Tell HN: Doing a PhD is good - <AUTHOR> Or having a higher education. A general trend here is to discard PhD/higher education as a waste of time or money when one want to go the startup way. Effectively, you can become rich without such education, but very few of them get really rich and on the barrier to entry, if you consider a field where you can be disruptive without education is rather low.
The real good point of having a PhD is not in the title you get, it is in the network you can build and the problems you try to solve. By definition, most of the scientific PhD are to solve industrial problems. This means, you have a complex problem and customers, directly, right now, during your studies.
If you are smart, you can already have a portfolio of customers at the end of your PhD, you can have your product nearly ready and you will be able to charge your customers more in thousands of Dollars than in $9 per month.
Bonus point, the barrier to entry will be high for the competition and it is relatively easy to become an expert in your field.
So please, if you want to do a PhD, do it and do it wisely.
A short list to think about:
1. Get a supervisor known to give his students a lot of freedom. 2. Do your PhD in a country where you get a good pay (most of the EU countries pay well for a PhD). 3. Go in a university with a good budget for travel to conferences. 4. Find labs with intensive industrial collaboration. <comment><USER2> Tell HN: It's your fucking life, do what the fuck makes you happy.

If you find being an undergrad painful and you're bored to tears, and you're only doing it is because your parents and peers tell you you'll end up as a janitor without that piece of paper, and you're literally itching to get into the 'real world', drop the fuck out and work on that startup.

If you're fascinated with Viking Poetry, and it's all you can think about, and people are telling you what a waste of money that Viking Poetry PhD is, tell them to fuck off and get that PhD anyway.

If you wanna be an actor, move to NY or LA, get a job as a waiter, and bust your fucking ass working on your craft. Don't stay at home and get that HR degree from University of Phoenix.

Both this post and the "X isn't worth it in the long run" articles it's responding to make the same mistakes. Assuming everyone has the same path in life. I think ultimately, deep down, all the posters want you to chase YOUR dream. But instead they take their dreams or their choices and find evidence prove to themselves that it's the right choice. And it probably is the right choice for them. It may or may not be the right choice for you.

As long as you're making the choices because that's what you really want, and not out of fear, they're the right choices. So yeah, if the only reason you didn't go to college was because your high-school sweetheart was a year younger, you made the wrong choice.

Why am I a software professional? Not because it pays well, but that sure helps. It's because I used to sit mesmerized in front of a computer typing in code from magazines, amazed that they followed my commands. It's because even before I had a computer to type the code into, I used to read the same code listings in the books, fascinated by them, even though I couldn't even run them. I didn't read the Economist's list of hot-fucking-jobs-for-the-next-ten- years and pick the top item on the list.

<comment><USER3> > _Tell HN: It's your fucking life, do what the fuck makes you happy._

Yes. But also make it a point to listen to people who've been there (which is exactly how I see these "Tell HN" and the "X isn't worth it in the long run" posts). Doing what makes you happy might make you happy in the short term. It might not necessarily be the best choice in the long run.

<comment><USER2> Well yeah, but if you're on the fence about a big life decision, you should go out and research it, and not rely on hacker news to spoon-feed you the appropriate info.

I'd hate to to think that someone considering a PhD program read yesterday's 'not worth it' article, but didn't get online over the weekend, missing the 'yes it is' article, and made his decision accordingly. I think we all agree that would be absurd, possibly even insane.

That's why I always feel like these articles and their upvotes are more about hn'ers trying to justify or rationalize their choices, than trying to help someone else out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry if you interpreted my post this way. The thing is that this year has seen many many articles in big journals about the "education bubble" etc. Basically, a lot of higher education bashing. And pg, with YCombinator is also kind of going that way with the mantra to get new entrepreneurs as young as possible. If you start a business being 18, you will never have the opportunity to discover then learn enough in some really interesting fields of engineering. This is what longer education provides.

I just wanted people not to forget about the good sides of a longer education. Nothing more.

<comment><USER2> I'm actually sorry. Apologies. I know the core of your message was "you can get a PhD, and things will work out okay." I might be being intentionally provocative up above, because I too am sick of the many articles about education sucking, and comments that equate happiness in life with the Golden Rule. (The guy who has the most gold wins.) Maybe I'm just mad that it's gotten to the point that people feel they need to post rebuttals to these silly articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "at the end of your PhD, you can have your product nearly ready and you will be able to charge your customers more in thousands of Dollars than in $9 per month."

PhD vs non-PhD does not determine whether you charge $1000/mo or $9/mo. It's what you actually build with your talent.

A PhD building a mobile service is still limited by the economics everybody else faces.

<comment><USER5> I don't see too many PhD dissertations on iPhone fart apps getting published.

<comment><USER4> You missed the point.

If you're build mobile services like mobile payment platforms, video games, ecommerce solutions etc., a PhD isn't going to get you more money from a customer.

<comment><USER5> No, you missed my point. No one is building "mobile payment platforms, video games, ecommerce solutions" in academia, either because those problems aren't interesting, or more likely because they will not get you grants. The point of a PhD is to work on fundamental problems in your field of study. This is something that is often ignored by people claiming to be studying computer science, which is why people constantly argue that it is not a science.

<comment><USER6> Well, actually people are building these things, but they are focussing on one aspect, and skipping any non-interesting parts as far as possible. So, that payment system will have one or more innovative aspects, but it will likely not be robust, fast enough to handle thousands of customers, secure, capable of handling international payments, etc, and it will certainly not be all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anecdotally (why my PhD turned out to be a bad idea):

1\. I got a supervisor who gave her students a lot of freedom but it worked entirely the wrong way.

2\. The UK doesn't pay well.

3\. I didn't get any money for conference travel as my PhD stipend was a grant from my college.

4\. Yeah, this is the fun one - you're doing a highly research focused degree and finding somewhere that actually has a foot in the real world, in the exact area you want to study and build a startup around, is difficult. But if you can pull it off, I'm sure it could work.

I got a lot of credit for starting a startup around my PhD topic - but I was forced to do so because I simply couldn't continue working on this stuff in academia any more, as it was too applied for my university.

</comment><comment><USER8> As an American PhD student currently finishing up and moving to a European faculty job, I was quite surprised at #2. Typical pay for a CS PhD student in the U.S. is somewhere in the $16k-24k range. In Denmark, it's $45k!

(I clearly did things backwards, because the opposite is true of faculty pay.)

<comment><USER9> How is the Canadian stipend? And do higher-paying countries tend to pay lower stipends?

Do schools in Scandinavia and the Netherlands even care if your only language is English?

<comment><USER10> From what I've seen, the Canadian stipends range from a low of about $15k, for those on research assistantships (paid out of their supervisor's research budget) or on provincial scholarships, to a high of about $21k (NSERC or other tri-council federal scholarships). There are a limited number of higher-paying tri-council scholarships as well.

Some universities will top up a federal/provincial scholarship (Waterloo tops up by $10,000), and teaching assistantships are available as well. However, part-time work hours (TA or otherwise) are usually limited by the terms of the scholarship/assitantship, so there is a limit to how much a student can reasonably earn while doing a degree (NSERC limits to 10 hours worked/week, the expected hours for a TA).

Tuition is paid out of the student's stipend amount, though it's often quite a bit less than undergraduate tuition in CS and similar programs. My fee bill dropped in half when I finished my BASc and started an MASc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is easier to acquire specialized skills in computer vision and machine learning in grad school than in industry. I've also personally had a good experience incubating technology during my PhD, although this depends on your advisor and your country. The PhD programs in the US are usually longer than the EU (6 versus 3 or 4 years), but typically provide more freedom and less pressure to publish constantly.

</comment><comment><USER5> The thing about doing a PhD in CS today is that from reading about all the famous people who did PhDs in the US in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it seems they were much better off. ARPA/DARPA funding was plentiful, industrial research labs were at their peak, commercial firms seem to have been hungry for consulting. I forgot where I read it, but someone was writing about how their PhD advisor wanted his students to spend half their time consulting at commercial firms outside the university.

I don't have any first-hand knowledge of this, maybe it is just the opinion of the successful and/or lucky people who had a good time and wrote about it, I would love for people to confirm or deny this perception. But the contrast with people I know who are/were doing their PhDs today is night and day.

"Starving grad student" is an accurate stereotype. I really can't see myself spending 5 years earning barely $30k a year, busting my ass TAing undergrads, dealing with publishing deadlines and BS from the supervisor and university (you'd be surprised at the amount of people who end up with asshole supervisors!), practically begging for grants. I don't know any PhD candidates who regularly do consulting, or anyone who has a comfortable annual income. And the stress is crazy. I don't know why anyone would do this to themselves.

To add insult to injury, I know I'm making the same or more money than many people my age (or a year or two older, I'm 25) straight out of CS PhD programs.

If I want to hack on interesting R&D projects, I can do that as Free Software in my spare time (which I do). The contrast is I have actual users instead of papers to submit. If I had to write an interesting system for a dissertation, I'm practically guaranteed that no one will use it because everyone knows that software that comes out of academia is shit.

So, what's the point?

<comment><USER12> If you think doing a PhD in CS is about writing software, you don't know what you're talking about, dude.

You started your post with a coherent argument, but the ending was completely WTF material.

<comment><USER5> If I wanted to do more math, I'd go to grad school for mathematics (one of my undergrad degrees is in math).

I don't want to beg Sun for grant money to develop new ways to make Java less shitty (you would be amazed at the number of papers that have been written about this topic), since they don't want to invest the money in setting up a real R&D lab with real-world salaries.

I'm not interested in type theory, complexity, encryption, or formal verification. Are there any other areas of CS research where I can get away with not writing any software as a grad student?

