We Got Accepted into Techstars and Turned Them Down - <AUTHOR> http://talkroute.com/got-accepted-into-techstars-turned-it-down/ <comment><USER2> This is a surprisingly good post. The title made me think it was going to be yet another startup flounder crowing, but it's actually a pretty thoughtful critique of the whole Techstars Chicago program.

The "100+k for 7-11% equity" analysis is particularly damning.

I think they're taking the "Techstars accepts 1% of applications" thing much too seriously. Presumably, only a tiny fraction of the inquiries they get are from serious teams.

Also: I've been to 1871 a couple times, and I got exactly the same vibe these people got. I know some people with solid companies working out of there, but the space is practically the archetype of the "startup playing house" idea Paul Graham likes to write about. It's particularly sad because it's located in Chicago, where it's _easy_ to get an inexpensive office lease.

 _Later: the equity math is apparently not as damning as it sounds, or, perhaps, not damning at all._

<comment><USER3> I was initially put off by the "Well, in 8 years, why haven't they had a big (>100M) exit?" in the beginning; I figured it was more of the kind of silly entitled bubble talk I've been seeing elsewhere.

The equity analysis you pointed out as well as the description of the LoI stuff made me reconsider that position, and by the end of the article I was glad I read it. It wasn't quite the muckraking I was expecting, and instead was a decent exploration of when a fit with an accelerator just didn't exit.

Matasano never did the incubator/accelerator thing, right?

<comment><USER4> Specifically on the exit stats GrabCAD (Boston TS company from 2012) was acquired for 100 million -

[http://betaboston.com/news/2014/09/16/product-design- startup...](http://betaboston.com/news/2014/09/16/product-design-startup- grabcad-acquired-by-stratasys-for-100-million/)

And the real answer to this is that getting large exits takes a long time. Unless I'm mistaken YC, which is older than Techstars and has 50% more portfolio companies, has 3 exits over 100 million, OMGPOP, Heroku and Twitch. Granted the last one was a big one.

<comment><USER5> Techstars should see some other big exits over time with SendGrid (couldn't find actual current valuation) and DigitalOcean ($153M Valuation in 3 years) to name a few

<comment><USER6> Also Localytics (TS Boston 2009) is well positioned for a big exit or IPO: [http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/localytics](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/localytics)

(Disclosure: Hackstar in 2009, Founder in 2010)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Troy sent over a Letter of Intent and explained that it needed to be signed > and returned by Monday. I was very frustrated by this. You don't send a > legal document to someone over the weekend when their is no time for a > lawyer to review it and demand it back by that same Monday. Whether it was > the intention or not, this was a high pressure sales technique and just one > more red flag.

This says it all to me.

<comment><USER8> I was a founder of a company in the TS Chicago class this summer.

I can tell you that this letter of intent was one and a half pages long, contained a simple, bulleted list of documents required for due diligence, and explained the structure of the funding and program.

Additionally, there is a very clear line that indicates that they are willing to extend the deadline provided you give a reason.

Finally, this document is not the formal acceptance of anything related to the program.

I would suggest that "demand[ing] it back" using "high pressure sales techniques" is a strong overstatement.

<comment><USER9> Ok, sure, fine, it was not technically demanding for a half sober lawyer to go over. Still why not on a Monday then, why not a 2 week horizon? Why do I have to give a reason, why do I have to skip dinner with my wife on Saturday, a plan I have had all week? If it's not formal, then why send it at all? Why send a 4th grade Valentine's day card? Etc.

Basically, it sent a message, at least to these guys. I think they read it correctly.

<comment><USER8> The challenge in equating our two experiences is the perspective from which the LOI was received. For them, it was a message in the form of another low blow from this high pressure accelerator trying to wrest away 50% of their business. With that mindset, a week probably would have been too short. Who knows.

Ours, on the other hand was, "Awesome! Troy called and invited us to the program! We finally get to quit our day jobs and go after this business full time like we have always dreamed about, and TS is facilitating that! Let's go over this LOI, which is simple and straightforward and doesn't legally bind us to do anything other than say we understand we are continuing the process and wont tell anyone publicly about it and gets us one step closer to Chicago and the success of our business!"

Looking through an LOI and getting it back to them was a joy for us, not a burden.

<comment><USER10> > Let's go over this LOI, which is simple and straightforward and doesn't > legally bind us to do anything other than...

How do you know that until you've had an attorney review it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Im an MD for Techstars in Austin and happy to answer specific questions on this for anyone about our programs and results.

I don't know the details of this specific company, so I won't comment on any of those particulars, but I can for sure comment on the structure of our terms.

As I mention in another reply on this thread, the OP appears to have misunderstood the note terms as presented. Currently the 100k note offered is a 3mil-5mil cap note, 20% discount. What causes it to be 5 vs 3 is whether or not the company has had a prior financing event. In other words the cap by default is 3, but it'll float up to 5 if a prior financing is above 3 for a particular company. Those terms are written in stone for all time, but as of this exact moment that's what they are and that's what the were at the time of this blog post.

One other thing I'll point out that wasn't covered in the post, likely due to the timing of the event, is our first >= 100 million exit, which happened in the last month.

[http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/09/23/stratasy...](http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/09/23/stratasys- grabcad-deal-gives-new-revenue-source-says-rbc/)

<comment><USER11> Is requiring the signing of an LOI over the weekend typical of TechStars?

<comment><USER4> Nope.

Sam Altman had a great post recently about YC's indictment of timing pressure tactics on accelerator offers. We completely agree with that position and try very hard to not give that impression. Clearly sometimes that pressure is still felt even if it's not intended.

One issue that is relevant to us given our fixed class sizes is getting a definitive answer from an offer as quickly as we can so that we know if should move down the list and give an offer to the next team instead. Having 10 offers out and finding out that only 8 want to accept would mean we are giving out 2 offers potentially much later than the others.

Purely as a practical timing matter we hope to have a set of offers out around the same time and have everyone accept or dismiss them pretty quickly so we know who the class will be.

There was good discussion of this on a prior HN thread when @sama posted that blog piece. If I can dig it up I'll add it here.

EDIT: found it -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8285994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8285994)

<comment><USER2> There's a goalposts-moving thing happening here. The claim in the post isn't simply that there was a time-limited offer made. The claim was that a complicated legal document was presented just before a weekend, with a demand that it be accepted or rejected by the following Monday.

I have no idea if that actually happened or not, but this thread isn't really addressing the claim in the post.

<comment><USER4> Not evading here, just don't want to go into unnecessary detail, but here it is if you are interested -

Our LOI is not a complex document. It's one page long and covers 7 points.

1- agreeing to supply an official version of the cap table 2- representing that documents supplied to us are are accurate to the best of their knowledge 3- acknowledging that the team must relocate for the duration of the program 4- committing to fully participate in the program (show up and not have another job outside of their company) 5- agreeing to the dates of the program 6- agreeing to our equity exchange 7- confidentially clause regarding the offer

And a final clause states that while signing the LOI executes your agreement to our terms that "your acceptance of our offer is subject to your review and satisfaction with the formal contract provided". In other words signing the document is merely signaling your intent to participate in the program, but you aren't held to any specific clauses by signing.

This is not a document that is meant to be negotiated, there are really no terms here that we'd debate on, it's more of an outline of the deal so that you get it all in one place and have it in writing up front.

<comment><USER9> Still, why Friday? Why not Monday? Why not a week time horizon? Yes it may be industry standard, but you aren't looking for industry standard people here. Why send such a thing to begin with? If it's not legally binding, negotiable, or really anything other than a 4th grade valentine's day card, why do it? Yes, again, the authors may have misread the boilerplate, but those are the people you are looking for, the ones that aren't 'normal.' If you want to do business with people, then do it. This isn't love notes in lockers stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks like your convertible note math is off. Given the $1M minimum trigger, the $100K note will not equal 10% of the company unless we plug in absurd numbers ($100K premoney Series A with a note discount).

Based on this Quora answer, the cap is $3M with a 20% discount. [http://www.quora.com/What-are-Techstars-convertible-notes- te...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-Techstars-convertible-notes-terms)

Say you raise $1M on a $3.9M pre-money. The $1M investors wind up with almost 20% (a little less because the note investors pay the $3M price), the note investors about 2.6% (they get $130K worth of Series A plus interest), and the remaining ~77.4% is your former cap table, including TechStars, diluted by the $1M and note conversion.

<comment><USER2> Is the point here that Techstars "7-11% equity" claim is accurate given the range of possible valuations for their convertible note? Or is it just that it's not _as inaccurate_ as the post claims?

