Startup feedback request: Fractal Press - We publish anthologies of blog posts - <AUTHOR> http://www.fractalpress.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the co-founder. Would love to get feedback. Looking forward to hearing about what you think is the good/bad/ugly.

Thanks.

<comment><USER2> There is not enough there to comment on. Perhaps a sample of the final result would help. I generally ignore most personal finance material I come across on the web so I suspect you would have to do a very good job to get my attention.

However I am curious about the kind of tools and organizational system you plan to use in the production of your product. E.g. things like <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104348>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We just happen to be starting with Personal Finance, in general, would you buy a real book that happens to be an anthology of the top blog posts from your favorite topic?

And if you're a blogger, would you be willing to participate if we were putting out an anthology in your niche?

Lumifi looks interesting, looking into it now.

<comment><USER2> The only blog I like that touches on finance is <http://www.winterspeak.com> and unfortunately it has been inactive for the past few months (Zimran where did you go?).

My taste in anthologies tends towards collections of academic papers selected by an expert in the field - things like "Readings in Database Systems"[1]. I would certainly be interested in stuff of similar quality.

I'm not a blogger - I just stay in the peanut gallery. One of these days I may try to self-publish some stuff from our internal wiki at work using something like <http://www.lulu.com/> which is why I'm curious about what you're doing.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Readings-Database-Systems-Kaufmann- Man...](http://www.amazon.com/Readings-Database-Systems-Kaufmann- Management/dp/1558605231)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Deadly border clash prompts renewed calls in India to boycott Chinese tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3089843/deadly-border-clash-prompts-renewed-calls-india-boycott-chinese-tech <comment><USER2> China refuses to share maps showing their Official view of 3,488 km line of actual control to India/World [https://archive.vn/0dcGF](https://archive.vn/0dcGF) / [https://archive.vn/1PvXa](https://archive.vn/1PvXa) because it intends to grab Nepal,Bhutan,Ladakh,Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh [https://archive.vn/OHJkC](https://archive.vn/OHJkC)

</comment><comment><USER3> Politicians on both sides are using nationalism as a diversion from the pandemic and the economy. This is a dangerous game.

On tech India should perhaps take a page from China's book. China is working hard to develop domestic tech giants. Where are India's?</comment>


Table Inheritance: What's It Good For? - <AUTHOR> http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2019/05/table-inheritance-whats-it-good-for.html <comment><USER2> I've just been experimenting and evaluating inheritance for a new project for the past week, and while I felt it could have been a great fit in some cases, I choose not to use it due to the many recommendations to stay clear of it. I finally felt good about my decision a couple of days ago when I saw the "official" recommendation here: [https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Don%27t_Do_This#Don.27t_use...](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Don%27t_Do_This#Don.27t_use_table_inheritance)

Now reading this post, I'm curious again :-) One case where I had inheritance in mind was to track row ownership and dates for app users. For instance, I currently have 56 tables which all contains the same columns (owned_by, created_by, deleted_by, created_at, deleted_at). Now as far as I understand, I'd still have to define foreign keys for owned_by, created_by and deleted_by on each table, so I wasn't sure the gain of inheritance was good enough considering potential downsides I wasn't able to evaluate properly without more knowledge / experience. I think my case looks a lot like the notes example, and I wonder if there are any pros/cons in using inheritance for a case like this?</comment>


Your Customers Don't Give A Flying Fig About The W3C Consortium - <AUTHOR> http://www.davidscottkane.com/2008/09/06/stupid-isv-is-as-stupid-isv-does/

<comment><USER2> It _is_ dumb to limit access to just the price information and checkout/purchase page based on browser type. That being said...

If the customers don't care about the W3C, they won't care about having to download another browser either.

The combination of professional and elitist ("clientele for whom ego and image are everything") has a good chance of meaning they are either going to _already_ be using one of the listed browsers _or_ will want to find out how to enter the exclusive club they are not a part of. Thankfully, a link has been provided.

Looks good, works on all browsers, is cheap (in time and money) to implement. Choose two. Someone else just decided their priorities are different than yours.

I'd like to see some places start to put claims like "You're still using Internet Explorer, which has increased our development costs Nx over other more standards compliant browsers. This is one of the reasons our products are so expensive."

</comment><comment><USER3> It was a fun challenge to figure out what the product is. Their site is created by another firm, but that firm's portfolio doesn't show any other cases of blocking IE7 that I could find. That would imply to me that that it wasn't thoughtlessness or arrogance on the part of the designer -- they were presumably asked to do that.

Granted the product is Mac only, but doing that to even the front page of your website is pretty ridiculous.

For what it's worth it renders poorly for me in opera because I've set Tools -> Preferences -> Web Pages -> Fit to Width on my machine, making 1024x768 browsing somewhat better by default.

<comment><USER4> So whats the product? Some kind of music software?

<comment><USER3> Yes. In case anyone else wants to try I'll rot13 it, but here's the link:

uggc://jjj.nhqvbsvyr-ratvarrevat.pbz/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blocking IE7 is overboard. _If the browser is your platform_ , I'd forgive blocking IE6.

If you're selling a _desktop application_ , blocking IE6 or IE7 doesn't make financial sense.</comment>


Whale Watching: Many companies earn a huge portion of sales from a few customers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.secondmeasure.com/2017/12/07/whales/ <comment><USER2> When I was in school for Wildlife Management, we learned pretty much the same thing about hunting. More money gets made by, outfitting companies, tour guides and local communities by having a lottery style big game hunt than an open season. It attracts a few people who are willing to spend upwards of $20000 just to shoot one animal as opposed to many hunters coming in and not spending as much overall. It also tends to be better for the survival of the population as a whole though it does tend to lead to an overall weakening of the population though as only the biggest and strongest animals, that should be breeding, get removed.

<comment><USER3> I think you are taking the metaphor a little bit too literally. :)

<comment><USER2> I don't understand I think that's my highest rated comment on HN. I gotta admit I wrote it before I actually read the article. I really thought it was going to be about whale watching. I've been trying to figure out if there's some kind of brilliant metaphor in that comment but honestly I can't see one now that I've actually read it.

<comment><USER4> Game industry calls people who spend a lot of money on games "whales". I guess it is because whales are supposed to have a lot of meat. None of people who use it knows a lot about biology and whale is likely the only big animal that can be eaten they know.

<comment><USER5> No it comes from Whaling, as in hunting whales for their spermaceti which was used as a fuel and to make many products. Whale meat is actually not usually sold by whalers. Not a lot of good methods for preserving meat in the 19th C on a boat.

Whaling is compared to businesses that rely on a small number of big spenders to be profitable because whaling is a similar high risk high reward business, compared to fishing. Whaling is even more dangerous than fishing, requires being at sea for a month at a time... if you fail to catch a whale, no one on the ship gets paid. Whalers were paid in equity. A lowly deckhand would make a very small amount compared to a spearman who killed a whale or the captain, but there were rewards for spotting the whale and even the deckhand would probably make enough money to take off work for a while before having to return to sea.

(Anyone else enjoy Moby Dick?)

<comment><USER6> >Anyone else enjoy Moby Dick?

Yes, but given your slightly OT rant, I suppose your reading is fresh?

<comment><USER5> No, just excited to get to show off useless whaling knowledge

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I felt that too, sometimes ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is one thing I'm terrified of going forward: industries being built by the 1% for the 1% and to Hell what the rest of us proles want.

I'm not at all against elites being able to get tons of money, so long as there's at least some scraps left for the rest of us.

<comment><USER8> I think the games in question are actually the opposite of that: they are played by millions and millions of people, often for free, but financed by a small, rich minority. It is _super_ aggressive price discrimination, which actually benefits the 99%—we get something cheaper (or even free with F2P games) because other people are willing to pay so much.

