Ask YC: How do you achieve laser focus and concentration? - <AUTHOR> Reading the news.yc item about Provigil and reading more about it, I'm convinced that it's the kind of thing that gives you laser focus and concentration. Silver bullet drug, really (see http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=62958)
Since it has strange side effects and U.S. restrictions (requires prescriptions), I'm wondering how you achieve concentration and focus when doing work.
I'm interested in this in the context of concentrating in class, doing schoolwork, and hacking.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> The single most important thing I do to "achieve laser focus and concentration" is to work in such a way that I don't need "laser focus and concentration" to get my work done.

This has to be done the night before.

I always quit all online work at least 2 hours before bedtime and print whatever I'm working on.

Then I go into any other room with program listings, blank paper, and pens (especially red!) and plan out all of tomorrow's work.

All analysis, design, and refactoring must be done at this time. I do not allow myself to sleep until the next day's work is laid out. I also do not allow myself to get back onto the computer. The idea is to have a clear "vision" of what I am going to accomplish the next day. The clearer the better.

This does 2 things. First, I think about it all night (maybe even dream about it). Second, I can't wait to get started the next day.

I always wake up and start programming immediately. Once I get going, it's easy to keep going. Any difficulties are probably because I didn't plan well enough the night before.

Not sure if that's the answer you're looking for, but whatever gets the work done...

<comment><USER3> That's actually an interesting approach. I have noticed that when I have a good idea in the evening as I get ready for bed, I need to get it on paper, and I keep thinking about it overnight.

The next day I can't help but work on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To make the greatest success of anything you must be able to concentrate your entire thought upon the idea you are working on. Concentration, like any skill, needs to be practiced. To practice concentration and focus, do only one thing at a time.

When eating, focus on your meal and turn off the computer; when driving, focus on the road and turn off the car radio. Anything you find yourself doing, try to do that and eliminate all distractions (sometimes this is impossible).

Your body should also be in a healthy state, thus exercise is of the utmost importance, 2-3 times a day for 45 mins seems to do it for me.

The food you eat and substances you consume have tremendous impacts on your mental state. Avoid meat, alcohol, cigarettes, pungent and spicy foods. Eat mild, bland foods and you'll begin to notice a clarity of mind and increased ability to focus.

Finally, for 15 minutes every other day, sit in a quiet location and meditate. This will increasingly clear your mind, allow you to manage your energy and multiply your ability to concentrate and focus.

The greatest man would accomplish nothing if he lacked concentration.

<comment><USER5> To back up the food argument, I decided to become vegetarian a year or so ago (to the chagrin of my mother), and definitely noticed an increase in clarity and 'calm' mind. I changed in part because of this rumoured clarity effect, so placebo is definitely not out of the equation, YMMV, etc.

<comment><USER6> I've been a vegetarian for 14 years, so I don't exactly recall what my concentration was like before vs. after (and I was a teenager before, so I was probably only concentrating on girls and rock and roll, but mostly girls). I do know that it isn't uncommon for testosterone levels to be reduced in men who become vegetarian, depending on diet, which actually has an adverse effect on many aspects of life including concentration. However, with a small amount of care, it is very easy to eat a vegetarian diet that is entirely positive for health. Walnuts (among other tree nuts and legumes), for example, provide the building blocks of testosterone better than the vast majority of animal products.

I think, in general, we have a pretty poor understanding of how various foods interact with the human body, particularly foods that trigger hormone production (as many high density proteins, like meats and non-tofu soy products, do). So, I would probably agree that a well-balanced vegetarian diet probably does lead to a more balanced day-to-day emotional life, which helps with concentration, wakefulness, and feeling good about what you're doing with your life (which I find is the single most important aspect of productivity for me).

I certainly encourage folks to give it a try, and see how it works for you. But do some reading first. There are some non-intuitive aspects that throw new vegetarians for a loop, and make the experience less than satisfying. For example, soy proteins of some types, while they seem like a high quality protein, are actually rather hard for your body to deal with. Tofu, on the other hand, which is processed similarly to cheese, has had those hormone- related proteins broken down into a form very friendly for your body.

I've also known people who've become vegetarian and gained weight (which was not my experience, as I lost about 15 pounds within months of becoming vegetarian without trying), because they've become carb-o-terians or bean-and- cheese-a-terians. Even if you rule out a whole class of (predominantly) unhealthy food in the form of meat, you can still eat a phenomenally unhealthy diet. And being unhealthy is bad for concentration (among other things).

<comment><USER7> "we have a pretty poor understanding of how various foods interact with the human body"

That's a fascinating area all by itself. I read a couple of years ago about a study in hyperactivity and (while it's not classic double-blind, etc) the anecdotal examples presented were interesting. In one case, a woman with identical twins (who were hyperactive and very unruly) started feeding one on "real food" rather than the processed stuff that many busy parents rely on. Two weeks later, there was a huge difference in behaviour, in the way that you might predict. I'll see if I can dig out a link.

A friend of mine is a school-teacher, in a really rough school. They just banned all forms of soft drink, and he says that has, in itself, made a big difference with discipline. Basically, kids who were getting tanked up on sugar and "bouncing off the walls" are now noticeably calmer and easier to manage.

Religious debates to one side, it's easy to forget that our bodies are just a bunch of chemicals, so the chemicals we put in are bound to make a difference. Thanks for relating your experiences :)

<comment><USER8> Kids don't get "tanked up on sugar." That myth was disproved many years ago. No doubt, replacing empty calories with healthy foods is good for children (and adults).

<comment><USER7> Well, I'm just quoting what he said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> try exercising before you work and take exercise breaks during the day:

<http://brainrules.net/> <http://www.johnratey.com/site/default.aspx>

<comment><USER10> Indeed. I live in a house with a few other people, and we make music a lot. I'll play the drums for a bit, and guitar for a bit, and when we're done I can generally be much more productive coding than I would have been if I had just sat down to code.

This seems to be from being physically active for a bit, and from having the creative juices flowing for a bit as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Provigil doesn't give you laser focus and concentration if you aren't already focused. If you're prone to time wasting, it just gives you more hours in the day to waste.

</comment><comment><USER12> Obviously I'm failing at this since I'm posting on news.YC. ;-)

For me, it's always been a matter of the work "pulling" me along. I don't achieve laser focus & concentration; rather, at a certain point, the work becomes so engrossing that focus just naturally happens. If I think about it, I've lost it.

I've got a bunch of tricks for setting things up so this is more likely, but no hard recipes. Atomic commits is a big one: when you've got the rush of "okay, I just finished this feature, I can check it in" 6-8 times a day, it's a pretty powerful reward system. If you've got some boring task like typing in a lot of details, try to write a library to generate it for you, or pick it up from conventions you already use. Also, having API documentation close at hand for the code you've already written seems to be a big win: I got significantly more engaged when I started generatting JSDoc for my JavaScript widgets so it was all at my fingertips.

<comment><USER13> _For me, it's always been a matter of the work "pulling" me along. I don't achieve laser focus & concentration; rather, at a certain point, the work becomes so engrossing that focus just naturally happens. If I think about it, I've lost it._

This is precisely how I work. Basically, start on some small task related to a larger project and just _hope_ it sucks you in and won't let go... if it doesn't, wait a while, try again. Rinse and repeat until you hit the 16-hour coding extravaganza.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned flow here. Google it up and read up about it; if you have time for a book, "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Csikszentmihalyi is a great book.

This is commonly called "being in the zone." And you reach it when the challenge at hand is slightly above, but attainable, relative to your ability, such that it requires effortful focus to achieve. If you tackle a problem of this sort, chances are you will focus automatically, lose track of time, feel unstoppable, etc.

Obviously not all problems are at the appropriate level. There are some people (not myself, unfortunately) who skillfully reshape these problems into smaller tasks, or add challenges, such that they can lead to flow. This skill (of reshaping problems) takes training itself, but I can see it being tremendously useful.

Of course, stuff that stresses discipline is probably better than any pill, in the long run. :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> You can legally order Adrafinil (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrafinil>) in the US, and it metabolizes into Modafinil (Provigil).

I tried it once, and didn't seem to do much for me.

If you want to give it a shot, it's available under the brand name 'Olmifon' online.

<comment><USER16> Adrafinil has worse side effects then Modafinil (liver toxicity), I would not recommend using it. To try out Modafinil, talk to your doctor about a prescription.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ObPeeve: In general, you don't focus lasers. The narrow beam is a result of it being collimated as it's produced.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#Laser_physics>

</comment><comment><USER18> I would mention kratom as an unregulated substance sometimes used for focus but I usually get mercilessly downmodded even though it it topic-appropriate. I'm not advocating it for anyone, but it certainly exists and has its legitimate uses.

