Early-career setback and future career impact - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12189-3 <comment><USER2> > ..Early-career setback appears to cause a _performance improvement_ among > those who persevere.

> ..These findings are consistent with the concept that "what doesn't kill me > makes me stronger," which may have broad implications for identifying, > training and nurturing junior scientists.

Good to hear, as someone who (is not a scientist but) has had a fair share of early-career setbacks, from external causes, bad luck, as well as self- inflicted in youthful ignorance. :)

At least from an anecdotal retrospective of my current blessed situation, surviving and overcoming these setbacks have indeed made me more resilient and persistently motivated.

<comment><USER3> I like "We are the sum of our scars." And OK, it's from Stover's Caine novels.

Also, we wouldn't have fingers and toes if intervening cells in the early limb bugs hadn't died.

<comment><USER3> Damn. I meant "buds".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny personal story:

In 2008 i applied for an IT role at News Corp in Sydney Australia, i didn't get the job. In 2015 they (one of their subsidiary companies) acquired the company that i founded with two other partners. A much better outcome.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm sure I'll feel silly when someone finds them, but are the concepts of "narrow win" and "near miss" defines in the context of this paper? Is "career setback" defined?

<comment><USER6> In the abstract "Here we examine junior scientists applying for National Institutes of Health R01 grants. By focusing on proposals fell just below and just above the funding threshold, we compare near-miss with narrow-win applicants"

In other words, scientists who just barely missed funding "near miss" versus scientists who just barely were over the threshold to receive it "narrow win".

<comment><USER5> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Or it's just a filter for perseverance.

<comment><USER8> The paper tests this hypothesis and finds that there's probably a causal effect:

 _"...these results demonstrate that the screening effect may have played a role, but it appears insufficient to entirely account for the observed difference between near misses and narrow wins."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Code and data is here:

[https://yang-wangnu.github.io/setback/](https://yang- wangnu.github.io/setback/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Come work at Amazon. If you can survive at Amazon, you can literally work anywhere afterwards (assuming they hire you and you're not an asshole).

</comment><comment><USER11> I like the conclusion but I have to dispute it: there is a snowball effect for motivated (and resilient) people. Maybe this shows that most people are not motivated and need a kick in the pants, but if you are clever and you get ahead, you can use that to get more ahead (otherwise you were not really ahead at all)

</comment><comment><USER12> Figure 2 and 3 legends don't start at zero. What in the world?

</comment><comment><USER13> Another funny personal story: since someone shared one.

Started developing a taste for studying and computers at age 12-13. Did not hit a stumbling block till 40. Oh yes there were bad times but it was always one valley to another peak and at 40 the tide turned. I would not say it was the Midas touch, it was not, there were others way more successful but I look at my growth based on my aspirations and capabilities.

And then the fall. Took 5 years to realize the fubar situation and then maybe 6 years of perseverance with a course correction ;) Even before the article I realized that the lack of failures in early days probably hurt me in the long run.

Once again, this is a very simplified version. Even I could find flaws in my presentation of details if I needed to.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anecdote: My company has recently passed on a few early career candidates who pretty clearly hadn't been mentored.

We have a take-home assignment as part of our interview process and they were able to get a working solution, but missed on design patterns that would make their code more maintainable and extensible, things that are usually learned from code-reviews by people who have had the experience of working with bad code.

This was more common in candidates who came to us from the tech departments of non-tech focused companies.

We lamented not being able to hire otherwise smart and personable candidates, but at the end of the day we only had headcount for 1 employee and we went with a different smart and personable candidate who had better early career opportunities.

<comment><USER15> > Anecdote: My company has recently passed on a few early career candidates > who pretty clearly hadn't been mentored.

Either that or the candidates you passed on simply didn't want to spend several hours making enterprise-grade software for a take-home test that they're not getting paid for.

<comment><USER16> This. This. This.

Everyone thinks they can interpret their tests perfectly. Ultimately, the candidates are likely better off. The coded message here is not that they didn't use obvious design patterns but that they didn't code in the way the employer wanted. Which...I suppose is a perfectly fine reason to pass on a candidate.</comment></comment></comment>


Growerbot: social gardening assistant - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/liseman/growerbot-your-social-gardening-assistant

<comment><AUTHOR> this is my latest project: grow better food and share with your friends. farmville, but in the real world:)</comment>


SourceForge Acquisition and Future Plans: DevShare Program Terminated - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-plans/ <comment><USER2> Good on 'em. Given the negative press surrounding GitHub, it might be a good time for them to build out a genuine competitor.

</comment><comment><USER3> I honestly wish them good luck, I used to like the service back in the day. Lost trust, GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab... won't be easy to get back on track.</comment>


What it's like to bootstrap a business before it can financially support you - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/whats-it-like-to-bootstrap-a-business-before-it-can-financially-support-you-3472417e29 <comment><USER2> Oh man. I bootstrapped a business on the side, and quit my dajob when it got to the point where it could support me (which is to say, could pay me like 1/4 of my market value in silicon valley) -

One of the clearest mistakes I made that _could_ have made the company opportunity cost profitable had I not screwed it up was that I was conserving capital while I had the opportunity to grow really fast. For a short period of time, because of a blog post someone else wrote, I had a huge waiting list. I was building servers one at a time, using the money from the first to pay for the next one. A _lot_ of that waiting list dried up while they were waiting for me; There is a reasonable chance I would have been 5x bigger at that point had I maxed out my credit and bought servers all at once. And if I was wrong? if I maxed out my credit and went bankrupt? I'd _still_ be better off than I was in reality.

10 years at 1/4 salary is... brutal in a way that bankruptcy isn't. (I think. I've never actually gone bankrupt.)

I guess my real point here is that you need to time box it. At some point, you need to give up. I've never worked with VC, but I would assume that it would act as something of a forcing function here. I think being disciplined about "always take a better job if you are offered one" might also work.

<comment><USER3> Why would you go bankrupt?

If you have a growing business making money it should be fairly straightforward to get a loan under your business name.

<comment><USER2> >If you have a growing business making money it should be fairly straightforward to get a loan under your business name.

this is not my experience, not without a personal guarantee or collateral that holds it's value better than servers.

(Leasing servers was also an option that would have made sense then. Most of the leasing deals I was offered that didn't include personal guarantees were two year leases wherein I paid about as much as the servers would cost up front over two years. It would have made sense in that case, but it's super expensive compared to buying servers)

<comment><USER4> This. Loans for small business require personal guarantees. If you are at a point that you need the capital that badly that you cant leverage it from existing cashflow, and VCs put you into their "maybe later" bucket (e.g. "no" for the rest of us), then requiring a personal guarantee is a signal for you. The signal means you should consider whether or not you should continue your endeavor, as the bank values your net worth and its leverage, far more than it values your business.

I've been down this road. I did not answer this question properly. Doesn't matter how much you believe in yourself, if the bank wants a personal guarantee, they dont really believe in your vision.

My best advice 3 year post blow up. It ain't worth it. Move on. You will save yourself pain.

<comment><USER5> I disagree depending on the circumstances.

If you are just trying to make ends meet, then yes, probably don't go for it.

If you need access to working capital to hire more people, increase production, etc then it's completely worth it.

For reference I founded a consulting company. We landed large projects. Had to pay employees to produce the deliverables, but did not get paid until later.

Basic math here is: Typically Net 30 terms. Usually have to pay a month or so worth of salary before hitting milestone to allow billing (then 30 more days to get paid). With $80k/mo in salaries we required working capital.

Even at the criminal levels that are charged for startup loans (plus personal guarantee) it is worth it when you are making 60%+ margins.

I have since paid down the loan and then sold the consulting side to focus on some products with a small in-house team. Funded for years at this point.

<comment> o-__-o Local bank offered $250k on a 3.8% APR. SBA offered $110k on 8% APR. bank loans aren't that bad in a low interest rate environment.. SBA has a much more flexible repayment plan tho

Plus once you're in profit, your loan frees up capital for growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm bootstrapping my third company[1]. I sold the previous two.

