Germans don't do tech startups – more access to capital might change that - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1404647/germans-dont-do-tech-startups-more-access-to-capital-might-change-that/ <comment><USER2> We _do_ have tech startups here in Germany, and quite a few of them. It's just that they tend to be funded differently, and with less of the wild valuation- speculation that goes on in the US. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

As a corollary, the article cites European data protection law (in the context of not being able to collect usage data to improve the product) as a barrier to building startups which ... is also very wrong. You can (legally! Ethically! GDPR-compliantly!) collect all sorts of data with which to improve your product. I've seen it done, I've done it myself.

There are a lot of people here, German and non-German alike, trying to furiously recreate the SV way of doing things, as if that's the only way to build a strong tech industry. To me that's both uninteresting (why replicate the same model everywhere?) and bad business (not all markets are the same, and that's not a bad thing). Maybe people would be more successfully adapting to the local context. It's certainly working for a handful of startup incubators I know in Berlin.

<comment><USER3> I have to disagree. We _don't_ do tech startup like in the US or China. Yes, we do have a lot of great B2B industrial startups. But ask yourself this questions: as a developers where would you want to work? In the US that's easy to answer, Google, MS, Apple, amazon. Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting topics at a large scale? That's one reason the big US companies have offices here, to attract the talent.

<comment><USER4> > Where do you want to work in Germany? Which tech company provides the > opportunity to earn a lot of money while working on really interesting > topics at a large scale?

Global companies have massively increased their presence here.

Google has a huge presence in Munich, notably including a chunk of the V8 developers. Apple has a large hardware team in Munich. Amazon Berlin is aggressively hiring for developers to work on AWS. If you're after SF style salaries go work for Google Zürich and take home €200k.

<comment><USER5> I still don't get why Germany is underpaying engineers. After taxes, a cleaning lady in Switzerland can earn more than an engineer in Germany. Net salaries in Zürich are the only ones in Europe that match Bay Area level. (Living costs are lower than you think, see my blogpost titled "Nine reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech", which I wrote after I emigrated from Germany: [https://bit.ly/2GNlJcA](https://bit.ly/2GNlJcA)) So why should top notch talent move to Germany, if they can move to Norway, the Netherlands or Switzerland where they earn double or triple?

What I hear from recruitment firms is that "mediocre engineers move to Berlin and great ones to Zurich". Also, GetYourGuide has their core backend engineering staff still in Zurich, but marketing and sales in Berlin. One of the founders writes that in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and complex data analysis, there are more talents in Switzerland than in Berlin: [https://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/getyourguide- chef-...](https://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/getyourguide-chef-reck- direkter-draht-zum-vatikan)

Switzerland is even more founder/investor-friendly than the US. Example: Capital gain tax is 0%, that means, if you start a company, and sell it (=shares usually surgue in value), you don't pay taxes on this gain. Also, no capital gain taxes need to be paid, if you buy a publicly listed stock/ETF and hold it for more than 6 months. (More in another thing I wrote: "Switzerland: How buying real-estate can kill you financially and reasons to go for stocks instead" \- [https://bit.ly/2xIe8ri](https://bit.ly/2xIe8ri)). Despite the legal infrastructure, we still lack the "American" mentality to become a startup place, but for small businesses it's much better here than in Germany:

A friend of me once said: "Germany is a rich country of poor people". The system in Germany hates small businesses / freelancers and is optimized for conglomerates like Siemens or BMW. If you open a company, you immediately drown in red-tape and upfront taxes. As a comparison, in Switzerland you can just start issuing invoices without a tax-code or anything. Only after you reach a certain threshold, you need to have to inform the authorities during the same tax-year. Also after that, things are very reasonable and easy. My tech recruitment firm generates "normal revenue" and I still haven't gotten a tax-consultant because I can do taxes myself. If I have a question, I call the tax authorities and they help me / give "free advice", which shocks my German entrepreneur friends. There, the tax-authorities treat them as criminals, no support is given and one is triple-checked thoroughly that no taxes are evaded, which, of course, happens anyway especially because taxes are damn high. If you make median wage, it's 45%. In Switzerland median wage is taxed at ~17%. Also, tax-authorities treat taxpayers like clients, whom one is grateful to. That reflects in the simplicity of the tax code: In Germany, if you go for dinner with clients, you need to subtract and can't deduct the part from the bill which you consumed; in Switzerland, you just deduct the whole bill.

(Content marketing from here: If you are European and you want to move here, shoot me an email to email@example.com. I am well-connected in the local tech scene because I match programmers with jobs for a living.)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure your comment adds any value to the discussion. It seems to be intended purely as advertisement

EDIT: it seems as if you edited your post heavily to add the notion of "content"

<comment><USER5> I am sorry that you see it in this way. I am just trying to be helpful by explaining what I experience here and also pointing to my small business, which is tech recruitment related. I added a few points and marked the end as "content marketing" to make things more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been trying to build deep tech startups in Germany for 6 years. I managed to sell the first one I built to a US company (for a very small amount of money) and started afresh after taking a break as an employee.

Right now I'm at the point of giving up again because it's so damn hard to find customers here. In my opinion, for deep tech startups the problem is not primarily access to capital but access to customers, as the corporate culture is extremely hostile towards startups. Large corporations are very risk-averse and most of them won't ever consider buying a product from an unproven startup. The ones that want to work with startups often have started their own incubators where they try out ideas by hiring teams and building startups that they fully control (50 % shares belong to the parent company from the beginning).

Also, from my experience getting seed funding becomes harder the more experienced you are here: If you just finished university it's easy to get a so-called EXIST grant, which will pay a little more than 100.000 € to fund a team of three people for a year. That's how most (or at least many) of the successful startups get funded here. The thing is, if you have been working for 5 years or more you will be ineligible for that program, and your options for getting seed money are very restricted. This is weird as people with industry experience usually have a much better chance at building something relevant and successful than a recent university graduate with no business experience. They have a much harder time finding money though.

There are counterexamples and very successful deep tech startups of course, I just think we could have many more of those if we had a system that actually encouraged and helped people to build these companies.

I can understand that many people decide against it, especially when you're a good technician / engineer you can earn much more in industry and there's very little to gain by leaving your position.

<comment><USER7> I'd have been eligible for EXIST, but that program is a bad joke. 100k for 3 persons for one year before tax? C'mon. That is financial sucide, if you're in tech these days.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, and than you have to pass a panel deciding whether your "idea" is innovative enough. It reminded me more of a game of buzzword bingo than a viable investment procedure. As your not allowed to incorporate before enter EXIST it is just a waste of time. Not to mention that it all depends on how well you are connected at your university, and if government funds are available.

<comment><USER6> I'd say the chances of getting a grant are very good, back in the day the success rate was around 50 % and you could apply up to three times (to my knowledge), which made it highly likely that you'd get the money if you were persevering. It's true that you have to choose a good university as the quality of the provided coaching and mentorship varies wildly. I can recommend LMU & TU Munich as well as TU Berlin or one of the other well-known technical universities (e.g. RWTH Aachen), to my knowledge they have very good programs. You don't need connections at your university either, you just need to convince a professor to support your application, which they are often happy to do as it counts towards the amount of funding they raised, which is a relevant metric to them.

If you can get that money it's really an excellent opportunity and will help you to get further funding, as I said before I just find it sad that nothing comparable exists for experienced people from industry.

<comment><USER8> I tried a while back. Not being at one of the universities you mentioned ,I would have been an extension from TU Munich. Funds where hard to come by at that time (right after the elections, so no governmant, no government budget, no EXIST funds). In the end, I talked to all relevant profs at my university, they talked to the giys at TUM, and the feed-back was "no need to tey, your idea is not innovative enough. Try a bank or bet your house."

Also the expected time line was around 6 months to get into the program, so for me it would have just been a colosal waste of time.

EDIT: While coaching is anive thing, it is access to follow-up funding that matters. At let's be honest in that regard YC is different league all together. And if you don't need funding beyond 100k you really could have used bank in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Germans absolutely do tech startups, in fact they've been on the forefront of building tech companies that mirror Silicon Valley, but in German.

There's been a German eBay, PayPal and Facebook.

Europe doesn't really do major companies though, and part of that is certainly a lack of demand to go global from capital investors, but there are other parts as well. Like language and regulation.