In a very real sense, the F2P business model only really works if the game is popular amount non-paying customers—otherwise, what would motivate whales to get into it in the first place? A whale-based system pretty much _guarantees_ a product that's as widely accessible as possible.

Of course, it has its own massive ethical issues; I am no fan of the practice. (Not least because the people spending the most money aren't always the ones who can _afford_ to spend that much!) But it does neatly invert the dynamic and uses the top 1% of spenders to finance something primarily enjoyed by the 99% who spend little to nothing.

<comment><USER9> > but financed by a small rich minority

I'm not at all convinced of this. Considering that much the properties of the game that land such whales are based on triggering addictive behavior, it seems much more likely that the whales' income profile is similar to that of a lotto ticker purchaser in the US: relatively poor people.

<comment><USER10> Do you believe that poor people are significantly more susceptible to triggering addictive behavior? I think a simpler explanation for why poor people play the lottery is that they see it as a way out of being poor.

<comment><USER11> I don't think the argument is to reverse the original statement (the original statement being something like "the top spenders must be wealthy", the reversal being something like "the top spenders must be poor"). Rather, the argument is that knowing there are people spending a lot of money tells you nothing about the income level of those people. They might be someone who's independently wealthy and using money they won't miss, or might be someone who's quite poor who's damaging their life in other ways to obtain the money. The argument is _you don 't know which_ from the facts given. All you know is there are people who spend $X on it.

That said, I don't think income level has anything to do with it. There are poorer people who shouldn't waste money to play the lottery or gamble in casinos, but do it anyway. There are also wealthier people who shouldn't waste money to play the markets, or other "casino/lottery for rich people" things, but do it anyway. It's just that our society is mostly oriented to treat the poorer people as compulsive gamblers -- which is treated as a moral failing -- and the wealthier people as "serial investors" or other terms which carry a more positive connotation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _> Second Measure analyzes billions of credit card transactions to answer real-time questions about consumer behavior. Unless otherwise noted, the data below comes from our platform._

Last time Second Measure came up on HN (April 2016), someone replied that the underlying data came from Yodlee.[1] Is that still the case?

Also, if it's analyzing a subset of -- instead of the complete -- transaction logs from Visa/Mastercard/AMEX networks, is there any bias in the data because the samples are limited to users of the Yodlee platform?

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

<comment><USER13> It's absolutely incredible data if it is coming from the full transaction feed.

Less so if Yodlee:(

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > At giant retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon, the top 20 percent of > spenders accounted for 65-70 percent of credit and debit card sales dollars > in 2016. At all three, WI80=8-9x.

Some of these seems nothing more nor less than the unequal distribution of wealth in America.

What portion of total income, wealth, or spending to the top 20% of Americans in any of those categories have? About the same as the portion of Amazon sales from the top 20% of spenders, I wonder?

I'm not saying I'm not disturbed, but that part isn't about business models or plans, exactly.

On the other hand, the top 20% of Zynga spenders are probably more like the top spenders in a casino (and for pretty much the same addictive reasons), and not necessarily correlated to income.

It's an interesting observation that this pattern holds true in diverse companies/industries, but I'm not sure the reasons are related, or say much about business similarities.

> Likewise, at eyewear retailer Warby Parker (whose products have relatively > low price variance), WI80 was only 3x.

Also, apparently no marketting has successfully convinced most glasses-wearers that they need more than at most 2 or 3 pairs of glasses at a time, regardless of if they can afford it! If the number of pairs of glasses you had was some kind of status symbol or something, I think there'd be more variance.

</comment><comment><USER15> The online apps concentration of revenue gets even more extreme if you look at whales as a fraction of downloads rather than spending customers. Most popular games only have a small number of people who pay anything...ever. I'd be willing to bet money that most of Zynga's revenue comes from the top 1% of downloads.

<comment><USER16> Zynga have more or less admitted this in the past IIRC. No idea if this still exists, but they had at one point setup a ridiculous bank transfer payment program for the largest whales who were bulk buying in game purchases at the tens of thousands of dollars level - minimum $500 transaction to participate.

> [http://gawker.com/5634379/the-secret-dealer-for-farmville- > ad...](http://gawker.com/5634379/the-secret-dealer-for-farmville-addicts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle)

</comment><comment><USER18> Reminds me of the old days of online poker. The regulars would sit around for hours just waiting for an unskilled opponent. They would almost never play each other.

Eventually the whale would leave and the game would instantly break. The ecosystem was so broken but sustained for a long period because so much money was being shovelled in.

<comment><USER19> At the most popular sites, at popular limits, during the peak years, there were plenty of poor players to go around. We had databases of player behaviors, and consulted them to find juicy games, but there was enough to go around that games didn't really break over losing a fish or two.

I do agree that the process you described occurred, basically whenever one of my above assumptions didn't hold - unpopular sites/high limits/post-boom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wouldn't consider "20 percent of customers were responsible for more than half the money raked in" as having "whales". At that point, you can usually still afford to lose one of your customers and survive. I've worked at companies where 1 out of their 15-20 clients is responsible for 25+% of revenue...THAT is having a whale.

If you do have a whale, then you've essentially just become a custom software/service firm for that "whale". From my experience working at companies that had a "whale", the business starts prioritizing the requests of that one "whale" over what's best for the product itself.

</comment><comment><USER21> Love how people keep discovering instances of fractal 80/20 and are continually surprised by it.

<comment><USER22> To blindly assume patterns such as "80/20" hold everywhere would be foolish - rather, it is better to empirically verify them first in each case (as done by the article). Further, I wonder what makes you think the writer is surprised in the least...

<comment><USER21> I don't think it's foolish. When it shows up as often it does, it's smart to see if it applies there.

You can verify it, but it seems like a smart hypothesis to start with rather than assuming the inverse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Whales can have a huge effect on your company.

One effect is derailing your product development. If you have one client bringing in millions of dollars a year, their feature requests, tweaks and bug fixes end up crowding out others. Features also end up getting shipped before they're ready, resulting in a shoddy product. Pressure to keep the client happy also results in promising unrealistic things, or letting the customer dictate the design. And they can hijack your support staff and developers to fix minor issues.

Another, less well known effect, is pressure on staff. This ranges from unrealistic workloads and deadlines causing stress at work, to outright harassment being ignored. If a client doesn't like someone who works for your company, your executives may decide that keeping the contract is worth more than the employee.

Whales can also get you through funding crunches and be the difference between staying afloat or collapsing.

They can also help you test your product in environments you could never afford to simulate on your own, weeding out strange bugs and one offs, and tweaking for performance. They can also be a great source of insight into how to improve the product for other users.

</comment><comment><USER24> I worked at a really small development shop, I'd say about 25 employees. We also did optional hosting for sites we'd finished (mostly WordPress).

The hosting side of the business didn't even come close to paying for itself, except we ran one large company's e-learning platform which paid for the rest of the hosting operation.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is exactly what NNT tries to explain in Blackswan with his argument against the bell curve (in favour of Power law) a bell curve or assumed normal distribution would put 99% of the consumer base with +-2 standard deviation which is not the case in reality

<comment><USER26> it's probably just a log normal distribution, meaning that the result is a product of normal factors, not a sum. Afaik this is one of the most used models in statistics, because the central limit theorem still applies, just with sums of logged random variables instead of just sums

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The question isn't whether the long tail of the power law distribution exists, it's how steep is that curve?

</comment><comment><USER28> Perhaps they have to because of income/wealth inequality?

If the wealthy are the only one with disposable income, it makes sense the market will conform to their needs.

<comment><USER29> I think this is absolutely a key point to take from this. Most people I know today have very little disposable income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This data could be analyzed in terms of Gini coefficients. It would be much easier then to make arbitrary comparisons between companies.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good example is SAP. They are basically an outsourced dev-shop for their top 50 customers. Everyone else who buys SAP is immaterial.