If anyone is looking for a drug solution, and I certainly wouldn't recommend using drugs to solve your problems, amphetamine would be the best thing, though it certainly has worse side effects than Modafanil. It worked for Erdos and is readily prescribed by psychiatrists to treat ADD, the disease of being unable to focus.

<comment><USER19> Apophasis FTW!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis>

<comment><USER18> ;) The apophasis may have been unnecessary, I think the real trigger is linking to the site in question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is what works for me: 1\. Get up early, very few distractions and the mind is fresh, work non-stop for about 4 hours atleast. 2\. Keep the browser closed and open it only if necessary. Having only the code editor and other necessary files open makes a big difference. 3\. Get your life in order, there's no way you can focus for any length of time if there's drastic conflicts, stress, relationship problems, etc in your social life. 4\. Exercise and keep healthy.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can never quite concentrate in class: best thing I could do is carry a laptop and take notes on it, hoping to review them later, read the textbook and make use of all resources available to me.

As far as concentrating on work/hacking, the tips are: Use a development environment where you can concentrate on creating useful features versus the process. To me it's: \- Linux with a window manager that allows me to have multiple work spaces and tile windows automatically \- Emacs with the tramp plugin (allows me to edit code on remote machines as to test the code immediately) \- Dynamic programming languages and unit/other automated testing. \- Either dual screens (preferred) or a single large screen. With this combination I am writing code on one screen (or part of the screen) and debugging (or editing a wiki/bugzilla bug entry/base camp task list) on another.

Also I try to be aware of when I am in the "zone" and try to get as much of the crucial (or core) work done as needed during that time. When I am not in the zone I try to get as many of the annoying/"easy, but tedious"/need-to-be- done tasks as possible, so that things are easier for me next time I enter the zone.

I also try to maintain a work out schedule as to keep myself free of headaches and fatigue.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would just echo the idea that you need to eliminate distractions - turn off phone, email, tv, and choose music with no lyrics. I have to have music going to get in the zone. I would add two other things that prevent me from getting in the zone: (1) small (less than 10 minute) tasks, and (2) tasks that I've procrastinated on. If there are lots of 10 minute tasks floating around, they are a distraction since, while working on a major code change, I'm often tempted to just do the quick fix here, quick fix there and then bam - I'm out of the zone (and now am checking email, etc). Do the little tasks and get them out of the way - even if it takes the whole day.

The second thing for me is clearing out any procrastinated items. If I don't answer that email, return that call, finish writing that article or whatever, sure enough it's going to pop into my brain at the wrong time and then I'll start thinking what a loser I am b/c I didn't do x, y and z on time.

So to sum up: not only is it important to minimize email and other interruptions but it's equally important to clear the chatter from your own head. To do so requires that you eliminate the small tasks and those things that make you think less of yourself.

</comment><comment><USER23> Working on something interesting is the first requirement for me to overcome distractions. I love troubleshooting and that is when I come close to some kind of a zone. But more often than not, I end up taking lots of breaks reading YC, reddit, etc. I suppose self-discipline and practice is the way to achieve consistent and deep focus.

</comment><comment><USER24> In regard to provigil...from what I understand it helps you to stay awake more than it does improve your concentration. It's also relatively expensive from what I remember. It doesn't seem like the most cost effective way to improve your focus/performance.

I agree with gcheong, exercise is a good way to maintain focus. In fact, doing something difficult (and hopefully productive) on a daily basis is a great way to increase your personal discipline, which leads to more focus. Try to force yourself to exercise, read or do anything that you don't generally want to do every day. The confidence and work ethic you build could translate into improved studying and focus. (I know it sounds crazy, but some people say it works)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's a difficult thing but this is how I do it

Get yourself a nice table and chair, no leather or anything special but one with an upright back. Posture is important

Next, don't use incandescent lamps, use flourescent lights instead. White light is neutral on the eyes and makes it easier to work.

Get a quiet environment or get yourself noise canceling headphones like the Bose QC ones.

Plug away at work, you will definitely reach a point when you will get engrossed and lose track of time. Now you're in the zone.

Alternately, practicing meditation daily for 10 minutes in the morning and the evening helps. Breathing rhythms are very important for relaxation and concentration.

</comment><comment><USER26> Install AntiRSI <http://tech.inhelsinki.nl/antirsi/> and follow the breaks rigorously. I.e. 8 min break each hour and mini breaks for stretching. Then fire up itunes with "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" by Brian Eno set to a very low volume. Then work! [and read <http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/29/do-it- fucking-now/>]

</comment><comment><USER27> Remove distractions while you're working. Shut down browsers, email, chat, etc.

If you have a brain, and you're doing something worthwhile and interesting with it, that will cause it to focus.

Daniel

</comment><comment><USER28> Before I can really concentrate everything has to be just right, I also like to go for a walk before I get started just to clear my head, a regular pattern of sleep helps too (need I mention a healthy diet?).

</comment><comment><USER29> schedule distractions. sleep well, regularly. eat well. exercise.</comment>


Ask HN: Is a SQL Library Application a useful idea ? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Summary : would a SQL library application, that gave a central place for teams to store standardize and share SQL be useful ?
I'm considering creating a SQL library application for windows.
It will either be a stand alone app or an Excel Add-In.
At this point I'm thinking
Features :
- You can add in SQL statements (probably pasted from your SQL client)
 - Categorize Statements
 - Apply a configurable format (indenting etc) to each statement
 - Associate a description with each statement
Would this be useful ?
Cheers <comment><USER2> What is SQL specific about your idea? Wouldn't it work just as well for any type of code snippets?

And, wouldn't most developers want their code-snippet add-in to be integrated into their IDE?

<comment><AUTHOR> A good point.

SQL is more likely to be used in different applications than code in an organisation I would say. So there is more use to an independant library location.

Also code is usually in the context of a project / application where are SQL statements often exist in isolation. I think most code snippets exist as part of a code base, but SQL statements often do a single job.

That's what I'm thinking anyway. Not too sure. I guess I shall note you as someone who doesn't see the value.

Good feedback to have.</comment></comment>


Scastie: use any Scala compiler and Scala library in the browser - <AUTHOR> http://scala-lang.org/blog/2017/05/19/scastie.html <comment><USER2> (naturally, the very first thing I tried to evaluate is scala.io.Source.fromFile("/etc/passwd").getLines.mkString("\n") . Spoiler alert: it works!)

<comment><USER3> It does and you are root. You are evaluating inside a docker container. It's not a bulletproof method but it will stop a few. The instances evaluating your code is also on a network not accessible from the internet. I'm not an expert in security, if you have any advice on how we can improve our defence please tell us.

<comment><USER2> I am not a pentesting expert. My first reaction is to leave everything as is, as it is a very cool to play with root access to docker containers (I managed to reboot one, but a new one immediately appeared on page reload).

My worst concern now would be network security. With root access, it is trivial to e.g. install spambots in all your containers (just checked, command execution works, and external network access is enabled). I think it is a good idea to at least disable networking. (Update: and use a minimal Docker image like Alpine Linux).

Proof:

[__REDACTED__]

<comment><USER4> I agree with this. What's to stop me from opening a bunch of the containers and using them to DDOS someone or to send out spam emails? I'm already playing around with system commands and they seem to be entirely unrestricted.

Basically I can run any bash script, as is, with

        import sys.process._
        "BASH_COMMAND" !!

And I seem to be able to at least cause the containers to endlessly restart quite simply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Hi Heather!

Looks like you've got a Hacker News effect on your shoulders. :) Servers seem to be overloaded.

<comment><USER5> Nah, that's probably just Hacker Effect of people rebooting the container ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like the Scala and SBT equivalent of [https://npm.runkit.com/](https://npm.runkit.com/) (which allows in-browser use of Node and NPM packages)

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks cool, I just experimented with it. I am curious: what is the business model for this? Server costs are probably fairly expensive.

<comment><USER3> We are the [Scala Center]([https://scala.epfl.ch](https://scala.epfl.ch)). We are a non-profit organization. Our revenue is from donations. This service will be forever free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its great to see so much good stuff going on in Scala land!

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a Scala developer but I don't understand what is Scastie. How does it benefit from the perspective of developers like me?

<comment><USER10> It's an interactive playground for Scala so you can share code and send it to other people.

[https://scastie.scala-lang.org/](https://scastie.scala-lang.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Will this allow running a play app? (with debug etc) ??

<comment><USER3> Yes it can run anything sbt can.

[https://scastie.scala- lang.org/MasseGuillaume/62vmEr9XR0qDWw...](https://scastie.scala- lang.org/MasseGuillaume/62vmEr9XR0qDWwimrO3r2Q)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks so cool!!! Can't wait to try it out!

