The Other Money Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.evanmiller.org/the-other-money-problem.html <comment><USER2> > If he tells you not to start a start-up, his co-founder wife, and all the > start-up friends he's made over the last several years, will be mad at him.

One of his essays from a couple of months ago very clearly made the point that a certain group of people shouldn't be doing startups (college students). That certainly seemed to be a big change in attitude to the essays from 10 years ago, and exactly in the opposite direction compared to your theory.

Edit: [http://paulgraham.com/before.html](http://paulgraham.com/before.html)

<comment><USER3> Regarding college students, I think this is a matter of becoming more responsible in his advice, now that he's become so prominent.

<comment><USER4> More to the point, he has more data.

The startup world is a community that only wants to hear from the successes. Those who fail are laughed off as being bitter. PG has enough insight and decency to see a larger spectrum and speak on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I was pg, unless I was writing essays based directly on the YCombinator experience, I would write under a pseudonym. Once you achieve a certain level of fame, it is simply too dangerous and aggravating to write honestly under your own name. This has only gotten worse in the past few years with the rise of angry twitter and tumblr mobs. The world is full of people who wish to punch upwards and tear someone down of higher status. And then on the flip side you have too many groupies who will agree with you just because you are successful. Of course, maybe he already is writing and submitting essays under a pseudonym, we may never know ...

<comment><USER6> There's too much of a benefit to his brand to not write. YC gets first pick of so many startups because people say, "I want to get advice from THIS guy"

As for the overall issue of "Talking your position" \- everyone does it. Left and Right leaning economists get different research conclusions. You just have to be aware that it exists. And despite this, the advice from PG, Peter Theil, Marc A and others is different, despite them all being long startups.

<comment><USER7> Your second point needs more emphasis. _Everybody_ has their own story, and it's always biased by their personal experiences and worldview. There's no such thing as a "fair and balanced" perspective, there are just people who pretend their perspective is balanced and end up introducing another sort of bias into it.

The article and some of the comments here seem to suggest that there's something more "authentic" about a piece when it comes from a subversive, low- power position. Why? What makes the perspective of someone in a position without power more authentic than the perspective of someone with it, other than the fact that it will probably resonate more with the personal experiences of many more people since power tends to be a pyramid with a much wider base than top?

The real answer is to carefully consider where the perspective of whomever is speaking is coming from, and identify how closely it aligns with where you are and want to go. The perspective of a billionaire on how hard it is to make ends meet, if you're living at the poverty threshold? Probably not that relevant. The perspective of a billionaire who started out poor on how he got to where he is? Probably pretty relevant.

<comment><USER8> >What makes the perspective of someone in a position without power more authentic than the perspective of someone with it...

Well someone not in a position of authority or power doesn't have to worry about losing said authority. If you tell too many uncomfortable truths or offend the wrong people, you may in certain instances loose some of your power. So it makes sense that the likely hood of getting an "authentic" story seems to get less and less as the person telling it rises in stature, power, authority.

<comment><USER7> Someone who's in a position of authority or power doesn't have to worry about gaining said authority, while someone who's not very often does. Rationally, the two situations are equivalent. (Psychologically they aren't; there's a cognitive bias that causes people to weight losses higher than gains, but there's also a cognitive bias in others that makes it easier to avoid losses than enact gains, so they roughly cancel out.) You can't draw significant conclusions either way along this dimension: the willingness to sacrifice authenticity for power is a mark of the security<=>insecurity axis, not power<=>powerlessness.

<comment><USER8> I don't know that those two axes are orthogonal. It seems like there is an asymmetry between gaining power and losing power. I think we can agree empirically (if not definitionaly) that there are fewer people with power / status. There are a lot of things besides not offending those others that keeps people in a position without power. If you know that these other factors are keeping you low status, then you have less incentive to pretend to be something you are not. But a single offensive comment can sometimes dislodge someone with power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to me this weirdly presumptuous post--imagine for a second a stranger pontificating to the world on how your wife would feel about you doing some hypothetical thing--is refuted almost entirely by Graham's lecture & essay "Before the Startup". [http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html)

He's not telling people unconditionally not to start a startup, but he is very frank about reasons why one shouldn't.

<comment><USER10> Exposing yourself to the Internet creates a strange sort of voyeurism where you have a personal connection to someone, but that connection tends to be one-way. This creates strange dynamics for prominent bloggers and especially for people on twitch.tv or YouTube where people are giving you life advice and telling you what you should/shouldn't do, or are questioning your actions like they are your close friend, even though you have no idea who they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The problem is that if he doesn't say this, well, his essays will be lacking > in their erstwhile authenticity.

That's silly. He believed in startups, that's why he started YCombinator. That he's no longer at the helm of the startup he created doesn't mean he doesn't believe in startups anymore.

It just means that he's done them and helped others do them enough to where he's ready to move on. I'm a Ruby developer right now. If I switched to Rust tomorrow, that doesn't mean that I found Ruby lacking. Just that I want to explore a new kind of programming. They both fit the bill nicely for the types of problems they were intended to solve.

Don't focus on solutions. Focus on problems. The solution will come out of the problem. The startup 'solution' solves a particular kind of social problem. It still solves that problem. PG is finding a different problem, that's all. Perhaps at the junction of the funding problem and the founding problem, if I were to make a guess.

<comment><USER12> My personal opinion is that he still believes in startups, but that the timing was right for him to get out for awhile. Regardless of what he _says_ , what he _does_ is far more telling. My guess is that the fever pitch of huge valuations and fund-raising rounds is getting to a point where it might just make sense to step aside and find something else to do for a few years to see what happens with the market.

The idea would be that the Paul Graham "brand" has a lot at stake among startups. If the bottom falls out of the market in the next 2 years (or whatever you want to define as "short term"), then he'll come out the other side looking that much better, that he got out in plenty of time. If everything continues on its current trend, he still sleeps perfectly well at night and his reputation hasn't taken a hit at all.

Don't misconstrue this as criticism of anyone. I have nothing whatsoever against either Paul Graham or Sam Altman. This is just my personal opinion on the matter.

<comment><USER13> Maybe this is just the efficient market hypothesis at work - everyone has (thinks they have?) figured out the signals that lead to success?

In any case, I wonder how companies with such massive escalation in their valuation will hire and raise subsequent funding. It really makes me wonder, you look at companies like Uber with $xx billion valuations, what's left for someone who joins now as an employee or investor?

<comment><USER11> > It really makes me wonder, you look at companies like Uber with $xx billion > valuations, what's left for someone who joins now as an employee or > investor?

That's always been the case. The opportunity for outsized gains in any risky venture is at the beginning where the risk is the greatest. Where there's no risk, there's no opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article says: "Paul Graham has been thinking about start-ups the last several years, and he is almost certainly going to write about start-ups now."

Maybe. But I've noticed many of PG's tweets lately have been more political, dealing with other problems in the world.[0] I think it would be awesome if PG started attacking these kinds of problems more. Police violence, government surveillance, stuff happening in Israel, etc. Imagine a YC for politics.

tl;dr, I think PG needs to start a new country. I'd apply.

[0] [https://twitter.com/paulg](https://twitter.com/paulg)

<comment><USER15> Grahamtown.

<comment><USER16> Nottingham, Tottenham, Birmingham, Buckingham.

Graham.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't want to speak for him, but I'm pretty sure pg is more worried about people following his advice uncritically than he is about promoting YC. Ever since HN launched he has been pretty wary of encouraging people to drop out of school or quit their jobs when they have no reasonable chance of being successful.

</comment><comment><USER18> _The thing that was so striking about Paul Graham's original essays was that they read almost as a kind of paranoid thriller. The world was out to dupe and enslave you, but he, Paul Graham, was — disinterestedly, dispassionately — going to get you out of here alive, armed only with Lisp, random facts about medieval Florence, and deep knowledge of Business Things._

I laughed out loud at this part. Classic.

</comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of the trouble musicians have in creating that 2nd album after their debut was such a big hit.

It's not anybody's fault but somehow whatever the musician subsequently does, it never sounds as pure as that first album.

</comment><comment><USER20> If I understand correctly, pg didn't quit YC completely. He only resigned as YC president and now is a normal partner. If he was making millions, now he is probably making only 3/4 millions, not in the unemployment row.

He also resigned as the main HN moredator/administrator/spokeman/programer/whatever and put a few people to cover those tasks. He didn't earn money directly from that work, it was a side project that grew out of control. (I suspect he's still watching from the shadows. Hi!)