I went to harzen for holiday this summer, very retro I know, and almost no one spoke English. In fact I had bigger luck with Danish than I had with English because they see so many Danish tourists. I'm not sure Americans can really understand how big the language and cultural barriers are from creating global companies when you're de-attached from the Anglo-Saxon world.

I think the reason that a lot of European startups that made it to the global scence came from Scandinavia, is exactly because we're so attached to American culture that's it's almost second nature to us. Sure we don't understand American individualism, not really, but we're all brought up watching American tv-shows and movies, hell American politics and economics sometimes take up more news space than our own national news...

The rest of Europe isn't like that, so while Germany had its own eBay, that made its founders billionaires, no one outside of Germany has ever heard about it. Except for maybe eBay who couldn't enter the market.

<comment><USER10> Usually when I go around in Eastern Europe I have an easier way trying to speak German than English.

And in southern Europe I am lucky to be able to speak most languages, as anyone beyond a certain age hardly speaks any word of English, specially outside the major cities.

Which is indeed a challenge, on the other side is also something quite rich, as most traveling Europeans tend to speak fluently three languages on average.

<comment><USER11> >Usually when I go around in Eastern Europe I have an easier way trying to speak German than English.

Everyone who knows English has already left. I'm not sure how much it's worth to other people but for me knowing English has been a ~x50 income multiplier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Germany has a lot of drawbacks to be the next silicon valley:

* the most difficult tax system in the world. even freelancers have to use accountant services, because most people will not be able to pay taxes properly without it.

* high taxes - 42% income tax + Solidaritätszuschlag 5.5% = 47.5%; for corporations it's ~30%.

* A LOT of buerocracy. I can't even send an email to tax authorities in my area, because they only accept paper letters but nothing else.

* highly qualified foreigners have to learn German and it's quite difficult language.

* the market in Germany is much smaller comparing to USA. If you want to target EU, then you have to support a lot of different languages, date/time formats, regulations and laws etc.

* recently the EU introduced a lot of additional regulations for internet companies (GDPR, new copyright directives that require checking uploaded files, etc...).

* weather is not that appealing as in the valley.

* the difference in salaries between regular developers and rockstars is very low. So there is zero motivation to become one.

* low salaries for software engineers. The most of senior software developers will earn 50.000 - 60.000 EURO anually and after paying taxes it's only ~2.600 EURO per month (3.000 USD)

* poor internet connection in a lot of places / poor connection speed - almost any country is better in this regard

<comment><USER13> > the most difficult tax system in the world.

I love how hyperbolic statements like this get bought and sold like truth. It's not _even close_ to being the most difficult tax system in the world.

Source: [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.TAX.DURS?year_high_d...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.TAX.DURS?year_high_desc=false)

> highly qualified foreigners have to learn German

For startups or tech positions? No, they don't.

Also, learning German at a conversational level is not impossible. (But it seems a lot of people in Berlin coast by without even knowing basic German)

<comment><USER12> Your link just proves how horrible German tax system is:

* A german needs 2x more time for taxes than a UK citizen

* needs 3x more time than a Norway citizen

* needs 4x more time than a Swiss citizen

* 20x more time than a UAE citizen

<comment><USER13> "Horrible"

United States: 175h Germany: 218h

Governments are not very easy dealing, but to call it "horrible" when some countries require 10x the time is unfair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The mindset in SV is to fail fast - yes, with all the consequences for the investors. That's why investing in startups is a high risk investment. And that's also why the cautious way of doing business in Europe doesn't help with the startup economy. Being too cautious prevents from taking high risks.

I interviewed several times with startups proud of not having any funding behind. Very nice. Still, my question is... Who cares? The main difference is that in the USA money is constantly being invested, there is a lot of debt but that's the way to innovate. In Europe on the other hand, if you fail, or if you make debts you better hide yourself.

<comment><USER15> Failing fast is done to _reduce_ risk. The quicker a company fails with an idea, i.e. discovers that there is no market fit, the fewer money was wasted on it. The remaining budget can be used to try other ideas.

The big company model, where something unproven is developed for a long time by a large team, is substantially more risky. Only when they go live after "finishing" their product they might discover that nobody wants it.

Anybody trying to innovate will fail at one point or another, because not all bets play out. So the key is to make the bets as small as possible and therefore "fail" as quickly as possible.

<comment><USER14> You are right!

I only saw this from the perspective of the investor that gives money and "hopes" it will work.

This doesn't contradict the fact, though, that in Europe the "big plan" tends to work for a simple reason: there are already deals (if it's a b2b) or the product doesn't innovate and it's based on something already working elsewhere.

Obviously this prevents innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I moved to Berlin recently and started making a list of "cool" startups and venture capital firms in my public notebook. It can be a reference for people who are curious about the ecosystem here:

cool startups: [https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#cool-...](https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#cool- startups)

venture capital firms: [https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#ventu...](https://github.com/azer/notebook/blob/master/berlin.md#venture- capital)

PRs are welcome.

<comment><USER17> Endeit Capital and Capnamic should be on your list, as well as Project-A ventures and Partech.

<comment><USER16> Could you send a PR?

<comment><USER17> No. I don't see why I should log in to another website or make an account there when you already have all the info you need right here.

<comment><USER16> Gotcha. I'll add it then.

<comment><USER17> Thank you. I'll see if I can dig up some more active German VCs for you, I should have a list somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Germans don't do tech startups" is obviously clickbait but it's equally obvious that Germany can't compete with SF when it comes to startups. As a Dutch founder of Germany based scaleup Transloadit.com I'd say taxes and workforce-legislation are more prohibitive than a lack of funding (tho it may also be a problem for others as clearly there's less going around). I realize why taxes and protection of the workforce are necessary and am happy to live in a country that sands down some sharper edges of capitalism, but when you are just starting out, it's overwhelming the amount of money you can't allocate for more growth, and the commitment/risk that comes with having people on the payroll. Even though we have work, and money to spend on having that done, going that route is like the last resort because it's so scary (maybe there isn't money/work next year, what if they become sick, it could just ruin the company). Not even talking about resources needed to get acquainted and comply with the rules. So currently we try to work with freelance/invoicing as much as possible, but that comes with its own set of legal constraints and high costs. Feels a bit like driving with the emergency brake on. If somehow the government could have a special set of lightweight rules for folks just starting out, I think you'd see more startups flourish.

</comment><comment><USER19> In Germany most start-ups are self-funded with maximum personal risk. That means that you only fail once, after that you'll never be able to recover from bankruptcy only to do your next thing. As Germans are not known to be risk taking folks it's understandable why there are slim chances for the next Silicon Valley in Germany. It's all about _risk_ and _risk taking_. Tweak those parameters economy-wise, then we talk about bold entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER20> I doubt that is true, do you have numbers for this claim? I see many companies founding limited structures (UG or GmbH) to have avoid maximum personal risk. It can be done with just 1€ of capital.

<comment><USER19> You still need liability capital for a GmbH (e.g. LLC) which most _start-ups_ just don't have. They start off single or as a GbR with a second or more partners, and then eventually change the company liability type to GmbH, when they generated the capital needed. A _real_ start-up doesn't have to be a GmbH at all. In fact about 2/3 are single start-ups in Germany with maximum personal risk, not even GbR which is only 8%. The rest are GmbH with 30% which also counts start-ups with a bigger company as backer.

That paper is a bit dated, and in German, but still the general assumption that most start-ups are poor remains true for Europe, not only Germany. [https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/WirtschaftStatistik...](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/WirtschaftStatistik/UnternehmenGewerbeanzeigen/Unternehmensdemografie_62013.pdf)

What is true though, a UG (e.g. Ltd), is an alternative to GmbH in terms of liability and capital. The 1 euro capital is a joke, imho. Because no sane credit institute would lend you money when they see your tiny liability investment. However, it _is_ possible to make your business legal and profitable, and then borrow some money. But, honestly, starting with literally nothing is like starting a new game at maximum difficulty and perma-death, and who does that in RL?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> More money alone won't solve this particular issue. The link that is referenced at the bottom of the article [1] highlights more of these challenges:

\- Government Policies: Taxes and Bureaucracy

\- Governmental Policies: Support and Relevance

\- Entrepreneurial Education at School Stage

The first is a much bigger issue than missing capital.

