JaakkoP

Magnificent 7, the new FAANG where Netflix got swapped to NVIDIA and Tesla got added.

Thoroughly enjoyed the writing style and the process of solving the mystery withdrawal, even though the outcome wasn’t what I expected. Consumed through an email client so the AI image didn’t bother me either.

Thanks! Just did. I didn't think of it the first time given they escalated me to someone who then asked me to verify the information I had just told them over email. Maybe this will get their attention.

Yeah bilberry land is the correct translation. The grocery store blueberry translates to pensasmustikka and the flavor is a lot less intense.

+1 to Mercury. And from the what I’ve seen from other founders / CEO using you all, I’m not alone!

Incredibly easy setup, great UI/UX and no nickeling and diming with fees of any kind. Makes me wonder what are your unit economics like as you obviously will be making losses from the very smallest of customers?

If anyone is looking for alternatives, I’ve found Linear.app to be like a breath of fresh air compared to Jira.

All I was looking for after the slugfest of Jira was fast performance and keyboard shortcuts, and so far linear has been able to deliver.

The headline here spills the beans but it's definitely worth watching his announcement video "It's time to come clean" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a-k6eaT-jQ

I was certain he is announcing he's working with a team of ghost writers given his extraordinary writing speed.

Almost certainly more than 100% bigger in two to four years, if Gartber predicts 50% growth for 2022-2021 alone. And many project more.

What’s more, the growth will likely pick up each year as more and better EVs become available, and more people start considering them as a real alternative.

Really cool use-cases! I wonder why you decided to move them under a separate page instead of showcasing them front and center?

Right now the focus seems to be how easy it is for developers to get going, but it doesn’t really talk to me why I should be doing it.

Once I read the use-cases I get the idea and I’m impressed, but the drop off from people not bothering to click on a 2nd page can be surprisingly big.

You might want to look into tools like Wingspan to save up some time with the 1099s. Even Gusto's contractor plan might work depending on your use-case.

How does someone fall into a rabbit hole of such hot garbage?

From the outside, you'd think that a successful tech founder would have some qualities that help them to avoid falling for such blatant misinformation. He would have needed to research the market, competition and investors, but apparently the same rigor didn't need to apply here.

At the very least, you'd think he would have been smart enough to keep his opinions to himself. Like, he starts with email saying that the recipients "will think I’m crazy after reading it", and still decides to hit the send button.

I too find his explanation on each click soothing.

Except when he got challenged to open a “difficult” bike lock in under 2 minutes by another locksmith he was dead silent the entire time and opened it in like 20 seconds.

If anything, based on these numbers the email increased their sales. I highly doubt there’s an actual causation, but personally speaking having a CEO take a stance I agree with would have made me check out their product.

I was surprised to see Expensify's revenue growth was only 8% YoY from 2019 to 2020. For comparison, Asana and GitLab had ~85% year-over-year growth on their S-1.

Granted, Expensify grew 60% over the last twelve months, but by their own account it was 'primarily due to a pricing change implemented in May 2020, which led to a gradual increase in per member price for our paid members"

Makes me wonder if they are being hit hard by the new entrants like Ramp, or if the pandemic had such a major impact on all expense management platforms as people travel less - especially on business?

This is a shrewd move by Ireland.

Multinational companies chose Ireland largely because:

1) Low tax basis

2) English speaking EU country

3) Part of the Euro zone (less important than #1 and #2 to be sure).

Given the OECD tax agreement there are fewer low-tax destinations for companies to pick from. And because of Brexit there are no other English-speaking EU countries.

Companies in Ireland aren’t going anywhere and it remains a pretty good option for any new HQs looking to expand into Europe. Ireland is just making more money off of each of them.

Let me ask my coach if she's taking new clients at the moment and I'll get back to you. You can reach me at {HN Username}iipponen@gmail.com

I'm a non-native English speaker, and I've been working with an accent coach to improve my pronunciation. The IPA chart has been instrumental teaching tool, and after about two years it's finally starting to sink in.

It's really helpful to understand the theory behind the pronunciation, instead of just repeating words and attempt to make the same sounds as my coach. As in "this is what your tongue should be doing, but you're doing this other thing instead."

You can even use the chart (and maybe Wikipedia) to identify specific reasons as to why you're doing something wrong. For example, there's just one way to pronounce "S" in Finnish, whereas there are four ways to do that in English. It's just something that never crossed my mind before starting to work with a professional.

You can pair two HomePods to play stereo sound, although you’re right it wasn’t an option from the get-go.

They did do an inspection and sealed the containers right after. The "swap" to painted rocks happened only after the inspection. Supposedly, they also had an insurance until it turned out 6 out of 7 of their insurance contracts were forged.

