aberman

Written by billclerico, my co-founder at WePay (S09), and now founding partner of Convective Capital, a venture capital firm committed to solving the wildfire crisis.

I hope not.

The BBB gives Uber an "F" rating based on a handful of complaints? Uber serves over a million users a month! And I'd guess most of their customers are repeat - one sign that customers are happy with the service.

I wish I could up-vote this a thousand times. Slava is one of the most genuine founders I've met, and I wish him and RethinkDB all the best.

Great team, great product, natural fit. Congrats to Ancestry and 1000Memories.

Congrats Jason and Byron. You guys deserve it. Salesforce is lucky to have you.

My 2¢:

If it's a software product, and you're debating whether it's time to release, it's probably time to release.

If your customers try your product and quickly abandon it because of it's imperfections, you prioritize fixing those imperfections. If they complain a little, and a few of them leave after a while because they're fed up, it's probably worth fixing those imperfections at some point, but you may want to focus on other priorities.

So true. I think the sign of a great PM is the ability to see all the imperfections but the self-control to focus on the things that matter and to de-prioritize the things that don't.

It's easy to make a list of everything wrong with your product and spend eternity trying to fix it all. It's harder to reconcile imperfection with the reality of limited resources and business objectives.

A big difference to whom? I don't think the author intended to imply something different by using that particular language.

I doubt the author consciously thought: "i'm going to make this apology less effective," so who cares if the language didn't exactly resonate with you or the OP? I don't think it was malicious or disingenuous; if anything, the NYT needs to hire better copywriters, so their emails don't get dissected as frequently.

Founder of WePay, here.

Quick clarification: We're actually not really working on solving the problem of helping people "send" money. Our primary focus is making it dead simple for anybody to get-up and running, collecting/accepting payments online.

We think that collecting money is a bigger pain point and a larger market.

"Sending" money falls into two categories: P2P transfers and remittances. Remittance is a pretty large market, with old (Western Union) and new (Xoom) players alike. It's not very exciting to us, and it's a difficult business to break into.

P2P is a little sexier, but the pain point is not as high, people are incredibly sensitive to cost, and it's a problem that will be "absorbed" by the bigger companies (Amex/VISA now have solutions, PayPal offers it for free, your bank will offer it soon). It's more of a feature than a real business. I actually think Venmo has an awesome product and does a great job solving this problem, but I'm guessing that it'll be hard for them to build a big business on that alone.

Just posted a job add on dribbble. Agree that it's a great place to recruit designers.

duly noted - will update

Then you should have a portfolio, no?

I'm not saying that having a blog makes you an "accomplished author" as the original commentator suggests I was implying, I'm just saying that seeing your work is the easiest/only way to screen for talent.

For a design candidate? Curious why you think that...

Would their academic credentials have been more helpful?

I also caveated that comment: I may be missing out on some good candidates, but seeing something they've created is the only way I know how to screen design candidates. Perhaps that does make me an idiot :(

I sent him a "thank you" email for that exact reason. Seriously.

You are correct, sir. On all accounts.

I live with the founders so I've had Lockitron for about a year. in my unbiased opinion: it's absolutely amazing especially if you have a lot of house guests (hacker sleepovers).

I haven't met the guy, but now I like him. And I am pulling for him. So he has accomplished at least that.

And don't worry, his investors knew that he had no idea what he was doing when they wired him the money. If they didn't, it's their own fault. At least he knows what he doesn't know, which is more than I can say for most people.

This one is a sleeper. Might not get as hyped as the other YC companies in its batch, but I think this could definitely be an interesting business.

Well done, sir.

Again, I agree - I didn't think this belonged on HN.

haha - it's awesome that you know who they are even though we bleeped out the name.

I figured it might get posted to HN, but I was hoping it would just live on reddit for a while...

Rich from WePay here. Definitely did not want this to end up on HN. Awkward...

edw519: I know what you're going to say...and I agree with you this time ;)

Soon.

Couldn't agree more.

I'm always more impressed by the companies that show a list of customers before they launch, then the companies assuming they need to launch to get customers (or that launching will necessarily lead to additional customers).

Agreed, gringo. If nothing is going to happen, I'm still going to make a ton of noise about it.

Curious why so many people upvoted this comment.

Is it because you are interested in hearing the answer? It's a social media company focused on attracting users and eyeballs (at the moment). The revenue is nil, same as it was for fb and google in the early days (not saying that dailybooth will be the next facebook and google, just that there are examples of companies that were once focused on users and eyeballs that are now focused on revenue).

Or is it because people enjoy the snark? Screw that company that just raised $6M!! I'm not jealous, I'm just...Bubble, bubble, stupid VCs, no revenue, no business model, pictures, bubble!

> I know of one incredibly talented potential female founder who applied with a killer idea and was rejected.

I know of dozens of incredibly talented potential male founders who applied with killer ideas and were rejected. Seriously.

> I think it is very likely that YC has a strong bias towards men, which this data certainly supports.

Why do you think it's very likely? What data supports that. As one of the other commentators already pointed out, the percentage of YC founders that are women is about equal to the percentage that apply. Saying that the "data support" the argument that YC is biased when there is such an obvious alternative explanation (namely, that there are less female founders) is disingenuous.

> since YC is a for profit business they are making economically sound decisions.

Wait, what? Are you saying that since Silicon Valley (I'm guessing you mean investors in this context?) favors men, YC intentionally (and consciously) chooses to fund men in order to increase the chances that YC founders raise subsequent rounds of financing? That's crazy talk...

> saying any fault lies with women is really unfair.

I don't think anybody is "faulting" women. They are just stating the facts - there are less female engineers, and less female YC applicants.

>> This is also why I hate VC's (PG included), they force you to become inward focused rather than seeking external inputs (IE: Customers).

In my humble and limited experience with both PG and VCs, the focus has always been on customers.

I'm surprised that you include PG in your sweeping statement. He is a pretty outspoken advocate of launching early, listening to customers, and iterating.

Do you mind sharing where you get your perspective?

the two requirements are pretty related.

Not many consumers (besides people collecting donations) need international, and very few merchants would be happy without it.

It's been made clear to us that this is a pretty big opportunity.

stay tuned...