</comment><comment><USER32> most insightful and relevant: Stitch Fix topping out relative to other companies in the same industry because they don't really offer a "whale" option.

the takeaway for me: make a product level for the whale, even if it seems a waste of time, it could very well make or break my business.

(I'm not captain obvious, but I play one on TV)

<comment><USER33> That's exactly what I took away from the article too.

Seems like an underrated piece of pricing advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> When I go on a trip funded by my company, I make sure I spend the allowance in full. I travel business class and spend lavishly. Yes, lots of middle class might be in category of these whales occasionally.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've seen this at nonprofits I've worked for. 5% of donors account for 95% of revenues. Sometimes it's even more extreme. But I think that distribution is very, very typical. With the exception of immediate and broad causes (Obama campaign, Bernie campaign, Red Cross relief for whatever disaster), small donors are not what keeps a cause going. It's the people with serious money to give who form a relationship with the org that make the difference.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Blue Apron and Stitch Fix don't match trends in their industries

Couple things which really jump out to me. I might be wrong but one of the article postulates is that whales tend to drive profitability. In which case what impact it might have on Blue Apron and Stitch Fix? Secondly, what are the chances of someone repeating and garnering some whales by actual marketing? That is - instead of trying to gauge customer behaviors why not gauge whale behavior and model the platform accordingly?

</comment><comment><USER37> Second Measure is at it again! I've really enjoyed the numerous blog posts over the past few months, the data is unreal.

</comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone know if the average they are referring to is a mean or a median?

</comment><comment><USER39> It took me way too long to figure out that the article isn't about literal whale watching. I was expecting something about a small number of customers spending large amounts of money to go on whale-watching cruises.

<comment><USER40> That was my impression from the headline, driven in part by a conversation earlier this week about many whale watching day cruises giving a free pass to come back if you don't actually see any whales.

The person I was talking with had gone on a cruise while traveling, got a pass, passed it to a coworker who was going to be in the same area, then it repeated at least two more times over the course of more than a year. One purchase, at least 4 trips.

<comment><USER41> My family has gone on three cruises now for the price of one. The company guarantees that we will see Orcas around the San Juan Islands in Washington State. We have seen seals and humpbacks but never Orcas. We go back every couple years, the last time we saw Orcas from the ferry to get _to_ the tour boat but not on the cruise itself so we still have the tickets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is news??? Wow

</comment><comment><USER43> It's called the power rule (Pareto distribution) and it's not news</comment>


Notifo (YC W10) adds webhooks for notifications - <AUTHOR> https://api.notifo.com/docs/webhooks

<comment><USER2> Notify.io has had webhooks and so much more. But yes, yay webhooks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Jeff :P

<comment><USER3> While I have the attention of both of you, are either of you aware of any project that lets you expose a webhook to a client-side JavaScript application? (the JavaScript application as the "receiver")

For example, if I wanted a webpage to display a feed of notifications without running a specialized backend. Maybe something like reverse HTTP? (<http://www.reversehttp.net/>)

<comment><USER2> You need what I got.

<comment><AUTHOR> yup.. i've been playing with it. i'm sure jeff will be in touch.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 3 Keys To Designing A Business That Learns  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670859/the-3-keys-to-designing-a-business-that-learns <comment><USER2> Seriously good article.I loved the lines: because it's better to be an adaptive company than a well-recognized fossil.

<comment><USER3> And the example : IBM, Amazon.</comment></comment>


Is now the time to learn Rails? - <AUTHOR>

With all the hype of Node, and other up and coming languages, do you think it is worth it to spend time on Rails? Is it going to be around for another 10 years? Is it going to look as good on a resume as Node might, in 10 years? <comment><USER2> I will say yes here.

First, I love ruby & rails. It jives with me. will it be around for another 10 years? there is no doubt in my mind. It has kept up with times and the contributors just keeping growing. I still love it 4 years in. There's a lot of snark at ruby & rails, but it is out of mostly jealousy & false ideologies. There's a lot of rhetoric about scaling and such that for the most part isn't true.

certainly not everyone uses rails, but i still see enough out there using it that i'm not concerned for it's future. If, given the choice of frameworks to use, people keep picking rails - it will live out quite a long life.

But you should really be the one to decide, in the end. As a language and framework, both are enjoyable and fairly straightforward. Few WTF moments (unlike my former PHP days)

is it worth learning? yes. Even a little can get you far. Node is good for things too - but not quite the same things.

but what matters more is building things. That will look awesome on your resume no matter what you build it with.

<comment><USER3> Jive means to deceive. I think you want "Jibe" instead..

<comment><USER2> you just blew my mind!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a PHP developer who moved on to Rails and now Node, I think for the most part the growth of Rails has stalled.

Doesn't mean there aren't Rails jobs out there, doesn't mean there aren't good reasons to use Rails, it just doesn't have the mindshare anymore.

If you're looking to learn a new language, try to look at what is popular now and what will be big in the next few years.

I personally think Javascript will continue to grow in popularity. There is nothing else on the horizon for front-end programming (ignoring languages with compilers to Javascript).

Other things to consider would be Functional Programming languages. Though Scala is popular, I believe (and don't have experience here, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt) that Haskell is probably more popular at the moment. I'm not sure what other languages will be coming up and gaining steam in that area.

I'd think about what you'd like to make or be making, then do some research to find what would be the best language for that.

<comment><USER5> As for FP, Haskell is a beautiful language, but its industry penetration is far behind that of Scala. Haskell is perfect to learn about FP, but if you're looking for a job _right now_ then Scala would be a much better choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't but that doesn't mean anything. Ruby/Rails is still used by a lot of startups and there are plenty of jobs available using it. There are some quick advantages to getting something done and usable as well.

I have been specializing in node for the last few years, but still do a lot of C/C++ work too, so can't knock any of those.

I'd say node is a safe bet, as JavaScript is here to stay, although I am sure it will have changes and new incarnations in the future. Not that Rails won't be around, but JS allows you a bit more flexibility in the job market IMO.

As for new stuff to learn, there are a ton of things you could learn. Golang and Scala come to mind each solving a different problem. If you are already an experienced developer and just looking to learn the next thing, then pick something that will round out your skill set more, otherwise pick up node in my opinion.

Also, if you don't already have experience and you want to be marketable, I'd also suggest really learning 1-2 data technologies, maybe ElasticSearch, Solr (really lucene period), hadoop, or cassandra etc. To me those are all technologies that have specific uses and can solve real world problems for companies and make candidates more valuable.

</comment><comment><USER7> No.

Ruby is already not a super-popular language. Rails is often used by startups, but I wouldn't call its adoption widespread. I also (personally) disagree with lots of the philosophy behind Rails.

More generally, you're probably thinking too much about "should I learn _____". Good programmers can make use of whatever tools are available. Figure out what you want to do, and then ask "what is the best tool available for this?"

<comment><USER2> > Ruby is already not a super-popular language

is this opinion or fact?

> I also (personally) disagree with lots of the philosophy behind Rails.

You present this as reasoning but, doesn't make it wrong.

<comment><USER8> > You present this as reasoning but, doesn't make it wrong.

In essence you are trying to say Rails philosophy is right and the other one is wrong ? This is exactly what's wrong with Rails too much opinionated that it makes me want to puke for it is promoting pseudo-science. Give us fact about any of the philosophy Rails uses, I remember, making too many SQL queries is "just fine".

<comment><USER2> The world is not black & white. Rails is good and works, but there are other frameworks out there too that can generate a webpage. None are "wrong".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No expert here, but elixir and phoenix are the next big tech frameworks.