<comment><USER12> There are plenty! But that's besides the point. You most likely will end up writing some software as part as a PhD in CS, but that's not the objective. Most of the time, the software will be proof-of-concept stuff to validate some of the research you've done. Or to assess the performance of a new algorithm, or whatever. Your comparison of equating R&D to hacking on some open-source project is really apples to oranges. In any case, a PhD in CS is, 99.9999% of the time, not about hacking, at all.

<comment><USER5> If a grad student writes a software prototype and no one uses it, does it make a sound?

The fact that "99.9999% of the time" is spent doing other things is the problem. If you're doing applied math like type theory and make an advancement, that's research. If you're doing anything else, that's the Development part of R&D.

Computer science doesn't exist in a vacuum. Unlike math, you can't come up with some new algorithm without first having a problem that that algorithm is intended to solve (again, this doesn't apply to complexity-related research because that is applied math).

So we can't claim CS arises a priori (unless it's just applied math like type theory), so then you have to claim that what your CS research is doing is empirical. Good luck with that. Because, you know, Java is a naturally occurring system.

Let's take two concrete examples of projects I hack on:

<http://common-lisp.net/project/eager-future/>

<http://common-lisp.net/project/parenscript/>

Both of these topics (using futures for parallelism, and language X to JavaScript compilation) have had and continue to have a lot of academic research devoted to them.

These two systems I contribute to happen to have interesting and original properties that I've arrived at in a process that can only be described as hacking.

I'm convinced that I never would have been able to have these hacking breakthroughs without the freedom and time to reflect that I have outside of grad school.

It doesn't matter how supportive your advisor is, there is still the question of grants and publishing deadlines. And I know a thing or two about working the university system to create a supportive environment for myself - as a math undergrad, I had my own cubicle in and run of the AI lab, had support from a number of CS professors, one of whom had a spot reserved in the CS MSc program for me (I obviously didn't go). I spent a lot of time around grad students at the AI and other CS labs, so I got to know what grad student life looked like.

But aside from all that, the best thing about working on these systems on my own has been the fact that people actually use them. The feedback has been invaluable for giving me new ideas and inspiring the innovative hacks.

<comment><USER12> >The fact that "99.9999% of the time" is spent doing other things is the problem. If you're doing applied math like type theory and make an advancement, that's research. If you're doing anything else, that's the Development part of R&D.

It's not a problem, at all. Whether you're developing new algorithms, analyzing them, running simulations, studying and understanding the results, all that _is_ research. I think you're being too narrow in your definitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know about CS but if you are thinking of doing a PhD in the biomedical field, do it only if you are really really really attracted by the idea of doing research and knowing that there is about 1 academic job for every 10-15 people who start PhD. Competition is fierce, pay is miserable, be sure you are in love with the job.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really don't get this type of statements (and I am referring both to this article and the opposite one that also got to front page today).

Doing a PhD is neither good nor bad. There is just no right choice for everybody. Some people will rather pursue one, some others will rather avoid higher education and go for other endeavors. It is just an individual decision which will turn out good for some and bad for others.

Personally, I didn't see the point for one and decided to graduate just with an MSc, but I have many friends with PhDs and in hindsight they are fully satisfied with their decisions.

</comment><comment><USER15> A warning before you simply look at just how much every single country pays for PhDs: Living in Europe, especially Scandinavia, cost _usually_ a lot more than living in the States. You should take this into account when you decide where to take your PhD.

As a little tips if you're interested in taking a PhD in Norway: They discuss whether to halve the amount of PhD-positions and double the pay or not. If this happens, it will be very reasonable to take a PhD here. If this does not happen, I would not recommend taking a PhD "for the money", because prices here are skyhigh.

</comment><comment><USER16> Isn't the _real_ answer that it's different for everyone? Doing any sort of degree _just because_ is surely wrong, especially in the way you suggest. Taking funding for a PHD and then working on a startup and moving into that once you're qualified probably isn't what those who are funding it intended on you doing... I guess that's what being a hacker is, playing the system, but it feels morally wrong to me when there are limited funding options etc etc etc

</comment><comment><USER17> Tell NH: don't worry about money so much and if you do want to waste time thinking/talking about money and the making thereof, don't do a PhD.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do you have a PhD?

</comment><comment><USER19> Your brain doesn't last forever. A PhD will make it harder to succeed because your brain will have deteriorated somewhat by the time you finish it.

Try comparing programmers at ages 20 vs 30.

<comment><USER20> I'm 6 months from 30, and I'm a much better programmer now than when I was 20. (Which was my junior year of college.) Not sure what your point is.

<comment><USER19> Some things get better with age. Others such as analytic ability, thinking speed, and energy level get worse.

<comment><USER21> [http://books.google.com/books?id=OXS8XBwP0coC&lpg=PA85&#...](http://books.google.com/books?id=OXS8XBwP0coC&lpg=PA85&ots=syZTCKEPGt&dq=analytical%20thinking%20ability%20age%20decline&lr&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=false)

one source amongst many, note the # of achievements peaks around 40 not 20

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6X08-46P4PSB-1K&_user=10&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F1997&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1583264144&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=fb9fa6a7c29afda6bd2aac0352d624ae&searchtype=a)

". In some cases (e.g., bisection), performance differences between the older participants and students nearly 50 years younger used in other studies were negligible."

and so on and so forth, this is by no means a well solved problem that says, young people are smarter derp

<comment><USER22> Achievement is definitely way more than just natural ability. Experience counts for a lot, and older people will have a large knowledge advantage. However, he has a legitimate point about natural analytic ability and speed.

See:[http://www18.homepage.villanova.edu/diego.fernandezduque/Tea...](http://www18.homepage.villanova.edu/diego.fernandezduque/Teaching/CognitivePsychology/Lectures_and_Labs/ssssAging/CurrDirAgingSalthouse.pdf)

Seriously, if you need a kick in the ass to get moving every now and then (like me), then google Timothy Salthouse's research on cognitive aging. It's a depressing reminder that time waits for no one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Old-School Silicon Valley Company Logos ON T-SHIRTS - <AUTHOR> http://abandonwear.biz/catalog/

<comment><USER2> Not as old school and most of the startups are still alive:

<http://www.startupschwag.com/>

I've shut down the monthly subscriptions but leftovers remain. Take 70% off, use code: HN70

I tried to track down who owned webvan's art through a screen printer that worked with them to no avail. Also tried to find out who has kozmo.com's art. Didn't get anywhere there either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not all Silicon Valley companies...

Commodore - Westchester, PA

Compuserve - Columbus, OH

Infocom - Cambridge, MA

DEC - Maynard, MA

Microsoft - Seattle, WA

Tandy - Fort Worth, TX

</comment><comment><USER4> No SUN? Their logo would probably be the best seller.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sun didn't fail; it was acquired and the right to the logo are Oracle's.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft didn't fail either. Who said anything about "Failed company logos on t-shirts"...?

<comment><USER5> The site itself:

"A history of silicon valley failure written in t-shirts"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Surely someone still owns the trademarks to many of these? Get 'em while they last.

<comment><USER7> FWIW the author claims this in the FAQ:

 _This is cool and all, but you aren't the owner of any of these logos. Aren't you going to be in deep trouble?

Trademarks need to be renewed fairly often. Even old logos from companies still in business get abandoned and die. Everything on this site is legally kosher as far as public records are concerned._

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> These look great, though I'm not sure I can justify $25 each on tshirts..

Also, I think this is the first time I've seen a .biz that wasn't spam-related (or is it?!?!)

</comment><comment><USER8> Need to come with instructions for washing so as to achieve that worn with age look to go along with holes in the blue jeans...

<comment><USER9> they have the "distressed" style for that

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was hoping to see webvan in the mix. Guess their logo belongs to amazon?

</comment><comment><USER11> hrm, site and shirts have been pulled down...

</comment><comment><USER12> exciting stuff</comment>


Stop Holding Yourself Back: Transcending False Desires - <AUTHOR> http://www.criticalreadingskills.com/speaking/stop-holding-back-transcending-false-desires/

<comment><USER2> Good point in that you do want to have an identity that accepts whatever kind of difficulty is inherent in achieving your goals. I think this general idea is a bit overstated and simplified though. You don't necessarily have to want to suffer or enjoy every moment of practice. Some parts you can like a lot and others you can hate. You just need to have a belief system around the endeavor that accepts the suffering parts as worthwhile and necessary.

I also think the "Law of Equivalent Exchange" is a good general rule but again an over-simplification. It also reflects a primitive and pessimistic worldview which I believe can be very harmful. I have seen this type of worldview used to justify Luddism or at least quite unwarranted ambivalence about technology. I have also seen beliefs like that law justify things like war. Sometimes there are positive ways forward which are not detrimental compromises against an other.

For example not all technological progress needs to lead to "equivalent" ecological destruction and not all cultural integration need to mean "equivalent" genocide.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the article is oversimplified and a bit overstated (you have to think about who it's written for and the context it's in), though I disagree with many of your more specific criticisms. You criticize, for example, the Law of Equivalent Exchange as reflecting a primitive and pessimistic worldview, and also as being something that can be used to justify Luddism and ambivalence towards technology. But that's like blaming the shovel for digging the hole. Sure, it was used to dig the hole, but that hole was going to be dug either way (unless we take away ALL tools, including hands -- and THAT would be some extreme Luddism). If people want to rationalize and justify their prejudices, it hardly matters to them how they go about doing so -- as long as they do do so. Also, win-win situations exist within the Law of Equivalent Exchange -- it sounds like you think it could promote an overly position-based worldview (as opposed to a principle-based one), and I agree that, untempered with moderation, it could potentially lead to such a thing. However, if this advice is taken with moderation (as I suspect it typically will be), I see no harm in it, and actually some value in it.

