hermanmerman

6 ms·

1.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
What is your non-arbitrary take on that number then?
2.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
1. Gold had value 4000 years ago because it was rare enough that people could use it as a currency, not because it was a useful metal. Incidentally, it's not useful at all compared to steel, copper, aluminum, etc. hence its use in jewe
3.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
What is the "jogging" of today? Gluten free diets? I could see it become mainstream once science has studied it more extensively, but today if you don't have coeliac disease and decide to go gluten-free, you're labeled a
4.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
The headlines look informative and neutral in tone, no click-baiting and BuzzFeed-like over-sensationalization. Correctly filtered and tailored to my tastes, I could use it to read the news!
5.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
I am completely out of the loop and hove no idea what the project is about, but apparently every one on the KS page is basically saying that they couldn't care less about this feature. I'm curious now at what really happened and w
6.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
So bullshit jobs are a tax paid by big corporations? Why are they willing to pay this tax? If most of their workforce is improductive, why not get rid of it altogether? Why do these jobs exist?
7.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
YC operates like a startup would: they have a bold hypothesis, something that must be challenged ("most science is a slog"). There is very little chance that they could be right, but in case they are, and they execute well, the be
8.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
I don't really think it's 10/20/30/40, one year cliff means they get 25% after a year but then the schedule is monthly. See it as a salary: you get some every month, it stops when you get fired.
9.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
It's one of those situations where I would be very happy to be wrong :)
10.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
As cool as it is, the reality is that geography changes: cities evolve, roads are built, closed, etc. Maintaining an up-to-date database of those views can only be done to serve another, very lucrative purpose, the one of which only Google
11.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Is it template-based like Clerky (with the same Delaware C-Corp limitation), or is there more to it (advice on which document to use based on the situation, clauses that change depending on context, etc.)?
12.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Does it support self-hosting of the server part? If I could deploy it to one of my Digital Ocean servers easily, I could see it become my default (and last) password manager. I'm too small a fish for a hacker to actually hunt my own se
13.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
The checks look simple/unambiguous enough for a bot to do the work. Maybe a dual machine/human approach is the right one: a bot scans /new every 15 min for those factors, and updates a list of suspicious links/accounts,
14.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
you're right, but HN is so focused that there is only one /new page, so the competition is brutal.
15.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
There are 25 links on /new, the oldest being 27 min ago. So your post has 27 minutes to gather the attention of enough people (7-8 upvotes is OK) to actually surface to the frontpage. This is not a lot fo time, especially for IPython N
16.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Hey Zac, I think you are spot on (except maybe the bullish part). Credit card processing was likely just a foot in the door, but allowed them to build relationships with a ton of (very) small businesses. As a technology company, I trust the
17.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
If you haven't seen it already (was posted yesterday I think), check out Standard Treasury's Series A deck: http://slideshare.net/linhir/standard-treasury-series-a-pitc... They explain why they decided to sta
18.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Why wait to find out, when there is money on the table right now? Also, sometimes they have to take a lot of money, as later-stage investors want to control a sizable chunk of the company (in this case, 12.5%).
19.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
tablecloth math time: $2bn worth, assuming they're worth 10 times their revenue (let's be generous), that would require $200m in sales. they have 10m users, assuming 1% are paying, that means 100k users for $200m sales, meaning ea
20.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Google naturally comes to mind. Facebook / Parse, also. Amazon Web Services. Actually any company in this space (that is worth more than $20bn). Why do you say an IPO is unlikely? I don't see why the public markets would be wary:
21.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Good thing he's saying it out loud, but for those who think actions speak louder than words, it was clear enough when he decided to buy Oculus VR for $2bn. It makes sense after all: 75% of Facebook's money comes from a platform (s
22.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Well many companies are profitable (actually, it's the only prerequisite to stay alive). And arguably, Github isn't profitable enough to fuel its own growth, or they wouldn't need to take $250m from investors in exchange of s
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by hermanmerman 11y ago
Apparently it's Daily Users, so I'd be really surprised if the standalone app turned out to be a success. Messenger and Instagram get away with that because people open them several times a day. I don't use Events nearly enou
24.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
It must be so hard to be one of the friends or family of someone who was in MH370. Every now and then you get a new hope that you could get closure, but until now it's just been speculations... Let's hope this one is different.
25.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
The 25% less on seed valuation is actually a good news for solo founders. The seed round is just a bet on the team, so if a team of 2, 3 or 4 people are worth "only" 25% more than one guy/girl, then this one guy/girl is
26.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Isn't it exactly the opportunity at hand? No matter how much you don't want them to, people will still use spreadsheets, and the reasons why don't even matter. Instead of getting in another lost battle (Hypercard), just give
27.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
That is a very misleading title. At first I thought it was confirmed that the propulsion was impossible... After reading the article, turns out it _is_ possible, it's just that it should not be.
28.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
And you're still banking there? That sounds kind of serious...
29.
by hermanmerman 11y ago
Well contrast that with Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100m initiative to search for alien life[1], and I'd say that we're still pretty optimistic about that. We're basically searching for aliens who would've ha