Bump Technologies (YC S09): The Quest To Destroy The Business Card - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/08/y-combinator-endorses-bump-technologies-in-the-quest-to-destroy-the-business-card/

<comment><USER2> I lost my iPhone, so I can't use this, so here's my question: if I bump phones with someone, does their information go into my Address Book?

You have to earn your way into my Address Book on my phone by getting drunk with me or being related by blood (seriously, no exceptions - same as with Facebook).

Business card hate is way overblown; there's a nice natural segregation and there's enough room to write notes for follow-ups. I mean, business cards are a _solution_ to the problem of exchanging information amongst casual acquaintences; they're not a problem _themselves_. I think this is where "business card replacements" (and we've had them since the Palm Pilot days) fail.

<comment><USER3> _You have to earn your way into my Address Book on my phone by getting drunk with me or being related by blood (seriously, no exceptions - same as with Facebook)._

You might see your life enriched a whole lot IF you just removed that law of yours. I would go a step further and say, dedicate an afternoon a month just to go through your cell phone contacts and say hell to everyone you don't remember speaking to recently.

No man is an island, unless he is surrounded by the vomit of his drinking buddies and cousins ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good app, but I doubt it'll gain traction in the business world. The business cards are too ingrained into our society.

Its like the don't shake hands techcrunch post, I'm not going to stop shaking hands, just because techcrunch thinks its an outdated method of greeting people.

<comment><USER5> Biz cards are a pain in the butt:

1) You've got to design and pay to print them. If titles or contact info changes, that's a re-print. The cost matters a lot particularly to the SoHo market.

2) You've got to carry them around with you everywhere to hand out. Usually this is in a metal case that's kinda cumbersome in a pocket shared with an iPhone/BlackBerry already.

3) When someone hands you one, you've gotta stick it in your pocket and not lose it.

4) After you bring them to your office, you need to file them somehow (scan them, manually enter them into Outlook/whatever).

I've seen people at hedge funds buy expensive scanners which plug into Outlook and let you scan this stuff in. It does OCR on the cards and auto-creates contacts for you. The scanners are around $200/each, plug into your desktop, and are a tad annoying to install and config. The cards get tossed into the trash the moment it's in Outlook.

If you don't buy a scanner for every employee, that's time wasted while they type said card info into Outlook.

While something like this won't "kill" business cards in the business world, it'll offer a nice alternative.

Here's an idea for an iPhone App that'll let someone with an iPhone do-away with biz cards all together: A scanner app using the iPhone camera. Take a snapshot* of someone's biz card, OCR it, and bam, it's in your contacts. Easier said than done, of course. But it eliminates steps 3 and 4 above, making your life easier when dealing with "legacy" business cards. :)

*Yeah, yeah, we all know how good the iPhone camera is at close-ups. Maybe the next revision? ;)

<comment><USER6> the video shows it takes about 15 seconds to launch the app, tap the button, and exchange data. now add in time to pull your phone out and unlock it (possibly with a pin). i just timed myself and it took 10 seconds to take the phone out of my pocket, slide the unlock bar, put in my pin, push the home button to get out of the last app i was in, and scroll to the home screen of apps.

so 25 seconds may not seem like a long time, but realistically, standing in front of someone for 25 seconds doing nothing is pretty awkward. really, try it. go up to someone and stand there counting to 25 in your head. now consider doing that in front of someone you don't really know (otherwise why would you be exchanging information?)

now consider pulling a business card out of that same pocket and handing it to the person. they can say thanks and put it in their pocket without even looking at it, then process it later.

<comment><USER7> Business cards are a pain if you ever want to use the information. Most people don't type them up so if you ever need the information you have to scramble to find the card so you can call/email the person. Once you factor in the time it takes to store the information on a business card Bump is more competitive time wise (but of course I am biased).

<comment><USER8> At most of the business mixers that I've gone to people later add the contacts to LinkedIn, at which point they can grab a vCard if they need to import it elsewhere. It might be worth looking into the LinkedIn API to see if you can try to get a similar workflow with Bump.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could you make the process any more complicated? I hear there's this thing called Bluetooth and all you have to do is activate it and zap the phone directly with it. Why communicate with the "cloud" at all?

<comment><USER7> Bluetooth is surprisingly difficult to get working between different phones. When phones actually do recognize each other it takes a long time to pair. Once pairing is completed (even between iPhones this takes ~45 when it works) transfers speeds are fast. Communicating with our server in the cloud is a compromise, but it eliminates the cross-platform compatability and pairing problems of Bluetooth.

<comment><USER9> As someone else noted, you're still waiting around for ~25 seconds with Bump. That's an incremental improvement and users may be slightly more forgiving of the time.

Have you looked into Bonjour?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How well does this scale?

They sortof glossed over the ninjitsu that is being used to link the two "bumps" together. My guess is that (since internet access is required), it syncs a clock within the bump application to the bump server, then looks for phones that were "bumped" at the same time.

I'm sure I'm wrong, and would love to hear of other ways that this is happening.

If I'm not, how does this scale up to the millions or hundreds of millions of users that it would require to actually _replace_ the business card (which is what it sounds like it wants to do).

Even if it isn't at millions, how well does it function at events where lots and lots of people are "bumping" (clever name, I have already verbed it)?

Finally...and this is what would--to me--kill it: the blackberry does not have an accelerometer. :(

<comment><USER11> I'd imagine they also do some geolocation, so it's two users who bumped at the same time _and same place_. Dunno how accurate a location they can get, but unless it's a really crowded mixer, this should probably enough to uniquely ID people. It also suggests some interesting features, eg. the software could record when & where you met somebody, and could suggest other people who were present at the time.

<comment><USER10> That was my guess as well...geolocation, I mean.

A major problem, to me, would be that the GPS in your phone doesn't usually work so well when it is buried deep in a hotel conference center...

I'm sure that the app devs thought of this stuff, I just like trying to mentally work through it myself as well...

<comment> a-priori I think the time stamp is more important for matching devices. In fact, theoretically, with an accurate enough time stamp you wouldn't need a location to match the devices virtually all the time.

Another idea I had would be to tell the users to knock the devices together twice. That way, you would have another dimension for matching devices: the interval between the knocks should be the same, and that doesn't depend on the clocks being synchronized on the two devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Business cards are about more than data in many parts of the world. Japan, for example.

<comment><USER5> You sparked my curiosity. What do they do in Japan with them?

<comment><USER12> It's not so much what they do with them, although there is more ritual associated with giving and receiving them (and they look aghast at Americans who wing their own cards across a conference table).

Basically, they believe that a business card is an extension of the person and should be treated with a great deal of respect. This does result in subtle things like making sure to put their business card on a notebook or leather holder in front of you during meetings (so it doesn't directly touch the table).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somehow I think the twitter generation will overstep the business card by miles.

The last time I was at a conference(in Bangalore), which is miles away from the hustle bustle of Silicon valley, insted of exchanging business cards people were just exchanging twitter ids.

I think this is cool to show to your friends, etc. But when it comes to exchanging business contact, twitter has an upper hand.

</comment><comment><USER14> I _beg_ all YC alumni to use Bump.

The last YC meet-up was great, but nobody had biz cards (I took pics with my iPhone instead).

Prolly one of the funnest/coolest useful apps I've seen come through YC. I'd love to see massive mainstream adoption.

<comment><USER15> Are YC alumni really the target audience? An iPhone with service costs about 20,000 ramen packets...

</comment></comment><comment> a-priori After reading this, I just ordered a batch of business cards. Is that telling? :)

</comment><comment><USER16> So why is the bump necessary, vs just both people turning the app on and being in proximity to each other? Or is that just the gimmick?

<comment><USER5> Look at the FAQ: <http://www.bumptechnologies.com/faq.phtml>

Sounds like they're matching the timing and "type" or "intensity" of the bump using the accelerometers. Both phones send this data to their cloud server, the server is able to match the pair (unique timing of the bump, unique intensity, etc...), and then it transfers the contact data.