<comment><USER4> The quora post is correct (note is a 100k convertible 3 mil - 5 mil cap, 20% discount). It appears that the OP misunderstood the terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was part of the first Excelerate class with FeeFighters (acquired by Groupon in 2012) and was an EIR with TechStars Chicago a few summers ago.

I thought this post was well balanced and obviously everyone should make their own decisions based on their startup's particular situation...incubators, just like financing, are not a panacea that guarantee success.

Troy, Sam, Steve and all the folks involved in Techstars Chicago all do TS because they are extremely passionate about developing startups and building the types of outcomes YC has produced.

One of the stark realities of the Chicago startup ecosystem is the capital available to tech startups is really tiny compared to other places. As a startup founder, I've both raised money and failed at raising money...one of the biggest challenges of being a founder here are the sheer financing odds you have to beat which are necessary to even have a chance to achieve YC outcomes.

That's why 1871 looks the way it does- it's meant to attract entrepreneurs but it's also meant to attract money. It's a symbol of the growing tech community in Chicago and a way for potential investors who have not invested in tech previously to see tangible proof of a burgeoning ecosystem. That's the truth...while office space is cheaper in Chicago, 1871 provides the connections and "accelerated serendipity" early stage founders might need. Again- I worked out of there for a year and left because it was too distracting...it was the right place for the right phase of business.

When it comes to Troy, he is just about the most founder friendly person I know. I'm sure if the founder had spoken to Troy about his discomfort with the exploding LOI, I can't speak for Troy, but it's hard to imagine him not understanding.

I look forward to seeing the big outcomes- GiveForward, SpotHero, SimpleRelevance, SocialCrunch, etc. in the future.

</comment><comment><USER14> Don't know enough about Techstars to comment, but the location (1871) is a problem. It's incredibly noisy and crowded. I personally can't get anything done there, so it's quick meetings and I'm out, working at home in peace. One upside however is that there is a good food court at the merchandise mart and I love those habanero burritos.

Lots of co-working spaces are popping up all over Chicago, if you're in the market for space... pick a quiet one.

<comment><USER2> If you've got 2 people in your team, I don't think the math on spaces like 1871 works out; it's cheaper just to get an office. If you're just one person, you probably don't need any space at all.

We're shopping for offices right now for the new company, and Chicago offices are cheap.

<comment><USER15> I can't speak to Chicago because I don't know the market but in general you'll get a lot more out of working in a space with other startups and freelancers than you will working alone in a cave, er, your own office. Networking alone is worth it. Once you grow to a large enough size that getting your own office offsets the lost opportunity cost of networking sure, get one.

<comment><USER2> I can speak to a career in startups when I say, respectfully, that I think this is horseshit. Compare outcomes. The most successful companies do not predominantly emerge from coworking spaces.

<comment><USER16> It seems like using "most successful" companies as a rubrik for decision making doesn't make a lot of sense, given how unlikely it is that any company will make it to the "most successful" categorization.

There are some tangible benefits from working out of a coworking space (I'm not sure you are advocating an opinion one way or the other regarding them):

\- easier access to networking events. Certainly you can make the trek from your office over to where the event is, but there is an extra level of convenience.

\- Access to other people. I was the only technical founder on our team, and just being able to talk shop with other engineers had real value. For the business guys, they were able to talk with other business guys and swap ideas and information.

\- Manufactured Serendipity. This one is a bit of a stretch, but if you are around other startups, there is a small chance that something lucky can happen. Is it going to move the needle? Dunno, certainly more likely to happen than if you were alone in a garage.

None of these things should take away from what I think is the important aspect of an office: allowing people to work productively. If that part isn't there, then no amount of perks and benefits will matter.

<comment><USER2> There are tangible costs to working in a coworking space:

* It's significantly more expensive.

* It's distracting.

* It creates an endless font of excuses to "network" and "talk shop" instead of powering through the schleps.

* It colocates serious companies alongside fundamentally unserious ones, leaving the serious ones to filter requests, drama, networking, &c.

For me, cost is dispositive. Put burning cash up against abstract benefits like "serendipity" and "talking shop" and I don't have a hard time making that decision. Last company, we wanted to talk shop too. We started a meetup. It worked fantastic. Do that!

Erin and I are signing a lease on the office for NewCo today. The space is depressing. We're in Oak Park to begin with, a 35 minute walk from my house, and you'd have to look to find an office with a window staring out onto a brick wall. We have two of those. It's perfect.

There's a time for spending some cash to make your work space pleasant. But not in the early days. Unfortunately, that's what coworking spaces optimize for.

<comment><USER15> > It's significantly more expensive.

When it's only the founders it isn't really more expensive especially when you factor in cleaning, food, coffee, etc. If you're growing beyond the founders then it probably makes financial sense to get your own office.

> It's distracting. > It creates an endless font of excuses to "network" and > "talk shop" instead of powering through the schleps.

Only as much as you let it be. Put on headphones and get work done.

> It colocates serious companies alongside fundamentally unserious ones, > leaving the serious ones to filter requests, drama, networking, &c.

To a certain degree but you're grasping at straws here. Don't want to talk to someone? Tell them you have work to do and don't talk to them. It's really not that hard.

Of course I can't speak for everyone. Some people simply can't adjust to working with other people around. Personally I prefer it, I find it inspiring.

<comment><USER2> No. It is significantly more expensive. I'm not saying this in the abstract. I just got a 2-person office for my new company, and I know what 1871 costs. 1871 is _expensive_. Office space in Chicago is _not expensive_. I'm actually paying slightly more to be walking distance from my house in Oak Park, and I'm still cheaper for 2 people than I would be at 1871. The difference would be even more stark if we had gotten an office in the Monadnock, where the company I'm leaving next week is. And the Monadnock is a historic landmark building with an Intelligentsia on the first floor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You made the right decision based on incorrect thinking.

Your math about dilution is completely wrong. That's a major issue right there. Then your math about expected success rate (claiming that TechStars has a negative impact on startups) is also completely off.

You did come to the right conclusion because you do not want to raise VC funding. That's it. That program is not for you, since your goals differ. From the tone of your post, you have your own way of thinking, fairly black and white. You naturally detected that there was a disconnect between your way of operating and TechStars'. So you didn't take the offer and my guess is TechStars is happy you didn't join either.

Good luck to your startup though. You are free to run your company whichever way you want (that's one of the beauties of startups).

</comment><comment><USER18> > The national rate of failure for startups is 75-90%... This means for every > [Techstars] company that is acquired, there is a company that fails. For a > program that is picking the best startups, this is not that impressive.

A 1:1 ration is actually very good. The failure rate for pre-VC startups is actually much higher than 90%. 75% of VC-funded startups fail [1] but only a tiny minority of startups ever get to that stage. If Techstars really keeps up a 50% success rate that would be amazing (though I assume it will go down over time).

[1] [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000087239639044372020...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443720204578004980476429190)

<comment><USER19> This^^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And another article styled by people who need to read and comprehend this: [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

</comment><comment><USER21> There is one thing that I've learned as I've been in Silicon Valley and tried to work with partners. Everything is a two way relationship and a two way street. If you're smart and you know what you're doing, you can't say "yes" to every opportunity because then you'll most likely miss the _right_ opportunity. This is a great example of a team doing their due diligence and realizing that they weren't ready to get into a long term relationship with a parter that wouldn't be able to help them. Even though the OP didn't make it in, I still think the experience was a success because of the learning. Thanks for sharing this with the rest of us as well.

</comment><comment><USER22> We turned down TechStars for Alchemist. 3x better terms, better network, 6 month program, incredible mentor network, largely tied to Stanford.

Since 2012 Alchemist Accelerator has advanced 64 companies according to CrunchBase. Of these, 29 companies have received more than a 1M raise and of these, four have raised around $5M at a $25M pre-money valuation.

[http://alchemistaccelerator.com](http://alchemistaccelerator.com)

[http://bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/09/26/ten-b2b-inter...](http://bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/09/26/ten-b2b-internet- ofthings-startups-pitch-at.html)

<comment><USER23> Have only heard of Alchemist second-hand and not seen anyone pick it over YC/TC. Would love to chat with you more on it: sjigjinni at google mail

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Disclaimer: TS Chicago 2014

It's hard to choose where to start, as this blog post just misses it on so many levels. So, we'll just pick "Mentorship Is Not The Primary Focus."

This summer, we had over 150 mentors complete over 650 30m-1hr long mentor meetings with our cohort. On top of these meetings, each company was assigned a super mentor who worked closely with each team for at least an hour a week, throughout the summer. These mentors hail from companies like Groupon, GrubHub, Walmart, etc. and are not just random business people. On top of that, we spent countless hours with Troy, Steve, and Sam throughout the summer... often late into the night. The passion and care these people and this program exudes towards mentorship and entrepreneurial development is unmatched and, frankly, unquestionable.