I'm surprised my approach wasn't mentioned: bootstrap with consulting revenue. It's not novel (it's how 37Signals bootstrapped Basecamp back in the day).

The ideal way is to provide a service that aligns with the product so you can deliver under the same brand.

In my case I've consulted as a fractional Product lead[2] since 2007 to bootstrap my product businesses. Consulting has allowed me to support my family and provided as much runway as necessary before the bootstrapped business could support me full time.

One criticism of this part-time consulting approach is that it distracts from the product. This is not true if you're delivering a service that doesn't compliment the business.

But ironically probably more than half the founders i know are in permanent fundraising mode for companies that probably shouldn't have raised in the first place. I look at consulting as a higher probability form of fundraising and see time spent on it as little different than fundraising for the "traditional" angel or venture funded company.

1- my current company is [https://www.savio.io](https://www.savio.io)

2- i do product management consulting through [https://www.reemer.com](https://www.reemer.com)

<comment><USER7> The problem with consulting is that it only scales linearly with the amount of bodies you throw at it, and it takes a lot of time away. I have been "consulting with a view to bootstrap" for a year and a half now, and the result is that I still have no real product, because most of my brain energy is spent on the consulting side to keep the lights on.

<comment><USER6> In my experience the ideal is to have a little lead gem machine that spits out leads, and discipline around how much time I consult every week vs time spent working on the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent some of my best years bootstrapping a business (trying to avoid the word "startup"), growing steady each year 30-50%. No hockey stick so far, but our customers are happy and the product rocks.

1) It is hard, properly HARD.

2) It does not seem like it is fair to yourself - you might feel like you are not really giving yourself a proper chance, be it capturing the market, hiring the best possible talent etc.

3) It might make you more risk averse, as you are gambling with your baby.

4) On the other hand, it is not the low risk path either, so it sort of conflicts with #3. I mean that there are a lot of risks involved in raising capital at an early stage, but going the tortoise path has other kinds of risks. Also see #2.

5) Your type of market needs to support it, obviously. Low investment product, stable customer base. In our case, the customers are large semi-governmental organizations and in all of history we have lost just 1 established customer. This gives a lot of consolation that you are building a house, one brick at a time.

6) You need a lot of mental stamina - everyone else seems to be doing things more cleverly. Your buddies will move on to work for the big bucks and establish their careers, others might be busy burning through VC money. It will take time.

8) Sometimes an investor will come along and try to offer you their money. But it often turns out as if your are playing a totally different ball game. One thing I learned was to ask not just how many X they expect us to deliver, but straight out ask how many X-s their "family" or whatever expects _them_ to deliver.

But in the end you _might_ have a company that is actually self sustaining, fantastic people around you and customers that appreciate what you are doing to them. I consider myself lucky, though. Feels like all odds were stacked against us.

</comment><comment><USER9> > * opt only for business ideas that can generate good revenue upfront

The fact that this isn't a fundamental requirement perplexes me. But I consider the generic silicon valley startup model a sickness. You sell your and the company's soul to VC's before you even make a dime at the expense of the people who sweat and bled for you and who you also promised stake, only to routinely get screwed by the VC's who get paid out first.

> * jump into bootstrapping full time while relying on personal savings

It can be done, but I don't recommend it.

> * bootstrap on the side while working a day job

This is what I did. About the time you're pulling your hair out because you don't have enough time in the day to follow through with taking people's money is a great time to finally quit that day job.

<comment><USER10> Keeping your day job and being willing to slog through your nights and weekends is a level zero test of whether you believe in your own success. "I don't have time" is the sorriest excuse for an excuse.

If you really want to make it you'll make time. If you don't, consider it an indication that you don't have what it takes.

<comment><USER11> I have a four month old daughter. My job takes eight hours, almost two hours more for the commute, at least an hour each day for cooking and meal prep, six hours for sleep, and the rest is taken up with the baby. I get some work done on weekends or in the middle of the night but it's not enough.

I recently negotiated with work to drop down to four days a week. They refused to let me do three days a week for the worst reason: my coworkers depend on me too much, so they need my butt in the chair. I tried it for a bit, but it's still nowhere near enough time to bootstrap my side project. So I decided to quit. I'll burn savings for a bit while I try to prove out my idea.

My wife knows she married a starving artist. I feel a lot older than I wanted to be when starting a family, but we're getting old enough that we don't have the luxury of putting it off any longer. I don't know if I'll ever be able to afford a house.

Am I failing your level zero test? Not everyone is a 21 year old college graduate with zero expenses or obligations. Saying it's just the "sorriest excuse for an excuse" and "you don't have what it takes" is just insulting. Real people have real time commitments in the real world.

<comment><USER9> For what it's worth, I did launch a side-project into a full-time company the same year my first kid was born. I would contend that if you have difficulty managing all the competing interests in your life between work family and side-projects now, it will not likely improve when you launch your former side project into a full time gig. Elon Musk is notorious for not taking vacations and sleeping on the factory floor when exciting shit is going down. His partner knows this and is ok with that. If yours isn't, then frankly, yeah it's going to be a major uphill battle and stressor on your relationship to try and pull that off.

It's totally ok to not be in a position to do this. In fact, it's arguably a healthier way of living. But it may still be an indication of failing that level zero test because you just aren't into it enough. Business is not the make-a-wish foundation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was revenue-positive by the second month but couldn't draw a salary until the end of year two. Everything was reinvested into the business. Having a spouse who contributed household income and health insurance was the only way I was able to do it. I am eternally grateful to her.

I also picked up a few consulting gigs (including one that was quite steady) and still do that now.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am pleasantly surprised to see Amir Rajan on that list. From this reddit post I thought that after his game went viral he couldn't capture any long- term success and went back to working a regular job: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/7m96wn/a_dark...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/7m96wn/a_dark_room_from_sabbatical_year_to_800000/)

It's a fascinating story. He has several other iOS games besides A Dark Room, but none of them seemed to go anywhere. Glad to hear his business is doing better now.

I suppose there's always money in the Skyrim business model -- just port your one successful game to every platform ever :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I've pretty much given up on working as a coder, as it seems too hostile to side endeavors. From manager squeezing time, to contracts squeezing IP, it creates a fearful mentality. Working as a laborer not touching computers feels like the way. As a bonus, I barely have to go to the gym to stay ripped. My phone never rings and everything I touch is mine. I worked in SV startups and corps for some years, always felt too risky to work on the side if I wasn't sleeping or getting drunk. I'm not sure what I'm founding yet and have no pressure, I just work for hours a day on whatever if I don't have a job scheduled. Where's my business co-founder? Email in profile.

<comment><USER15> Genuine question here: have you thought about trying Upwork? You can set your hourly rate low to start off with and then gradually increase it as you get more satisfied customers, more reviews, more proof of your capabilities. You'll have a global customer base, and so long as you get things done in a timely manner, not that much trouble finding work. It won't be market rate for a long time (if ever), but based on your past posting history, it might be something that could be really helpful for you right now. Best of luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think there's two approaches to this and they probably often overlap.

You may have a great idea and you want to do it because you believe its a great thing to accomplish.

Or you may think you want to maximize your net income, and do whatever it takes to do that.

I think the latter is better if that is what you want to do but only if that is what you want to do.

</comment><comment><USER17> If I could do it all over again and actually succeed this time:

* Get your living expenses down to $1000/mo before you start your startup (this is just a target for the northwestern US, find your own where you live).

* Multiply all projections by 3. People will complain that you are being over-conservative and probably laugh at you or grow concerned. They might point to other companies that succeeded in such and such time. Ignore them just like they ignore survival bias.

* Divide revenue by 5 to 10. A repair business running at 30% profitability needs to gross $3 for every dollar it keeps. A restaurant needs to make 20x at 5% margin. Chargebacks. Refunds. Illness. Accidents. Countless life experiences can make it feel like you are treading water for months/years. Another way to say this is that each dollar you make in your startup is like making $5-10 anywhere else, so treat it with the reverence it deserves.

