HN user
The number of kids featured in such articles is really a drop in the ocean. So, coming to the conclusion that 'having a gift is not synonymous with being successful' is not entirely correct.
As a counter example, Zuck, Sergey Brin and Lady Gaga were identified as talented youth. They may not have been covered by the Economist when they were kids. But all of them are certainly successful in my book.
This Rand study looks at impact of lives saved and recommends that "Results Suggest That More Lives Will Be Saved the Sooner HAVs Are Deployed". Any mishap, while most unfortunate and tragic for everyone concerned, should not result in kneejerk reactions!
Why can't Intel acquire Qualcomm instead of Broadcom?
The lynchpin of this "logical argument" appears to be a Business Standard article that references a Morgan Stanley report that says FK is 4 times as big as AMZN in GMV. While neither of the two authors (and us included) may have the "raw data" that Morgan Stanley supposedly has at its command, we don't need to be geniuses to understand that GMV via exclusive deals with one phone manufacturer after another can only buy so much PR runway.
What really matters is the bottomline. As Buffett would say, it's only when the tide goes out (or in this case, when the funding tap runs dry), do you discover who's been swimming naked. Having said that as a consumer, less competition means less deals. So, I do hope all the shopping sites have their swimming trunks on :)
On the subject of happiness, Prof Raj Raghunathan's "A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment" is also something I would highly recommend. The learner stands to gain a lot of insights on the types of motivations serve to enhance as well as undermine happiness.
Check out https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness
Have changed for the better because of it :)
IIRC, this novel idea has been filed multiple times (and may have been granted as well) at the USPTO at different times. I believe that this is because the USPTO sometimes leaves it to the interested/affected parties to raise complaints and go through these rather than do the donkey's work of exhaustive prior art search.
Is there any data file to show what comment has been marked as positive or negative?
For example, if you look at the Quora thread ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146 ), a comment could say something good about the site and also provide some feedback (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197230).
Is this comment marked positive or negative? If feedback is somehow clubbed with negative comments, I would doubt the accuracy of the analysis.
Isn't it better for any individual/employee to have been a whistleblower under the False Claims Act - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act ?
According to the Wikipedia page "Persons filing under the Act stand to receive a portion (usually about 15–25 percent) of any recovered damages."
Well, one threat for Google's search business is possibly Apple. By controlling the device, browser and the platform - they have an option to integrate their own search offering instead of relying on third parties. Not sure what the Topsy acquisition was about - but perhaps there is some sort of a social search integration in the works.
And then there's Facebook. The key for them is to figure out a viable business out of head search queries i.e. instead of going after all possible searches. Perhaps mainly target shopping oriented search queries via recommendations from friends?
Of course, this is all easier said than done. Apple has seen its struggles with Maps and even Google couldn't do much with Google+.
What a few big name companies (e.g. Microsoft) are getting rid of is the "forced bell curve fit" rankings. The core issue supposedly that team members are loathe to help anyone else succeed as that may not benefit them in the appraisal.
Have heard that, in the new model, your manager gets a lot more liberty in deciding how to distribute the appraisal budget for the team instead of the hikes simply following a company-wide rule depending on the employee's rating tier.
Six weeks for closing a seed/angel investment from introduction to term sheet sign-off is not "too long". From my reading, it seems there was a firm commitment on both sides and hence, it was bad of both airbnb and YC to cut you off totally. At the very least, I would have expected the likes of YC to allow you to co-invest instead of simply assuming you were a newbie marine. After all, it was not as if YC had seen some stellar exits by mid-2008.
From a company's perspective, just because one person gets a market rate that is higher than the rest of the team, the entire team can't simply be given a raise. While this sort of largesse may work for Google & FB, I doubt it would for those companies that grow in single digit to low teen % per annum.
Also, if the person given this raise is not amongst your top performers and now ends up out earning the rest of team, it ends up affecting overall team morale. Your star performers then start to feel short changed and think they have to leave to get a raise.