</comment><comment><USER21> Let's not forget that pg probably doesn't have money as driver or motivator for his next adventures given that he has plenty of it. I would trust pg to say FU to any VC in world as needed although he might do it much more elegantly. Also given that he is much less involved at YC I would think his essay topics will change sooner or later. It's like Bill Gates who now writes almost nothing about software even though that's what he did for 30 years. One thing I would however agree is that something is different in his last two essays. Especially public praise for highly subjective physicic abilities of wife kind of took me of guarded from otherwise logical pg.

</comment><comment><USER22> The author of "The Other Money Problem," seems to assume readers are not aware of change or that Paul Graham can't continue to be honest and interesting now simply because he makes more money than he did previously. According to this theory, J.K. Rowling would be less interesting to read now that she's rich, but I would argue that her new work is better. Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, same thing.

Each of Paul Graham's essays were written as he slowly evolved into the man he is today. He was changing the entire time. Also, he knows more now than he did before.

The thing that saddens me is not Paul Graham getting advice from friends, it's people who try to take some of the shine off.

<comment><USER23> Your comparison is invalid, e.g. JK Rowling doesn't write books about how you should become a magician

<comment><USER22> There's more to this than meets the eye.

It depends on how you perceive writing. For example, "Old Man and the Sea" might be the greatest essay about criticism ever written, despite the fact that it's not an essay. You have to see through the story to get to the essay.

I think the reason so many people enjoy Paul Graham's writing is not only due to the subject or the genre, it's that he transcends the category, much like Hemingway did when he wrote "Old Man and the Sea."

<comment><USER24> For others who might be curious about the Hemmingway connection, [http://petersencj14.blog.com/2013/02/15/an- essay/](http://petersencj14.blog.com/2013/02/15/an-essay/) seems to explain what you're referring to

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For that "paranoid thriller" sort of feeling, try reading these blog posts: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/)

<comment><USER4> I would actually like to be retired from the public politics-of-software within 5 years, focusing instead on the constructive and technical. (I'm looking for a replacement.)

I want to be successful, and so far things are going well and I think I will be, but I also think that success will make me less perceptive on what's actually going on. Ultimately, the way to know a society is to talk to the people at its bottom. In my case, most of the things that have awakened me to the evil lurking in our community (meaning technology, not just "startups") happened 2-3 years ago. Ten years from now, I hope to be an expert on other things but my evilology will have rusted.

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to say, I'm a big fan of your essays!

Another blog I like that seems somewhat related to "evilology" is [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/), especially the essays on the Gervais principle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >I admit to feeling a twinge of excitement last summer when I read that Paul Graham was leaving his jillion-dollar job to write more essays

rather apocryphal claim. I bet PG makes just as much money now as he did when he was running Y Combinator as most of his earnings are investment earnings, not salary from being Y Combinator President.

Sam's salary doesn't come out of Paul's pocket. It comes out of the management fees, of which, Paul's only charged a small part of.

</comment><comment><USER26> > It's the other money problem. Just as having a lot of money drives a wedge > between friends, power drives a wedge between writers and their audience. It > spoils all the fun. Sure, things might look the same as before. But they > just won't feel the same. But they just won't feel the same.

How do you know how you will feel in the future? Do you read things assuming you already know what they are trying to say?

</comment><comment><USER27> Maybe he'll write essays on being a good parent. Sort of like a being a good startup founder, and likely just as counter-intuitive.

<comment><USER28> Surely PG doesn't have an ego big enough to allow him to write prescriptively about intractable problems in good conscience.

<comment><USER25> perhaps, but PG does tweet a lot about parenthood. mostly general observations, not directives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You know what man, critical reading/thinking. We should read just everyone in the same manner: with an open mind, but not one that just receives everything written as the ultimate truth.

</comment><comment><USER30> This seems gratuitously mean. Why not let pg write some essays first?

</comment><comment><USER31> Who cares who writes the essay? If you aren't reading the content without regard to who wrote it, yes, it will be less credible. You're using a system of authority / ad hominem, and those two sides of the same coin are not a good barometer for truth.

Who cares that he made money on it? If you want to really get into this discussion, anyone who writes about startups has a vested interest in advocating them -- that way their work is relevant instead of confusing ("let me tell you about how bad this thing you weren't going to do is" doesn't make sense to write). This whole line of thinking leads no where.

</comment><comment><USER32> Beautifully written. The other money problem is talking about money.

</comment><comment><USER33> Oh, bull.

We all have biases. We all, if we're known to our readers, are perceived as having biases that are not a perfect match to the biases we actually have.

Being credible despite those obstacles is a skill commonly self-taught.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is silly.

<comment><USER35> I glanced through it but nothing caught my eye that much. you should elaborate why this is silly if you're going to take the time to leave a comment here. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What an utterly superfluous article. Why not just wait what he will write (if anything). There is no point in speculating about it.

</comment><comment><USER37> I thought that was too meta and strained of a piece. I suspect his goal was just to say something that could make HN front page and then get some portion of that eyeball stream siphoned through to look at his commercial software Wizard. (and here I've helped with that further perhaps, haha.) But it was a very strained, strawman-heavy piece. Though I liked the writing in terms of craft.

</comment><comment><USER38> PG essays aren't going to change, he isn't going to write exclusively about startups and he has no conflict of interest. One of his main messages in the past was "You don't have to take a corporate job like people may have advised you to, you can start your own company". I don't think his stance on that has changed, he just doesn't have to say it as loudly. Dorm room startups have become part of the cultural zeitgeist and the word has gotten out. Oscar winning movies have been made about prototypical startup founders, everyone has become familiar with the companies, the people behind them and the amount of money that they make. If you told someone at a cocktail party that you were going to start a software company back when PG wrote some of his first essays, you would have been looked at as a crazy risk taker. Now someone will say "Going to make a billion dollars, huh?". PG hasn't changed, the culture around him has.

Any conflict of interest is marginal at best. Paul Graham is in a situation where more startups will help his business interests, but only by a little bit. He's already built a world class brand and he doesn't need to hype it up like a late night tv commercial pitch man. It wouldn't change his financial standing if he did, and that's just not his personality. He's too smart, too wise and has much more to lose from damaging his image and reputation than he does to gain by convincing yet another college kid to start yet another photo sharing site. "his co-founder wife" won't be mad at him if he tells people not to start companies, or to start companies, or to study art instead. Make no mistake: Paul and Jessica are grown and highly intelligent people. They are in a place where petty greed isn't going to influence their decisions in any way.

Paul Graham is not a perfect man, but he sure as hell isn't weak minded. He's incredibly careful and he's usually right. All of his essays may not hit the mark, but I'm always looking forward to the next one.

<comment><USER39> Human beings are affected by conflicts of interest. Not weak minded people, not immature or stupid or unwise or careless people. People. All of them. It's how the heuristics in our evolved brains work.

I agree, if you have a view of people being rational actors, then Paul Graham seems like the kind of guy who would be able to rise above this kind of thing. We now know that this model of human behaviour is a fantasy. These types of biases affect your thoughts before they rise to conscious awareness.</comment></comment>


'Homo sapiens is an obsolete algorithm': Harari on how data could eat the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/yuval-noah-harari-dataism <comment><USER2> "With the growth of the towns, technics became bourgeois. The successor of those Gothic monks was the cultured lay inventor, the expert priest of the machine. Finally, with the coming of rationalism, the belief in technics almost becomes a materialistic religion. Technics is eternal and immortal like God the Father, it delivers mankind like God the Son, and it illumines us like God the Holy Ghost. And its worshiper is the progress-philistine of the modem age which runs from Lamettrie to Lenin."

Spengler, O. (1931). _Man and Technics_ , p. 43

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another extract from "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow"

Not quite sure about this one.</comment>


Show HN: I've made a tough math game that you guys might like it - <AUTHOR> http://0.mk/safe-breaker-r

<comment><USER2> Mastermind is a "tough math game" ?? It's a guessing and logic game, nothing to do with math. And it's not tough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted it here exactly for this reason. Many of the app's 'regular' users complain that it's too tough and can't solve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks fun but I am wondering why does this app have access to my contact list? Seems unusual for a game

<comment><USER4> I also will not be installing games on my phone that require access to my contact list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then wait for the new update. :)

<comment><USER4> Will do!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Palmer Luckey Created Oculus Rift - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/innovation/how-palmer-luckey-created-oculus-rift-180953049/?all <comment><USER2> Doesn't seem to mention the existing VR work at USC that he referenced. Or any of the existing work at all.

Researchers have been making VR goggles for decades. Give them at least a tiny bit of credit for figuring a few things out.

Competition and individuality is good, but this culture is so deep into narcissism and cult of personality. Quite a lot of exceptional work is being dismissed or ignored just because it isn't uber-popular. And there is an enormous amount of duplication of effort.