* Donate plasma. This is a form of prostitution because you are selling yourself for money, but you'll make an extra $300/mo. You'll get a glimpse of the value of human life and dignity inherent to an industrial society that's being denied to us all by the lack of UBI. It will also show you the true value of money because you'll see that retail service jobs pay 1/2 to 1/4 per hour what plasma pays. You'll learn how all money is blood money because someone always exchanges blood, sweat, tears or time for it (unless they are born into it like the people who most likely have it today). And if you aren't ready to put your life on the line in some fashion, you might not be ready to make the big sacrifices that running a startup demands, or even lead others.

* Learn The Secret (The Law of Attraction) and other mindfulness practices. It's not so much that they are real (my experience is that it's all real) but that successful people are likely to attribute their success to things besides luck. It's good to know how to speak the lingo and present a good appearance for networking, since your primary revenue stream will probably come from a human need you might not have expected.

* Find a romantic partner that believes in you. Short of that, work a good job for a while and provide for their needs for some number of months or years before your startup so they're willing to take a risk on you. Or reject this advice completely and be a loner for a few years. Most startups were started by geeks, so it might be advantageous. But if you succeed, don't be a douche. Nobody likes that you succeed. Many secretly hate you for it. Be magnanimous. Pay it forward. If you suffer in solitude or walk around like a self-help guru, you'll probably fail.

* Remember that the thing isn't the thing. Financing to get you to the thing is. Our entire system of western capitalism is at odds with your personal dream of being the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. And since all money is blood money, maybe you don't want that anyway. We need new heroes like, I dunno, Captain America. I think that there is vast untapped potential in ideas like cooperatives and communal stewardship of the things we care about. I've tried to adopt ideas like radical inclusion into my life. Maybe something in your belief system will lead you to a worthy cause and the funding to see it through. We all know that banks sure won't.

Well this post stinks but my gut seems satisfied that most of the nonintuitive stuff has been covered. Happy holidays everyone.

<comment><USER18> This was an intriguing read, so I'm kind of reluctant to go OT... but is selling blood and/or plasma really a thing in the US?

For background, I'm from the UK, where people _donate_ blood, plasma and platelets, and AFAIK, it's illegal to sell such things. I read all kinds of things about US health care on HN, but this isn't something I've come across before. If true... I don't know exactly, it just feels very, very strange, especially for a "western" country.

<comment><USER19> I'm from Europe as well and remember seeing this mentioned in more than one US movie.

For example, there is a scene in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pursuit_of_Happyness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pursuit_of_Happyness) where the main character sells blood for money.

You can find several websites that mention this "money making strategy": [https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/240-month- selling...](https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/make-money/240-month-selling- plasma/)

<comment><USER20> Selling blood is somewhat outlawed. I say somewhat because you can still receive gift cards and movie tickets.

Selling plasma for cash is mostly done by very impoverished people. I used to live a few blocks from one of these businesses. The people you see hanging around the place would probably discourage anyone but the neediest from "donating."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WTF Is Aspartame and Why Is Pepsi Bringing Back the Chemical Linked to Cancer? - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/17554-wtf-is-aspartame-and-why-pepsi-is-bringing-back-the-chemical-linked-to-cancer <comment><USER2> Nice click bait (the article is about how aspartame is not linked to cancer).

On the topic, people have somehow convinced themselves that all chemicals are bad. And of course their "common sense" trumps couple decades of scientific studies.

<comment><USER3> Except that Aspartame is bad although possibly not causing cancer. All sweeteners (even though not containing glucose) have been found to increase blood sugar. And, on top of it, Aspartame is an excitotoxin, i.e. if you value your brain, stay off Aspartame!</comment></comment>


San Francisco Hacker News meetup – Thursday Jan 24 - <AUTHOR> Hi Everyone,
I'm organizing an SFHN meetup this coming Thursday, January 24th. It will be at Founders Den at 665 3rd Street #150, San Francisco, CA 94107 from 6pm-8:30pm.
Drinks and snacks will be provided!
Please RSVP at http://sfhn2.eventbrite.com/
Thanks!
-
Group Contact Info:
website  : http://sfhackernews.com facebook : https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn meetup   : http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Hacker-News-Meetup/
-
HUGE thanks to our sponsors:
Founders Den : http://foundersden.com/ Twilio       : http://twilio.com/ Nuzzel       : http://beta.nuzzel.com/passion ValleyAnon   : http://valleyanon.com/
-
If you need to contact me:
phone    : 415.583.5403 email    : email@example.com twitter  : http://twitter.com/dpg facebook : http://facebook.com/ctwiz <comment><USER2> Heads-up: the SF memorial for Aaron Swartz is the same night, 7p at the Internet Archive, 300 Funston Ave in the Richmond neighborhood. See:

[http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/15/memorial-for-aaron- swartz...](http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/15/memorial-for-aaron-swartz/)

<comment><AUTHOR> My thoughts go out to Aaron's family and friends.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

Event : <http://sfhn2.eventbrite.com/>

website : <http://sfhackernews.com>

facebook : <https://www.facebook.com/groups/gosfhn>

meetup : <http://www.meetup.com/San-Francisco-Hacker-News-Meetup/>

Sponsors:

Founders Den : <http://foundersden.com/>

Twilio : <http://twilio.com/>

Nuzzel : <http://beta.nuzzel.com/passion>

ValleyAnon : <http://valleyanon.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey dan, I will be a bit late for the meetup. I will be arriving at SF in 1st of feb. Can we still meet for a coffee or sth somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Sounds great. Just email me at email@example.com or DM me on twitter @dpg

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will internet personality @sarahaustin be there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you like me to invite her?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully we'll get to see you out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> cool!</comment>


The staggering impact of IT systems gone wrong - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-staggering-impact-of-it-systems-gone-wrong <comment><USER2> I clicked on this curious as to whether I had worked on any of these. And yep. 3 of them -- 3 out of the top 4 worst in the Americas. The DoD has some successes though.

<comment><USER3> well, and this is just a personal suggestion, maybe you should stop sabotaging the companies you work for? Or hire yourself out for your ability to sabotage competitors?

: D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Queensland Health payroll failure is now estimated to be $AU1.2b all up, with nothing to show for it.

<comment><USER5> One of the authors here- we have another graphic coming about Queensland Health. The craziest part was when IBM estimated it at $6 million.

<comment><USER4> $6m to $1.2b cost overrun. That must be some type of record.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it seems like it. You can see how the budget ballooned here: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-life-cycles-of-failed- pr...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-life-cycles-of-failed-projects) (select the 5th project)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> But there is a profession dedicated to preventing these kinds of failures: Systems Administrators.

Proper infrastructure engineers (or "site reliability engineers" as google now calls them) are key for helping architect highly available systems like this; Yet the trend seems to be forcing software engineers follow tutorials from google on setting up key pieces of infrastructure nowadays.

 _Edit:_ it's ettiquite to say why you're going to downvote someone, if what I said wasn't relevant please let me know.

<comment><USER7> I did not downvote you, but I disagree with your premise. Systems administration is only part of the problem, and only in some cases. A non- inclusive list of other causes include failing to understand the intended purpose of a system and the environment it is to operate in, and losing control of the design.

<comment><USER6> I would agree with what you said, but I would argue that the points you raised still fall into the realm of systems administration.

Identifying scope and purpose, and it's impact and documenting the design are just some of the things an platform operations team is -supposed- to take care of.

<comment><USER7> If you expand the definition of systems administration to include everything, it doesn't get you any closer to a solution.

The largest problems of development have nothing to do with administering anything (edit: for example, bad design often results from bad design decisions that are neither prevented nor fixed by seeing that the required documents have been written.) The idea that Winslow Taylor's principles can solve these problems is a fallacy - a commonly held one, but a fallacy nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe that these complex multi-billion $ projects fail for 2 reasons :

\- corruption : "let's milk the customer for all they have"

\- personal ambition : "let's choose what's best for my career instead of what's best for the project"

Unless we radically change the way we do things the IEEE will need bigger and bigger green circles on their charts.

