I'm Getting Pretty Tired of Startup Advice that Doesn't Include Any Mention of SEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/im-getting-pretty-tired-of-startup-advice-that-doesnt-include-any-mention-of-seo <comment><USER2> Here's what I put on the post-- thought I'd repeat it here for those who don't want to wade thru all of the people bashing Matt Maroon. :-)

\---

Hehe. The obvious solution for this is to, uh, submit articles to News.YC.

FWIW, a good percentage of my posts (which often appear on YC News) have to do with SEO ( <http://www.tonywright.com/category/seo/> ).

(Disclosure: I am a YC08 Founder)

I think it's a "devil you know" issue, to some degree-- I actually offered to help some other YC founders with their SEO plans and didn't get a lot of uptake- people prefer to tackle the problems they understand.

Another issue (and this might be controversial) is that maybe SEO doesn't matter a damn bit for most early stage startups... At least in the very early stages (which is what most people tend to write about).

I always look at startups as a bucket with holes in it. You can focus on increasing the flow of water into the bucket (SEO, viral, PR, marketing) or you can work on patching the holes in the bucket (adding value, improving product/market fit, improving the "lower" part of your funnel). With time being the most scarce resource in a startup, any time you spend improving "flow" takes away from "patching the bucket".

If you've got a great "bucket" (a product people freakin' LOVE and love to talk about), all of the "flow" tasks get a lot easier. If you've got a mediocre"bucket" with lots of holes, great "flow" isn't going to help make patching the bucket easier.

So (as a guy who has built and sold 2 businesses and the third is looking pretty darn good), I'd recommend ignoring a concerted SEO effort in favor of making your product better (if you have to make a choice). Ideally, you're funded and you don't HAVE to make a choice (but most startups do).

</comment><comment><USER3> I always thought that "SEO" was some basic good practices wrapped in a bunch of snake oil. At the last place I worked at a full time job, we had an "SEO expert" come in, and the boss and I concluded that 1) he was basically full of it, and that 2) the boss had a good handle on what needed doing to make various things visible. Just one anecdote, but there seem to be a lot of dubious people touting their "SEO" credentials.

<comment><USER4> "SEO experts" are a lot like "real estate experts".

If their advice was so good, what are they doing here? They'd be way ahead if they were just out there implementing their own advice.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. Some of those people may be experts at SEO but not have the first clue about how to make a good web app. The best they may be able to do is write a blog and apply SEO techniques to it to get it to the top.

On that note, If I was ever to pay someone for SEO, I'd probably Google the term and pick one of the first consulting companies that comes up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found the post ridiculously condescending. Insinuating we are idiots and then stating 'For fuck's sake people - get a clue.' and then attacking specific small startups unprovoked does not seem like a very proper way to spread the word for your company or SEO in general. Unfortunately, I'm sure the post has garnered the desired attention by 'dropping the F bomb for the first time'.

I would hope search optimization is really important to SEOmoz given it's their entire concentration as a company. But, I work in a startup as well. Our concentration is not in the field of search optimization. When we have a spare moment or the resources to tackle SEO, I am sure we will. In the meantime, I would refrain from calling me and those in similar positions idiots.

<comment><USER7> As a founder (and the website maintainer) of one of the startups "attacked", I'm not too bothered by the criticism. It is valid...we aren't showing up in all the right places on Google, and we're currently paying a buck or more per click to occasionally appear in those right places in ads. But, it's also worth noting that while we'd never turn down more traffic we also aren't experiencing significant pain due to that lack. Our site gets 1800 uniques per day, and is growing at a very respectable clip--I remember vividly celebrating our first week of 1000+ visitor days just a few months back and it won't be long before we're celebrating 2000+ visitor days. For a site that sells a product (rather than sells eyeballs), that's a nice stream of potential buyers. Actually, I sometimes chuckle when I read about sites that are selling nothing but eyeballs bragging about 100,000 monthly pageviews (or whatever) when our product site does significantly more than that (and our four sites combined see an order of magnitude more traffic than that).

We consider our biggest website problems to be conversion rather than bringing the eyeballs in...so even though I readily admit that we're weaker in the engines than we'd like to be, my current focus with the website is on getting those people who come to our site excited enough to buy our product (or, even better, ask their hosting provider to buy it for them), and better serving those customers that have bought.

So, I don't know that we're really a good example of a truckload of SEO fail, even if our SEO results are poorly, since we don't actually live or die by search engine traffic. Only recently did the majority of our incoming traffic shift from our Open Source project pages to other sources, for example, and those clicks from Webmin.com are still far more valuable to us than search- related clicks...they are about 10 times more likely to buy from us than natural search result users. Likewise for users of our Open Source Virtualmin version at places like Joyent, who are proving to be extremely likely to upgrade to the commercial version. This tells me that getting more people using and talking about our Open Source products is a better marketing tactic than almost anything else we could do. So, we balance our efforts, and SEO unfortunately gets put on a back-burner. (We do try hard to have good URLs, though, but mainly because I consider URLs a usability issue, and not because I care what a search engine thinks about them. I just wish Joomla didn't suck so bad for stuff like that.)

<comment><USER8> Im a virtualmin user, I love it, I use the GPL version as it's lighter and I need to squeeze out every cent of my server as memory is the big issue for my app.

The app I have running on it is purely search engine traffic driven by seo. I am top for the main 3 - 4 word terms, (suffering a slight drop with the latest end march google update) that said the next term were going after is the big one and will bring 4 fold the traffic we have now.

My position is this, if your not into seo and your doing a startup then you better have some nice friends, and hope to make the first page of TC etc. Else you will sit there with 50 hits a day and most of them will be from crawlers.

I have no 'nice friends' apart from my seo adviser. I'm lucky he is a good friend and trained me well. Now I have a site that has tremendous growth, targeted traffic that sticks about (and comes back) and absoulty zero effort wasted on pitching for editorial, advertising, other marketing, etc.

I could care less about word of mouth because it is very hit and miss. People only want to talk about you if you have upset them or if you have a real game changer. Competing or slogging it out in established markets, like music for example just doesn't get the masses enthused to enough to chat about (mind everyone will blog about you if TC did so that's a bonus of being T.cked.)

I often check my apps progress with compete and benchmark it against sites that are in the same market that are going for the big bucks, VC backing, big splashes of editorial on TC, advertising and generally hustling their way in, and while I am often behind there initial curves the encouraging thing is my traffic is constantly rising and Im nipping at there ankles as they dip after the sharp rises, while also building a large net to crawl the ocean of organic search traffic.

I also freelance, coding and SEO, and it's really amazing talking to potential clients that are working on startups, they are interested in me helping them with their apps, but when I say, look the best advice I can help you with is not coding but in getting your SEO sorted out - blank faces stare back. Just like all the examples given in this article, they are equally nonchalant.

The biggest laugh for me was a competitor who had made TC because it had been backed with 5 million USD or some other worthless currency and when I did the quick seo scan (10 secs work) the biggest laugh of my life (index=1 page).

Alas I don't expect that the startups I see here will change there focus and concentrate on SEO anytime soon, the general opinion that seems to be prevalent is that SEO is like web1, and social graphs and viral marketing will build the traffic.

That is a huge shame, I feel a huge empathy for the fellow entrepreneur's on this board, sharing many of the same trials and tribulations I feel like I also share some of the same genes, and this is nothing more than a little clan, and I want nothing more than to see my fellow clan members go out and change the world. For better and worse, that is model of creation and one bloody good reason to live.

Long live Virtualmin.

<comment><USER7> "Im a virtualmin user, I love it, I use the GPL version as it's lighter and I need to squeeze out every cent of my server as memory is the big issue for my app."

Awesome. Memory usage of GPL and Professional are roughly identical, but if you don't need the features of Professional, we'd encourage you to keep using GPL. Also check out our guide for running Virtualmin on low memory systems:

[http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/id,virtualmin_on_low...](http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/id,virtualmin_on_low_memory_systems/)

Most memory usage is actually found in the underlying services, and not Virtualmin/Webmin proper (though Webmin with all of the Virtualmin modules cached is about 110MB...turning off that caching takes it down to 10MB).

"Alas I don't expect that the startups I see here will change there focus and concentrate on SEO anytime soon, the general opinion that seems to be prevalent is that SEO is like web1, and social graphs and viral marketing will build the traffic."