Second, the assertion by the OP that "the focus on raising capital is just too strong" is curious and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the program. I concede that if you plan on doing an accelerator, you should most likely be planning to raise further investment capital after the program at some point. (As PG puts it, "A startup is a company designed to grow fast" and from what I see, usually this growth will be accelerated by the injection of capital.) After going through this program, however, I would say the focus in TS Chicago is not mainly on raising capital at all. Rather, it is squarely on building you as an entrepreneur in order to empower you to build your business, equip you to hustle up more traction, and provide you with the tools to raise money to continue accelerating your growth if you want. The leadership goes above and beyond to make themselves available to you throughout the program regardless of the business or personal need.

Third, the dilution math is just so bad. Other folks have addressed it in this thread, so I'm not going to go into detail. But geez.

Fourth, looking purely at the "valuation" you get for 6% for $18k is an incredibly short-sighted way to understand the value you are getting out of the program. Mentorship, the network, deep friendships, and core business knowledge are just a few pieces of the value added. But even if you want to add pure money related perks, please review this: [http://www.techstars.com/program/perks/](http://www.techstars.com/program/perks/). Such free. Much hosting.

Fifth, demo day. At first, I was under the impression that demo day was all about pitching investors my business in the hopes of drumming up some interest in our next round of funding. After going through that process, my view changed drastically. I am more equipped to explain my business, our purpose, our plan, and the landscape of what we are doing than I would ever have been without it. Not only do I deeply understand the story of my business, but I can articulate it to investors, mentors, customers, and our team with a clarity like never before. I wouldn't trade that insanely challenging demo day prep process for anything.

Sixth, asking someone a pointed question about the specifics of your business in hopes that they have the answer to it off the cuff with (based on where that point in the interview would have happened) 30 seconds to consider your query is a poor way to judge the quality of their ability to contribute to your business over the lifetime of their involvement.

Finally, I'll end this discussion with these remarks:

TechStars is about relationships and equipping entrepreneurs. If you come into the program with a teachable spirit and are willing to listen and learn from the incredibly knowledgeable and generous people in charge, then you will come away with invaluable experience and tools to apply to your current startup, as well as to other businesses you may start throughout rest of your life. That is truly the offer on the table. Paul and co. missed out, but hey... maybe we were company 11? If so... thanks guys!

<comment><USER24> > But even if you want to add pure money related perks, please review this: > [http://www.techstars.com/program/perks/](http://www.techstars.com/program/perks/). > Such free. Much hosting.

Some of those are programs that are open to any company in any accelerator.

[http://aws.amazon.com/activate/](http://aws.amazon.com/activate/)

[http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/](http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/)

[http://www.softlayer.com/catalyst](http://www.softlayer.com/catalyst)

[https://blueprint.paypal.com/](https://blueprint.paypal.com/)

Not really a reason to pick techstars over another program

<comment><USER25> > Not really a reason to pick techstars over another program

When was this a debate about picking techstars over any other program? The article relates to picking nothing as opposed to joining TechStars. I think these perks are a little harder to come by when you turn an accelerator down for the no op as opposed to "I picked accelerator B instead of accelerator A".

I'd tell you that if you wanted to do an apples to apples comparison of accelerators we should save that for another thread lest we get too off topic, but that hasn't stopped others in this thread from turning the article into a TS vs Other Accelerator debate, so why should it stop you?

<comment><USER26> It is always a debate about picking from the choices available. Just like the equity portion, it's all baked into the decision even if it's discussing the specific equity offer.

Not sure why you feel so passionately about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> DigitalOcean and Sendgrid (both techstars companies) probably have valuations exceeding 100m at this point.

<comment><USER2> Were either of those companies part of Techstars Chicago?

<comment><USER28> No, they both came up through the Boulder branch.

[http://www.techstars.com/program/locations/boulder/#3](http://www.techstars.com/program/locations/boulder/#3)

<comment><USER16> I think the point being made is that you can't 1:1 compare TechStars locations.

A true measure of comparison would be to see the performance of companies that participated in TechStars Chicago, and not just TechStars as a whole.

<comment><USER29> Sure you can.

Your access to the TS network is the same regardless of your location and that's the important part.

<comment><USER2> You're saying that if I join TS Chicago, I'll have access to the same "mentor meetings" as someone in TS Austin or TS Seattle would? That the same people will come speak to my Chicago cohort as would Austin? That TS will round up comparable groups of investors?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is more or less a guaranteed way to never get accepted into a program like this ever again however. I don't see any serious upside to a company who might want to do this.

<comment><USER11> After hearing this story, I would be more likely to invest in this startup. The LOI pressure over the weekend was unacceptable. The fact that the founders held firm and did not fall for it is an indicator of future success for them. This was responsible, wise, business behavior. If the startup continues to operate like this, their chances for success are high, market allowing.

<comment><USER31> How to get investor attention: 1. Write about a controversial topic relevant to Hacker News 2. Show off traction 3. Say you are not looking for $$$ (Bonus: get more customers)

<comment><USER32> Lol, you are probably right. I bet these get money thrown at them from investors that don't respect accelerators (there are lots of them). They have over 40k users (probably more now) and charge 20$ per month. Close to 1m a month in revenue. They don't need investment or an accelerator at this point.

I think it was a brilliant self marketing tactic. And then they have the balls to post it here, lol... Love it. I think we are all witnessing a genius marketing stunt that is going to be the topic of discussion in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My understanding is that Techstars is a "franchise model" of sorts. So Techstars Chicago, as described in the post, could be quite different from another city's Techstars?

If anyone on HN have been through any Techstars programme and are prepared to comment on the experience that'll be super valuable.

<comment><USER34> Yes, that's accurate. Techstars Chicago is an incubator called Excelerate that joined the "network". I think they're all run similarly, but Excelerate didn't magically become a premium accelerator by slapping the Techstars label on.

<comment><USER35> Excellerate was close to #3 or #4 incubator (depending on how you count) in the country before joining the TechStars crew.

<comment><USER2> How do you count this? What's the rationale for saying that Excellerate was the next-best incubator after YC and 500s?

<comment><USER36> Forbes put together an analysis in 2012 (the last year Excelerate was still Excelerate) based on companies' exit price or price of most recent round. Excelerate came in No. 6.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/04/30/top- tech-i...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/04/30/top-tech- incubators-as-ranked-by-forbes-y-combinator-tops-with-7-billion-in-value/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I am an Excelerate Labs (now TS Chicago) grad whose company just did a 2.5M Series A. I consider the accelerator program to be an enormous component in my success. We still bug Troy and Steve on a weekly basis and they have never hesitated to help us out on anything. My classmates have turned in to war buddies who I can talk to about things that no friend or family member understands. I learned way more than I ever needed to know not only about VC but about the fundamentals of a healthy business. I wouldn't trade my experience there for anything in the world.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you map the raises of post-accelerator/incubator startups in Europe, you see a fascinating trend which suggests that the vast majority raise almost no money of any consequence (to the point where there's just one, Transferwise, in Europe which has raised significant external investment to my knowledge).

Capital clearly is not the best proxy for success or trajectory, but it's a visible and widely available (usually) metric.

Could be that Techstars are smart about picking startups which have low working capital. More likely is that the best startups in London and elsewhere are run by people who have access to mentorship by hustling in their own network, and raise money by being good at execution.

</comment><comment><USER39> Off-topic, but, I'm sorry, what is difference between Talkroute and Line2... outside of Line2 costing 50% less, allowing multiple in-bound numbers, and also supporting toll-free numbers and free existing number porting?

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not affiliated with Techstars at all. But this seems a bit tasteless. How would you feel if someone from Techstars had rejected you, and then posted a long explanation of "Why I Rejected Talkroute"?

</comment><comment><USER41> TS Austin 2014

Techstars Austin was an invaluable experience for our team. It seems like the founders did not factor the opportunity for personal growth when they made their decision. Some may argue that the company's growth comes first, but sometimes that can only happen when the founders are growing too.

We were the youngest company in our class. We actually used the Techstars investment as a means to incorporate and set everything up. Another factor is that all of us were first time founders. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure all 11 companies in our class had first time founders.

The Austin program was broken into three phases:

Month 1 - Mentor Meetings: For the first four weeks we had dozens of meetings with the program's mentors. The mentors were a healthy mix of past Techstars founders, angels, VCs, and biz dev partners. It was exhausting at the time (5-6/day, 4 days/week), but definitely worth it. We used the meetings as pitch practice, and iterated how we described our business along the way. I also learned a lot about my co-founders in those meetings. Seeing them describe our business to other people was very revealing about how they felt about things. Super valuable.