<comment><USER9> You're definitely falling prey to a short-sighted and overly cynical point of view.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" and never use the stupidity explination to overlook the fundamental complexity of a software project.

What you have here is a lot of non IT professionals, without siginificant IT experience, attempting the most complex IT projects ever considered, without the pressures of ship-or-sink, investors looking for progress reports, or even the benefit of working with their own employees (usually multiple groups of contractors work on these big projects). Also, they're not trying to build a MVP and iterate. They're trying to build Rome in a few years.

When you think about the hurdles these projects face, of course they fail. The government trying to do a huge software project is like a kid seeing a master level parkour video on Youtube and not understanding the lifetime of practice that went into the sport. They're just going to jump off the roof and break their ankle.

Of course in a sample size this large corruption is an issue. However, with zero corruption and only the best intentions, we'd see substantially the same results.

<comment><USER10> Also, "Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by complexity."

[http://www.cennydd.com/blog/its-not-what-you- think](http://www.cennydd.com/blog/its-not-what-you-think)

<comment><USER11> Only those that haven't worked in DoD / federal systems could ever think that laziness / stupidity is _not_ a major root cause of so many DoD IT project failures. There's a lot of successes when using smaller, elite contractors but complexity intertwines with stupidity as larger contractors must be brought in to handle the bureaucracy and their hiring standards are basically abysmal. Why? They were very much incentivized to hire butts in seats on contracts historically, not to be effective at executing them to technical satisfaction.

Someone needs to call out DoD for what it really is in the US - federal Public Works program that's approved by neoconservatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Is it really that bad? Yossarian: It's cotton! 1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: They've got to learn to like it!</comment>


Cloud Run Button: Click-to-deploy your Git repos to GCP - <AUTHOR> https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/serverless/introducing-cloud-run-button-click-to-deploy-your-git-repos-to-google-cloud <comment><USER2> Back in June a Googler added a cloud run button to one of my open-source repositories ([https://github.com/typpo/quickchart#deploy](https://github.com/typpo/quickchart#deploy)).

As a project maintainer, I like it because it gives prospective users a quick and cheap way to test out service deployment, and it required nothing more from me than the already existing Dockerfile.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is fascinating. It's one of those "feels so obvious" type of things. I wonder how hard it will be to track versions of things?

I guess the "safest" workflow would be to fork the repo before you click run but the article doesn't say how to handles repeat clicks... multiple environments or if it prompts you? Off to test!

<comment><USER3> To save anyone else some time if they stumble across my comment... It creates multiple revisions, even from distinct forks, based on what appears to be the repo name (cloud-run-hello).

First run from a fork:

This created the revision "cloud-run-hello-00001" of the Cloud Run service "cloud-run-hello"...

After changing the button's HTML to point to my repo on my fork:

This created the revision "cloud-run-hello-00002" of the Cloud Run service "cloud-run-hello"...

<comment><USER4> Cloud Run requires a deployed container image somewhere. That can be Docker Hub or GCR, but the image version is what it actually operates on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Heroku has had this for years. I'm surprised others have not followed suite more often.

<comment><USER3> I didn't realize that. Saving anyone else a search [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku- button](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-button)

There appears to be more vendor lock in with this one requiring heroku specific files...

I'm a bit behind on best practices with Heroku so the heroku.yml[1] config is new to me and it says it doesn't replace app.json. This is where I feel like Cloud Run supporting "plain" docker files or build packs is great. I wonder if Heroku will follow suit and make it a bit easier to deploy "just a container"?

[1] [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/build-docker-images- he...](https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/build-docker-images-heroku-yml)

<comment><USER6> `app.json` serves a different purpose from Dockerfiles (which Heroku also supports). Google's Cloud Run also makes use of `app.json`.

<comment><USER7> Cloud Run doesn't recognize app.json natively. However this project (Cloud Run Button) accepts an app.json that lets the developer configure env variables to prompt to the user.

Disclaimer: I've worked on this project.

<comment><USER6> My mistake for confusing Cloud Run and Cloud Run Button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this. Would be cool if the cloud run button (i.e. the image in the readme) updates and shows whether it's running and some status info after it's started (maybe it does already, didn't try it yet)

<comment><USER3> I am a bit disappointed- I skipped the details and now that I've tried it hands-on I see that it is hardcoding the link to the repo in the button's HTML. So even after you fork it the button still point's to Google's repo.

That makes sense, of course, but if that step were gone (maybe by checking referrer?) it would be a lot slicker!

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: co-author of the project.

It's already on our list: [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-run- button/issu...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-run- button/issues/16) Ideally you'd just link to a URL like deploy.cloud.run and we'll figure out the rest from Referer.

<comment><USER3> Awesome! Thanks for the quick response on that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks pretty slick, will have to see which parts/ideas we should copy for [https://mybinder.org](https://mybinder.org). Which is an open-source project that lets you do something very similar, mostly based around people wanting to share notebooks. Colab but with automatically detected environment/build instructions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks awesome. Loved the deploy to Heroku button in the past.

Now I just wait for websocket support to move my backend to cloud run as well

<comment><USER11> If you want to support websockets from a not-always-on backend, you can use Fanout or Amazon API Gateway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to build your own micro PaaS, which is from Git to Deploy (on a Kubernetes cluster), check out [https://rio.io](https://rio.io) (disclaimer: happy user).

</comment><comment><USER13> What's the best way to handle a button like this if you intentionally keep certain dependencies out of Git/GitHub? (e.g. my gpt-2-cloud-run repos [[https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-cloud- run](https://github.com/minimaxir/gpt-2-cloud-run)] have a 500MB dependency)

Can you do a conditional in the Dockerfile, e.g. download a remote file if using Docker to build with certain parameters?

<comment><USER7> Off-topic but I think Dockerfile allows downloading remote URLs, e.g.:

         ADD http://example.com ./file.txt

<comment><USER14> I've been using wget like a sucker?!

<comment><USER7> I think using RUN wget/curl is actually cached better than ADD [URL], which will invalidate your build steps cache more often unless I'm mistaken.

<comment><USER15> It's also easier to clean up, i.e download a file, do something with it and then remove it. With ADD this is impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> i _want_ to love all these cloud run app engine cloud function type things (and amazon type equals), but it seems like stuff takes like 30 years to start up if it hasn't been touched for a little bit even for super simple functions... is this stuff just near unusable unless you're patient or like super baller with billions of hits per second?

<comment><USER17> It depends on the language you're using and how you manage your dependencies.

If you're using Java, see this writeup for how different frameworks can affect startup time: [https://medium.com/google-cloud/java-frameworks- performances...](https://medium.com/google-cloud/java-frameworks-performances- on-cloud-run-eb243fd84a5c)

Similarly, if you're using Node or Python, you might want to see if any of your dependencies are _enormous_ with lots of files and slow startup time -- you can check this locally by timing how long it takes to get to the initial listen() call and just print that wall time as you adjust dependencies.

If you're building Golang and you're seeing slow cold starts... I have no idea how you're doing that. For development, a lot of us on the open source [http://knative.dev/](http://knative.dev/) side are using Go http servers that take tens of milliseconds to start up, so there's probably some other initialization that's slowing you down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The free tier seems pretty generous but I'm not sure I'm making sense of all these numbers [1].

Anyone has insight on how this compares to Heroku in terms of pricing/performance?

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/run/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/run/pricing)

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this different from how Netlify does it?

</comment><comment><USER20> Any thoughts on auto-detecting the language/framework so that's it's just git push and you don't even need a dockerfile? For a zeit or Heroku like experience.

It might require a lot of conventions (which might not be worth it finally) but as a quick deploy and experiment solution, it'd be super awesome.