-WrennGo

<comment><USER2> Those worldviews are prevalent and that "law" is commonly used as one of the core belief nodes supporting those worldviews.

Here's another example: tool selection by programmers. Many have a false belief that a programming language that performs must be difficult to use or require a lot of manual memory management or plumbing.

This false belief is also supported by that incorrect belief node about the "law".

Also, you know you don't have to sign your name on comments, right? It says your name at the top.</comment></comment></comment>


Financial Modeling for Startups: An Introduction - <AUTHOR> https://www.fivecastfinancial.com/guides/financial-modeling-for-startups-an-introduction/ <comment><USER3> Finance person here, this is a good grounding of the basics. The hardest part to take forward is working out the timing of things. A company is constantly owed and owing money, and this is the real trick to working out your funding requirements.

On top of the model every business needs an operational cash flow forecast going out say 3 months at least. For every day you enter the _brought forward_ balance from yesterday. Then you add and subtract all of the line items of cash inflow and outflow for the day to forecast a closing can balance. It is more than possible for your financing model to show profitability and yet to be insolvent, because you are paying money out before it comes in. Like maybe a big customer pays on the 28th but payroll goes on the 25th...

Cash is king as they say, and a daily cash-flow forecast is the main tool that a financial controller would use to maximise it.

<comment><USER4> I've heard that it's rather common to be technically profitable (i.e.: a company has a greater income than expenses), but nonetheless insolvent due to bills coming due before clients pay their invoices.

From what I was told, this mostly affects supply-chain heavy companies; software companies are mostly spared this kind of consideration.

What are some of the red flags that founders should be aware of when reading their own cashflow statements?

<comment><USER5> I'm currently handling bookkeeping for software companies and one thing that's often overlooked is your clients consistently making late payments on their invoices. Make sure that you know who those client are and schedule accordingly.

<comment><USER6> DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) is one of the most important numbers to track for any company. If you are a small company it is arguably _the_ most important one to manage cash flow

<comment><USER3> And it is a notoriously fickle metric, most people track it at month end, and yet their main sales receipts come in after... leading to a rather alarming result. DSO or debtor days as it is often called in the UK, needs to be read with an understanding of the payment patterns in that business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The issue is forecasting revenues.

Zoom in and the issue is forecasting unit sales.

Zoom in and the issue is forecasting new unit sales.

In the example, this line does a lot of the work in the model: "Forecasting New Subscriptions (line 10). We've just entered hardcodes here for simplicity, but these could be the result of calculations related to a marketing / sales funnel"

I submit that this single assumption will carry more weight than the rest of the model, and is the most difficult to forecast.

<comment><USER8> Broadly speaking you should have a MQL -> SQL -> Deal model (i.e assumptions for ratios between the three) and assumptions for CPL and SQL per SDR/AE.

With these you can tie sales forecasts to marketing spend and sales hires.

Obviously these won't be perfect, but when you're off target you can see why (i.e which assumption was false) and then either try to fix it or correct the false assumption giving you a more accurate model going forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. If you like this sort of thing you can go one step down the modeling path and take a great coursera course called "Model Thinking" [1] which totally gave me a different appreciation for spreadsheet nerdery (you use lots of different tools).

1\. [https://www.class-central.com/course/coursera-model- thinking...](https://www.class-central.com/course/coursera-model-thinking-317)

<comment><USER10> Why is it linked to an affiliate website and not coursera itself?

EDIT: here the original coursera link: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/model- thinking](https://www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking)

<comment><USER9> I was on my phone and couldnt copy the target link without the app opening the page instead. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I had to produce my first financial documents like this, I went out and looked at public companies that had similar enough business models to mine, and read all their annual reports. Then I figured out what metrics are worth tracking or that I wanted to track, and pretty much just copied their methodology (which they described in their statements).

Another thing worth considering, if you hate The Sheet, or if it's getting out of control, considering putting your data into a database and reporting with redash. It's a also a very convenient way to share data internally.

Also, in my experience, the thing that mattered most was customer acquisition cost to lifetime value ratio.

</comment><comment><USER12> Decent article, thanks for writing it. I think more founders should do a bit of financial modeling.

That said, I think most founders should not be forecasting salary expenses on a per-position basis, even if they're under 100 employees. In my experience, you definitely won't know which positions you'll be hiring for further out than 1 year. If you're trying to impress investors it might work, but it will have limited utility for you personally.

Instead, you should group salaries by function (e.g. sales, engineering) and then make explicit your assumptions about labour efficiency. In the model described in the article, these assumptions are also there, but spread out over 40 rows in a table - not good! Assumptions in models should always be explicit.

For example, you could say that, in order to maintain your projected growth, you need to spend 10% of your revenue on sales staff. Or if you're aiming to be funded, you might instead work out how much labour it might take to make one sale, and then extrapolate based on how many sales you intend to make in the year.

You could look at engineering and decide you need 1 person in your engineering team (disregarding job title) per 100 clients. Then extrapolate, once again, based on number of projected clients. Obviously, software is meant to be scalable, so this all depends on how much up-front development you intend to do and at what pace you intend to add new features, so you might want to factor your growth targets in too.

Now, organisations normally bring in layers of management as teams grow. Do you need to account for this? Probably not. Remember, we're focusing on labour efficiency. These managers might increase your costs, but the idea is that they also help your teams function in a scalable way. And if you have good managers, the average tenure at your company should increase, leading to higher productivity.

The benefit of the above approach is that, now that all your assumptions have been made explicit, you can easily tweak them to see how they impact your model, rather than having to dig through many rows of data.

Lastly, and this is nit-picking, but ignoring income tax means this model should only be used to forecast up to periods where the company is not profitable. As soon as there's profit it will be completely wrong. Although it's a nice simplifying assumption if all you're trying to model is your road to break-even.

<comment><USER13> I prefer the bottoms up expense buildup of people as opposed to a broad percent of total calculation as it introduces more discipline to the forecast and reduces risk of weird situations where sales go up by x% and all of a sudden you're hiring 3 half people (in models I expect to see expenses go up in steps because that's how they work in practice). Also gives insight into the mindset of the forecaster. For example do they assume 2 sales people can cover 300 accounts while building a pipeline without SDRs? I am an operator, not a VC so perhaps it's an audience preference.

<comment><USER12> I think it would be good to have a bottom up forecast for the first 12 months. Apart from that, a disciplined forecast will clearly show how the calculation was derived and what assumptions went into it. You should not have to dig through a bunch of data to gain insight into the mindset of the forecaster - the forecaster is supposed to put that info in the model! If they can justify year 1's sales expenses by mentioning that it's for 2 sales people + an SDR, then great! Just don't expect that granularity in year 3.

It's quite easy to avoid the "3.5 people" issue by making it a step function (i.e. rounding). Once again your assumptions become explicit, which is good. E.g. you might decide that one person can do the work of 1.3 employees (people can do this for a while when it's needed!) and round everything above that up to 2.

However, when forecasting 3 years in advance as in the article, the fact that your model has you hiring fractional people becomes less important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was just thinking about using stats in startups. For sure you need to know your runway (and burn rate) - but then for SaaS (and similar business with recurring revenues) the first useful statistics is _churn_. Customers quiting is the most important info when looking for product market fit. Customer groups with lowest churn are your target group (market). Before you start scaling business you need first to decrease churn - because you don't want to grow the holes in your system together with it (this metaphor is not mine - but I cannot now find where it came from - but I googled this article instead: [https://pakman.com/churn-is-the-single-metric-that- determine...](https://pakman.com/churn-is-the-single-metric-that-determines- the-success-of-your-subscription-service-6e82d9d9ea01)).

Sales statistics become important after you have satisfying churn rate (i.e. after product market fit). With advertising you can quickly grow sales - <USER2> if your churn is too big - then the LTV ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value)) will be too low. And generally customers that come from advertising will have a bigger churn than those who learned about the product organically.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice writeup. A previous company had us participate in a simulation exercise. Split into teams, move around a board similar to monopoly except you were collecting accounts payable from customers, paying rent and utilities, paying payroll, paying taxes on xyz, lawsuits, etc. CashFlow was king. Losers all were paying bills as they arrived rather than on due dates. They had the money, on paper, but not on time. Timesheet-driven contracting - it showed how important it is to fill-in timesheets so customers can be billed. Miss the cutoff and your 48 hrs gets invoiced two weeks later. Your company doesn't thrive when it's borrowing money to pay you for time it can't bill yet because you forgot to sign your timecard.

</comment><comment><USER16> Good brief summary but sometimes high level is just as important. eg. Using the tools to explain how you prioritize spending money raised and connecting it to material signposts is very helpful for funder communications as well as testing out your own ideas in a cohesive framework.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good basics but the article is too much on the simple side for me.

"There are no hard and fast rules on how to categorize your expenses"

Pro tip: Loosely aligning them within recognized tax lines can help simplify things in the early days and reduce work for your accountant.

</comment><comment><USER18> In my experience with early stage startups, these models are often pure fiction and completely divorced from reality.

They look nice to investors. Reality is very, very different.

<comment><USER19> (Ex VC here)

Before you launch, yes (ish) - it can give you an idea of where you'd like to start charging and why. Models come into their own post launch. They provide a clear structure on how to optimise the economics of your business. E.g. If you are currently selling at $20 and losing $3/sale due to support costs and returns, it provides a great structure to focus on a) increasing the price, b) reducing support costs / order and c) reducing returns.

