dpandey

Really glad to see this happen. I (MIT alum) think this was a legacy of the past that had to change - MIT was just hoarding too many IP addresses. Not blaming MIT - it was a historical artifact, but most other universities had released theirs over the years and MIT hadn't.

Honestly, why is this news? :)

not much of a "wilderness"

Asians are intelligent and talented,

So are Europeans and Latinos and Americans and Arabs and Africans and dolphins.

The discussion isn't about race. It's about creating a culture and ecosystem of innovation. Which even other cities in the US have failed to replicate beyond modest successes.

Exactly. The article focuses on something marginal (number of large companies starting an 'innovation center' aka a tiny office in Silicon Valley has come down). The title is misleading because it makes you think it's talking about Silicon Valley being left behind in innovation.

What it actually talks about is 'large companies are opening more satellite offices around the world than in Silicon Valley in the last few years'.

The appropriate response to this article is: 'so what? How does that matter?'

If you interpret the title literally, it's probably true. It's not something to worry too much about, however.

Just like the rest of the world starting large universities has rarely had a negative effect on institutions like Oxford, Harvard or MIT, the rest of the world starting innovation center is unlikely to do much negatively to Silicon Valley.

Starting an 'innovation center' and actually creating lots of innovative companies (including some really large ones) are not the same thing at all. In fact, just like IITs are a great feeder into MIT or Stanford, some of the best companies outside Silicon Valley have become a feeder for the SV ecosystem.

I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm just saying quantity is not the same as quality, and quality innovation center is very hard to create without lots of quality people in all parts of the ecosystem.

This is a great question. And 6 months after the last update is a good time to be asking it.

It's much less efficient for both YC and individuals if every interested individual started emailing and asking for updates. Much better this way - after all that's why broadcast or pub-sub systems exist. HN is kind of a curated broadcast system.

It often happens that people who're working on the project might not find 'right now' to be the ideal time to share updates. This could be either because they're immersed thinking through a particularly challenging aspect of the problem/solution, or they feel a little lost (which is a normal feeling in the middle of ambitious projects). Sharing an update at that point makes you feel vulnerable, but that's exactly what you need to do.

Or it could be that they have a really promising angle and want to see more data before writing something up. The 'more data' approach is usually a mirage (promising approaches start showing potential even at early stages/small scale) and sharing progress helps the project even in that case. (For example, you might learn that a similar approach has been tried before, and here is what someone learnt).

That's a great example.

"he received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from its College of Arts and Sciences. Musk moved to California to begin a PhD in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University"

maybe not, but pretty technical.

A better example of a non-tech CEO of a tech company is Jack Ma, who was an English teacher.

We provide healthy snacks. Yoghurt, oatmeal, nuts, bars, trailmix, and of course beer.

I'd say that when you've worked at a company > 6 months, you know if your manager cares about you. You know if the management cares about you. Doesn't take much to figure that out.

I think there are 1-1 and public ways of showing care. When an employee has a performance issue and is going through something rough, you have a private conversation, nobody else needs to know (unless they're impacted/frustrated and you let them know some of it to make them cut some slack) and the employee is taken care of.

Perks are a public way of taking a stand and saying I care about people and will provide these perks and won't take them away except in the direst of situations. Providing perks won't make people love you, but it shows you care. They're nice to get and show thoughtfulness. Especially if you're not obnoxious otherwise.

I don't think it was 10K per employee (that'd be a ridiculous amount of soda). It was 10K total.

Small perks like free lunches, gym membership or a massage every month are huge in making employees happy.

We're a seed funded company and provide free lunches to our employees. We also reimburse up to 100$ a month for fitness/gym memberships. Some of my friends working in large organizations don't get these perks, and point out that they're wasteful of a company that is cash flow negative and trying to conserve capital.

What most people with such mindset don't realize is how valuable inspired people can be. For employees to be inspired, they must do work they find meaningful and they must be appreciated and challenged. But they also must realize the company genuinely cares about them. Then they want to give back to the company; they want to exceed expectations because they love how the company cares about them.

Now you need to show care to employees on an everyday basis, but one amazing way to show it is with perks like these. 100$ a month for gym or 200$ a month for lunch per employee is not outrageous if you compare that with how much you pay them every month. It's almost miniscule. Also, in most startups at least, they're getting paid below market rate in exchange for equity etc. Not having to worry about lunch or gym everyday makes a huge difference psychologically.

The one situation where you can justify cutting perks is when the company is going through a genuine crisis, cutting the perk is critical to get through, and you let everyone know this is temporary and it's just something we all must do to get through this crisis. Otherwise, instead of trying to cut soda out, the management needs to focus on growing revenue and profits and ask themselves why they're not succeeding there as much as they'd like to. Hiding behind a soda cut isn't going to fix the issue.

PS: I used to worked at Salesforce where we got several days a year off just to go volunteer time at non-profits. You'd be amazed at how much employees love the company for allowing them to do things non-work related that they're passionate about just a few days a year while getting paid for it. It says that the company has a warm heart. The impact shows up in the company's relentless growth year after year. Same with companies like Costco. Showing care for employees has an outsized impact on the bottomline.

Reflects my limited experience with them as well. We ordered, and waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually I called them and was told someone had messed up the order and the restaurant needs at least another hour to deliver. I gave up.

I love the idea of quickly ordering lunch for our employees on the app - DoorDash just needs to ensure they meet expectations. Just do what Dominos does already. If they do that well - I'd love a reminder at 11 am with our favorites listed where we can check out in 3 taps. And they need to really ensure Uber quality execution.

Given the current state, I feel like they're missing out on a massive opportunity by not fixing genuine customer issues.

