HN user

ValG

1,494 karma

valgui at gmail.com Formerly employee #1 at MobileWorks (YC '11)

Currently co-founder of Instamotor.com

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Comments137
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3.26.18.232 11mo ago

The mysterious art of ball slapping and the decay of man

ValG
1pts0
sparktoro.com 2y ago

The Final Chapter of My First Startup

ValG
6pts0
www.nytimes.com 5y ago

MacKenzie Scott Reveals Another $2.74B in Giving

ValG
2pts0
twitter.com 5y ago

Onlyfans ranking % and how much actual money that corresponds to

ValG
2pts0
finance.yahoo.com 5y ago

Russia registers virus vaccine, Putin’s daughter given it

ValG
1pts0
www.rand.org 5y ago

You Can Fight Russia's Plans to Troll Americans During Campaign 2020

ValG
6pts0
hipcityreg.substack.com 6y ago

The Myth of Blackness in Venture

ValG
2pts0
www.justice.gov 6y ago

Field of Schemes Fraud Lead to a Decade in Prison for Largest Organic Fraud Case

ValG
1pts0
www.bloomberg.com 6y ago

Everyone has a wealth number, what’s yours?

ValG
2pts0
www.forbes.com 7y ago

A Harvard Scientist Thinks He Has a Gene Test for Heart Attack Risk

ValG
1pts1
www.sciencenews.org 8y ago

Cancer cells engineered with CRISPR slay their own kin

ValG
2pts0
wi.mit.edu 8y ago

Fragile X syndrome neurons restored using CRISPR/Cas9-guided activation strategy

ValG
1pts0
25iq.com 8y ago

What might the Amazon, Berkshire and JP Morgan health care joint venture do?

ValG
1pts0
25iq.com 8y ago

MoviePass. Premature Scaling?

ValG
3pts0
observer.com 8y ago

An Open Letter to Simple Habit: Can You Really Rip-Off Other Startups Mindfully?

ValG
2pts2
techcrunch.com 8y ago

Stitch Fix has filed for an IPO, and the numbers look good

ValG
2pts0
www.nature.com 8y ago

Micromotor-enabled active drug delivery in vivo treatment of stomach infection

ValG
1pts0
www.buzzfeed.com 8y ago

BuzzFeed Trained a Computer to Search for Spy Planes. This Is What We Found

ValG
57pts6
www.nytimes.com 8y ago

Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them

ValG
2pts1
www.wired.com 8y ago

How Netflix DDoS'd itself to help protect the entire internet

ValG
1pts0
shift.newco.co 8y ago

What $50 Buys You at Huaqiangbei, the World’s Most Fascinating Electronic Market

ValG
3pts1
uk.reuters.com 9y ago

Fake online stores reveal gamblers' shadow banking system

ValG
1pts0
medium.com 9y ago

The Secret Behind Dollar Shave Club’s Billion Dollar Success in One Graph

ValG
1pts0
uploadvr.com 9y ago

Microsoft Reveals Motion Controllers for Windows VR Headsets

ValG
3pts0
phys.org 9y ago

Device pulls water from dry air, powered only by the sun

ValG
35pts5
www.sec.gov 9y ago

Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?

ValG
5pts0
www.engadget.com 9y ago

Amazon Prime will replace Twitter to stream Thursday NFL games

ValG
3pts0
www.cnet.com 9y ago

IBM has found a way to store data on a single atom

ValG
122pts84
hbr.org 9y ago

How Resilience Works

ValG
3pts0
www.bizjournals.com 9y ago

Why ​Silicon Valley’s leading tech firms avoid hiring coding school graduates

ValG
8pts0

It's very possible that we never raised enough, or the firms we did raise from operate differently, but we did raise low $xxM and we got all of it at once, and we did in fact deposit it right into out SVB account.

I've never heard of the "just in time" funding - and if that's more common than I think I'm also very surprised that we don't hear more of the "fund committed $100M, but the business went south and they declined to fund it fully" sort of stories.

I don't which other states may do this, but in Cali Labor Code Section 558.1 - company managers and owners are personally liable for missed wages. It is a codified approach to piercing the corporate veil. I learned this well when we had a single digit bank account and were waiting on funding to get wired in as payroll was coming due.

I just picked this back up last week for similar reasons. I have so much going on in my life right now that I wanted something to read where I already know the story well and can allow parts of my brain to "defrag" while still enjoying a book.

It seems like you're not reading what I'm writing at all. I literally said "they are not mutually exclusive. Also, you are misinformed, both parties 100% do this [1](or attempt to) - It just happens that Republicans are way better at it. Way better.[2] Either way, I don't care who does it, it must be stopped b/c it's not good for a democracy like ours. [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/repub... [2]http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/30/gerrymanders-part-1...