[1] [https://www.gemconsortium.org/country- profile/64](https://www.gemconsortium.org/country-profile/64)

<comment><USER13> Everybody complains about taxes but I don't think that's the most important factor tbh

Whenever someone discusses corp. taxes in the US and incorporation it seems it's full of gotchas, corner cases and traps. Not to mention every state having its own legislation as well.

Taxes might be higher outside of the US (but then again, they're taxes: no profit, no taxes) but they're not necessarily more complex (though Germany ones are probably not the easiest tbh).

Startups exist in more tax complex countries. You can't buy culture, customers and financing, the rest is doable.

<comment><USER22> I don't know the exact situation in Germany or US, but in Italy, the "no profit, no taxes" is definitely not true. Depending on the company type you registered, there's a significant cost to just keep the ability to run the company to _do_ business in the first place.

By experience, the dead cost of the smallest company you can run is between 5-15k per year. It might not seem much, but I've heard here on HN over and over how to grow a side/passive income, and there's basically no way to do this here. The moment you want to start a side business, the fixed minimal cost is sunk, so unless you start making a significant sum from the start you're just losing money that eats into your primary income. And there's no _legal_ way to do the business below that. That's not how I understood people in the US do this sort of passive income. It _sounds_ like "no money = no tax", but this is not true here. You often have to pay taxes in advance on the _projected_ income of the next year, even if you never had a business first: the projection is based on god-knows-what market estimates you have no control over.

The market segmentation, language barrier and tax situation in EU is a huge burden. If you're working on a niche product you want to start with a wide basin of users, at least as large as the EU block. Sounds stupid to start in a single country. It's doable, but don't expect to start with a small capital, and typically not with the wannabe-VC we have here in the EU. The 100k for 3ppl/year is not a joke.. a "100k-300k" ballpark is very common for startups here. I'd consider that just for marketing, or even then. With this money you basically cannot do anything serious, just considering how hard is to penetrate the market.

I've yet to see something in the likes of Stripe in the EU. And a decent replacement for Paypal for smaller setups. I'd love to have candidates here. Accepting money is cumbersome if you're small. This is _sad_.

Workforce is a problem. But not because of talent. The extra regulation here implies a _strong_ commitment when hiring. This forces companies to grow very cautiously. You cannot resize the workforce to match the load. If you grow too much, you may doom the company at the first financial difficulty. This causes a lot of sub-contractual work to be done, with a significant decrease in quality and cohesion. Not to mention, this line of working is being limited more and more over time - I was working as an entrepreneur in the beginning of my career but I cannot do that anymore and have to be regularly employed. I could have started something from scratch much more easily 15 years ago compared to now just due to regulations.

I could go on for pages...

<comment><USER4> > And there's no legal way to do the business below that.

Actually, there is. Register an Irish company. All the paperwork is in English, costs are low, and you can operate across the EU.

<comment><USER23> If you are based in Italy and operate the company from there, you will still have to pay the Italian taxes. But yeah at least you should have easier accounting and no running costs.

<comment><USER4> > you will still have to pay the Italian taxes.

Yup. The company is clearly subject to Italian taxes. This all hinges on whether registering a branch is less hassle and cheaper than opening an Srl.

Lots of smaller German startups use either a UK limited or an Irish limited + a German branch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has the author not heard of Rocket Internet? Hello Fresh? Zalando? Contentful? SumUp? Wooga? Deepstreamhub? Delivery Hero? N26?

<comment><USER25> Rocket Internet were just the scumbags that ripped off every US based idea and tried to implement it in Germany. A few "me-too" businesses. Okay.

There are very few big ideas that investors in Germany would pour money into.

<comment><USER26> Their big idea was to copy every idea in markets where the original company hadn't expanded yet.

It might not be the greatest technical achievement, but it certainly paid off for them, demonstrating that execution is more important than being the first to have an idea.

<comment><USER27> By "execution" you mean a wasp nest of POs, PMs, MBAs, friends'-friends and lawyers standing over and yelling at engineers and developers imported from Eastern Europe and India?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The difference is: We have labor laws.

<comment><USER29> Why is not there a middle ground between hire-and-fire-quick vs very strong/rigid labor laws that would give more optimized/successful end results for _most involved_ than either of the two extreme points would generate? On one hand, I certainly would not want what's happened to e.g. Telltale employees who recently got laid off abruptly with no severance packages to happen to any of my friends/family. On the other hand, if you want a pool of opportunities of strong growth to co-exist within your economy, you gotta relax and give some room for those of us who are or want to be innovative.

Come to think of it, with the safety net that is provided in most developed European countries (e.g. Sweden, Norway) one would think that there'd be more innovations (normalized by metrics like population, etc.) generated there than say, the USA but I doubt that is the case here without having any numbers or proof. Is it the scale that matters most or what am I missing?

Overall, I for one wouldn't still trade strong labor laws with being the most innovative place but I do still hope for a better middle ground for everyone.

<comment><USER4> Germany has trial periods for employees. If you put in the contract you can terminate the contract without reason for up to 6 months. It goes both ways. Employees can leave with almost no notice during the same period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I read this article a few days ago with three different ways of funding a startup in Germany, namely (1) crowdfunding/crowdinvesting, (2) business angels, and (3) wealth families (family offices).

[http://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/pm-en/online- magazine/invent-a...](http://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/pm-en/online- magazine/invent-and-establish/strategies-for-the-piggy-bank?set_language=en)

</comment><comment><USER31> Not mentioned in the article is that the EU is made up of many smaller markets that each demand a lot of customization. The Bay Area has instant access to 300 million consumers before anyone is dealing languages, currencies, etc.

B2C is more successful in the EU because barriers relating to foreign vendors are less significant to businesses as consumers.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a question. Are there any German laws or regulations that prohibit using startups from using stock options as part of total compensation? I thought I remembered hearing something about this once, namely that it wasn't possible in the same way it was possible in the US. Is there any truth to that?

<comment><USER33> I think the mentality in general is a lot more conservative, financially speaking.

So also a lot of employees won't take stock options over a bigger pay.

I also think most developers are not in the mood to live like people in SF do - just barely scraping by after accomodation and food. Most people here want to live a good life on their "developer salary" which is already pretty good for Germany in the most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The largest German startup is Wirecard.

If you received a prepaid card from online service like Payoneer, highly likely you've consumed services of this startup indirectly.

There is also Dr. Bentz, creator of Bentz Bone which many people in Silicion Valley have used.

</comment><comment><USER34> Startups need immigrants. Germany only accept immigrants from EU, not from China or India which produce cheapest empoyees offering max value.

One key difference is that Startups lack fund.

So either:

1\. Funding be made more generous by offering tax advantages to invesitors

2\. Or, biggest expense are employees, so we need employees accepting a dream stock unit and very low wage, so we can hire more of them.

But I've talked with German employees, literally, none of them will accept more money for more work. There is very strong emphasis on work life balance unlike US. So only way to overcome this issue is to get larger funding and that's smth government needs to fix.

That way startup can become more competitive.

<comment><USER35> This is not true.

I'm Australian, and it was _easy_ to get my Blue Card, and more recently my permanent residency in Germany. Compared to the nightmare of dealing with the UK Home Office, moving to Germany was a breeze.

(For those who don't know: if you have a 4-year degree, and can get a job- offer that pays €48K or above, you can easily get a Blue Card, which lets you work in Germany. Keep that job, and after 21 months, you can get a Niederlassungserlaubnis (permanent residency) with B2-level German, or after 33-months with rudimentary German. It's an amazing deal.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's because they don't need to. Startups often include difficult and intense work environment. For exactly what? Better than average compensation discussion is frowned upon in Germany. There is ramphant latent descrimination against people from other countries. Which German company has a foreign born CEO?

In US, Google and Microsoft have foreign born CEOs.

This is my own experience, so downvoting is only silencing a voice.

<comment><USER36> > Startups often include difficult and intense work environment

Compared to the USA? Lol, you have no clue. The standard for a software engineer in SV is to take drugs to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week, pay a fucking high rent living with 4 other people and if he's foreigner and freshly arrived, he has to suck his boss' cock everyday because they might take away his visa sponsorship and put him into troubles.