Month 2 - Development: The second month was all about taking the first month of endless feedback and getting to work on advancing our business. We used the second month to build our MVP, speak with potential customers, and build partnerships. The Techstars staff was hands off, but were a big help whenever we asked for it. We accomplished a lot in our second month.

Month 3 - Fundraising/Demo Day: The Techstars staff started to get more hands on in the last month to help us with our Demo Day pitch and fundraising plans. There was more structure, but we had the absolute freedom to do what we wanted. It was a bit distracting from our business the last few weeks, but the experience of Demo Day was amazing and completely worth it.

I highly recommend Techstars for any company with first time founders. We were able to go from polished idea to MVP within three months, and achieve a high level of personal growth at the same time. It's also worth mentioning that I now have 50+ amazing new friends that went through the same experience I did.

</comment><comment><USER16> YC has distinct advantage of being tapped into a very powerful network, in what is arguably the strongest startup market in the world.

TechStars are in #2 and below markets, each of which is easily dwarfed by Silicon Valley. So while TS (and other accelerators for that matter) don't have as much success as YC, I'd love to compare the stats of local companies that were in TS relative to the expected performance in their respective markets.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is unrelated to your decision to turn down Techstars, but do you expect people not to notice the resemblance of your introductory video to this ad by Apple? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZmIiIXuZ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZmIiIXuZ0)

</comment><comment><USER43> Why do I see so many similar posts? Is it cool to turn something down other people want and make a blog post about it?

The internet these days is much like McDonald's, instant gratification and quantity over quality.

</comment><comment><USER44> Can't read clear grey on white background (#7a for font color?? are you kidding me??!?); maybe TS or another accelerator would have taught those guys a thing or two about legibility and testing.

Also (without reading the article) why did they apply if they knew they didn't like the deal in the first place? Aren't they wasting everyone's time, starting with their own?

</comment><comment><USER45> What's crazy is that you think using light gray as a text color is a good idea.

<comment><USER46> In Safari, "Show Reader" corrects all styling sins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> For the effort put into this you probably could have gotten your 150k users

</comment><comment><USER48> Okay, after reading the OP, explain something to me, because so far I just don't _get it_ :

That is, from all I can see, the situation in the OP, admittedly only from an accelerator, is much like that in essentially all early stage VC firm equity funding. That is, as in the OP, I'm failing to see how "both sides of the table" ever have much chance of shaking hands.

Why? From all I can see, and as mentioned in the OP, to be considered for any funding at all, even via an accelerator, the startup needs to have a product that has traction in the market with that traction growing.

Before that traction, the guys with the checkbooks are not interested. With that traction, like the guys in the OP, I wonder why the heck the founders would want to take the term sheet, deal details, check, Delaware C Corp., Board of Directors, etc. instead of just growing, as in the OP, "organically".

Sure, I can imagine some exceptions, but the OP company was just two guys. Moreover, in the currently running Stanford course by Sam Altman and YC, the strong advice is to have 2-3 founders for a long time and be very slow to add anyone else.

So, the OP company had two founders, traction significant and growing, and, thus, qualified for some funding but with so few founders likely had expenses only at the Ramem noodle level and had some revenue and maybe free cash flow.

So, why take an equity check and all that comes with it instead of just continuing to grow _organically_?

Or, net, in simplest terms, it appears that by the time a startup, based on information technology and software where the product exists and has traction and was developed by a team of just 2-3, qualifies for funding, it will rarely still need or even want it.

So, I'm losing just where the guys with the checkbooks expect to find startups they want to fund that will take the funding.

Yes, I can think of some exceptions, but otherwise, again, I'm not _getting it_ on how anyone could expect the two sides of the table to do a deal?

Two more points:

First, all across the US, Atlantic to Pacific, border to border, in crossroads, villages, up to the largest cities, the US is just awash in successful small businesses with 1-3 founders, often just 1, who do well. Indeed, from all I've seen, most of the nicer houses, 50 foot yachts, full tuition checks at private schools and colleges, late model luxury cars, etc. are paid for by such small business people.

These successful small business people rarely went to business school, never watched lectures on business such as the current YC course at Stanford, never went to an accelerator, and never got VC funding.

For being an information technology startup with a product just software and written by just 1-3 founders and with revenue, that should be one heck of an advantage compared with nearly all the rest of these millions of successful small businesses. If those millions of US small businesses can get to a good _life style_ business, then the founders of a good information technology startup should be able to, also. And for further growth, a successful information technology startup should be able to generate plenty of free cash flow -- some software on a server can run by itself and make money sending ads 24 x 7 but for a guy with a successful pizza shop, or 10 such, each pizza has to be made by hand.

Then, with that nice start as a lifestyle business, maybe that information technology startup could continue rapid growth to be a major company.

I know; I know; there is a PG essay that a _startup_ is intended for explosive growth and, thus, needs equity funding. Okay, but I'm missing just why the founders won't be happy with $20 million or $200 million and, instead, want to take on a lot of financial risk and burdens shooting for $2 billion to $20 billion. A rich guy can easily say, "I wouldn't walk across a street for another $1 million.".

But in all of this, I'm missing just where the accelerators or early stage VCs have a meaningful role to play. The VCs look like the Drawback on a football team, a third person twiddling their thumbs in a two person canoe, a fifth wheel on a wagon, mammary glands on a boar hog, or someone who wants to buy a ticket on an airplane after it has already left the ground.

Second, I have to be reminded of the Mother Goose story _The Little Red Hen_ who found some grains of wheat but discovered that no one wanted to help her until she already had on her own built a bakery and had hot, fragrant loaves of bread and a line of eager customers and didn't need any help.

<comment><USER49> Sometimes people want to get to retirement money quicker than they could through organic growth. Or sometimes they want to push this idea to success/fail fast so that they can move onto the next project if it doesn't work out. Sometimes the organic lifestyle business approach is just boring.

The whole point of an "accelerator" is you do the same thing but faster. You get your business to where it would naturally be in five years time (whether that be success or failure), but you do it in one year. To some people that's valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> > So regardless of our startup's position on raising VC, we were obligating > ourselves to months of preparation for the pitch.

This is also a big one. Your time as a founder, especially in a new start-up is invaluable.

<comment><USER51> It's also invaluable to be able to stand in front of a group of people (whether VCs, the press, other startups) and be able to clearly communicate what your startup does.

Viewing Demo Day as a tool that's only useful if you're fundraising on the back of it is incredibly shortsighted.

<comment><USER50> That's not my point. There is no need for this to be mandatory. When company is ready they should be able to present at another demo day, etc.

I also think the founders know better where the time needs to be spend and at what stage they should focus on PR.

Cookie cutter approach does not work for everybody.

<comment><USER51> > I also think the founders know better where the time needs to be spend and > at what stage they should focus on PR.

If that were the case then accelerators wouldn't exist and the "national rate of failure for startups" wouldn't be 75 to 90%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Really Really good post. Look forward to the next post.

</comment><comment><USER53> The math is feverishly wrong, but that's not the point.

Techstars is a NETWORK. For us (Boulder 2013) it was a window into a world we only saw through occasional blog posts. Techstars is a NETWORK of crazy people who risk everything to start companies. Some of those companies are absolutely amazing, and we have access to their founders, we know them personally. We never even dreamt of such honor.

Before Techstars, we had access to our desks.

For first-time founders, Techstars is truly an opportunity of a lifetime.

If you get accepted, do it. Don't listen to these fools.

<comment><USER54> You can't call someone with a well reasoned argument a 'fool'. These guys explain very well the 'why not', and they aren't advising first time founders to turn TS down.</comment></comment>


Is "Google Me" Real? "I Won't Say", Says Eric Schmidt - <AUTHOR> http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100702/is-google-me-real-i-wont-say-says-eric-schmidt/ <comment><USER2> _But I wouldn't count Google Wave against them–best I can tell, that non- starter of a messaging product was truly a lab experiment conducted by a handful of engineers. If there really are a "are a large number of people" working on Google Me, as D'Angelo maintains, this could be interesting._

Because disruptive innovations on the web are always driven by large numbers of people, and _never_ by mere handfuls of engineers, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> Other than Brazil, Orkut is also huge in India.