</comment><comment><USER13> How am I supposed to dismiss this modal window? [http://i.imgur.com/atx6KsX.png](http://i.imgur.com/atx6KsX.png)

<comment><USER3> hum this look like a but in safari [https://github.com/scalacenter/scastie/issues/](https://github.com/scalacenter/scastie/issues/). You can visit this link: [https://scastie.scala- lang.org/MasseGuillaume/kHn9lemPTayxoY...](https://scastie.scala- lang.org/MasseGuillaume/kHn9lemPTayxoY20e09uiw) and it will clear the modal.</comment></comment>


NSA Can't Do Arithmetic - <AUTHOR> http://rationalconspiracy.com/2013/08/09/nsa-cant-do-arithmetic/

<comment><USER2> I find it hard to believe that the same person writing that line is going to have the same qualifications as someone actually doing what we imagine the NSA does.

A copy error completely means that the NSA is incapable of doing its job! /s

<comment><AUTHOR> Obviously, everyone has typos, but this wasn't just a typo (they got the entire paragraph wrong). And it was one of the most important paragraphs in one of the most highly visible documents they've ever released. Can you imagine what would happen to a corporate law firm that, on the eve of signing a billion-dollar real estate deal, accidentally/"accidentally" inserted extra zeroes into every number in the final contract?</comment></comment>


Seeking feedback for our online commerce management platform - <AUTHOR> Hi developers!
Our team built an online commerce management platform (For an easier understanding, you may think of it as a tool resembles Wordpress). But we hope to make it an even more developer friendly tool with these  features: 1. Supports restful api 2. Custom theme can be built with the commonest languages (html + javascript) 3. Auto deploy with Git push for any theme updates 4. Dynamic article & product query engine 5. Separated production & testing environments 6. Custom domain parking
We are working hard on developing our SDKs for faster & better development experience. Javascript and node.js versions are available in current stage: https://github.com/osltd/oneshop-web.js (frontend) https://github.com/osltd/oneshop.js (backend)
You may wonder how much we charge. Good news is that our platform is FREEMIUM like Github because we value developers' feedback for improvements more than anything else!
If you want to try us out, referral code is required for creating a shop/website since our platform is at beta stage : url: https://panel.oneshop.cloud referral code: 5k7VI80G5PahWsgm
Some tutorial videos you may find useful:
Create shop/website: https://youtu.be/YjEhv97633Y
Set up a custom theme: https://youtu.be/CPEyCSblJb4
Develop custom theme by using html & javascript: https://youtu.be/ej2FloWjxNQ
Develop custom theme by using react: https://youtu.be/Bb2disDOY28
I hope you will enjoy our platform, and we look forward to your generous comments! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!
Team Oneshop <comment><USER2> Some tips for you:

Posts without URLs get penalized, so you'd be better off posting this with a link, then adding your text as a first comment in the new thread.

Don't make a marketing presentation. That is, don't present the shiny exterior of your product along with marketing copy. That will bore HN and sound spammy. Everyone does it and it all sounds the same. Instead, show the work from the inside—HN readers want the inside view. Introduce yourself, tell how you came to work on this and what's different about it, and give interesting details about the problem, the project, the implementation. Don't just say _what_ you've made. Include the _how_ and _why_. Those two are actually the more interesting to this community.

Don't talk to HN like a company ("Team Oneshop") or other abstraction. That creates a feeling of separation from the community. Instead participate as yourself (or yourselves) in a community of fellow builders and entrepreneurs. Then it will feel like you're approaching the community as one of them.

This is exactly the advice we give to YC startups who launch on HN (excepting the first bit about links). If you read the blurbs at [https://news.ycombinator.com/launches](https://news.ycombinator.com/launches), you might get some ideas. Those blurbs often go through extensive editing to apply the principles I mentioned above. One of these years I want to write all this up as a blog post or essay about how to present your startup to HN—there's nothing there that shouldn't be shared with everyone.</comment>


United Airlines vows not to call police on passengers - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-united-boarding-20170412-story.html <comment><USER2> "We aren't going to do this one specific illegal thing any more"? How reassuring.</comment>


SEC moves toward allowing crowdfunding IPOs - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/23/crowdfunding-ipo-sec-jobs-act/3169395/ <comment><USER2> I'm really excited that we've made it to this point. The implementation of the full JOBS Act has been on the horizon for over a year and I think it has a lot of potential to do good.

That said, I'm nervous about overzealous regulations. There are a few ways this can create severe enough adverse selection that healthy, high-caliber companies will avoid raising from the unaccredited crowd.

I'm still reading the details in the 585 page PDF of proposed rules but some concerns come to mind:

        - Capping the whole round to $1m
        - Forcing unnecessary financial disclosures
        - Inability to use a single purpose fund for aggregating small investors (forcing every unaccredited to be a direct investor)

I believe these are all feel-good but destructive rules that will poison the unaccredited crowdinvesting ecosystem. At Wefunder we've learned a lot about what it takes to get high caliber startups to use our platform and I'm pretty confident that those three things can each be deal breakers.

If you're a part of the startup ecosystem I encourage you to pay attention to this law, get informed, and give the SEC your feedback. These are only -proposed- rules and the SEC will listen and adapt (at least, they have in the past). Someday you may want to raise money or invest in a company!

<comment><USER3> Healthy, high-caliber companies are far less likely to want anything to do with the unaccredited crowd anyway. Most will continue to raise capital through Reg D Rule 506 offerings, and 506(b) offerings specifically given the uncertainty around the proposed rules associated with 506(c).

It sounds like you basically want Rule 506 offerings without the accredited investor requirements. Debate over the wisdom of that notwithstanding, this was never the intention of the crowdfunding portion of the JOBS Act to begin with.

<comment><USER2> That's what many critics said before 506(c) but that's not how the market is behaving [1]. There's more value to a crowd of investors than easy dumb money, and I don't see why the personal wealth of an investor really matters.

I disagree with your interpretation of the intention of the JOBS Act. As I interpret it it's meant to allow all Americans the opportunity to invest in startups and small businesses while protecting them from losing all their money. Introducing regulations that cause severe adverse selection outweighs the benefit of those specific rules, in my opinion.

[1] I think the quality of companies raising publicly on Wefunder and AngelList speak to that, but I'm heavily biased. I respect your opinion even though I disagree with it. :)

<comment><USER3> Obviously "healthy, high-caliber" means different things to different people.

As for how the market is behaving: I have personally heard several attorneys state that they're advising their clients to be very cautious about Rule 506(c) and according to media reports[1], this is the advice of many attorneys.

I am aware that companies are relying on Rule 506(c) for offerings on AngelList and services like yours, but in terms of the overall market for Regulation D offerings, this is a still a small number.

> I disagree with your interpretation of the intention of the JOBS Act.

You cited the $1 million cap as an example of a rule that is of concern to you. To my knowledge, this cap was an explicit part of the bill that Congress passed. As such, I don't see how the SEC could eliminate that restriction.

[1] [http://www.crowdsourcing.org/editorial/ban-on-general- solici...](http://www.crowdsourcing.org/editorial/ban-on-general-solicitation- lifted-but-caution-prevails/28964)

<comment><USER2> > Obviously "healthy, high-caliber" means different things to different > people.

That's true, there's definitely subjectivity here. I make the assumption that YC companies are a proxy for "healthy, high-caliber" startups and my opinion of what will be deal breakers for that category of company is shaped by our customer development in the YC network. I could be wrong for a few reasons.

> As for how the market is behaving: I have personally heard several attorneys > state that they're advising their clients to be very cautious about Rule > 506(c) and according to media reports[1], this is the advice of many > attorneys.

Indeed. I think there's a natural lean for attorneys to be more conservative and wait for things to play out a little. I believe that in the next year or two it will be commonly accepted, I've already seen a lot of attitude change over the past year. We'll see. I think this is something startups ultimately want - assuming all the concerns can be addressed. More fundraising options and a wider pool of value-add investors is a good thing if crowdinvesting can be done practically, IMO.

> You cited the $1 million cap as an example of a rule that is of concern to > you. To my knowledge, this cap was an explicit part of the bill that > Congress passed. As such, I don't see how the SEC could eliminate that > restriction.

I did, in the 585 page document the SEC released they suggest a few adjustments to address the concerns people have. For example, the $1m limit might be applied to the fees collected by the funding portal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To make a public comment: [http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/ruling- comments?ruling=s70913&rul...](http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/ruling- comments?ruling=s70913&rule_path=/comments/s7-09-13&file_num=S7-09-13&action=Show_Form&title=Crowdfunding)

</comment><comment><USER5> The whole limit on how much you can invest looks silly to me. When it comes to investing in high growth startups, government thinks : "Poor people are dumb and we need to protect them from their own mistakes".