We need to do a better job of structuring things to emphasize not only freedom and diversity of ideas but also collaboration.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Palmer Luckey and John Carmack are doing for VR what Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak did for PCs. They launched a new industry, one that will be bigger than PCs ever were.

<comment><USER3> ... and then surrendered it to Facebook. Which means they aren't really like Jobs or Woz, except in a technical capacity.

I have nothing against Facebook. But would you have respected Zuck as much if he'd sold Facebook to Yahoo?

Either way, Facebook controls the industry now, and there are few industries that have grown to their full potential under the stewardship of a company that acquired the primary creator. Take automobiles, for example. Ford started his own company. He didn't start his own company and then sell it. Automobiles would certainly have done well even if he had, since transportation is a fundamental technology, but VR goggles aren't. How long will their development be delayed because Oculus no longer feels the pressure of getting their company off the ground? People keep talking like "they now have the resources they need to make Oculus great," but if history is any indication, having excessive resources tends to produce excessive failure, not success. For example, companies that take huge investment rounds usually fail to deliver something of value to customers. Maybe Oculus is in the same position. After all, if they don't deliver something people want, then there's no downside anymore for Oculus. They've already been bought by Facebook. They could fail to do anything from this point forward and it would no longer matter to them (except emotionally).

Breathless hero worship is a little over the top, considering the outcome. Let's wait and see what actually happens.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _... and then surrendered it to Facebook._

Woz and Jobs surrendered their company too. Woz became disillusioned and Jobs got fired. They still managed to do a lot of important work during that time, including creating the PC industry.

> _Facebook controls the industry now..._

Oculus may be the leading player, but they're just one company making products. Other companies can make products too.

> _Automobiles would certainly have done well even if he had, since > transportation is a fundamental technology, but VR goggles aren 't._

There's nothing fundamental about cars. There were other means of transportation. But VR is just as inevitable as cars were. When people what they could have, they'll demand it, just like they did with cars.

> _How long will their development be delayed because Oculus no longer feels > the pressure of getting their company off the ground?_

John Carmack's work ethic is famous. He doesn't screw around and everyone else has to keep up with him. None of these guys is motivated by money, which means they've got a good shot.

> _Let 's wait and see what actually happens._

The VR industry is on a rocket ship trajectory and these guys launched it by shipping real products. That's already happened. Of course it's true that the hard work and fun of VR has only begun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It was clear years ago that it was possible to make better VR headgear. There's been some progress since the 80's and 90's. The question is whether VR is worth the trouble. I'm still not seeing the killer app for this. Hardcore gamers? Virtual tourism? Implanting false memories in kids? (The VR group at Stanford has used their system to let kids experience swimming with dolphins. Asked about it a few months later, the kids believe they really did swim with dolphins.)

A big problem is that VR has the same problem as gaming - moving and shooting works great, but try to manipulate anything and it sucks. Early thinking about VR was that it might be easier and more intuitive to do design work in VR than on a 2D screen. Autodesk did some work on this. Design in VR is like drawing while wearing mittens. No good.

Notice that the Oculus Rift crowd totally ignores the input side. The first generation of VR was "gloves and goggles". Now it's just goggles.

This may be the biggest dud since 3D TV.

<comment><USER2> [http://controlvr.com/](http://controlvr.com/)

<comment><USER4> The Kickstarter video claims it's the first consumer VR glove with finger sensing. It's not. The Nintendo Power Glove, 25 years ago, has that honor.

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove

The Power Glove was a relatively decent input device. But the game machines of 1989 had no hope of displaying a virtual world in which it was useful.

Now if the "Clang" game kickstarter, which was fully funded years ago at $500K and produced zero, had produced something, there would at least be a game for this thing.

       https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's too bad the guy wasn't able to try Crescent Bay. I've tried it and the screen door effect he complains about is gone. It's way better than the improvement from DK1 to DK2.

<comment><USER6> Were there any demos that required you to read text? That always been the hard thing for me.

<comment><USER5> Yea, in one demo you were standing in a submarine and there were dials everywhere. In another demo you are top of a tall building and if you look all the way down you can see little cars below. Not perfectly clear, but no screen door effect which makes a huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As I understand it, it was basically Carmack that made it actually work.

Before his help, I'm not sure it was more than an interesting demo of technologies we'd seen before.

<comment><USER8> They must have had something unique, or Carmack would have probably created his own company instead of joining Oculus...

<comment><USER9> I don't know. Carmack doesn't strike me as the sort of person that would want to waste his time with all the extraneous details involved in starting a company. Seems that he prefers to have his own isolated fief where others can handle the sales side while he can focus purely on R&D where he excels. He probably did some calculation regarding the potential of the technology vs. the competence of the founders and decided it was an important enough problem that he would be happy working at for the next few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A shame this article doesn't mention Valve which is where the technology came from. In fact what the VC's were demoed was Valve's $75 million rig (which does indeed look very good!).

And when Oculus started a ton of Valve IP was handed over to them...

<comment><USER11> Sure you're not confused with Jeri Ellsworth's and Rick Johnson's castAR tech?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_Illusions#castAR](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_Illusions#castAR)

<comment><USER12> No. Valve hired Jeri to build them a hardware group to work on 'the next thing'. That team split in the middle with Jeri doing AR and the rest doing VR. Valve didnt want AR and dropped Jeri and her team (just fired them one day without explanation). The only decent thing Valve did was let Jeri keep all the AR IP she build with her team.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft tries to entice developers to choose Windows Phone 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/25743/Microsoft_tries_to_entice_developers_to_choose_Windows_Phone_7 <comment><AUTHOR> I had never heard of the "Ring-fencing" concept. Makes total sense but interesting nonetheless to see MSFT set aside $10m to push the tactic.</comment>


Linux-based worm turns routers into social network bots - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/05/the-moose-is-loose-linux-based-worm-turns-routers-into-social-network-bots/

<comment><USER2> The floodgates are open.

Companies like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Siemens, etc. haven't really had the trial-by-fire experienced by companies like Microsoft, Google, or any of a hundred consumer-facing service providers. How many embedded controllers are out there waiting to be pwned by something even half as sophisticated as Stuxnet?

I personally hate Windows and most other Microsoft products but it's undeniable that the asskicking they got in the 90s and early 00's has really transformed Microsoft's outlook on security.

Half these companies are still in the security-by-obscurity mindset. I'm not optimistic for the next decade of the so-called Internet of Things.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure there is something like this generating fake ad impressions on the routers used by Time Warner Cable. I constantly see what appears to be fake user agents with screen resolutions that don't match hitting our ads to the tune of tens of thousands per day (if not more).

</comment><comment><USER4> Direct link to paper, to save you from clicking [http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/Dis...](http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/Dissecting-LinuxMoose.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> telnet... in 2015... on the WAN side?</comment>


Show HN: Born Out of Covid (Collective Links from HN Post) - <AUTHOR> https://born-out-of-covid.f22labs.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Another side project born out of covid WFH and from the HN post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23170881). I've listed all possible links from this post across pages and listed down here. [https://born-out-of-covid.f22labs.com/](https://born-out-of- covid.f22labs.com/)

Let me know your thoughts, will add more details and links after i wake up tomorrow.

Stay safe everyone</comment>


The New Instant Social Network App - <AUTHOR> http://www.blleep.com <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone with an ios 7 higher can download and try this app,you gonna like it!</comment>


Alibaba's Jack Ma is a Communist Party member, China state paper reveals - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-is-a-communist-party-member-china-state-media.html <comment><USER2> I would have been more surprised if they had announced that he was not.

People try to create buzz and headlines, but should start by explaining how the Chinese system works... Which is less sensational.</comment>


Financial Misstatements - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/financial-misstatements <comment><USER3> Here's the biggest offenders I see when talking to founders:

      revenue vs GMV
      (if you give GMV, give me your cut/margin)
      contract vs LOI
      burn vs expenses
      users vs customers
      (customers pay)
      signups vs users vs active users
      (you should give active with time interval and measurement of active.
       eg. logged in last 30 days)
      profitable vs cash flow positive

Others people should know:

      diff between retention rate vs churn rate
      (both should be given with time interval.
       eg. 30 day retention rate is...
           monthly churn rate is...)
      voluntary churn vs involuntary churn
      gross vs net
      top line vs bottom line

<comment><USER4> >"GMV" (gross merchandise volume)

Interesting...been in finance all my life & dealt with pretty much every industry out there...never heard this one before. Must be some type of startup slang so to speak.

<comment><USER5> It's a term of the trade in the retailing (and by extension e-commerce) industry. It refers to the value of the goods sold. If a retailer sells a widget for $100 at 50% margin, then the GMV is $100 and revenue to the retailer is $50.