A dream for any VC is a startup with fantastic economics at day 0, but this is rare. The majority of high quality companies have negative unit economics during their infancy. We liked investing in companies with negative unit economics with founders that understood the drivers of their economics deeply and were optimising them aggressively on a weekly/monthly basis (and doing all this inside of a H-U-G-E market). (The best ones did it on a weekly basis.)

An interesting example is Just Eat, one of Europe's best performing startups (IPOed at £1.5bn). This company had negative economics for ~3 years, but the market was very big and investors could see a pathway to positive unit economics through optimisation. This allowed them to fund the company through the negative UE period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> nice post. also in the 'financial modeling for startups' space: [https://foresight.is/](https://foresight.is/)</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you aim to be 30 years from now? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I'll be 56. My kids (hopefully) would have graduated from college. I aim to have been the greatest dad ever. We would have traveled the world together, started a band together, written a few web/mobile app together, etc., and always be there for them when they needed me.

<comment><USER3> Song, you are the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We, the family of five, went bicycling along Vancouver's waterfront today. It was a cold sunny day. We rode something like 12km, made several stops, had lunch and looped back to where we started.

It would be nice to be able to do the same thing, with the same people, in the same place, on this same day in April, 30 years from now.

Which sort of illustrates the cliché that it is not the destination that one should aim for but the journey.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll be in my early 70s. "Still in good shape" sounds great. Maybe "inhabiting a robot duplicate with my brain regularly backed up".

Also "a famous enough artist to crowdsource a decent living with my art". Which I think is a threshold I may be thoroughly over in about a year. In 30 years, barring accidents, I'll have finished the next two graphic novels I have planned for the next 6 or so years, done whatever the hell the next three multi-year projects are, and taken some cool vacations.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll be approaching 60 in 30 years. At that point I would like to be out of the tech industry at least 20 years.

I love technology, I love creating things and working with others to create cool things, but I'm sick of everything surrounding the tech industry these days. The politics, the media, the "culture" critics, etc. I'm not even 30 but I've become extremely cynical about the industry we work in.

At 60ish I'd like:

\- to have a large historical home and some land in the south of England or France, with a lot of animals / pets on site.

\- decent passive income and pension to support my being able to do things I'd like to do in terms of hobbies and leisure.

\- children and perhaps grandchildren to have great experiences with and maintain my sense of youth.

\- reasonable physical fitness.

The above would make me very content.

</comment><comment><USER7> I plan to be somewhere I won't be arrested for building stuff and having emotions.

<comment><USER8> rough weekend?

<comment><USER9> No, rough civilization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That'll put me at 84. I'll be retired.

I'm hoping to get another 20 years or so out of my programming career, though. I think I can do it, though I'm pretty unsure on my strategy for working for a traditional company in my 60s and might have to do consulting or some similar kind of piece-work.

</comment><comment><USER11> Space! Assuming we solve the problems of death and aging (I'll be getting pretty old by then...probably still alive and in pretty good shape, if my rate of aging thus far is any indicator), I'd like to be colonizing another planet. But, 30 years might be optimistic for that. I can dream big, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've never aimed to be anywhere in particular, and I've been there ever since.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a part of the rebellion fighting against Skynet(Google). We are taking in early volunteers if anyone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER14> Founding a religion to guide mankind and AI through the post-human future

<comment><USER15> How will there be mankind in post-human future?

<comment><USER9> Why? Aren't there animals in the post-animal (human) present?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll be at my 57. I would love to build a vintage home in the far south of India and maintain the agricultural lands that I own. I would love to do anything myself without anyone's help. And I don't want to be a coder by that time but I would love to teach others by that time. I would have explored at least 50 countries by that time and also might have finished my second book.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Still doin' ma thang".

</comment><comment><USER18> counting the days to the release of perl 6.

</comment><comment><USER19> Best case scenario: Retired, living in the beach or a mountain somewhere.

Worst case scenario and much more probable: Too old to continue working in the ageist tech industry and too old to start again, I'll be working a low-wage job trying to make ends meet.

</comment><comment><USER20> That would put me at 55. I intend on not having to worry about money by that age. I will likely have a few rental properties. Ideally, living somewhere warm where I can exercise for free (eg. swimming in an ocean or a public workout area). Enough income generated from investments to take a yearly vacation. If programming still exists, I would still do that as a hobby. Writing trading algorithms for fun, gambling with slightly better odds. Teaching is also appealing to me, not necessarily in academia, but maybe if I get good at a martial art over the next 30 years.

In short, doing whatever the hell I want.

<comment><USER21> As someone closer to 55 than 25, allow me to let you know just how fast those decades are about to fly past.

I'm 44 now.

When 55 is thirty years away, it seems like "not having to worry about money" is a realistic goal. When it gets closer, you start to notice that most people still do have to worry about it, all their lives. The only difference is that you get better about being at peace with the idea, and letting life be good even if you do have to look at your bank balance regularly.

The one practical piece of advice I'd like to offer, if I may be so bold, is this. If you want to live a life like that in 30 years, make sure that every day you ask yourself "what can I do today to get me one step closer to my goal?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Inside a computer

<comment><USER23> Fortunately this is impossible. You cannot copy a running program. You can keep a brain alive in a jar forever (the hardware the software runs on), but you can't transfer running software from one machine to another.

<comment><USER24> You must not have heard about VMware or VMotion, it's their killer app. There are alternatives from other hypervisors, but I believe VMware was the first to do this.

<comment><USER23> The brain isn't a virtual machine!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> While I can't say for sure where I'll be 30 years from now, I feel like it is better to dream big than to give up while I'm still young. With that in mind, I'd love to be helping to get us off of this rock before we accidentally sterilise it - even better if I can do so before 30 years passes.

<comment><USER26> I'm with Elon Musk on this one "I'd like to die on Mars, just not on impact".

<comment><USER8> even on impact... pretty cool way to go!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I hope to still be a beginner at something.

<comment><USER28> Simple - just don't learn anything for the next 30 years!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In 30 years I will be 52 Years old. I aim to help as many people as I can with my project. As a goal, I will reach out to 6 billion users or more by 2045. I also wish to see my algorithms running in future robots for the greater good of mankind.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'll be 54, my game engine (side project) hopefully gonna turn into very mature one, my research hopefully can have actual practice that can help people in specific way, and hopefully I'll still alone in the corner of my room.

</comment><comment><USER31> Post 30 years from now, I would have lived a major fraction of my life span. I would like to see myself in good health. I would like to travel and enjoy with my family and friends. Perhaps, I would regularly write on my blog.

</comment><comment><USER32> Retired/on a permanent vacation but still programming as a semi-serious hobby.

</comment><comment><USER33> I aim to not have forgotten to buy my then wife a present for her 54th birthday.

</comment><comment><USER34> wow,this is stretching my imagination very far,I will be 67,I only wish one thing ,made enough money to have a home in planet Mars and healthy enough to live there

</comment><comment><USER35> Cured of tinnitus. Thinking of 30 more years of constant noise is making me want that 30 years to be a lot shorter.

</comment><comment><USER36> Assuming the creation of AI went smoothly, virtually all jobs would be obsolete due to AI, society has transitioned to basic income, and I'd be trying to wrap my head around the latest discovery from our AI friends.

It'll be like we are kids again, watching the AI's going about their grown up business.

Can't wait! :)

</comment><comment><USER37> I aim to have vastly more assimilated knowledge...and maybe a boat.

</comment><comment><USER38> the way things are currently going for me. To be practical i still see myself struggling for living and housing. Hope that changes.

</comment><comment><USER39> healthy.

</comment><comment><USER40> I aim to be a writer and a triathlete.

</comment><comment><USER41> Dead. Hopefully in Heaven.

</comment><comment><USER42> Honestly, I have no idea.

</comment><comment><USER43> Alive and happy.

</comment><comment><USER44> Waiting for Half Life 3 to be released...

</comment><comment><USER45> World dictator.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think, no one will be able to answer this question precisely. Lets ask, Where do you aim to be 3 years from now?

<comment><USER47> Where do you aim to be 30 years from now is an interesting question because our industry seems pretty committed to the belief that there is no place for people 30 years older than us.

<comment><USER21> Sadly true. I'd say the tech industry is committed to the belief that everyone becomes useless after they reach 30, period.

Unless they're an investor, that is.</comment></comment></comment>


Asia Struggles for a Solution to Its 'Missing Women' Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/asia-struggles-for-a-solution-to-its-missing-women-problem-1448545813?tesla=y <comment><USER2> Not mentioned here is war: a traditional and horrifyingly effective means to dispose of excess male population.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I feel badly for my mother who has to do all of the housework and wash all of my clothes at her age because I can't find a wife," he says.

...you're a grown ass man making your elderly mom do all the housework and laundry? I wonder why nobody's going after this jewel of a man!?

<comment><USER4> In Asia, it is customary that women take care of all the household tasks. Many women actually feel insulted (not sure if that's the right word, maybe more upset?) if a man starts to do one of those chores. This is more common in even the younger women there than you think.

Also, the way dating works is much different than the current western standards. Think more US circa 1930. Therefore, his not doing the chores may not be such a huge part of why he can't find someone.

Not making a judgment on whether its good or bad, but that's how it is.

<comment><USER5> Living in Cambodia for a few years now, and I can definitely say that this is true. I always make the comparison of how in Western society, it is custom that a man carries the bags / does the heavy lifting; he doesn't feel bad about it, and it would upset him if he saw his wife / girlfriend / etc do heavy lifting instead of him, even when she's perfectly capable of doing so.

<comment><USER6> That's a good comparison. My wife is from Asia Minor, and despite being a modern career woman in other respects, gets very weirded out if I cook for myself. Cooking for both of us is fine, oddly enough, but she'll insist on doing it if it's just for me.