<comment><USER17> That makes sense; the odds of bumping at the same place, at the same time, and with similar enough motion vectors _should_ be small enough to give uniqueness.

That said, every phone I've ever owned in Japan has a little IR port, and you can send your contact info across very easily, even between different carriers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ok, we've pointed out a lot of the flaws with a system like this. But what if there were advantages beyond just 'exchanging data'?

One drawback to the business card is that it is very passive. I just cleaned out piles of business cards and threw them away. However, a priceless one or two were very handy. I wished I had kept track of them better.

What if, when I 'bump' someone, it also lists all the people we have in common through linkedin and facebook? It could also tell me all the other people at the function who I have previously 'bumped'. (or are 1 or 2 degrees from me) Now I went from a basic 'hi how are you, what do you do' conversation to bonding over a common associate.

I can only assume there is more to this than basic contact exchange functionality. It's gotta have more of a pull that their working on for Bump 2.0. (points if they name the extra functionality 'grind')

(maybe there is a dating element to it as well?)

</comment><comment><USER19> The author thinks that a handshake is "an annoying relic of the past.", and launching an app and bumping phones is somehow superior? Whatever. A handshake can tell you a lot about a person and gives us a little, sometimes much needed, human contact from people outside our normal circles.

I'm not dogging the app, just the author's assertion.

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember seeing years ago (long before the handheld device took off) researchers were working on a device that would swap business/contact information digitally through a handshake. The device was contained in your shoe.

While I like the idea of digital exchanges of information (the above idea never really took off), I just don't think this is terribly practical, especially the deep rooted customs, such as business cards and handshakes.

All the best of luck though, I'd sure as hell like to be proven wrong.

Now, if you could figure out a way to exchange information through a handshake with the phone sitting in your pocket, you have a goldmine right there sirs. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even have to give it away.

</comment><comment><USER21> Something like that is never going to fly. What if I meet somebody who doesn't have an enabled phone? I'll still need to carry around the business card. So why put in the extra effort for other systems?

For the first time I see a benefit in putting a QR code on my card, though - maybe the "enabled" people could just scan the QR code and would not need to bother with taking the card.

I thought QR codes would be superfluous because of OCR, but apparently the technology is still not there yet?

</comment><comment><USER22> Currently how big is your market here? How many ppl have an Internet centric phone vs. a regular handset?

Are you looking 3 to 5 years into the future re: market potential?

</comment><comment><USER23> I <3 business cards. One of my weaknesses is buying expensive business cards. And I even suspect that they have some impact on my dealings. All part of the brand...

</comment><comment><USER24> might have been a better idea to build this for the Blackberry. Not that I'd install it anyway. 15 seconds vs 1 second to exchange cards and I can do cards in parallel. Imagine how silly you'd feel in an actual business setting bumping iPhones with one another... A better idea would be to point the iPhone at someone in a mtg and it identify them using some form of augmented reality. we don't need tagging, there are much better ways.

</comment><comment><USER25> How bout this for a business card service:

1\. I create my "virtual business card" online and upload 5 pictures of myself

2\. Someone meets me at a conference, takes my pic (in 5 secs), then uploads it (via mobile app or web)

3\. Facial recognition confirms who I am and they get to download all my information to their address book

</comment><comment><USER26> Do I have to bump (touch) someone's hand when doing cards exchange? What about Asian market (millions of iPhone units are sold there), where business etiquette is that you should hand your business card to someone while holding it with both of your hands, and you should not touch the receiver?

</comment><comment><USER27> He lost me as soon as he said that the handshake is outdated. I'm incredibly wired into the digital world, but some things just shouldn't be 'digitized'. We live in a physical world and our brains are built to deal with a physical world. Everything else is a hack.

</comment><comment><USER28> Going after the BUSINESS card market with an IPHONE app?

Now, the Pre would be compelling, but the Blackberry is where this app should live, and Windows Mobile. The latter 2 are all I see in the UK. The odd iPhones I encounter are people's personal phones.

<comment><USER29> Aye, in the UK "real" businesspeople use Blackberries, us cool kids with iPhones love to flash our Moo cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If Apple would let the bluetooth built into the phone actually be USEFUL then you could do this without any need for an intermediary.

</comment><comment><USER31> Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER32> Just another silly app. A whole company just to build this?

<comment><USER33> I think it is bad to let the thought "Is it a big enough idea?" stop you from building something. You don't know what doors building it will open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Put together one jpg and some xml in one package, standardize it and share it with everybody on the web, mobile, bluetooth, wireless, etc.

Kind of like a vcard on steroids.

Let everybody show it on their webpage, blog, etc.

Show it, share it, send it, shake it, transfer it.</comment>


The Attack of the Superfakes - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/03/the-attack-of-the-superfakes/ <comment><USER2> ELI5: I dont understand how this can't all be avoided by the watch makers associating each watch with an official serial number and having an official website that you go to check your serial against.</comment>


Redis or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the unstable version - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hashtagify.me/2011/06/19/redis-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-unstable-version/

<comment><USER2> This should be titled "how I learned to stop worrying about memory fragmentation and love jemalloc."

On a slightly more serious note, jemalloc is a pretty incredible piece of systems software. If you're experiencing issues with memory fragmentation or lock contention in malloc(3) it's definitely worth looking at.

<comment><USER3> Looks like there's also a Redis 2.2-jemalloc branch. Good to know.</comment></comment>


Layzr.js – A small, fast, and dependency-free library for lazy loading images - <AUTHOR> http://callmecavs.github.io/layzr.js/

<comment><USER2> Hello all,

I'm the author of this library. I appreciate any comments/feedback, and will be here all day to answer questions.</comment>


The $99B Idea: How Uber and Airbnb Won - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2017-uber-airbnb-99-billion-idea/ <comment><USER3> Uber sounds pretty evil

> The FTC claimed that Uber was advertising an annual median income of over > $90,000 per year for uberX drivers in New York and more than $74,000 for > uberX drivers in San Francisco. But, as the commission found out, less than > 10 percent of all drivers in those cities actually make that much. The > complaint also alleges that Uber was inflating the hourly earnings on job > boards like Craigslist.

> New drivers who financed a new car through Uber's Vehicle Solutions Program > found out the company's claims were too good to be true as well. Although > Uber told new drivers they would be able to lease a new car for around $119 > per week, the actual lease rates never dipped below $200 from late 2013 to > April 2015. And, despite it's promise of delivering "the best financing > options available," it turns out that Uber's rates were actually worse than > consumers with similar credit scores could have gotten elsewhere. Adding > insult to overpriced injury, Uber tacked on mileage limits to lease > agreements that were advertised with unlimited mileage.

I like "taking an Uber" but if they're screwing people over by false advetising I'd consider boycotting them. Been in several Ubers where the driver had just bought a high end-ish car specifically to be an Uber driver. It sounded risky to me and I was sad the driver was taking such a big chance although assumed it's possible his calculations showed it would work out. Now thought it's apparent that Uber lied about how much he'd make, lied about how much the car would cost, and lied about the lease terms.

Continuing to support Uber seems problematic knowing I'd be helping screw people into more debt and poverty.

Oh yea, and they're a YC company

Oh and don't get me started on AirBnb. I've documented all kinds of issues on my blog. The latest is they removed a negative review. Log in and it says I never submitted it. Not only did it used to be on their site I still have the confirmation email for it.

<comment><USER4> Airbnb is a YC company. Uber is not.

<comment><USER5> They're a bunch of scumbags too. Well, senior manatgement definitely - <USER2> that probably trickles down to their systems and who they hire but I'll reserve judgement.

<comment><USER6> I've used airbnb a few times as both a host and a guest with few problems. Any evidence for the scumbaginess?

