physical objects (civil engineers, architects, industrial designers). There are already graphic tablets, of course, but they are very expensive and very specialized. This makes me hope that my current way of working staring directly at the screen while moving the mouse might change in a few years.

<comment><USER13> It might have that potential but I think illustrators and architects will be the last people to adopt it. If you've ever used the last version you would see it was slow, imprecise, buggy, and gave you the feel that you were only vaguely connected to the display. There will always be artists on the leading edge of technology doing cool things, but for people who have jobs to get done, this is one to wait on.

There is a restaurant here in Tokyo where each table is a surface. It took us forever to order because we couldn't manipulate the menus. Our server had to leave the table while taking orders to reboot it. It interpreted input as chorded input because something or someone else was on the table turning pan operations into zoom operations. Quite funny, not practical.

There are already tablet/monitor hybrids (and I mean digitizer tablets with pressure sensitive pens) that don't suffer from the imprecision and accidental input of this and I think they are somewhat popular with artists. A Microsoft Surface, even an order of magnitude better than the last version isn't going to cut it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's really cool for sure, but you know what this one man once said "Real artists ship!" Too bad Microsoft didn't put this in a tablet eons ago.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why you are getting up-votes for this. It isn't adding anything to the conversation other than obvious Microsoft bashing.

The Pixel Sense technology is obviously quite new, so I'm not sure how they were supposed to put it in anything eons ago.

As far as Microsoft not shipping... Well they ship more stuff than a lot of people. True that their tablet and phone offerings are not as good as the competition (yet), but that isn't through not shipping, it's through creating products that was out of touch with consumer expectations.

In the phone world, over the lifetime of the window Mobile, they've probably been quite successful. In tablets, less so, but still they have shipped numerous times over the past decade.

Just saying.

<comment><USER14> Microsoft didn't capitalize on Touch-based computing (a la Surface - didn't imply about pixel sense at all) when they had the chance before.

Microsoft labs has a lot of crazy cool stuff, but they don't see daylight in the hands of the consumer. There's something to be said about that.

The point is that they missed the boat, but shipped late.

"Gates's admission that he looked at the iPhone, unveiled three years ago in January 2007 and which went on sale in June that year, and thought that "Microsoft didn't aim high enough" is a startling revelation from the man who drove the company to focus on mobile." [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/12/ipad- bill-g...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/12/ipad-bill-gates- microsoft-opinion-iphone) \- that says it all!</comment></comment></comment>


The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, 1919 - <AUTHOR> http://marshlib.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-economic-consequences-of-peace-by.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I've just started reading A.J.P. Taylor's controversial "The Origins of the Second World War". It was published in 1961 and used the newly released records from that time. The book is controversial because it lays bare just how much of the blame for the tragedy that followed should be spread more widely than the popular myths we remember today.

<comment><USER3> Finished this book a few months ago. It strikes me how reluctant he is to blame the brits, eg saying that Benes condemned British grenadiers to die between two flicks of his cigarette, instead of the idiotic guarantee of poland itself. All in all, though, excellent revisionism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Free to rrad online, thanks to the Internet Archive:

[https://archive.org/details/economicconseque00keyn](https://archive.org/details/economicconseque00keyn)

<comment><USER5> Do you know if it is possible to download it as an ePub file? Or anything else that is easier to read than a stupid fake page turning web page?

I'd like to read it but on my mobile or tablet while on a train or bus when I am not online.

<comment><USER5> Oops, stupid me, just had to scroll down the page to see a whole menu of alternatives.

Thanks for the link brylie!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's curious that Keynes describes WWI as Europe's Civil War as seen from London POV. I read one of the key drivers for the formation of a EU was to avoid future wars, but I guess a civil war is always something possible.

<comment><USER7> Europe has always been a stage for centuries of savage, vicious warfare. This culminated in WW2 after which they called off the game, realizing that the next war could wipe them out.

<comment><USER8> That, and being caught between the superpowers of the post war era.</comment></comment></comment>