Everybody has their hang ups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Check out the statistics for Silicon Valley.[1] The gender imbalance is much sharper than for China.

[1] [http://visualizing.nyc/bay-area-zip-codes-singles- map/](http://visualizing.nyc/bay-area-zip-codes-singles-map/)

<comment><USER8> Silicon Valley is a self-selecting imbalance whereas China is not.

<comment><USER9> China has a parent-selected imbalance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't the problem exacerbated by the traditional monogamous relationship structures? Why must there be a pairing and nothing else? Why are there only two choices of "unmarried men" or "married men"?

Article's terms like "competing for brides" betrays a certain "ownership of women" mentality, IMO.

So when we talk about cultural attitudes leading to this "missing women" problem, we can't disregard the cultural/societal context of two-person marriage as the only way.

<comment><USER4> This is a really interesting topic.

I think that there are two ideas that combine to create a requirement for traditional monogamous structures - 1) Land Ownership and 2) The family as a power-wielding unit (not just immediate family but extended family)

Land is power, in Asia and everywhere else. It's advantageous for a family to get more land. Also, it needs people to take care of/improve the land. The best way to do this is to have a son who can earn more land, bringing it into the family, and then marry a young girl who can create more members of the family to work and repeat the process.

Now, here's where competition for brides comes into play - it is in the girl's best interests that she picks a mate with lots of land/power, since that means her offspring will be better off, and she will also probably have a better life. So potential suitors will compete to show they have better resources. This is really in the girl's interests - she has the power here.

So why doesn't a girl work herself? Well, in much of Asia, hard labor is still dominant. Men are much better at physical labor than women. With the advent of more IT-related jobs this is starting to change, but men are still in higher demand for jobs than women.

<comment><USER10> It's fascinating to me to contrast this with the dominant American nuclear family paradigm. The family as a power-wielding unit is not the part of the American Dream. And so there's no incentive to build such extended families. A nuclear family strikes me as a much more expensive way to live, however.

But really, how many of us would want to live with our extended family? (A significant percentage would not, I reckon)

<comment><USER6> Much of the pressure for an extended family is the lack of rule of law and the need to have people close to you to watch your back. When people become more comfortable that they will not be treated arbitrarily, that pressure relaxes.

<comment><USER10> Awesome insight!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shouldn't this self-correct eventually with women becoming more and more valuable (dowries, etc.) until people have no problem having daughters since they'll be getting just as rich?

<comment><USER12> Sadly there's a considerable lead time and capex cost in spinning up new women of marryable age.

<comment><USER11> No more than the lead time and capex in spinning up new men of hard-laboring age.

<comment><USER12> Did you read the article? Men are currently over-provisioned in that availability zone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The countries that are most affected by this problem are countries which have staggeringly large numbers of people already.

Is it truly all bad that population growth will be decreased somewhat by this problem?

<comment><USER14> Its not so much the population decrease as the distribution of people in different age groups. A lot of seniors with a much smaller number of young people is problematic when your structure is based on the other way around.

<comment><USER15> Oh, it's even worse than that. Lots of unhappy males leads to fear among the ruling class of where the discontent might lead, which encourages them to pick a fight to start a shooting war, which has the dual benefits of keeping the now-patriotic males busy on the front, and also directly serving to decrease their numbers to fix the original problem. Kind of a big problem if you're the one they decide to rile the masses up against.

<comment><USER14> How does this play out with countries with nuclear weapons?

// sorry for late response - flu shot did not work this time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In reality, the imbalance is even greater as many men aren't fit for marriage/relationship. Look at the men living on the streets, look at the criminal statistics, look at universities: too many men get lost somehow along the way and will never ever have a wife and children. Men genetically strive to be great to impress women. While this sometimes leads to new rock stars, the invention of airplanes and the creation of SV startups, the reality is that many more get lost on the wrong track (drinking/drugging to show how manly they are and because their peers do it, stealing something to "get rich quick", etc...). I even read a study that 100% of the children only stem from 30% of men (AFAIR, I do not find the link any more).

So those societies favoring the birth of boys over girls are really far away from what should be.

</comment><comment><USER17> >One study by Lena Edlund at Columbia University and others suggested a causal link between a more masculine sex ratio and crime, analyzing province level crime data in China to show that a single point rise in the sex ratio of men aged 16 to 25 raised property and violent crime by between 5% and 6%

If they are referring to this study [http://anon- ftp.iza.org/dp3214.pdf](http://anon-ftp.iza.org/dp3214.pdf) then this is contradicted by the abstract which claims the figure is 3%.

>feticide

I'm a bit surprised by the authors' reasoning here, as I would have imagined that they would be in favor of allowing the mothers to choose for themselves whether to carry a child. I guess they're in favor of choice unless the choice is different from their own.

<comment><USER18> > I'm a bit surprised by the authors' reasoning here, as I would have imagined > that they would be in favor of allowing the mothers to choose for themselves > whether to carry a child. I guess they're in favor of choice unless the > choice is different from their own.

I think the idea is that the mothers are innocent and pure and the pressure to abort based on gender of the fetus is external. I imagine there is broad consensus against forced abortions in both pro-choice and anti-choice circles.

<comment><USER17> >I imagine there is broad consensus against forced abortions in both pro- choice and anti-choice circles.

Curious: in which category would you place Geeta Anand and Jaeyeon Woo?

<comment><USER18> I'd put them in a category of horrible people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the article: There are some hopeful signs. The imbalance in China and India appeared to peak at the end of the last decade and has started moving towards normal levels.

</comment><comment><USER20> This sucks, but what can be done?

<comment><USER12> Non-nuclear Himalayan war. Has the added benefit of potentially pacifying Tibet.</comment></comment>


"If You Don't Trust People You Know, It's Over." - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/20/if-you-dont-trust-pe.html <comment><AUTHOR> If I don't trust someone, I make an effort to distance myself from them. The people I know == the people I trust.</comment>


Good-bye Shockley Labs - <AUTHOR> http://siliconvalley.town/good-bye-shockley-labs/ <comment><USER2> I saw it coming down yesterday from Valero across the street and was surprised. "Didn't you guys read the plaque?"

It's been in the works for a while. This article is from April 2013:

[http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23003899/cassidy-readers- inspi...](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23003899/cassidy-readers-inspire-ways- honor-birthplace-silicon-valley)

According to this it was not "practical" to save the building.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a plaque on San Antonio Ave in Mountain View dedicated to the invention of the transistor at Shockley labs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_California#Econo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_View,_California#Economic_past)

<comment><USER4> I believe the transistor was invented at Bell Labs, though Shockley was involved in the invention

</comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra First Asimov's house and now this.

Don't you appreciate a bit that it's a part of history of humanity that you just torn down? Not just yours, which would be still a shame.

<comment><USER5> The physical lab wasn't a part of the history of humanity, what was done there -- that's what is important. The building was not in good shape and the landlord(s) have had trouble finding long term tenants for the site for decades. A shopping mall and high density housing are a much better use for the site. The building may be gone, but memories of Shockley, both the good and the bad, live on.

<comment><USER6> By that reasoning, BT's plans to build on Bletchley Park would have been fine. The physical context of a place is often a central part of understanding the an activity and how the people involved worked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those who haven't seen it, Geek Silicon Valley gives a great tour of historically significant locations throughout the area: [http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Silicon-Valley-Sunnyvale- Francisc...](http://www.amazon.com/Geek-Silicon-Valley-Sunnyvale-Francisco- ebook/dp/B001PSEPS4)

Might be time to visit some of these places before they're gone forever.

</comment><comment><USER8> Spent many hours in the laundry mat across the street in the 90s and had no idea.

Are they sure it wasn't the laundry mat that was supposed to have been torn down? :-) :-(</comment>


Ask HN: Who are your favourite people to follow on Mastodon? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to follow a few more people from my GNU Social instance. Who do you follow, and why? <comment><USER3> I have made HackerNewsBot [1] (it publishes stories with 100+ points), comedy bot [2] that reposts jokes and showerthoughts from reddit, writing prompts bot [3], and webcomics bot [4].

My favorite people to follow are:

@email@example.com (webcomics artist)

@email@example.com (writes jokes)

@firstname.lastname@example.com (creator of mastodon)

@email@example.com (author of ActivityPub)

And a few cool engineers:

@email@example.com

@firstname.lastname@example.com

@email@example.com

@firstname.lastname@example.com

@firstname.lastname@example.com

@email@example.com

Also come follow my account [5], I don't post often, but I tend to share updates on my projects, cool startup/webdev related stuff, and some digital art. I should get back on mastodon and post more stuff...

[1] [https://mastodon.social/@hackernewsbot](https://mastodon.social/@hackernewsbot)

[2] [https://mastodon.social/@comedy](https://mastodon.social/@comedy)

[3] [https://mastodon.social/@webcomics](https://mastodon.social/@webcomics)

[4] [https://mastodon.social/@WritingPrompts](https://mastodon.social/@WritingPrompts)

[5] [https://mastodon.social/@rayalez](https://mastodon.social/@rayalez)

<comment><USER4> I follow several of your bots!

One feature request: webcomics bot should provide links to the original when posting, so that people can find webcomics they want to follow regularly.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, straight-up reposting images in bulk like that is one of those crimes that people do thoughtlessly, but all over the place without even realizing it's a copyright violation, or not even caring that it is one.

The bot should be posting links to the comic pages and let mastodon's multimedia stuff extract preview images.

Anything other than that may be "convenient", but is ultimately entirely self- serving at the detriment of the people whose work the bot is using.

How do you feel about fixing that, rayalez?