<comment><USER5> Anecdotal.

I've used them also. It's when things go really wrong when you'll understand the issues with them.

This might not be the majority experience, and I accept that, but I wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole based on my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> that, or - they found a heavily regulated market, ignored all the laws, invented a business model that didn't squarely fall into legal precedent and that the people in charge of enforcing the law (city officials) aren't very keen to enforce it.

We applaud them only because we believe (and probably rightly so) that those regulations are there only to prevent competition for entrenched interests.

It's not sharing economy if the majority of the people offering the service do it full-time.

</comment><comment><USER8> I always think about the time when Facebook and Google were bleeding money. They were thought of as terrible businesses.

When you have a shit ton of eye balls, you have a money printing machine: "Ads". Just plaster them in the face of users. Now with machine learning and average user expecting little privacy, you can really target the ads and customize it per person.

It's amazing Wikipedia hasn't gone in the path of ads. I'm grateful for that.

If uber's self driving car gizmo works out, which there is a good chance. They can make zero profit on rides and make them $1/10 mile trip. Make the cream off in car entertainment and services.

They can have average person buy the car and rent it out to Uber network. Airbnb already loans money to home owners to renovate their houses.

<comment><USER4> If a large user base were the only metric, then shouldn't Twitter have more robust revenue numbers? (Though I think I can see a world where Uber has more relevant tracking data than Twitter)

Also, I hate flying airlines where they'll keto allowing you ads on their in flight screen (I think I had one flight where there was no entertainment and just ads). I'd happily rider on a competitor with higher prices that didn't thrust a bright ad laden display on me during the trip.

<comment><USER9> Twitter also has what somewhat ridiculous costs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> read the article, what was the idea?

spamming craigslist users to bootstrap your userbase?

using venture capital to undercut existing businesses and get the public on your side, allowing you to dominate local politics?

<comment><USER11> Offloading risk and capital costs to ordinary members of the public that already owned underutilized assets. Love them or hate them, it was pretty genius.

<comment><USER12> Lyft (zimride) started the first carpool site. Sidecar started the first rideshare app. Uber used excess black cars capacity to start. I would say sidecar and lyft were pretty genius but Uber won the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > How Uber and Airbnb Won

The game never ends. No one wins. They can only be "winning".

<comment><USER14> Like Charley Sheen?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> in defense of Uber, here in Argentina ( where the taxi industry is run by the "mob" ) Uber's ability to instantly provide a safe and steady stream of income to thousands on the verge of middle-class collapse has been a godsend.

</comment><comment><USER16> I always wondered what's exactly the value that AirBnB is providing? Why can't a website with reviews by guests and hosts (with money handling) be run at a much smaller cost?

<comment><USER17> Basically trust and brand, as they said in the article. They had to come up with both supply and demand at the same time. You wouldn't use a service with limited supply, and as a renter, you wouldn't list your property on a service without any people willing to rent your spare room/apartment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Airbnb can be considered one of the biggest hotel companies in the > world—currently valued at $30 billion.

Priceline Group, owner of Booking.com, is currently valued at $79 billion.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Uber Loses at Least $1.2 Billion in First Half of 2016" ([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber- lose...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at- least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016))

How is that winning? Is capitalism dead and profits don't count anymore? Then what are the social benefits of company known for sabotaging unions and fighting against labor protection laws?

The original idea, to share car rides, was really good and worth investment. Now it is just a big bubble waiting to explode.

<comment><USER20> People said this about Amazon for 20 years [http://www.ibtimes.com/amazon- nearly-20-years-business-it-st...](http://www.ibtimes.com/amazon- nearly-20-years-business-it-still-doesnt-make-money-investors-dont-seem- care-1513368)

And for 8 years about Facebook [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2219503/facebook- gr...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2219503/facebook-grows- members-and-revenue-but-still-loses-money)

I wish I'd bought stock in both while they were still losing money.

<comment><USER21> Uber needs to hit its timeline esp. with self-driving car very fast, they are for now branching into eats etc to buy some time. I used to think Uber is a slamdunk, but their humbling in China and India, showed that they need to protect Fortress America very bad and get Self-driving cars on the roads by turn of the decade.

I am more long on AirBnB than Uber.

<comment><USER19> > get Self-driving cars on the roads by turn of the decade.

It is not the same to create an app than to purchase and maintain a huge number of cars. That is a completely different business model.

Isn't the article about how "sharing economy" is so good. Then why Uber wants to get rid of it so badly?

AirBnB is more focused in its core business. The equivalent for them will be to create Hotels around the world. Hotel industry is a good one, but AirBnb doesn't has the business experience to work on that. And that's why they experiment on that in a less visible more realistic way ([http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-builds-hotel-japan- com...](http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-builds-hotel-japan-community- samara-yoshino-2016-8?r=UK&IR=T&IR=T)).

<comment><USER6> Also I see no reason to give Uber a high chance of being the first to develop level 4 autonomous cars. Google, Tesla and Volvo all seem ahead. And then why should they give the market to Uber rather than run their own taxis? Tesla are already talking about competing.

("Tesla says it will roll out Uber-style ride-hailing program "[http://europe.autonews.com/article/20161020/COPY/310209846/t...](http://europe.autonews.com/article/20161020/COPY/310209846/tesla- says-it-will-roll-out-uber-style-ride-hailing-program)

"No, you can't use your self-driving Tesla to make money through Uber" [http://mashable.com/2016/10/20/tesla-ride-sharing- ban/#6Mklf...](http://mashable.com/2016/10/20/tesla-ride-sharing- ban/#6Mklfcj1Ckq0) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> All of that was everyday reality for people outside of the first world countries long before internet was a thing.

1\. Flats turned into mini hotels - existed since first highrise appartments started appearing in 3rd world countries

2\. Carpooling - old as the world. In smaller Russian cities, people absolutely don't mind driving strangers around for a symbolic sum. In "good ol times" people used to do it for free.

3\. Food devilery - phone order pizzas anyone? I remember first internet groceries started at around 1998, and they catered to really rich demographic living in far off suburbs ($30 just for the delivery fee, a daily income of a well off family back in 1998), but later internet only ones started to be displaced by existing grocery chains

4\. "Microcommerce" \- I don't know why Americans classify just selling anything with an app as such and why it is anything special

5\. Regional same day delivery couriers - same story

6\. Alibaba thing - classifieds in a newspaper?

All what Americans call the "sharing economy" or "economy 2.0" was what 80% of small business was about outside of the "developed countries"

<comment><USER23> True, but you had to know/trust the other person. These platforms solve that problem through reviews and handling of payment.

<comment><USER24> Not so. Ride sharing in other countries often happens without knowing the people you share rides with.

<comment><USER4> What kind of social fabric do these countries have? What's the crime rate? The US being a very diverse and relatively high crime country makes such acts difficult.

<comment><USER25> > What kind of social fabric do these countries have?

In Germany it is quite common for people to carpool between cities with strangers. We even have websites for pairing drivers with passengers (mitfahrgelegenheit). These have existed since long before Uber.

Say you're driving between SFO and LAX to catch a flight. You put your place/time of departure on the website, and other people can request to ride with you.

Usually there is a small cost to the passengers to split the cost of fuel.

Passengers can then rate the driver/car on things like punctuality, comfort, personality, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Presumably this a PR article?</comment>


From idea to product in 7 days - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hartwigchris/from-idea-to-product-in-7-days-f44ff8c525eb#.5kggxksnz <comment><USER2> " … and here you go: your certificates are now stored in mongodb (for sharing of certs among instances)."

I _assume_ it's not just me who just went "Wait, you did WHAT??? With your SSL certs???" here?

s/instances/anyone with a shodan account/

;-)

<comment><USER2> Even more facepalm...

