brezina

I’ve been a beta tester and my kids have been loving Stickerbox. With the app I can peer into their world and see their prompting skills improve as well as see their interests evolve :)

This article is so auto-centric, the author only considers the safety of people inside cars. Banning left turns in cities is a GREAT idea! The group of people most threatened by left turning cars are people walking. Control F for "pedestrian" or "walk" in this article. Nothing. American traffic engineering is so car-dominant, they fail to consider the most vulnerable road users. Pedestrian fatalities in the USA are at 30 year highs. Design for the healthy human living habitat we desperately need. Good human habitat requires safe walking infrastructure for humans of all ages, sizes & abilities.

indeed. and that "rural" lifestyle really often involves driving far and often, therefore pushing your fossil fuel & auto (ev or otherwise) externalities on other people.

i think we should remove the cars from the cities, not remove the people from the cities. People were there first after all

The core of san francisco, probably 30% of the city's 49 sq mile landmass, and where 60%+ of the population lives, was built before cars existed. Most of SF was a walking/horse city, and then a walking/streetcar/cablecar city.

Not left on the sidewalk, the scooter should be left on the street - a dozen scooters in the space formerly occupied by one car. And they should absolutely pay to use that space! Residential permits in SF are $150/yr. 50c/day per spot. Less than 5c per day per scooter. I think scooter and bike share companies would eat this opportunity up

The two largest complaints in cities with scooter sharing are (1) users riding on the sidewalk because they don’t feel safe on the road and (2) users parking on the sidewalk because all street space for storing personal mobility devices is allocated to 4,000 lb cars. A climate conscious city can get more people using zero emission vehicles like bikes and scooters and solve the issues above by (1) creating protected bike lanes so scooter users of all ages and abilities feel safe riding on the street and (2) converting one or two car street parking spots on every block to bike and scooter parking.

However, street parking has been a 3rd rail of local politics in American cities. Demographics are pointing to change: last year SF added 8,500 residents but car registrations dropped by 1,800. More protected bike lanes, less personal cars, more ride sharing/autonomous cars and more scooters is the future - most boomer politicians running American cities today just don’t get this yet - they and their friends live in highly appreciated SFHs,have a personal car and a place to store said car, maintain a low prop13 tax rate, and reminisce of 1974 when people were moving out of cities and they could always find free parking right in front of their favorite restaurant. But the demographics are changing, our streets will transform as a result and for the sake of our planet, it couldn’t happen soon enough

You mean like the 450k street car parking spaces that line almost every street in our city?

If you live in SF and want to help, the team doing this is on Twitter at @sfmtra and looking for volunteers and donations. Safe biking is good for the health of humans,their communities, and the environment

um, have you been to sac? Given the choice, people (both founders of the companies & the best employees) would rather live in the bay area vs. sac. Hence the price difference. SF bay people are paying for things like: 20 min access to world class airport, one of the most human friendly climates on the planet, access to the capital of the internet & the people from around world building said internet, a stop on world tours of every major music act or performance, Ocean, Bay, coastal ranges, the ability to get to work, beach, entertainment without getting in a car, etc etc. I personally trust the wisdom of the crowd and find the best places on the planet to live/visit are often the most expensive: NYC, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Paris, Maui, Coastal Los Angeles, SF

ah, i remember those early dinners and fancy cheese plates that weren't orange nor formed into a brick.

i've found that potential employees are getting more and more savvy about evaluating culture.

One thing we do at Sincerely to share our culture and evaluate the candidate's character is to play a board game at lunch during interview days. The candidate drops their guard, treats communication less like an interivew, and we get to see deeper into their real character. And they get to see one of the ways we like to interact with our teammates outside of shipping products.

Octopart has always inspired me. Just one of those quiet, confident, heads down YC companies we can be proud to call a peer. Sam - this is such an awesome story - thanks for sharing

this lecture by kevin is bomb. i love the examples of personality and delight he sources from multiple startups including his very successful startup wufoo. Also - on startupclass.co you can watch the lecture at 1.5x speed which i find ideal for these startup lectures.