In Berlin most people I know work less than 8 hours a day, can afford to have their own apartment at their first or second job and save enough money and energy to go travel somewhere every 3 months. Because you know, we have 30 days of holidays per year.

<comment><USER37> In addition to being uncivil, this is wildly wrong ("The standard for a software engineer in SV") and you misread the parent comment.

Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

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


Bitcoin is growing even in africa - <AUTHOR> http://techunzipped.com/bitcoin-conference-africa/ <comment><USER2> If something is zero (bitcoin usage on africa a few years ago) it's certainly more likely to grow than diminish.

<comment><AUTHOR> to me it is starting to grow ,but most pple don like change

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> will bitcoin be accepted in africa as it has the word over?</comment>


Honda's global operations hit by cyber-attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52982427 <comment><USER2> Firmware engineering and IOT is a huge mess

At least in my experience, there aren't many opportunities for career growth in that area unless you switch to regular app/web development, or you move to a snazzier company like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc. (Or start a disruptive startup..)

I wonder if there's a "brain drain" effect that's causing this industrial software to be persistently low quality and susceptible to attack

<comment><USER3> Well, some 'growth' happens just by raising your rates. Not a lot of folks willing to do IoT and firmware. I just charge more every year.

And yes its a mess. Folks resist using real security on their phone or desktop. Imaging an embedded device they buy and want to forget about. They sure don't want any passwords or keys that they'll promptly forget! How many times have I reset my router to factory defaults because, who knows what the admin password is I set two years ago and never used since?

I've put security into devices, and had the client want it taken out. Because their installers find it onerous. And, 'nobody is going to attack my pool pump controller!'

<comment><USER4> There is probably a good reason for this that I don't know, but why haven't physical keys replaced passwords yet? Want to manage your IoT device? Just slot in a USB key, do your thing, and unslot it.

You don't really have to sweat the security of the key laying around because its mere existence requires an attacker perform physical penetration which is a different attack profile from someone just cruising Shodan.

Granted, a USB key doesn't make sense for every device, but e.g. it seems like it would make a lot of sense for my router.

<comment><USER5> I wish thats how a lot of things work, but I imagine it would end up encouraging some to create "proprietary" ones (only ours that has special certificate) to work.

Then charge like crazy the same way dealers do with car keys.

<comment><USER6> except dealer keys are software. so I guess car firmware is already the worst of both? which further reinforces the point of the top comment in this thread we are in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Honda can confirm that a cyber-attack has taken place on the Honda > network," the Japanese car-maker said in a statement. It added that the > problem was affecting its ability to access its computer servers, use email > and otherwise make use of its internal systems. "There is also an impact on > production systems outside of Japan," it added.

The article suggests ransomware.

<comment><USER8> > on the Honda network

Is that saying it was internal eg. someone plugged in a USB/executed code in person... hmm

article said possible downloaded "booby-trapped files"

<comment><USER9> > article said possible downloaded "booby-trapped files"

They gave that as a general example, not for this attack specifically. The article doesn't rule out an attack originating from outside the network (ie: phishing).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder to what extent this attack was related to work-from-home.

The hasty manner in which many companies were forced to adapt + open up their computer networks to accommodate working from home may have created opportunities for attacks like this on large organizations.

<comment><USER11> And the shame for any businesses who fall back on this excuse is, their disaster recovery or business continuity plans should have already taken into account the necessity that a large section of their workforce may need to work outside the corporate network. There's zero reason _not_ to have this planned out as a real possibility. Natural disasters, fires, terrorism, power outages, the list of possibilities is almost endless for reasons why business can't be done at one planned location.

I work as a security consultant and I've had companies tell me they can't plan on working from home because of culture issues (aka bosses want to see their employees in front of them). And yet all of them have disaster recovery datacenters or multi-zone cloud setups because they know inevitably a tornado or earthquake or fire or ice storm or something will impact their main datacenter. But no plans for their employees because of "culture".

<comment><USER12> Do you wear a hard hat all the time ? If not, then how do you plan for an evitable brick falling on your head ?

<comment><USER13> People at construction sites are required to wear a hard hat all the time just like company policies require firewalls to be placed on corporate networks. Not really sure why you're making this comparison, because connecting to the Internet is very much like walking into a construction site where bricks could be falling everywhere and even aimed directly at you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how long until we see a global car manufacturer get compromised to the point that the products are slowly compromised with the data stolen initially?

Imagine any car with ECMs that can receive OTA updates turned into a herd of bots of some type.

It's an entertaining avenue of thought to consider every Honda with OTA capabilities mining bitcoin from this day on.

<comment><USER15> Most car manufacturers haven't moved towards OTA updates, probably because they know exactly the risk you describe.

I think Tesla has done remarkably well and I suspect they were able to do it because they were small and nimble when OTA capabilities first became feasible.

On a different note, Nissan's manufacturing was disabled[1] a few years ago when WannaCry was endemic.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk- england-39906534](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-39906534)

<comment><USER13> > I think Tesla has done remarkably well and I suspect they were able to do it > because they were small and nimble when OTA capabilities first became > feasible.

I think Tesla have done well for another reason: they are strictly a software engineering company that just happens to make cars on the side. Tesla could easily port their software to any other existing car (Autopilot, mobile app + services, touchscreen OS), but then the Tesla cars would be just another bland electric car offering much like the others. It's the software that defines the Tesla experience, and that's why they have focused on cybersecurity since the beginning.

There certainly were some fun hijinks on the way I'm sure, like the engineer whose NDA expired and explained that the way OTA was done on the first batch of Model S was to have a massive bash script ssh into each car and run apt-get or a similar command.

<comment><USER16> >that's why they have focused on cybersecurity since the beginning

That sounds to me like a voting machine company saying they've had antivirus software on their machines since day one. "Strictly speaking, it's better than the alternative..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some Aussie brewers got hit over the past 24hrs too:

[https://www.smh.com.au/technology/drinks-giant-lion-hit- by-c...](https://www.smh.com.au/technology/drinks-giant-lion-hit-by-cyber- attack-as-hackers-target-corporate-australia-20200609-p550pu.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Fun Fact: Ekans backward is snake.

<comment><USER19> Ekans is also 1st generation pokemon

<comment><USER20> Poke-what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hope it doesn't infect the thinly papered over Android based "OS" on my car's dashboard.

I authorized the car to my home's WiFi in hopes that there would be updates. Instantly regret. :/

Do I dare even turn it on now?

<comment><USER22> Block internet access from your car at the router if you're that worried about it.

<comment><USER23> Adversaries can leverage telematics(free Linux box and LTE module that works like Google Analytics for manufacturers) module or passenger's phones

<comment><USER22> If that's an actual, founded concern, in your threat model then you should not get in any vehicle with an ecm, nor have a consumer cell phone. I suppose if you strip out the wireless com module may negate most issues, however your vehicle would still be susceptible to various other attack vectors that you won't have in purely mechanical vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The only solution is that Industrial networks must be physically isolated from the internet.

<comment><USER25> The power plant at Natantz in Iran was physically separate. Zero Day is a great documentary on that attack.

<comment><USER26> You mean the stuxnet attack?

<comment><USER25> Yep, that's the one</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A habitable environment on Martian volcano? - <AUTHOR> http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2014/05/mars

<comment><USER2> I am currently reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy [1] where vulcanos and melting ice play some role in survival on mars. And in general it's a great read.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy))

<comment><USER3> The Mars Trilogy – and especially Red Mars – has to be some of the best hard sci-fi ever written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately the paper seems well hidden away behind Elsevier's paywall. But I noticed there's another 2008 paper by some of the same authors on the same topic:

[http://sws.bu.edu/marchant/Dave_FullText_Papers/Kadish_Icaru...](http://sws.bu.edu/marchant/Dave_FullText_Papers/Kadish_Icarus_2008.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember wanting to to be an astronaut as a kid, and I was fascinated by space and was back then constantly making up elaborate, naive plans in my head on how Mars colonization could be effortlessly made possible. This brings me back to that time, and is a great read, too. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the habitat in Cowboy Bebop

[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090805152551/cowboyb...](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090805152551/cowboybebop/images/0/0c/2_Marscity.png)</comment>


Apperian launches first administrative remote control solution for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2012/10/12/apperian-launches-first-administrative-remote-control-solution-for-ios-video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+9To5Mac-MacAllDay+%289+to+5+Mac+-+Apple+Intelligence%29

<comment><AUTHOR> How do they do that technically? Seems impossible to pull of without jailbreak but they say it's for all iOS devices..