<comment><USER4> >It's a term of the trade in the retailing

No its not. I've seen dozens of retailing operations in multiple countries. None use this term, which brings me smoothly to my next point...

>It refers to the value of the goods sold.

aka CoGS (Cost of Goods Sold) (or CoS in some regions). Unlike GMV you'll actually find that on the financial statement of major retailers. As I said:

>Must be some type of startup slang so to speak.

Would be curious to hear if there is some actual business reason that warrants giving this a new name in the startup context though...

<comment><USER6> Wait... I thought COGS referred to the production costs of goods sold. The direct material and labor costs. For example, in a restaurant it would involve food costs and wages for cooks.

GMV sounds like it refers to what in this example would be revenue from the finished food. A burger COGS is meat+bun+cook, a burger GMV is the menu price.

Am I wrong in my understanding?

<comment><USER4> No. Its a bit of a regional difference. UK affiliated people prefer "cost of goods sold" while the rest of the world uses "cost of sales". They're essentially interchangeable with CoGS leaning towards enterprises that produce physical goods.

>GMV sounds like it refers to what in this example would be revenue from the finished food.

GMV was pulled out of thin air & means nothing at all, aside from CoGS/CoS with a lick of startup paint. Anyone that reckons otherwise please step forward with a coherent argument...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mr. Altman is talking about the basic misunderstanding of these terms and it's surprising to me that he didn't take a bit of time to define the terms himself. Maybe I'm naive and those terms are a lot harder to define than I'm imagining, but even then some references linking to other sites could have been provided.

I really enjoy reading Sam's posts and I'm usually bookmarking and/or forwarding his articles to a ton of friends. This one is a nice amuse-bouche but I guess I'm use to getting a full meal from Sam. Maybe a quick update with some links is all it needs? Good read otherwise.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I'm a CPA and some of these terms (GMV) I've never heard before (must be because I'm in a different industry - payments, and we use TPV - <USER2> payment volume), and others (burn) are ambiguous to my accounting brain.

Is that cash flow used to fund operations? Is that the accrual based operating expenses? Is that the difference in cash between this month and last month?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post sounds fishy to me. If the "financial statements" are sufficiently important for the fine details to matter, then they need to be produced by someone who knows exactly what they are doing (a properly qualified accountant). If they aren't important (why are the financial statements for a YC _applicant_ important?? surely they have zero revenue typically and nobody believes their projections), then who cares if the terminology is slightly wrong? Certainly if I were given such a document, I'd ask who prepared it and go from there as regards how accurate I expected it to be.

Also, if your role is an incubator investor, isn't it your job to educate the inexperienced founders about things like this?

fwiw I don't understand how anyone could confuse LOI with executed contract. I mean, really the only way that the concept of a LOI can arise is when you ask "can we get a contract in place?" and the answer is "not at this time" so you counter with "how about an LOI?". Hard to get confused about that..

</comment><comment><USER10> There are so many startup accelerators that take a team of engineers / product people and do their best to make businesspeople out of them. I'm one of those CEOs, for sure, and learning about the financial world, accounting, and trying to make sure to not mis-speak was quite difficult.

The primary training I received during the accelerator helped a lot, but it was more along the lines of how to more accurately model in excel. It was up to the CEO (?CFO? if you're lucky) to get all this exactly right, and it's not easy.

I think that when an accelerator knows that its teams are not well-versed in the financial part of running a startup, there should be more emphasis on helping them learn. It's daunting to try to do that alone.

<comment><USER11> What are the reasons startups can't hire good finance people? Or at least contract with an expert?

Is it a difficulty in judging their abilities when it's not your area? Is it something where only at a certain size would it be worth the reduced financial risk to have someone on it? Learning from scratch has to be the slowest, highest risk way of doing it -- which is the exact opposite of what a startup should be optimizing for (reduce risk where possible, move fast)

It seems like helping identify business talent is what an accelerator should be helping with, not becoming a half assed B-school for engineers..

There's some implicit assumption here that learning from scratch is better than hiring talent, and I think that's a mistake.

<comment><USER12> "What are the reasons startups can't hire good finance people?"

I think the reason is that you are in stage where the CEO personally empties the rubbish bins in the office, that's why.

<comment><USER13> Offloading finance should arguably come before offloading janitorial. You can be thinking about other things while emptying rubbish bins.

<comment><USER14> you're a company. you're built to make something and grow it. outsourcing financials (I don't mean getting help with them, but actually offloading them) is in some ways like outsourcing development.

the "CEO" personally does finances for the same reason the "CTO" personally codes. If either of them can't do something they learn it.

Sam is saying: learn these words.

<comment><USER13> I do want to make a distinction between "offloading" and "outsourcing".

That said, you may very well be correct. My point was simply that, if it's a good idea, it's mostly _not_ for the same reason that has the CEO emptying waste baskets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree with Sam's message, but I sympathize with founders who make mistakes here.

Founders are told to hustle, to aggressively push themselves and their visions in order to build momentum for their businesses. Founders are encouraged to bend - if not break - the rules in order to get things done.

First-time founders are thrown into the world of finance with a good deal of ignorance about the meanings and conventions of specific financial terms, combined with a culturally ingrained bias towards spinning things as positively as possible. Broadly speaking, this seems like a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER16> _mistakes_

Color me stupid, but I am sure the vast majority of founders know exactly what they are doing when they give GVM in place of revenue.

For example no one would buy a home for $200M, sell it for $201M and say I made $201M last year.

<comment><USER17> Not necessarily; many would consider $201M the revenue and $1M the "profit" or "earnings" in that case.

<comment><USER18> but they'd know they didn't make 201M - and conceptually that them buying and selling that house doesn't value them like a 201M revenue publicly traded company with billions in market cap. Founders know exactly what they're overselling. They do it for spin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd recommend the following books: Financial Statements Step by Step ([http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Statements-Step-Step- Underst...](http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Statements-Step-Step- Understanding/dp/1601630239))

Financial Intelligence ([http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Intelligence-Revised- Edition...](http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Intelligence-Revised-Edition- Managers/dp/1422144119/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_z))

Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs ([http://www.amazon.com/Financial- Intelligence-Entrepreneurs-R...](http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Intelligence- Entrepreneurs-Really- Numbers/dp/1422119157/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440176755&sr=1-1&keywords=financial+intelligence+for+entrepreneurs))

</comment><comment><USER20> I can recommend Brian Bushee's accounting course on Coursera: [https://www.coursera.org/course/whartonaccounting](https://www.coursera.org/course/whartonaccounting)

[http://www.investopedia.com/](http://www.investopedia.com/) is helpful for occasional reference

<comment><USER21> Thanks! Signed up for the next session.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_merchandise_volume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_merchandise_volume) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_intent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_intent)

for people like me who weren't aware of the term.

This is yet another way in which Y Combinator can differentiate themselves as a place for startups. A once a week course on this type of material would probably be very useful for most founders, I'm working under the assumption that most Y Combinator founders are first time founders.

As a side note, it feels like this type of communication straddles the boundary between something that could have been a tweet vs a blog post.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting idea: VCs should have in-house finance folks specifically meant to work with portfolio companies who spent a few days a month for year 1 after investment, or until the company gets it own finance team. Most VCs do less than 10-15 deals a year, so this seems tolerable and a relatively low cost way of to really know what's going on with the portfolio. (I know some VCs already kind of do this (Vantage Point). Also, harder for YC, given # of investments, so maybe not as applicable for true seed funds but still might be worth it - I'm sure they could get 5 mid-career CPAs for the price of one partner, and they would love the job! I think)

The fun part is that then the VCs will have a direct line into the company's nitty-gritty operations, which really they are entitled to receive anyhow (though usually they just take the board deck at its word..which is not always good).

This might suck for the company since you have the VC in-the-know on your nitty-gritty (though I'd argue that if you don't want them in-the-know, you should not have taken their $$...though I understand it's more complicated than that haha), BUT that might also serve to incentivize the company to build out the finance team quickly, and also give the management team a taste of what a good finance person can provide (assuming the person the VC provides is good, which they should be if they are to be trusted with multiple portfolio companies).

<comment><USER24> Not such a great idea, in my opinion.

There are honest and competent people willing to work one day a week as contract CFO. Such a person works as part of the management team and doesn't have divided loyalty (management / investors).

<comment><USER23> you are right, I've worked with a few. Problem is that it's a cost to the company they often don't want and they don't value the work (I think this is what SA is trying to change). Also, vetting/hiring folks etc. is it's own burden. VC pushing this gets rid of the friction and forces founders to take this seriously.

