motti_s

Not necessarily, Facebook has mobile clients.

I'm not sure why people find the 401k changes confusing, here is how it works:

The employee defers up to 18K (IRS limit), MSFT matches 50% of it, which is up to 9K.

Previously they contributed 50% of the first 6% the employee deferred = a maximum of 3% of the salary. So for anyone who makes less than 300K (9K / 0.03), this means a higher match from MSFT.

Try this: http://data.jobsintech.io/lawyers/<last name>-<first name>-<city>-<state> Example: http://data.jobsintech.io/lawyers/maranci-daniel-boston-ma

I don't get the big deal with free OS X updates. Apple sells hardware at a premium and you get the software with it. You can't buy Apple software, so why should you be able to buy software upgrades? It should have always been free, just like iOS upgrades are free.

This is a great idea (assuming that the budget exist), because it takes care of retention, not just recruiting.

I'd split the bonus between the two employees, and have it stop if either leave the company. This way both employees (who might have some influence on one another) have an incentive to keep each other happy at that company. This can boost the retention effect of this strategy.

I'd argue that HN has a built-in mechanism for determining what's interesting to its users. If a Bitcoin related story gets voted up to appear in the top page every day, then maybe it should be there.

I agree, it's not necessarily a bad idea. I meant that most people (even most hackers) probably won't do it. I think the biggest issue is reliability, since if your SMTP server is down emails sent to you are rejected.

This happened to me once and it took a while until they reinstated my account. To date I have no idea why it happened. I thought about moving to another service, but unless you setup your own SMTP server (probably not a good idea), you never really have full control.

Here is what I recommend you do (before getting locked out):

1. Use your own domain for email and host it on gmail (free) - do not use yourname@gmail.com, but yourname@yourdomain.com.

2. Create a secondary email account and have your primary account forward all emails to it.

If you get locked out, your account still accepts emails. I believe that forwarding still works as well, though I haven't been able to verify it (need to get locked out again...).

Then either respond from your secondary account, or change your mx records to point to another service, or even to your own temporary SMTP server.

It's not a complete / ideal solution. You still don't have access to emails you sent (could be done using IMAP, but I didn't bother) and to other Google services. But it might be OK as a temporary solution until you get your account back.

The overheated market causes high valuation, which some argue, hurts investors. By saying bubble and discouraging unsophisticated investors from bidding, he probably stands to gain, not lose.

Everyone has a vested interest in what they deal with (or they're amateurs, hence I don't need their opinion). That doesn't mean they never say the truth.

I've never even been in silicon valley, actually.

It's hard to find talents in many regions, though maybe not all of them.

"Most people who have a well developed understanding of an industry and basic financial sense easily recognize bubbles and have always done so in the past."

I try to listen to what people I trust from the industry say about the existence of a bubble. Pretty much all of them say that there is none. For example Ben Horowitz (of Andreesen Horowitz) consistently argues that there is absolutely no bubble (and he was around for the real bubble occurred). See 5:10 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xzcJnqcTP4

I think that often when markets become hot, people automatically think of a bubble, but that's not necessarily true. The internet has grown from 50 million users to over 2 billion and smartphones were non-existent in the 90s. So perhaps higher valuations for tech companies are justified due to higher potential.

But you could be right, only time will tell.

As a gadget freak and a hacker, I love this product. But I wonder how many people use a watch these days. Of course this is no ordinary watch, but when you have a supercomputer (in the shape of a phone) in your pocket, is it really needed? I suppose it's great for sports, but I'm not sure whether it has mass market potential (selling ~10K in a few hours is amazing, but isn't mass market yet). I'm actually on the fence with this one...

In general I think that watches will make a comeback only if they become the phone. Maybe Pebble will be well positioned to do that in the future (remember iPod -> iPhone?).

BTW It's nice to see a hardware company coming out of YC. Also nice to know that Eric is from Vancouver. Good luck Pebble! I'll buy one as soon as I stop being a starving bootstrapper.

Here is something ironic. I bet you many of DDG's users are hackers who use it for privacy reasons. The same hackers who rely on Google Analytics in their own websites. If DuckDuckGo grows to become more than a niche search engine, the same hackers who use it will have to reinvent Analytics somehow. This is reason #1 why DDG will stay small. Reason #2 is that if necessary, a DuckDuckGoogle can be created in an afternoon's worth of effort in Mountain View.

I don't think we're in a bubble. How can the author compare the IPO of Facebook, a company with a billion users and billion dollar in revenue, to those IPOs of the late 90s of companies with no revenue and no viable plan to have any in the foreseeable future? In fact most IPOs since LinkedIn started the trend are of mature companies. That's not what happened in the bubble days.

It's true that more companies are being created and seed valuations are going up. But the selection process still occurs at the series A stage and crappy companies usually still can't pass that hurdle.

As for the JOBS act: if I'm not mistaken investment is capped at (the lowest of) $10K or 10% of the annual salary. I believe you even have to go through a course before you can invest though the JOBS act. Conversely, in the stock market you can invest as much as you want, without any training, and lose everything overnight.

The fact is that economy fluctuates. Whenever there's an upswing people scream bubble. It's a result of the traumatic effect of previous bubbles. But the irony is that real bubbles sneak on you. Hardly anyone sees them coming. So keep screaming bubble, it makes me feel safe.

"One of its main byproducts is the replacement of low-productivity workers with computers."

This is the main fallacy of this article.

It's actually "high-productivity workers", who build technology, which replaces "low-productivity workers". For that to happen, more "high-productivity workers" are required. Do they realize how hard it is to find talent in tech these days? The economy is ever evolving and becoming more efficient. There is really nothing new here, this has been happening for decades and centuries. With some adjustments, this article could be published 100 years ago and probably 100 years into the future.