Actually, we thought hard about viral marketing and social graphs and realized that we don't stand a chance marketing via that path. Almost nothing about our product has viral characteristics, though word of mouth has been strong. We've been focusing on increasing the amount of valuable information on our network of websites (Webmin.com, Virtualmin.com, and Doxfer.com), such that searches for all sorts of common server administration problems will result in the user coming to one or more of our sites because the solution can be found there. I don't know how to measure the success of this, and it hasn't resulted in us being front page of Google for any of our keywords...but we do get several hundred visitors a day from natural search results to our forums and wikis. As I mentioned, our traffic is nothing to be ashamed of for a product site, and it's growing rapidly.

All of this discussion has made me think a lot more about the problem. So I'm going to start paying more attention and blog about the results. Starting from our current "zero SEO effort" state, I'll spend the next couple of months tuning for SEO and post a few short articles about the results. It's certainly worth some testing, if we could crank up traffic without spending ad dollars.

<comment><USER8> My problem with memory was primarily caused by poor indexing on mysql tables, that once I resolved and cleaned up my queries resolved my memory problems completely. Ref Virtualmin pro, it was the claimav that used more memory not PRO per say. However, I don't need the server for email at all, so the GPL version for me is actually a god send. As I said I really do love it and would happily pay for it. I think you should offer it as shareware for 50 usd one time license, its really good (with the install script) and is a great solution for system admins who don't want (or know how to) set up LAMP without a panel.

Im in the latter catagory, having moved over to a linode, (also highly recommended) after the app was OOM the previous server that was really lightweight and over priced, (that had cpanel) and I actually prefer Virtualmin. It's more rustic and I prefer the support from your small team.

As regards SEO traffic, I'm really glade your thinking of getting into it more. Basically you need to talk to a pro if you want to make headways, I assure you it's not just a case of having the right titles and meta tags, though of course that helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I actually found this quite interesting. Although most people would love to grow virally through word of mouth, top search rankings bring in enormous amounts of traffic day after day. I know of blogs that haven't updated in years that still get hundreds of visits per day solely from Google.

</comment><comment><USER10> One site I used to manage used to have an unexplained high ranking for "animal porn"... talk about the gravy-train.

But seriously, thanks for the article. SEO is definitely one of those areas that hackers tend to downplay in significance, probably because it's not rocket science to learn or implement. Not to mention it introduces a bunch of generic looking language on your page. Ie: just having Adpinion in the title bar may be worth the gain in aesthetic alone... just a thought...

</comment><comment><USER11> For the start up I work at, SEO brings in at least $450 a day, 30 days a month. I believe in SEO and think it works great when you are selling a product or service.

When you are giving a product or service away for free, I don't think the SEO juice is worth the SEO squeeze.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always understood that it was more important to have a good product than to have good SEO. Who cares if your site appears at the top of a Google search if it isn't for what people are searching? They'll come across it, be like "this sucks," and not click on you again. SEO is only one aspect of marketing, which in turn is only one aspect of running a startup. I would argue that not mentioning SEO is not an act of negligence.

Also, SEO has gotten a bit of a reputation for being dishonest, with people placing references to recent scandals in their html headers to attract hits. This can kind of stuff can be like spam and doesn't necessarily help users find something useful. Especially if what you are selling is a piece of crap.

So it pretty clear why someone would not mention SEO in an advice column, even legit stuff: because they don't want to associated with crap.

<comment><USER13> I agree. Just by its nature, SEO is bad. Of course there are some simple things that you can do to make your page better understood by search engines, but using these self-proclaimed tricks and methodologies employed by most SEO companies is a total waste of time and money. Focus on putting something out there that's good, not trying to find shortcuts.

<comment><USER14> "Just by its nature, SEO is bad" This statement is ridiculous. You are a fool is you don't do everything you can to rank for relevant terms. This is the best, most targeted traffic you can get. Gaming the engines is bad, but not trying to rank in them is idiocy.

<comment><USER13> I mostly meant the gaming part and the industry of SEO 'experts' who are involved with that. You are obviously right that search engine traffic is great. However, it is a waste of time focusing on doing "everything you can" to rank in the search engines, instead of for instance, working on making a good product in the first place. Search engines today usually use a QA feedback loop to figure out what ends up being the most relevant result for people. So if your site is good and the best, it will rise to the top anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Proper SEO can mean the difference between making $10/day and $100/day.

<comment><USER16> It all depends on the keywords you rank highly on, and the value is almost boolean in nature. Appearing in the first 3 links can be very valuable, appearing in the third page practically worthless.

Ranking first on Mesothelioma, a form of cancer only caused by asbestos exposure, can generate a few millions a year, as there is almost always someone to sue for the exposure (btw CPC for related search terms around 70$ ).

Ranking first on "purple dragons with red horns" will probably not generate a dime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> read this about SEO and Techcrunch: [http://www.podtech.net/home/3579/a-secret-sauce-to- top-100-b...](http://www.podtech.net/home/3579/a-secret-sauce-to- top-100-blogging-success)

</comment><comment><USER18> yes that is true..that was one of the reason we tried to gather news on VC&Startups and SEO/SEM in our site at naubo.com under the blogs section. The ideas was to make it useful and raise the issue as they go hand and hand...

</comment><comment><USER19> April Fools?

<comment><USER19> Ha. I guess that wasn't very helpful. What I meant to say is that it's kind of silly to suggest that basic startup advice should automatically include something about SEO. Even if we assume that SEO is highly important and every startup should spend time on it, it's an implementation detail. It's no more germane to general startup advice than how to deploy a web app, even if both are vital to a web startup's success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And we're getting tired of linkbaiting posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe linkbait...

but it has a lot of good examples, seo is really something overlooked here, and it is relevant to this site obviously

<comment><USER21> The irony is that this link-bait is a prime example of SEO.

Still want to buy what they're selling?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> First rule of effective SEO : Nobody talks about effective SEO.

<comment><USER22> Oops! I obviously broke the rule.</comment></comment>


Why do "Christian" countries appear so prosperous? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-are-the-christian-countries-so-prosperous/answer/Marcos-Hung?__filter__=all&__nsrc__=1&__sncid__=3889821792&__snid3__=6374796406&share=1 <comment><USER2> "For background, please read <my blog post>".

"To learn more about this investigation, visit <the book I wrote>"

I agree with an earlier comment in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21197466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21197466) that the Quora question is meant to promote a book, not really to ask a question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, corrected it. New to content marketing.</comment></comment>


SNAP households spent 9.3 percent of their grocery budgets on soft drinks - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/well/eat/food-stamp-snap-soda.html <comment><USER2> Seems like the headline should read "In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Slightly More Soda Than the National Average." I wonder what the distribution of money spent on soda is by income level. My guess would be that the 7.1% number (the national average) is brought down by wealthier people who buy much less soda and if you look at income levels right above those using the SNAP program it'll be approximately in line with those on SNAP. Also easy to forget that healthier options are not that available in lots of places. Food deserts are real.

In general soda consumption is on the decline in the US and if that decline follows the same pattern as cigarettes it will start with wealthier people drinking less and then move down the socioeconomic ladder. Seems a shame for tax payer dollars going to fund unhealthy food options but maybe the answer to that is a tax on sugar to correct for the negative externality on health.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a few issues with this article.

One is that basing "they could buy x amount at so and so store" is meaningless because when you are poor you don't tend to arbitrage for lower prices, you buy when you're out. Not to mention that poor neighbourhoods have fewer supermarkets in number and are less likely to offer sales.

But more egregious, the Walmart cited is in a shopping district with a Costco and a HomeDepot in San Leandro which is not in an especially poor area. [1]

Non-SNAP families paying 7.1% for soda is a meaningless comparison since generally these families have much bigger food budgets than SNAP families so it's not unreasonable to see that figure be lower. Also non-SNAP families have access to more supermarkets and ones with sales.

And 9.3% of $256 is $23.80 per month or about $0.80 a day. This is not an abusive amount of expense for a family, yes, it would be nice to offer incentives for better food, but this will be just an excuse to do more poor bashing.

