bali

Yeah, these open lists going around might not be the best idea... Attracting spam, zero privacy. This tool is a better approach

It's a pretty detailed account on how it happened

I thought it was an original "growth hack" from our CTO, Mario, but who knows :)

Couldn't agree more... Transparency almost always helps and in this case it definitely does.

Well, I have many more examples similar to yours... Our CTO actually interviewed with Facebook over 8 rounds (!) only to find out at the end that they won't offer him the salary he was expecting and asking since the very beginning. But they dragged him along because for HR it's just a normal work day, but for him it was a gigantic waste of time.

Imagine a world without headhunters... Haha

Totally agree and the feature is coming! For the MVP we focused on bare essentials and look: no mater how great a job is, you won't take it if it doesn't pay the rent.

Bonuses, equity and other package elements are coming.

Just launched this, thanks for checking out and comment! We are also launching on Product Hunt today where we have some additional info, check it out also!

We decided to build Wanted after being overwhelmed by InMails from recruiters on LinkedIn... It's impossible to cut through the noise.

On the other hand, we had a real hard time finding the best talent whenever launching a startup and working with those headhunters is crazy expensive.

So we created Wanted to solve both sides of this issue.

(1) Talents have to specify what salary they want, drop their resume / linkedin and that's it (equity, other package elements are coming).

(2) Companies commit to a salary for a posted position

The additional benefit of a set salary before the interviews is that employers won't be able to discriminate and offer less when negotiating because of gender, religion, ethnicity, or any other personal preference or attribute.

Please share your thoughts and feedback with us,

Balazs

I think that has more to do with how publicly one has to use/consume the product. E.g. most people don't like to tell their friends that they have a sexual toy at home, or that they like to binge eat, or watch porn or do something else that is considered shameful once exposed publicly.

However as long as it's not a social product (e.g. porn sites or the axe deo), it's fine, since they do it privately. The problem with online dating is that it exposes one's intentions more publicly.. The embarrassment factor is somewhat declining though - according to Pew Internet's online dating survey it was 21% in the US in 2013 vs. 29% in 2005.

However one has to keep in mind that what Pew measured is agreement with statements such as "Do you agree that online dating is a good way to meet someone". So you might say yes since you have a friend who did it, but you may still not register yourself. The latter has some strong support if you look at how many people use online dating, which is only 11% of the population and something like 40% of singles if I remember correctly. These numbers contradict to the notion that it's ok for the majority to date online, but the tendencies seem to go in that direction [source: http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/10/21/online-dating-relation...]

That depends on the age group, on sites targeting 30+ / more serious dating there is usually balance or more women

Very true sir in a small fraction of cases, see http://www.umsl.edu/~renners/Ming_etal_Sex_chromosomes_2011.... (well, if you wanted to be precise, you could have said "there are more sex determination systems in the world than just XX/XY", since these letters only make sense when it comes to comparing different systems, sex loci relate to one chromosome within the same species)

In this particular case however, it's not true, Cycads are in the XY/XX system, see http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/2/261

So we may proceed and clone those females :)

if it's a male dioecious plant, then it has X & Y chromosomes (like dates), so you could theoretically clone a female friend for him :)

Haha, not being able to sleep/working at night is a birth defect in my case.. Not because of the YC application, lol :)

I think we are stuck here, should probably discuss while having a beer :)

I see where you are coming from and what bugs you in the logic of Graham.

None of us denies that there are transaction costs related to operate an "idea market", we just seem to argue about their amount/importance/relevance. I say these costs are not the primary reason behind the absence of the market but rather the fact that there are no stable ideas that can be used to found a sustainable business upon. You say there are stable ideas but it would be too costly to operate or even establish a market mechanism. (Although I am sure there would be a charity organization or even the government that would establish the market if it would be mostly a one-time fixed cost and low running expenses such as in the lighthouse example).

I should go to sleep now, have to wake up in 2 hours.. (but I really enjoyed the conversation, thx :)

(btw, a question - do you really think there is anything that is valuable to people but nobody has ever tried to monetize it if it wasn't banned by authority? Air, love, aesthetics of a building or a landscape, even values and religions... I have seen business models related to all of these)

(btw2, it may be worthwhile to define what we mean under "1 idea" :)

This is even much better than to penalize. Why isn't there a startup helping the government? :) http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/23/the-goldmine-of-opportuniti...

Great idea! There is a ton of social science about why it is irrational to vote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance). If one had to pay even a low penalty similar to Australia that may help to convince rational but disappointed, ignorant and hopefully peaceful people to vote..