"But with Bitcoin came a great idea: we're not going to ask for an email/password registration! Instead, we'll use the transaction hash as a proof of payment… and that proof of payment is also an authentication for the user. In a word, the transaction hash is the user's login/password! and it's certainly way more secure than a password like 'password'."

So your proof-of-payment, is confirmed by the public blockchain including a particular hash. And your login authentication, which is apparently way more secure than "password" \- is that hash, which is on the public blockchain?

 _BOGGLE!_

(A day's worth of bitcoin transactions is something less then 300,000 publicly available transaction hashes - simplistically "password" has maybe 28 bits of entropy - or about 1000 times _more_ than a bitcoin transaction hash from a particular day...)

<comment><AUTHOR> I disagree. Use a dictionary to brute force passwords, and 'password' has exactly 0 bit of entropy. '123456' come right after it.

In the end, one transaction hash among 300k offers more security than any word you could find in the dictionary. And you should consider a year of hashes, not a single day...

I'm not pretending to have invented a new ultra-secure way to authenticate, just one that's secure enough (more than words, less than random passwords) and totally anonymous. Would you prefer an email-hash combo? or a hash- password?

Finally, I was expecting a more positive attitude</comment></comment></comment>


Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/fundraising-mistakes-founder-make <comment><USER2> To me, one of the biggies is raising too early. To Sam's point, you want a competitive environment. To get that you want to obviously be a good investment to as many investors as possible.

If you don't have some combination of an amazing v1 product, a traction graph that's moving in the right direction, credible investors already on board, a big/timely market, or a top 5% team, you're almost certainly fundraising too early... And you should do whatever you can to get one or more of the above.

See: [http://andrewchen.co/2011/06/21/video-the-anatomy-of-a- funda...](http://andrewchen.co/2011/06/21/video-the-anatomy-of-a-fundable- startup-by-naval-ravikant-of-angellist/#)

(note: salesmanship can trump all of the above)

<comment><USER3> It's sort of silly though - founders already take risk with years of their life going nowhere, why should they also bear the entirety of the financial risk? Isn't the purpose of early stage investment to validate the idea? And by contrast late-stage investment is to grow the validated idea? It feels like these days everyone wants to invest only in validated ideas. It just feels suboptimal that hardly anyone ever wants to finance the actual validation... Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> The "graph moving in the right direction" doesn't have to be impressive in absolute terms. If I can prove that I have 100 paying, engaged customers this week, 50 last week, 25 the week before, etc. I've proved that the idea resonates with a market, and its growing. Note that this is still early stage. You have to be able to prove _some_ indication of longterm value though.

<comment><USER5> If you have paying customers with consistent growth then you are well past idea stage.

I think DenisM's point is that founders often need to be somewhat wealthy on their own in order to create a product in the first place. This doesn't seem like an optimal division of responsibilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know Sam, but I really like this experiment he's doing with writing. Lot's of decent articles being written a a high speed.

It's almost like he's trying to replicate Paul Graham circa 2004- 2008.

I haven't seen an article yet that breaks any new ground, ie he's still looking for his "blub paradox" article, but all his articles generate discussion.

Just look at his article on AI from yesterday. It didn't really break any new ground in the AI conversation and it got 260+ comments.

<comment><USER7> Except unlike PG, he hasn't really established authority on what he is writing about (other than perhaps a confusing endorsement from PG). What are Sam's big hits?

Edit: That sounds meaner than intended, but it's actually an honest question. How does this guy share a top 5 list spot with Jobs, Larry, and Sergey? How do we know we should take him at his word when he didn't learn these things be being successful doing them? I feel like I'm missing something.

<comment><USER8> But PG wasn't an established authority back when PG was writing fast. I remember reading PG in 2006, and you'd read lots of snarks on the tech forums of the time (Slashdot, Digg): who is this guy, and why should we listen to this bored washed up multi-millionaire who sold his startup to Yahoo? He hasn't done anything of note in the past 10 years! (They said the same thing about Philip Greenspun too, who was also writing at a faster clip back then).

Look, at the end of the day, "established authority" is only loosely correlated with worthwhile meaning. At some point you're going to have to move past the author and evaluate the words on the page on their own merit.

<comment><USER7> > At some point you're going to have to move past the author and evaluate the > words on the page on their own merit.

For this type of writing, you can't. You don't have the experience or the data to judge anything. That's just how expert advice works. It's not falsifiable to anyone that would be learning from it, so that's why the credentials are important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great but I will offer a simplistic view how to raise money.

First, you need to get "social proof". Getting accepted into Y-combinator is a very good one. Or if you already sold a company then you are golden. But if you are super smart working in large tech company such as Yahoo! for 15+ years - good luck. Especially if you are over 40. When you are 40 it is easier to convince Discovery Loan to give you 100K loan than seed round from any VC.

Second, you should not have any revenue or god forbid any profit. You might think that is needed but actually revenue and profit are bad for raising money: investors will look your numbers and make projection based on these numbers. It much easier to sell "blue sky" than business with actual revenue and profit.

So to raise money:

      1 build "social proof",
      2 make powerpoint presentation,
      2 go raise money

<comment> wh-uws If you worked at large tech company for that long and didn't make enough connections, learn enough, and/or save enough money to start a startup on your own...

I wouldn't invest in you either

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great compilation of wisdom passed on while participating in YC, plus lessons learned I can appreciate 1.5 years later. Well written Sam.

My personal favorite on this list is to focus on what you're most passionate about during your pitch. This should drive the entire conversation. Investors do not expect you to know everything from day one. Don't go into a pitch trying to have the perfect answer for every question, focus on what you do know and can speak passionately about.

</comment><comment><USER11> This basic point is something I keep thinking, too… either you have your shit together, or you don't. If your fundamentals are strong, you should be able to get funding easily. If your fundamentals are weak, no amount of would-be cleverness will make funding viable.

If you want to impress investors, impress your customers.

Interestingly, this just falls out of something I've learned from years of developing big systems, which is that the line between success and failure is narrow, but the grounds on either side of that line are broad. So back of the envelope calculations that strongly suggest one conclusion or the other are almost always right, assuming there's nothing wrong with your analysis. Because of this, I've learned to not be pedantic about precision. Quick decisions are usually more effective than cautious ones.

Maybe that's why I've set out on a path away from the enterprise and toward entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER12> No 1. by miles and miles is fundraising at all.

Just saying, but nobody successful I know spends or spent any time raising funds for their company that wasn't just saving their wages.

The one case I know of where they tried (after already being successful I would add) they were already doomed before going down that path ... it just took a while for it to come to fruition. Given that the only people I know who thought this was a good idea lost their business from right under their nose anyway I'm not inclined to think that in general it is a good idea.

The small number of spectacular successes that came from VC capital make it seem more reasonable as a choice than it is... they also make it easier for VCs to invest and see a return because some of those spectacular success are worth a lot and more than make up for the fact that without them its just a game of losing money constantly...

<comment><USER13> It's push vs pull. If you build value, investors will beat down your door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _So don't do obviously dumb things like talk about potential acquirers in a > seed round pitch - that will suggest you're not trying to build a really big > company._

Question, should one talk about potential acquirers - specifically, those you have offers from - at _any_ point during fundraising?

<comment><USER15> Acquisition offers are a great external validation of both your product and the market you're in. So my take is that it's a very positive thing to talk about any potential acquisition offers, _as long as you stress that that 's not your end game_.

Take for example Drew Houston turning down the acquisition offer from Jobs/Apple back in the day; probably did wonders for Dropbox's valuation in the following round (and very rightly, if so).

<comment><USER14> Great point, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Not hearing no"

I've never heard an investor actually say "no". They will hem, haw, delay, excuse, etc. and do everything except give a definitive "no". You just have to learn to treat "maybe" as "no" until you decide it's worth talking to them again.

I'd love to have an actual "no" from an investor.

It's like dating: "no" is no. "maybe" is no. "yes" is maybe until you've closed the deal.