[1] [http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/10/14/san- francisc...](http://visualizingeconomics.com/blog/2007/10/14/san-francisco- oakland-poverty-map)

Update: ninja edit to add part of a sentence

<comment><USER4> > and 9.3% of $256 is $23.80 per month or about $0.80 a day. This is not an > abusive amount of expense for a family

I feel like this is a bit of gymnastics of the numbers. When you recast the number as "only $23.80/month" what happens is that you mentally recontextualize that around your own budget, in which $23.80 is probably negligible. For a family on SNAP, the whole point is that $23.80 is _not_ negligible. If you have problems with hunger and under-nutrition due to lack of income, $23.80 can go a _very_ long way. Percentages are an appropriate way to discuss the issue in this case, because they more appropriately encapsulate the opportunity costs of such spending.

<comment><USER3> Hahaha ... people pay for groceries with dollars not percentages, the math I did is simple and plain enough that you may be overdoing the generosity in describing it as gymnastics.

On the contrary, I feel it is the use of percentages that obscures the truth and allows blame to be reassigned. The poor aren't on the sort of budget or living in circumstances that allow for much weighing of opportunity costs.

$23.80 for a person might go some distance on a food budget, but for a family of 3 it is less than 32 cents per person per day. If you can make that stretch "a very long way", you're a better budgeter than anyone I've ever met and could have given my mother lessons when we had to struggle to make ends meet (thankfully for not very long).

I urge you to try to shop with $23.80 in a poor neighborhood's supermarket, corner store or bodega. Best of luck with the stretching.

Update: the true figure for the soda budget is 5.44% or closer to $13.93/month, the discrepancy caused by the Times author including juices in with sweetened soda.

<comment><USER4> Well, I live in a major metropolitan area so I have access to things like Walmart, but I can (and do) buy 20lb of rice for around $8, 20lb of potatoes for around $8, and 5 dozen eggs for $6.50. That's an awful lot of calories (7k from potatoes, 12k from the rice, 4.7k from the eggs), with good carbohydrate, fat, and protein availability - about 4 days worth for a family of 3 eating at 2k calories/day/each - for around $22-$23, and it's going to leave you a lot more full than $23 worth of soda and juice.

If you want to go for straight caloric juicing then you just replace some potatoes with vegetable oil in the budget and cook extensively with it. A gallon costs ~$6 and contains a whopping 31,000 calories, and fattier foods tend to leave you feeling more full.

I've spent a significant portion of my adult life stretching my grocery budget, and while I'm fortunate enough to not have to do so by necessity right now, I've learned that it's very possible to eat well for a fraction of what most people expect.

You're very right that $23.80 isn't a whole lot for a family of 3, which rather reinforces the accusation that always underlies this kind of article - that that $23.80, which is so meager, represents a significant chunk of the low-income family's already-meager grocery spending power, which already isn't enough, and is being spent on liquid sugar rather than more nutritious alternatives. To suggest that it doesn't matter in the budgeting because it's a small number just handwaves away the fact that these families are already struggling to buy enough food.

For the record: I'm of the opinion that we should let people buy whatever they please with their SNAP benefits and seek to offer education to those on SNAP about how to spend their entitlements in the most cost- and nutrition- effective ways. Nobody likes feeling hungry. Some people are going to make poor decisions about how they spend those funds, but it's a fool's errand to try to police that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I was 16 (2006), I worked in a grocery store. I still remember vividly a woman coming in, buying $200 worth of food with SNAP and then pulling out two crisp $100 bills and buying 4 or 5 cartons of cigarettes. I was really put off by it, though I never showed. It felt like a kick to the gut. That someone would abuse the system in such a fashion felt like an affront to all the people paying for her food when she clearly had the ability to pay.

This wasn't an isolated incident from her or any of the other SNAP beneficiaries in my area. It was just my first encounter with abuse.

This is of course anecdotal and it only reflects on fewer than 100 people in a small Tennessee town.

I truly believe we need to abolish food stamps and other welfare programs and replace it with a "negative income tax". That way these sorts of people can buy cigarettes (or soda) instead of food without the public feeling like they've been cheated.

<comment><USER6> What do you propose to do about the people who don't buy cigarettes and soda with their food stamps?

<comment><USER5> They still receive their benefits. The negative income tax allows for them to spend money freely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I find it interesting that they had to rely on data volunteered by a grocery chain. They should build in something to the SNAP card system so they can track at high level where the money is being spent. That could provide some interesting data about nutrition and budget of the low income population.

<comment><USER7> This so much. That's as rigorous as a study of the most gas efficient automobile using only data provided by Volkswagen.

This is not an independently controlled dataset.

<comment><USER8> A single nation-wide grocery chain should be enough to establish trends - that's how statistics work.

The report is looking at broad categories of foods (soft drinks, vegetables). Walk into any Kroger, Whole Foods, Von's, or Trader Joe's and you'll the same assortment of products at similar levels of inventory. Demand shifts take many years and even decades, and grocers use that data very effectively for inventory control management.

Even without controlling for multiple chains, I'd wager the numbers are in the ballpark of the expected value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should take into account that individuals with SNAP benefits:

1\. Are less likely to have transportation to goto a grocery store and opt to going to small convenience stores that are in walking distance.

2\. May not have the ability to prepare their meals, such as being homeless, not having a stove, or don't have utilities such as electricity/gas.

</comment><comment><USER7> I mean isn't there some psychological studies that show that people consume more calories when under extreme stress. And what could be more stress inducing than poverty and what provides the highest amount of calories ?

It's easy to demonize these people but they're under extreme stress all the time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Turning snap into wic would probably cost more than 9%

<comment><USER11> But it's not about how much they spend on sugary drinks and junk food. The issue is that taxpayers are subsidizing the purchase of food and drinks which are known to be incredibly bad for the health of consumers. This is a bad thing, in large part because the additional social costs are profound. We cannot in good conscience subsidize purchasing these sorts of food and drinks (just as we don't allow purchasing alcohol with food stamps). And, I think we should tax them at a high rate just like we do with tobacco, alcohol, and now marijuana. We need to stop treating these toxic foods and drinks as somehow acceptable, just because it doesn't (but probably should) come with a Surgeon General's warning.

I predict that someday we'll have the same sorts of ads which play on TV for smoking and drugs for sugary drinks and junk food. Heck, if I were a billionaire, I'd pay for the campaign myself.

<comment><USER12> This is exactly why so many people resist nationalizing health care. They know it'll be about 30 seconds afterwards when people start trying to tell them how to live under the guise of "we're paying for it."

And they aren't wrong.

<comment><USER13> Incorrect on both counts.

The evidence is that _most people want federally funded healthcare._

[http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea- fed-...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-funded- healthcare-system.aspx)

And the experience of nationalised health care in other countries is very much _not_ of being told how to live.

The NHS in the UK is fairly easy-going about health promotion. If anything it could have done a lot more about smoking, whose costs have always consumed some significant percentage of the entire NHS budget.

Currently it could also be doing a lot more about obesity and exercise. And about sugar consumption.

But instead of going through the NHS, the British gov is seriously considering a sugar tax.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38212608](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38212608)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If it is unfair to single out a single kind of food, it is worth pointing out it is also unfair that food stamps are given and not cash.

<comment><USER15> If it were cash, this article would be about cigarettes and alcohol.</comment></comment>


Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@tylertringas/selling-my-bootstrapped-saas-business-26c8406e1d <comment><USER2> Hi folks. I'm the OP here. Hit me up if you have any questions.

<comment> le-mark _Go to Conferences ... I only reached a critical mass of serious acquisition offers after attending my first Micro-Conf in Las Vegas._

Just curious, what types of activities did you do at MicroConf? Did you speak/present? Did you attend sessions (which ones)? Did you just talk to people and network? How did you plan to approach people at the conf? What worked, what didn't?

I once paid to attend an industry conference for a product I was working on, it was a complete waste of time because I basically did nothing, could not get out of my shell, and didn't know what to do. So any guidance you have here would be very valuable!

<comment><USER2> Didn't speak. Just walked and talked. I spent a lot of time at conferences in a previous job and no longer get massive anxiety from it. Two things that make going to conference better: 1) Build a reputation online before (blog, tweet, be transparent) (2) get a speaking slot if at all possible b/c then people come speak to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Purposefully under-optimize

> For example, I really do not understand paid search advertising (Google > Adwords, Facebook, etc) so I purposefully put almost no effort into it as a > customer acquisition channel for Storemapper.