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: working on this project.

When there are no Dockerfiles, we use CNCF Buildpacks ([https://buildpacks.io](https://buildpacks.io)) similar to Heroku buildpacks.

Some apps without Dockerfile are currently deployable using this, as buildpacks detect the language/framework.

<comment><USER21> > _similar to Heroku buildpacks._

In fact Heroku is one of the founding contributors for Cloud Native Buildpacks (along with Pivotal, where I work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm about to launch a new website and would like to start using AWS or GCP. Between Fargate and Cloud Run, which one would you recommend? (It's a simple React + Django + Postgres + Redis project) Thanks!

<comment><USER23> I personally make heavy use of classic App Engine tbh, the experience is pretty similar to Cloud Run but it's much more of a mature platform (if you can deal with the downsides).

<comment><USER22> I used App Engine years ago, but didn't even consider it nowadays exactly because it's mature and I fear Google might sunset it soon. Will have a look now, thanks!

<comment><USER17> App Engine is still GA and is still having features added.

Disclaimer: I work on both Cloud Run and App Engine at Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Conceptually cool. I wonder though if this would work for those of us whose application consists of multiple interdependent services living in multiple repos.

<comment><USER25> Exactly, going to production is 80%. This button while cool is only 20% of the story.

<comment><USER26> that's fine, sometimes you just want to try something out, test it, play around

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is excellent. Any way to pass environment variables?

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I work on this project.

Yes, you can create a file named app.json that prompts the user for environment variables that are set on the deployed application. See [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-run- button/](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/cloud-run-button/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is this free? How do I know google wont terminate it?

</comment><comment><USER29> Does this work with private repos? I don't see documentation on this.

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://zeit.co/](https://zeit.co/)

</comment><comment><USER31> > sped up for your viewing pleasure...

Has anyone tested how long this button actually takes?

Last time I checked its at least a [1] 7 minute wait to deploy a "Hello World" to GCP...

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40205222/why-does- google...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40205222/why-does-google- appengine-deployment-take-several-minutes-to-update-service)

<comment><USER32> You're linking to a question about a different service (App Engine) from 3 years ago

<comment><USER33> Yup, OP's time is in reference to App Engine Flex, which is much slower to deploy.

I normally see 1-2 minute deployment times depending on the application.

(I work for GCP)

<comment><USER31> OP here, sorry my mistake. But what is this button deploying to then?

<comment><USER34> Cloud Run. Serverless containers

[https://cloud.google.com/run/](https://cloud.google.com/run/)

<comment><USER31> Interesting looks like it's still in Beta, but will check it out.

We use Firebase and GCP at our company and have had a good experience aside from slow deploys with App Engine. What parts do you get to work on?

<comment><USER34> I am using this in production for [https://www.pagedash.com](https://www.pagedash.com)

It's holding up pretty well so far.

> What parts do you get to work on?

Not sure if this answers your question, but I also use Cloud SQL, Cloud Build, GKE, GCE, Stackdriver, Bigquery etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How did you learn to build your first software? - <AUTHOR> Share your experience here. What did you build? And how did you learn to build? <comment><USER2> Sounds silly but it was on a calculator using basic. It was an old CASIO PB-100.

I had a book that taught me how to program it, eventually I made an organiser that was password protected, and a slot machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a no code founder who had some success. Now, I am thinking of learning how to code and to build some real SaaS products. Any advice on where and how I can go about learning?

<comment><USER2> These are in no order.

\- Start small. Build many small things fast.

\- Pick a framework that you like - my two recommended are either Laravel (php) or Django (Python). If you wanted to build something in C++ then I would recommend Qt Framework

\- Depending how you learn, you can easily find documentation, YouTube videos, courses etc on nearly every single language.

\- Go to meet ups - depending where you live you might have a meet up for web development, or a meet up for a particular language you are trying to master. Talking to people could help solve issues that you are experiencing

\- Persistence - it took me years to get where I am now. Even then I am not quiet there yet and still have a lot more to learn myself. I have to persistently teach myself new things to get ahead of the job market

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. I really appreciate it!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MercuryApp For Teams is now free for startups/small teams up to 4 people - <AUTHOR>

MercuryApp helps you track your team's feelings and progress along your project. https://www.mercuryapp.com/startups <comment><USER2> I've been using MercuryApp since way early on, and I'm absolutely loving it for evaluating.... uh, my life. As a leader of a dev group, I'm really excited about the team functionality. I'm hoping it'll give me lots of insight to both our advantages and dysfunctions.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, MercuryApp is great. Go try it!</comment></comment>


Scratch for Arduino - <AUTHOR> http://s4a.cat/

<comment><USER2> This is soooo cool. I have been teaching my son about programming using Scratch.

The biggest problem is the huge gap between the kinds of programs a kid can make vs. the kind he can easily download. When I was a kid the kind of programs you could type into a C64 were not that different than anything you might get, so you had an incentive to learn how to do that.

Using Scratch to control hardware could be a really appealing way for them to learn about programming.

<comment><USER3> A favorite memory of mine is building an RC monster truck with my dad when I was a kid. Combining physical projects with Scratch sounds like something I would have _loved_. (Who am I kidding, I'm excited to do this myself as soon as I have some spare time :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Waterbear has an Arduino plugin: [http://robotics.waterbearlang.com/garden.html?plugin=arduino](http://robotics.waterbearlang.com/garden.html?plugin=arduino)

As does Blockly (Google): [http://www.gasolin.idv.tw/public/blockly/demos/blocklyduino/...](http://www.gasolin.idv.tw/public/blockly/demos/blocklyduino/index.html)

Blockly is easy to extend as well (maybe Waterbear is too; I have not tried).

</comment><comment><USER5> This fills a very important void in my family being that my kids can't really type (well or at all) but they love using Scratch. We just got an Arduino but the environment is a bit daunting for them. I haven't had the chance to download the Scratch for Arduino environment, but if this works, I don't know who will be more excited, me or the kids.

Thanks for the work that went into this!

</comment><comment><USER6> I just got my first Arduino yesterday. It came with a light sensor and some other pieces as part of a starter pack. This is my first project of any kind dealing with anything EE-related or even C-related. This could help get used to some of the concepts surrounding programming for an Arduino.

</comment><comment><USER7> My kids play with Lego Mindstorms and I play with Arquino. They are also very well versed in Scratch. This is really unexpected but super cool. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER8> This is cool.. kinda like lego mindstorms

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great. Congratulations for the work!

Kids will really enjoy something like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks! My kids will love this.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks great!</comment>


Electric Car Battery Maker A123 Systems Files Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443854204578060433271656440.html

<comment><USER2> Ach. Sounds interesting, but behind paywall.

Here [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-16/electric-car- batter...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-16/electric-car-battery- maker-a123-systems-files-bankruptcy.html) is a pointer to the story from bloomberg.</comment>


How You Win - <AUTHOR> http://www.ideasonideas.com/2011/03/how-you-win/

<comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing this article. How much do you really think luck takes into account?

Also, the remark about the "he (it's almost always a "he")" opens up the discussion about the role of women in start-ups.

I'm a female entrepreneur and designer. Yes, I think Apple is great. Yes, Google is swell. What about successful companies started by women?

As a designer, I draw inspiration from our surroundings and experiences. I have become accustomed to learning from the success of famous men in tech. What about the women?

<comment><AUTHOR> As noted in the post, I don't put much stock in luck at all. It's great to have some, but it's too elusive to bank on.

As for the lack of women in start-ups, I don't really know what the answer is. There are people like Cher Wang at HTC, but they certainly are the exception more than the rule.

I have some hunches as to why this happens, but no definitive answer. It is, however, a problem that needs to be addressed--and at very least discussed.</comment></comment>


An OSI layer model for the 21st century (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://davidad.github.io/blog/2014/04/24/an-osi-layer-model-for-the-21st-century/ <comment><USER2> What is the point of the OSI layers. It feels like some academic come up with them and everyone has been going through mental gymnastics trying to work out how to fit the real world on to it. The proposed new model doesn't seem to make much sense either. How is IP integrity?

