HN user

unohoo

343 karma

Pranav Dharma

Posts23
Comments179
View on HN
www.bloomberg.com 10y ago

Cost of becoming a pro tennis player

unohoo
2pts0
qz.com 11y ago

Best VCs at finding unicorns

unohoo
7pts0
teespring.com 11y ago

Show HN: Tshirts with gems curated from YikYak

unohoo
1pts0
buzzerati.io 11y ago

Show HN: Buzzerati – Tech News Sorted by FB, Twitter, Linkedin Shares

unohoo
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Show HN: Buzzerati.io Tech content ranked by social engagement

unohoo
1pts0
pranavdharma.com 13y ago

Thank you Mike Arrington for creating TC

unohoo
1pts0
pranavdharma.com 14y ago

Possible solution to PG's frighteningly ambitious idea for email overload

unohoo
37pts42
pranavdharma.wordpress.com 14y ago

No more entrepreneurial masturbation

unohoo
7pts4
sosforguys.com 14y ago

Show HN: MVP for my site SoSforguys. Nice things to say to your wife

unohoo
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 14y ago

Tell HN: Techie founder looking for a Django co-founder for ecommerce idea

unohoo
4pts0
www.mployed.us 14y ago

Show HN: Mployed - employee directory accessible over smartphones

unohoo
3pts0
news.ycombinator.com 15y ago

Ask HN: How does your company maintain an employee directory?

unohoo
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 15y ago

Ask HN: Feedback on a couple of startup ideas

unohoo
14pts18
news.ycombinator.com 15y ago

Ask HN: Why are startup events/conferences in Bay Area held on weekdays?

unohoo
4pts3
online.wsj.com 16y ago

San Mateo's $155 million hit thanks to Lehman bankruptcy

unohoo
2pts0
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: Can Friendster enforce their patents against Facebook ?

unohoo
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: Startup Idea - Dating with anonymous profiles

unohoo
2pts7
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: Startup Idea - Outsource Travel planning ?

unohoo
3pts9
news.ycombinator.com 17y ago

Ask HN: If ideas are overrated...

unohoo
9pts7
news.ycombinator.com 17y ago

Ask HN: Should monetization be an afterthought ?

unohoo
16pts30
news.ycombinator.com 17y ago

FeedBurner sucks - But what options do you have ?

unohoo
4pts1
news.ycombinator.com 17y ago

Ask HN: Can you recommend a good Django freelance designer ?

unohoo
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 17y ago

Ask PG: Does YC review single founder applications?

unohoo
2pts8

I am dealing with the exact same situation handling a 7 year and a 2 year old. Its actually worse in my case since my wife is a healthcare professional and has to be at her job - so its effectively just me looking after the 2 kids during the day.

I tried working 1 week from 6-12 in the night, but was exhausted since I still had to wake up when kids woke up. This week, I am trying to do 3 hours before they wake up, another hour when the younger one naps and then finally 2 more hours once my wife is back home. Several folks in my reporting chain have similar aged kids or a tad bit older, so they are empathetic to the situation.

My productivity is definitely impacted, but then these are unchartered waters. I am just trying to stay sane through the process :-)

React 16 9 years ago

2 awesome things about this release: 1) No need to wrap siblings in an enclosing element - upgrade is worth it just for this change alone (j/k)

2) I'm surprised no one has mentioned it so far -- but this release uses the new fiber architecture - I saw the video presentation about fiber and think it could really help in terms of performance

IIRC Bezos chose seattle not just for available talent but also the fact that there are no income / corporate taxes in the state of WA. I believe this factor will be also significant when they choose the 2nd HQ. Texas / Florida / Nevada are the competitive places that come to mind that have no income tax. Perhaps Austin (availability of talent pool) seems likely ?

Where: San Jose / South Bay Company: MyCityPals (https://mycitypals.com) Position: Co-founder

MyCityPals is a platform for people to meet new people - whether you are new to town/ friends settled down / bored of doing things alone.

I am a developer and have coded the site by myself (Django/postgres / aws)

If you read the story, it mentions digging dirt on Sarah's family. Family includes children.

> But what is wrong with threatening a woman's children? Clearly you dont have children. If you dont see anything wrong with this notion, having a thoughtful discussion with you is a moot point. Do you work for uber ?

Docker Raises $15M 13 years ago

Congrats Docker team. Docker is an amazing product and I've been following it closely as well as playing with the latest version. Not one bit of the hype is vaporware. Cant wait for it to get a little more production ready. I'm sure anyone who has done even a small amount of dev-ops can appreciate what a huge pain point docker will solve. VM's have been commoditized, but with docker, they can be obliterated altogether.

One question I have for Solomon -- do you guys have a product roadmap on the site anywhere ? As in, what features are planned etc. and by what release/time ?

With so many startups doing things similar to this (do local tasks, fetch food, deliver stuff, clean home, do laundry) -- I am wondering where and how they will all be able to hire local runners (lets not forget ebay, google and amazon also trying to get into this 'get it now' mania).