This article is awesome and super helpful, but that particular point seems like terrible advice. Surely it would be much better to hire a marketing/adwords contractor, and increase the value of your company by getting more customers.

I don't think I would want to purposefully leave any "room for improvement", just to make a startup more attractive to buyers who have some experience with ads and SEO. I'd prefer to do the best job I possibly can, and I'm sure people would be still interested in buying, as long as you have the customers and revenue.

<comment><USER4> In my experience, hiring a marketing/adwords contractor is the very easiest way to transfer cash out of your business and into somebody else's business, with no discernible value gained.

I'm sure there are some hotshot marketing/adwords contractors out there...and unicorns probably exist also.

<comment><USER5> The "problem" with SEO and adwords consultants is that the good ones would be working for the most lucrative verticals: insurance, consumer finance, medical lawsuits, etc.

If your small SaaS business can afford to hire them, then they aren't worth hiring.

<comment><USER6> You can say that about literally anything and have it be false. Simply because someone/some company is amazing at what they do, does not mean they are priced out of reach or otherwise unavailable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I buy bootstrapped businesses. Email in profile. Shoot me a message would be happy to discuss even if its just to chat. I don't ask a lot of questions, have numerous references, and I have been buying for the last 10 years.

<comment><USER8> ... and what revenue multiple do you pay?

<comment><USER9> > ... and what revenue multiple do you pay?

I'm trying to figure out if you're just being a jerk here, or whether you are genuinely curious about a question with a wide range of acceptable answers. I hope it's the latter.

Market rates are typically something between 2x and 5x some sort of revenue or profit measure.

That said, the price can go over 5 if there is a big strategic advantage to be had.

Conversely, the multiplier can be measured in months if there are some red flags -- bad management, suspect financials (e.g, lots of charge backs, excessive debt, cash flow mismanagement, etc.), suspect marketing activities (e.g., janky backlink profiles), evidence of black hat / gray hat activity, publicity issues, etc. Sometimes folks just want to sell these to get away from them, and they are willing to offer the right price. Is offering a 12 month revenue/profit multiple or lower bad here? I would say potentially no.

Also note that some people are motivated to sell for some reason. If you've got cash on hand, they will sell for less.

Anyway, whether you intended to or not, this sounded like a snarky reply. Much has been written about markets for small companies, so blithely challenging someone on HN seems inappropriate.

On the other hand, if you do know someone who has an unconditional open offer to buy businesses at a specific multiple of revenue, please let me know. I can hook them up with as much as they want. I'm fairly certain that this is not the case, but I think it is prudent for me to ask.

<comment><USER8> No I am asking a genuine question. My experience is all buyers want to pay 1x to 1.5x of the after tax profit after some massive owner salary has been subtracted.

From a financial perspective it almost never makes sense to sell unless you have to get out today. If you have a good business that is earning good money then just run it out for cash. At worst take your best employee, give them 10% of the business, and let them run it.

<comment><USER10> This hasn't been my experience at all - I'm sorry you haven't had better offers. If you haven't already, I suggest contacting the brokers mentioned on this page (FE International, Pixel Paycheques) and see if they can get you better deals

<comment><USER8> I am not really looking to sell, this is just my experience of approaches I have had. My favourite was the offer I got which came with a three year earn out that was half my expected profit over the timeframe. Really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wanted to keep my first business as a life-style business, to fund other ventures, because the income is financially a much better deal than a sale... but also found that it just takes too much to run miltiple ventures (Elon Musk notwithstanding).

Really liked the "see an opportunity", of the business being worth more owned by them - the sale creates value in the world. Really, it's how a sale of anything, product/service, should be.

Unfortunately, getting a business into a saleable state, and getting a sale actually done, seem about as much work as creating a profitable (but not self- running) business in the first place. Conceptually analogous to Brooks' _program_ vs. _product_.

> In a strategic acquisition, businesses can be purchased

Typo/something missing after that?

</comment><comment><USER12> Excellent and very informative post. I'd love to see the things SureSwift needed for due diligence and their hand-over list - it would be a good checklist of things you need to have squared away to ensure a smooth transaction.

</comment><comment><USER13> imho this article is a good illustration of how business get bought and not sold. The business has to be able to live on its own and be interesting to be bought. But that means you have less reason to sell

<comment><USER14> Whew... I can think of a long list of reasons to sell a business. Many sell simply because of life events - wanting to spend more time with family, travel, buy a new house, deal with personal health. Running a small business is a 24/7/365 job and you can't just take a month off because you have got a honeymoon or a newborn in the plans.

Accounting (consult your own accountant please0: when you make salary/profit from your small biz you get taxed at ordinary tax rate (up to 40% in the US) where is when you sell biz as assets you may be taxed at capital gain tax rate (0%-20%) which is a financial advantage - like you get paid 3-4 years ahead. Again, consult a professional on this.

You could have other ideas or projects you want to work on, but unable to because your business is your 100% priority and has been for too long.

You might not want to deal with hiring a team because that's the stage your business is at - too big for you to handle on your own or you don't want to work 60-hour weeks anymore.

I could just go on and on, but a combo of 2-3 of these will certainly make the thought of selling quite appealing to many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm kinda wowed that something so rudimentary (the map doesn't even have clustering FFS!) can generate a "life changing" income.

Developed during a single flight? It shows. So the real question is, why the $$$$$ valuation?!

</comment><comment><USER16> Shows how out of touch I am with the corporate world. I can't believe people pay monthly for this.

<comment><USER2> I know right. Big thanks to patio11 for convincing me (via blog posts and tweets) that, yes, many businesses will pay quite a bit more than you think for things like a store locator

<comment><USER17> Thanks! That made my day. (I would have liked it regardless of the context but particularly nice to hear in the context of helping a business to a materially successful outcome.)

<comment><USER14> It's time you wrote a book (aka package your popular blog posts into an ebook) Patrick and made people pay $$ for your advice :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _...the cash, from selling the business has built momentum for other projects like [...] angel investing,_

I just _knew_ that would be in there. Why do so many tech people seem to think that VC investment is what they want to be doing once they have spare cash? This isn't a personal critique of the OP, but it just seems so very common in general. I don't understand it.

<comment><USER8> I "invest" in new startups because I want to help the next generation. I put invest in quotation marks because I don't expect to make any money (I will be happy if I break even), but I do want to give back and create the environment that I never had access to. I know others feel the same.

<comment><USER19> > I "invest" in new startups because I want to help the next generation

That sounds noble. But, concretely, you want to help people make SaaS products like Storemapper (mentioned in the article)? I don't want to sound demeaning, but is that really such a noble goal?

<comment><USER8> I am not trying to be noble, just trying to change things where I live for the better (I am not in SV, I am in Australia).

When I started there were zero angel investors and next to zero VCs. Things have got a lot better, but we still have a long way to go.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/2010/01/consumerist-investigation-best-buy-optimization-is-a-big-stupid-annoying-waste-of-money.html

<comment><USER2> The Consumerist (and Best Buy) got some stuff right, and some wrong, IMO. Just for background info, I'm the founder of a rapidly growing I.T. consulting company, with both individual, small business, and corporate clients.

1: Laptops and vendor computers certainly could use a thorough going-over when they're unboxed. Of the various vendors, Dell is the least offensive this way, and Acer is one of the worst.

1a: Most vendors are installing various Norton or Symantec products by default, one of the worst anti-virus products available on the market. Norton's actual catch rating is -- literally -- only about 50%, and to get even that high, it has measurable negative impacts on system performance. Notably, it has a pernicious bug in its email scanner that can cause it, spontaneously, to interrupt email service several months down the road. Removing Norton is not as easy as you might think. Inexplicably, the removal process varies from system to system. On one memorable system, it took me two hours to remove it; its own uninstaller crashed every time, refusing to uninstall anything, my copy of the special Norton Removal Tool that can be downloaded was "out of date" (I had downloaded it just three weeks before), and the Norton website was broken and wouldn't allow me to download a new copy. The computer would not reboot into safe mode -- upon starting in safe mode it would reboot back to normal -- and initial attempts at manual removal caused the program to reload its files upon reboot. Despite having a fully updated version of Norton, the computer was riddled with viruses and other garbage.