Agreed they may have divided loyalty, hopefully mitigated by a very temporary relationship and the fact that at early stages, VCs and founders should be super aligned, at least around the ops numbers (sale decisions, etc. are a totally different ballgame for sure).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's pretty amusing to see this post coming from a guy who's publicly stated:

> I can't read a balance sheet or income statement or anything like that. I > have to have someone explain it to me, every Board meeting.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/07/sam_altman_on_s.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/07/sam_altman_on_s.html)

<comment><USER26> There's no hypocrisy there. He's probably had to personally be super-cautious about opening his mouth about things like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This post leaves a bad taste in my mouth, at least to the degree it's talking about executives of YC companies.

I mean, the whole model of YC is to take kids straight out of college (if not before) and turn them into startup CEOs. If those CEOs come out of that process not understanding the legal obligations of their new position, whose fault is that, exactly? It's not like they're bringing decades of business experience to the gig. The only thing they know about what being a CEO requires is what YC teaches them.

If their only preparation for the post is YC, and they're ending up ignorant of stuff that could get them slapped with a felony charge, I would think that would say more about YC than it does about them.

<comment><USER28> My impression of YC has never been that it is some hand-holding after school special. This is an investment firm in the world of business and the world of business is very serious. As a startup founder, you are treated as an adult and that includes both the freedoms and responsibilities implied.

That said, you may have a point here. If there is a recurring issue that some founders are too immature for their own good and might be a risk to their own personal safety (e.g., committing felonies out of pure ignorance), YC should probably be intentional about filtering those people out during applications. But this article isn't just about YC candidates and that's not a solution for the whole industry.

<comment><USER29> It's strange that you think that an investor who _owns 7% of a company_ is "being serious" by declining to do any diligence about _illegal behavior_ undertaken by management.

<comment><USER30> You have no basis for that statement.

<comment><USER31> Isn't the whole article pretty much basis for that ? :(

If sam is saying YC founders are using terms wrong, doesn't that imply that YC _was fine with_ those terms?

So confused.

Anyway, the simple fix would be to just have a 1-3 day finance bootcamp to make sure everyone speaks the same language. Rather than getting everyone to try to being kinda-sorta competent.

<comment><USER30> > Isn't the whole article pretty much basis for that

For "declining to do any diligence about illegal behavior"? Of course not. Why did this topic come up in the first place?

Re lack of diligence, it's astonishing how people jump to make mean, false statements without a second's pause to consider the obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's a great book called 'The HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers', about 200 pages:

[https://hbr.org/product/hbr-guide-to-finance-basics-for- mana...](https://hbr.org/product/hbr-guide-to-finance-basics-for- managers/an/11185E-KND-ENG)

It doesn't specifically address the terms in the OP, but it should be the starting point for non-MBAs (like myself) to start understanding basic Finance.

In my experience, if you're a co-founder and you don't understand basic Finance and let your Finance department do whatever it's doing you may be setting yourself up for trouble. The OP described the other case of simply saying non-sense because you don't understand the terms :)

</comment><comment><USER33> (By the way, we do teach this stuff at YC. But obviously we only fund a small percentage of the startups in the world.)

</comment><comment><USER34> > One particularly bad one is misunderstanding or misusing basic financial > terms. I started noticing this in Y Combinator applicants a couple of years > ago [...] I've seen people use GMV for revenue or refer to an LOI as a > contract many times in the past year when talking to investors. This is a > felony.

Not sure who the target audience is. If a business person is willfully deceiving people, let's call that out. But if a programmer is using financial jargon they don't understand, then let's educate them.

It's not hard to read this blog post and come away believing that if you use the wrong acronym accidentally the author thinks you're a felon. I'm sure that's an overstatement, but overall this could have been an article that was educational yet had a serious warning. Instead it kind of stirs drama and fear. That's fine but I can't help but compare PG's essays which are a delight to read and get lost in.

</comment><comment><USER35> _" This is a felony."_

This is probably a too-broad-brush use of the word.

Other than that, I like this essay.

People should be taught financial literacy early and accurately. Like learning maths notation: It's useful, compact and efficient. But...it must be precisely grasped/implemented to be of any benefit to speaker or the audience.

</comment><comment><USER36> I like Sam, and I even agree with him in this post. However, I don't think everything he blogs about needs to shoot straight to the number one spot on HN. I'm not sure if this is the community's voting or the YC algorithm's bias, but it would benefit the community if we could stop the fawning and treat his posts like we would anyone else's.

</comment><comment><USER37> >This is a felony and it's called fraud, even though it's usually unintentional.

This is incorrect. Fraud requires intent. Otherwise it's just negligence.

Should probably throw a legal dictionary in with the financial one.

<comment><USER38> That's a valid point, but if you think about what it's like to raise money, do you _really_ want to be in the position of establishing --- to a prosecutor's satisfaction, since being dragged into court for this is game-over --- that you were unaware of the materiality of these distinctions when you improperly made them to potential investors?

From model jury instructions, which might be misleading here: the "intent" a prosecutor needs to establish is that you knowingly said something false, in the process of seeking something of value, that the falsehood was material to the decision of whether to give the thing of value to you, and that the other party later gave you that thing.

The bigger issue is it's very very very very very unlikely that a tiny startup is going to be prosecuted for attempting to defraud an accredited investor.

<comment><USER39> I agree, but there is also the civil aspect, and while its exceedingly unlikely that this would become a criminal matter, the civil liability could be substantial...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Brad Feld had something similar to say recently:

[http://feld.com/archives/2015/07/dont-try-fake- language.html](http://feld.com/archives/2015/07/dont-try-fake-language.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> From the TC article about Uber today:

> This year, the firm expects to clock $10.84 billion in revenue which — > calculating the 20 percent commission that it takes — should bring in around > $2 billion in revenue for the year.

</comment><comment><USER42> So where can one learn about financial terms or processes before running a company ?. Most people are familiar with AWS than with SEC.

</comment><comment><USER24> A voice recognition company was in the process of IPO in the mid 1990s. They had some big purchase orders from institutional customers. The trouble was, those POs had side letters giving the customers the right to return the products for credit if they didn't work correctly.

Not disclosing those side agreements to investors was treated as felony securities fraud. It made the company seem more valuable than it really was.

That's the whole dealio. Don't cook the books. Don't make stuff up. There's enough that can go wrong even if you are transparent with investors about your deals.

<comment><USER38> That's a nutshell description of "cash flow positive" versus "profitable", right? It's about revenue recognition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Some of the more extreme stuff is the fault of "stretch the truth till it breaks" ideology in business culture. This stuff is dubious in any form IMHO, but when naive first-timers without MBAs pick it up it easily devolves into outright fraud. Someone who knows finance, law, and accounting inside and out knows when and where to stop stretching, but non-experts in these areas do not.

I've heard some jaw-droppers myself in conversations with other founders/entrepreneurs over the years. It's okay to put a positive spin on it, but it's not okay to lie. You can't say you are "cash flow positive" if you are not in any way shape or form collecting actual cash from anyone.

If you don't understand MBA-level accounting and finance, then the safest and most honest thing to do is stick to concrete numbers and things you clearly do understand. Revenue is actual _dollars_ that land in your bank account-- real money that really exists. Profit is revenue minus expense. Customers are actual people or businesses who have given you money for an actual thing. Contracts are actual promises to do so in the future for some length of time. Users are people who are actually handling, running, or consuming your product _right now_ , etc.

It's also perfectly okay to say "I'm not an accountant" in response to questions you don't understand. Your prospective investors are looking for someone to build a product and sell it, and if you can do that then that's your expertise. Accountants and lawyers can be hired on a consulting basis just like any other domain expert. It's okay not to have expertise in all areas as long as your expertise is where it counts and you have traction/results.

Investors will appreciate that too, since anyone operating as a VC or serious angel will see right through any nonsense you spew. It will simply discredit you, and any investor who doesn't have very sensitive radar for blowhards and con men will not be an investor long.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've seen this is in many businesses. The biggest offense is gross vs net revenue. "Oh, we're an X million revenue firm" is frequently tossed out, when the company only keeps 15% of that to pay the bills. This is especially prevalent in AdTech. I used to think this was lack of financial knowledge on the part of the founders. Lately I've started thinking it's deliberate.

I see Virtual being an example of this too, though not in AdTech.

Some of this does fall on the VCs. It's very important for the VCs to dig into financials before investing, and asking for precise definitions. It also highlights the need for professional financial talent in startups.