This is unfair and unjust, I don't really understand why there hasn't been a better regulation put in place for so long.. (even if the initial distribution of ownership rights doesn't affect economic efficiency)

The problem with ideas is not that they are non-excludable or that transaction costs are too high (contractual costs, monitoring, you can cite the whole institutional economic literature from Coase to Williamson). It is not so hard to construct excludability, think of non-excludable goods such as fish, "ideas" for fiction, "ideas" for scientific research. They need to be linked to something, fish: best fishermen, fiction: best novelists like Stephen King get contracts without writing down a single word, research: a professor gets tenure. They just need to be linked to something excludable, e.g. to the person itself, or the service of a venture. (And I am still not talking about regulation, patents, etc!)

There is no market for venture ideas without the founders who are credible in executing them. Not because they are non-excludable, but because in fact they don't exist for a long time: it is very rare that somebody has an initial idea that won't change during building a company. Markets, customers, technology change.

If the world of startups would work like you say they do, it would be enough for the most creative persons to get a long term contract from VCs just to tell the ideas that pop out of their minds every morning.. Have you ever seen that happen? VCs invest in people who execute and are able to adapt ideas as circumstances change.

Btw, I am an economist so I happen to understand economics (to a certain degree :)

0.25-1% conversion rate (50-200k vs 20M) is not bad, 100-400X in terms of readers compared to the pure ad vs. subscription model that would be more like 500-5000X in terms of revenue per user depending on their CPM, CPA, CPC rates and subscription pricing structure (assuming the range for all these are somewhere between 1-10 pounds). Plus they can fire half of their sales team..

Just read this: http://paulgraham.com/start.html

Graham argues if ideas would be worth a lot, there would be a market for them. If you understand how the market works, especially in the US, even more so in the Valley, you would agree, I certainly do...

Or if you don't like Graham's argument think of any established venture's story: it has never, ever been a straight line from the idea to success. Business models change along the way: it's the people that count, their attitude and execution

Would you have thought that coke is a good idea in the late 19th century? A black, sticky drink? Or mobile phones in the 70s? Or messages with 140 characters in the era of emails?

Always agreed with the first sentence of the post: "Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything."

I advise 50% of people telling me about a new iPhone app idea to go and open a restaurant at the corner. You make 4-800K a year, with 10-30% margin: that's way more than what most ideas are worth - given solid execution.

However if I would have hired all these people mentioned in the article: "Management, Marketing, Sales, Legal, Accounting, Technical, Human Resources" ...instead of doing 90% of these by the 2 founders we would be already bankrupt, lol. Focus and execute, use everyday opportunities to gain momentum, be more thoughtful of resources, etc. There hasn't been one day in the past 6 months when I couldn't improve something, find a workaround, etc (by myself, without HR or a lawyer). Just in the past 1 hour I manage to spare $1500 by using someone else's network and resources almost for free.

Think of Netflix & the US Post; Google & Yahoo; Microsoft & IBM; Intel & IBM; Yahoo & Netscape; Facebook & Harvard. What is the common element in their stories? :)

You guys are really sleeping at night? :) Best time to work. Otherwise don't worry, be happy about being a pirate. You will eventually meet your angel either from YC or somewhere else :)

Just because something is complicated doesn't mean necessarily that it's more accurate or true (a funny illustration: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/360419/a-dream-within-...)

I have constructed preference profiles with conjoint and other "complicated" methods many times for big companies and believe me: they only scratch the surface of human behavior, most of it is not valid.

Everybody may have his/her own reason for being an entrepreneur. I see this discussion and Arrington's article as well (besides maybe preparing the ground to quit:) more as an emotional discourse to justify why we do what we do. I have these discussions with my friend and bus. partner all the time and I really enjoy feeling superior to employees, but I know in the back of my brain that it's somewhat unfair.

Anyhow, as for myself, I love to do it because of the lifestyle, because I love to create something, because I can wake up late and work during the night, because I am in control of my professional life and decisions and perhaps most importantly because I hate to know what's gonna happen the next day, next month which is inevitable with a normal job.

My life is over as soon as I am locked in a job + family + everyday routines + stop being curious and open. I would die. I would know how it is going to end, just wouldn't know when.

Just to avoid the latter and achieve the former I am risking right now nearly everything stable I have had in life (friends, family, nice job ($1M in 5-6 years), house, perspective of a relaxed long life)

(don't misunderstand the family part, i believe that is the most important element of a happy life, but it decreases your "degrees of freedom", if you see what i mean)

Ah, that was the word I was looking for, freedom :)