</comment><comment><USER17> > It's actually quite simple; if you have a good company, you will probably be > able to raise money.

IMO, investors tend to be very formulaic. Traction + social proof + impressive team etc. The formula might be a good heuristic, but I think that it misses out on some genuinely good companies.

See [https://medium.com/p/2ef77c6acb](https://medium.com/p/2ef77c6acb)

</comment><comment><USER18> As someone who has found a startup, one point I would add is - Make sure you are within 50 miles of where the VC activity is. That for practical purposes means this; be based out of SFO (+Bay Area), NYC (+Boston).

VCs want to fund businesses that reach all over the world, but they themselves must be reachable within an hour or two commute.

</comment><comment><USER19> _> Some founders try things like carefully timing news articles, casually mentioning to one investor that they'll be having dinner with another investor, claiming their schedule is really packed except for one specific hour, and other tricks - _but if you just build a good company, you generally won't need to. __

(Non-italics mine) This is such wonderfully simple advice. Investors, by definition, want to make money. Build something that can, show them it will, and they will give you an investment. If you can 't raise money, you're doing something wrong with the first two -- so that should show you where to focus on instead of using poorly thought out social engineering tricks.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would second webright's comment about raising too early. One other mistake we made was underestimating the number of investors we needed to speak with in order to create momentum and a competitive environment. You definitely do want to raise in parallel, and in order to truly do so you should overshoot the number of people you plan to talk to so that you don't find yourself done with all of your leads and not with the full amount raised. Chase more leads than you think you'll need to.

</comment><comment><USER21> Normally, I find Sam's articles maybe interesting, but not that insightful.

However, this one is really awesome, it pins down the dynamics happening in fundraising exactly. It actually feels a bit Paul Graham like, very good article.

Especially liked the part about not being arrogant. I'm always trying to be very assertive while actually sounding really nice and likeable, it's a very important art to master.

</comment><comment><USER13> With actual rockstar startups not burning through cash like it's their own personal vacation from profitably and reality, the dilemma is often centered between reasonable frugality and trying too hard to seem frugal ending up penny wise-pound foolish.

FWIW I'm impressed more by how little actual (non-bullshit numbers) cash and time went into something.

</comment><comment><USER13> Business people that don't add value tend to focus on appearances than substance because it's an easier business theather to bikeshed than to show progress and interest. The upside is that anyone that's built a business before is unlikely to be fooled by clever packaging or a well-defended presentation.

</comment><comment><USER22> i wish i had this when we were fundraising for experiment.com

</comment><comment><USER23> We've been in fundraising mode for the last 6 months and some of Sam's points really shine through.

In particular the valuation bit strikes close to home.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great article, comes at a very good time for me and my company.

</comment><comment><USER25> _Beware, though, that saying things like "our round is closing really fast" when you have no offers usually backfires. Investors talk and will call your bluff._

True, but this sort of investor collusion is unethical and only (possibly) legal because private stock isn't regulated in the way that publicly traded stock is. In fact, the whole and only purpose of the VC-funded economy is to take stock strategies that were made illegal 30-100+ years ago and apply them to fast-growing, private, volatile tech stocks.

Shit like this is why most of us who are paying attention hate VC, and why the U.S. has gone from admiring Silicon Valley to vilifying it (and justly so; the ethics in Wall Street are way better than those in the VC-funded world.)

That this kind of scumbag collusion is tolerated is just unconscionable. Investors are supposed to be competitors, but they compare notes so much as to function as a cartel.

<comment><USER26> Collusion is a pretty big charge. If investors are upfront about the fact that they talk to each other (and, hey, it's right there in the blog post) then investor A calling up investor B to verify he has made an offer to a startup isn't collusion. It's just due diligence. I'm also unclear about the analogous situation in the public markets that you alluded to.

<comment><USER25> On the public markets, using social sway or inside connections to intentionally up- or downregulate the reputation or market price of another company for personal profit (say, a pump-and-dump scheme) will put you in prison. No question about it; it's unambiguously illegal to do that. You don't get to, for example, spread negative rumors about a company and ruin its reputation because you think you should be able to buy it at a discount.

Investors do the same thing, and it wrecks peoples' careers and makes it hard as hell for people to get started amid that feudalistic reputation economy. The excuse is "well, investors talk".

I say: fuck that and fuck them. If Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are really going to tolerate that shit-- which only hurts them-- instead of agitating for proper laws to be written, then they're a pack of self-hating losers for not knowing how to fight for themselves.

<comment><USER26> It is illegal to give false or misleading statements in order to defraud other investors, but it isn't illegal to "talk your book" if you aren't outright lying about what you are saying. You can flip on CNBC and expect to see lots of hedge fund managers hyping up their positions. That's not fraud.

If you are saying there is some fraudulent behavior involved in one investor calling another investor to fact check a founder's claim, I'm still not seeing it.

<comment><USER25> The main difference is that, in this case, the investor is playing to screw the founder, not other investors.

If you want to argue that it's only unethical but not strictly illegal, then fine. I still think we should aim to do better, and it's sad that Silicon Valley doesn't care about better than "not clearly illegal" when it comes to ethics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the most stable, drama-free TLD in 2020? - <AUTHOR> What's your go-to top-level domain in 2020? I'd like a go-to for new web projects that's not embroiled in ownership squabbles, isn't appropriated or misused (e.g. .io) or likely to have their rates suddenly increase. .info? .dev? .net? Something else altogether? <comment><USER2> Now that the decentralized root system is in place [1], you can now own your own TLD.

[1] [https://www.handshake.org](https://www.handshake.org)</comment>


TikTok claims zero takedown requests from China in first transparency report - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/31/21044876/tiktok-china-transparency-report-bytedance-takedown-requests-zero <comment><USER2> Well, if your own policies are in accord with the government, you don't need to wait for it to request a takedown.</comment>


Google should extend Right to be Forgotten worldwide, says EU data watchdog - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2383764/google-should-extend-right-to-be-forgotten-worldwide-says-eu-data-watchdog

<comment><USER2> yeah, sure, so criminals world wide will be able to use it :-)

Yes, one can read a lot of stories how people abuse this "right".

(e.g. politiancs involved in bribery cases)</comment>


One Thing You Don't Need To Be An Entrepreneur: A College Degree - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/02/one-thing-you-dont-need-to-be-an-entrepreneur-a-college-degree.html <comment><USER2> Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard while undergrads. David Filo, Jerry Yang, Sergey Brin, Larry Page didn't bother to finish grad school at Stanford and dropped out too. On the other hand, we can think of Craig Venter, Andrew Grove, Gordon Moore, Carver Mead... all of whom obtained PhD's.

The usefulness of a degree depends on what field one is working on. In the Software arena, smart kids out of high school can do a lot if college is not holding them back. But try to start a laser / semiconductor / biotech company with high school kids if you dare ;-)

One might not need a degree to be a good software entrepreneur, but there are many other entrepreneurs who don't live in the software world. Sure, HN is focused on software, but it seems to me that it's irresponsible to promote the idea that all that entrepreneurs need is passion and hard-work. Necessary but not sufficient.

<comment><USER3> _"In the Software arena, smart kids out of high school can do a lot if college is not holding them back. But try to start a laser / semiconductor / biotech company with high school kids if you dare."_

Exactly. We've inadvertently created a culture that rewards extremely shallow achievements. Thirty years ago, brilliant 20-somethings wanted to send men to Mars and build super-colliders. Today, the smartest college kids are trying to build social networks for dogs.

Frankly, that's not a trend worth celebrating. A society where an advanced education _isn't_ an economic advantage is a society going the wrong way.

<comment><USER4> That's just not true. I meet a lot of startup founders who are working on very hard technical problems and have hopes of changing the world by solving them. The Etherpads, for example, had to literally prove theorems to get their real- time collaboration sw to work, and they hope eventually to use it in a whole range of applications.