</comment><comment><USER45> After reading this and going through some of the comments, it may be worth while for YC to hold a small online course, or at least make a small business wiki, that discusses these terms and other concepts specifically in the start- up domain. I mean especially if misusing these terms, unintentional or not, can be considered as a felony, then it would really be worth while to at least give them some information to read up. Even though the ideal team of founders is one CompSci and one business, it seems that some of the business gurus posting here have a hard time defining a few of these terms, like GMV. That's just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Although investors should be doing more diligence than is currently in > fashion, this issue is on the founders to fix.

What incentive do founders have to "fix" this when investors aren't doing adequate due diligence?

<comment><USER38> The fact that they can be prosecuted for it.

<comment><USER46> How many Silicon Valley startup founders have faced felony charges for making financial misrepresentations in recent years?

<comment><USER47> If you're choosing between "should I commit a felony or not" should it matter how often other are charged with it? What happens if law enforcement suddenly becomes more interested?

<comment><USER46> Have you considered the possibility that founders aren't being charged with felonies left and right because they're not committing felonies left and right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Look what A16Z just posted: [http://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/](http://a16z.com/2015/08/21/16-metrics/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Note that the freelancer startups do this emphatically...

UpWork Toptal Gun.io

all list Revenue as total amount via gigs posted not as total amount actually awarded via finished gigs..ie project revenue on system which means that they are over or understating their actual earhed revenue from project fees

Easy to catch as in accounting terms you would list the full project revenue listed on system times the percent project fees as unearned revenue and the booked earned project fee revenue as earned revenue.

<comment><USER50> Background: I am the COO of Toptal

This is simply not true for Toptal. Our publicly stated $80,000,000 ARR is top line.

[http://www.toptal.com/press- center/top-3-percent](http://www.toptal.com/press-center/top-3-percent)

For additional clarification:

You don't post "projects" on Toptal. Everything we do is time & materials, so the concept of misrepresenting financials based on posted projects simply isn't possible. ARR is calculated by actual sales right now multiplied out for a year of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I find most people can't name the summery lines of an income statement (Revenue>COGS>gross profit>sg&A>operating profit> etc.) let alone a balance sheet or cash flow statement. but frankly the one annoys me the most is is the way "cash flow" is misused.

BTW this comes into play [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b-5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b-5)

<comment><USER51> Not a startup guy but a finance guy, how is cash flow misused?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Accounting is so important and so underrated.

With a good accounting you can check the health of any company with just minute reading of the statements, cash flow, profit/losses, debits for short term, investments, etc.

With accounting you can easily know how your investments are going, when you have many and other people administrating.

You can also use accounting to invest in good companies for long term, and for this, I recommend Peter Lynch books.

</comment><comment><USER53> [https://quip.com/32zVAMYAi29n](https://quip.com/32zVAMYAi29n)

</comment><comment><USER54> It's a learning process. A lot of times the Bay Area (like some other places in the world, for different endeavours) is the first real-life encounter with excellence and some times with geniality. Experiencing failure will make felons better, if they survive rejections, mature and learn from mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER4> >misunderstanding or misusing basic financial terms

Well if you stick the average finance guy in front of a python JIT compiler anyone looking over his shoulder will conclude he's an idiot. Yet somehow the average IT guy thinks it just takes a bit of terminology to "get" the finance side.

</comment><comment><USER55> this is where having an MBA (or undergrad business degree) can be helpful. note, i'm not saying you need a business degree to be a founder, just that it can help if you already have it. =)

in business school, you learn that much of finance & accounting is storytelling with numbers, but with the added twist that there are legal consequences for crossing over (and sometimes, just into) the gray area. that's what sam is pointing out, where the gray area ends and the legal consequences start.

as others have pointed out, quantitative finance & accounting classes can be very helpful:

      * financial accounting
      * managerial accounting
      * financial markets
      * investment finance
      * corporate valuation
      * entrepreneurial finance

</comment><comment><USER56> What are some books or resources to get a crash course on these terms and their context?

<comment><USER57> The Wall Street MBA by Advani

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Can someone clarify the difference? Using Uber as an example: their GMV is the sum of all fares, whereas revenue is the 10% they take off that number—is this correct?

</comment><comment><USER59> And walking away from a handshake deal is breach of contract.

<comment><USER60> but only if the contract period was for less than 1 year, iirc. and also the issue of authority-to-bind comes into play as well..

for protection from a verbal deal going bad, see also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#Promissory_estoppel_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#Promissory_estoppel_2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Anybody else have solid resources to learn this stuff?

</comment><comment><USER62> """I've seen people use GMV for revenue or refer to an LOI as a contract many times in the past year when talking to investors. This is a felony."""

How come it's only "disruption" when it happens to somebody else.</comment>


Introduction to machine learning with R - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-bloggers.com/in-depth-introduction-to-machine-learning-in-15-hours-of-expert-videos/

<comment><USER2> is it possible to learn machine learning with only minimal stats background?

<comment><AUTHOR> might as well try. any well written machine learning tutorial will give you a foundation as you go through it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable? - <AUTHOR>

I think that can be inspiring and interesting to learn about the early journey of already profitable businesses.
I enjoyed the 2012 edition : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4088538
Impatient to learn about the accomplishments of the community. <comment><USER2> I launched Invoiced [1] as a private beta in June of 2013 while in college. In November I took it out of private beta and have since been fortunate enough to be able to focus on it full time.

Invoiced provides simple invoicing for the small business/freelance crowd. It is bootstrapped, profitable, and currently producing 4-figures of MRR. I learn something new every day and get to work with awesome people (customers).

[1] [http://invoiced.com](http://invoiced.com)

<comment><USER3> Cool, good job. I had two issues: 1\. The fixed header is an issue when scrolling. Also, the pricing table has the
 bullet points still showing. (edit: on Chrome current version) 2\. Looking at the pricing page, it took me a minute to distinguish between the _names_ of your packages. Maybe have something less "mathy". Otherwise, great job.

<comment><USER2> Thank you. I fixed the pricing table. I plan to do a refresh of the landing page in the near future and might remove the fixed header at that time. Also, great tip on the packages. I let my passion for math slip through into the pricing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I launched my first app in March 2013 and it's basically paying off my school tuition. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spinme-alarm-clock- guarantee...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spinme-alarm-clock- guaranteed/id607979227?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ld6x)

<comment><USER5> This is clever! Bought -- and good luck with school!

<comment><USER4> Thank you! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We launched Geocodio [1] in January 2014. It's a side project, so the definition of "profitable" is a bit different, but it's paying for itself and then some -- servers, Basecamp, LLC filing fees, etc. We're making enough that it covers costs for other, less serious projects [2][3] and our "fun" server (for testing out new projects/ideas/etc) with some to spare.

This was our first time launching a serious product as a side project and it's been a blast. I actually wrote up a few thoughts on launching side projects last week [4], largely based on our experience with Geocodio.

[1] [http://geocod.io](http://geocod.io) [2] [http://opennear.by](http://opennear.by) [3] [http://happykitchen.dotsqua.re](http://happykitchen.dotsqua.re) [4] [https://medium.com/@mjwhansen/things-ive-learned- launching-a...](https://medium.com/@mjwhansen/things-ive-learned-launching-a- side-project-2968c3becd17)

<comment><USER7> How many user use geocod.io?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I launched Duet ([http://duetapp.com](http://duetapp.com)) in May 2013 and it's been profitable since day 1. I'm going to start focusing on it more so it can hopefully grow into something I can live off of.

*edit: I'm very curious to know, what about this comment is worthy of downvotes.

<comment><USER9> i would guess it's the difference between "making revenue since day 1" and "profitable since day 1".

it's hard to imagine that you recouped all of your time/money/expenses not to mention that going forward, you can work on it full time -- all as of day one.

<comment><USER8> Very good point. And very true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I launched [http://ipinfo.io](http://ipinfo.io) back in 2013 and when it hit 50M API requests a day early this year I decided to launch the paid plans, and it's been profitable ever since. It's now hosted across 2 providers in 3 different cities, and handles almost 100M requests per day with a p99 of less than 1s and p50 of less than 100ms. Expect more services and features later this year!

<comment><USER11> That traffic is pretty impressive, I've seen your site before and even though I don't have an obvious need for it I've had it bookmarked for a while.

Congratulations :)

<comment><USER10> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Our mobile games startup started in Dec 2013 is profitable. Our monthly revenues are 3-4X our monthly expenses (which includes market salary for Co- Founders.) In fact in the last 2-3 months, we have been able to save up almost 18 months worth of runway for our team of 8.

Bear in mind that the team is based in India, so our salary and other expenses cannot be compared to Silicon Valley, but in India we pay market rates.

<comment><USER13> What platform? What are your games?