[http://elixir-lang.org/](http://elixir-lang.org/) [http://www.phoenixframework.org/](http://www.phoenixframework.org/)</comment>


Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 Defined - <AUTHOR> http://benramsey.com/archives/web-10-20-and-30-defined/ <comment><USER2> The take on web 3.0 is interesting, at least it's not full of crazy shit like the people who talk about the internet becoming the operating system and localized storage becoming completely useless</comment>


Sneak Peek: Beyond React 16 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/03/01/sneak-peek-beyond-react-16.html <comment><USER2> Video of Dan Abramov's demo here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6iR3Zk4oDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6iR3Zk4oDY)

and associated HN discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16492973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16492973)

<comment><USER3> Firstly, this is super cool. Writing loading this easily based on different connections is going to be awesome. The suspense stuff is great.

Secondly, Dan has to be one of the nicest people on the internet. If you don't follow him on Twitter, give him a follow. He is so helpful, and understanding of his users' problems. I think it's a huge reason why the React team is constantly pushing boundaries. They really do listen.

It's not just Dan though, the community really has some great people. Dan had actually tweeted a bunch of people worth following a couple months back, which I compiled into a list: [https://twitter.com/udayrsingh/lists/react](https://twitter.com/udayrsingh/lists/react)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As far as I understand:

If you throw a promise (throw as in throwing an error) from the render function, React will retry when it resolves. `createFetcher` is a cache layer so that you don't DOS your own server on re-renders. Maybe though encouraging people use a ServiceWorker for that would have made more sense (edit: it also throws the promise for you when you access the cached value. so, yeah, it is very well-thought indeed).

Apart from that, this seems to be very simple to use, well-thought and useful.

<comment><USER5> This sounds about right. I would note the atomicity of the actual screen update. We don't flush the changes until the whole tree resolves. Another thing to note is that we try to render as much of the tree as we can (e.g. if a sibling asks for a retry, we still try to render other siblings so we can collect as many requests as possible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very cool. I'm heavily invested in Vue.js, but seeing these kinds of features of the horizon with React makes me a bit jealous.

The APIs do see unintuitive, but as Dan said, they are not finalized yet. I remember trying to implement a drag and drop component in React and having a bit of trouble with complicated APIs. Hopefully this keeps getting cleaner.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm eager to play with this and to try out some ideas.

For example, I wonder if it's possible to pass createFetcher an async function that awaits a fetch, dispatches a redux action with the data as a payload, then returns the data. If create fetcher works this way, it would seem to obviate a bunch of the usual redux actions. instead of FETCH_DATA, FETCH_DATA_SUCCESS, and FETCH_DATA_FAILURE, you could just have something like SET_DATA.</comment>


Regular Expression examples in Java - <AUTHOR> http://united-coders.com/nico-heid/regular-expressions-in-java

<comment><USER2> I wonder if anyone has written an extension to allow:

      /[0..255].[0..255].[0..255].[0..255]/

I'm guessing this could be compiled down to a regular regular expression. Support for [000..255] (enforce leading zeros) would be nice too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't think that two simple regex examples are worth cluttering up the front page for. There's nothing here that wouldn't be surpassed by a quick Google search.</comment>


Ouya developers report poor to middling sales figures for early games - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/ouya-developers-report-poor-to-middling-sales-figures-for-early-games/

<comment><USER2> I think the main reason for the low renevues is that the games in the store are mostly casual mobile/tablet games. They seem like they are designed to be played in short bursts. Not the sort of game that you'd play for 2-4 hours and lose track of time.

OUYA itself is quite decent. I don't quite get the criticism about the UI. It may not be perfect but it does the job of launching your game, no?

</comment><comment><USER3> Not surprising.

I turned my OUYA on for perhaps 15 minutes a week after I received it. I found the store experience flaky and the title selection poor.

Looking at the website today, the only thing I new addition I might want to try is Chronoblade [0].

0: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEf1dorRG94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEf1dorRG94)</comment>


TCL is dead))) - <AUTHOR> https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tcl8.6 <comment><USER2> Will you explain what I'm looking at? How does that page show that 'TCL is dead'? As far as I can tell, it means that Tcl developers do not use Debian to install debug builds and documentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought, it is quite clear from the graph that tcl, despite of many pessimists, is alive. It is still popular and has positive tendencies. Now, tcl 8.6 is more popular, then tcl 8.5 was ([https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tcl8.5](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=tcl8.5)). I understand that popcon is not perfect for such estimations, but I feel the same tendencies.

<comment><USER2> If I understand it correctly, you used a counter-factual title 'TCL is dead' (note also the non-convention capitalization - it should be 'Tcl'), and assumed that a good number of people on HN would understand 1) it was satirical, 2) the need for counter-pessimists, 3) the context in which to understand the numbers shown, and 4) whatever 'popcon' means.

I - and I'll add that I've published papers on using Tcl for molecular graphics, in software which still has 10K+ users - don't have any of that understanding. I know Tcl is still active, if a minority language, and is a good fit for some niches. (One of which is regression testing, with the SQLite test suite being perhaps the most famous.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, thank you. "10K+ users" is great and promising fact. After 5+ years of active python developing, I have decided to move to Tcl (you are right, "TCL" looks really wrong). I feel this language is fit to my tasks much better then python

<comment><USER2> I haven't worked on the project for a while. I pulled up the 2011 survey report at [http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/survey/report2011/vmdsur...](http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/survey/report2011/vmdsurvey2011rep.pdf) . There were 56,575 registered users then.

Mind you, I don't know how many of those people write scripts. Plus, VMD also supports Python, though that was added years after Tcl.

Personally, I think Tcl is better for the types of scripting that the physical scientists (biologist, chemists, etc.) - most of my user base - want to do. However, as something they developed became more generally useful, I found I couldn't easily tweak it to be part of the larger system. OTOH, while Python is more complex than Tcl, I rarely feel the need to rewrite user code in Python into C++ code, so there's a more smooth transition between non- programmer code to experienced programmer code. That is one of the reasons I switched to Python.

On the flip side, IPython and others have developed script-like meta-languages which makes it easier to do some of the things that Tcl excels at.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Solo Founders: How do you do it? - <AUTHOR> I've been following the other discussion on how do you keep yourself emotionally efficient.
However, I'd to broaden the scope of discussion: How do you do it? Or in other words, how do you keep yourself motivated to keep doing a startup. I'm not talking about projects that you do on the side, while you have a full-time job or are in school. I'm talking about where your startup is your job, whether you have funding or not.
It seems specifically hard to get funding if you are going solo. How do you go about getting funding? It also seems harder making those first key hires.
Why do you guys believe that this is the right way to go? Share the experience. <comment><USER2> How do I get funding? I haven't -- I was introduced to one "angel" when I was first getting started, but the draft MOU he put onto paper had almost nothing in common with what we had discussed in person, and after that experience I realized that I didn't really need funding. My costs are kept down by living in my parents' basement, using a 4 year old laptop, not hiring anyone else to help me out, and using Amazon Web Services instead of buying/renting discrete servers (although I spent the first 15 months writing code on my laptop before I got to the point of using AWS).

How do I keep myself motivated? The same way as multiple founders do, I guess -- by telling people what I'm doing and knowing that they expect that I will succeed. The fact that I turned down a six-figure job at Google to do this also helps keep me motivated -- I need to succeed here in order to make up for all the money I'm not earning at Google.

Why do I believe that this is the right way to go? I don't think it is, for most people. I'm unusual both in terms of my clarity of vision and my expertise in this particular area.

<comment><USER3> Colin, don't forget to mention your Open Source credentials if you do decide to raise money (if your OSS work is part of your startup, even better). It's not going to impress every investor...but we've found more than a few that recognize the value of someone that has built products used by millions of people. It is, at the very least, proof of competence and ability to execute on large projects.