1b: The "cleanup" is not something I'd recommend for the average user -- and I'm all for teaching users how to use their computer. Unfortunately, it's gotten very hard to tell what to keep from what to throw away. There are no clues other than experience. For example: Dell's moronic "wireless manager" can't be uninstalled without taking the laptop's wireless drivers with it, but there's a way to disable it and let Windows handle the wireless interface, which is more reliable and reduces clutter in the system tray.

2: Where Consumer Reports found a decrease in system speed, it's likely that "Geek Squad" accidentally removed one of the manufacturer's OS updates.

3: _If_ the "cleanup" was done right, and _if_ it was truly optional, $40 is a really fair price for it. Even if we assume that they've got some in-house tools that automate this, the process would likely still take at least 20 minutes and require oversight by a skilled technician. Part of my business is about kicking Geek Squad in the pants every chance I get, but I doubt I could beat that price.

4: There are some system tweaks that can really help things along, that wouldn't show up on a benchmark. One that comes to mind immediately is the particularly stupid network-related services configuration in Vista. The services aren't started automatically, so for dialup users especially this means a very long wait time every time the user opens up Internet Explorer for the first time.

5: Sending users to "msconfig" without directions was a particularly stupid move by Consumerist. The registry at least looks scary enough to ward off most novices, but msconfig makes things really easy to change -- and can result in very strange system behavior.

6: I have not been impressed by CCleaner, nor does PC Decrapifier do a very good job of cleaning up a new system. CCleaner has given me some work in the past in the form of newly unreliable printer behavior, and we tried using PC Decrapifier for a while before concluding that we could actually do the job much faster manually.

7: Spybot Search & Destroy is really not that great as a preventative program. Avira (<http://free-av.com/>) is a much better piece of software, also free, although the free version has two annoying habits which can be disabled easily.

So, should new systems be "optimized" by trained techs working for a company that actually cares about its customers? Hell yes. Unfortunately, neither Best Buy nor Geek Squad got it right.

<comment><USER3> So it works like this?:

1) Crapware makers pay PC makers to pre-load their crapware
 2) PC makers use (some of) the money to reduce their selling price
 3) Best Buy removes (some of) the crapware and increases the price again

Why not just sell a computer with a clean OS? Why on earth should a brand new machine need work?

I'm not knocking your services, thaumaturgy, just saying it shouldn't be necessary to optimize a new machine.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you 100%.

If the computer industry really put its customers needs first, I wouldn't have this job.

And that would be OK by me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >she was told installing software yourself, "negates the vendor's warranty."

Wait, installing software on a laptop negates the vendor's warranty? I thought the _whole point_ of owning a general purpose computer rather than, say, some embedded device was the flexibility to install (and write) whatever programs you want.

<comment><USER5> This is why it shocks me that iPhone owners willingly give up this flexibility and even defend Apple for taking it away from them. I know it's not exactly a general purpose computer but it's pretty close.

<comment><USER6> I never intended to buy another general-purpose computer when I got an iPhone. I'm already responsible for tech support on enough devices--having Apple be root on one of my boxes, instead of me, is somewhat a relief, and I'd actually accept them extending that service to full-form-factor computers for people who ask for such a service.

Note that people can still be root on their iPhones if they wish--it's just not a _supported_ configuration, because, unlike with a computer, "supporting" a phone has different connotations and more implied responsibilities for a company. Apple has never actively tried to stop people from jailbreaking their phones, they've just tried to stop people from blaming anything that happens after they do on them. It's like blaming a theme park for injuries you sustain if you blowtorch the restraining bars off yourself and jump from the ride when you're 50 feet in the air.

<comment><USER5> _Apple has never actively tried to stop people from jailbreaking their phones..._

Doesn't jailbreaking void your warranty? And then there's this quote: _Every iPhone update from iTunes disables Jailbreak. Every time Apple comes out with an update for iPhone, they find a way to prevent hackers from cracking the code again. Hackers then scramble to Jailbreak the iPhone again and release the new methods. That means if you like to download Apple's iPhone updates, you are going to have to figure out each time how to Jailbreak your iPhone yes again. Do you really want to play this cat and mouse game?_ [http://www.appleiphonereview.com/iphone-tutorials/iphone- jai...](http://www.appleiphonereview.com/iphone-tutorials/iphone-jailbreak/)

And this: [http://consumerist.com/2009/07/apple-argues-jailbreaking- iph...](http://consumerist.com/2009/07/apple-argues-jailbreaking-iphones-can- lead-to-terrorism.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oddly, in their table, Consumer's Reports did not list Microsoft's own free antivirus program (they _did_ list Windows Defender anti-spyware).

<http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/>

<comment><USER8> I've been using this since it came out. It's fast, and seems to work very well. It doesn't get in the way and irritate me like AVG, Avast and the other free ones. I've been extremely pleased with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, let's say you are a manufacturer. You take money from all these software products and install their wares on your computers. Margins are tight, and this seems the only way to make a profit. Let's also say you are one of the brands sold at Best Buy.

At some point, isn't one of the software providers going to want their money back from Best Buy sales since Best Buy is removing their "advertising"?

<comment><USER10> Only because the advertisers will complain, and because it's a reason to get a mac [1]. Say Best Buy removed the crapware ads for free, and the advertisers didn't complain. I'm sure Dell couldn't care less, as it's actually a better experience for the user.

[1] As far as I know, no one offers "optimization" on a mac, so buying one is less annoying. EDIT: this is wrong: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1032781>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> To me, this seems like another reason to buy a Mac. It'll cost you more than the PC (even after optimization) but you don't have to deal with either the mysterious optimizations or uninstalling a bunch of promotional garbage and running endless updates. With the Mac, you open your computer, run Software Update once and you're good to go. In my opinion, that alone justifies the higher price.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great article, and it really lowers my opinion of Best Buy. I couldn't help but think of the auto rustproofing sales pitch when buying a new car.

Another benefit to the article, I think the bottom section listing programs to "optimize" the PC is useful. Only thing I would have added is that cable/dsl internet services these days are likely to provide a free anti-virus from McAfee.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone make a "good PC" anymore? I know many will answer just build it yourself. That's a worthy answer for me, but not for the general public. If my mom wants to buy a PC tomorrow that isn't cluttered with crap (just an OEM install), offers great service, and looks great, what does she buy?

<comment><USER14> You could always boot straight into a Windows install CD and blow away the vendor's OS install entirely. The problem with doing that, is that often (particularly on laptops) you need a bunch of special purpose drivers to get everything working. Finding and downloading these can be a hassle.

<comment><USER15> I doubt this is true anymore. Centrino is well-standardized (and what other laptop platform is there?), and Windows 7 is not as outdated as XP with respect to hardware support. Maybe if you saved fifty cents by getting "Dell Wireless" instead of the Intel chipset, you'll have problems... but I don't know anyone who does that. (Even Dell's site tries to talk you out of it.)

I have never used a machine with the default OS install on it, and I have never had any hardware support problems. (And this includes my XP machines at work. Definitely not the default HP Windows install, but the hardware works fine nonetheless.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Best Buy also sells Apple computers (MacBooks, iMacs, etc.). Does anyone here know if they try to sell "optimized" versions of those as well?

<comment><USER17> [http://consumerist.com/2010/01/shocking-best-buys-mac- optimi...](http://consumerist.com/2010/01/shocking-best-buys-mac-optimization- sucks-also.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's some truth to this "optimization" stuff: most of the low end computers these days come with all kinds of trial software installed (presumably for marketing purposes). Usually I'll spend 20 minutes removing it all after the initial setup. Its probably worth $20 to have it removed if you don't know how to remove it yourself.

<comment><USER19> Just run the PC decrapifier: <http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/> and go get a cup of coffee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's be fair. 3dmark is a horrible way to test if cleanup helped. It's mostly gpu limited, and that tends to be unaffected by OEM crap. Rendering a complex webpage, launching an office suite, or watching high-def flash video would be more useful tests.

I am not volunteering to do these tests.

</comment><comment><USER21> is there a reasonable way to build ones own laptop these days?

<comment><USER15> No, but it is easy to pop in the OS install disk of your choice and blow away whatever crap came with the default install. (That's all this article is talking about.)

Most laptops have fine hardware, it's just that the default Windows installs come with a lot of ads to keep the price low (or more likely, the profit margin higher). Save yourself the trouble and delete the ads before they even get the chance to be executed.

<comment><USER2> Dell laptops and desktops are tricky to do this with if you're installing Windows, because -- for some dumb reason -- the Dell hardware is simply crippled without the pack of model-specific drivers installed.