Edit: My wild guess - they use createScreenIOSurface to capture the screen, GSEvents to simulate Input + VOIP Api for staying in the background. Since they are just enterprise distrubuted they can use the hell out of the private API's</comment>


Show HN: ESP8266 as a VNC Client Connecting to a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> It's been a while since this ESP8266 VNC Client library has been out.
https://github.com/Links2004/arduinoVNC
Today I finally got my ILI9341 display, so tried to set it up as a remote display for the Raspberry Pi. Here's a demo video and photo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVFWgACP6sw https://www.instagram.com/p/BDJwURSkdY_/
On the Pi, all you need to do is start a TightVNC server, something like this

  vncserver :1 -geometry 320x240 -depth 16 -name "ESP VNC :888" -alwaysshared -s 0 -nocursor -broadcast
 The ESP8266 connects instantly on boot up. Looking at the accuracy of the touch panel, doesn't look very practical as an input device, but it could be fun as a remote display if setup correctly. Perhaps some sort of dashboard running on the RPi. You could even set it up to connect to multiple Raspberry Pi's by using one of the ESP's GPIO's to to select one. The video refresh rate looks bad, I guess because I couldn't find a way to setup hextile encoding with TightVNC. If you looks at his original demo video running the XVNC server on a Linux box, it looks much smoother (20-25fps). Overclocking the ESP to 160MHz might help too.
Finally, this library is an entrant in the 1st Annual ESP8266 Design Contest. If you think it's kinda cool, please go and vote for it here: http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=8832 <comment><AUTHOR> Ah I see, no links in the post. Here you go:

Library: [https://github.com/Links2004/arduinoVNC](https://github.com/Links2004/arduinoVNC)

Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVFWgACP6sw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVFWgACP6sw)

Photo: [https://www.instagram.com/p/BDJwURSkdY_/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BDJwURSkdY_/)

Contest: [http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=8832](http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=8832)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is great - I didn't imagine the ESP was so powerful! Could be a great low-fps security camera terminal...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's the exact idea Markus started this project with .

> The starting point to the project where to stream my Door cam to a Display > in my living room. - See more at: > [http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=152&t=8731#sthash.v8H...](http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=152&t=8731#sthash.v8HhG8gz.dpuf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What hardware are you using (other than the ESP8266 and ILI9341 of! )

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing really, as for the ESP, I'm using a NodeMCU 1.0 dev kit, but that's just for convenience of uploading the sketch. All you really need is the display, ESP-12E and power.

And of course, you need something to host the VNC server at the correct screen size, in this case it's a Raspberry Pi.</comment></comment>


How a bike-share scheme became a symbol of gentrification in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/21/bike-sharing-scheme-san-francisco-gentrification-vandalism <comment><USER2> The interviewees sure seem upset that rich _white_ people are moving in, despite the proportion of whites in San Francisco steadily falling: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco#Race_and_ethnicity)

From 92% in 1940, to 42% in 2010, and still there's too many?</comment>


Azure Is the Future of Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://windowsitpro.com/windows-azure/azure-future-microsoft <comment><USER2> Paul Thurrot has a long list of microsoft futures that somehow failed to gain traction for the 5+ years I have been reading winsupersite.

Windows Phone 7 was the future, then Windows Phone 8, then Windows 8 and RT. Also Microsoft managed to snatch parity straight out of the jaws of victory in the last console generation.

I admit that in the case of Azure he has a stronger case, but the cloud is far from the endgame. The pendulum between centralization and decentralization has swung a few times already.

And there is the issue of trust. I can thrust "insanely awesome startup" that they will hold and respect my data and fight tooth and nail to protect it. but what happens when Microsoft is subpoenaed to deliver data that is on their servers but the VMs are operated by other company? They tried something with seizing domains - going straight for Verisign.</comment>


"Wogrammers" – Breaking the "brogrammer" Stereotype - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@wogrammer/breaking-the-brogrammer-stereotype-a30e9bb16a5e

<comment><AUTHOR> Women engineers - Share your own wogrammer stories or nominate women to be featured by the wogrammer at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER2> Ouch, I guess that "wog" does not have the same racist meaning in the US as it does in the UK :-(

<comment><AUTHOR> @jjgreen, what's WOG in the UK means? Overall, they only have changed BRO to WO and connect it with -grammer, came from (pro-grammer).

<comment><USER2> Derived from "golliwog", see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwog)</comment></comment></comment>


The Secret World of Tiny Phones That Go Inside Your Butt - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/read/prison-phones-that-go-up-your-bum?utm_source=vicefbus <comment><AUTHOR> It's possible that this is a little crass for HN but I decided to submit anyway. I never even knew these phones existed, let alone their purpose in prison.

I find the interview with Adam, a tiny phone seller on eBay, to be particularly interesting. When asked about the illicit use of the phones he sells:

        "If that's what they want to do, they can, but we've never tested the phones to see if they set off those scanners; some of them are mainly plastic, but they're not going to be 100 percent plastic—they still need to have a circuit board."

But what if they did? These phones seem to be perfect for the prison task. I wonder what would be different if they were specifically optimized for the "hide in butt" use case. Could they be smaller? A different shape? etc etc...</comment>


Buffer raises $3.5M - <AUTHOR> http://open.bufferapp.com/raising-3-5m-funding-valuation-term-sheet/ <comment><USER2> Good on them.

Secondary sales are, anecdotally, getting more common these days, despite the fact that many VCs dislike them. They're so obviously in the best interests of founders and early employees, and the VC arguments against them are frankly odious, that I'd wager we see a realignment on how acceptable this term is seen to be.

The argument advanced against secondaries is, phrased to be maximally charitable to it, that having founders and employees in the same boat as having to wait for an exit to really reap the rewards of the company keeps everyone's interests aligned and avoids causing any bad blood at the company caused by founders getting a very happy outcome prior to employees having gotten one.

Phrased less charitably: rich people (VC partners) think paper-rich-cash-poor people should continue being cash-poor so that rich people have better negotiating leverage over them.

<comment><USER3> _Phrased less charitably: rich people (VC partners) think paper-rich-cash-poor people should continue being cash-poor so that rich people have better negotiating leverage over them._

Doesn't this work _against_ the VCs when the startup with cash-poor founder gets a subpar M&A offer? I thought VCs had become accepting and even encouraging of early founder liquidity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _This is our intention with this new round, to really set a precedent for multiple liquidity events going forward. Different investors will have different stages at which they'd like to get liquidity, and now they'll be able to cash out at the time which is comfortable for them. New funds which are more focused on later stage capital can invest as we grow more and become more stable and predictable with our growth and revenue. The same applies for team members: if someone wants to put their kids through college or buy a house, they can choose to sell some of their equity. Others might not have as many commitments and may choose to keep their shares._

So basically the Silicon Valley VC ecosystem is reinventing secondary markets for equity shares. This scheme has the same basic purpose as traditional stock markets (i.e. capital formation for companies and liquidity for investors), but is limited to a restricted set of participants, and price formation occurs only during specifically timed liquidity events (rather than continuously). I wonder if investors and founders are really happier this way than they would be on the public markets. If you are an early employee and you want to buy a house (or whatever), would you rather be able to sell your shares at any time to the best bidder or be stuck waiting for the next liquidity event at who knows what price?

I think this is an interesting development for a couple of reasons. First it probably is indicative of the huge regulatory burden involved with going public (Sarbanes Oxley &c). Second it shows how much capital really is available in SV VC these days. There is so much money that founders and early investors don't even care about access to capital available in the public markets because they can get all the cash they want without having to leave the VC world. I wonder if we will see a shift back to the public markets if the VC money ever dries up for whatever reason.

<comment><USER5> Related reading on why companies don't want to go public: [http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying- marc-a...](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc- andreessen-explains-why)

In short, a couple factors have made IPOs less appealing: 1\. More regulation and reporting requirements 2\. Hyper short term investors

The first incurs great costs, and counterintuitively reduces transparency. The second drives heavy gaming of the market. You can't hold a company accountable to day to day events, you probably can't even hold them accountable to month to month growth, it's an unnecessary burden and short term predictability doesn't correlate to long term value growth.