That's a super interesting concept. I will look into it; book ordered! From a quick think through - I think that this argument may fall flat on 2 related ideas. 1. Data shows that when seats are more secure like you say (90-10 instead of 50-50), representatives often go towards the extremes of the political spectrum (on both sides). this leads to issue 2... 2. Voters are generally not strictly partisan - that is to say (purely as an example), while I may have right leaning thoughts on how to run the economy, I may have left leaning thoughts on social issues. If I'm in a district with someone that is far right or far left, a portion of the time they're always going to vote against my wishes. Am I better off in general? Hard to tell without getting more in depth on my preferences.

You may have missed point three, where I literally say that. Also, they are not mutually exclusive, in fact they are quite causal. Also, there is more to gerrymandering that packing a voting block together; you can split voting blocks up do more sophisticated things to ensure your goals are met (the primary objectives generally being "get re-elected"). My email is in the comment and my profile, happy to chat more.

There are a ton of important issues, but, I believe that gerrymandering is a core issue in the United States because :

Partisan gerrymandering allows for politicians to secure their seats - this leads to less voters being represented (allowing the politicians to become more polarized) e.g. when races are tight, politicians tend to move towards the center. [2]

Partisan gerrymandering is strongly disliked by both parties and across the political spectrum, the only people fighting for it are those currently in power (on both sides) [3]

Partisan gerrymandering disenfranchises a large portion of voters, whose votes end up “not counting” b/c of how district lines are drawn[4]

Because of this, I'm currently fundraising (from friends and family) for the legal team in the North Carolina case [1]. I've committed significant amount personally to the fundraise and can say that this is arguably one of the highest leverage ways to spent dollars that you can get to get America back on track as a representative democracy.

I've done a lot of research on this - if you want to help (with $$) or just want to learn more, feel free to reach out (valgui [at] gmail.com)

[1]http://www.campaignlegalcenter.org/sites/default/files/LWVNC... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/us/politics/in-indiana-tig... [3]http://www.theharrispoll.com/politics/Americans_Across_Party... [4]http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wang-remlinger-ge...

Also interesting to see how the company ended up. Keep in mind it was started in '99

from the wiki[1]:

By January 2003...all of the founders other than Tolia had left

and eventually

In January 2005 the four cofounders who had left and other Epinions employee-stockholders filed a lawsuit against Tolia and the two VC firms that provided seed funding.

Lots of context missing around these quotes (read the wiki), but there was a lot of conflict (as mentioned in the posted article) between these "bulldogs and execution machines"

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinions

This is super interesting - is there any information if they're doing this for other Falcon 9s? Or are all of the new 9s built like this now? Was this a contingency plan if the heavy wasn't launched on time or a scramble to get it done?

State of Startups 10 years ago

Didn't see that when I posted. Usually HN catches dupes, but I posted this on mobile on the go. My bad.

It may be a bit on the high end, but not by much. A quick way to sanity check is to use KBB. I just did this; kbb a 2013 Honda Accord EX with 40,000 miles. Dealership CPO suggested price: $20,388. Now do the opposite, trade in a 2013 Honda Accord Ex with 40,000 miles. KBB suggested Trade-In: 14,200. The spread? Over $6k. That doesn't mean that's what the dealership makes of course, but it is a heck of a mark-up.

I might be biases (OP) but I would argue that this is a thin article; I tried to be balanced in providing the benefits and the drawbacks of buying at a dealer. I also made sure to provide sources where I could to keep the data accurate.

In my experience, NEW will never (or almost never) come out cheaper than used, there is too much depreciation in the first 2 years. CPOs are generally good values if you negotiate for it. Best value is a 2-4 year car with moderate miles in a model that has high reliability scores, private party of course.

How'd you do your calculations + assumptions?

Like was brought up, part of it has to do with the averaging. If I remember correctly, base for a sales person was 30k-45k annually, and the rest was commission. The average sales person sells 10 cars a month, average commission was... I can't remember. But, you had 1 or 2 ppl in the dealership that had been there forever and/or were responsible for all the internet leads and sold 20+ cars a month. They were clearing 120k easily to bring up those averages. Maybe median would be a better # to look at here.

Floorplanning a car is still ownership, the only thing is that you're doing short term financing at very low interest rates. But once that financing is up, you still have to account for the $$ of the car. IF you don't sell it, you'll likely take it back to auction and sell it there (usually for a loss), so inventory risk is still present. Franchise dealers have floorplanning for sure, independents not so much. Plus, for USED cars, you usually don't floorplan those (from what I remember). There used to be a saying, if you want to find a Franchsie Dealer that was on it's death bed, look for the one that is floorplanning it's used inventory.