On some units, you even lose ethernet, so you're not only stuck with a horrible screen resolution until you fix it, but you also have to load the drivers on via usb.

And finally: I don't know of a manufacturer right now that provides you with a real actual Windows disk when you buy your computer. You generally get instead an OEM "reinstall" disk which puts all that wonderful crap back on your system.

I really really wish Linux could get a serious hold on the consumer market.

<comment><USER15> _I really really wish Linux could get a serious hold on the consumer market._

So then Linux machines would ship with a ton of crapware too?

<comment><USER2> If they did, the problem could be solved by installing your own free Linux distribution.

This is not the case with Windows, which was the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have walked into a Best Buy, ready to make a computer purchase on the spot.

And then walked out because I could not buy what I wanted without their "optimizations".

I simply will not deal with retailers who do this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wait, people buy computers at Best Buy still? What year is this?

<comment><USER24> I've noticed when they run their specials on laptops the prices can run lower than the online only retailers. Not always the case though.

<comment><USER15> Never noticed this. The only time I buy from Best Buy is when I am truly desperate; buying from Amazon with overnight shipping is always cheaper, and there is much better selection.

<comment><USER23> Lack of sales tax alone is hard to compete with when it comes to electronics.

<comment><USER15> That is really the least of my concerns. It's just that Best Buy only tends to sell the very lowest of the low-end stuff, but marks it up to high-end prices.

This is true of almost all retail stores, which is why I pretty much only shop online now. The brick-and-mortar stores want to blame sales tax or too-low online prices for their woes, but the reality is that they only sell crap. Most people do not want to buy crap, and don't. As a result, the brick-and- mortar stores that only sell crap are not doing too well compared to the online stores that sell things people actually want to buy.

(Notice how Apple's retail stores do fine. This is because they actually sell good products.)

<comment><USER23> That's not true. Best Buy sells plenty of quality merchandise. They've got the same TVs, digital cameras, etc. you'd find highly recommended on Amazon or anywhere else. Their Xbox 360 is no more failure prone than anyone else's.

Their computers range the gamut, but so does Dell.com. Most Best Buys now even have an extensive selection of Macs on their own wooden table. They've got every mp3 player worth considering (and many not). I bought my Diamond Rio there back in what must have been 98 or 99.

Amazon sells most electronics for about the same price as them. I just looked for my camera, the Cannon Powershot. $149 for the newer model at both places. (Perhaps time for me to upgrade).

It's really the sales tax that ruins the business case for shopping there. A copy of Halo is $3 more at Best Buy, and I have to wait in line. When my business bought a Macbook, we saved $100 buying it from Amazon. I could have gotten the same thing off the shelf at Best Buy or an Apple Store, but why pay extra?

And the computers I wouldn't buy there due to lack of customizability, which was the original point of the comment. Even my dad just orders them off the net because of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> free advice for bestbuy.

1\. go to ubuntu.com 2\. order a zillion live install cds. 3\. give one to every consumer that buys a pc or mac. 4\. be able to claim performance and virus free optimization without consumerist eating them alive.</comment>


Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures - <AUTHOR> http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/ <comment><USER2> Looks like the creator announced a plan to stop caring for the dictionary in January of 2012. FASTAR apparently agreed to take it over, but if they did it is locked behind their authentication system.

Someone should scrape and preserve.

<comment><USER3> its dying because its not a wiki

<http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/HTML/bplustree.html>

there is tons of stuff on b+trees online but nothing there. Could easily remedy that with a small amount of work

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms>

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

</comment><comment><USER5> I made a mirror of the website.

[https://mega.co.nz/#!8h4SxKqb!f7KgcRgfN1TeHJdB9-yh- iISiAdb-c...](https://mega.co.nz/#!8h4SxKqb!f7KgcRgfN1TeHJdB9-yh-iISiAdb- cS6-08Oqu2C5lA)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a great resource, but may need a bit of an update. It's missing Wavelet Trees for example.

</comment><comment><USER7> Neither detailed nor comprehensive. Most of these are just random pieces of jargon with 1-sentence explanations. They also forgot to add a bunch of really fundamental data structures too. Where are range trees? They are in like every database in existence.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wish there were a ready offline/download version of this one.

<comment><USER9> You can use <http://www.httrack.com/> to build a local version of the site for your own use.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the idea (and karanbhangui). I'm a little uncomfortable scraping a government website in these litigious times, so I was hoping NIST had a big PDF or something. :)

<comment><USER10> Haha I scrape my banks website everyday 24/7. They dont care / wont notice.

<comment><USER11> scrape bank's website? What for? Just download your bank statement periodically :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On behalf of FASTAR: we've updated our main page (fastar.org) to include information about the imminent migration of DADS to FASTAR.org. The site will remain open for public access.

</comment><comment><USER13> That's an overwhelming list. Well worth a bookmark, though.</comment>


'China's Manhattan' Borrowed Heavily, but the People Have Yet to Arrive - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/business/china-economy-debt-tianjin.html <comment><USER2> I'm not a big fan of centrally planned cities, but this author has it out for China. The original articles about "China'a ghost town" were also not true. A narrative was invented to sell an interesting story about some failure of China... this article is a non-story, and just an attempt to revive a topic parroted since the last decade.

Many of China's urban districts were centrally planned and sat empty before they were eventually filled, including the famous Pudong district of Shanghai. [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepar...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2018/03/19/ghost- towns-or-boomtowns-what-new-cities-really-become/amp/)

"If you look around, you will think this is a normal city and just assume this is the way it always was, not knowing that 10 years ago people were calling it a ghost city, 20 years ago it was just apartments and villages." [https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9912186](https://www.google.com/amp/amp.abc.net.au/article/9912186)

Short story is some developments work, others don't, but investing in real estate is one way for people to park money so people still end up buying up all the properties.

<comment><AUTHOR> Quoting from Caixing Global, a PRC-based financial news source:

 _China Investment Network, a business newspaper in Beijing, released a "ghost town index" to determine which cities were, well, the most ghostly. The newspaper devised its index using a government standard that says cities should have 10,000 people per square kilometer. The editors at China Investment Network determined that if a city's ratio of people to area was 0.5 – that is, it was half full – then it is a ghost town. To take the example a step further, if a city had a ratio of .10, then it had one-tenth the population the government thought it deserved. Based on this approach, at least 50 Chinese cities fit the description of "ghost town."_ (1)

This report is from 2014, so maybe some of those cities were eventually filled ... but surely not all of them.

1\. [https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost- towns...](https://www.caixinglobal.com/2014-10-17/graphics-ghost- towns-101012983.html)

<comment><USER3> I think both of these positions (its a fake narrative, and "ghost towns abound") have elements of truth. What it is, is impossible to compare.

Given the structure of western governments, and by that I mean nominally liberal democracies, a policy of funding the development of a city prior to their being any economic reason for the city to exist, is not possible. Western forms of government wait for economic pockets to develop, then tax them, and then with the tax revenue improve them to increase their economic potential. Without a tax base there is no mechanism for funding development.

China on the other hand, has a central government with a fiscal policy of borrowing from the central bank to fund the _creation_ of economic zones prior to there being any economic activity. Once that zone exists, it does not enhance the existing zones nearby thus as they grow there is incentive to move their activity to "nearby" zones which are under utilized. This takes time of course and between the time of construction and mass migration, well the zone is under utilized or a "ghost" town.

When China guesses wrong, and the zone never supports additional economic activity, then its a complete write-off. Something a western government could not survive (they would be booted out of office for it) but one that a central government can (and does) survive.

The bottom line is that it is easy to write stories that amaze people who live in one system by playing on the differences of the other system.

<comment><USER4> A building sitting empty for 5 years is a massive cost even if it's later filled. This goes beyond time value of money and into the limited lifespan of infrastructure. Ghost cities are a problem with an easy and obvious solution, slow down the rate of construction to more closely match population movement.

<comment><USER5> >> A building sitting empty for 5 years is a massive cost even if it's later filled.

Don't look too closely at NYC, Vancouver, london, or any of the other hot markets. Whether for historical preservation scams or investment trickery, it is not unusual for a building to sit empty for many years. Given the effort that it takes to oust tenants, and the length of time necessary for zoning/planning, many owners would rather a building sit empty for years pending redevelopment rather than the hassle of filling it.