<comment><USER2> When people ask me why I think I can do this, the fact that I built and run portsnap is something I often mention -- of course, 50k people using a free service for updating FreeBSD is different from people paying me to store their backups, but at least it demonstrates that I (a) can build a system which scales into the TB/month range, and (b) am able to "make something which people want". I also developed quite a few ideas while working on portsnap which I'm now using in tarsnap... hence the similarity in naming. :-)

But you're quite right about people being impressed by open source credentials -- I've had a few emails along the lines of "I only have a vague notion of what you're doing with tarsnap, but I've seen enough of your FreeBSD work to know that anything you do is likely to be good -- so let me know if you're looking for investment". So far these have all gotten a polite "thanks, but I'm not looking for funding right now" reply, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Day-to-day motivation is easy: My company is my job, if I don't work on it it will fail, and there will be no one to blame for that but myself.

Work when you work. Rest when you rest. Play when you play. If you're too unfocused to work, don't waste that time: Rest instead and put the hours in when you're refreshed later.

Funding was easy enough: Set aside as much as you can each month and invest it against the market index. In a few years you'll have a nest egg which can see you through a good period of modest living without a single penny of revenue. It really doesn't take a lot to support yourself if you focus on the essentials, and knowing you've a good buffer to see you through to profitability takes a lot of the pressure (and distraction) off of paying your bills. Immodest living can come later -- you'll be too busy building up your business to live rich anyhow.

Business ideas were a snap: They magically come while you're working for others (and building up your nest egg for self-funding). Just pay attention to your surroundings and identify where there are unmet needs (those can often be measured by the volume of workplace profanity). Think on those and consider solutions you might put together yourself.

</comment><comment><USER5> As soon as I got a user I started to feel pressure to make their life easier, the fact the first 10 users were my friends and relatives didn't matter. Once you get users, you get feature requests, once you implement feature requests they say "thank you - that's awesome", you smile and that powers you for a week at least.

The trick is to pick the right feature requests that power you and empower your users.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do it solo, I've no funding.

My base is this : I limit my investments to limit my break-even point. Currently, I need about 1500€/mo of income to break even. I'm not shooting for a 5x like VC's do. My next investment will probably be in graphic design because I've got an ugliness problem.

But the motivation is clear : I don't want a boss to feed me anymore, I live in a tiny town where (interesting) IT work doesn't exists, going back to the big town far from the beach is a last resort option.

Why I don't recruit a team : I'm not a team player, and we will spend most of the time dealing with my behavior and I'll get singled out in a short time.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am not a solo founder, so I am not speaking from personal experience (well, I am to an extent - I am a founder whose startup is my job, but I do have a partner).

I would assume that motivation is a lot easier when the startup IS your job as opposed to an evening/weekend project, even for a solo founder. Unless you're already rich, chances are you're not doing it exclusively for fun - you're doing it to earn a living somewhere down the road, so you're racing against time. Even if you have savings, they won't last forever, and there is always the opportunity cost ticking away in the background.

That's a lot of motivation, when there's no lifeline. You sink or swim, where sinking likely means having to go back to a day job.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am solo founder who a year & half ago started up. I hired a developer in India to do the back-end, while I did/do the front end (US).

As for motivation.. the recognition received is a huge motivator; submit your work to contests, tech events/presentations and what not. Also, I attend weekly/monthly tech networking events and hear positivity in regards to my work. That does not mean I hear HOORAY from everyone, but I retain the positive and let that drive me. The negative I think should be listened to, especially when it's constructive!

In regards to funding I did hear a few times, "we don't fund solo startuppers," but perseverance pays and Im honored that I have angels backing my work now! It took 17 months to get to this point! Although I did focus more on development and less on seeking funding, so 17 months maybe a long time?

Im looking now for a LAMP developer in PA, NJ, MD area and so far that has been challenging! Email me at paul9290 <at> yahoo.com if you interested in learning more about the position (include links to you work).

Good luck and don't let the solo founder thing stop you from starting up! It has changed my life for the better!

<comment><USER9> Paul, I would like to get a recommendation about your outsourcing in India. Could you please contact me at thiagolg at gmail.com ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My first business, which ran profitably for about 5 of its 7 years, was a solo effort. I don't recommend it. Your definition of vacation changes, your number of friends will plummet, and your health will probably suffer. I'm a bit of a health nut and a vegetarian and that didn't change much, but I stopped cycling --which was something I did heavily throughout my youth, through college and up until the solo startup...I'm riding again now--and put on a few extraneous pounds and had slightly high blood pressure.

It's certainly possible, and most of my mistakes were not related to being solo (though I might have been able to think more clearly, and spend more time on correcting strategy and the direction of the business, had I not been abusing my body and mind by working for too many hours and under too much stress). Raising money is certainly a problem in a solo effort, though I had a couple of offers with my previous business (angel money, as well as a relatively serious VC offer--but it was in 1999 when everybody and their brother was getting money).

</comment><comment><USER10> I have somewhat negative motivation. I just realized that most of moderately rich people is not anyhow better than me. They're just people like me, frequently even less prepared to manage the companies they have.

Of course, there's still luck involved. As Seneca says, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity".

</comment><comment><USER11> Self-funded.

 _How do you keep yourself motivated?_ I love what I am doing and believe in its potential for success. It's that simple. Of course, there are ups and downs, but that seems more along the lines of the other thread.

 _Why do you guys believe that this is the right way to go?_ I think it is very case by case. In this case, I'm lucky to be able to self-fund this stage. And I'm not ruling out investment later on if there is a defined plan I want to pursue that calls for it. At this stage, I don't need outside funding and I can accomplish the rapid prototyping piece myself at a relatively fast pace. I wouldn't have been opposed to a co-founder, but I didn't have the right one at the time, and so I moved on it myself.

<comment><USER12> Good to see you back, epiOBauqu, you were away for awhile.

<comment><USER11> Thanks. Yeah, I didn't visit the site much for 6 months or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did my first startup as a solo founder and began to flag after 6 months. Luckily I identified a good partner right around that time--a sales guy to match my tech skills. I doubt the company would have gotten off the ground had I continued alone.

</comment><comment><USER14> Alot of people here are referring to fear of messing up and failing as a means to gain motivation for a startup, whether its letting yourself down or letting others down. I hope people don't get stress confused with actually working hard. Yes, worrying about stuff can make you certainly work hard, but also getting into a good frame of mind every day and getting into a "flow" of completion of tasks works much better.

Running towards something good and being happy while your doing it works just as good, if not better than running away from something bad and being stressed at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well, funding is its own issue. On one of my previous startups, we wanted to look at funding, but basically found that without connections and revenue in boston, the number of team members didn't make much difference. The amount we would have looked for fit right in with pg's missing funding niche article.

Keeping motivated has never been a problem for me, since this is _what I like doing_ to a scary extent. The bigger problem is staying off HN.

Pros:

-No founder disagreements (what killed my last startup).

-No founders aren't carrying their weight

-No politics

-No debating decisions (this was endless in a previous startup)

-No differing visions

</comment><comment><USER16> I didn't get any external funding. At the moment I'm living on savings and my wife's salary. Luckily I've had pretty good jobs for the last few years, and managed to put a bit away, and also lucky that my Wife is fully supportive of me doing this.... I think it would be impossible without that support.

I must say though, as cperciva said above, leaving a well paid job is very motivational too. And the fact that I'm 34, have a mortgage and am about to start a family ... there's no time to be unmotivated :)

<comment><USER2> _as cperciva said above, leaving a well paid job is very motivational too_

To clarify, I didn't leave a well paid job at google -- I turned down a well paying job offer at google. Had I started working for them, I suspect that I would still be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Make sure you are doing something that you can accomplish and have launched in a 1 to 3 month window of time.