<comment><AUTHOR> Was is more apt. Orkut has lost a HUGE share to FB</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice for troubles with Co-founder/CEO? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
Recently the relationship between my fellow co-founder (CEO) and myself (CTO) have hit very rough times. He asked me to take on the responsibility of managing the tech team. It was once just me, and we have grown to three. Now I have organized the Sprints and the development process, but he is constantly micromanaging me, and the rest of the team.
He is directly asking developers to work on small, meaningless projects during the sprint that cause us to lose time and focus. He even told me he knows it is not helping, but still refuses to stop doing it.
Additionally, he is now making all business decisions himself without even consulting with me. I own around 25% of the business and my stake is comparable with his. Before we would meet and discuss, and then come to a decision. I recently took a small vacation, and when I came back he had decided to throw out our revenue model. He also had been secretly raising a Series A and interviewing developers without my knowledge.
Once we raised our seed round, it seems that the power and thought of money has gone to his head. I am on the verge of quitting, but I have worked very hard and believe deeply in the product. I really am not sure what to do. I have confronted him multiple times, but he refuses to change or even communicate clearly.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I can provide further details if necessary. <comment><USER2> A. Sit down and go over rev model change / secret Series A. Let him speak 90% of the time. Then; revisit the roles/responsibilities you both signed on for. Reiterate the role of CEO; overseeing scale, high-level items and that it's imperative to stay focused on such, keeping tech-related accountability to you.

B. Communicate via all-hands more often, so his micromanaging efforts are blatantly obvious, allowing objectives to realign as a whole.

\---

I've been in a similar spot previously; heavy written email to a co-founder and all. Don't send it. Don't blow it up. Approach this from a tone of strategic tone and not emotional.</comment>


Show HN: Netflix, Prime, Twitch, etc. video speed controller add-on Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/speedify-netflix-prime-videos/ <comment><AUTHOR> This works on all websites, no exception. We do not track user's data.

Improvements: Include in-app speed control buttons and quality control buttons. Suggest if any more should be included.</comment>


"Good Enough" Architecture [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzEox3szeRc <comment><USER2> Nice talk. Somewhere in the middle I realized it was a room full of people and we don't do that anymore. How long will it be? Anyway, back to topic.

To hear him tell it, the situation is clear. And the path forward doesn't need discussion because analysis and recommendations are done. I shuddered at the insane 6 month change process story. Yet it's not that clear when you're in the middle of it. There are all these frustrations. People talk about rewriting. And a lot of things should have been completed yesterday. The tests are not written. Deployment relies on hacks you won't tell.

It helps a lot to have an outsider come in, look at the architecture, the processes, and just ask why. They say "look if you do this you'll have x, y, and z problems." And you realize that you indeed have x, y, and z. It's just always been that way. And often you understand you're stuck with it for the foreseeable future. Talking about architecture so that you know where you want to go, will allow taking incremental steps in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish I understood the distinction earlier on in my career between scalable solutions and doing things "the right way" from the perspective of a CompSci background versus focusing on product / business and having an architecture that's "good enough".

Great talk - this type of mentality should be required understanding for software engineering & computer science students.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Good Enough" is unfortunately something you learn after you destroyed a system. Everything makes sense when you are building the new architecture until someone else complains.

</comment><comment><USER5> To me good enough practically means almost perfect, because it's just matter of time you go broke with an imperfect architecture.

To me the relevant keywords for the futures programming environment and architecture: FRP, Cycle.js, Idris.

<comment><USER6> Just breathe through it, it's a phase.

Every good solution will be some kind of compromise, keeping it simple is more important than picking "perfect" tools.</comment></comment>


How coffee took over the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/michael-pollan-coffee/606805/ <comment><USER2> It's a shame an article like this doesn't tell the economic enslavement story. Ethiopia and other poor countries are unable to reap profits from the coffee they grow thanks to extremely restrictive WTO tariffs that essentially prevent them from processing it before they export it. This means they're forced to export raw beans for pennies, and they'll never really make much money doing so.

It turns out coffee growing countries only receive about 8% of the total coffee revenue annually and Germany is actually the fourth largest exporter of coffee in the world, despite never growing a single bean.

Schoolyard bullying, on a global scale.

<comment><USER3> > _Ethiopia and other poor countries are unable to reap profits from the > coffee they grow thanks to extremely restrictive WTO tariffs that > essentially prevent them from processing it before they export it. This > means they 're forced to export raw beans for pennies, and they'll never > really make much money doing so._

As someone who has roasted my own coffee for 20 years, I'm confused about what you're saying. What are these "raw beans" that the Ethopians are forced to export?

I do buy green coffee beans from Ethopia, and have about 25 pounds of Ethopian at home right now. Are these the raw beans you're talking about? I certainly wouldn't want to buy coffee that was _roasted_ in Ethopia; it would be awfully stale by the time it gets here.

I mostly buy dry process beans, occasionally wet process. I've just never heard the term "raw beans". Are you talking about raw unprocessed coffee cherry? I didn't know anyone exports those as is. I thought they would go bad in shipping, and no one would buy them. And the sheer bulk and weight of raw coffee cherry should make it more economical to do a dry process or wet process at the source, to separate the valuable beans from the husk.

I do buy a lot of my green beans from Sweet Maria's. They have a Farm Gate program where they work directly with coffee growers to make sure they get a fair price - generally more than the "Fair Trade" pricing.

If you can help educate me on what I'm missing here, I would appreciate it - thanks!

<comment><USER4> I also don't understand where this is going:

> coffee growing countries only receive about 8% of the total coffee revenue

If we look at the price of, for example, white flour from the supermarket, it should be immediately obvious that grain farmers are receiving some tiny fraction of the total net value of all baked-goods / pasta / pizza / etc sold annually.

It's not immediately obvious that this is bad or unfair.

<comment><USER5> Yes it's misleading, I suspect purposefully. The cost of green unroasted coffee cannot be compared with "global coffee revenue" ... roasting makes coffee lose 30%, then you add packaging, shipping, labor to distribute ... finally the cost of coffee cup adds in service, rent and more ... you buy a kilo of green arabica for $4 after roasting and shipping you're on $8 ... so sell a cup in a cafe let's say you make 20-100x per kilo yet cafes are still the thinnest margin business and most go bankrupt.

It's equivalent to saying the oil producing companies only get x% of global car sales. Simply, ridiculous statement.

<comment><USER6> > I suspect purposefully

Please don't do that here. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Your comment would be just fine without that bit (and the final bit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That was a good read. There's an interesting discussion (and article) for those who prefer tea over coffee :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16129454)

<comment><USER8> Just started drinking tea with freshly distilled water. So much smoother taste! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great video on the history of Coffee in Ethiopia, and how it was subsequently spread throughout the world: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Uj6RPbUXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Uj6RPbUXQ)

</comment><comment><USER10> How common are "coffee breaks" still in businesses? I've never worked for a company with mandatory breaks (coffee or otherwise), but maybe that is because I am engaged in more mental that physical labor?

Ironically, my company does have a number of fitness facilities on campus and it is entirely kosher to take an hour plus break each day to workout, i.e., engage in physical labor.

<comment><USER11> A very common ritual in Sweden is the activity "Fika" which is essential time to drink strong coffee and eat cake at work. Usuall mid morning. Said with tongue in cheek: it's mandatory.

<comment><USER12> In Finland too. The ironic thing is that most companies worldwide would probably claim that coffee breaks help employees share experience and news of what is going on, but in my experience in Finland, no one actually talks to each other during the coffee break. Everyone just enters, _maybe_ nods in greeting to their coworkers, grabs their coffee, drinks it in silence, and then leaves.

<comment><USER13> Aren't Finns famous for avoiding small talk?

<comment><USER9> Sounds like I'm moving to Finland!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Worth repeating from the bottom of the article:

"Climate scientists estimate that at least half of the acreage now producing coffee—and an even greater proportion in Latin America—will be unable to support the plant by 2050, making coffee one of the crops most immediately endangered by climate change."

<comment><USER15> Would any acreage _not_ now producing coffee be newly-able to support the plant due to climate change?

<comment><USER16> One of the major factors in growing high quality coffee is altitude. Coffee beans grown higher altitudes are harder and denser because they have more sugar. The coffee cherries have taken longer to ripen because the soil is less rich and there's more drainage at altitude. Longer ripening times means more sugar and more flavour compounds.

If climate change makes these (already harsh) mountainous regions indispensable to the coffee shrubs, then we may be forced to grow coffee in lowland regions where the quality will not be as good.

<comment><USER17> It seems that they are asking whether, due to global warming, some other countries much further north may be able to grow coffee at the appropriate height (while it is now impossible because they are too cold). For instance, in advanced stages of global warming it may be possible to grow coffee in northern Italy.

<comment><USER18> The US has a lot of mountains too in various different climates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think coffee requires more skills/equipment (cost) than tea. It's much harder to create good coffee than good tea.

<comment><USER20> Cezve and grinder? That's not a costly equipment.

<comment><USER21> If you want consistency that grinder is going to cost a lot. There are diminishing returns and $60 grinder will get you 80% of the way. But going from 80% to 99% you're looking at a price increase of about $1800. You're obviously not going to buy that equipment for your home though.