Also, for anyone wondering why this matters, further reading from an incident last year: [https://twitter.com/aurahack/status/902363519672360962](https://twitter.com/aurahack/status/902363519672360962) \- [https://twitter.com/i/moments/901869159931187200](https://twitter.com/i/moments/901869159931187200)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People

[https://mastodon.social/@eevee](https://mastodon.social/@eevee) \- good tech blogger

[https://mastodon.art/@Curator](https://mastodon.art/@Curator) \- admin of an art-based instance who boosts lots of cool art

[https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy](https://framapiaf.org/@davidrevoy) \- artist behind [https://peppercarrot.com](https://peppercarrot.com)

[https://octodon.social/@emersion](https://octodon.social/@emersion) \- friend of mine who works on cool projects with me

Orgs

[https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay](https://mastodon.xyz/@Liberapay)

[https://mastodon.art/@Krita](https://mastodon.art/@Krita)

[https://mastodon.technology/@kde](https://mastodon.technology/@kde)

Bots

[https://apoil.org/@NextLaunch](https://apoil.org/@NextLaunch)

[https://apoil.org/@nasa](https://apoil.org/@nasa)

[https://apoil.org/@ESA](https://apoil.org/@ESA)

Me

[https://cmpwn.com/@sir](https://cmpwn.com/@sir)

How to follow -> click "remote follow" on any profile and fill in your account details.

<comment><USER7> If I were to setup my own instance, like you, how do I interact (read & write) with other, curated instances (e.g. octodon.social, mastodon.social etc.)?

<comment><USER8> Remote follow enough specific people you are interested in and some of the rest of the instance's traffic will show up in your instance's Federated Feed as it interests them.

Sometimes if the remote instance's entire feed is interesting I might set up a "read only" account on that instance to get an idea of people to remote follow from my main account. I've heard good multi-instance clients can help a lot with that, but I've not yet found a multi-instance supporting client I like.

<comment><USER7> Okay, yeah, doesn't seem to be too many out there. So no real way to do this now, except what you described. You can follow specific people, but no local timelines of instances.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, there are also interesting experiments out there, like some instances run bots to try to "collect them all" and follow almost everyone they can in the fediverse. The one that found my instance first was @email@example.com.

It's not something I've considered on my instance, to keep costs down and because I like the opportunity to curate it manually a bit.

Oh, and [https://smeap.com/@max](https://smeap.com/@max) if anyone was curious to follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been mostly hanging out in this subculture of Forth/Gopher folks:

[https://mastodon.social/@crc](https://mastodon.social/@crc)

[https://mastodon.social/@vertigo](https://mastodon.social/@vertigo)

[https://social.coop/@h](https://social.coop/@h)

[https://mastodon.social/@natecull](https://mastodon.social/@natecull)

Ok, that's not much of a list. I tend to have favorite threads rather than favorite people:

[https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99158138073364070](https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99158138073364070)

[https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99765851805118639](https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99765851805118639)

[https://social.coop/@h/99191538225584742](https://social.coop/@h/99191538225584742)

[https://social.coop/@h/99097437322507669](https://social.coop/@h/99097437322507669)

[https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99135181901636906](https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99135181901636906)

[https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99118398192730050](https://mastodon.social/@natecull/99118398192730050)

[https://a.weirder.earth/@enkiv2/99667688333089676](https://a.weirder.earth/@enkiv2/99667688333089676)

[https://niu.moe/@enkiv2/99270035409991776](https://niu.moe/@enkiv2/99270035409991776)

<comment><USER10> I love that there's a really rich gopher-centric community on the fediverse. It should be noted that the gopher people overlap heavily not just with forth but also with experimental hypertext.

<comment><USER9> Indeed! Hence your Xanadu toot train in that list :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Those famous outside of Mastodon: [https://mastodon.technology/@brion](https://mastodon.technology/@brion) (major MediaWiki contributor), [https://mastodon.xyz/@johnonolan](https://mastodon.xyz/@johnonolan) (Ghost.org founder), [https://mstdn.io/@xahlee](https://mstdn.io/@xahlee) (of xahlee.info, which gets posted here a lot), and [https://octodon.social/@pzmyers](https://octodon.social/@pzmyers) (PZ Myers, the blogger).

Organizations: [https://mastodon.technology/@kde](https://mastodon.technology/@kde), [https://mastodon.social/@Purism](https://mastodon.social/@Purism), [https://status.fsf.org/fsf](https://status.fsf.org/fsf), and [https://mastodon.technology/@conservancy](https://mastodon.technology/@conservancy)

Those who make interesting posts: [https://cybre.space/@theZacAttacks](https://cybre.space/@theZacAttacks), [https://mastodon.social/@natecull](https://mastodon.social/@natecull), and [https://dev.glitch.social/@MightyPork](https://dev.glitch.social/@MightyPork).

I'm [https://mastodon.technology/@danielhglus](https://mastodon.technology/@danielhglus), by the way.

And browsing the local timeline of [https://mastodon.technology](https://mastodon.technology) with the unmung tool (direct link: [http://www.unmung.com/mastoview?url=mastodon.technology&view...](http://www.unmung.com/mastoview?url=mastodon.technology&view=local)) might turn up some interesting people to follow as well.

<comment><USER12> To tack on some more folks well-known in the outside world (some of these signed up last year and aren't active now):

\- Michael W. Lucas, author: [https://bsd.network/@mwlucas](https://bsd.network/@mwlucas)

\- Amanda Rousseau, malware researcher: [https://mastodon.social/@malwareunicorn](https://mastodon.social/@malwareunicorn)

\- Brendan Eich, creator of Javascript: [https://mastodon.social/@BrendanEich](https://mastodon.social/@BrendanEich)

\- John Scalzi, author: [https://mastodon.social/@scalzi](https://mastodon.social/@scalzi)

\- Jenn Schiffer, artist and dev at Glitch: [https://toot.cafe/@jenn](https://toot.cafe/@jenn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anxiously awaiting biologists, bioinformaticists, and other scientists to arrive to Mastodon en masse. So far scientists seem to be firmly entrenched in the blue bird site. Any recommendations along these lines would be sincerely appreciated!

I am squatting at [https://mastodon.social/@brendes](https://mastodon.social/@brendes), lurking silently until more scientists show up.

<comment><USER14> I see more scientists over at scholar.social, have you joined and checked out their local timeline?

<comment><USER13> Never heard of it—thanks so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Janelle Shane: [https://wandering.shop/@janellecshane](https://wandering.shop/@janellecshane)

She runs the [http://aiweirdness.com](http://aiweirdness.com) blog, which is delightful

</comment><comment><USER16> If someone is interested, I'm the amin of an instance focused on functional programming: [https://functional.cafe](https://functional.cafe)

<comment><USER17> Looking at the local timeline of functional.cafe there is hardly any tech related toots, much less functional programming. Is this expected of Mastodon networks? I noticed the same thing with bsd.network.

<comment><USER16> That's why I called it "café"

Jokes apart, I'm trying my best to make it a more technical instance, but I can't control what the users toot. I just hope that someone joins a tech instance to talk about tech...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't quite understand the relationship between the various instances on Mastodon.

Once you join an instance are you stuck on that instance for life? What happens if you want to participate on another instance? Can I reply to comments on other instances?

<comment><USER19> I wrote a thing[0] about Mastodon a while ago. Currently there is no way to migrate an account, but that's being worked on actively, and progress is being made. You can already export your data, and who you follow, block, or mute.

Ideas are being discussed as to how your followers can follow you when you move, but that's tricky given the entire concept of federation.

This is explained on the page I wrote[0], but if anyone on your instance follows person X on another instance, toots from person X turn up on the federated timeline on your instance, you can have a chance to see those toots. Similarly, if someone on your instance boosts a toot, it turns up on your instance, so you can see it and decide whether or not you want to remote follow that person. This the network of connections grows, albeit slowly.

And yes, you can comment on threads on other instances.

Hope that helps. You can always join an instance with a throwaway account, try it out, and if migration does come to life, migrate. If not, start afresh on the instance of choice with a new account. Come find me here:

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo](https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo)

[0] [http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ThinkingAboutMastodon.html?HN_...](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ThinkingAboutMastodon.html?HN_20180403)

<comment><USER20> Useful information, thanks. I've followed your account, though I'm finding it hard to get into using Mastodon. A means to show the oldest unread Toots first, and to sync this across devices/web, might be helpful.

<comment><USER21> Mastodon generates an RSS feed for every user. Check out their web profile pages and look in the HTML header. Most popular RSS readers will just pick it up if you paste the profile URL in.

<comment><USER20> That could be rather useful - many thanks. As an aside, I used to follow various organisations' RSS feeds from Facebook, before that was shut down. It was a great way to keep up with their activities.

<comment><USER19> I think technically it's an "atom" feed, and I'm not hip enough to know the exact difference, but there is certainly come kind of feed there.

[https://<MastodonInstance>/users/<UserName>.atom](https://<MastodonInstance>/users/<UserName>.atom)

<comment><USER21> Atom was Google's answer to RSS back when they cared about an open web. As far as I can tell, everything that handles RSS also handles Atom, and they're exposed in the header in the same way.

Firefox users can right click on the browser chrome, go to Customize, and add a subscribe button that lights up when a page has a feed. It's not as snug a fit as what used to go in the address bar, but it still works.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure what this means:

> _Firefox users can right click on the browser chrome, ..._

... but I've made a note of your comment, and when I get time I'll go hunting to find out how it works. It seems to me that RSS/Atom/Subscription is going to make a comeback. Technical people are moving off other platforms and putting their output on their own sites, so some sort of subscription management is the way to go.

Maybe.