To me this screams like an inside job. How is it possible that the thieves can get into the ships at night, spend hours hauling copper and paving stones and nobody notices.

In many cases you should try to bill everyone out of the same billing system. For example, you can still invoice customers out of Stripe - you just disable the option to pay with a credit card.

Or are you saying you do that already and it still shows up as churn?

I had exactly the same experience driving from Baltimore to Seattle this June.

There were a good amount of masks in Pennsylvania, but in Ohio and Indiana it was as if pandemic didn't exist. Hotel employees didn't understand my reluctance to squeeze into a small space to pick up a to-go breakfast, and made snarky comments along the lines of "am I far enough for you sir?"

Madison, WI was much better, but starting from La Crosse all the way through Minnesota and North Dakota plains it was as if you were living in a different reality.

This may have been true in 2016, but since then, I’ve seen CEOs raising multimillion dollar rounds using Google Sheets, financial modeling software, and Excel alike.

There’s certainly still some preference towards Excel in 2020, but in no way using sheets will mean that you’re not “financially savvy.”

Agree with your method of boiling the water for a longer period of time, but this doesn’t have much to do with handling milk.

You generally don’t want to bring milk to a boil as it creates a film on top and modifies the taste. Instead, you heat it to 162F / 72C to kill the bacteria and cool it down as quickly as possibly. There isn’t a “traditional” method going back generations, since it was only in the 1860s when Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization.

When I looked at his example more closely, the numbers didn't make sense to me either.

I always assumed he had calculated them correctly, but looks like his projection of $2.7MM ARR in 12 months might be a typo ($625k starting ARR with 15% annual growth is $3.3M, his figure is 20% less. Maybe he accidentally calculated Gross Margin run rate).

Here's a similar example illustrating the difference between 12 month and 6 month payback at different growth rates. The cells highlighted in yellow are inputs, so you can change the numbers and see how the capital requirements will change for the year.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-kaIW6uvvMBER1efk8Yz...

Great to hear! Feel free to shoot me any questions here or on Twitter. @JaakkoPiipponen

It's all dummy data which makes the metrics sometimes look a little wacky, but I tried to model everything based on real-world examples I've seen.

The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is high, but so is the ARPC (Average Revenue per Customer), so you can't just look at the one number in isolation to see if it's realistic or not.

In this case, I'd look at the CAC Payback time and the CAC:LTV ratio to see if these acquisition costs would be realistic in any kind of a company. The payback time climbs from 6-8 months to 19 over time, which is a pretty clear indication that this is unlikely to be a bootstrapped company. They just wouldn't have the capital to sustain it long-term, unless they sell mostly multi-year deals paid in advance.

For a VC Company, 19 months would be on the high end for sure, but not unheard of. Dated, but still great article from Tom Tunguz[1] says the SaaS median is 15 months, indicating there are a lot of companies with longer payback times.

Finally, if you look into the future projections you'll notice that the payback time grows to 26 months. Unless you have clear understanding why this should happen, this is more likely an indication that your forecast isn't very good. (Which, I'm realizing typing this, is quite ironic). Either your revenue growth is not fast enough in your forecast, or if it is the maximum you think you can do, your S&M spending is too high and your business just isn't sustainable. Or something else.

[1] https://tomtunguz.com/payback_period_cash/

Author of the model here. First time on the front page with my content - thanks for sharing!

This is the same model I used to service several dozens of SaaS companies a month when we didn't have any software to help us.

The idea was that I need to have one core template that I can use to quickly onboard companies around $1m in revenue, while keeping it modular enough to add more complex forecasts or metrics for companies in the $5-20m range. (Not all of those more complex pieces are in this template though).

I'd appreciate any feedback on the model! There's definitely a lot of legacy stuff I would do differently if I were to start over.

I'm planning to update it this fall to make it simpler to get started, while keeping the structure robust enough to keep adding forecasts & reports over time. Maybe a video how-to would make the learning curve a little less steep as well.

Since I don't sleep with the watch it's not too big of a burden to charge it each night. I just wish there was a better charging mat so I don't need to connect it to a charger.

They came up with a new Apple Watch (Series 6) that measures blood oxygen content! If that actually works as advertised, this feels like enough of a reason to upgrade.

My wife has Series 3 and I have Series 5, but I haven't seen a major difference between the two. Series 5 is slightly sleeker and smaller, but the updates didn't feel important enough for her to upgrade.

Yup, the valuation doesn't have to be driven solely by what Apple is doing as a company. In fact, Apple doesn't need to do anything at all if all other stocks and asset classes suddenly become less attractive.