<comment><USER22> Who are you kidding? Of course we are. I have a $2000 grinder on the way.

Edit: I don't buy that a $60 dollar grinder will get you 80% of the way. The output of such cheap grinders that I have seen have very poor consistency. You're looking at low hundreds to get anything decent and even then you will have very clear differences when matched against a top end grinder.

<comment><USER21> On the continuum from preground coffee to cafe quality pour over, a $60 wilfa burr griner will get you 80% in my opinion. You'll have days when the brew comes out very well, some days it's disappointing. The biggest advantage when going from no grinder to cheap grinder is that you can buy quality beans rather than supermarket coffee and that time from grinding to brewing is minimized, so you lose less flavour. For me, that's 80% of the value for 20% of the effort/money.

<comment><USER22> Ah, ok sure. I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If anyone is looking for an interesting exploration of coffees history across the globe the book The Devil's Cup by Stewart Allen is a light hearted travelogue that digs into its history and impact on cultures across the centuries.

<comment><USER24> -And, while taking a break from that (excellent, I might add) book, you could do worse - a lot worse - than picking up Sebastião Salgado's "Scent of a dream", a photographic tour de force documenting how coffee is grown, processed and enjoyed around the world.

Heck, you could do a lot worse than picking up _anything_ by Salgado...

<comment><USER23> Thank you so much for this recommendation!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Idly wondering, did Coffee really took over the world, or was it really just Caffeine.

</comment><comment><USER26> Fun fact: in Brazil, "breakfast" is usually called "morning coffee" (café da manhã)

<comment><USER27> "breakfast" in Turkish is "kahvaltı" comes from words for after coffee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Caffeine is unquestionably a drug. While you can even give caffeine freely to kids, use of mostly all other substances may even cause death penalty in some countries. Pure caffeine powder is actually very dangerous, even in small quantities like 1000 milligrams.

"That chemical of course is caffeine, which is now the world's most popular psychoactive drug, used daily by 80 percent of humanity. (It is the only such drug we routinely give to our children, in the form of soda.)"

<comment><USER29> However, it's not addictive like many other drugs. Sure you'll suffer withdrawal for a day or too with some bad migraines, but afterward you're off it. I just make sure if I'm gonna miss a day to pack some aspirin to combat the headache.

<comment><USER30> Modern addiction specialists don't fetishize physical addiction the way many lay people do. What really characterizes "addiction" is problematic usage, i.e. continued use in the face of adverse consequences. Most (all?) caffeine users do not suffer adverse behavioral or physical consequences. That's really the distinction that matters.

<comment><USER31> Stimulants, including caffeine, cause irritability among other bad side- effects.

The only reason it's not characterized by these "modern addiction specialists", whatever that is, is because of both $$$ and how socially acceptable it is.

Since you can get your caffeine fix in anyway for really cheap (or not so cheap if you want) and you can drink it at work without any weird looks it doesn't destroy your social life.

Just because it doesn't destroy your social life doesn't mean it's not addictive, but I guess that's just the layman in me.

<comment><USER30> > _The only reason it 's not characterized by these "modern addiction > specialists", whatever that is_

As a sort of meta point, every time I use the phrase "modern addiction specialist" in a thread somebody responds expressing skepticism that such a thing exists or that the definition of addiction I've provided reflects consensus opinion. This is...weird. The American Psychiatric Association leads their "What is Addiction?" page with the following text:

 _" Addiction is a complex condition, a brain disease that is manifested by compulsive substance use despite harmful consequence."_

[https://www.psychiatry.org/patients- families/addiction/what-...](https://www.psychiatry.org/patients- families/addiction/what-is-addiction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not enough uses of the word capitalism for my taste.

</comment><comment><USER33> > the government launched a program of land privatization, forcing the Indians > to either move to more marginal lands or find work on the new coffee > plantations.

Government forcing people off their own lands is nationalization, which is literally the opposite of privatization.

<comment><USER29> It's more like the land cosolidation act Britain passed in the 1800s. The peasant holdings making subsistence were forced out or became laborers. The "privatization" is where a business takes over.

It's better on a production level simply because the focus is for people to exclusively work on that as opposed to people living the complex life of a farmer. Instead of 100 peasants being marginal jack of all trades, you have maybe 50 be somewhat better at a select few tasks.</comment></comment>


Warrant Canary – Purism - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/warrant-canary/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm... Those "July 1st" canaries weren't there when I submitted this (at around 2019-07-02T07:00Z).

I suppose they're on US Pacific Time and cut it fine on the deadline.</comment>


Quantopian's algorithmic trading platform now accepts outside data sets - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/02/want-to-take-on-wall-street-quantopians-algorithmic-trading-platform-now-accepts-outside-data-sets/

<comment><USER2> Just slightly off-topic, but the quant.ly forum is so dead, and I think the Quantopian guys might chime in here.

I started taking the Finance Engineering class on Coursera, and one of the things that did not help me was their reliance of Excel as a way to solve most of the exercises in the problem sets. They even have part of the lectures dedicated to "how to use Excel for X". For solving the problem sets, they mention Matlab, but that's about it. Suffice it to say, with my refusal to buy a license of Excel and LibreOffice not having the requested features, I now found myself having to learn the theory and writing a bunch of small pieces of ad-hoc code to re-implement the formulas. And no, I could not find an easy to use constraint solver, in either Python or Octave.

So my task of "learn about Mean Variance Optimization" also included "learn and re-implement a constraint solver in NumPy", and the first lesson I'm actually taking away from this class is "forget about all and any decent tooling if you want to work in Finance."

There was another field of work where I experienced something like that, which is bioinformatics. Not to that degree, though. There is still way too much spreadsheet-emailing going on to my taste, but it was recognized as far from ideal. So at the lab there was a big push to adopt Galaxy as part of everyone's workflow. I no longer work over there, but I'm sure that the ad- hoc, sloppy pieces of R and Python code are being replaced by better integrated and more efficient Galaxy tools.

Going back to Quantopian... am I too far off to wish that it could become the "Galaxy for Quants _and finance students_ "? Am I too much of a finance n00b to think that it makes sense to have something like Galaxy, but with tools focused on quantitative analysis? Is there a market in developing only these tools, instead of focusing on trading itself?

Or maybe this is _exactly_ what these guys want to do, but it's just that they are too early in the development to tell? If so, I'm not exactly looking for work, but if you need a seasoned Python developer with experience in Galaxy and an interest in finance, we should talk...

<comment><USER3> 1\. Constrained optimization ("solving") is a very well studied, deep field. I assure you that optimization tools exist in dozens of languages, not just excel. Perhaps you were searching the wrong corner of google? What are you looking for specifically?

2\. The folks doing portfolio optimization are generally finance geeks first, and math geeks second (if at all). Like you, they do not want to implement everything themselves and thus are born libraries like Quantlib[1], which has interfaces to "C#, Objective Caml, Java, Perl, Python, GNU R, Ruby, and Scheme" with other bindings on the way or hacked by someone already. This is not me endorsing qlib, but it is certainly a common choice.

3\. There is a market for finance tooling, and there are many smart people rolling around in it as we speak. For example, take a look at rapidquant[2] from (formerly?) LambdaFoundry.

4\. It can be tough to find a tool that suits you out of the box, but they do exist. My personal preference is python, but at the moment R and C++ win in terms of financial library support. (hint: rpy2)

[1] <http://quantlib.org/index.shtml> [2] <http://www.rapidquant.com/>

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your response. I think the key word about the constraint solver part is "easy to use". I did find quantlib, but in my specific case I was just looking for an immediate substitute to Excel. Learning how to do minimally productive work with quantlib seemed to be a task to take longer than my budgeted time of 1.5 hours/day for the Coursera class.

I do plan on spending some more time setting up an environment with quantlib and ipython notebook. But when I was talking about tooling, perhaps I misused the term. I was thinking in finer-grained things. For instance, there is no "tool" that would just take a table of assets and the covariance matrix to give you the portfolio optimization. In a system like Galaxy, you can develop a "tool" that does _exactly that_ and make that available to researchers. They can then incorporate it to their workflow, get the output and put in the workflow pipeline for other "tools", etc, etc. I haven't seen anything like that for finance.

<comment><USER3> Yeah there is some startup time required to get to know the tools. In my experience it's worth it, though. I've seen some absolutely mind boggling spreadsheets trying to do what is a couple of lines of work with numpy/pandas. Spreadsheets are dead simple, but get unwieldy very quickly as your data & problem become more complex.