Where was this rule when greedy banks sold them expensive mortgages ?

<comment><USER3> > Where was this rule when greedy banks sold them expensive mortgages ?

Uhm, the government _encouraged_ much of the mortgage lending you're referring to. The loans themselves were artificially cheap. Unfortunately for borrowers, the houses were not.

<comment><USER6> A lot of people thought those high risk mortgages were win/win. Best case scenario: the mortgage gets paid back at a healthy RoI. Better case scenario: the borrower defaults and the mortgage owners end up with real estate that is getting more valuable by the day.

Of course, the borrower gets screwed but who gives a shit about them. And if the housing market tanks the whole thing falls apart, but the market can only go up, up, up!

<comment><USER3> Your understanding of how mortgage-backed securities work is flawed. MBS holders have no control over how the collateral backing their securities (the houses themselves) are dealt with in a default. The servicers of the MBS are responsible for this. In other words, no investor buys MBS with the expectation of owning houses because that's simply not what happens.

Out of all the "victims" in the housing collapse, MBS investors were arguably some of the more sympathetic. They were the true bag holders, overpaying (in the form of lower yields than was justified by actual risk) for lead that credit ratings agencies assured them was gold. Following the collapse, many any of them sued, alleging amongst other things, fraud.

On the list of "victims", many but certainly not all borrowers were less sympathetic characters. Some individuals had no problem lying about their income, and many others took out adjustable rate mortgages with the incorrect assumption that they'd be able to flip their homes at a profit or rent them out when their payments increased. It's hard to see these folks as anything other than willing participants in the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> But the SEC won't allow ordinary Americans to invest in much safer FTSE flotations for example say the royal mail float that just happened.

Floated at £3.30 now £5.30 in not much more than a week.

<comment><USER8> Is this a SEC problem or a problem with British regulations? I'm completely clueless on how this works for international stuff.

<comment><USER7> SEC was my understanding from reading the prospectus.

<comment><USER9> Offering shares to US citizens would have subjected the Royal Mail IPO to US laws and regulations, and opened the company up to the risk of spurious lawsuits by greedy lawyers or over-zealous regulators and public prosecutors seeking a high-profile scalp so they can get their face in the newspapers and on TV to kickstart their election campaign.

After the "British Petroleum" debacle, what sane company would voluntarily expose itself to such risks unless it had to?

<comment><USER7> I think that its UK laws that apply to securities on the FTSE 100 same as if I hold ATT or IBM I have to abide by US law - and file a wben 8.

Just seems odd that the SEC is fine with people investing in much riskier start ups than blue chips - arnt they supposed to look out for investors as well as companys

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We've had equity crowdfunding in the UK for a while now. The two platforms I hear about most often are Seedrs ($3.2m invested) and Crowdcube ($23.3m).

For example, PixelPin - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6366343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6366343) \- raised $240k at a $2.4m valation: [https://www.seedrs.com/post_investment/9385#1976](https://www.seedrs.com/post_investment/9385#1976)

</comment><comment><USER10> For anyone who is curious, here's a link to the (585 page!) PDF of the SEC's proposed rules: [http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2013/33-9470.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2013/33-9470.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm trying to figure out what this kind of funding would be good for. Could you use it to open a restaurant or bar for example?

<comment><USER12> Kickstarter's Technology category has only 9 projects that have raised over $1 million [1]. None of them requested more than $250,000 and one requested just $30,000.

In fact the only things I can find on Kickstarter that requested and raised more than $1 million are films [2]. There's people working on space telescopes who only requested $1 million [3].

So, I guess this type of funding could be used for the kind of things you see on kickstarter?

[1] [http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/mo...](http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/most- funded?ref=more#p1) [2] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the- veronica-m...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica- mars-movie-project?ref=most-funded) [3] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a- space...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1458134548/arkyd-a-space- telescope-for-everyone-0?ref=most-funded)

<comment><USER11> Excellent point. So is anyone working on a kickstarter that uses this model instead?

Would it work like Kickstarter except you'd receive shares of a company? Would there be a lot of overhead?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The SEC is overrated and this is the year that they stop being relevant.

</comment><comment><USER14> HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH brilliant! Let's break this dumb idea down shall we.

> _These rules could reinvent the way companies raise money by allowing them > to bypass the traditional costs of going public, which usually involves > hiring costly investment bankers and accountants._

So instead of breaking the seat belt monopoly to reduce costs (work with me here), we'll just make it so that kids no longer have to wear seat belts anymore. It's absolutely brilliant in its sheer audacity. You get to keep your campaign contributions from the rent-seeking financial cartels, whilst simultaneously providing VCs with their retail lambs for the slaughter. The fact that they do this, whilst selling the idea as a positive act for the public has me slack jawed. That takes balls.

> _Congress is looking for a loophole to allow smaller companies to get an > exemption from the strict rules controlling the sale of securities to > individuals. Congress is hoping that by using Internet crowdfunding, small > and promising companies could gather capital needed to grow and expand from > a wide pool of investors._

So we invent seat belts, and people stop dying. After a while people forget why we had seat belts in the first place. Let's take away the seat belts, because look, no one has died in a really long time.

Furthermore, why on earth would MORE risky companies need LESS disclosure. That makes no sense. If you were thinking halfway straight, you'd realize that it's the small ones that are the most subject to corruption, pump and dump scams and extensive stock promotion. Penny stocks CLEARLY indicate that this is the case. We need MORE disclosure not less. Costs are entirely derived from the IPO cartel. Break that you morons. Oh wait, you can't, because 20% of next year's campaign contributions come from your financial bosses.

> _With the new rules, the SEC is looking to open the concept of crowdfunding > to the public, while still offering investor protection. The new elements of > the rules would cap any company 's ability to raise money through > crowdfunding to $1 million every 12 months. For investors with an annual net > income or net worth of less than $100,000, every 12 months they can invest > up to 5% of that, or $2,000, whichever is more. Those with an annual income > or net worth exceeding $100,000 can invest up to 10% of that every 12 > months. Securities bought through portals would have to be held a year > before being sold._

Good luck regulating this. Capital limits are always exceeded by the determinedly stupid.

<comment><USER15> Two things:

1) I would assume that you can invest at the same level of risk at existing public company (e.g. micro cup, or investing in options), the this point is mute.

2) core pillar of modern finance is portfolio theory . I.e. how to mitigate a specific company risk by investing in portfolio of companies (which is what VCs are essentially doing). Hence, this would also imply here (regardless of the amount of audit employed). So really a risk of a single company is a non issue.

<comment><USER14> Two things

1) Those are esoteric. People don't do them. However the dotcom boom shows us that they will fund bullshit stock issues.

2) MPT is bullshit. Systems fail in a cascade fashion, not independently. Furthermore investors do not diversify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Call my cynical, but I don't think they are going to allow the peons to move in on their action. If I'm wrong, fantastic!</comment>


Music video jukebox powered by Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://twtbox.com This is my first Twitter app built with Rails 2.3 and Twitter's search API. Any suggestions or critiques is appreciated. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Pretty cool. Back in 2004 I built about the same thing. It accepted requests from IRC and a web site and streamed MP3s through Icecast (YouTube did not exist).

I remember spending several days to build a smart algorithm to pick songs when the queue was empty. For the 9 months of the site's existence the queue was not empty once and my work was in vain.

<comment><USER3> Nice, there are so many resources for what people are listening to right now that I'm sure that algorithm would be easier if you were to do it again now. In this case, when the queue is empty it uses search.twitter to find some music that people are currently listening to. (I'm the developer)</comment></comment>


Schlep Blindness - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html <comment><USER4> I think there's a flaw in the premise, namely that one persons schlepp is another mans passion.

From the Stripe example: _"You'd have to make deals with banks._ " - I know quite a few people who would love nothing more than the challenge of getting big banks to sign on to a new payment service. Their passion is selling. The harder the sell the bigger the challenge. Just like good hackers want to work on hard technical problems great salespeople like to work on hard sales problems.

The real takeaway here is that you should find your personal schlepps and start a company with someone who is passionate about them. If a great hacker, a great salesman and a great fraud investigator started a company they would be able to start a company like stripe. And they'd all be doing stuff they were passionate about.

<comment><USER5> I had a paragraph about this in an earlier draft, but I took it out because it was only half true and the true half seemed obvious. The obvious half is that one man's schlep is another man's interesting problem, and that once the company gets going you can hire experts in each of the schleps you need to deal with.

But not all the schleps a company undertakes are schleps simply in virtue of not being someone's specialty. You have to satisfy users' needs to make a successful company, and it is very unlikely that the stuff you have to do to satisfy users' needs also happens to be exactly what you'd most like to work on, even if you're the specialist in that problem.