<comment><USER3> OSI actually developed an entire set of protocols for each of the layers that adhered to the principles of their design. (Or at least they intended to, I don't know if they actually got around to tackling all of the layers). It is an entire networking stack that competes with the TCP/IP model, which was very much _not_ designed in such a way, and thus does not mesh very well with it.

The OSI protocol stack never gained much traction. Some of them were repackaged on top of TCP/IP--X.500 became adapted into LDAP, and SSL certificates are derived from X.509. X.400 is the OSI competitor to SMTP, and still sees some niche usage (just not for email). There may be some other ones floating about in terms of the telephone network infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> Do you know what the X stood for?

<comment><USER5> _X_ is just the letter prefix identifying the series of ITU-T Recommendations related to "Data networks, open system communications and security."

You can see a list of all 25 series ("W" is not assigned) and download most of the documents (including Rec. ITU-T A.12, _Identification and layout of ITU-T Recommendations_ , which defines the letters) on the ITU's website: [https://www.itu.int/pub/T-REC](https://www.itu.int/pub/T-REC)

<comment><USER6> Many more people who have never heard of the ITU will certainly be familiar with the H series ("audiovisual and multimedia systems"), of which the video codec H.264 is well known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author, David Dalrymple, used to be a "wunderkind" (got into MIT phd program when he was 14, etc), but lately he disappeared after briefly working for Twitter. I wonder what is he doing now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Discussed in 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15058090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15058090)

</comment><comment><USER9> This seems to be written by someone who spends a lot of time (and has a lot of knowledge) about high level application stuff but lacks an understanding of the existing network technology they are writing about or what purposes real world networking models need to serve. Apologies for the huge block of text, I'm not sure how to format this better.

> Data Link and Physical layers For our purposes today, the Data Link and > Physical layers are a black box (perhaps literally), to which we have an > interface (the "network interface") which looks like a transmit queue and a > receive queue. These queues can store "payloads" of anywhere from 1 to > 1280[1] octets (bytes).

1) The physical layer and data link layer almost always have different size and structure

2) Data link layer queues aren't defined by network layer payloads

3) IPv6 specifies a MINIMUM payload of 1280 octets

4) For most of the internet and private systems ~1500 is the standard payload limit due to the Ethernet standard.

> We would like a received payload to self-evidently be the same payload which > was sent. Although the Data Link layer is supposed to provide such an > assurance, various kinds of attacks on the system might invalidate this > assumption. Integrity protocols mitigate these attacks: \- 1 Thermal noise, > cosmic rays checksum hash TCP Checksum CRC-32C

1) TCP Checksums are not part of and do not validate the data link layer headers.

2) Ethernet aleardy includes the FCS (CRC) as a form of check (as most data link layers have).

3) Physical layers also commonly have forms of integrity checking

> 2 Deliberate corruption cryptographic hash SHA-1 BLAKE2b 3 Spoofing of > trusted contacts keyed hash HMAC-SHA1 SipHash 4 Spoofing of strangers > public-key signature of cryptographic hash SHA-1 + RSA BLAKE2b + Ed25519

1) I'm not sure where these "common implementations" are comming from on the data link/physical layers, AES encryption via DTLS/MACsec or encryption via DTLS are the standards here.

> A fully implemented Availability layer should provide unicast (deliver to a > unique endpoint authenticated by a given public key, wherever it may be), > anycast (deliver to nearest endpoint authenticated by a given public key), > and multicast (a.k.a. pub/sub: route to all endpoints who have asked to > subscribe to a given ID, and provide a subscription method).

1) Multicast sounds great until you consider the billions of devices across untold number of paths on the internet and look at the line that started the paragraph "We would like networked endpoints to be available to receive packets from other endpoints in a way that is robust to unannounced changes in network topology.". It's hard enough today to announce and learn unicast paths between network aggregated endpoints and the author wants to add multicast paths/typologies to the mix while throwing out the abstraction of the port in favor of service based networking?

2) [personal opinion] moving more "work" from ports (which are supposed to be an inside the END NODE thing _cough_ ipv4 NAT _cough_ ) into "the network" almost never seems to sell me on being a sustainable/worthwhile tradeoff. The less your layer needs to know to deliver something the more flexible and upgradable communication becomes.

> Confidentiality layer Ideally, we would like to not transmit any information > to anything other than the destination endpoint(s). This ideal is not in > general achievable on a public network, but some types of mitigation are > possible: ...

1) A layer has to be more than "this is the encryption algorithm we use".

2) Encryption should not be a layer high up the stack, it should be something available at any point and able to be performed multiple times to allow levels of trust or defense in depth

3) Is there anything the author doesn't like about existing solutions for this layer like IPsec other than AES is most commonly used rather than ChaCha and similar variants?

> Non-Repudiation and/or Repudiation layer > We would like for a receiver to > be sure that a message they receive was sent by a given sender, and we would > like for a sender to be sure that a given message was successfully received. > Sometimes, we would also like for a receiver to be unaware of the location a > message was sent from

1) This layer needs to be fully option as

a) many real-time messages don't want confirmation information to bog things down

b) repudiation of origin needs to be optional unless society agrees it's more important than performance (it won't)

> Transactions layer

[personal opinion] this needs to be part of the application layer functionality to prevent the ossification of implementations and protocols.

General comment on the topic - The OSI model wasn't meant to be viewed like it is today and as a result spends a lot of time defining how to stratifying things that don't need to be stratified in the modern world. One thing I'd like to tell EVERYONE about network is "stop thinking of network models as a set of 1 dimensional abstractions".

</comment><comment><USER10> This is super cool.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand a lot of the complexities or issues with this, but from what I do understand it seems like he's thought through a lot of issues and provided cool solutions for them.</comment>


A Pandemic Does Not Suspend the Rule of Law – Reason.com - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/05/20/a-pandemic-does-not-suspend-the-rule-of-law/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is the key quote I took away from it and it seems like something most people would agree on.

"Any government that has made the grave decision to suspend the liberties of a free people during a health emergency should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate—both to its citizens and to the courts—that its chosen measures are absolutely necessary to combat a threat of overwhelming severity. The government should also be expected to demonstrate that less restrictive measures cannot adequately address the threat."</comment>


How about YC-rejected Alumni network? - <AUTHOR> I filed 2016W at the very last minute, with no demo as "solo-founder". Actually I have a cofounder, just I never met him:) So my chance got rejected is much higher than 97%.
Today I can not stop thinking why not people got rejected start a network and help each other.
At least we could get feedback from each other, which we could not get from rejection.
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> You don't need more feedback from other, unfunded founders. You need feedback from customers. Networking with other founders isn't a very useful activity once you already have your co-founder. If you're not coding, spend all of every day on customer discovery.

<comment><AUTHOR> then why yc alumni network exists? Why yc provides mentors? Whose feedback is more valuable, mentors or customers?

<comment><USER2> The entire assumption of YC (and all investors, really) is that they're able to select companies that are likely to succeed. I'm not saying YC (or anyone) is good at it, but let's pretend that they are.

You're proposing to create a group of people who YC has decided are _not_ likely to succeed. That doesn't make any sense.

YC alumni might want to be in a network so they can collaborate, make deals with each other, or find new jobs when their own company fails.

Why would you want to do that with the rejected group? Why not try to do that with other companies in general? There are lots of opportunities to meet other founders in any city with a decent level of entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER3> You're stopping short of saying YC-rejected groups are failures (less likely to succeed) ergo their advice will certainly fall short. But then we learn better from failure in general and the failure of others. I think that rejected YC companies are one step closer to success.

So why not...

<comment><USER4> I think the process of applying is useful for some people At least for me, it took me outside my comfort zone. I've always just operated under my own name and spokesmodelling "a company" instead for the video created a cognitive shift that I didn't know existed.