As a result companies wait longer before going IPO, and individual investors (read: the 99%) are no longer able to invest in the growth stage of companies. The implications of this are interesting: 1\. Rich get richer, poor can't. Retirement funds and the likes get no real returns. 2\. Things like second market, the JOBS act and more will provide real alternatives to the public market. Extend this out 100 years, the IPO market becomes day to day gambling with 0 connection to real growth. People will write algorithms to play this game, and it will roughly be a zero sum game. Private unregulated markets will replace the public market once individuals have the freedom to invest. They'll look like public markets of the past where there wasn't rapid trading and there were less regulatory requirements.

As a company, I would much rather list on a private market where people were only allowed to buy and sell my stock once per quarter. You could design an auction system that allowed the price to be set based on how many shares were requested to be bought / sold (could be similar to the way IPO prices are originally set). I wouldn't have to deal with short term ebbs and flows of the market, and worries of cascading crashes due to day to day events and rumors. Instead I'd get to release a comprehensive quarterly report explaining how the company is doing and why people should buy into our growth, and give a gameplan for how we plan to deal with crisis. Someone should build this, and figure out a way to let individuals invest.

<comment><USER4> I think #1 is obviously a huge issue. I am less convinced about #2. A lot of the tech IPOs in the past few years (mod Zynga?) have done well since the IPO. I Andreesen's argument about shorts driving the price to zero is kind of silly. To cash out on a trade, the number of shares you buy has to match the number of shares you sell. So if you start the trade on the short leg and the stock goes down, why wouldn't you expect the price to be driven back up when you buy back to cover your position?

You can look at a tech company like Apple whose shares are some of the most frequently traded shares in the market, and you can see that in the long term, as the company has done better, the share price has gone up. The market still works even in the presence of all the short term trading.

<comment><USER6> you seem to have fundamentally misunderstood how shorting shares works.

<comment><USER4> I don't think I have, but feel free to explain it to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty awesome watching these guys grow. I also love how they question the norm in the VC/startup world of being poor until you hit a real homerun. You only get one life. Don't let a VC dictate how you live it just so they can hit their IRR projections.

<comment><USER8> I'll second my name-twin's sentiments and add:

It's fantastic to see a dividend based model being introduced into early round VC fundraising. It's an alternative to liquidity and something that should/can move upstream. Bravo to Buffer for leading the charge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Bold move to take most of the round off the table for founder liquidity.

Edit: I think this is great for the founders and I hope they gave a similar option to their employees who have been with them a long time.

High fives for the massive transparency success of the business while maintaining a positive work culture.

<comment><USER10> > _and I hope they gave a similar option to their employees who have been with > them a long time._

Looks like they did. Up in the article they say they're splitting $2M among the two founders, and later it says that they're taking in total $2,5M for cashing in founder and employee equity. I assume the $0,5M is the employee part. Seems like a small fraction, but I assume most of it goes to the earlier employees (and then only those who opt for it), so it might be a year's salary right there anyway.

<comment><USER11> That's right, good eye Egbert and thanks for chiming in with the details! Interestingly, Leo and I have been doing this for almost 4 years, whereas most of the team is much earlier in the journey. We have a couple of the earliest members of the team taking some liquidity, however most chose not to at this stage (we offered it to everyone).

Thanks, guys!

<comment><USER10> Joel, I like seeing how well you're doing. I truly wonder how much of it is luck, but I really hope that only very little of it is.

<comment><USER11> Oh, I think most if it is :) Lots of right time right place.

<comment><USER10> Ha :-)

Ok, well good for you then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think Buffer is creating a third way for startups in general. Everything i've seen and heard these guys do since launch has been unorthodox. They're outliers and I mean that as a big compliment!

<comment><USER13> My sentiments are: (1) love what they're doing and the path they're trailblazing (2) unsure how replicable it is for other companies (3) hoping for more companies/founders that leverage their initial success (combination of luck and skill) to further push the envelope on what is accepted and possible in this little corner of the world if ours.

The best leverage is to not need the financing, and one you get to that point, all sorts of possibilities open up. Great to see a wildly successful company show us what's possible if you have leverage.

<comment><USER12> I agree their financing path is unique to the way they've built their product and team, but I think parts of it can still be replicable to other startups. ie not gearing the whole future of the company towards the big exit, but using VC money to create a more organic route..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If one of the founders is reading - why not taking the money in the bank as dividend right before the fund raising (with full disclosure to the future investors, of course). You get a similar amount of money (although sharing it with the early investors), but all the money you're raising goes to the company, which I assume is a simpler model. Wouldn't that be simpler?

Best of luck with completing the round, and with future growth!

<comment><USER15> Yup, great questions! We considered a number of things: dividends, loans, buying back shares without raising money, debt. Dividends for a c-corp are taxed super high (big fan of paying taxes, but you end up paying something like 60-70% tax, not a good idea!). So raising extra cash with minimal dilution (2.5% for this round) was most efficient.

Right now, all money raised goes to company, then company buys back shares from early team members - investors still get preferred stock. We're not selling our common stock directly to investors - you're right, that'd be too complicated and not in investors interest.

Would love to answer more questions on this, keen to explain our full thinking!

<comment><USER14> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is an interesting and unusual (but not unprecedented) move that actually aligns interests.

99% of founders have a goal (it may not be the primary or secondary, but trust me it's there) to be "F you" rich. Maybe 99.9%.

This move doesn't make either of the founders remotely close to that. If the founders checked out now, they wouldn't be able to retire - they certainly won't worry about paying for college for their kids, but they're sipping pina coladas on the beach either.

Taking "just enough" money off the table de-risks the whole operation for everybody. The risks in a startup this size are

a) Founder fallout / burnout

b) Running out of enough runway to really scale the biz and make the right long-term product investments (being cash-flow positive doesn't mean you can do this - plenty of breakeven startups out there just treading water who are one bad product cycle or market shift away from biting it)

c) Inability to hire and retain the right people

This helps tackle all three.

Win-win for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been hearing a lot about Buffer lately. I'm about to release my project and wanted to earn some money with affiliated marketing.

Everywhere I turned, people mentioned Buffer so I grabbed an account a couple of days ago.

Its a great service that falls in that "why didn't I think of that?" category. Really cool.

I'm happy for them and I hope they can go very far with this venture. They have paying customers and as word spreads around more and more about the need to utilize social media to market your online business (There's a CNN article recently released about it [http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/world/europe/bloggers-six- figu...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/world/europe/bloggers-six-figure- salaries/) ), the need to organize content release is essential.

So, congrats guys at Buffer!

</comment><comment><USER18> They're doing pretty well for how much little info is on their website. What do they do? Apparently they're the easiest way to publish on social media...but there's not much more info

<comment><USER19> They make it easy for people to manage multiple accounts, and build a buffer of posts for later release. So your account is always active, even if nobody's on the clock 24/7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congrats! Just a comment. Your landing page seems very sparse. I hadn't heard of you before and from that landing page I had no good idea of what your app does or how popular it is.

I feel like adding your blurb from the about page + including something about who uses your website along with a bigger button for businesses would at a minimum be worth A/B testing.

Also it seems a bit awkward to navigate with no navbar at the top and for the business landing page you have to go all the way back to the first landing page to go to any of the other pages.

<comment><USER15> Great point! We A/B tested a bunch of different ones, we haven't managed to outperform the current one. We'll certainly keep testing it. I like your hypothesis!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> FYI: This was all over TechCrunch, so if someone knows the BufferApp team, please tell them they'll need to file a Form D 506(c) exemption with the SEC.

<comment><USER15> yup, we will, thanks!

<comment><USER21> Sorry, forgot to mention. It's going to also force you to to acctedited investor verification on each investor. I'm the CEO of AgFunder (and also a Buffer user) and I can send you a guide to AI verification if you need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've learned about buffer while looking for job. (probably from who is hiring threads) Since then, I've been reading their medium posts.[1] Their values, hiring strategy, salary transparency and managing remote teams seems perfect to me and I really liked reading their posts. (Highly recommended)

[1] [https://medium.com/buffer-posts](https://medium.com/buffer-posts)

</comment><comment><USER23> is this an offer to sell a security?