<comment><USER6> >> Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software

I wonder if the word "hackers" ought to be replaced with "young hackers of the type to apply to YC"?

If you're fresh out of school, or have only worked in big silicon-valley companies doing specialized tasks, I can see it. I have a hard time believing someone with even a few years experience in smaller companies haven't come to grips with "schlepness".

>> Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have young founders.

I don't think that's what the research shows:

""" Old guys rule. And they are far more likely to be the founder of a successful technology company than most of you understand. How do I know this? Research that my team conducted, based on a survey of 549 entrepreneurs in high-growth industries, showed that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. """

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to- founding-s...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding- successful-startups-old-guys-rule/)

<comment><USER5> Old hackers still _wish_ they could just program. The difference between old and young is that the old are more likely to know they can't have what they wish for in that respect.

The research you quote is about moderately successful startups, not about the most successful of all. You can easily verify I'm right about the outliers by traversing the Forbes 400.

<comment><USER6> Ok... with correlation vs. causation out of the way, and a ridiculously small sample size to boot, it appears the average age of Forbes 400 tech company founders was almost 32 at the time of the founding their companies (<http://goo.gl/iHAEe>).

I have a feeling that's not what you meant when you said "young"...? Maybe you meant to restrict that to only founders that wrote the code their companies are based on? In which case, yeah, the founders of facebook, google, and Microsoft were all young when they started... I'd be careful drawing too many conclusions on that sample size, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note: "tedious, unpleasant task" != "impossible task".

Back during the first internet bubble, I was playing around calculating Pi and drew the attention of some VCs: "distributed computing" was big. After asking if I was interested in starting a company (I wasn't -- I was going off to Oxford to do my doctorate) one of them asked for my opinion on the technical feasibility of a business plan.

My advice (which I provided for free, being a foolish 19 year old) was "it is provably impossible to solve these problems as stated without transmitting information faster than the speed of light". They funded the company anyway, and $10M later the company died having never produced anything.

Be the guy who says "this is going to be hard, but I'm sure it's possible". Don't be the guy who says "I'm sure I can find a way to circumvent the laws of physics".

<comment><USER8> _Be the guy who says "this is going to be hard, but I'm sure it's possible". Don't be the guy who says "I'm sure I can find a way to circumvent the laws of physics"._

Why be either guy? If you know that something really isn't possible, just say so. Hang onto your self-respect and reputation.

<comment><USER7> I guess I phrased that poorly. I mean that you should work on problems which are hard but possible, not that you should be dishonest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Stripe is an awesome example of a company that addressed a tangible frustration / real need instead of a desire or a higher-level "want". I've noticed that companies that provide "Internet plumbing" often fall into this category:

* SendGrid (bulk email sending)

* Twilio (easy to use telephony / sms)

* Zencoder (video encoding)

* MailChimp (mailing list management)

What others can you think of? Would love to see a list here :).

<comment><USER5> Heroku, Mailgun, MongoHQ, Cloudkick, Parse, AeroFS, DotCloud, Vidyard, AppHarbor, Mixpanel, Cloudant, PagerDuty (we like this type of company).

<comment><USER10> One of the things that I have noticed about all of your examples is that they are all tools for developers. Do you have any examples of companies that solve real problems for the general consumer?

<comment><USER11> Leanpub (self-publishing in-progress ebooks)

[disclaimer: my startup]

<comment><USER12> That is pretty nice Peter. I have a few short book ideas and I'll try your service out on one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?"_

PG had another gem some time ago along the lines of:

 _The best startup is the one you needed at your last job._

<comment><USER14> Another plus for young founders - older people have solved more problems by brute force (often just paying a specialist to solve it for them) and don't consider them problems anymore.

<comment><USER15> "A new broom sweeps clean but an old broom knows the corners." Irish aphorism

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is funny because one of the first startup ideas I ever had was 'hey, I should make a webservices based site for collecting web payments, lots of people would use that'. This was back when PayPal was still principally something you used to share money between two people, and was limited principally to US accounts.

But I made the mistake of talking over the idea with someone who I looked up to at the time, who seemed older and wiser. They said 'there are already systems that do that, I would find something else'.

Now I'm not saying I had even the remotest chance of getting such a thing off the ground - but at the time, I was so ignorant that I thought I could - <USER2> the ignorance worked both ways in that I would blindly accept the word of someone else, who just highlighted the _schlep_ involved and so I immediately gave up.

But that's just what the article says : when you're young ignorance can be a blessing, but you've got to be prepared to put in the hard work and not give up at even the tiniest hurdle. Getting that rare mix in a young person is the elusive part. But I'm convinced you can get young people to put in the hard work - you've just got to give them the encouragement to go ahead and fail big if need be.

<comment><USER17> One of the big failures we have as a society is not teaching our young people that "average" people will do their best to suppress success in others. Almost everyone I know has a story like this to tell... if only that so-and-so didn't tell me my dream was impossible, perhaps I could have been successful at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the things that made Seinfeld so successful was his insane tenacity; what he did in a year most of his fellow comedians did in five. It's not that he was necessarily the smartest nor the funniest guy in stand-up, but he was one of the people who worked the hardest. And it's not as if he didn't hone his craft while doing it.

Skills, talent, money, and ideas are a part of the puzzle, but you can also beat your competitors on work ethic.

<comment><USER8> "Don't break the chain". I've used Jerry Seinfeld's method to just get stuff done since I first read about it a few years ago. [http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity- se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> i worked for a startup (eVend) that tried to tackle the 'hard problem' stripe tackles way back in 1997. You read that right - 1997!

From Stripe's home page: "you don't need a merchant account or gateway. Stripe handles everything, including storing cards, subscriptions, and direct payouts to your bank account."

The problem was - not schlepp blindness - but the fact that this problem was _completely impossible to solve_ in 1997.

Sure, maybe our execution was lacking (I was just a junior programmer at the time) but what really killed it was the banks and especially the credit card companies.

Mastercard and Visa just said _no_. We will not allow this to happen. Whoever charges the card must be responsible for delivery. We pivoted to take this into account (digital content delivery anyone) but reality was. This schlepp was too hard at that time.

People have been banging on the 'making payment easy' door, for a long, long, time. The fact that Stripe is making progress now is more a fortuitous confluence of events than the fact that nobody else had tried.

</comment><comment><USER20> I see a pretty big schlep involved in our business (<http://www.tagstand.com> YCS11). Fulfillment is an absolute pain in the ass.

The closest thing that comes close to solving it is Amazon's fulfillment services ([http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by- amazon....](http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by- amazon.htm#!features-and-benefits)), but it doesn't quite work and is US only.

A hard problem to solve indeed (and one we've discussed).

<comment><USER21> Product fulfillment is hard but doesn't have to be a pain. There are plenty of very sophisticated 3PL warehouses that can do any type of fulfillment you need. At my last job I managed an e-commerce business and our process was so streamlined that we'd never actually touch our products. They were delivered from production directly to the 3PL fulfillment warehouses where the items were unpacked and stored. When the orders came in items were packed up, and shipped out, including international delivery. When items were sent out, we got the tracking numbers for the packages back so we could send customers e-mails (again all automated).

Some of the newer operations have staff on site that has electronics expertise and offer troubleshooting of arriving items, etc. It seems that having them flash NFC stickers shouldn't be soo bad to teach them (but maybe expensive).

<comment><USER20> that's amazing, can you share some names/links of recommended warehouses?

<comment><USER21> Certainly. None of these require 6 figure payments. There are some setup fees, (very reasonable) and then they usually charge per action (items packed, computers checked, etc).

Ones I worked with and would recommend: <http://parcelport.net>, <http://amplifier.com/>

Ones that I talked with but didn't have personal experience (yet)<http://www.im-logistics.com>, <http://archway.com>, <http://www.capacityllc.com/>

Each has their own pros and cons and it depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is pretty much chicken and egg problem. There is a huge schlep blindess in world of VCs, advisors, incubators, etc. So many entrepreneurs are actively discouraged to do things they want and to solve the real hard problems (the most common theme is: because there is a big company XYZ doing something kinda similar like that).

<comment><USER5> Not at this incubator.

<comment><USER23> The amount of money provided by YC seems like it would naturally limit the type of problems that could be solved by a YC startup.

<comment><USER24> The amount of money more-or-less promised to all YC companies is deceptively larger than the amount YC itself publishes. Also, until you get to Webvan sizes, there are existence proofs to pretty much all the possible company sizes at YC.

<comment><USER23> I am aware that there are very large companies that were originally funded by YC. There are some problems that do not begin with throwing some code on EC2 and iterating to success. Hardware design and production is the area that comes to mind. I realize that there are a few companies that were funded by YC that did some hardware design and production, but they are certainly not representative of the entire problem of hardware design and production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find online shopping for a lot of things to be really tedious (when you don't exactly know what to buy). That's why I'm working on a shopping search engine to make finding the right products much faster and easier. But PG dismissed my idea as a shopping guide that no one needs.