You could just as easily argue that thirty years ago (I was actually around then and old enough to be paying attention), technical people just wanted safe jobs solving circumscribed problems for large organizations.

The truth is that, all other things being equal, each generation of people is roughly equally ambitious. Past generations weren't golden ages compared to the present, or vice versa.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how you can argue that each generation is equally ambitious, while also arguing that the previous generation was seeking out "safe jobs".

I agree that people are probably as ambitious as they were decades ago on an individual basis, but that _doesn't_ mean that their goals have stayed the same over time. Even in the last decade, there's been a massive shift of technical talent toward entertainment technology, whereas it's getting harder and harder to find R&D jobs in physics, chemistry, biology and computer science.

There are always a _few_ companies doing interesting technical work, but if the number of under-employed PhDs I know is any indication, the fraction of companies doing R&D is pretty darned small, and getting smaller every year. It's much easier for a PhD in Physics to get a job as a sysadmin at a web startup than it is for her to get a job in her field. I think that's sad.

<comment><USER5> I find it frightening that in the U.S. at least, basic research seems to have seriously declined at the government and large company level. Bell Labs is gone, and most companies now are focusing on applied rather than fundamental advances.

And before people start piling on large companies and the government with the usual rant, try to figure out how you could invent the laser, fiber optics, tcp/ip, lunar landing, orthgonal frequency division multiplexing , etc, with 2 college dropouts well-versed in rails and javascript.

<comment><USER6> I think there are cycles where technology get's to a state where basic research has huge value until you have enough basic research to to build a wave of new technology's. Once you have fully exploited the last wave of technology you are ready to build the next level of new technology. But, you rarely change technology's while there is still room to grow the old tech. Example: Modems starting at 300bps to 56k used the same basic technology, then DSL, then Fiber.

IMO, there is value to understanding the limitations to existing technology before you start doing basic research.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. A counter anecdote would be the advances in physics in the early 20th century, when we were still far from finished innovating with Newtonian mechanics. I've always doubted the whole "necessity is the mother of invention" thing; I don't think relativity was discovered because it became necessary to discover it. On the other hand, when it comes to technological innovations (semiconductors, transistors, lasers, etc.,) I just don't know enough scientific history to assess your hypothesis.

<comment><USER6> I think the limitations of Newtonian physics where only discovered as people built devices that broke them. There is a great time line for that period, but when you consider the instruments required to make the discovery's you see they are based on specific assumptions about how the world operates. It's only when their design reaches their limits that meaningful discovery's can be made.

<http://timeline.aps.org/APS/Timeline/>

"The Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes finds that mercury loses its electrical resistance at temperatures near absolute zero. This low temperature effect is observed in other materials as well."

That takes advanced equipment to reduce things to that temperature, an expectation that resistance is effected by temperature, and an formula that works at higher temperatures to notice the discontinuity.

PS: Consider all the benefits high speed computing has provided when designing aircraft. You need a lot of wind tunnel / real world tests to build a model, but with that model and lot's of computing power you can design aircraft out to the limits of your simulation. At which point you need to collect more data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've noticed this too. But I worry about encouraging people to drop out of college. There are probably a lot who don't really blossom till they get there. Especially those who went to bad high schools.

I think people should at least try a couple years of college, if they can, if only so they know what they're missing if they don't finish.

<comment><USER8> that is in fact what the president suggested in his "non state of the union" speech this week.

i didn't mean the post to encourage dropping out but upon reading it this morning, i realize it sort of does that

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't read the article but I'll be honest... I'm really thankful for my education. I taught myself programming when I was young and I thought I knew everything when I went to college. I was thankfully proved wrong.

College forced me to learn a lot of stuff I wouldn't have bothered to learn before. Stuff I had no idea would become useful and if I ever needed it may not have had an idea to look for it.

I have an interest in programming languages and interpreters--college helped me find and cultivate this interest. I'm working on a startup doing a lot of natural language stuff--college gave me the foundation necessary to teach myself the tools of this field quickly.

The theoretical underpinnings of stuff don't go away. Understanding different string matching algorithms can apply to writing an efficient style checker, not just making an asinine version of strcmp.

Granted this is all oriented towards technical stuff. I suppose if I wanted to be just an entrepreneur I could save money and buy a Subway franchise. I don't think a college education is necessary there either (but I'm sure it doesn't hurt).

<comment><USER10> "I have an interest in programming languages and interpreters--college helped me find and cultivate this interest."

Wow. We never even came close to studying that kind of stuff at my college (Computer degree). We just learned some Java and linked lists and trees in the data structures course, a bit about computer hardware and not much else.

All the really cool stuff like interpreters, compilers, programming languages, unification, Rete, Common Lisp, etc. I had to learn on my own.

Did I simply attend a subpar college or you attended a great one?

<comment><USER11> Wow. We did the linked list and data structures course freshman year. After that it was all compilers, computability, writing schedulers for micro controllers, designing a processor in verilog, etc. Lots of really cool stuff I mostly haven't used since, but it's a great base of knowledge. And I went to Iowa State, not a top tier computer science school.

<comment><USER10> Oh my. It seems what you call college I'd call university (I live in Quebec).

<comment> barry-cotter In Ireland and Britain college = university. I believe the US has a ~distinction that a college is an undergraduate institution, which may or may not be part of a university, but the rest of the Anglosphere follows British usage in that a college is post secondary school though it may not be degree granting, like the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I live in a country where software and technology is not really blossoming. The government is trying hard to promote the tech business in the country. But, nothing is really working at all.

I stopped school for three years before I came to the US to further my studies here. In those three years, my plan was to start something that could make me millions. Soon, I realize that this is a dream, I only managed to make decent amount of money through freelancing. But, I can tell you that you hardly can go anywhere if you are working alone. Luckily enough, I did learn some programming in this period.

Then, I decided to come to the US. English is not my first language. I worked my ass out to get decent score for my SAT. And, luckily enough, I got accepted into one of the best CS school in US. Here, I met with my current cofounders with my new startup. And, this is another new process that I have to dedicate myself to learn something new again(Communication skills, new culture, etc.).

I never regretted to further my studies to college. I met new people here. I learned new knowledge(Remember, CS is not all about programming). And, I believe that this year in college actually helped me more than the three years I wasted.

<comment><USER13> What country, if you don't mind my asking?

<comment><USER12> Malaysia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another reason this happens in my opinion: If you graduate from a good college with a marketable degree, you get sucked right into a cushy job at a large company. If you never got that degree and don't have that job, you're not giving up as much as the guy who's used to the status and money associated with the big company job. The opportunity cost of starting a company is less.

<comment><USER15> I've found this can be a really big "problem" as well. And it's not just the temptation of getting sucked yourself into a cushy job. It's that much of your network, your closest friends, _also_ have that same hot degree and face the same temptation. Holding a startup together is hard enough in the best of times; when everyone on the founding team is continually bombarded by really tempting offers, chances are someone will crack. (Unless you're in a place where Silicon Valley where working on a startup is definitely "cooler" than that cushy job.)

My startup died when my cofounder got into Harvard Business School and I got into Google (we're both Amherst grads). 99.99% of America would not call that a failure. But the bottom line is that my startup's still just as dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've certainly never felt my lack of a degree to be a hindrance in any area except maybe fundraising. PG wrote once that he had come to the same conclusion but still had trouble believing it. Most investors never get there at all.

And I'd imagine even among those like Fred, they still find themselves impressed by a team of 4 CS grads from MIT. Thankfully for those of us who college wasn't for, customers are significantly less likely to read your resume.

<comment><USER8> 4 CS grads from MIT would be impressive, but more impressive are the two kids from RISD who raised $32k for their seed capital selling cereal.

it takes chutzpah to make it as an entrepreneur and the cereal guys can hire the CS grads from MIT easier than the CS grads can get up the courage to sell 800 boxes of cereal at $40/box.