PS: I can't reply to the followup post to this post, so answering here. If you go to CES, you'll find a hundred companies that make a fitness band (I did, last year). None of them have Fitbit's branding and name recognition (which is very non-trivial to create).

It doesn't look like Wearables are a priority for Microsoft at all. Given the recent slump in that market, I don't think they're getting FOMO either.

You usually acquire IP by inventing something, and then filing for patents based on the invention, if that's what you're asking.

To be fair, I don't think Pebble was aspiring to be acquired by Fitbit for their IP. They turned down a huge acquisition offer, presumably on the notion of getting bigger. This was just a fire sale which barely returned money to debt holders (and maybe some to investors).

Same thing with Coin. In fact, Fitbit only acquired a portion of that company.

No wonder I was confused (and I'm a WatchOS developer).

Their hardware and marketing are good, but software not so much - which is where magic happens. Completely agree that when it comes to software and user experience - Fitbit feels like a 'commodity'.

The 30% fall was mainly triggered by Fitbit revising revenue estimates for Q4 from 985M to somewhere around 725M as well as Q3 performing poorer than expected.

What's fascinating is that Fitbit is still going to do about 2.2B in revenue (up from 1.8B) last year. So annual revenue is going to be more than current market cap (1.7B).

Apart from a less than delightful user experience (resulting in device abandonment and low engagement/retention), Fitbit is also losing market share to Xiaomi in Asia.

So I wouldn't call it failing, but yeah it could do much better :)

That makes way more sense. Thanks for correcting.

PS: I momentarily thought maybe Apple had 'pulled a Siri' on the Watch. When the iPhone 4S came out, Apple deleted Siri from the App Store so only new (4S and later) devices had it. Pretty sure it increased upgrade rate.

That's a really really old model. I haven't used one recently - I'd say look at Amazon reviews. Friends who have bought them swear by them and my experience with them was exceptional.

Fitbit blaze is a smart watch.

"New products, Fitbit BlazeTM and AltaTM, including related accessories, comprised 54% of Q216 revenue".

I don't know how revenue is split between the two, but it sounds like they're selling a lot of blazes.

Edit: "In the first quarter, Fitbit sold 4.8 million wearable devices, including one million of the Fitbit Blaze and another one million of the Fitbit Alta."

Now this is first quarter data (when Blaze + Alta did 50% of overall revenue). Since Blaze costs 199$ and Alta 99$, one could split the revenue Blaze (33%) and Alta (17%) roughly.

One third of Fitbit revenue from Blaze (smartwatch) - that's a LOT!

Apple watch starts at $269. Apple Watch Nike at $369.

I'm really impressed by how Apple is able to charge an extra $100 just by allowing a custom app to run on the home screen. Brilliant!

The key focus of this acquisition seems to be the acquisition of assets (read 'IP'). Fitbit has had a rough time battling Jawbone in court (though ironically Jawbone has been the sufferer in the market while Fitbit revenue keeps going up). I feel that has made them cautious about IP and this is the second acquisition (after Coin) that's been purely focussed on acquiring IP so that:

1. Others can't acquire and sue them

2. They can sue others if needed

Other than IP, it's hard to justify their spend in acquiring the company (they already have hardware and software/app).

Garmin has been exceptional since before 2007 (that's when I bought my 305). It's been doing really well in revenue and growth recently.

Fitbit had revenues of $14.5 million in 2011, $76.4 million in 2012, $271.1 million in 2013, $754 million in 2014, $1.8B in 2015 and is expected to do $2.4B in 2016.

'Failing' in what sense?

Hard to back up that claim. Fitbit should be doing about $2.4B in revenue this year. That's only about 22% of the global market share.

This paper is simply a comprehensive survey of VC opinion broken down statistically, rather than a genuine study into how VCs work.

In other words, the singular focus on survey data without a sharp focus on correct interpretation has killed the spirit of digging deep and understanding the VC setup, with the result that it's not very actionable or insightful.

If the findings were perhaps informed by cross referencing with a survey of others in the ecosystem who aren't VCs, the authors would probably have been more skeptical and possibly better educated on reality. It'd have been extremely valuable to go to entrepreneurs and ask.

Reading one of PG's essays provides a far more useful perspective.

The challenge with a generic survey such as this is that while it gives an (really long) introduction into how VC works, it misses all the subtleties. A better researcher would have looked into that, and turned this into a legendary paper. Why is that important? Because as a VC, decisions are the most important thing you make, and subtleties play a huge role in that. If you don't dig deep, then you're just documenting interviews rather than understanding and interpreting reality correctly.

What the authors should actually have focussed on is:

How do VCs really make decisions?

Believe me, I'm a big fan of the Apple Watch.

Everytime I meet someone who uses (used to use) the Watch, it usually turns out they have given up because of short battery life. I have a series 1: looks like it has improved in recent versions. I'm glad to hear that. Mine barely lasts a day.

Battery life is really important. Many of my friends see smartwatches as primarily a fitness device, and when the comparison with Fitbit (or anyone else) happens, it usually comes last.

My hope is that Apple focusses aggressively on making the iWatch battery life longer. That would undoubtedly lead to further lift in sales and happier customers.

It would be extremely unwise for the CEO of a very public company to make such a statement if it weren't true.

The lift in units sold must definitely be affected by the recent price drop.

Anecdotal evidence: we have a fitness app that connects with the Apple Watch, and we have seen a large number of users connect their Apple Watch (about 7% of our total user base). We get data from these watches on a regular basis which means the watches are on and being used.

The battery is still terrible (barely runs a day) compared to Fitbit Blaze (5-7 days).