Almost every new shopping/ecommerce startup is some clone of Pinterest or a Q&A site. Those are very attractive ideas, but I believe I'm working on the real schlep, which involves combing product feeds, crawling for furniture photos, etc. and making life for the average Joe easier.

What do you think?

<comment><USER26> How would you say it's tedious? There are many sites with product reviews, blogs, forums, etc. Need a new camera? There's dpreviews. Need a new TV? Cnet. Need a new video game? IGN.

<comment><USER25> Exactly. Deciding what to buy is a research project. I think it's one of those pains we've got so accustomed to, that we take it for granted.

<comment><USER26> Well, don't be too enthusiastic about this idea.. I've seen lots of sites try it and fail such as Measy, Gdgt, etc. The ones that succeed are the ones that thrive in the search engines. People use search engines to find what they want.. they don't go to a specific destination.

<comment><USER25> Heh, I'm not driven just by my own enthusiasm - that doesn't pay the bills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just a side note: like many Yiddish words, 'schlep' originates from the german verb 'schleppen', which translates to 'haul','tow','drag','carry' or 'tug'.

<comment><USER28> Yes, I've never heard schlep defined as an unpleasant task, except in that schlepping your suitcase all the way to Newark airport and back (or any other schlep) is unpleasant. The main conclusion I draw from this article: Paul Graham is not jewish. Either that or I don't know what schlep means.

<comment><USER29> It does only mean a "an arduous journey" or, when used literally, "to pull/drag" but it isn't used to to mean a arduous task in general.

I guess, In an effort to find a Google-able/SEO-friendly unique phrase, pg has overgeneralised the term.

<comment><USER30> It "isn't used to to mean a arduous task in general" says who? The OED defines it as a "troublesome business, a piece of hard work" with examples of that particular usage going back to 1964 in the Economist, who I presume wouldn't have used it unless their audience would understand. Pg has provided contemporary examples from the web at large using it in this fashion as well. Also the original German doesn't mean the actual journey but the act of dragging or being burdened so I don't see how this usage is likely to be at odds anyway.

<comment><USER31> As a native Yiddish speaker, my experience is that schlep is only used to describe a journey-related pain in Yiddish - I think TFA statement that this is a Yiddish word used in this context is what's confusing (has the article been edited to clarify this since?). It appears that its use has been expanded by non-Yiddish speakers to refer to "arduous tasks" - although no-one besides OED seems to think this.

As it happens, in Yiddish, there is a one other use which is more related which is to describe someone as "a schlepper" (or that they "schlepped") which means they take a long time do something.

<comment><USER30> No-one besides the OED.. There is no central authority for English, but if there were one it would be the OED. Besides, there are copious examples of people using it in that way in English for half a century: the OED catalogues these so it's not really up for debate in English. And that's the point, it's English not Yiddish we are talking about. You would say "it's Yiddish, not German" if a German started trying to correct you on things because he's a "native speaker".

Edit: as far as I can tell the article always said "originally a Yiddish word" which serves to hold the case I am making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just a few other huge schleppy targets:

        Better elementary/middle/high school
        Better voting (digital democracy)
        Better government procurement system
        Better prisons or prison alternatives

<comment><USER33> Better Electronic Health Record systems

<comment><USER34> The problem with doing one of these (as with all of the ones above) is that you have a serious principal-agent problem on the buy side.

The people using your products (doctors) aren't necessarily the ones making the purchasing decisions, and in such situations you won't always win by providing the best product.

This is why EHR systems especially have a lot of fine grained reporting systems that let administrators spy on just about everything going on (they love this) and huge sales teams with budgets to lavish potential buyers with champagne and horrific user interfaces for doctors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in." (love the metaphor pg)

I did this once outside of my startup on a motorcycle trip to Panama, crossing the boarder into Mexico was a huge block for me and my riding buddy. We stayed in the US and drank beer for 2 days straight not realizing what we were doing. Then one night we had a moment of clarity, jumped on our bikes and headed for the boarder.

We just jumped right in!

In that moment of clarity I removed the fear and felt total freedom and the world became my oyster if only for a moment or two.

I think schleps are the reasons why many startups either fail or succeed, the ones that win hit the wall and learn to break through them.

<comment><USER36> Schleps is an indicator our work goes towards success. It has to be hard. Notice this can equally lead the entrepreneur to nowhere. It is the role of the entrepreneur to understand if this the right schleps.

<comment><USER35> That is where focus, vision, listening and filtering come in...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Would the various AWS services count as the biggest, by far? Not a startup, but fits the definition.

</comment><comment><USER38> An interesting piece, but I think a flawed one too.

I am in complete agreement with the section about " _you can't start a startup by just writing code_ ", and I think that concept could have expanded to become an entire and valid article.

But then it morphed from that into the idea that people (often subconciously) avoid "schleps" and pick easier tasks instead, which I think is both obvious and normal. I also think it is often a lot less subconcious than pg thinks.

To expand on the example of olympic athletes: I don't know about that specific example, but to expand to "professional athletes", an awful lot of people do think about being a football star, a top baseball player, whatever. But ultimately, even children with dreams have a basic understanding of risk vs. reward.

Saying that starting stripe involves a lot of schleps is one way of putting it, another way is to say that you're less likely to succeed.

 _Probably no one who applied to Y Combinator to work on a recipe site began by asking "should we fix payments, or build a recipe site?" and chose the recipe site. Though the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain sight, they never saw it, because their unconscious mind shrank from the complications involved._

Other than gut instinct is there any reason to believe this is the case? Those people also chose to start a recipe site over becoming journalists, or chefs, or working in fashion - nobody has ever, before starting either a career or a startup, gone through every possibility and ticked them all off, so why is it that in this case we should assign subconcious fear of hard work s the reason?

Personally I find it can often be the reason conciously, to the extent that I don't believe it has any need to be in my subconcious. Much like when I'm in a casino and think "let's bet fairly small" rather than "risk my entire savings to have a chance at getting crazily rich", when it comes to work I conciously think about how hard something will be, and what rewards it could bring.

Personally I work in content/publishing, and no it never occured to me to work on Stripe, but thinking about it now, if I could go back in time, I wouldn't try to build Stripe first, nor would I at this point in time consider a job in that kind of company. Maybe part of that can be assigned to the schelps involved, but I'm conciously deciding that.

Regardless, an interesting piece as food for thought.

edit: As a completely unrelated question that doesn't really merit creating an entire topic to ask, does anyone with showdead enabled have any idea what comments like <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3465559> are all about? I see them now and again, and can't work out any logic behind them.

<comment><USER39> Answer to unrelated question: Losethos is a developer of a quite unique operating system, <http://www.losethos.com/videos.html> which he has been developing for the past 10 years.

One of his last sane comments were when he asked startup advice here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1782800> and got zero responses.

Sometimes it passes my mind that maybe someone on HN should help him. It's quite obvious he has lost his mental health.

<comment><USER40> I reached out by e-mail once, out of similar curiosity to the parent, and got a string of replies that made about as much sense as his comments here. The mails kept coming, several minutes apart... I was actually worried I'd stepped into a situation I didn't want to be in. I'm convinced there are some real psychological problems there that startup advice won't help with...

> I'm some kind of terrorist lab animal, in jail--shrinks abuse me and shit.

> All I can do is post to HN News and yell at my shrinks.

> I get fake downloads and no emails. Total terrorist lab rat abused by > shrinks.

It is sad. I hope he does see those shrinks.

<comment><USER41> From his comments and yours, here is what might have happened:

He developed an operating system by himself, spent a lot of effort in it.

Despite spending a large part of his life on this project, not many people are interested.

In despair, and alone, all he thinks about everyday is losethos, as you can see in each comment. In his mind, everything links back to losethos in someway.

`I could do USB but keyboard and mice aren't any better, possibly worse from a compatibility state. Memory sticks would be really nice. Now, we're in the domain of distinctive drivers for similar pieces of hardware. Can't do that. Might be able to.`

He seems to have related this article to how he didn't implement drivers for those accessories in his OS. (Schleps)

I am guessing he was sent to a clinic by his parents.

`I don't know. I don't even care. I don't care about one person. Parents are enemies. I pay them $600 they take care of me, but abuse me, I prolly abuse them. This is heaven -- argument clinic and I'm telling truth all the time, except for wild speculation. I don't know shit about reality.`

His frequent references to God suggests someone close has given him a bible, in an attempt to help him.

He is able to comment on HN probably because he still has access to his computer and internet.