I went for something super complex and it taken me years to get a point where everything is stable, it has enough features, and to where it is flexible enough to create additional products on the same base of it. It has been a hard road and I am battle scarred from it.

<comment><USER18> _accomplish and have launched in a 1 to 3 month window of time_

Are you sure you're not taking a grass-is-greener perspective here? People say this 3 month thing a lot, but I'm not sure it happens very often in practice. Building a software product is hard.

<comment><USER17> One project I did about 3 years ago, a modeling portfolio site <http://www.profolios.com/> took a little less then 3 months to make. It is far out of date now, the marketing guy wasn't selling as much as he thought and kept on demanding just an unlimited amount of programming. But in that window of time I got a lot done, I still have the code for myself if I ever want to do anything with it.

A single founder can push out a lot of code in a short amount of time. You just really need to know exactly what you want and you need to know your language good enough to not have to be learning it at the same time you are using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Why do you guys believe that this is the right way to go?_

Because it's the only way I can envision living fully. Answering only to myself. That is energizing enough.

</comment><comment><USER19> tell yourself that you "owe" it to the millions of users whose life you will make a tiny bite easier/better. it is a mini-purpose. as far as funding i suggest you find a co-founder. that will double your chances and reduce your efforts in half.</comment>


Evan Spiegel's Email Memo - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegels-email-memo-2014-12

<comment><USER2> Here's his response to the leak: [https://twitter.com/evanspiegel/status/545308400829997056](https://twitter.com/evanspiegel/status/545308400829997056)

<comment><USER3> Wow, is all PR speak from SV companies so absolutely vacuous?

This guy sounded much more intelligent in his private memos. This crap sounds like a teenager's diary. So many "feels" and "hurts" and "angrys"...really seems like he's writing to a bunch of young teens.

I don't know how people work at companies like this. Between this and Marissa Mayer's children's book reading at an all employee meeting, I'd get fired twice for laughing out loud and calling the CEO of the company a blabbering idiot.

Anyone care to unravel the mystery of teen mystery PR speak?

<comment><USER4> It's not PR speak, it's their generation. I'm only a few years older and can't even relate to it. My peers have even noticed this in our younger male siblings - they're only ~3 years younger, but they would constantly get into emotional fights with their good friends (lasting several days), cry all the time, and generally are a lot more sensitive and emotional. We don't understand it at all.

<comment><USER5> Pushing 60 here. What age are you talking about? Owing to neighborhood demographics I seem to know no males between the ages of about 24 and about 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I place a lot of value on Spiegel's view of the market. As the CEO of one of the "hottest" startups in the past couple of years, I think he has access to a lot of people and information that most of us don't. I'm a believer in semi- strong market efficiency to be sure.

If he is turning down valuation money, he is also explicitly acknowledging that the fundamentals of the company simply don't justify the leverage of taking on additional investments.

He uses startup era Facebook to inform many of his decisions. Monetization is where Snapchat is finally breaking from Facebook's precedent, allowing the user to opt into ads disguised as high-quality content, and adding a money- sending service by partnering with square. Personally, I find this strategy a lot more effective than Facebook's attempts: jamming ads down users' throats, auto-play videos, breaking messenger off of the main Facebook app, selling robot clicks and false engagement, etc.

Should be interesting to see how Spiegel is planning to ride out the readjustment that he is predicting.

<comment><USER7> Yep.

I also found that quite interesting. It's quite similar to my own view ... let's see, an October 12 variant:

 _Twitter, and much of the rest of the Web 2.0 / dot com firms mostly are solving the problem of "where can we invest all of this free money the Federal Reserve is pumping out while real financial returns are so low. The fact that much of the business model supported by these ventures is effectively advertising, and that a lion's share of the advertising is itself FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector -- also bolstered by easy money / liquidity / QE2, or electronics goods, dittos, makes me think that this is all one hell of a massive bubble. At some time it's going to pop, and it's going to be all kinds of ugly -- the dot-com bust will look like salad days in comparison._

(Comment on the post in question)

[https://plus.google.com/104119855035793551431/posts/QQrWKvBx...](https://plus.google.com/104119855035793551431/posts/QQrWKvBxKRz)

So, yes, Spiegel's comments on the Fed and money are pretty interesting. Not sure if it's confirmation bias on my part or just confirmation.

<comment><USER6> I'd be interested to hear how you're betting on the bubble. Are you shorting stocks? Buying puts? Some kind of real estate ETF? Are you actively betting or just sideline speculating? Not trying be passive aggressive - I've just been trying to come up with a good strategy myself to bet on an imminent bubble.

Also, could you provide more detail on how QE money is ending up in VC pockets? I was under the impression that most of the large-scale-asset purchase money is simply sitting in bank reserves - check out the 2nd graph showing how much of QE has actually made it into circulation [0]. I'm not sure exactly how the "free money" of the Fed is ending up in Twitter's coffers.

[0] [http://www.frbsf.org/economic- research/publications/economic...](http://www.frbsf.org/economic- research/publications/economic-letter/2012/july/monetary-policy-money- inflation/)

<comment><USER7> I'm taking a longer-term view and investing in personal capital on the basis of that.

Money in bank reserves doesn't, of and by itself, provide revenue growth. Banks put the money someplace else.

Some of that goes back into Government paper. Some into offshore tax havens (the avoided tax is an immediate gains). Some 10-20% of all finanicial wealth is there -- $21 - 30 trillion as of this past July:

[http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/editorials/close- do...](http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/editorials/close-down- offshore-tax-havens-267286871.html)

Other funds end up in various investment operations -- some are HFT, some are speculating in commodities or other real assets (stories of Goldman's operations in this area are interesting), some ends up chasing tech opportunities -- it's one of the few economic sectors offering much promise. Though I suspect a lot of it's overrated.

Most present "investment opportunities" strike me as quite ephemeral, though the volatility may allow for gains for the extremely astute. Or lucky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Though this seems obvious in retrospect, this is an interesting insight:

       VC dollars are being spent on user acquisition despite unknown LTV of users ...

I think some of the tech "bubble" is being driven by speculation in what customer lifetime value could be. There would need to be some pretty devastating event for investors to no longer believe that having millions of users doesn't have potential for a lot of value. It would have to be a fairly counter intuitive epiphany.

<comment><USER9> As soon as FB Messenger or WhatsApp introduce a "view once" feature to their products I'd instantly stop using Snapchat.

<comment><USER10> Do you use Facebook Poke?

<comment><USER11> See that's a seperate app that exists on one platform, while FB Messenger is cross platform and already used by most people, so adding one feature (while anathema to the way companies are doing this atm, opting to make each feature an app) would instantly overtake a lot of the value of snapchat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For some reason I found this hilarious: "Going from a college frat boy to the CEO of today's hottest new startup isn't easy."

<comment><USER13> Because it's easier than any other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it takes a lot of courage to say "No, you can value us at $800 million instead of a billion." There are reasons to do that, but it means some money is being left on the table either via dilution or lower capital raise.

There's a secondary question (can someone answer?) of is it tax advantageous to do this? Does it benefit the first a lot to issue options at a cheaper price?

<comment><USER15> That's what they were discussing in the emails regarding 409(a)... from what I understand, the taxable-benefit value of options is determined by the IRS's fair market valuation of the company. So the same options contract becomes more valuable (and more taxable) as the company becomes plausibly more valuable. Spiegel's response indicates that he's unconcerned by this, though, so maybe options aren't a huge part of their compensation package.

<comment><USER16> IRS requires paying taxes as restricted stock vests (or up front if you so- elect) based on the fair market value of the stock. Or, if options, based on the intrinsic + time-value of the option. So maintaining a low common stock valuation becomes a crucial exercise if you want to actually be able to issue any meaningful number of shares to your employees.