Google "Calgary new horizons mall". From the owner/developer's perspective that mall is technically full and, at least for them, profitable.

<comment><USER4> US national vacancy rate is ~6.9% and NYC sit's well below that at under 4%. Much like the unemployment rate these things don't hit 0% for various reasons. But, that's very different from building a 11th building when your first 10 are all at 90% vacancy.

<comment><USER5> "Vacancy" is something above a building being empty. Vacancy is a building that has space available that hasn't been filled. It does not cover buildings deliberately left empty by owners. A building waiting years to be demolished and replaced isn't vacant, nor a condo kept only as an investment and never lived in.

That mall in Calgary isn't vacant either. Each store/stall is technically occupied by its owner. There just aren't any flesh and blood people in the mall.

<comment><USER4> NYC has ~60,000 buildings. Less than 1% of them are deliberately left empty by their owners. It's a very different situation in a city which can make use of that space as demonstrated by the low vacancy rate.

That mall does have people shopping in it. In terms of retail square footage it's underutilized but a long way from empty. Good or bad investment they are not building 3 of them next to each other while the first is far from full.

Really, you have some edge cases with people trying to time the market, deal with zoning or lawsuits etc. But, that's different from seeing 6 empty apartment buildings and saying let's build another one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been browsing around satellite view of Chinese cities for a while now. There are hundreds of thousands of high rise apartment complexes without visible activity around them. Literally copy paste buildings surrounded by empty fields. How does this bode for China's economy? They are all over the place.

<comment><USER7> China has moved 300 million people out of rural poverty, into nearly-first world lifestyles in the past 30 years.

At that rate of development, it would be a failure of planning to not have millions of empty units.

<comment><USER8> It's a failure of planning if those new units fall into disrepair before being rented.

<comment><USER9> Nowhere does it say the buildings are falling into disrepair.

On the other hand, if you would otherwise have high unemployment right now that can productively be channeled into construction that is less expensive to achieve, while you expect a massive influx of people in 15 years with a tight labor market... then it makes perfect economic sense to build out a decade in advance.

I'm not saying this is the case, but there are plenty of reasons why building in advance can make sense.

<comment><USER8> There's lot of videos of urban explorers who travel China looking for these places, and many of them are in complete disrepair. Even if you don't trust the CNN/NYT narrative, those are harder to discount.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8TbOPzpeKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8TbOPzpeKc)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wuyRxc99h8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wuyRxc99h8)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL9qfucWqu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL9qfucWqu0)

<comment><USER10> haha that last video has a guy cycling through an indoor marble floor mall and a dog just casually wander in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we stop using Manhattan as shorthand for a giant city center? NYC is a cultural world capital, as well as economic hub.

Good luck trying to actually build another one of those. There's a reason why there's only 3-4 in the world and they haven't changed in centuries.

<comment><USER12> What do you consider the other ones?

And I'm guessing the reason is valuable geographical position (in NYC's case it's a major shipping hub for both the Atlantic and the Hudson River) and the network effect. But valuable geography can change over time, and who knows how long the network effect of cities is going to last when we finally start making more jobs remote instead of wasting space and other resources on offices and people are free to live wherever they want.

<comment><USER13> It was the Erie Canal that really made New York -- it allowed shipping into the Great Lakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Garden cities have never worked and never will work. I'm sure they have their reasons for building these now, but they will be big liabilities for China in 30 years, just like they have been in the US. (Speaking as a fan of Jane Jacobs and someone who works with fine-grained microeconomic data)

</comment><comment><USER15> Just in case you've reached your article limit [http://archive.is/xDydO](http://archive.is/xDydO)

</comment><comment><USER16> Whenever western media tries and portray China as being ridiculous I'm reminded of the 80s or 90s magazine article showing empty highways being built around Beijing when 99% of the population didn't drive a car.

I'm way less worried about brand new empty cities. They fill up eventually. I'd be worried more about people abandoning populated cities. A problem the US is facing now.

<comment><USER17> What cities are being abandoned in the US?

<comment><USER18> Small/mid size cities in the midwest like Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago (though to a lesser extent).

Other "cities" are growing in the sun-belt.

It's complicated because many of the up-and-coming cities are being built with cars in mind and are not very dense. They are "cities" but they are not urban.

<comment><USER19> Saying those cities are being abandoned, is more than a stretch.

Cincinnati's population has expanded since 2010.

Pittsburgh and Cleveland have both had stable population numbers the last decade. The declines have been very small over that time. As with Cincinnati they did suffer drops for a couple of decades in the past. They're not being abandoned.

Detroit is losing 0.004% per year at this point. There's a reasonable chance the worst is over for Detroit.

Chicago is not being abandoned at all, that's particularly incorrect. Their population has been stable for 30 years, it has seen a small 70k decline (less than 3% decline over three decades doesn't get you in the lesser extent abandoned category at all).

<comment><USER18> I take your point, abandoned is too far.

As I understand it: it's a bad sign if a city is not growing. If a city's population is steady, but the countries population is increasing that means people are leaving the city. It at least indicates a lack of growth which can be a marker of a weak economy.

Abandoned is too far, but I think it's true that many of these cities are in some form of decline from their historical peak.

<comment><USER20> "it's a bad sign if a city is not growing" is something taken as true by many people, but I think it is absolutely arbitrary. Maybe the opposite is true for some cities. Other metrics as land value (San Francisco is the obvious example) and media income must be taken into account.

I guess there are people out there that thinks that cities have a healthy population limit and growing beyond that can harm environment around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ghost towns are only scary if there is a credit collapse and no one can buy them because of the unavailability of bank financing. The central government in China will always make sure there's bank financing because it controls the printing of money.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's interesting, but I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from it. The article is trying to spin it as negative, but they never get to the point.

In the United States we'd never preemptively build up a city like this, so obviously China is different, but I don't see what the problem is. They have lots of interview with people saying buildings are empty, but nothing official saying it's a problem or that the Chinese government is worried about it. What were the expectations for filling the buildings? Are they behind schedule?

And sure, $4.5-10 trillion in debt sounds bad, but it's less than half of ours in the United States.

</comment><comment><USER23> My understanding is that the amount of local government debt is pretty high generally in China, but the central government is basically the one backing it all to some extent correct?

So the question is what does the central government choose to do about it?

<comment><USER24> It's mostly in the banking system. They introduced loan securitization about 5 years ago, and have been walking down the same path the US went in the 90's and 00's.

It will be indeed be interesting to see how they handle a banking system implosion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> On the coast, one hour from Beijing. This is obviously an extremely attractive area. Give it a couple of years and it will be busy and wealthy.

</comment><comment><USER26> Are there any healthy, major, "planned" cities? It seems to me that the vast majority of successful healthy cities just spring up naturally at a time and place that makes economic sense. Humans tend to gather and live in groups that are either near a resource or in a location that serves as a hub between resources.

<comment><USER27> irvine, ca

<comment><USER26> I didn't know that, thanks.

Reading up on it though, it seems like there was already a lot of growth in the region and development happened over the course of decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meanwhile, in major American cities, people sleep on the streets and even middle class people can't afford housing.

</comment><comment><USER29> It sounds like the construction might have been a big jobs program.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why not to move government? Move China government to one of these planned cities? That seems to work when doing well.

</comment><comment><USER30> Western economists have predict China economy would collapse in two decades ago and repeated every year, and their faces been slapped hardly every time. If Yujiapu is called China's Manhattan, there are dozens of bigger Manhattan in China right now and they are doing really good.</comment>


Brachistochrones, Tautochrones, Roller Coasters and Cogs - <AUTHOR> http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/march32014/index.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing</comment>


Dexter – A low cost, high precision haptic robotic arm w 50 micron repeatability - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.io/project/158779-dexter <comment><USER2> I think they misuse the term 'repeatability'. Their demo shows it moving back and forth 50 microns, with minimal backlash (which is cool). But repeatability means you should be able to send it to the same coordinates and get the same position ± 50 μm every time. Anything made out of plastic will have far more thermal variation than that. Even in a controlled environment, the motors heat up.

There's an official standard for measuring it: ISO 9283.

</comment><comment><USER3> How much is it? I can't seem to find the price.</comment>


How to incorporate a US Corporation from outside the USA? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.freshdesk.com/how-to-incorporate-a-us-corporation-from-outs/ <comment><USER3> This is a lot of effort to go to just gain the ability to handling recurring payments in USD[1].