Pouring your life into a project, only after finding nobody cares much about it, while living alone for years... I can see how I'd become mentally unstable too.

=(

`Frustration over my reality being bogus, sucks.` <http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=K3sfeO8PZb>

He was probably told that by doctors. Could it be caused by long-term denial?

Here's more of him elsewhere: [http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18514&sta...](http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18514&start=15)

<comment><USER38> See also [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_64bit_operating_system_v707_released/) and [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_64bit_operating_system_v707_released/) (second link from three years ago, a lot more sanity shown).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Very hopeful. pg wrote similarly in "How to make wealth" (choose hard problems; choose hard options) <http://awurl.com/HLZs3Bxu7>

my version: life is suffering, so you might as well suffer meaningfully. Making something tedious into something simple can itself be _extraordinarily_ tedious. But what a great thing to have done!

A problem is an opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER43> > Most people don't consciously decide not to be in as good physical shape as > Olympic athletes, for example. Their unconscious mind decides for them, > shrinking from the work involved.

Being a world-class athlete is essentially a full-time job. Most people quite consciously do decide not to work two full time jobs, or simply don't have the energy for it. Not the best example...

<comment><USER44> It's not only a full-time job, those who are successful at it are genetically suited to it. It wasn't _training_ that gave Michael Phelps his flipper-like feet...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> pg, would you be willing to share some of the great startup ideas you think people are overlooking? (In addition to the ones on the Request for Startups list.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Generally speaking, the more shlep you're willing to deal with, the less perfect your marketing can be. Find a cure for cancer, and you won't have to market it. Work on a recipe site OTOH and your marketing better be tight.

And you definitely have less competition. More shlep acts as barriers to entry. So does unique insight/expertise in a field outside of technology. Anyone can build the next Del.icio.us, or Pinterest, but not anyone can build the next software system that can help currency traders make money, or software to monitor diabetes patients. But most people just go after the low hanging fruit.

<comment><USER46> and this is because of many reasons too... Easier money, lack of time for harder problems, scared of failure and thus wasting time/money. Agreed to point one, more shlep now, less marketing required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> "One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps."

Or, as somebody wisely put it, "All good planning eventually degenerates into work."

</comment><comment><USER48> Nitpicking: To schlep comes from the German verb "schleppen" - to drag. In yiddish it refers generally to a commute or journey that is in some way quite aggravating - for example, I consider my daily commute in which I'm stuck in traffic a "schlep". Or, "I had to schlep my buby around town all afternoon as she kvetched about her bad back".

In short, to schlep does _not_ mean a tedious or unpleasant task, it means a tedious or unpleasant journey.

</comment><comment><USER49> Never tried Stripe, but what was wrong with Avangate or ShareIt before that?

Did not seem to me that accepting payments on your website was so painful...

<comment><USER50> I just looked at Avangate's site and it wouldn't even let you sign up without "requesting a quote".

Give Stripe a try.

<comment><USER51> If you aren't from the US don't even bother.

<comment><USER52> We're working on fixing that part.

<comment><USER53> If you guys are really, and i mean really looking forward to include other countries; i know that me and another bunch of people would be willing to give you money right now as an advance for the service and as incentive to actually make it happen.

Just be sure to include the big profitable countries: Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Japan, Canada, France, UK among others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> "If you pick an ambitious idea, you'll have less competition, because everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved. (This is also true of starting a startup generally.)"

Given the right set of circumstances of course this is exactly where the opportunity is with many things.

Take real estate as another example.

If you buy a nice looking, appealing, ready to go condo or home in a well know building or neighborhood, assuming values aren't rising, there is really no way to make a killing.

You make a killing by transforming something. By adding value. You take an unappealing piece of real estate and you transform it. Or you buy a piece of land and you build something on it ready to go. It's well known that people buy on an emotional level. And if they can't get attached to something they won't pay as much. (This is why homes are staged for example or cars are shined up at the dealer).

</comment><comment><USER55> Very good article. I think we should also consider the /reasons/ many consciously avoid "known/well understood" schleps. They have to do with the motivations for undertaking the work involved with a startup (or anything else, but startups for this argument) in the first place. Paths of least resistance are going to be taken if they satisfy the goals. Basically, the issue in the cases I'm speaking of is _satisficing_.

1) If you want to hang out with "cool startup people" and be involved in "cool startup culture" just about any startup will do. No need to do something difficult. That recipe aggregator will do just fine.

2) If you want to work on "interesting" problems, there are lots of those too. They might not serve many people (dev tools which do the same thing as many other existing dev tools and do not improve upon them) or change the world in really useful ways, they can still be /interesting/ to work on.

3) If you just want to make enough money so that you can stop stressing out every single day of your worry-filled life over having to work yourself to the bone for the rest of your life/becoming homeless/being able to afford food/shelter/health insurance, and you think just about any startup can give you that Startup Lottery Ticket, you don't need to work on the next Stripe. You just need a couple of million, then you could move into your one room studio/log cabin/pod and live the rest of your life sans the typical day-to- day worries about the basics and be just fine. The diminishing marginal utility of money seems like an excellent bulwark against trying to do those Schleppier things. If you're going to make at _least_ as much from a RecipeAggregator472 as you would from a Stripe, the choice is easy.

As pg states, undertaking these sorts of endeavors requires ignorance for some, but I would also add some other possible useful motivators (ignorance may also become tougher "motivator" since so much useful data about failure is so readily available):

1) The need for big money for other goals. If you want to be a mega- philanthropist/cure cancer/finally solve immortality/whatever, you probably need BIG BUCKS. The number of people motivated to actually do this (or who even think it is possible) is probably not very large.

2) Fanaticism. You want to make this project happen because it's just your dream. The rewards are irrelevant. You will make it so that it's possible to create coffee from rain no matter what it takes, it's just that important to you. Probably not that many of these either.

3) Revenge. Everyone told you it could not, can not, and will not be done. Maybe they told you that you will never be the Coffee From Rain King. Whatever the reason, you live to prove them wrong and rub their faces in it. You want to get on the news and blithely tell the world about you invented this genius thing while making no mention of your detractors, but you secretly giggle with glee since you know you were Right, and they were Wrong. This one might actually be the easiest of the bunch, but still requires a delicate balance of just enough ridicule and scorn to motivate one, but not so much so that one one thinks said thing is truly impossible.

4) Reinforcing the Peltzman effect. Certainly not a panacea either, but it could certainly help: [http://www.angrybearblog.com/2012/01/peltzman-effect- why-eco...](http://www.angrybearblog.com/2012/01/peltzman-effect-why-economic- growth-has.html)

</comment><comment><USER56> The problem here is domain knowledge. Everybody understands what a To Do List is.

</comment><comment><USER57> A question to ask may be, is there a more efficient way to discover what these problems are? I know Y combinator and co. have somewhat of a pre-defined list of problems they would like to see solved that are not being addressed. For a lot startups it seems to be random. Their idea occurred to them when 'they', or someone they knew were having this problem.

I think there are many industries that many talented engineers know nothing about, and therefore don't know where the problems lie. How can we facilitate this awareness to the people who want to create startups without it being happenstance?

<comment><USER58> I'm sure many people have gone through the same thought process. The problem is many people don't know they want something or realize they have a need until they see a solution. The whole, _I'll know when I see it_ mentality in a way.

Instead of a _request for proposal_ we need a _request for startup_. But people want their solutions now because they have the need now.

<comment><USER57> I agree. Perhaps this particular 'problem' is something that I will work on.

<comment><USER58> This site came to mind - <http://wappr.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I thought for a moment that the essay was about how to find startup ideas: solving your own schleps. Solve those things which everyone assumes are an annoying part of life/business.

The things I do that I find the most tiresome: commute by car, dishes, laundry, and flossing.

I find it funny that the solution to the first three if you have money are: 1\. Hire a human driver (or move). 2. Hire a human maid. 3. Hire a human maid.

But all might be solved by technology: robot drivers, robot butler, robot butler, and "vaccines" against tooth decay and halitosis.

If I dug into the less important schleps, I bet I'd find that software is a solution.

</comment><comment><USER60> Even though Braintree (<http://braintreepayments.com>) is not exactly like Stripe in terms of "speed to be up and running", it was created way before Stripe and has important features (like Third Party Payment Aggregations - <USER3> must for sites like Airbnb) that Stripe can't have in the short term.

As a result, Braintree is processing billion and billion of dollars a year.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is the money quote:

"A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in."

It also helps to think of things like "making deals with banks", which can initially seem scary, in terms of the basic human actions they really stand for: "talking to a lot of people who work for banks". To me at least, that is both less boring and less scary.

<comment><USER62> For me, "talking to a lot of people who work for banks" is a lot less scary, but it is also so unimaginably boring. It would be difficult for me to imagine something more boring that talking to a ton of people who work at banks about banking.