I suppose you're right, Quantopian could turn into a galaxy-like tool, but I think there is a great deal of experimentation that goes on in finance that doesn't fit into the pipeline model very well. As well, a lot of the fitting routines run in finance are quite computationally intensive and wouldn't really work on a framework like quantopian. For example, good luck hooking your risk model into a recurrent neural network on quantopian. That isn't to say that bioinf. is not computationally bound, of course it is, but a lot of what's done is more oriented to data pipelines as opposed to fancy computations (correct me if I'm wrong), which is why a thing like Galaxy fits so well.

<comment><USER2> Oh, genomics can be very demanding in their computating power requirements. We had a few applications with the running time reported in days/weeks.

But still... with all the talk about cloud computing and PaaS, this is the only real use-case where I see a benefit in tying up a platform to something like EC2. In the case of Galaxy, the developers provided an AMI that you could deploy and use your own account. For the Quantopian case, one of their services could be exactly in doing the managing and scaling of these tools. So, the neural network would be a tool that you'd have access to, and you would define how much power should be allocated when running it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good work! This is an important step. For some people not being able to use their CRSP data (or whatever) is simply a deal-breaker. As someone who once implemented most of the bits that make up the quantopian functionality, I can certainly appreciate the effort you folks are putting in.

I believe it's been mentioned a few times now, but have to agree that risk metrics should be pretty high on your priority list. Sharpe/sortino/omega/etc. are great to have, but you really need to be able to build and experiment with variance models. As in all science, a number doesn't mean much without an error estimate :-) GARCH models are pretty popular these days, and they are fairly non-trivial to implement correctly (especially in their vectorized form), particularly for people new to the field.

Now for the most part this stuff _can_ be implemented by the users in their algos, but it's often a non-starter when it comes to the more complex stuff like vector autoregressive processes, bootstrap analysis or sane fitting routines.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's an example of fetcher in action: <https://www.quantopian.com/posts/new- feature-fetcher>

<comment><USER5> Some additional details about Fetcher: <https://www.quantopian.com/help> (You will need to scroll down to the Fetcher section -- couldn't find anchor links)

<comment><USER4> here you are: <https://www.quantopian.com/help#overview-fetcher>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool!

Now add risk management. It's not sexy, but it is table stakes.</comment>


Charles Leadbeater: Cloud Culture - The Promise and the Threat"   - <AUTHOR> http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/leadbeater10/leadbeater10_index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> People who like this may also like this Nov 2009 edge.org article: [http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter09/gelernter09_inde...](http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter09/gelernter09_index.html)</comment>


Why Spam Cannot be Stopped - <AUTHOR> http://www.trevorblackwell.com/whyspamcannotbestopped.html <comment><USER2> There will be virus free computers within 5 years. Widespread adoption will happen within 10.

Malware takes advantage of the fact that security architectures are over 30 years out of date. Someday the OS in a computer will be as invisible to the average user as the preamplifier in a home theater sound system. We should have some modern security features like capabilities by then.

I don't see why one couldn't have an OS that consisted entirely of a web browser, and absolutely nothing else visible to the user. System prefs would just be the pages accessible under "system:" If that browser was like Google Chrome, then everything could be sandboxed. (No web plugins or ActiveX. In fact, there could easily be no way for any executable code to get on the box other than Javascript, which would be subject to the sandboxing.)

In any case, spam hardly bothers me at all. I rarely see it. When I do, it's not a hassle. My problem is with information overload from legitimate sources. _That_ is getting to be a problem!

</comment><comment><USER3> We should convert our society from the current system of easily transferable electronic money to one based on large heavy cinder blocks as currency. No longer will a spammer be able to access your bank account electronically and siphon off your funds. You will have a large cave or other storage area where you accumulate your cinder blocks.

It could work! See "Burkina Faso" <http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso> Currency: Giant Stone Wheels, Bananas

I bet they didn't have any email spam.

</comment><comment><USER4> As long as crime pays, there will be criminals.</comment>


20 Ways Facebook Can Make Billions - <AUTHOR> http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/01/facebook-billion-dollars/

<comment><USER2> In summary:

\- Become better at advertising

\- Sell completely unrelated crap (water, gear, hardware, phone), because they've got a good brand and advertising platform

\- Charge users and developers, "somehow" (great advise, thank you!)

\- Sell their data (anonymously, though)

\- Advertise more (pretty contrary to the claim that they have a brilliant, under-utilized advertising platform)

\- Be something else (corporate intranet, dev. payment platform, eBay, Skype, Second Life (WTF?!), Online bank, cloud storage, Tor network, physical loyalty card)

Basically: There is no Facebook business model, besides the one they already figured out (advertising) and can't make work, and the one about selling their data, that users had a strong antipathy of (beacon).

Becoming a corporate intranet is a little viable, but it doesn't really leverage the Facebook network. A corporate intranet doesn't need the network effect that is really the cores of Facebook. They have Active Directory.

<comment><USER3> Agreed that charging developers is truly stupid and charging your basic user is close, but developing a subscription model for advanced services makes sense. For example, an all you can eat music service. If you view "be something else" as brand extension or premium services, then it makes sense. Not all of the suggestions are worthwhile, agreed. Online bank, no, but applications that directly leverage facebook itself, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most obvious way to monetise facebook is to me some kind of job advertising platform. They have all this data on people, like whether they're students, where and studying what, etc. Companies looking to recruit could buy job ad placements based on those criteria. (e.g. show this job to final-year CompSci BSc students at Cambridge and Oxford) The more specific and popular, the more expensive.

I suppose it's possible that they've explored it but there isn't a market for this. I guess with the job market right now might not be the best time for that kind of feature - on the other hand there are probably lots of users who would use it.

<comment><USER5> See something like this makes sense for LinkedIn, who unless I am mistaken is already doing it well and making money off it. If you take a look at the Facebook Marketplace, you will find it is pretty diluted with spam and other junk listings (Last time I checked this was 6 months ago so I may be wrong now.)

If you look at who's using Facebook, most of them are using it to play games and spread PIRATE BOOTY not search for jobs. Although there is a small subset of users who would use it, I don't think it would be enough to monetize.

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends how small the subset is. They have ~150 million users and should break 200 million this year. Several services serving small subsets could be enough to make a profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Several of the suggestions are very low-margin activities; Facebook might not be able to earn serious money from those even with improbably huge revenues. But Facebook does have a capacity to gather an astounding amount of data about each user, and it would be missing an opportunity not to find some way to monetize that. The downside risk, of course, is that if Facebook finds a way to get money from users' willingness to share personal information that they may become less willing. Online social networks appear to have huge elasticity of participation depending on how the business model and thus culture of the nework changes.</comment>


Rare half-male, half-female cardinal spotted in Pennsylvania - shaki-dora https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/01/half-male-half-female-cardinal-pennsylvania/ <comment><AUTHOR> What does pope say to that?</comment>


I Tried to Virtually Stalk Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexkras.com/i-tried-to-virtually-stalk-mark-zuckerberg/ <comment><USER2> If I had the resources zuckerberg has, and the access to information and data that he does, my posts would be optimized to show asynchronously by region, and to show first in the region most likely to respond positively to my post. That way it sets a tone of positivity for the rest of the commenters. At least in theory.

<comment><USER3> forget regions. they can show it to positively-disposed individuals.

<comment><USER4> That's what newsfeed algorithm is doing with all the facebook posts

<comment><USER5> No, it is optimizing for engagement (to be like a drug), not for positiveness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice write up! I would assume in a large distributed back-end like facebook that notifications are not sent immediately and definitely not sent to everyone at the same time. This probably means that it is impossible to rely on them to get a first post comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I am sure you are right.

It did seem like some people were able to compose well thought out responses in a very short time. Which most likely was due to them getting a head start thanks to an advanced notification.

<comment><USER7> Or they have a better automated system...

<comment><AUTHOR> I highly doubt it. At least the meaningful ones that I saw. If they have automated systems that good, they probably would be very rich by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While the analysis was interesting, I can't help but wonder why so many people write pointless comments to what is probably some marketing person impersonating Mark.

<comment><USER9> It's a ego boost. Nothing more. You associate yourself with a famous person. It feels good. Even if it is totally pointless. Maybe a friend notices. And sometimes your comment gets many likes, but then you're really lucky.

<comment><USER10> So it's entirely pointless then. Good to know.

<comment><USER11> There's a pretty big difference between being dismissive and being right.

<comment><USER10> Fair comment. My comment was snarky, I apologise for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would probably go with auto-reply as soon as he post something, receive the text message and then edit the reply to something meaningful. Fun read! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, great idea. I did not think of that :)

<comment><USER13> well, are you going to try it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably not, I am pretty convinced at this point that Mark ignores those comments anyway.

<comment><USER14> Well, I know this wasn't your intention, but you could always "sell" that top spot and edit in the content from a top marketer, keeping it subtle enough that it looks legit.