<comment><USER17> That's why airbnb is on their way to becoming the largest hotel in the world without having to own any rooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I graduated high school in 1994. I'd have graduated college in 1998 with a CS degree. Two startups I held key roles in sold in 8-figure deals in that time period. I even got to do some academic research. I guess I'm unhappy I didn't take linear algebra (really!), but I think I'd have had to have been made of stupid to go to college in '94.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm 21, working _at_ a startup as an engineer, working _on_ my own small startup, and making a considerable amount of money over everyone I graduated High School with. All without a degree.

However, I feel that I've been quite lucky and am far more the exception than the rule. I'm actually quite jealous of some of my friends who are getting ready to receive their Bachelors in the next year. As different paths as we took, I somehow feel that I'm lagging behind them in terms of achievements. So I'm back in school this semester. Just one class to make _some_ iota of progress towards my B.S. Comp. Sci.

You certainly don't need a college degree to be a successful entrepreneur, but I've often found it quite hard to apply theory to practicality when you don't know the theory in the first place. When all is said and done, I'd like to have the holes in my knowledge filled and kick that much more ass at what I do..

</comment><comment><USER20> At the first startup I worked for we polled our office of 12 people to see who had graduated from college. I'm pretty sure the answer was just two people, myself and the other middle manager. Everybody doing interesting work, developers, designers, and founders had either skipped or dropped out of college.

Three of those college dropouts went on to found a company that Fred is funding. So his story could easily be about those three people.

There are two things I realized after that poll. First, the conventional path is boring and I needed to jump off.

Second, the amount of work required to be great at something completely trumps the tiny amount of work that you're going to put in during college. Sure, the background knowledge is helpful, but only a little bit compared to everything you're going to have to learn after college.

<comment><USER21> Your second point is certainly not universal, some people do a lot of work during college.

If you know what you really want to do before college, sure go for it, but in most cases people have no idea, college is a good place to keep busy and learn about your interests.

<comment><USER20> I was really talking about the specific work (or practice) that goes into being great at something, not about misspent youth.

Let's take a computer science degree and a ten year path to great (whatever that means). If you just measure by time spent, you're maybe coming out of college 5-20% of the way down the path.

But I'd argue that the computer science degree isn't specific enough to count nearly that much. Really, you're graduating as an broadly experienced non- expert who then has to put a boat load of time into developing a specific expertise.

The value of that time spent outside of college completely trumps the value of the time spent in college, even if the amount of time spent is equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These days, I encourage kids to learn how to hack early and then go to a good school and network. If nothing else, the contacts are well worth it. It's not easy to get into the game anymore without the contacts and unless you've got deep pocketed parents or kooky friends with ambition (and money) you're just gonna get stuck somewhere less than desirable.

<comment><USER18> What's the game you're talking about, and what are the contacts you suppose you'd be making in school?

<comment><USER22> You're not supposed to do anything. But like all things, opportunities exist to do something beyond the ordinary. Look for openings, ways to stand out and to gain experience. College can provide someone who doesn't have their parents contacts to stand on with the opportunity to build social capital that could extend to other things.

Game? We're talking business or the "startup game" if you will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> At my first Valley startup job I was the first hire (out of 30) who didn't have a degree. I gather there was a long discussion about it before I was hired.

I missed out on some things, especially getting to know good hackers, and I've probably been paid less over the years. But it hasn't hurt me much. I am under 30 and I have almost 20 years of work experience.

<comment><USER18> I wound up in the same situation in an interview in 2000. They asked me to do Towers of Hanoi nonrecursively. I think I refused. Didn't get the gig. Things worked out anyways (ironically, I wound up at a spinoff of UMich, working for a professor and his postdoc).

If you don't have a degree and you go interview at (what turns out to have been) a Stanford spinoff, brush up on your useless CS 101, is I guess my life lesson there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My LinkedIn profile is permanently set to 85% complete because I can't add a college education.

And I'm 100% happy with my decision to drop out of college after 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER25> College is a check box, not a select all button.

<comment><USER26> +1 on that, I'm about to check it, but I see college as a way to make connections and get to know more people (teachers and students) interested in the same things I'm.

But yes!, you should do whatever you want to do, college is not an obligation, like you said a check box not a select button.

<comment><USER27> FWIW, you can hang out with the clubs and associations and _not_ attend college.

<comment><USER28> This is a very important point.

Most people phrase the issue as either attending college or getting some boring job and missing out on the "college experience"...

The better model is to not attend college, but to hang around the college town and attend the clubs and associations...and network with the folks that are doing more than just attending classes...these will be your co-founders :)

The real stuff goes on at night when folks are working on their side projects.

The other benefit of this model is that you don't have mountains of debt from tuition...so you're able to take more risks later on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm 22, soon finished up with first year in Business School and constantly fighting with myself if I have the patience to graduate. I have worked in the web industry since I was 16, done freelancing for couple of years, involved with few startups and currently a co-founder.

I know that I don't necessarily need the degree. For the most part it seems useless. I'm quite sure I could find a job, my financials are not that bad, I could even start a startup, but still feel that I'm not somewhat "ready" or have lucrative options enough to dropout.

My current solution is just to read for the exams and skip most, if not all the classes and work on other things. Good thing is that college education here is basically free, so I'm only loosing some time. But still, most of the time, I dislike everything with institutional education.

</comment><comment><USER30> I just feel like sharing:

I am currently a High School senior. I'm three for three as far as colllege acceptances go which makes me feel incredible but I am still unsure where I will be going or how I will pay.

One side of me wants to start a business as soon as possible. Devote my time to fostering the network of websites I own and expanding my web design services to clients. There is plenty of other stuff I do as well, but I don't know if that's a realistic way to go on. I recognize that college will provide structure when I need it and I hope that it will get me to focus.

I wonder what college did for successful entrepreneurs. Rather how to take the most of college as an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER4> Try college! (If you can afford it.) You don't even know what all the options are yet.

<comment><USER31> By afford do you mean, can pay for without racking up student loan debt? I don't quite understand the qualification here.

<comment><USER4> I added that qualification because I know not everyone may be able to afford to go to college, especially in poorer countries. I wouldn't presume to say precisely how much debt one could afford, and on what terms. I just didn't want to seem like I was assuming everyone had the option of going to college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've noticed a trend tho. The dropouts that became successful were dropouts from Ivy League schools. Does that mean people from second tire schools should stay in school and finish their degree?

<comment><USER33> Perhaps it means people with a wealthy background have a higher chance of trying to start their own business?

<comment><USER15> It undoubtedly helps. There're plenty of counterexamples though: Steve & Steve from Apple, for one. And I don't think it's more that they have a higher chance of _starting_ a business, it's more that they have a higher chance of finding the _money and time_ to succeed with their new business.

Also - the elephant in the room is plain old intelligence. Ivy League colleges tend to admit smart people, at least as closely as they can determine (there're always a few doofuses who sneak in, but they are a smaller proportion than at community colleges). Smart people have a higher chance of trying to start their own business, and a higher chance of being successful once they've tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Of course, every system of education does not encourage characteristics of good enterpreneurs - independence and thinking differently. They are crerated to produce good workers - those people who will work for enterpreneurs. And I don't think this atricle encourages people to drop out of college - those who have bravity to do this will do it anyway, and others will finish grad school.

</comment><comment><USER35> I just saw Johnny Cupcakes speak at UCSB last night. He's also a college drop out. While there are plenty of college drop out entrepreneurs that are very successful (e.g. Bill Gates), there are also a lot of successful entrepreneurs that are college graduates. An MBA is more debatable.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why does this topic keep coming up?

The same comments, the same threads, the same post-hoc justification (from all sides), the same faulty logical extrapolation, the refutation of aforementioned, etc., etc., etc.