That's exactly why Stripe is so valuable.

<comment><USER61> I like talking to people. It _can be_ pretty boring if they don't engage with you and just stay with formal/small talk, but if you can get someone to really talk, you learn all sorts of new things about the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Its about personality and subsequent 'search pattern'. Stripe was never on the radar for most entrepreneurs, while building the next RecipeBook is. This is due to most entrepreneurs are not the game changing type whose personalities lead them to tackle such large and unwieldy issues like Stripe did.

It should be noted that the world will never know how many tried and failed to do what Stripe succeeded in.

<comment><USER46> Another problem is, if you are out of university or high school without much experience in really any field, what exactly are you going to build, you have no real specializations and are a blank state, so you can work with what you do know a little about... music? recipes, travel? existing consumer web apps that are easy to code (and then coding it and realizing marketing is the real challenge for them).

Wondering what Paul G. thinks of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I don't mind doing tedious things. I discovered in college that I was an excellent bureaucrat when I became student treasurer.

I just wish I could come up with ideas, though. A lot of them are hard for me to relate to. I don't go out and do normal consumer-type things ( not that there's anything wrong if you do) or have any real friends, so social things are out.

I just can't relate.

<comment><USER65> Startup ideas are so cheap that there are a bunch of resources for finding free ones if you don't think you can come up with one (which I'm sure you could, if you had a good brainstorming session!)

Maybe you could start here at YC's requests for startups: <http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I wonder if going after a schlep problem hurts you in the hiring department. Although founders may be motivated to grind out schlep problems in the hopes of a large payoff, the talented programmer who is willing be engineer #1 at a startup is exactly the type of person who is susceptible to schlep blindness.

</comment><comment><USER67> At least in the one example you gave, 'blindness' is a terrible way to describe how hackers avoid it

"fixing payment processing" is not a problem that we subconsciously avoid — but rather one that we very deliberately stay as far away from as possible. Is there a more inglorious class of failed internet startups?

</comment><comment><USER68> One of the key reasons why I think the US university system is useful is it demonstrates who can do the schlepp.

And boy howdy, is enterprisey full of schlepping. Talking with my dad, who has run his own small construction business for the last 20? years, this is just the nature with work in general.

+1, pg. +1.

</comment><comment><USER69> Guess the folks at WePay didn't read this.

Still struggling to see the difference between WePay and Stripe personally.

</comment><comment><USER70> _The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps._

"Unconscious" should probably be "subconscious" in these two sentences...

</comment><comment><USER71> The case of Stripe is a rather bad example: most of the work is schleps, leaving very little for the enjoyment of creating something new, something unique, something that has the potential to not become an "also ran".

<comment><USER72> Wasn't that the point of the article? Most people would avoid creating something like Stripe because of all the schleps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I don't agree. The way to make money is to do the simplest thing that makes money. Rarely is that the thing that you least want to do.

</comment><comment><USER25> He comes so close to spelling out some ideas he wants people to do, but for some reason files them under "What you can't say".

</comment><comment><USER74> pg,

How many, or which, of the companies that have had success with Y-combinator were companies that were, in a manner you could discern early on (such as in the application process), clearly addressing schleps versus those you took on simply due to the force of character of the founder(s) (by virtue of their relentless resourcefulness)?

</comment><comment><USER75> this article has a lot of truth to it, but one thing I will always disagree with PG about is that ignorance is a good thing. perhaps ignorance may produce a better local maximum than limited knowledge, but as a hacker I believe the true optimum lies at maximum knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER76> Why is it too late to be Stripe?

<comment><USER77> Because there's already a Stripe. Doesn't mean you _couldn't_ start a company to do what Stripe does, but it'd be hard, since people would probably be saying, "Isn't that what Stripe does?"

<comment><USER78> I disagree completely. Stripe is the only one so far who doesn't suck. There's room for more, and plenty of room for differentiation. Sure, stripe.com set the bar and has first mover advantage etc., but that doesn't mean they now own the market. Not at all.

<comment><USER79> Agreed. There's room for more than one payment-provider-that-doesn't-suck™.

And let's not forget stripe hasn't even launched in europe, yet. That's quite a market still waiting to be schlepped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> as usual, it's also in the bible [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstraction.html)

</comment><comment><USER81> I would like to know, what are the schleps of HN readers?

</comment><comment><USER82> Main reason why (I want to code not schlep) I don't want to run a business, let alone a startup. I've run business before, btw.

</comment><comment><USER83> Great essay with good lessons. I will work on those for sure.

By the way, can someone explain to me what's the difference between paypal and stripe? In what paypal don't fix web payment?

<comment><USER84> For me, It's the API and customer (developer) service. Second to none in the payment industry.

<comment><USER85> Yep, I spent the last two days hanging out in the Stripe campfire chat while I was implementing my own billing system. Some of the questions were borderline bizarre and I was truly shocked at how the Stripe team went above and beyond to answer every single request. My only other experience is with SagePay who I spent weeks asking questions on their developer forum to get a handful of vague responses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Point of usage - "Schlep" is most commonly used as a verb. As in, "Oy, you had to drop out of college and schlep all the way to California, just to listen to some schmuck make himself a macher?" It's true, you could say "that was a long schlep" - but other than meaning a long or difficult physical journey, (think getting home from Vegas on a Sunday), when schlep is used as a noun, it almost always refers to a person, short for schlepper, or one who schleps. This is someone at the bottom of the totem pole. As in "what kind of schlep wants to deal with this guy's verkakte ego?"

</comment><comment><USER87> This essay is very disingenuous. Businesses are hard work, Paul Graham wants to invest in the next Facebook, he needs younger founders who are ridiculously ambitious and won't take an early exit.

[http://diegobasch.com/stop-the-presses-essay-shows-that- hard...](http://diegobasch.com/stop-the-presses-essay-shows-that-hard-work-c)

Edit: pg, don't downvote me :)

<comment><USER24> I don't think it's disingenuous; I think it's pretty on-the-nose. Also, I think "early exits" are still win conditions at YC; that's one of the (salubrious) benefits of being organized like YC and not DFJ; there's a lot of reasons why a "YC" would want to tune outreach to young people, and none of them need to be "avoid build-to-flip companies".</comment></comment>


Live Blog: New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission Votes on Anti-Tesla Rules - <AUTHOR> http://transportevolved.com/2014/03/11/transport-evolved-live-blog-new-jersey-motor-vehicle-commission-votes-on-anti-tesla-rules

<comment><AUTHOR> Some context: [http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/defending-innovation-and- con...](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/defending-innovation-and-consumer- choice-new-jersey)</comment>


Ask HN: Approached to be consultant for hedge fund research group - <AUTHOR> Hi all Does anyone have any experience working as an industry expert consultant for a hedge fund run research group? I recently was and they seem legit as in they are part of a major fund. They offered to pay me a really high retainer for about 1 hour per month of conference call to discuss things in my industry. This seems a little too good to be true. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> Take a retainer.

Unless they are operating from Nigeria and are asking a small fee to initiate wire transfer of retainer.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the worst case scenario anyway?

</comment><comment><USER4> Do they need anyone else? :)</comment>


How you build it - Pinterest - <AUTHOR> http://blog.grouptalent.com/2012/how-you-build-it-pinterest/#more-363

<comment><USER2> I really thought this was going to be more of a technical article. Sort of a "how to clone this" type thing. That would be a fun series.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure about now but pinterest was virtually unusable on an ipad for a really long time?</comment>


Show HN: Føcal Releases OpenCV Benchmark Tool - <AUTHOR> https://app.f0cal.com/benchmarks <comment><USER2> Wow, I literally wrote down an idea for a tool like this, just a couple of days ago.

I'm running OpenCV on Android for an app project, and gauging pipeline costs at different steps is a pain. Right now I'm resorting to a "timing" build, with basic printouts of elapsed times at each step. Archaic.

Do you guys plan to add e.g. Snapdragon etc. as a measure at some point?

Also are the benchmarks based off of real device numbers, or are they fuzzed estimates somehow?

You seem to target businesses, understandably, but I signed up for a beta in any case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for signing up. I'll reach out via email.

<comment><USER2> Cool, looking forward to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat! It would be nice if contrib functions were added.

<comment><USER3> I just noticed you're in Cambridge. I work down the street in the Broad's Imaging Platform. We should have coffee or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're running through the contribs now and should have them posted soon. Would love to meet up for a coffee or beer in town. Ping me at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is F0cal?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Brian. F0cal provides a suite of tools to help design, test, optimize, and deploy computer vision systems. We're currently developing automated pipeline profiling and hardware simulation features. Let me know if you're interested in hearing more.</comment></comment>