Although slightly more nuanced than a blanket YES/NO, it would have been more helpful if there were more concrete suggestions on acceptable process mechanisms for 'limited free Internet access'.
On your earlier point about the domain name, if you had the money and had an option to buy your brandname.com (especially "housing" for the business they are in), $1 million is a good investment.
There are a whole lot of things they can start monetizing. Sure, I am not going to buy an apartment based on slice view, but based on my experience with Housing as regards getting tenants and prospective buyers, I would gladly pay them for the service :)
Have put up my apartment for rent on Housing and all the other major realty sites.
In my experience, Housing has: a) The best UI and UX b) The best customer service in terms of tele-service, the agent coming over and taking photos, etc. c) The best response - on the other sites, even when I clicked and uploaded my apartment photos, the response rate on Housing was the best. d) Interesting add-on features such as 'lease agreement' maker and so on (which I only used to draft my own agreement with my tenant)
As regards 'aggressive campaigning', so many other companies are burning more expensive television moolah (e.g. Car Trade, Car Dekho, YepMe, Practo and more). And yet, this company interestingly attracts more than its fair share of criticism of aggressive campaigning - possibly thanks to some of media houses that also run property portals :)
Maybe if you used your Kindle more instead of making snarky posts you would get a clue.
Don't even get me started on founders vesting their shares.
As an average Joe angel (not blessed with any inherited wealth), I personally think it's fair ask to ask founders to vest a "majority" of their shares. IMHO, if angels take 10% for a company in its infancy and leave founders with 90% vested equity, there is simply too much risk if one of the founders decides to leave! Especially so when the business itself hasn't really been properly built.
While it may be the case that kids these days demand and get the kind of toys they want, it is also the case (at least in certain cultures) that parents obsess a lot on what kind of toys make their kids 'smarter', 'happier', etc.
So, Lego could look at ads that target parents in some of their markets.
BTW, journalists are reporting that the driver did indeed get a clean certificate by the local police station in May this year. Link: https://twitter.com/KarnHT/status/541875208844353536/photo/1
Not sure who sought this verification - but the point I wish to make again is that a clean chit by the police in India is bunkum.
Even if any company going forward claims that they are doing "police verification", please realize for your own safety's sake that this is tantamount to nothing.
I am making a claim that "police verification" is hogwash and the government itself knows its futility.
Regarding "non-disableable GPS" - please share details of such "non-disableable GPS" devices that other cab services provide. I assume that these cabs automagically stop moving should the driver disable the GPS?
Waiting for more details on cab services that provide such devices.
What happened in Delhi is tragic -- and no one would want such a dreadful thing to happen to anyone, anywhere.
Yes, Uber did not vet the driver enough. But "police verification" in India is a big joke. You pretty much go to one station and find out if there are crimes committed by a person in that locality. There really isn't an exchange of information across stations across cities about a person's criminal record. So, you can only do so much in this country, where a lot of such information needs to be made more easily accessible even to law enforcement agencies themselves. In fact, the government itself is mulling doing away with such verification requirements for government jobs as the police reports are often perfunctory (link: http://bit.ly/1lJ1vRy ).
Regarding Uber's service in India, I have taken over 40 rides in the past year and find it to be the most reliable taxi service in town. In fact, I find it to be far safer when the women and kids in my family ride an Uber vis-a-vis other transportation services. I know fully well that endorsing Uber when a lot of folks are outraging about the firm over the latest controversy du jour may not really come across well -- but I personally feel that the alternatives in India are far worse and definitely not 100% crime free.
To be more precise, these are first world YCombinator problems :). Unless there is something great cooking behind the scenes, raising $3MM in seed is not really a piece of cake.
Liked how the interviewer was posing tough questions around the failures of previous product launches and around any resentment towards folks who had deemed him incapable of running the Lisa division. Didn't seem like the interviewer was sitting inside the distortion field. Having said that, I must also say that Jobs fielded the questions rather well.