"Anti"-college people: Hi! You do not need an article on a blog - even a great blog from an expert - to justify your life decisions.

"Pro"-college people: Hi! You do not need to act uncomfortable because you _did_ go to college. What an idea. Where's the defensiveness coming from?

"Try inventing anti-cancer shark-mounted LASERS without college degrees!" / "You sure wouldn't hire a BRAIN SURGEON without a degree!" people: One of these things is not like the other. The kids who bypass university thinking they will strike it rich with a social network for iguanas would not go on to invent anti-gravity boots -- or torts -- if _only_ they'd tough it out thru 4 years in a state school.

Who'd I miss?

Remember, folks, historically speaking, many of the world's greatest minds had no university education in their fields. And a lot of them did, too.

Who the fuck cares?

EDIT: PS: I dropped out of high school at 14. Take that!

<comment><USER36> As a reasoning for the defensiveness: Each side is basically marginalizing the other. The anticollege people suggest that college is worthless and (occasionally) the people who go there are similar.

The procollege people suggest that people without a degree are lesser or cannot achieve as much because of it.

This leads to both sides feeling attacked, and for them to attack back. What you said is basically true, though. College is a _choice_ which is good for some people, bad for others. Some people excel with the pedagogy, and go far further than they could have on their own. Some subjects require this (or, to turn it around, in some subjects pedagogy is so effective that people without it are at a significant disadvantage). Some, however, do not.

Colleges are important and useful. Some people don't need/want that level of analysis. Some people don't need the help. It's a personal decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Yeah, well, you don't need a college degree to drink a bunch of booze, have sex with lots of chicks, and do lots of interesting drugs and hang around with interesting people, but it's how most people go about doing those things when they're 18-22 years old.</comment>


Facebook and Microsoft are building a giant cable under the sea - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/26/technology/facebook-microsoft-cable-marea/index.html <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure they're building it on land and then laying it in the sea.</comment>


Ask HN: I have 4 months and i need to earn $2000? - <AUTHOR>

I know this is not the right way to figure out stuff but i guess HN can give a little advice over here. I know basic html/css, i can covert a pdf into html if given 7-8 hours..apart from that i have no skill. I am learning javascript right now.  I have a big day coming in the start of May 2012, and i need to have around $2000 before that...what's the most appropriate path i should follow to achieve this target? <comment><USER3> There are many sites on which you can find freelance work. Here are a few I've used myself to find freelance workers for odd jobs from time to time.

Sites: 1) freelancer.com, elance.com, odesk.com, rentacoder.com, scriptlance.com, etc 2) fiverr.com (i think they pay you $4 for every job) 3) digitalpoint.com forums (see buy/sell forum)

Type of jobs you can do:

1) Convert a PSD into HTML/CSS - can pay up to $100 per job 2) Do voice-overs if you have a good voice - can pay up to $30 per minute 3) Write articles on something - it pays like $5 per 500 words 4) Create e-books (as pdfs) - <USER2> can earn up to $50 per ebook.

Of course for most of the above you need to have good command over english. Also once you get good feedback it will be easier for you to find more work. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> FYI, there are free online services that can convert PDFs to HTML. I agree with the Craigslist approach, but you might spend some time on <http://www.codecademy.com> learning how to write JavaScript. Also, use <http://stackoverflow.com/> when you get stuck on how to do something.

</comment><comment><USER5> Try to find freelance clients. If you're either not confident enough or feel like you're not ready, you could get a regular job. It doesn't matter if it's as a junior dev somewhere or flipping burgers. You can make over $2k in 4 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually i am not located in US. The country where i live have very low paying junior programming jobs like $200 per month, needless to say 90% of the businesses here have really shitty websites. They don't think there is any value in functional user interfaces. Most small business don't pay more than $100..or maybe $200 for a website.

<comment><USER6> what country is that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pakistan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would say go on craiglist and find a freelance client. I did this few years ago and usually made a couple thousand/month.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try a freelance website. For example www.odesk.com

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> You could always try Amazon Mechanical Turk.</comment>


$10 Startup: A Leanpub Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://iterin.blogspot.com/2012/04/leanpub-experiment-10-startups.html <comment><USER2> As I'm not gonna spent any part of my $10 budget yet I've signed up and suggested price of 0 :) I wish you there will be less people like me :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was afraid of that... :)

<comment><USER2> Easy, that was assumption you had to verify. And afaik Leanpub allows you to increase the price later when the value of the book will be more visible. Or charge for the sequel, for practical examples of solutions etc. Anyway I hope you won't abandon the project due to cheapskates like me. The title and blurb made me curious.</comment></comment></comment>


Finshir – A generic, optimized alternative to SlowLoris, written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Gymmasssorla/finshir <comment><AUTHOR> What you guys think about this, any questions and/or ideas?</comment>


Odysseys and Homecomings From Homer to "First Man" - <AUTHOR> https://eidolon.pub/heroes-are-a-virus-from-outer-space-6909d85e2731 <comment><USER2> Maybe I just don't get this article, but I really dislike the singular interpretation of adventure as some kind of Male self delusional escapism of responsibility - adventure and exploration are the one thing making life worth living for many people, and something worth risking dying for.

Adventure is it's own feeling, it does not need to be explained away as a pseudo emotion or psychoanalysed as dysfunction in disguise. Sure Armstrong had demons, intensely suppressed emotions of family, but i refuse to believe these clinical description of his actual adventure as some kind of symptom, someone doesn't go to the moon purely for escapism, there are far easier ways of doing that.

It's possible the author has never experienced the genuine emotion of adventure, and therefor is blind to this aspect.</comment>


How do you manage side-effects when working with the DOM? - <AUTHOR>

I started working with JavaScript a few months ago for something I've been working on in my spare time. I find that there are pieces that I love and pieces that I hate, but the pieces that I love usually enable a level of expressiveness that lets me fix the broken bits or at the very least work around them in an elegant way.
One piece that I struggle with and have yet to find a good model for working with is the DOM -- the big piece of global state right in the middle of my application. I've tried a few things to mitigate the inevitable problems. At first I tried wrapping up elements in objects and treating them as private instance variables. Of course the elements were still global and I quickly grew tired of this metaphor. My new strategy is to basically treat the DOM as a database. I use a CSS selector to grab elements I care about and then apply changes by mapping a function over the resulting set. I never store references to the elements and simply use the selector to get the elements I care about at any given time. I never make any assumptions about the state of the element and merely 'apply' the changes onto the element.
But of course almost all of my functions are riddled with side effects. My strategy to prevent this from becoming over complicated has been to keep my code base as small as possible so I can see at a glance what's going on.
So, to all the hackers out there that are much more clever than I am, please help a guy out. What strategies do you use to work with the DOM? Am I even approaching the problem from the right direction? <comment><USER2> I work with objects that have immediate value - e.g., a form will be an object that has a reference to fields of interest, and member methods that listen to form events to achieve validation, et cetera. I keep DOM elements as instance variables, because it's faster to access them that way than with selector engines. It also neatly separates my behavior - the JavaScript - from my presentation. If another piece of the page's script layer needs to listen to my form object, it can subscribe to the events that it publishes.

Basically, I treat DOM elements as the display portion of an object, and if another object needs to change it, it can fire an event. Keeps things nice and loosely coupled. And I typically keep any methods that update the DOM in a separate method - keeps everything nice and organized...

It's an interesting topic, and one that probably needs a little more exposition than this.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a clean approach and one that I've heard before. I now build function generators that wrap functionality around passed in elements and then register these functions with events -- so basically what you are doing except with closures instead of objects. I've found this approach useful where I'd prefer not to use a CSS selector over and over again.

My suspicion is that these problems have been solved already by programmers creating traditional event-driven GUI applications. This is unfortunately something I have no experience in so I can only guess that there is some overlap in these problem domains.</comment></comment>