For accuracy's sake, he must live in the Tenderloin then, maybe at the NEMA apts. Twitter and Square are both in the Tenderloin, the Mission isn't really walking distance to that area (right on Market).

edit: Alternatively, he could live in the mission and then walk between the 2 offices during the day, they're right next to each other.

It's actually pretty well documented that if the companies failed (and both almost did, by almost I mean within weeks of failing), Elon would have been ruined. At the point where he invested in Tesla and SpaceX, he wasn't actually billionaire, and his companies certainly were not liquid. The one out Elon had was having Google buy Tesla (which almost did happen). A few sources:

1. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/sorkin-elon-musk-of-p...

2. http://www.carbonated.tv/technology/spacex-founder-and-tesla...

This will always be the case, even here on HN, the vast majority of users/commenters haven't been through a start-up, especially not as a founder. Gotta just ignore it and move on. Having been through it 3 times now (2x as a founder, 1x as first employee) I can read some of these critiques and see how maddeningly simplistic they are.

That's not to say a founder has too much more insight into the specifics of what you faced. Without being in the thick of it, it's almost impossible to really see what happened.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth - Mike Tyson

Android Dev San Francisco, CA

email: val@instamotor.com

Instamotor - Mobile First Used Car Marketplace

tl;dr - We're technical, funded with an exceptionally long runway, you'd get to build your own Android Dev Team

Our team is small and highly technical. We are experienced when it comes to iOS but we're looking for help when it comes to Android. Our iOS app focuses on speed, efficient data-sync between thousands of objects, and strong UX. We'd like to bring someone onboard who can bring the same discipline to Android development.

What You'll Be Doing

You will be the first Android Engineer at Instamotor. You will own the app and have your hands in everything (including broader company direction).

We're looking for

2+ years of software development experience and at least 1 year of Android app development experience. We don't care about degrees, but we do care that you know what you're doing. Very strong development skills in Java, Android SDK, and good general programming skills Superior analytical skills and a strong sense of urgency and ownership in your work Proven customer facing application development, troubleshooting, deployment and application performance tuning experience Proven ability to build, launch and iterate on apps under pressure A love for coding and ability to code quickly What We'll Set You Up With

Competitive salary and equity, based on experience Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage Laptop and peripherals of your choice A fulfilling, challenging adventure of a work experience An incredible team of hackers and hustlers In your application, please include a short note about your background and interests, your Github username, and/or links to any projects that represent your skill set.

I think what's interesting is that this in intended to give artists buy-in to the streaming service. If they can get enough exclusive material and artists, I could see it take off. A few months ago I remember reading a post by an artist that said this is the only way for artists to get their fair share, but no one was big enough to tackle it, maybe Jay Z is the guy to do it?

Just having some fun. One of our out of state interns was playing on tinder (doesn't really know anyone around here) after a long day of work and we thought it might be fun to see if we could automate the process. No harm intended; just blowing off steam.

You should try looking into MobileWorks. Recently they've focused more on human generated lead gen, but they might still/used to do transcription as well. Their crowd is generally much more reliable than MTurk.

I will do this, but it will start from the beginning, assuming that all knowledge (including language and math) is lost.

It will start with images, since are universal, and will teach the basics of language and mathematics. It will have to be done in such a way that it's self directed, and to assume that there is no "teacher" available.

It will progress into more and more complicated topics and will explain how certain breakthrough discoveries and technologies were discovered. It will provide the framework to recreate scientific knowledge. It will also touch on civic technologies and management techniques. It will be exhaustive.

The main challenge will be how to condense the knowledge in such a way that it is accessible to those with no technologies (1 book will not be enough). Potentially it will be saved in different technologies, each previous technology will allow you to unlock the next volume of information and technology (and thus becoming more efficient at storing the info).

Once I get to that point from a financial perspective, I will fund it and will put a plan in place to freely distribute the information and make sure that there are set locations across the world where the volumes will be accessible in the event of a major worldwide catastrophe.

I don't necessarily think it will ever be used, but like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault [1] it would be a "nice to have"

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault

Chain Reaction iOS/Android game: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chain-reaction-connect-dots/...

Makes ~$1500+ in revenue on a monthly basis. Pretty low maintenance, just add levels every other week to keep engagement (~2 hours a month of work). 2600+ reviews, average 4.5 stars.

Box It: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/box-it!-dodge-the-dots-free/...

Another game, jezzball clone. 200+ 4.5 stars. ~$300 per month revenue. Can be much bigger than it is.

Started Instamotor.com with my partners and we're selling b/c we'd rather take the money now and put it into Instamotor than wait every month to get incremental value.

email in profile.

I'm actually very impressed by it. They found a market that is highly fragmented and tried to consolidate. The interesting thing is that they it took them forever to make a profit (and tons of funding). It's great to see, but in my (biased) opinion, they didn't go far enough.