One problem is that it's hard for people, especially at a certain age to adapt their skill set. So while some sectors are struggling to find employees, others have too many. It's the friction that is created by economy's evolution. But we have to look beyond the cold numbers. This is a social problem. With 8% unemployment rate, an unemployed person is not 8% unemployed, he is 100% unemployed. That's a person like you and me, with family and dreams.

However, I believe that in the future this friction will actually become lower. With technology and internet becoming prevalent, high quality, relevant education will become accessible and affordable. In other words, when education finally becomes part of that "second economy" (and it will), things will get better, not worse.

When this happens, then ironically this "second economy" could actually solve the problem the article says it creates.

Things are changing. Technology is cheaper, internet is prevalent and small organizations disrupt the ways of the dinosaurs. We've seen that with newspapers, we are seeing that with Hollywood and we'll soon see it in education. The dinosaurs are big and powerful, but we all know what happens to them eventually. Sooner or later technology wins. Always.

Having said that I hope Geocoder gets help with PR. I'm no PR expert but the fact that this post is not on their front page is the first bad sign. And the media, which always loves a David & Goliath story, apparently hasn't covered this; that's another bad sign. Swaying public opinion to your side is the way to win this, not litigation. If Geocoder lets Canada Post drag them to court they've already lost.

As a Canadian I'm one of the owners of Canada Post and I hope I lose.

Facebook should open a new savings account and deposit $1.37 million every day. In two years it will have the $1 billion they'll pay to acquire Everyme.

"Everyme uses your phone’s address book for sharing, and if people don’t have Everyme accounts, they can still see and post content through email and text messages."

This is a brilliant way to overcome the chicken-and-egg problem, which is probably the biggest problem a new social network is facing.

I don't want to share my kids' pictures with everyone on Facebook. And no, my mom is not going to join Google+ (nor should she), so having her receive the posts by emails for now is just brilliant.

I think the Everyme guys may be on to something.

So in you opinion, assuming that Sequoia had to distribute the "overnight" 2X to their LPs, was that a good investment for them?

I believe that most funds are structured in a way that the VCs have to pass the proceedings (minus their cut of course) to their LPs (investors).

I have a question: is this good or bad for the Series B investors? I'm not sure the answer is as obvious as it seems.

2X return overnight is great for angels, but is it good for VCs? From what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), once VCs have an exit, they can't reuse the proceedings for a subsequent investment. Thus, since VCs like Sequoia are probably looking for 10X returns, they just ended up with a chunk of their fund that underperformed. True or false?

Yep I'm happy to discuss, email me: motti {at} wincode dot net

I wonder why Google Chrome offers to translate this page from Malay...

"Business Plans are Dead"

Good riddance. It's so frustrating to waste countless hours working on a detailed plan that you and anyone who reads it know is wrong. Such a pointless exercise. It is important to have a plan, but not a formal business plan per se.

Here in Vancouver it's not very easy to find talent these days, but I think that it's easier to retain talent.

Compared to SV your burn rate could be lower because salaries are lower and you can get significant government funding (sometimes you get back most of the salary paid to some employees, see SR&ED and IRAP).

When it comes to the ecosystem, especially mentors and angels / VCs, SV wins big time.

I don't think you can compare what we see now to the bubble days. Let's look at some key differences:

- In the 90s there were 50 million internet users, now there are over 2 billion. The internet economy is huge.

- It's becoming easier to get seed funding, but it hasn't become any easier to raise series A (some claim it's becoming harder due to the increased number of seed companies chasing those series A dollars). In the bubble days the madness went all the way to the IPO.

- When the bubble burst, people lost faith in the future of technology, or at least in the rate at which it would advance. Now that phones have become computers, books have been digitized, and people rely on technology for every aspects of their lives (even to socialize!), it's pretty obvious that technology is here to stay.

For sure we may see a down-swing. If macro economics go in shambles due a new war or an economic meltdown in Europe, then technology investment will suffer as well. But as opposed to the bubble days, I don't think technology investment will be the cause for such a down-swing. I think we have matured since the bubble and the fact that it was so traumatic (we're still discussing it aren't we?) also helps preventing it from re-occurring.

I agree - it seems true (albeit strange) that only a handful of VCs are making returns that justify the risk. But those top VCs are consistently ahead of the game. I don't think those index funds did very well during the tech bubble burst, when Sequoia almost lost.

Good point. Though I think the top VCs hardly ever lose money on a fund, they just make lower profit margins. In fact Doug Leone of Sequoia once said that they never had a fund that lost money, although in 2002 they almost did [1]. But even if they did, if their investors had consistently invested in their funds over the years, they would have been ahead of the game. So in the long term I believe that top VCs and their investors are going to do well.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/doug-leone/

I don't think it's that easy for all companies to raise money. In fact, I just watched an interview with Pinterest's founder who said that they were turned down by virtually the entire investor community. I think the pendulum has made a full swing for YC companies, but a partial one for others.

Deciding what to invest in is hard, especially in the seed stage. With the market being so hot, investors have to decide quickly which makes it even harder. When investors are agreeing to an 8 million cap on a YC company and a 4 million cap on comparable non-YC company, they are essentially saying that the YC company is twice as likely to succeed, which I don't think is far-fetched. You may also wonder whether this anticipation fulfils itself (a company that seems more likely to succeed may get "better" investors, positive media coverage, early adopters, etc, which may end up helping it becoming successful).

I also think that the increased popularity of convertible notes is a contributing factor. The 8 million cap only becomes 8 million valuation if the company raises the next round at 8 million or above, so in a way it has to live up to its promise in order for the increased cap to take an effect.

And finally, if a company becomes the next Google then the valuation at the seed stage is insignificant. Therefore the valuation just represents the perceived probability of that happening.

Stories like this make you wonder if some companies pivot too quickly.