<comment><USER12> We have games on iOS, Google play and Amazon app stores. Mostly trivia games, but some arcade games too. As an example, this is our most popular game across the 3 stores, with 1 million+ downloads [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.froods.dwt...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.froods.dwtt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Started a UK postcode and addressing API in the midst of developing another (eventually failed) project - partly to scratch my own itch and partly because the existing offering was in a bit of a sorry state.

Was profitable within 2 months despite some idealistic pricing on my part. The feedback and kind words from my users over the past year has been incredibly humbling.

<comment><USER13> Curious about this. What does your API do? Associate addresses with postcodes and vice versa? And this is a rookie question but how are postcode different from zip codes in the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My partner finally decided to give it a try to her idea for her own fashion brand[1] (instead of regular career in journaling), designing and hand crafting clothes in small quantities made of self designed and produced specially for us materials and we're just starting being profitable, even tho we're at the moment not very active when it comes to advertising via any channels. The profit varies heavily so far, having very good months and a bit worse ones, but overall, we're positive.

[1] [http://facebook.com/kropeczki](http://facebook.com/kropeczki)

</comment><comment><USER16> My co-founder Dan and I launched WP Curve (24/7 WordPress support) in June 2013. At the time of writing, we're generating $24,166 in MRR.

We share a monthly report every month, here's our last report: [http://wpcurve.com/june-wp-curve-monthly-report-people- produ...](http://wpcurve.com/june-wp-curve-monthly-report-people-product-and- process/) if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER17> I started cardforcoin.com [1] in January. After great launch numbers [2] and some legal concerns [3] we're back up, and on track to pay founders salaries next month. We're still deciding how much of that should be in bitcoin :)

When we had to put cardforcoin.com on hold, we built coinforcoffee.com [4], which lets you spend bitcoin at Starbucks. It's also "profitable", and I think we're going to see some big numbers when we expand to other merchants in a couple months.

[1] [https://cardforcoin.com](https://cardforcoin.com) [2] [http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/card-for-coin- trade-s...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/card-for-coin-trade- starbucks-gift-cards-bitcoin/) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7157180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7157180) [4] [https://coinforcoffee.com](https://coinforcoffee.com)

</comment><comment><USER18> I launched WiseCash ([https://www.wisecashhq.com](https://www.wisecashhq.com)), a cash flow forecasting app for freelancers and small businesses publicly in July 2013.

This is bootstrapped using freelancing. We are currently at $800 MRR and growing.

I'm having a lot of fun helping people get more freedom of choice in their lives!

</comment><comment><USER19> I wrote and self-published a book in 2013 that definitely fits some definitions of success[1]. Sales to date total a little over $30,000, plus some consulting gigs.

[1]: [https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern- payments](https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments)

<comment><USER20> I'm also trying to get into the book writing business. Can you tell me what tool you use to write the book? I was using Gitbook.io but it was buggy and not formatting well.

<comment><USER19> I wrote all of my own tools. The book itself is written in Markdown, and I use the Redcarpet gem to turn it into HTML. From that, I convert it into PDF and the ebook formats using Docverter.

[http://www.docverter.com](http://www.docverter.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I launched [http://park.io](http://park.io) last week and it is already profitable (around +$500).

<comment><USER22> Brilliant. Love it. So park.io registers the domain for you?

<comment><USER21> Thanks! Yes, we register it for you - email me if you have any questions (see my hn profile for my email)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I made FiveStar [0], which was covered on TechCrunch [1] and it made ~$600 last month. Doesn't cost any money to run, so it just sits there. Not a fabulous success story, and traffic is decreasing, but $10 a day as passive income isn't awful.

[0] [http://fivestar.io](http://fivestar.io) [1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/03/fivestar-finds-the-best- pro...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/03/fivestar-finds-the-best-products-on- amazon-from-any-category-on-any-budget/)

<comment><USER24> So how do you make money off your site?

<comment><USER25> I'd guess through Amazon affiliate links, which will pay out for every purchase that originated on the site. Very nice idea, and brilliant use of an affiliate scheme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I started an advertising agency in February with another friend who also used to work in tech. We're Ramen profitable (2 founders make below market, but livable, wages). We were fortunate enough to find some clients in the marijuana industry out here in Colorado who have been largely overlooked by other agencies due to the stigma attached to it. Our strength is solidly in the digital space (particularly social advertising).

</comment><comment><USER20> I built this eCommerce site using Magento for my wife and it was profitable from day 1

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

It's basically a more modern / contemporary artificial flower arrangements. Stuffs you see in Neiman Marcus selling for $400. She sells for $200 or less.

</comment><comment><USER27> I launched product1 of my publishing startup on Jan 1st 2013 on HN[1] and now I'm officially living, frugally, from the sales. It was a side-project, but the interest was so great that I've spent the last 1.5 years building the company. So far so good. More titles and more authors coming soon. Bootstrap funding all the way!

The self-publishing route for authors is a very interesting development. I believe it is going to be one of the more interesting strategies for monetizing content on the web. Take the best of modern web technology (version control, bug reports, quick iterations) and apply it to producing books--- meaningful information products that can be sold at 60%--95% margins. What's not to like?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4994367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4994367)

</comment><comment><USER28> We launched ConferenceBadge.com January 2013 (team of 4). We are now profitable and fully pay ourselves with it.

We have no outside funding (we were invited to the YC interview, but weren't selected).

We now invest our time between this and one other unannounced project.

Life is good.

</comment><comment><USER29> I launched [http://BeatsImporter.com](http://BeatsImporter.com) a few weeks ago.. like some others it's a side project so profitable is a bit different for me. in a month of "operation" it's paying for itself using Adsense. really not sure how else to monetize something like this (maybe a 99 cent app kind of thing?) At any rate I have done a few small sites that scratched an itch for me and none ever went any further than scratching my own itch. this one (BeatsImporter) is the first to go beyond that.. so pretty excited.. :-)

</comment><comment><USER30> We (friends and I) launched SAO Launcher [1] as an Android app in 2013. It lets you make phone calls, launch apps, and a few more things by swiping down from a small hitbox.

Got to build a lot of cool things because of it (Themes and Extensions installed via separate apks, Overlays, Animations). And it's profitable.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xlythe.sao...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xlythe.saolauncher)

</comment><comment><USER31> We launched the LinkRisk suite in April last year [http://www.linkrisk.com](http://www.linkrisk.com) and we are profitable (and hiring!)

</comment><comment><USER32> I started [http://mammothology.com](http://mammothology.com) last year and was profitable within 3 months. I create software for small businesses, mainly WordPress plugins but other things too. It's not a (comfortably) liveable wage yet but slowly increasing month on month. I'm not much of a marketer so it's difficult to figure out how to get sales up to that next level.

</comment><comment><USER33> Launched iOS Leads [0] in May. Spent a few months testing the product before launch. Only a handful of monthly software expenses (Mailchimp and Memberful).

Currently at 4 digit MRR, and almost full. The program is capped at 40 customers.

Also went indie dev in 2013, but selling product is way harder than selling service.

[0] [http://iosleads.com](http://iosleads.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> I started a recruiting company in the real estate niche.

We're profitable technically, but I would only say "gross profitable" not "net profitable".

(Couldn't afford to pay minimum wage for someone to do this)

On the up side, its a B2B so there are opportunities to cross sell a better product if we come up with one

</comment><comment><USER35> I very recently launched an ecommerce site[1] selling shoe shine kits of all things. We just launched a few weeks ago but are already making money. It was a nice feeling to be able to pay myself yesterday, even if it was only $500!

[1] [http://shinekits.com](http://shinekits.com)

<comment><USER36> Off-topic, but you should contact massdrop.com these are the kinds of products that may really interest massdrop's customers!

<comment><USER37> What is Massdrop? Website doesn't say much.

<comment><USER37> Oh, I see. Aggregates consumer demand for a given product and negotiates a discount for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I started [http://skyul.com](http://skyul.com) and it's been profitable since it's first month when I released this service. The main reason why is because I'm keeping costs low and I re-invested most of the cash into advertising and more product development :)

</comment><comment><USER39> I launched Minimal Reader [1] last year right before Google Reader shut down. It started small, grew organically, and now I've been able to wrangle together a couple thousand customers.

[1] [https://minimalreader.com](https://minimalreader.com)

</comment><comment><USER40> Off-topic, but I'm proud to have my thread mentioned in your post. :) A long time went by after I posted it, and I still haven't launched anything, just a couple of nearly-launches. I hope 2014/2015 will change that and wish everyone to not hesitate and just do it!

</comment><comment><USER41> I started:

[http://www.thingsunder15.com](http://www.thingsunder15.com) and [http://www.myfancysauce.com](http://www.myfancysauce.com)

both slightly profitable.