<comment><USER15> Yup, it is! We've filed for general solicitation, which the jobs act made possible last year! Let me know if I can answer any questions about it!

<comment><USER24> I'm curious on how the process works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Commenting so I can find in the future.

</comment><comment><USER26> [OT/Ask HN] Is there something wrong with the check for duplicates?

I sent the same post about 25mins after [1] (clearly, I didn't see this one) and I was able to post it. Just reporting the issue.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8517105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8517105)

<comment><USER27> The urls were slightly different. The duplicate detector is porous in this way by design, to allow good stories multiple cracks at the bat. We do intend to replace it with something more sophisticated, but in the meantime a small number of reposts is ok.

<comment><USER26> Cool, just wanted to report the case. (got downvoted, not clear why, I'll maybe delete the comment if this continue)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your stack of choice for web development? - <AUTHOR>

I would like to know what stacks are you using for web development. Things are changing fast and new technologies are emerging every other day so it's interesting to watch what comes out of it.
Node.js + NoSQL? Go? LAMP? ... <comment><USER2> Most of the Fogbeam Labs stuff - that's web based - is built using Groovy/Grails, with PostgreSQL as the persistent store, and HTML/CSS/JS on the front-end with JQuery and Bootstrap. Lucene is heavily used for search.

Looking to the future a bit, I'm sure we'll be gradually introducing more HTML5 stuff, and might start looking at angular.js or ember.js for some of the javascript centric front-end stuff. On the backend, there will probably be some places where we introduce a graph database, perhaps Neo4J. We'll also be doing more and more with Hadoop, Mahout, OpenNLP and UIMA in the not-too- distant future.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am both a front-end and back-end coder for a digital agency.

We have some huge clients that require legacy browser support (IE6 and above) so it's a mix of typical front-end stuff, a ton of VM's for testing and if we're working on a new build website with no history or few existing users using legacy browsers some Backbone.js, Modernizr and LESS/SCSS. Like most developers, we use a lot of jQuery and custom JS on our sites, but we also make sure our sites function correctly when JS is disabled.

The back-end stack is ASP.NET using C#. As we have a mixture of inter-agency work and our own stuff we use a bit of everything really. Sometimes we use Entity Framework, sometimes we're limited to .NET 2 and sometimes we're working on large-scale websites using Sitecore. The main CMS of choice is Umbraco, and over the past couple of years I've really started to enjoy using it. The IDE of choice is, obviously, Visual Studio 2010, and with ReSharper installed I'm yet to use anything even remotely as good.

For personal projects I tend to use Python and Django. I've toyed with writing some tools using Google App Engine as the primary store, but I usually work with PostgreSQL. Version control wise, at home I'm a Git guy, whereas at work we use Mercurial. Most of my code is written using Komodo Edit and PyCharm. I've got a few desktop projects I'm looking to start soon, and I'm hoping to either use F# or Haskell, depending on whether I can fix my Ubuntu box or whether I'm limited to my Windows 7 box.

</comment><comment><USER4> Depends a lot on the needs of the client. Some have preferences on the development language, deployment setup, etc. I tend to mix and match the following...

Groovy/Grails, Java/Spring, Ruby/Rails, Python/Django|Tornado|Web2Py, Node.js, Meteor

&

MySQL|PostgreSQL|Sqlite, MongoDB

Haven't had to do anything requiring significant amounts of message passing yet, so no ZeroMQ, RabbitMQ yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> Proudly still using lamp. I don't see the benefits of switching to something new outweighing the enormous learning curve. But lots of people who choose these new technologies are brand new to development, so they don't have a learning curve.

</comment><comment><USER6> Also using LAMP. For small websites/campaigns I tend to use a CodeIgniter back-end with jQuery and Twitter Bootstrap front-end. For bigger things a separation into an API and a client helps to keep it clean so a Kohana RESTful back-end that communicates through JSON with a Backbone front-end.

</comment><comment><USER7> In my current project, we are using Symfony2 ( PHP ) + MySQL, Redis, Neo4j in the backend and recently started to use Angular.js in the frontend. frondend mvc is taking a lot of our time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Startup I formerly worked for: Python/Django

Current fortune 500: Java/Dojo

Personal Project #1: Python/Django/Backbone

Personal Project #2: Node

</comment><comment><USER9> HTML/CSS/JS + JQuery on the Front-end with Perl and my own custom Web package using XML files for data storage on the backend.

</comment><comment><USER10> HTML , CSS , JS -> JQuery for front-end . PHP , Phpmyadmin + PDO for backend

</comment><comment><USER11> AngularJS + RESTler (PHP) + memSQL

</comment><comment><USER12> RESTful backend in Sinatra+ROAR

</comment><comment><USER13> freebsd, apache, sbcl, ucw, postgresql/cl-store, bootstrap, jquery

</comment><comment><USER14> node + express

</comment><comment><USER15> python + web.py</comment>


Self-hosted server platform arkOS starts crowdfund for new features - <AUTHOR> https://fund.arkos.io

<comment><USER3> Seems like a good idea in theory, but I know that my ISP sends you a threatening letter in the post if you have too much incoming traffic - <USER2> it's unbelievably slow anyway. I wish this project a whole lot of luck though, because I really wish for a future of the internet where you don't rely on products that bombard you with adverts.

<comment><AUTHOR> The project plans to expand to other architectures (including VPSes) with a successful funding campaign, meaning that you don't _have_ to host at home to get the same easy experience. So maybe that would be an option for you.

Thanks for your support!! :D

<comment><USER3> I use bittorrent sync on a (really cheap) OVH dedicated server to much success and if I could replace it with something pretty like your product then I almost certainly would.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is the prime use case for arkOS :) With everyone's support easy and secure self-hosted file sync will be possible for arkOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting pendulum going on here:

A big reason we moved to Dropbox and the cloud was to avoid the single-point- of-failure and security problems associated with self-hosting. Most home users aren't going to take the time to make sure their arkOS is constantly up-to- date and configured securely, and anything hosted from one particular location is liable to data loss from all sorts of physical issues (hardware failure, theft, natural disaster, etc.).

I have a Dropbox Pro account because I'd rather pay someone a small amount of money to take care of these things for me than risk my data being destroyed by a fluke. The ability to access files from across devices is a big benefit too, but a big part of the cloud push is to move critical data off of individual devices, and I don't see arkOS handling that in its current pitch.

<comment><USER5> IMO security is solved by sandboxing and Chrome-style auto updates and reliability is solved by data centers and mandatory backups, but I guess the plug/RPi people disagree.

<comment><AUTHOR> arkOS will provide three of those four things. (Obviously not the data centers part). The privacy implications counter the need for data centers for interested users, but of course everyone will need to evaluate their own individual pros and cons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there documentation available about the various layers of this project: operating system, networking, applications, and so on? You will receive much more and better quality feedback with more documentation.

For example, I would advise that after installing arkOS the web server for the Genesis application be only accessible from the LAN until the user changes the default password(s), by configuring TCP Wrapper. But it's hard to tell if this is already done without actually going through the installation.

arkOS is a great idea. I hope you succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi eliteraspberrie - You will find all the documentation you need on [https://arkos.io](https://arkos.io). There is explanation about the various frameworks and plugins that work with Genesis, what they do, how to use them, how to develop with them, and so on.

There is a Security framework in Genesis that can be used to prevent access from external (non-local network) clients. Genesis does not have a default setting for this at this point, but I will see what I can do to implement it as this makes good sense.

Thank you! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty neat - there's definitely a market for this kind of thing that extends beyond ownCloud and is easy to set up. Targeting RasPi users initially isn't a bad idea, but I'd like to see support for other architectures as well, as maaarghk says.

A tangential point: I like how the BBS and funding are all integrated within the site.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't see email in the list of "what it does now" ... is that so basic of a arkOS function that it is presumed, and doesn't need to be mentioned ?