I think this is a powerful concept - a fund where all founders backed by the fund share in the upside of the entire fund. A great way for founders to diversify a tiny bit beyond their own company's success. I'm a big fan of Kent and this concept

beautiful PR execution by the Oculus/FB teams. They knew this acquisition would anger members of the community, and they timed this hire/announcement so as to quiet the predicted backlash. Brilliant execution.

having been adam's co-founder (xobni) and having lived with him for many years - this article describes one of the things I most like & respect about adam. He is incredibly structured in his thinking about everything in life. I brought much more of the go with the flow skills, but highly respect & learned much from his structured approach. His Wiki of Structures for various fields of thinking is linked at the bottom and a must browse http://wikilogic.org/index.php/Home_Page

yo HN! Just for you guys - use the promo code: 'hn' in the settings area of the Sesame app to get $10 off a gift set. http://www.sincerely.com/sesame Send your pops a father's day gift! (limit 10 codes)

gracias amigo

sweet! hook a brother up 13d1B83HJZqgwwDUmVDB8dTtmgkp7BK62Q

Congrats @pg and team! I love seeing YC used for so much good. The impact continues

exactly. I know the founder. He originally had no plans of creating an alternative to kickstarter. He wanted to create great hardware products and use Kickstarter to fund the development. After running into Apple approval issues for POP, realizing how a less than honest company could ship a shitty product and keep the $140k that backers had provided, he realized just how bad kickstarter is for funding & creating hardware products. Not only is he giving the money back - this inspired him to create a better alternative for creating and backing products. It is a classic founding story.

I won't even think of building for Windows phone until I see them in the wild. I did see one at the cable car turn around in San Francisco - so I asked the guy using it... Yup, he worked for MSFT

Love seeing people use the Sincerely api. I truly believe in Hiring via API http://www.mattbrezina.com/blog/2011/08/hiring-via-api/

We've done this twice so far at Sincerely. Once to Puerto Vallarta Mexico when our team was ~7 people. And once to Tahoe for a ski-cation when we were at ~9 people. Both were week-long trips and cost under $1k per person. We are doing Mexico again soon with our team of 14.

Quick thoughts: - We like to ship stuff while on these trips. I find it unproductive to do brainstorming or planning on these trips. We plan before we go. We execute while we are away. And on drunken walks home from the club or sunburned strolls back from the beach, we come up with great ideas that we quickly turn into new realities for our users. - The trips end up defining elements of company culture. It has been on these trips where we've started our board game culture, our exercise culture, etc - For several of our employees, this was the first time they had left the country. Most of us do startups because they are challenging and an amazing learning environment. It is nice to extend that learning experience into other aspects of our human experience - like traveling abroad. - I always dreamed about working at a company that did cool things like workcations to Mexico. And the best thing about running your own startup is that you can actually redefine the traditional work place. Be the change you want to see in the world. It feels really really good.

Ask about how and when they scaled their team. They built this beast on a small amount of angel money, by keeping a small team. Their profitability allowed them to scale the company how and when they wanted to. I'd also ask them about their price/funnel/etc optimizations. These guys have a lot of traffic - so small changes have moved the needle a lot. Easily one of my favorite business in San Francisco.

A great example of the YC mafia at work. Over 1/3 of the companies I saw listed are YC alums

its not about new users. it is about engaging their existing users on a new platform - mobile. Pretty sure instagram mobile crushes facebook mobile in engagement

Both of my companies www.sincerely.com & www.xobni.com are ZeroCater customers. The quality and diversity of the food we get is better with ZeroCater than when we ordered it ourselves. Also, the vendors show up on time. They know if we complain they won't just lose 1 customer - they may lose all of ZeroCater. Arram has found a true market need. His story of hustle is inspiring. I'm so genuinely excited by this perfect story of entrepreneurship. And I wish I would have invested.

That picture was priceless. I'm so happy pg captured the moment :)

no matter what site does the blackout, they need to run a simple web app that generates your representative's phone number based on zip code.

I've got 2. They exist. They make great co-founder and founding team members