Is it worth it to try to get real news to Russian citizens? Apparently people are trying to post about the war in places that Russians can still access (e.g. reviews for high-end restaurants on Google maps). How much impact can this have?
this +100000. The huge-ness of this contribution to making openstreetmap better is underscored by the fact that you're not allowed to do this with Google Street View (Section 10) https://developers.google.com/maps/terms
Agreed, and it's a running theme in most customer service interactions with Zenefits (Aetna's fault, Intuit's fault, etc.). There's also tends to be long delays in response times because of the back and forth between Zenefits and the provider, and sometimes conflicting responses which make things really frustrating.
Yes, this is 100% true! My main point was not about the cost of the plans, so much as getting access to better plans. E.g. with Trinet we were able to get access to PPOs that had some out of network coverage. With Zenefits, as a standalone company of our size we only had access to EPOs (i.e. no coverage if a blood test or something got accidentally sent to an out of network provider.)
Yes, Zenefits has a gorgeous interface which feels much more modern and sleek than something like Trinet. The trade-off is that the healthcare benefits are inferior for a small company - because unlike a PEO, Zenefits is NOT pooling together tens of thousands of young, healthy employees across many companies and getting a good deal from insurance companies. Yes, as an employer, you don't play the hefty admin fee you pay Trinet - but you just don't have access to better plans for your employees.
The other pain we've found is that at the end of the day Zenefits is simply a wrapper around third party services (healthcare insurance, payroll etc.). If everything is smooth sailing, there is no problem. the moment something goes wrong there's this super frustrating finger pointing session where you have to call Aetna directly, or Intuit Payroll and Zenefits blame each other, or no one wants to cop to a payroll tax filing error. If you have an employee waiting for some critical healthcare reimbursement, this he-said/she-said is the worst. Never had to deal with that with the one-stop-shop PEOs.
Zenefits has great software but the customer service needs some catching up. Maybe this round of funding will do it.
not that it's the same at all, but your great question made me think of negative political ads. I can't find any research that clearly shows how effective negative campaigning is, but apparently >70% of ads this election season were negative or attack ads (http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/2012/05/02/jump-in-negativi...). That feels like a lot and I can't imagine that the smart people working on these campaigns would spend so much here if it didn't work as well as other tactics. I'd love to see metrics here too.
@milton: it's a phony excuse for being "bad at marketing" (which you claim and then cite your excellent SEO results) and kind of shoehorned in here to CYA, but your work with refuges sounds awesome and commendable. It's a great use of your product and talking about that more on your blog would be fantastic to read.
it is one marker of success. being utterly and fervently in love with one's work is another, and this may or may not coincide with massive growth. dmor is correct that life is short; given that "making a dent in the universe" is kind of relative (see this excellent piece on our small ness: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4674932) and some times more ego-driven than altruistic,
I see no shame in optimizing for happiness in one's lifetime. For some people this may simply mean a decent salary (which may not be an "average" goal for some people), but this was not how I read this piece. The OP appears to have found her own way to do something she loves, profitably and within a short amount of time. This is fantastic. VCs may not want to fund her, and it doesn't look like she wants them to. pg points out businesses like this in his growth essay with no judgment. I wouldn't pass them either.
I just moved to NYC from the SF and love going to a coffee shop and NOT seeing everyone with laptops covered with stickers and talking about MVPs and their upcoming seed round. The valley is a great community, but the diversity in NYC is refreshing and gives good outside-the-bubble perspective. I think that's one point of this post is making.