Also, Mark is just one person. Imagine if you opened this script up for use targeting the fans of any celebrity / influencer. Companies would be willing to pay a LOT of money to be able to reach those audiences.

Can't believe I'm advocating comment spam, but sometimes the opportunities jump out at me. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a valid point, but I personally wouldn't want to build a business build on spamming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is why I love this industry. He started with a somewhat "bad" idea- even an automated reply would have a really hard chance being the first comment. But, he was able to experiment and tweak the idea to do something pretty cool with his work while learning. Well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is an amazing amount of Interesting™ stuff you can do with social media. I've been actively looking for and following people in the "social media influencer" game to see just how they pull it off (things like getting apps to the top of the app store, building gigantic and legit Twitter and Instagram accounts, etc.)

On this particular story, doesn't Facebook let you create notifications in any way? I get instant notifications from certain best friends for some reason. Maybe you could create a burner FB account and make Zuckerberg the only friend. I'd also consider trying this on someone like Robert Scoble or a tech journalist - someone who has a gigantic following, but relatively low comment velocity.

<comment><USER17> This article is interesting (there a discussion on HN somewhere): [http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an- electi...](http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/)

Anecdotally, through ~2009/11 you could use keyword density as a significant ranking variable on the Google Play store. I was amazed when I discovered as web SEO had long left this behind. I had an app coming up 3rd in searches for things like FB and YT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love seeing someone using selenium and I had no idea you could use anything else than the Chrome driver, what's a headless browser?! I automated whole sections of my old Sales Rep job with Selenium it was so awesome

<comment><USER19> Care to share further what you automated?

<comment><USER18> I was working a sales development type role, which involved some pretty fierce competition to "claim" inbound leads (contact form submissions basically) before anyone else did. Also there were a series of clicks and repetitive tasks you had to perform on each of these leads after you claimed it.

So I automated getting a list of leads, opening them in multiple tabs and sequentially performing all the repetitive tasks so when I eye balled them, they were at the right point in the process. I reckon I save myself about 1.5 hours per day doing this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm really curious why browsers can't handle 18mb of comment data.

I've observed the problem myself when trying to load up old fb conversations to search for some detail I knew was there.

What's 18mb when my machine has 12gb ram?

<comment><USER21> I doubt it's the data itself that your browser is struggling with. It's more likely the parsing of the comment content, generation of 20,000 templates, keeping track of probably a quarter million DOM nodes, listening to a hundred thousand events, and making sure _all_ of that is layed out and aligned sensibly in real-time that your computer struggles with.

<comment><USER20> Here's hoping it's only one event as opposed to a hundred thousand, at the very least.

In jQuery, for instance, you'd do something like

$(parentOfComments).on('eventName', '.commentClass', function() { //dostuff });

The event propagates up to the body or whatever parent element you use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I Tried to Virtually Stalk Mark Zuckerberg

Isn't this just called "following"?

<comment><USER23> At first I also thought that stalking would be summarising several sources to find his physical location or something. So like you I was also initially a bit disappointed by the non-mallace in his approach.

But given his goal of "becoming a friend" by automatic following Mark, I ended up concluding that stalking wasn't hyperbole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't tell if saying 'Mark Zuckerberg – the Bill Gates of our time' was a joke or not. I mean, isn't Gates very much still going strong? I get the analogy I suppose, but doesn't that imply Gates is all washed up?

<comment><USER25> We're just getting old my friend. There are kids programming right now that were born after 9/11.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I thought it seemed odd that Python supported the AND operator on lists, but it doesn't.

You do need to convert to a set first, e.g.

      [1,2,3] & [1,2]

gives a TypeError, while

      set([1,2,3]) & set([1,2])

gives set([1,2]) as expected.

<comment><USER27> You can also write sets in a more compact notation in python as:

        {1,2,3} & {1,2}

Which gives {1,2} as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great! You should also post it on /r/Dataisbeautiful to get more insight. Kudos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Already did, thank you though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> can you figure out a posting schedule for this Mark Zuckerberg guy, maybe there are certain times he is more likely to post. Then you can increase your rate of monitoring during those times, without such a high chance of being labelled a spammer by Facebook?

<comment><USER30> It takes a while for a Facebook post to processed. When posted it shows up in the user's news stream. However, once the page is refreshed it might be a few minutes before the post is seen again. I watched a video where some developers were talking about the problems with getting feedback to the posting user and pushing the posts to different server farms around the world. A lot of posts take minutes to propagate.

<comment><USER9> That would mean that you should use vpn and get an American IP address, close to a FB datacenter.

<comment><USER30> To hack Facebook maybe first we need to understand how they do things.[1]

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook- engineering/scaling-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook- engineering/scaling-out/23844338919/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looking at the graph of comment text, it's remarkable how many people are convinced that Mark Zuckerberg should be giving them money for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER32> I agree that it was difficult parsing data on a post about a specific topic, Christmas.

However, most comments will be in reply to a post which usually has a central theme.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Looking back though, it might have been more funto pick a more controversial subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Enjoyed the article. For once, this article showed some flaws in the original process/idea, and showed very nicely how an original seed idea turned into something different, and more involved/interesting.

Clearly a lot of work and sweat went into getting the results you did, and the final output looks very polished.

Congrats for having the courage to post this.

</comment><comment><USER34> does Mark respond to any of the posts? if so, what kind. Do some types of posts always generate more "buzz" among other commenters? Those are some of the questions that would be interesting to answer.

In this case the process was far more interesting than the findings, thanks for citing the book and videos.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't remember seeing any responses in my data set. I think I have seen him respond to comments before, hence where I got my inspiration.

I also know that he has people who actually are connected to him (he friended them back) and their comments appear to show up differently from the regular followers.

He does reply to those comments a lot more, intensifying the illusion that if you write to him, he will read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Lovely write-up, made me smile. I'll be reading your other posts on related subjects.

Great to read a walk through of a "directed trial and error" approach. Out of curiosity, how did you select NLTK and a graphing approach? Did you consider other techniques for ploughing through the data?

</comment><comment><USER36> It would just be much easier to use the Facebook graph api, there is an official Python module and is well documented, and would be less likely to hit rate limits or other blocks - ironically that was one of the reasons that the author used scraping instead of the api.

<comment><USER37> Incidentally, the Graph API wouldn't work for _this use case_ , since the Graph API will not let you get any data from users unless that user is authorized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Inspiring use of scraping through social media - just what I was looking for as my next project.

</comment><comment><USER39> Alex, where's my money $4.5m? :) Nice to read an article with a smile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There is a point at which social becomes anti-social, even online.

</comment><comment><USER41> Cool experiment!

BNtw. is there any similarity measure that can be calculated with less complexity? (e.g. without the need to compare every pair of comments?)

</comment><comment><USER42> What a fun project, thanks for the share!

</comment><comment><USER43> Awesome work, love the concept :)

</comment><comment><USER44> Could you reply to his post by SMS?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sure I could, but I generally have a fast internet connection, so it wouldn't be any faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is all so sad. WTF!

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-hope-senpai-will-notice- me](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-hope-senpai-will-notice-me)

</comment><comment><USER46> Mark is not bill! Mark got everything from mommy and daddy! Bill started in his garage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bill Gates was also from an affluent family, which among other things helped him to log a lot of hours on a computer at the time when it was not available to the masses.

I think there is some luck at play for both of them. But I also think they deserve credit for their accomplishments.

<comment><USER47> I give both of them credit for their successful businesses. It's the same credit I give to Donald Trump. They are all fine businessmen. In my world, I want moral businessmen.

They all made a lot of money.

There's a part of me that cringes whenever Gate's talks about giving away his money. Yes, he made the money legally. We paid for his philanthropy? (To the Gate's, and his wife's non-profit; stop giving third world farmers Monsanto seeds. They are only getting one crop. Listen to Buffett's son.)

As to Mark. Yes he's a fine businessman. I don't think he has had an original thought since he stole the idea from the twins. I've never worshiped, nor liked that guy. I take that back--loved the tee shirts, and jeans. Honestly-- I've never understood the whole tie thing.

And to be completely honest; I will love the internet again when/if FB is displaced by a the next big, new, wiz bang app. I am really tired of FB.

Go ahead call me a Troll. Call me a Hater. I like a lot of Founders, and their companies. I have never liked these two.

<comment><USER48> Who are some of the lesser-known founders that you do like, out of curiosity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> If Facebook is so important to you, why not just get the necessary skills for the interview and join the company?

<comment><USER50> I think the article is very tongue in cheek! I'm pretty sure the author was trying to freak Mark out; I'm not certain this work would help to get him a job at Facebook either!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, spot on.</comment></comment></comment>