Or are you not providing what I would argue is the number one priority for self reliance, privacy and control on the Internet ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi rsync -- Email capability is in the works, you can find that mentioned on the site under the "On the Agenda" "The true centre of your self-hosted Internet" sections.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is around like 6 months, no progress beside nginx and transmission inclusion has been made in that time. It's nice idea but without community I don't see this project succeeding.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! A ton of progress has been made beside those things. And the frameworks behind them (database management, SSL certificate management, webapp download/installs, etc) are nothing to shake a stick at. Check this out for a full list [https://github.com/cznweb/genesis/releases](https://github.com/cznweb/genesis/releases)

The project has already started developing its community at [https://bbs.arkos.io](https://bbs.arkos.io) and has an active mailing list, Twitter following and others in diverse social media. I'm working hard to get people active and involved, and contribution/bugfixes are very easy to do.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


The Beauty of Roots - <AUTHOR> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/roots/ <comment><AUTHOR> Basic method to generate this set if you want to play around with it:

        from itertools import chain
        import numpy as np
        import matplotlib
        matplotlib.use('TkAgg')
        from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

        def gen_pm_one(m):
            def array_for(n):
                return map(
                    lambda i: 1 if not (1 << i) & n == 0 else -1,
                    range(m)
                )

            def out():
                generated = 0
                final = 2 ** m

                while generated < final:
                    yield array_for(generated)
                    generated += 1

            return out()

        if __name__ == '__main__':
            roots = map(
                lambda roots: map(
                    lambda cpx: [cpx.real, cpx.imag],
                    roots
                ),
                map(
                    np.roots,
                    gen_pm_one(13)
                )
            )

            data = np.array(list(chain(*roots)))
            x, y = data.T
            plt.scatter(x,y)
            plt.show()</comment>


YC applicants, let's keep in touch  - <AUTHOR>

Lets help each other be successful! I mean it! "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich." -PG<p>"the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you." That means if we keep in touch and update each other on what we're up to everyday we can decrease our chances of dying and become rich! :)<p>Being a startup founder can be very demoralizing, but you'll feel so much better if you knew that other founders are going through the same thing. It seems a lot of the YC applicants (evident from the YC Wompt chatroom) are naturally very supportive and helpful toward each other. That's the kind of community that the YC network has (except better). If you didn't get accepted into YC, you won't have that supportive community. I'd say, let's update each other on a daily basis and geek out! Create an account here and include "yc" in your username so we know we're from the YC applicant list: http://rantfoo.com/signup/. Post a ramble (not a rant, unless you're emotional for some reason) to share what you're up to. We can share other content with each other too, aside from things about our project. <comment><USER2> <https://convore.com/yc-s11-apps/yc-rejects-hangout/></comment>


Google Developer Day registration requires questionnaire/optional quiz this year - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/07/its-coming-open-call-for-google.html

<comment><USER2> Google IO needs this badly. The conference is starting to bring out a different crowd: investors. Folks paid $450 per ticket and received close to $1000 in gear. People with a professional investment in the technology should get priority. The free ticket contest helped out 100 developers this year, which was awesome, but some standard needs to be applied to the conference as a whole.</comment>


Can Google's Larry Page Make Flying Cars a Reality? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/06/we-were-promised-flying-cars-and-larry-page-wants-to-deliver/ <comment><USER2> This is a completely futile waste of money that goes against any real progress of the human race.

It takes VASTLY more energy to keep a mass of any significant quantity (i.e. human sized or greater) suspended in air with the ability to accelerate the body significantly enough to "drive" it. (granted gliders do not use that much energy, but they are very limited in their maneuvers).

This also seems like a very solved problem: if you want to take off vertically, use a helicopter.

I very much wish the economic and thought leaders of this country would invest to allowing humans to exist and thrive where large amounts of energy are not needed. I know this goes against the power-hungry megalomaniac personality of most CEO's that want MORE POWER!!!! But if we can teach humans to live in "low-energy" states, we will prolong our precarious existence on this planet. We have passed peak-oil, have neared peak-computing. If there was ever a time we as a species could solve the "important problems", it is now.</comment>


Teaching Students to Sift Mountains of Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/technology/12data.html

<comment><USER2> I am reminded of the early-90's complaints from IT organizations -- "You [Univeristy X] don't teach your students how to do anything useful like Visual Basic 3, etc. They come to us, and we have to teach them these basic skills."

While techniques for dealing with large volumes of data are certainly more general (and intellectual) than VB3, these complaints are similar in nature. I don't hear Google complaining about deficiencies in top-ranked undergraduate CS programs. It's not as if a basic knowledge of algorithms and data structures is not still required (if anything, it's more valuable with large datasets).

For years, universities have thought their mission was to educate, and businesses thought their goal ought to be training. Interestingly, those businesses with reputations for hiring top talent don't seem to complain about specific coursework. It's not like the mid-90's Microsoft complained that its recruits didn't know VB! And, Google certainly has a penchant for hiring smart people without regard to specific technical knowledge.

<comment> barry-cotter _Interestingly, those businesses with reputations for hiring top talent don't seem to complain about specific coursework._

Yes, because they assume they can train you. If you're a smart bastard, you'll learn fast, and almost anybody will learn faster by applying knowledge than by reading a textbook.

"And, Google certainly has a penchant for hiring smart people without regard to specific technical knowledge."

Again, yes. What does this suggest? Google (and like companies) are hiring for intelligence, not specific skills. What does this suggest combined with the lack of concern about specific coursework?

They're hiring for intelligence, they're not that bothered about what you know, and they mostly recruit from top schools. This suggests that the top schools mostly act as a filter; anyone who got into School X is a smart bastard, so we should give strong consideration to hiring them just because they're smart.

So Google could cut out the middleman and hire based on SATs and cut out the middleman. Why not? They like _some_ skills, and getting through college signals a certain degree of conscientiousness, which is good to have in employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was lucky enough to write software for government supercomputers and work with government scientists. From these experiences, I've come to the realization that "science has turned into data management" is completely the wrong conclusion. In 99% of scientific supercomputing studies, if you do not know what you are looking for (or at least have a _very_ good guess) before you start looking, then you will not find anything in your data -- you only have time to code and wait for a few analyses.

Unfortunately, the systems that scientists study with supercomputing are often beyond our understanding. Even with the supercomputers, we can not form good hypotheses and therefore we learn very little.

</comment><comment><USER4> If finding useful pieces of information from huge databases was really hard search engines would advertise _smaller_ databases. But, fear of large numbers makes a far better story.

PS: The only way a scientist is _overwhelmed with information_ is when they need to do something by hand. It's hard to guess how a scientist would like to collect less information. Worst case you ignore it because you can't process it _yet_.

<comment><USER5> >If finding useful pieces of information from huge databases was really hard search engines would advertise smaller databases.

Come again?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Creative ways to share resources? - <AUTHOR> I trying to figure out creative ways to share resources without becoming a company or adding partners. <comment><AUTHOR> franchising, but let's say you came up with a great idea, test it out and it works out great. You give it to the company, they give it to the others you see nothing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> open source is one way but freeloaders bother me.</comment>


Livestream of the PennApps hackathon demos - <AUTHOR> http://www.livestream.com/pennapps

<comment><USER2> The audience vote was tallied here (it's closed now). Scratch table destroyed. <http://voter.brooklynhacker.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> As a SEAS alum (bioengineering 07) I'm so glad that events like this are going on at Penn the last few years

<comment><USER4> Agreed/is there a way for alumni/others to get involved? SAS '09 up in NYC and would love to be notified when these are happening if to just come down and see them in person (would also be glad to help out).

<comment><USER5> Yes would love to learn more about Penn tech events (for current students and alums). I'm an M&T grad.

In NYC, I just learned about the Penn NY Tech meetup (<http://www.meetup.com/Penn-NY-Tech>) which maybe worth checking out. (note: I'm not an organizer/affiliated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish I could have attended this as a Drexel CS student across the street, but I'm in Seattle for a co-op internship. Hopefully there will be another in the summer.

<comment><USER7> There's one every September and January. Hope to see you there next time!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just in case anyone wants to know and it is not immediately obvious, the URL for PennApps is <http://PennApps.com>

</comment><comment><USER9> Viewers full at the moment, second stream: <http://www.livestream.com/pennappshackathon>

<comment><USER10> I hit retry a bunch and finally got in. Looks like the viewer count is sitting at 51 ;) Guess that is the limit ;(

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You may also want to follow #PennApps on Twitter!

</comment><comment><USER11> Go Quakers - wish this was around when I went to Penn :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Was this open to non-Penn students?

<comment><AUTHOR> In case you're a non-Penn student interested in participating in the future, please reach out to me (my HN username @seas.upenn.edu)</comment></comment>