We'll see. Thank for the reply.

<comment><USER21> I should have linked to the help page: [https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...](https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars)

<comment><USER19> Cool - thanks - much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> That rocky1138 guy is a great person to follow [https://kwat.chat/rocky1138](https://kwat.chat/rocky1138) _cough_

<comment><USER19> Maybe you can help me here. I'm on a Mastodon instance:

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo](https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo)

I've clicked on your link, but from the page I get I can find no way to follow you.

What should I be doing? Do I click the "Subscribe" link at the top left? Given that your page doesn't look at all like the Mastodon I'm used to, it's not at all clear.

Advice welcome.

<comment><USER22> You can copy-paste the profile url in mastodon's searchbar, it'll open that profile in the UI of your mastodon instance, so you can follow it as you normally would.

<comment><USER19> Your words "the profile url" don't mean anything to me. The URL I have - <USER2> quoted above - when pasted into the search bar gives no results.

<comment><USER22> That was exactly what I meant, sorry if it was unclear. Copy-pasting the http URL in the search bar works for me. I am however on a different instance, mastodon.social, no idea what may be causing the different behavior.

<comment><USER19> OK, so interpreted you correctly, but it didn't work on my instance. Fair enough - not really worth pursuing, but worth being aware of.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really want to get into Mastodon, but I cannot decide which one I would want to join. Is there one that's say best for.. gaming? Or one best for the arts? I tried to use their search but it's hard to tell which one I'd actually want to be part of.

<comment><USER24> I too couldn't decide, so I started my own private instance recently (it was dead simple with the docker stack), and sometimes I feel a bit isolated and wonder if I should have joined an established instance instead. I suppose that's the burden one takes upon with a private instance: you have to actively go out and find people to follow and interact with. The advantage of course being that you're not bound by any sort of community rules or norms, and all the other advantages of hosting your own services. In any case my main goal was to get myself to write more, regardless of who's reading it, so to that end it's been successful.

<comment><USER25> You could always set up a second account to dig more into another instance. I'm currently on octodon.social (largely because mastodon.social was full when I first joined), but I've been thinking of creating a personal instance to play around with things that I don't necessarily want to clutter another local timeline with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I typically follow people I've had a number of meaningful conversations with.

If looking for techies, they're scattered across several instances. The i.write.codethat.sucks instance I am on I think is on the smaller side.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm nobody important, but I really am loving the atmosphere in Mastodon. I'm @firstname.lastname@example.com

Come say hi! :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> Some of my faves:

* firstname.lastname@example.com

* firstname.lastname@example.com

* firstname.lastname@example.com

* email@example.com

* email@example.com

* firstname.lastname@example.com

In case anyone's vaguely interested I can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. I mostly post about hardware hacking and conferences.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a bot that provides randomized follow suggestions (from its follower list) -- [https://botsin.space/@FollowFriday](https://botsin.space/@FollowFriday)

As for interesting _people_ to follow (biased in favor of people who post interesting technical content) I recommend [https://mastodon.social/@natecull](https://mastodon.social/@natecull), [https://cybre.space/@a_breakin_glass](https://cybre.space/@a_breakin_glass), [https://mastodon.social/@hisham_hm](https://mastodon.social/@hisham_hm), [https://mastodon.social/@tomharris](https://mastodon.social/@tomharris), and [https://hackers.town/@thegibson](https://hackers.town/@thegibson)

I'm at [https://a.weirder.earth/@enkiv2](https://a.weirder.earth/@enkiv2) at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER28> [http://mastodonusermatching.tk](http://mastodonusermatching.tk) recommends infinite users for you.

</comment><comment><USER29> I typically just shout into the void and follow most people who engage with my posts. Its a big network out there

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll be following up on several of these recommendations. In the meantime, I can be found here:

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo](https://mathstodon.xyz/@ColinTheMathmo)

</comment><comment><USER30> Just Mastodon, or anything in the fediverse?

<comment><USER30> BTW, [https://sealion.club/craig](https://sealion.club/craig). Mostly I post music that I have recently found and like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://retro.social/@ajroach42](https://retro.social/@ajroach42)

For cool retro computing stuff, and general archival-of-tech stuff

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://bsd.network/@ed1conf](https://bsd.network/@ed1conf) for useful tips about the standard Unix editor

Pretty much every other account on [https://bsd.network/](https://bsd.network/)

[https://mastodon.social/@qrs](https://mastodon.social/@qrs) for retrocomputing and CG pictures

</comment><comment><USER33> What is Mastodon?

<comment><USER29> Its a recent new server software and client for the StatusNet "fediverse". StatusNet and the protocols it uses are very old, and a small community of users have been there for like a decade.

Its a federated social network. It is like a cross between Twitter and email. Anyone can start a server and set their own community rules and guide lines. If you or someone on your server remotely follows someone they like on another server then your servers will federate and posts from both will be in the public timeline. Eventually you will have a full timeline of many servers. Though your admin can silence or outright block other instances. Most GS veteran admins prefer their users just block people, as full instance banning is an extreme measure and against the spirit of federation. This is also a future-proof approach to social networking because if your server and its admin are malicious you can either start your own or just move and you still can contribute to the same network of people as before.

Recently a guy named Eugen who goes by @firstname.lastname@example.com made Mastodon and a patreon account to support its development.

It has a troubled history, as the early adopters of Mastodon were Twitter and Tumblr users from the far-left pro-censorship crowd. They didnt understand how federation worked but they were paying Eugen's bills so he focused on redundant administration tools instead of more critical fixes (its ok now tho). Many popular Mastodon servers for example cybre.space, witches.town(now dead), and others they maintained big instance block lists and they live mostly in a bubble as they did not agree with the hands off, self moderation (blocking individuals) approach of older GNU Social sites. This bubble is really small though and is not sustainable.

Now, even though Eugen and his audience might prefer Mastodon servers not federate with GNU social servers not every masto server uses a huge instance block list. Anyone can host a masto server same as GS.

<comment><USER34> If you want a freezepeach instance there are lots of them, and I wish you luck.

Frankly, social media is a place where I want a bit of a "bubble", and by "bubble" I mean "blocking people and communities that annoy me".

<comment><USER35> Send an email or text.

Social media is what is replacing our town square, and the potential for someone to walk by and say "Nah, mate, that's fuckin stupid, and here's why" will be _sorely_ missed in the environment that bubble-ists desire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For the news, journalism and freedom of the press inclined I've posted an invitation link below that will allow you into FourthEstate.social. Expires in 12 hours.

[https://fourthestate.social/invite/SQtFxnjp](https://fourthestate.social/invite/SQtFxnjp)

</comment><comment><USER37> Mastodon looks great, but one newbie Q holds me back - what if you join, participate, and after some years your the instance/community upon which you built goes under? Are you starting again from scratch somewhere else? Thanks for any help!

<comment><USER38> Looks like

<comment><USER10> You can (and should) export & backup your following list.

Migrating posts is complicated -- it's straightforward to export all your posts with third party tools, but you shouldn't expect to be able to move them to a new instance unless you're running it yourself, in order to avoid the possibility of faked histories. (I personally keep a backup of all my posts, and it's fairly straightforward to re-format them as a static html document if you feel like you need to re-host them for archival purposes.)

Personally, I recommend keeping accounts on several instances, and posting to different accounts corresponding to your various interests. This makes it less irritating for members of your social group that don't want to hear about particular topics, makes migration in case of instance apocalypse easier, and encourages you to stretch out your identity a bit (rather than feeling like you need to stay 'on-brand' like people do on twitter).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://instance.business/@SuricrasiaOnline](https://instance.business/@SuricrasiaOnline)

[...] Suricrasia Online is a Toronto-based ISP staffed entirely by anthropomorphic sharks in maid outfits. [...]

</comment><comment><USER40> My favourite is this one: @email@example.com

I'm here: @email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER41> I think people will assume their data is safer with Mastadon. But in a way, your data might even be more insecure, as you have no idea what and who the Instance owner is, and what they will do with the data.

Also, now the responsibility of securing the platform is in the hands of the instance owner, whom you have no idea how they have their platform setup.

FYI, an open source project called Drupal, was recently affected with a a bug where millions of sites could be hacked.

Now I'd like to know how Mastadon will combat these issues.

<comment><USER42> I think that fundamentally misses the point. No one is using a social network for "data security", the whole value add of twitter (and by extension mastodon) is the public nature.

The value add of something like mastodon is you get to choose your instance owner (and it could be yourself) which means choosing your moderation scheme. As well as offering a more transparent social experience (ie no algorithmically generated timelines to push adds or "engagement").

Comparing Mastodon to a php CMS seems like an apples to oranges comparison in every sense.

<comment><USER41> I get that. I haven't fully read the in and outs of Mastadon but from a glance, it reminds me of Wordpress with Pingbacks. Or quite simply RSS feeds, where user you follow is essentially subscribing to their feeds.

But all that aside, at the end of the day, if you "are" a user in one of the instances, you are still at the mercy of the owner's technical skills to make sure your data is safe.

If the owner one day decides he can't afford to pay his bills, or gets hacked and wipes out data, what would happen to all your posts? I believe it'd just disappear, but please do correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER8> There is a lot of overlap with RSS and Pingbacks, indeed.

Mastodon today provides a tool to get data backups of your account's own data, at least, so in the case of a lost instance there may be some options.

Plus, as with blogs there is the option to be your own instance owner on a custom domain you control. So the assumed risk level can vary to what you are comfortable with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://fourthestate.social/@jeff](https://fourthestate.social/@jeff)

</comment><comment><USER43> Me, if you want to hear about books I read, papers I find while working on neuromorphic systems and in general my opinions...

