stevenj

And the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, near where the MIT professor was killed, ended its contract with Flock earlier this month, following community privacy concerns.

Found this bit particularly interesting.

Your comment made me lol. And it’s very rare for that to happen to me via reading text. And I needed it today. So I just wanted to tell you thank you and I hope you have a good day.

Are you gonna buy a lambo?

I think it's still a fairly new phenomenon where white collar work often consists of sitting in front of a computer monitor all day. Not for leisure, but for work (something you possibly don't want to be doing to begin with).

For me, less screen time (for work, but also in general) and more time spent outside and/or in the presence of people I like has really made me a happier person.

Las Vegas Review-Journal says he “died Friday after being injured in a house fire.”

https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tony-hsieh-key-figure...

I really appreciated this piece, Jessica. Primarily because of its focus. I've heard many of the points in it before, but the fact you narrowed it down to these three and then included practical and specific commentary (based on your deep experience with startups) on each was very helpful.

Thank you.

I don't live in Whitefish (nor Montana), but I love it - it's such a cool town!

What do you think about Bigfork as a place for future investment/growth?

Spend less time looking at a screen. Spend more time outside and/or around people I enjoy.

(Note: I'm more extroverted than introverted.)

Lol, thanks for the laugh. Merry Christmas.

I think the Winklevoss twins were rightly ridiculed for thinking they invented Facebook. However, they've made two prescient bets and deserve credit for those: (1) Getting Facebook stock instead of cash as part of their legal settlement; (2) Not only seeing bitcoin's future potential, but investing in it and sticking with it. While the final result on the second one is still TBD, they deserve credit for investing in something at a time when many thought they were stupid for doing so.

I may get downvoted for saying this but, anecdotally, people today seem way more sensitive and emotional about other people's viewpoints and actions, especially when they disagree with them.

Growing up, it was much easier to have conversations of differing opinions because people not only listened more, but they also listened better. (Perhaps that's in part due to the unique sense of curiosity that kids have.)

Today, it commonly feels like conversations involve hearing aids that have been turned off completely.

Einstein is quoted as half-jokingly saying that the greatest force in the universe is compound interest.

I think it's emotions.

VC is a very tough business.

Same with Zuck.

I've long believed that you should be most critical of things you believe in the greatest.

I think you meant a "B" for the Lyft/Uber valuations. :)

If your goal is to build a company, I think you should focus on the following:

1. Find a problem that you (or someone you know very well) have.

2. Look at the existing solutions to the problem and evaluate not only if you can build a better solution, but also how quickly people will switch to something better if they came across it today (i.e. How fed up are people with current offerings? How easy will it be for them to switch?).

3. Build and market something for a very small group of customers or users. Focus on making that group extremely happy with your product or service. (It could be as small as one customer or user at first.)

You have to pay taxes on any income you earn whether it's through trading bitcoin, selling drugs, or working at Google.

There are other options out there besides deciding between SV and the flyover states, such as Portland, Oregon or Austin, Texas.

I think angel investors are different than venture capitalists. The former typically make small investments, starting anywhere in the low five figures, up to seven figures, but more commonly capping out in the low to mid six figures and receiving a corresponding stake size in the companies.

Venture capital often requires taking sizable stakes in companies by investing millions of dollars, in order to have a chance at producing the returns it's seeking.

After thinking about it more, this Rise of the Rest fund for the Midwest, to me, is more like Y Combinator (and likely a competitor to it), in that it's essentially a giant seed fund that will then bring in its big-name investors and business magnates to make VC-like investments in the most promising companies.

Instead of having a large network of former YC grads, it has a network of some of the most well-known investors and business magnates in the U.S.

With that said, Steve Case is quoted in the article saying, "First and foremost, our goal was to generate top returns.”

I have a hard time believing that the majority of people making 400k+ at either Google or Facebook would consider their work/life situation a type of hell.

I understand why some people don't want to work for those companies or in those areas, or aren't motivated by money. But I think many others do, and the ones that are living it now are doing so by choice and for their own reasons.

It's depressing that the majority of good programmers in the bay area are obsessed with the compensation package.

I think many people across a lot of industries are primarily concerned with their compensation packages when evaluating jobs.

Everything I've ever learned about venture capital is centered around the notion that in order for the economics to work, you have to invest in big winners (companies that exit at valuations of hundreds of millions to billions of dollars), such as an Instagram.

Do you disagree with that? And/or are you saying that there are many of those kinds of promising startups outside of Silicon Valley to justify these new investment funds?

My personal opinion is that there's just too much money chasing too few good companies. In other words, I think many startups, including ones that are worth a billion or more on paper today, will ultimately fail to generate the necessary returns for many VC investors and firms. And as a result, the access to money at all stages will constrain greatly, and sharply.

Off-topic: a somewhat unknown fact about Stripe is that it started as /dev/payments.

Its former CTO explained how /dev/payments became Stripe: https://www.quora.com/How-did-Stripe-come-up-with-its-name

Is there a way to solve these issues - perhaps even via a startup?

I'd imagine the whole scandal has negatively effected the firm and its future.

I believe at least 50% of SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund is dependent upon Saudi Arabia, which recently arrested several prominent businessmen and investors that were integral to securing the deal.

As far as I know, the status of Saudi Arabia's $50 billion investment into the Vision Fund is uncertain right now due to the arrests.

Early in this case means before Series A.

Wow. That is shocking.

Has Pinterest even reached product/market fit?

I don't see how me simply stopping being a customer in itself would help them treat their employees better.

They wouldn't know why I stopped being a customer, unless I tell them.

Perhaps a better course of action would be to write a letter directly to Jeff.

I'm probably in the minority but I'd pay higher prices for better treatment of employees and better quality of product/service (which I do think Amazon needs to improve upon as well in terms of its third party seller operations).

I also like going to restaurants where there's a required 20% gratuity that gets distributed to all staff and helps pay for employee benefits. I think the overall service, interactions, and experience are far better at those restaurants and I'm happy to pay for it.