I considered a similar path, since here in Australia we are very similarly constrained[2]. However I was not willing to accept the risk and complexity of incorporating in an unfamiliar legal/financial jurisdiction and I really don't feel the OP has made me any more comfortable although they seem flush about it.

Since I have an alternative billing model available that will be acceptable to my customers, I've abandoned the whole subscription approach in favour of annual prepayments.

Instead I have added "solve Australian online service billing" to my list of possible future projects (not a pipedream, issuer/acquirer systems knowledge is in my utility belt).

The guys at Pin (www.pin.net.au) will, hopefully, beat me to it, and I wish them the best because it's a problem seriously needs solving for Australian startups.

[1] Neither Paypal nor Worldpay's recurring options are palatable to me - <USER2> are seriously underspecified, and are UX catastrophes to boot.

[2] There is one option available; there is one bank that offers USD-capable merchant accounts, and the signup takes months of paperwork, and has huge up- front and per-txn fees, at least huge from a startup POV.

<comment><USER4> I'm also from Australia and have recently gone through the process of getting a merchant account (from St.George bank).

From stories I heard in the past, I was expecting a horrible experience (banks not being able to grok the concept of digital goods etc). Turns out that either the stories were a furphy or banks have gotten a lot better.

Here's the process I went through.

1\. Application

2\. Set up a single page website to give a brief overview of product

3\. Include TOS and returns policy (adapted from wordpress.com)

4\. Wait 7 days for approval

Thats it. One week to get a merchant account with no prior business history. The rates are fairly standard:

1.4%/trans, $33 monthly, $44 anual fee, $33 chargeback fee

I think off the top of my head those rates beat those provided by paypal, stripe, etc. although I'm happy to be corrected if anyone has up-to-date info about them

I'll also be paying $300/yr for gateway fees since I have no desire to handle CC details directly.

<comment><USER3> Ok, but to the topic at hand - are you able to bill directly in USD with St George without the buyer wearing the exchange risk and overseas transaction fee?

I ask because merchant accounts denominated in AUD are widely available, but for USD it still appears that only the NAB have multi-currency support.

<comment><USER4> Sorry.. I'm not sure what you mean by 'exchange risk'.

To your question though.. no I cant bill directly in USD. I am very new (and ignorant) to receiving online payments, so I'm really curious what the issues for Americans are. The on-line currency converters are accurate to (I would guess) +- 1hour currency fluctuations so would give a _very_ accurate estimate (to within cents) of the cost of a transaction... Wouldn't this be good enough?

Otherwise if this is an issue then paypal should do the job... 2 mins to set up and gives an alternative option.

Would be good to hear your own personal experiences.

<comment><USER3> No, not good enough. Each bank chooses different exchange rates. Using a converter gives you a spot price from one institution. There's no telling what the customer will actually be billed. Indeed there's no certainty that the transaction will even be journalled that day. Moreover, they'll be slugged for an "overseas transaction fee". Finally, it means you're unable to use any kind of collateral that quotes a price, because you can't guarantee it.

It's a marketing disaster, in fact, and would look completely amateurish.

Paypal is never Plan A.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your insight. I guess as an Aussie I'm used to seeing a slightly different amount (usually within $1) of the quoted USD for a transaction... however maybe US users are different. In any event, I think given that my own business is only just launching I'll have to go the less than pro route of offering paypal along with direct payment (in AUD) and hopefully that will garner me enough business to start looking into direct USD transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not super clear on the tax implications of this and they aren't mentioned... any insights?

<comment><USER5> If you only have a US company, then it can pay salary to workers in other countries and have those workers pay local tax. I think that your country has to have a Double Tax Agreement for that to work. The US company pays US corporate tax.

If you want the money to be funnelled to a company in your local country then you need a set up a Transfer Pricing Agreement. This basically means that your local company charges the US company for services rendered, and the US company charges your customers. You pay local tax on whatever goes to your local company and US tax on whatever remains. The hard part is determining a percentage.

I believe that the rules for this are different per country, but in our case (New Zealand), we needed to set up what is called an "Arms Length Agreement". That is to say, you need to be able to prove that the relationship you have could have formed between any two unrelated companies.

As we are a game company, we called our US company a publisher of our game and we did a 70/30 split with it. This is justified by the fact that you can get a 70/30 split with a fair number of other methods for publishing independent games (for example, the apple app store).

All up we paid several thousand for legal advice and incorporation costs.

<comment><USER6> Do you have Twitter/E-mail? I have a few questions you might be able to answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is useless. Incorporation is not really the problem. Being outside the US is the problem. Compliance issues in both countries will cost a lot more than the incorporation. They are either ignorant of the issues and not compliant or paying a lot for an expert on international tax.

</comment><comment><USER8> There might be some good info in a recent thread:

Ask HN: How to setup a company in U.S. without being there?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4122794>

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice, missed this.

Seems to me two reasons to set up in the US:

1\. For US-based investment 2\. For taking payments using excellent services like Stripe, Braintree etc

#2 should be inspiring localized entrepreneurs all over the world. Fix the payment problem and 'boom', instant business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems he doesn't really understand why one typically incorporates in Delaware.

<comment><USER10> Hi Sean - When you are looking to incorporate from abroad, Delaware seemed the most obvious and had a good ecosystem around it. You can pay the Franchise tax online and pretty much get most of what you want from the State of Delaware online. Once you are successful and have money we can always change things but as a startup getting up and running quickly was essential and Delaware incorporation was a breeze.

<comment><USER9> What's missing from your article, and from your response here, is _why_ companies incorporate in Delaware as opposed to, say, Iowa. That reason is: since the turn of the century, Delaware has adopted a variety of tax and corporate laws which are highly, almost absurdly, corporation-friendly. As a result, Delaware has a well-deserved reputation for being a corporate haven.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a lovely story. Not specifically the credit card stuff but the hackernews inspired startup story... [http://blog.freshdesk.com/the-freshdesk-story-how- a-simple-c...](http://blog.freshdesk.com/the-freshdesk-story-how-a-simple- comment-on-h-0)

I find the 'just make the core features work' part interesting. Make my core business processes work with no glitches at a 'reasonable' cost.

I would be interested in a freshdesk tech stack blog entry?

</comment><comment><USER12> If you found useful this article you may check this one too - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4138253>

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey Andy, I used <http://www.incplan.net/> Jacques is the owner and very helpful. Let him know I sent you along - Mikel.

<comment><AUTHOR> How does the tax work for you guys?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing to note. The blog writer Girish already had lived in the US before and had a social security number without which I do not think you can get a federal EIN. So if you have never been to the USA, you cannot have a social security number and which means you cannot incorporate? I will stand corrected if someone has better information.

<comment><USER14> Ok thanks all. So you can possibly get an EIN using an agent. But I am sure that you cannot incorporate certain entities such as S-corp (which I own btw). But good learning otherwise.

<comment><USER15> You cannot incorporate an S-Corporation if you are not a U.S. individual taxpayer (i.e., a flesh-and-blood person who is a citizen or permanent resident of the U.S.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a few thoughts on the tax consequences based on a cursory look at the OP's post...

\- It appears that the OP will be subject to at least a 15% withholding rate on dividends paid from the US Corp to the Indian parent in addition to the U.S. corporate income taxes paid.

\- All IP and IP rights are owned by the U.S. corporation, which will make a future IP migration offshore very expensive. As in, minimum six-figures expensive (possibly even into 9 figures). This could be a serious deterrent to foreign acquirers. IP should be held offshore to the extent possible. Note that holding the IP in the U.S. also has implications for future expansion, as it prevents the use of the most cost-favorable transfer pricing arrangements.

\- Worldwide income is subject to U.S. taxation. Their costs will not scale with their income, which will make this very expensive. (U.S. income taxation is preferrable to foreign jurisdictions only if costs scale with expenses, because special deductions or credits in the U.S. tax code can lower the effective tax rate below 10% or even 0%).

Incorporating in the U.S. is easy. The hard part is getting a tax-efficient structure. The OP's structure is not tax-efficient. This will not matter as long as they do not have profits, but it will haunt them once they start having serious earnings or start receiving serious acquisition offers.</comment>