It might actually be a killer idea to employ these local runners -- and then get jobs from all these varied companies/startups. So, doordash, instacart, prim etc. could all contact you and use your workforce -- you essentially remove the headache of hiring, scheduling and logistics for these startups. But then -- what would be the point of all these startups -- you could just offer these services yourself if you owned the runners :)

if you read through it, (2) specifically is about usage and adoption, not monetization. commute in bay area is more limited to work and back -- most of the folks in east bay and south bay dont use / rely on public transport for their weekend travel.

I am a regular Caltrain rider and here's my honest feedback.

First, to be completely unbiased, the app looks awesome and pretty slick - so great job on it.

Now the challenges: 1) This app will be incredibly difficult to monetize unless you reach significant scale and then use advertising

2) Most of the daily commuters in the bay area are either bart riders or caltrain riders or muni riders -- as in, the mode of public transport they take is fixed. As a Caltrain rider, i have never taken the bart in the last 2 years i've commuted to the city. And I believe vice versa is equally true. Bart riders are unlikely to ride Caltrain regularly (discounting every once in a while ride). Why am I saying this and how is it relevant ? Most of the existing daily commuters have already downloaded free apps which provide the schedules, maps etc. -- most will have very little incentive to download your app, unless it provides some additional value above and beyond the existing apps

3) This app could be more valuable for those who are visiting bay area -- although most of my friends who have visited bay area rent a car -- since they plan day trips to napa, carmel etc -- while in the city, most just tend to use cabs.

This kind of app makes a lot of sense for a place like nyc or london where the subway and public transport system is much more complex and extremely well connected. And where majority of the people use public transport. But even then -- those whose daily commute route is fixed, the app adds little value, IMHO. But I havent used it in nyc, so I could be wrong.

Here's why things are headed downwards - There are way more reasons as well, but these are the most significant:

1) Victim of its own success. Groupon, LS expanded way soon, way fast. Daily deal sites start popping around all over the place creating chaos and irritation for both the merchants and the customers (merchants bcos the same merchant gets solicited by 10 diff daily deal sites - customer bcos now you're unsure which site has the best deal and too much email)

2) The last part of (1) above can be listed as merchant and customer fatigue.

3) Its uneconomical to hire and retain salespeople in big cities like Chicago/DC etc. For this model to work, the sales team should be in a extremely low cost area. Sales team will be one of the biggest expense for such a company/startup

4) Groupon / LS are not proving effective ROI to merchants

5) Novelty factor has worn off -- making it difficult to keep customers engaged. Now, the customer is engaged only if its an awesome deal from an awesome merchant. For the remaining merchants, the purchase pattern is more driven by 'need' -- not so much impulse any more. For eg: Meh - I need to get oil change done. Might as well check on Grpn/LS to see if there's a deal being offered.

What would really help is a small demo video just to get a whiff of what the IDE feels like. The description and screenshots are somehow not enough for me to download and install an entire IDE and take a test drive. If there is a demo video somewhere, my apologies - I was not able to find it.

The Quiet Ones 14 years ago

I've had the exact same experience on Caltrain. Although Caltrain does not have a 'quiet car' per se, most of the every day commuters are aware of the unspoken conduct of silence. Although there are a few folks who just cant get off their phones and like to yap about non-stop. The worst part of it is that most often, I end up being the asshole telling them to keep it down. I dont know why some of the other folks dont speak up, even though they are equally annoyed as I am

The information you guys provide could be a good starting point. However, in my experience, having good metrics (number of sales etc., ) is not the only means to gauge the quality of a realtor. There are a lot of intangibles (not pushy, comfort level, knowledgeable, empathy to your buying/selling criteria etc.) are very important as well. If you simply go by sales numbers etc, the data will get heavily skewed in favor of big realtors, who can afford to hire a team of other people to work for them and thereby work on and close more deals.

Are you seriously comparing scaling these businesses with scaling online media companies ?

If dealing with logistics issues at scale would have been easy, your grocery store would have been able to deliver to your home. Do they ? No -- because its not cost efficient due to the logistics involved.

that's where majority of the US population lives -- the sprawl if you may. If you simply restrict to SF/NYC and downtown areas (which in a lot of the US cities are mainly office buildings and not housing), you're not going to able to expand your business.

moving parts != comfort, which is paramount when it comes to mattresses. For me (and a lot of people I know), having springs is actually an issue. The springs wear off, the mattress begins to sag and not to mention the back aches. So its not as simple as -- simple foam mattresses should cost lower just because they have less raw materials than a spring coil one.

courier services (aka postmates) is definitely difficult to scale in the 'burbs. And that's because of the distances, traffic etc. involved. Certain tasks on Taskrabbit could work in the suburbs, but not all. How many times do you see these kind of jobs on Craigslist ? Ikea delivery, assembling etc are fine -- but when instant gratification (Postmates, Zaarly etc.) is concerned, scaling to the suburbs will be extremely difficult.