</comment><comment><USER42> I started a contracting company in 2014, [http://www.motusdesign.ca](http://www.motusdesign.ca)

We are already profitable, but that's not saying much since we have almost no expenses.

<comment><USER43> Shady, this seems to be riding the coattails of Motus Global... [http://www.motusglobal.com/](http://www.motusglobal.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I launched [http://namaste-lms.org](http://namaste-lms.org) which is profitable. But is far from the profits I was hoping for so probably will start something new again.

<comment><USER45> Just FYI, there's a typo on the homepage!

"Connect to Exmas"

<comment><USER44> Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My wife started [http://makerjunior.com/](http://makerjunior.com/) to teach kids technology through workshops and kits. Profitable and growing...

</comment><comment><USER47> My wife left corporate law firm life to start her own law practice in March of this year. By not taking on unnecessary expenses she has been profitable every single month.

</comment><comment><USER48> in 2012 i started a loose html-only info-site. But there was sincere effort put on, and one thing lead to another- it turned out a commercial info-site being taken quite seriously by the industry- soon a business model evolved - and things came up. Good employees and a lot of online help in coding got things through. Now our portal earns revenue- i never knew the stuff would be taken so seriously.

</comment><comment><USER49> well we have started little early but we speed things up at 2013-2014 and cleared the mile store of 1MN$ revenue we are now largest self created open source plugin marketplace [https://store.webkul.com/](https://store.webkul.com/) .

</comment><comment><USER50> I started a 401(k) account and put it on S&P500 index fund, it's gone up about 65% in two years. The best part of the business is that I work less than Timothy Ferris, "0-hour work week"; I let the money do the work for me, not the other way around.

<comment><USER13> Interest to put this under starting something profitable, but the tone seems a little snarky.

<comment><USER50> Np, I didn't mean to be snarky. I wanted to make a point both the opportunity cost of starting something creative and the pride that entrepreneurs have for their "initiative and originality" yet are beholden and exploited by the investors who invest in them and who'll ultimately reap in their success.

Also that trading can be an creative act (expressing your belief about yourself, in risk-taking in buying a leveraged option call or a conservative index fund with stop loss; your personal conflict resolution and problem solving when the market moves against you) and a simple decision to invest in an index fund is not trivial but can be just as nuanced in making any complex decisions. But in the West, we put so much credence in "hustlin'" that we become penny-wise and pound-foolish.

<comment><USER51> unless creating for the sense of ownership or pure joy, it's certainly valid to compare the time spent against the opportunity cost of a full-time job or contracting.

it was a thread about _profit_, after all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Protesters in Hong Kong are getting attacked by masked thugs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/gissisim/status/1152975855334887424 <comment><USER2> The Chinese and HK government's have realized they've lost the culture wars and public opinion so they've resorted to the tried and tested handibook of authoritarian governments, to create a cycle of violence to create justification for cracking down.

This is a provocation. Protesters will now counter arm themselves with similar bats and sticks, which in turn will give the police extra justification when they uncover "weapons". It will be used by the Chinese domestic media as justification to crack down hard.

</comment><comment><USER3> I despair for the protesters hope to have self determination. How can we help the people who just want to be free? China will just keep increasing the pressure, trying to get an excuse for sending out the police and arresting or beating them all up.

</comment><comment><USER4> Police turn blind eye on thug's assault [https://streamable.com/wlfoq](https://streamable.com/wlfoq)

<comment><USER4> CONFIRMED: Pro-Beijing lawmaker Junius Ho shook hands with suspected gangsters, who very likely are the same batch of people attacking passengers in Yuen Long Station few hours ago.

[https://www.facebook.com/hkcolumn/](https://www.facebook.com/hkcolumn/)

<comment><USER5> Hong Kong Police Commander Coordinating With Suspected Attackers: [https://streamable.com/7wt53](https://streamable.com/7wt53)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love Hong Kong. I love Hong Kongers and spent wonderful three years there. Am now leaving though (for many reasons, career and this). Not sure where off to next.

Singapore again? Australia? Don't know. Depends on opportunities. If anyone needs a good product guy, let me know

Unfortunately Hong Kong has never been competitive in tech offerings and quality of life has been going down dramatically over recent years.

<comment><USER7> How did quality of life go down?

<comment><USER8> Extreme real estate prices?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More [https://twitter.com/alanwongw/status/1152962222357807104](https://twitter.com/alanwongw/status/1152962222357807104)

<comment><USER4> Journalists were hit by thugs [https://thestandnews.com/politics/%E5%85%83%E6%9C%97%E6%83%A...](https://thestandnews.com/politics/%E5%85%83%E6%9C%97%E6%83%A1%E7%85%9E%E8%A1%8C%E5%85%87-%E7%BE%A4%E6%AF%86%E8%A8%98%E8%80%85%E5%B8%82%E6%B0%91-%E9%A0%AD%E7%A0%B4%E8%A1%80%E6%B5%81-%E8%A8%98%E5%8D%94%E7%B7%8A%E6%80%A5%E5%91%BC%E7%B1%B2%E8%AD%A6%E6%96%B9%E5%B1%A5%E8%A1%8C%E8%81%B7%E8%B2%AC/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Assuming the gangsters are backed by pro mainland leaders, what are hoping to get out of this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Suppression of dissent. What else?

<comment><USER9> If the general public is apathetic and and number of dissenter is in minority I get it. The only thing I can think of is, they are pitting against one another in hope to cause greater chaos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> (Based on a comment I made on another thread)

For more photos and videos of the triad attack, check out [https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/)

For another reporting of the triad attack, see BBC [1] and the Times [2].

It was leaked a few days ago that the government was planning to use triads to do the dirty work (See point 4 in [3] and [4] in Chinese). Using triads happened during the 2014 umbrella protest, but this time the attack on arbitrary citizens (not necessarily the protesters) is on a completely different scale: a terrorist attack.

And there are videos showing that the police "co-operated" with the triads (by turning a blind eye: arriving at the scene late [5] [6], chatting with the triad attackers [7] [8], closing the police stations and not responding to cases during the events).

[1]: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-49066982](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49066982)

[2]: [https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2c35b094-abe5-11e9-b657-1...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2c35b094-abe5-11e9-b657-1..).

[3]: [https://www.facebook.com/ChanKamShui/posts/2336638383089638](https://www.facebook.com/ChanKamShui/posts/2336638383089638)

[4]: [https://nextplus.nextmedia.com/article/2_682569_0](https://nextplus.nextmedia.com/article/2_682569_0)

[5]: A video showing two policemen turning their back on the the subway station right before the attack: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cg0hm2/hkpf_leavi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/cg0hm2/hkpf_leavi..).

[6]: A video allegedly showed how the triad members (on the left) left the scene when the police (on the right) arrived at one scene: [https://www.facebook.com/ChanKamShui/videos/477470036387268/](https://www.facebook.com/ChanKamShui/videos/477470036387268/)

[7]: [https://www.facebook.com/paco.chor/videos/10157511842948537/](https://www.facebook.com/paco.chor/videos/10157511842948537/)

[8]: [https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=316880969036144](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=316880969036144)

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like Antifa, or the right wing equivalent. Before the swarm of downvotes, everyone think about what happens when we decide to use violence to impose their point of view. The government should be our client, not our ruler. We should be able to protest and be heard without fear.

<comment><USER12> Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER13> You are always SO quick to shut down discussion but the guy you're replying to is not flaming anyone and he is making really interesting points

<comment><USER12> The issue isn't that the commenter was flaming a particular person but that the comment was going into a generic ideological tangent. That's a classic flamewar zone and off topic here. I'm sorry to tell you that it's off topic since you find it interesting, but we don't have much choice but to build firewalls around HN. Highly-charged political topics would take over very quickly otherwise; they are more impassioned and inflammatory (and important, arguably) than anything else that gets discussed here.

By the way, I'm sorry that I didn't have a chance to respond to you in earlier threads. I saw your comments and would normally have been happy to answer, but ran out of time.

<comment><USER13> Okay, good points. I see it your way now. Thanks for the response. I appreciate you dude.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


USPS jerking around GameFly one year later - <AUTHOR> http://prc.gov/Docs/67/67931/1st%20Discovery%20Requests%20[1-46].pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> The basic gist of the story is this: a year ago, GameFly filed a formal complaint against USPS for treating its game disks different from competitors like NetFlix and Blockbuster (a disproportionate number were broken, lost, etc). This was after already working with USPS to try to resolve the issue before the complain process. It's taken USPS a full year to respond to the complaint, and their response is in the form of a wild goose chase.</comment>