startingup

6 ms·

1.
by startingup 16y ago
The trouble with the AdMob-like behavior is that acquirers pretty much know founders would flip and go. No rational acquirer these days can expect founders to stick around very long. It may happen - YouTube guys stuck around - but the odds
2.
by startingup 16y ago
I am noticing a trend lately where private market valuations seem higher than what equivalent public companies get. Of course, it is hard to find a public company equivalent of Facebook or LinkedIn, but I would say Google can be a good prox
3.
by startingup 16y ago
I made that original comment. Thanks for doing the analysis I was too lazy to do! Your analysis jives with the broader point I was trying to make - in the past 15 years, finance has been the surest path to riches in America. It is not just
4.
by startingup 16y ago
pg, unfortunately for America, in recent years most of the highest paid people (to the tune of hundreds of millions per person) have been financiers. Even fairly successful outcomes in the start-up world, such as Mint.com to take a random e
5.
by startingup 17y ago
I have some colleagues and good friends in Beijing, most of them coming from various provinces to Beijing for their jobs - they are not high up in the ladder socio-economically. The impression I get is that they love China (to the extent of
6.
by startingup 17y ago
My suspicion is that Facebook revenues could be much higher than they are letting on. I say that as a non-Facebook user and a fairly neutral outside observer. If they were being coy because revenues were actually too good, it wouldn't be th
7.
by startingup 17y ago
I sense too much negativity and frustration on this thread. I can sympathize. I was exactly the same way at 24, a nerd who couldn't hold a conversation with the opposite sex, had rejection after rejection, and was pretty depressed about it
8.
by startingup 17y ago
This is one of those evil taxes - you pay a life time of taxes and accumulate stuff, and then when you die, it gets dinged another 55%.
9.
by startingup 17y ago
Can anyone compare Git vs Mercurial? This decision is coming up for us, and would appreciate the input.
10.
by startingup 17y ago
You hit the nail on the head. This is really the effect of the massive credit bubble - natural resource companies and financials. Given the way things are going, we will likely see a lot more of this in the next decade.
11.
by startingup 17y ago
There is an interesting analogy to India too, which had a sclerotic, state-dominated economic system for 40+ years. India had far less of a dispora than China, but far more than Russia. And India's economic reforms have been half-hearted, a
12.
by startingup 17y ago
In the name of freedom, what the MySQL flavor of GPL has achieved is to give special powers of dual-licensing to the "original author" - all animals are equal, some animals are more equal than the others. The MySQL business model is entirel
13.
by startingup 17y ago
I think the real debate here is that value in the internet is moving relentlessly away from content producers towards content aggregators. Even a big newspaper site doesn't have the diversity that you find in an aggregator like Google News;
14.
by startingup 17y ago
When I was in college, I wanted it all - wanted to prove theorems, found companies, join politics and so on. As I got older, I realized that just getting deeply focused on one thing gives you all manner of creative opportunities. Pick one a
15.
by startingup 17y ago
This is a great article, but keep in mind that the numbers are illustrative of one type of company. Mint was dealing with financial information, so they had to get "serious" fast and that means spending on things that, say, a Facebook or Tw
16.
by startingup 17y ago
I am afraid this is the predictable consequence of the Fed orchestrated monster credit bubble. These private equity players, through investment banking and other financial intermediaries are able to borrow close to the low Fed-orchestrated
17.
by startingup 17y ago
I agree. This would only complicate the language, without adding much of value.
18.
by startingup 17y ago
My heartfelt condolences.
19.
by startingup 17y ago
I attended a presentation he made some time ago, and came away really impressed. He has a remarkably clear vision, understands what not to do as much as what to do, and seems to know his own strengths and weaknesses. I agree - he is a rem
20.
by startingup 17y ago
The reason this "upside" notion is so pernicious is that it's fed by powerful biases. We read about the successes. Even the failures we hear about, we're reading about them by and large because they were "successful". You hit the nail on
21.
by startingup 17y ago
I worked in a large successful tech company right after school. One of the best periods of my life. I learned a lot, worked on really cool technology, and I was treated well. I left for reasons unconnected to them, with much regret. There e
22.
by startingup 17y ago
My point was that FSF achieved its maximal influence during the reign of Microsoft. And I argue that is not a coincidence.
23.
by startingup 17y ago
I clarified my point above: forking MySQL will not solve the "GPL-in-the-hands-of-Oracle-salesmen" problem. Any forks will still be bound by MySQL's original terms, which in practice amounted to "You need to pay us if you ever ask us abou
24.
by startingup 17y ago
Exactly my feeling. My thesis is that FSF achieved its popularity in the heyday of Microsoft monopoly serving as a counter-force, and as Microsoft's hegemony declined (thanks in part to FSF's efforts), it has become less relevant. Open sour
25.
by startingup 17y ago
Summary (it is all a little meta for me): the reddit link above started as a fairly innocuous reddit thread comparing the sizes of the two books "Javascript - The Definitive Guide" and "Javascript - The Good Parts" - the Good Parts being a
26.
by startingup 17y ago
Simons is worth several billions ($10 billion perhaps?) and the number of mathematicians with at least 3 articles in the Annals of Mathematics cannot be huge (1000 perhaps?). I am pretty sure that was what Simons was getting at. Seeing your
27.
by startingup 17y ago
Government printing money increases capital? Do you even know what "capital" means? By your definition Zimbabwe has extreme amounts of capital ... that seems to have done them a lot of good.
28.
by startingup 17y ago
Quote (supposedly "explaining" why unemployment happens): It used to be, Keynes says, that wealthy men just thought investing was the manly thing to do. They weren’t going to sit around and calculate what kind of bonds yielded the greatest
29.
by startingup 17y ago
I am not sure I am hot on the startup vs small company distinction, because there exist so many examples of cross-overs. First, there are a lot of tech "startups" (meeting pg's definition) that have preferred to stay small, becoming "lifest
30.
by startingup 17y ago
Personally I generally advise our developers to avoid using GPL-ed software, even as part of web services, as much as possible - only exception being Linux, which we use as a OS, but we are moving to BSD steadily. Surprisingly (or perhaps n

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