This article is probably a reasonable way to look at not getting accepted: [http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped- do...](http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped-doing- interviews-for-yale/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From six years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550351)

<comment><USER6> Pretty good post. And you get the bonus of Drew Houston saying he got rejected the first time :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I understand you correctly, you have not yet been rejected. You are just having big feels, feeling sure you will be rejected, and are flailing around looking for an emotional outlet, hoping to find people who will understand you.

This is the kind of thing where the answer is you write emo poetry or watch tear jerk movies or something until you have an actual answer in hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. What I feel bad is a lot of 97% rejected applications may have pretty solid ideas. We could see the ideas of successful ones from demo day.

My actual purpose is I want to see rest of them.

<comment><USER7> I hate the meme "Ideas don't matter, execution does" but there is a reason it exists.

I have a sandbox website that I have long neglected where I want to talk about the architecture of ideas. Execution reveals assumptions you did not know you had. To have a successful start up, you need a density of value in your concepts.

I think most failed start ups have serious errors in their ideas, kind of like early pregnancies that miscarry because they aren't viable.

Unlike pregnancy, a startup has opportunities to become aware that it doesn't work and to self correct -- to pivot, for example.

You might learn something from seeing all the demos, but a "rejection club" is not a great way to reach out to people and ask for access to that information. You aren't even yet rejected. This is just seriously not the way to approach this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your comment with ideas. Some ideas are totally not workable. That is why we could learn more from failures.

Many applicants may not like to show failed application to unknown people. But to a group of peers who experienced same thing, we could possibly share and learn from each other's application.

<comment><USER7> Generally speaking, a good example of what actually works is the strongest way to teach people how to do things that work.

Best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you have a strong conviction that what you are building/making will succeed, why do you need a "YC-Rejected Alumni Network? Why do you need the reminder of the rejection? What will be the purpose of such a network?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Maybe as someone said we do not need feedbacks, which I think we all need.

But since already prepared the application, why not show it to more people?

<comment><USER2> > why not show it to more people?

Because most people will have strong opinions about it, and those opinions will be wrong. The only people who have the right opinions are your prospective customers. Go show it to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm in.

<comment><USER10> I didn't apply can I be in too?</comment></comment>


China Missiles Could Overwhelm U.S. Military in Asia in 'Hours', Says Think Tank - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-19/china-could-crush-some-u-s-military-assets-in-hours <comment><USER2> This is a pointless exercise in creating the think tank equivalent of click bait. So China could wipe out America's military presence in Asia. What then? Do we assume that somehow the rest of America's military back home and abroad doesn't respond? That this inevitable retaliation does not weigh into a decision to "wipe out" Asian-deployed forces? American forces deployed overseas are nothing more than "ambassadors" for its military, mere pawns on the chessboard. Imagine a newspaper headline "black queen could wipe out white pawns" and realize how ridiculous this is.

<comment><USER3> > So China could wipe out America's military presence in Asia. What then? Do > we assume that somehow the rest of America's military back home and abroad > doesn't respond?

Yes, consider the following scenario, Using some political pretence, China invade Taiwan in a blitzkrieg which is over in a few days. All US communications and GPS are wiped out before the attack begins. Total chaos. Allies are blind. Any US forces in the vicinity trying to prevent the attack are obliterated. Next days China issue the following decree, Taiwan has joined the motherland and all regrettable attacks on US forces have stopped and a ceasefire is in effect. Any attack on China and Taiwan will be meet with nuclear forces. What will US and Nato do? What did they do when Russia elbowed itself into the Syrian conflict? That's right, nothing.

The point is, any serious attack done by China will be over before US an allies can stop it or reply properly, unless there is a believable rapid response force on location.

<comment><USER4> A bunch of jerks flew planes in a building at killed ~3k people and look how we reacted? The blood of Americans as you described would result in the same reaction as WW2, full stop. It is the way we wired.

As an aside, the PLA trying to capture Taiwan will be a huge bloody mess. Any attack plan would be known as the build up would be seen by everyone. The Taiwan military is not a push over and has dug hole in every mountain. This is a pretty realistic view here - [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan- can-win-a-war-wi...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a- war-with-china/)

All of that being said, we should all work to find a solution that does not involved killing lots of people. China is still trying to find its place in the world and has a bit of a chip on its shoulder about how it was treated in the past. I have to believe there is a path in which we are all better off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _A decade of "delayed and unpredictable funding" for the U.S. military's budget has seen America lose its primacy in the Western Pacific, giving the edge to an increasingly sophisticated China, a Sydney-based think tank warned._

So you're saying there's a 'Gap' in missile technology between the US and China? A 'Missile Gap', perhaps? Perhaps we should have a good old-fashioned arms-race to sort it all out?

<comment><USER6> How? Wall Street has control of the US defense Industry and Chinese investors are a big part of that. The last time we had a healthy defense industry was the mid nineties before the last supper destroyed all the small to medium size defense contractors by forcing them to merge in mega corporations like Raytheon and L3.

<comment><USER7> > The last time we had a healthy defense industry was the mid nineties before > the last supper destroyed all the small to medium size defense contractors

What was "the last supper"?

<comment><USER8> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1997/07/04/h...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1997/07/04/how- a-dinner-led-to-a-feeding- frenzy/13961ba2-5908-4992-8335-c3c087cdebc6/?noredirect=on)

<comment><USER7> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That seems a sort of absurd scenario / click bait type story where any given conflict would be far more complex / nuanced.

Was there an assumption that US forces stationed there right now alone could somehow fight a battle and win vs the volume of China's forces in Asia? Seems unlikely.

I recall a US general testifying and noting that if N. Korea chose to cross the DMZ, just based on their sheer volume of men and material would take a great deal of territory in a short period of time. It was not a surprise, it's a known thing.

Even during the cold war I belive most plans expected that if the soviet union chose to move into the rest of Europe, they could do so to some extent.

What happens after that is what would really matter.

</comment><comment><USER10> The cruise missiles go both ways.

The US loses some military bases. China loses their economic infrastructure and their own internal military bases.

The US would have tens of thousands of casualties. China would have a couple orders of magnitude more casualties.

The US would lose one trading partner. China would lose almost all of their trading partners.

The article seems like a sensationalist attempt to justify increasing the US military budget.

<comment><USER11> I've served over there and of the bases I've seen I doubt a single one would be "destroyed" in the total sense. There are just so many, most of them are large and spread out, and the structures are usually reinforced concrete. At the start of this soft targets would be moved anyway. Meh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I'm China, wouldn't I be concerned if the opposite were true? That my military capabilities didn't allow me the ability to at least defend my continent/sphere of influence from my greatest enemy?

It's one thing to go on the offensive to attack another country like the US at their home, but it's another to have the capabilities to defend areas of interest that are relatively close to home.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it me or is Bloomberg just total trash news?! And why on earth are they using a wire photo of the Thunderbirds for an article about war?

</comment><comment><USER14> The report they are citing ([https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/averting-crisis- american-st...](https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/averting-crisis-american- strategy-military-spending-and-collective-defence-in-the-indo-pacific) if you didn't see the link) is much more interesting. Though it doesn't seem to cite a source or give evidence for the claim that the missiles could overwhelm US forces within hours, and there doesn't seem to be any elaboration about that figure. Honestly I don't think they are taking into account ballistic missile defense systems in place, the rate of fire the PLA can sustain, the risk of escalation (depending on the scenario, some of the countries these bases reside in could be neutral in the conflict), and the fact that the PLA will likely want to hold on to their longer-range DF-26 missiles until they get the opportunity to take down a carrier.

</comment><comment><USER11> Actual think-tank paper: [https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/averting-crisis- american-st...](https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/averting-crisis-american- strategy-military-spending-and-collective-defence-in-the-indo-pacific)

After skimming I'm not too impressed with this. It makes a lot of sweeping assumptions, some totally inaccurate, about our readiness in the area and seems to disapprove of them not being at peak war-time levels. More alarmist than anything.