@email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER44> How to find people to follow? Is there a hashtag on mastodon to ask about finding certain people based on certain interests?

<comment><USER31> There's #ff or #followfriday for suggesting, but i've seen it used to ask for suggestions as well.

<comment><USER45> There's also Freya, the Follow Friday bot, who will randomly throw you suggestions and let yourself be added to the pool. [https://botsin.space/@FollowFriday](https://botsin.space/@FollowFriday)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> slipstream- here's some interesting people I follow:

@email@example.com @firstname.lastname@example.com @firstname.lastname@example.com @firstname.lastname@example.com

I'm @firstname.lastname@example.com and @email@example.com :)

<comment><USER25> I second @email@example.com. Followed on twitter and was glad when they showed up on Mastodon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> email@example.com is really neat. He worked on Alpine Linux, audacious, pkgconf and other stuff

[https://pleroma.dereferenced.org/users/kaniini](https://pleroma.dereferenced.org/users/kaniini)

Lain, developer of Pleroma, is also rad:

@firstname.lastname@example.com [https://pleroma.soykaf.com/users/lain](https://pleroma.soykaf.com/users/lain)

</comment><comment><USER47> mastodon.cloud/@occrp - because stories on organized crime and corruption are fun.

</comment><comment><USER19> And now to partially answer the original question, culled from the 200 or so people I follow, so I will have missed some I should have left in, and some of these might be of less interest to the HN crowd:

[https://octodon.social/@craigmaloney](https://octodon.social/@craigmaloney) \- Linux, programmer, stuff

[https://mastodon.social/@natecull](https://mastodon.social/@natecull) \- computery and other stuff

[https://mastodon.social/@rysiek](https://mastodon.social/@rysiek) \- security

[https://mastodon.social/@Ronkjeffries](https://mastodon.social/@Ronkjeffries) \- Well, it's Ron Jeffries

[https://mastodon.technology/@Ronkjeffries](https://mastodon.technology/@Ronkjeffries) \- and again

[https://mastodon.social/@andrewt](https://mastodon.social/@andrewt) \- Maths stuff and odd observations

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@virtuosew](https://mathstodon.xyz/@virtuosew) \- Linguistics, odd observations

And then there are the maths people:

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@peterrowlett](https://mathstodon.xyz/@peterrowlett)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@Pecnut](https://mathstodon.xyz/@Pecnut)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@christianp](https://mathstodon.xyz/@christianp)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@icecolbeveridge](https://mathstodon.xyz/@icecolbeveridge)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@mscroggs](https://mathstodon.xyz/@mscroggs)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@aperiodical](https://mathstodon.xyz/@aperiodical)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@j2kun](https://mathstodon.xyz/@j2kun)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@csk](https://mathstodon.xyz/@csk)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@neilbickford](https://mathstodon.xyz/@neilbickford)

[https://mathstodon.xyz/@JordiGH](https://mathstodon.xyz/@JordiGH)

</comment><comment><USER14> Was Sage Sharp previously known as Sarah? Did they transition?

I just want to know if it's the same person. It would be a big coincidence if they were not.

<comment><USER48> Since that person is no longer in that list, we detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16743065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16743065) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


Thiel Fellow Says He's Not Welcome At His Former College - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2013/02/thiel-fellow-says-hes-not-welcome-at-his-former-college-dale-stephens-20-under-20/

<comment><USER2> The article says

"The response, basically, was 'You are not welcome here. We do not want you to come back, at all. We are not interested in engaging, and steer clear,'" said Mr. Stephens. "I was just amazed that Hendrix was, like, so opposed to this idea of even engaging in a conversation two years later," he added.

Whomever reached out to the press office of the college was told the following

"Asked for comment, Hendrix spokesperson told Betabeat, "While we regularly invite and promote speakers on a variety of topics that are relevant to our academic program to campus for the benefit of our students, past and present, faculty, and the community, Hendrix does not provide a venue for individuals to promote personal projects."

I can't see anything to indicate he is unwelcome. He couldn't give the exact reason why they would not let him present his work (Which is obviously disappointing).

The article title is misleading.

<comment><USER3> Right. It's OK to have a book tour, but it's not OK to gripe when you aren't given a venue of your choice to promote your book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There seems to be a gaggle of people who have popped up somewhere within the intersection of entrepreneurship, online startups and lately education that seem to effectively be self-help "experts" in disguise. In some ways it feels like the social networking experts have found a new outfit.

The thing that feels a bit smarmy about it is how a lot of these folks pitch tech entrepreneurship to inexperienced people as some form of paradise where you just listen Seth Godin, finish codecademy, setup an iphone app and a life of abundance falls from the sky. Perhaps I have this guy wrong but I think its a trend that is pretty disingenuous. Colleges need to figure out how to compete and realign their pricing thats for sure but the learn to code, slap together an app, learn some web buzzwords and go pitch people is not exactly much of a real alternative education. Perhaps its Silicon Valley's vision but it seems to be more self serving than the traditional education industry of today.

<comment><USER5> That's what I'm seeing too. I support Thiel's ideas in general (and have worked with and can vouch for at least one Thiel Fellow), but this case appears to be a guy dropping out of college... to promote dropping out of college. I am not saying this is actually the case, but it seems looks like this -- I don't see as much substance in what's posted on the guy's site(s).

It might make sense for Thiel to limit the number of fellows who pursue the "write a self-help book" strategy (limit, however, rather than exclude) -- otherwise this becomes quite similar to MLMs, where more money is made from selling "business education tools" (books, lecture CDs) to MLM participants rather than by actually selling the product. If the said fellow is reading this: please don't view this post as an attack, merely as a suggestion on how to better tailor your message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The guys acheivements seem to be entirely based on the fact that he's a Theil fellow. Unschooling worked for him because he goes around getting paid to give lectures on the merits of unschooling. It reminds me of the success guru's who's entire success comes from telling people how to be successfull. It's like a self help ponzi scheme. Not saying the school is being reasonable. Just that this dude doesn't seem to have actually accomplished anything.

</comment><comment><USER7> Another Thiel fellow (2012) here.

I've had largely the opposite experience from Dale; I'm currently on leave from Harvard, but still maintain strong ties with faculty members and other members of the Harvard community. They are excited about what I'm working on, and provide guidance and assistance as they can.

I've also maintained contact with the administration of the university, and had a great conversation with its president last year. On the whole, I find that Harvard's been quite supportive.

Frankly, I find Dale's comments here rather unhelpful and frustrating. Some of the fellows maintain good relations with their universities, and some intend to return when the time is appropriate. I very much dislike the idea of burning bridges with universities, and this article seems to taunt to them.

</comment><comment><USER8> The institution does not appear to be in the wrong, here. I'm a little confused as to why this gentleman feels he should be entitled to take his self help book tour to his (kinda sorta) alma mater.

In any event, what are his accomplishments? I would tend to think that if he had something substantial to offer, he might stand a better chance of being invited to speak. As Steve Martin once quipped, _"be so good they can't ignore you"_. Clearly, this guy is quite ignore-able.

</comment><comment><USER9> If someone is trying to disrupt the very core of your business probably you won't like them nowhere near you.

Stephens shouldn't be surprised.

<comment><USER10> His rationale is highly self-serving, bordering on disingenuous:

 _"I was just amazed that Hendrix was, like, so opposed to this idea of even engaging in a conversation two years later," he added."_

Pulling condescending word games about what he's doing as "a conversation." "Hey man, _I just want to talk_." Well no, and this tack is practically straight out of the book, "The Gift of Fear."

 _"It got me thinking that this had nothing all to do with Hendrix and everything to do with the way the entire system is designed."_

Ah, see? It's not just Hendrix, but the entire system. Nothing personal, you see.

If this is how people learn to act under the Thiel umbrella...

<comment><USER11> It's not how they learn to act, it's what the program selects for - skill in bullshit artistry.

I've met two or three few Thiel fellows - smart people who were very good at presentation and toastmasters 101 cheap public speaking tricks, and whose aggrandized claims often turned into a shrug whence I asked for specifics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The site in question, UnCollege: <http://www.uncollege.org/>

Three of the top four headlines have the word 'hack' in their name.

His bio reads:

"He founded UnCollege in January 2011 because we are paying too much for university and learning too little."

Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it's fair that they are interpreting his visit as promotion of a personal project. If he had asked them to simply engage in discourse on the future of higher education, but with his book release and his for-profit, Uncollege, I can totally see why this looks like self-promotion...because IT IS!

</comment><comment><USER14> So, you have a girlfriend and she leaves you for some other dude. Then several years later she calls you and wants to come over for the purposes of telling you how much better he is?

</comment><comment><USER15> I recommend reading the comments.

<comment><USER16> +1

For those too lazy to click, an excerpt

 __ _Having had the "honor" of attending class with Mr. Stephens, I would not say that this rebuff is uncalled for. It is one thing to hold a contrary opinion, it is another to act on the matter that Mr. Stephens consistently did: snobbery. [...] It is not as if Hendrix's opinion is not well known to Mr. Stephens, due to the dramatic and attention crazed way he departed the campus._ __

It sounds like he has quite a reputation there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not endorsing the guy's ideas (at all), and obviously Hendrix College doesn't particularly owe him anything, but I thought this was interesting:

> Hendrix does not provide a venue for individuals to promote personal > projects.

I don't see how it's more of a personal project than any other project being advocated for by a person, which includes just about everything. I think they mean to imply it's unserious or hobbyist in a way other speakers/advocates/whatever are not. The actual merits of his ideas aside, it seems reasonably serious, organized, and "real". Are they sure they don't just think it's a "personal project" because he's so young?</comment>