You can value investor preferred shares at a significant markup to your common stock by giving a non-participating liquidation preference. So you can raise $50m at $800m and not completely wreck the next round of options. It's called the "Thin Common" strategy. The idea is I sold X shares for $50mm, but since they also got a $50mm preference as part of the deal, the common share value is still no-where near $50mm / X.

What Spiegel is saying, which is spot-on, is that having revenue will encourage a Section 409a valuation based on discounted cash-flow for common stock which will be minuscule compared to the investor value on preferred shares. 409a is about gaining a safe-harbor where your valuation is presumed reasonable and harder for the IRS to contest.

This allows them to keep moving shares into employees hands at a reasonable rate, or if options, then issuing them without an impossibly high strike price. The problem Mitch is pointing out is the Facebook offer also plays into the 409a to some extent. If someone offers you $3 billion cash, it's hard to claim you are worth less than $3 billion.

If you are issuing restricted stock, or RSUs, you have to price them at fair market value, and either the employee PAYS you that money, or the value of the shares is taxable income as they vest.

If your valuation is too high, any modest stock grant (remember they are only 30 employees) requires someone to pay ~40% of that amount in cash as taxes. So it becomes quickly impossible to give a meaningful number of shares -- the tax consequence is just too immense.

For example, lets say they issue 1% of their shares to their 30 employees next year. They have a 409a valuation based on $0 revenue, 13 months of runway, and a plan to hopefully possibly achieve $20mm of revenue in the next 12 months. Their accountant says that equals $200mm common stock value, so they owe taxes on $2mm of income. Not so bad. But if the IRS comes back and says, wait just a minute, those shares were worth $3 billion at the time, you owe us $15mm in taxes and another $30mm in penalties....

Anyone who STARTED at Snapchat early on would have received shares at PAR value, and if they were restricted, would have done an 83(b) election to pay tax up-front at the current value, instead of paying tax at the market value as they vested over time.

If anyone at Snapchat has significant vesting shares and did NOT do the 83(b) election to pay tax at an early-days valuation, they are now totally fucked, because every month they vest more shares, they owe millions of dollars to the IRS and they have no liquidity with which to pay the tax man.

The system is stupidly broken. The way I would do it is that freshly minted common stock should transfer tax-free until a subsequent transfer or sale (not including transfers through probate). Then the full value should be taxed at short or long-term capital gain. There's absolutely no reason to tax, or even attempt to value, the initial issuance of unregistered and non-transferable securities of a private company. Simply wait till they are first sold, or otherwise encumbered, and collect taxes from the market value at that time. Registered stock could remain under the current rules.

In a sense, even declining an offer from Facebook cuts off new hires from obtaining reasonably priced shares, thwarting Snapchat's ability to hire and retain the best talent. It's an interesting "damned if you don't" scenario.

<comment><USER17> An alternate way to handle it would be to pass a law saying the IRS must accept payment in-kind for taxes on in-kind payments. I.e., the IRS can make up whatever valuation they want but you have the option to pay them in snapchat shares.

<comment><USER16> Now that would be the day! :-)

      "You owe $15 million in taxes on those Snapchat shares that just vested."
      "You say we're worth $3 billion? Fine, here, have some shares!"
      "Oh, oh, what? No revenue? Yeah, your shares are worth shit!"
      "So what about the tax bill?"
      "Yeah, pay up in cash, or as they say in Monopoly..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1\. His views on the general tech market are somewhat banal (though impressive for someone who was only 23 at the time). It is your standard zerohedge analysis that fed is printing money and it is causing a tech bubble. Can anyone track and connect the dots from fed bond buying to increase in Facebook share price? I don't think anyone knows.

2\. His comments on facebook are much more fascinating though. One thing I did not understand is where all the mobile money on facebook is coming from. Looks like it is from app installs (don't think FB breaks it out) which in turn is created by VC funding bubble. The VC's fund because they see mobile on Facebook is taking off. Close the loop, classic bubble. So the whole scheme is likely to end pretty badly for facebook (sounds plausible). PG talked about the dot com bubble and the impact of VC funded ad buying that led to increasing market cap for yahoo until it burst

"By 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors were excited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue growth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then used the money to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more revenue growth for Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was worth investing in. When I realized this one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of "Eureka!" I was shouting "Sell!""

[http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)

Edit: I should have guessed, people are more interested in supplying ready made narratives from the past five years for point 1 (which is not that interesting) than point 2. SMH. Some cool narratives are being provided which I heard almost verbatim at various points in the past five years that "explained" how --

1\. We will have world wide inflation of epic proportions (reality: world is fighting deflation all over)

2\. ECB is doing a great job compared to the fed continuing with QE2 in 2011 (reality: recession in Europe vs the US)

3\. Gold will soar through the roof (reality: slump)

4\. Oil prices will rise forerver (until they collapsed)

5\. House prices in China will go to sky (until they stopped doing)

6\. Apple was up 100% in late 2012 (until it collapsed by half six months later)

Etc etc. I would have thought some humility would have set in the "FED is printing, things are inflated to sky crowd". Nope, just doubling down. Always stay with the narrative explain something else until we get it right ☺. At least I admit I don't know how things work :-).

Consider, there are $20 Trillion dollars of SWF's in the world investing all over. What is the impact of these as opposed to QE?

<comment><USER19> > One thing I did not understand is where all the mobile money on facebook is > coming from. Looks like it is from app installs (don't think FB breaks it > out) which in turn is created by VC funding bubble.

In July re/code put the App Install Ads at $400-$800m in revenue per quarter. I'd guess it's on the upper-end of that spectrum and is out-pacing other revenue lines. It's not unusual for a top tier game to pay up to $3-5 for a US install.

This is why Twitter is so keen (desperate?) to replicate what FB is doing.

[http://recode.net/2014/07/24/why-doesnt-facebook-want-to- bra...](http://recode.net/2014/07/24/why-doesnt-facebook-want-to-brag-about- its-billion-dollar-app-ad-business/)

<comment><USER18> Good link, thanks. Interesting that Spiegel was aware of the trend at least a year earlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about his view of the market? Anyway he kind of surprised me with his attitude towards building large company. Seems like he has vision to turn Snapchat into the platform(buzzword alert). Anyway his opinion is very mature.

<comment><USER20> They've put in payment sending -- I think FB does this too.

Also have advertised spots. They're definitely trying to expand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _[Snapchat] is valuable because it has fundamentally changed the nature of > digital communication in <2 years and will continue to do so for the life of > the Company (may it be long and prosperous)._

</comment><comment><USER22> What is the legality of Business Insider publishing what amounts to stolen trade secrets?

<comment><USER23> Protected by the First Amendment - [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2014...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2014/12/15/can-sony-sue-media-outlets-who-publish-the-stolen- sony-documents/)

<comment> k-mcgrady Is that still applicable considering Sony is a Japanese company?

<comment><USER24> Unless Business Insider has Japanese assets or employees that Sony could go after under Japanese law, yes.

<comment> k-mcgrady Ok, so they could sue non-US sites reposting the hacked information I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I thought his comments about available capital (specifically) to social communication companies was interesting.

There was so much homogeneity in tech in '99/'01\. So many companies doing very similar things.

I guess I'm wondering: Are we (the tech market) sufficiently diversified in what our companies do? Enough to see segments of the industry pop but not the entirety?

</comment><comment><USER26> I think, his summary is somewhat realistic. But that also applies to his own company.

My base line: Valuation of (consumer) software products is still hard. And given the current monetary politics, it is even harder to tell what a reasonable valuation looks like. It is a gamble, as usual. But at least he has a business and is propably doing his best to keep it, along with the souls in it. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER20> "For Snapchat to capitalize on market conditions in next 3 years, it is imperative that we become a revenue-generating company," .. no shit, sherlock.