I might be biased since I served in Okinawa for a few years.

</comment><comment><USER15> looks like the principal US export (military-industrial complex + all that entails - in this case, think tanks justifying insane defense projects/spending) is getting some play down under

</comment><comment><USER16> Are they talking about nuclear missiles? Doesn't _" mutually assured destruction"_ still hold?

<comment><USER17> Exactly. Nobody knows what the threshold for opening a can of nuclear whopass is. Who's willing to bet a billion lives on it being in a particular spot?

The US and China have far too much common economic interest to go to war short of China doing something so absurdly aggressive that you can't not go to war (e.g. invading Japan) I don't see that happening.

<comment><USER18> Or maybe miscalculating (I mean here thinking the U.S. isn't willing to go to war but turns out they are) and invading Taiwan. I'm honestly not sure how the U.S. and allies would respond. In my opinion, with the current Chinese administration there's no reason to think they won't continue to act in ways that the West views as aggressive, the question is whether or not we can avoid a war of a misstep. Certainly any military action against Japan (or the Republic of Korea) would guarantee a U.S. military response, but what about other countries? If you're China, it seems like the goal here would be to have Chinese citizens immigrate to countries like Australia and subvert their resolve through their own democracy. We see some of those actions taking place on college campuses in Canada, for example. It's certainly interesting to chat about.

<comment><USER4> The US is legally obligated to protect Taiwan. Also the US would have to fight even without that because not doing so would be the end of US power in the world. We could NOT afford NOT to fight.

<comment><USER19> Legal obligations are worth the paper they're written on, when it comes to war between two major world powers. Any decision to retaliate would end up being based on what's best geopolitically for the USA.

Giving up Taiwan, of course, would announce to the world that allies of the US should look for other world power sponsors, because our support is paper thin.

That kind of choice is very costly, and it would take a very unique type of President willing to piss away a century of alliance building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So did the attack on Pearl Harbor.

</comment><comment><USER21> Then what? The US builds a coalition of regional and international powers, boxes China in and destroys them economically. China needs the world to trade with, otherwise the CCP house of cards collapses.

<comment><USER14> It's complicated. Any war between the US and China will likely be over disputed territories in the South China Sea, the reunification of Taiwan, maybe taking South Korea. The US can't invade the Chinese mainland, and China can't project power to the US mainland. The only way such a way ends is when both sides come to the negotiating table, where victory or defeat will be determined by political factors. The US wins by blocking shipping. China wins by destroying ships and bases. The political fallout from losing a carrier would probably be enough to bring the US to the table.

<comment><USER22> The official death toll of Pearl Harbor was 2,403. A Nimitz class US Navy Aircraft carrier houses ~6,000 sailors and airmen. If a carrier was sunk in a first strike, I'd expect a similar response to what the US responded to Pearl Harbor with. The US still has a first strike nuclear weapons doctrine. China does not. This would be bad for everyone so I do NOT want this, but am just pointing out the reality of how it would escalate.

Disclaimer: I'm spit balling as a US Army Veteran here.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why have none of the ~940 YC companies ever gone public via IPO? - <AUTHOR> It was interesting to notice in the discussion of the announcement of the VC fund that no YC company has ever gone public via an IPO.
After 10 years of success, and a lot of VC-backed companies that would be looking for eventual exits, that seemed like a surprising statistic.
Is the market for private funding that attractive, or the public market process that unattractive, or is it something special about the YC ecosystem that tends to not culminate in an IPO, or just the luck of the draw? <comment><USER2> The premise of this question is that each year YC operated produced identical returns. No.

* The alumni network has gotten steadily more valuable

* The signaling value of being accepted into YC has increased _dramatically_

* YC's direct influence on investors has increased steadily

* The incentives to apply to YC have increased accordingly, setting up a virtuous cycle (you had to be a bit of an oddball to be in that first class)

* Each batch now funds many more companies than YC did in its entire first year

Meanwhile: it takes lots of years to get to a point where you're ready to file S-1; since the nuclear winter in 2001, you need to be doing a huge amount of revenue with a profitability that can be modeled in simple Excel spreadsheets to do it.

So if you figure YC hit its stride 5 years ago, the year Stripe applied, they're right on schedule.

Consider: Square was founded in 2009, with gold-plated credentials, has done very well, and is only now filing for IPO.

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate on Square's gold-plated credentials? Most of the news / comments I've read about square post their IPO disclosure have been negative (or at least skeptical) - largely to do with the increasing loss rate and the state of the payments market.

<comment><USER4> Square has prominent co-founders and raised over half a billion dollars from prominent investors.

One way to look at Square is as a company that essentially bought its way into the payments space. The question is whether its premium valuation is warranted.

Some analysts point out reasons to be skeptical[1].

[1] [http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Cowens+Damning...](http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Cowens+Damning+Analysis+of+Squares+IPO/10977891.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Marc Andreessen answered this question:

The IPO is Dying

[http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying- marc-a...](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc- andreessen-explains-why)

Basically, high-tech growth gains have been privatized. Most of the upside is made via venture capital now.

<comment><USER6> He made a couple of really important points in that interview though;

that the stock market is now dominated by short-sellers, who in their lust for short term gains, will start rumors about your company and due to regulations, you can only respond in certain ways.

that, in his words, you need "fleets of lawyers and accountants" to meet all the regulations, something only a billion dollar plus company can afford.

that your company's stock will get "batted around like a chew toy", which will really mess with a smaller company.

It sounds like the stock market is a buyer's game these days.

<comment><USER7> bah, you could always beat those short-sellers by being profitable and generating revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think there is a simple fallacy in your question, you wrote:

       > After 10 years of success, and a lot of VC-backed
       > companies that would be looking for eventual exits,
       > that seemed like a surprising statistic.

"IPO" is perhaps the smallest member of the set "eventual exits". Take the set of all companies funded by VC money since 2005, take the number of IPOs by VC funded companies since 2005, and you will get a very small number. (If the folks at MatterMark want to pop in here, they have this probability in their dataset).

</comment><comment><USER9> How could it not be luck of the draw? Do you understand how rare IPOs are?

> Why have none of the ~940 YC companies ever gone public via IPO?

I take issue with your implication: "YC has had no IPOs after funding ~1000 companies". That is a premature call, and (frankly) bending the truth. YC has been taking on more startups per year recently. That skews the age of YC companies to very young. If you assume that an IPO takes > 5-6 years, then results for the _vast_ majority of YC companies aren't even in yet.

> After 10 years of success, and a lot of VC-backed companies that would be > looking for eventual exits, that seemed like a surprising statistic.

Sure, YC may have fewer IPOs than normal VCs. That's because they are an _early-stage_ investor, which has much higher risk. Thus, you would expect fewer IPOs compared to a late-stage investor.

> is it something special about the YC ecosystem that tends to not culminate > in an IPO,

Citation needed. What is the "expected" number of IPOs? Are there similar __early-stage __VCs that have more IPOs?

It sounds like you are trying to dig for a problem that doesn't exist. It's like complaining that your favorite baseball team hasn't had enough no- hitters. Who cares, as long as they are winning!

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't mean to imply a problem, or a criticism, or anything, really.

My prior would be that the public market has really changed in significance for tech.

the ~900 is the wrong base rate, takes 7-10 years to become IPO eligible, but there were ~100 companies through '08\. 0 IPOs after 10 years still seems like a bit of an outlier for a large, unusually successful seed investor.

<comment><USER10> Line by line refutation usually indicates argument for argument's sake. It is not uncommon for people to go in search of things to take issue with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sarbanes-Oxley. It's been a disaster for IPOs. [http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying- marc-a...](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc- andreessen-explains-why)

</comment><comment><USER12> You're not going to get an answer. I think we all know why.

<comment><USER13> "We all" = ....?

I certainly don't, and would enjoy insight.

<comment><USER14> Private VC investors take the gains rather than the public.</comment></comment></comment>