<comment><USER27> Actually, this comment is stupid and more broadly indicative of why we have today's current tech bubble: not a second of thought about profit. Revenue is the goal, no consideration to the underlying business model. God forbid one of these companies try to make money.

<comment><USER28> Surely some form of revenue comes before profit, right? I think he's just staying focused on one piece of the puzzle at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Snapchat is a child of a bubble, my doubts are confirmed, it has no real revenue.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ugh. This is thinly-veiled native advertising for the persona of a 24-year-old executive, presumably as insurance for him against possible business issues (read: building up his personal reputation to prepare for Snapchat headwinds). Anyone who can't see that is delusional. I almost wonder if he paid to have "I'd rather not burn another $100mm of OPM _[other peoples ' money]_ before we find out whether or not we have a business" leaked so he can present himself as frugal, should the chips go down in the next year or two, and people accuse him of being the opposite.

If that email is "very impressive", then I'm Jesus H. Christ. Any lepers need cured?

First, he's a bad writer. He'd barely get a C in a freshman English class, and that's with grade inflation. He doesn't know where to place commas or how to use punctuation. (That doesn't make his business emails unusual for the genre, but it rules out calling him "impressive".) Second, the only thing that is impressive or unusual (for that age) about his communication style is that, yes, he has an above-average level of confidence, and most 23-year-olds from middle-class backgrounds are still scared of their bosses, not talking about a business like they run the place. But who wouldn't have that confidence, after having so much handed to him?

This isn't damaging like his frat-boy communications but it's not really interesting. Sure, he knows some things about the business that he's the CEO of, but if he were 30 or 40 and wrote that email, people would be underwhelmed at his mediocrity, expecting better.

This bizarre age-curving is irritating because (a) what should really matter is where people are, and where they're headed, not whether they're 24 or 67 or 38+√(-163), and (b) because so much early success in the Valley is manufactured and delivered via connections rather than merit. (Silicon Valley's ageism is an expression of its classism.) Given that a 40-year-old CEO who wrote an email like that would (and rightfully) be considered somewhat off-the-ball, we should apply the same standard to Mr. Spiegel.

<comment><USER31> I was curious to see how you'd react to this, since Spiegel's success has been such a thorn in your side. So let's see, you opened with conspiracy theory nutjob (so maybe the real purpose of the Sony hack was to leak Spiegel's private email and bolster his personal brand??), and segued nicely into grammar nazi pedant (as if anybody, anywhere called the email impressive due to its punctuation).

> _First, he 's a bad writer. He'd barely get a C in a freshman English class_

> _Any lepers need cured?_

And you probably spent as more time writing your comment than Spiegel did writing his email.

> _Given that a 40-year-old CEO who wrote an email like that would (and > rightfully) be considered somewhat off-the-ball_

No. Maybe all the 40-year-old CEOs who privately email you write exceptionally well, but that hasn't been my experience at all.

<comment><USER30> _I was curious to see how you 'd react to this, since Spiegel's success has been such a thorn in your side._

I don't care about him, personally. He's boring. I care about frat boys being funded at the expense of people with actual ideas. I care about a generation of technologists that has been sold out because a bunch of smooth-operator, manipulative invaders have come in and outcompeted true technologists for funding and coverage, and the VCs have let it happen. If they were worth their millions per year, they simply wouldn't. If they could actually spot talent sufficiently well to justify their obscene salaries, they wouldn't be funding frat boys. I react strongly because this nonsense is very bad for the world.

If Evan Spiegel wasn't part of something that's setting technology back by decades, I wouldn't give a rat's ass about him or his billions either way.

 _So let 's see, you opened with conspiracy theory nutjob_

No, you misunderstand. Obviously, he didn't intend for the Sony hack to happen. My contention is that, after the hack happened, he got quickly to work on figuring out how to use it best to bolster his reputation.

An effective sociopath doesn't expect to control the world, because that's impossible, but only to exploit events as they come for maximal personal benefit. Clearly, Spiegel had nothing to do with the Sony hack. I'm arguing that his PR apparatus engaged shortly afterward.

Given that Snapchat Beliebers (employees?) have come out of the woodwork to downvote me into oblivion, it's not _that_ far fetched. His PR team (which may include the whole company) clearly managed to find my posts on a Wednesday afternoon. This means that they respond quickly to events large and small... and what I say on Hacker News is clearly less newsworthy than the Sony hack.

 _And you probably spent as more time writing your comment than Spiegel did writing his email._

I see what you're trying to say, and it doesn't work. Emails to investors, because your employees' livelihoods depend on them, deserve more time than Hacker News posts. Writing them quickly, when not well, isn't something to be bragged about. Granted, he's probably going for neoteny to some extent, and I'm sure he uses uptalk when interacting with investors, but even still... he should learn to communicate clearly and professionally.

<comment><USER32> _No, you misunderstand. Obviously, he didn 't intend for the Sony hack to happen. My contention is that, after the hack happened, he got quickly to work on figuring out how to use it best to bolster his reputation._

I agree with the above poster (I too was interested to see your thoughts), but this is really weak. Between believing that 1.) Evan Spiegal is a sociopath who drafted not only a grammatically correct email from Mitch Lasky but also a grammatically incorrect email from himself in a fake convo, and took advantage of his connection with the Sony CEO to "leak" this report vs. 2.) This was just business as usual and the result of an already very public Sony hack, I'd choose the one that didn't take me 90+ words to explain.

I'm going to call Occam's Razor here. Other than that the rest of your post has little to do with the _content_ of the email. If Einstein had presented the theory general relativity to me, I'd be rightly less concerned with the fact he could use a semicolon.

<comment><USER33> _> Between believing that 1.) Evan Spiegal is a sociopath who drafted not only a grammatically correct email from Mitch Lasky but also a grammatically incorrect email from himself in a fake convo, and took advantage of his connection with the Sony CEO to "leak" this report vs. 2.) This was just business as usual and the result of an already very public Sony hack, I'd choose the one that didn't take me 90+ words to explain._

No horse in this race, but I assume parent is actually implying a third possibility, where the email exchange is real but cherry-picked by parties friendly to Spiegel.

<comment><USER30> _No horse in this race, but I assume parent is actually implying a third possibility, where the email exchange is real but cherry-picked by parties friendly to Spiegel._

Right. Or, it's "real" insofar as it actually happened. His stated interest in building a quality business and being careful with "OPM" is obviously not _genuine_ , but the conversation actually happened and, at the time, he would not have known that the Sony leak would happen in the future. He didn't write that particular email with the intention of it being leaked.

After the leak, Spiegel needed to lend credibility to the idea that he's not some careless frat boy and he (or, just as likely, his PR team) decided to focus attention on a particular email. Since the email itself was poorly crafted, an influential third party was paid off (bought social proof) to say that it was "very impressive" for his age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think that the people at Snapchat do realize how fucked they are.

That's why they're making a spree of acquisitions and media deals to try to stay prepared.

<comment><USER35> Every startup is completely fucked until they start raking in money through a sustainable business model.

The ones that get there are the ones that proactively take steps to avoid being fucked.</comment></comment>


Facebook launches free calling for all iPhone users in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/16/3883538/facebook-launches-free-calling-in-messenger-for-iphone-us

<comment><USER2> Telcos celebrate this day with joy :D</comment>


Django Pluggables: Find reusable applications for your Django project, quickly and easily - <AUTHOR> http://djangoplugables.com/

<comment><USER2> control-D'ed

<comment><AUTHOR> or ⌘-D for Mac folks.</comment></comment>


How Storytelling Increased Our Blog's Engagement by 300% - <AUTHOR> https://www.groovehq.com/blog/storytelling-in-content-marketing <comment><USER2> I love bullet-points instead of interview bloat :/</comment>