wooyi

The founders likely took some money off the table in those huge rounds. They didn't end up with "nothing".

We do a book exchange. We tell all would be givers that we will not accept gifts but only used/new books. You come to our house and give one of your books to our child and we will give you one back in return. Works for birthday parties too.

These are likely seasonal job losses like retail or related. You have to do Year over Year comparisons for jobs. Month over month comparisons are misleading because of seasonality

@garrytan said it as well in 2012: Travel planning software: The most common bad startup idea

http://blog.garrytan.com/travel-planning-software-the-most-c...

Indexing != SEO

A better test is to insert mentions to another site for relevant keywords. Then measure impact on ranking for the other site.

My guess is likely zero to negative impact (due to hidden text being penalized)

Same experience here. A few of my developers migrated our servers to DO 2 years ago to "save" a few hundred dollars. Turns out DO has planned downtime every other month and its cost us 100x more in staff and headache dealing with them. You can't run a SaaS or anything that requires uptime reliability (ie, any sizable business) . I've transferred our main site back to AWS. Also AWS dedicated pricing is now almost the same as DO, and much more reliable.

But congrats to the DO team. They will only get better.

This assumes everyone is motivated, wants to improve their lives and do well in their jobs or in society.

If you listen to everyone here, they'll ask you to finish school. That is the safe bet and "prudent" choice.

If you want to be a founder, you'll never be comfortable taking the "safe" route. Go for it. Do it when you're young and you're able to take risk. No regrets, whichever path you take. Good luck.

Is software free trial similar to this? Don't we, as developers, give our software for free in either a freemium or free trial business models? One freemium tool I'm involved in only monetizes 2-3% of our users... But it's a model that works as far as marketing goes.. Not saying you shouldn't pay artists but isn't this another form of marketing to users? In the end, it's win-win. Apple gets more users, artists gets more listens...

Do you know if these kinds of interactive content perform better (ie clicks/shares/views) vs other forms, ie longform or just plain data visualization pieces? I personally enjoyed it a lot.

Singapore had some success in the consumer electronics field with Creative (remember the Sound Blaster?). There is Razor, whose CEO is Singaporean, but the company isn't based there.

Regionally, Singapore is already a tech hub and will continue to dominant that region. But I doubt it will ever threaten the Valley or even places like NY or LA.

Wouldn't touch this with a 10ft pole.

Most of the comments here are focusing on the OS. It's not about the OS. It's about the ecosystem - the apps marketplace. They can come up with a great OS, like Windows did, but without the ecosystem, consumers will not use it. A smartphone without apps is a dumb phone.

+1 on the Canada hack. Canada now has an "Express Entry" process for skilled workers that grants permanent residence in months 6 months or less. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/express/express-entry...

However, applying for a Work Permit is still rather cumbersome (which is typically the first step after the job offer and before Express Entry) I just went through this process with an employee. While there is no arbitrary quota, the process does take between 3-6 months.

But overall the path to citizenship is much shorter than in the US.

And Canada has public healthcare. So, no need to worry about healthcare while you're self employed.

There are many education pathways to a good career. The traditional 4 year college after high school is only one of them. It's great to see real examples of these different pathways.

Yes. And for me, to be successful is to be happy with what I do for a living, and to have the freedom to pursue my dreams. Selfishly, I rather be a mediocre father and successful/happy with my career/lifelong work vs a great father and a mediocre career. We all pick our own paths. No regrets so far.

If anything, I felt more pressure after kids to be successful. I had to prove to them that their father was not a mediocre person. I also need to show by example - that I did not want them to be mediocre and that they should strive to be the best at what they do.

I quit my job and travelled for almost year in South America. I later spent 2 years in grad school (studying social science) as part of an extended "break" to figure out what I wanted to do. I had no grand plans, goals nor did I become enlightened from it. I did learned Spanish and met my wife during my trip, so personally, it had a big impact in my life.

Definitely, had some regrets about grad school as it was a fairly academic program. I went straight back to coding/software after graduation.

My advice is, if you know what you want to do, just do it. There is no need to travel the world or go on any journey. But if you don't, or if you haven't travelled yet, then yes, it does wonders to expand your experiences.

I've been involved in a micro acquisition. From my experience, this is not true. Both the timeline, cost and effort from term sheet to closing was small (in comparison to larger acquisitions)

It's great to see individuals/institutions being innovative on this front. I applaud Brad, his wife and CU for this.

For Americans afraid of immigrants (H1B or other types) stealing your jobs - research shows that you'll likely be better off in the long run.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/debunking-the-myt...

Entrepreneurs don't steal jobs - they create jobs.

It isn't a zero sum game. The top 20% doesn't take away 84% of the wealth pie and leave the rest to us. They also create a lot of it. If fact, if the top 20% can create enough wealth for the whole country to live a good quality of life, that is not a bad thing.

I would recommend a book on selling and marketing. Influence the pyschology of persuasion, for example.

And as practice, take a job as a door to door sales person. Build up resistance towards rejection and learn how to influence people.

v. late reply. Was busy working:-) There is a lot of empirical research that attribute grit, perseverance, practice to success. The best and most "successful" creatives, are also the ones that started the earliest, are the most productive (worked the hardest),.. http://pmarchive.com/age_and_the_entrepreneur.html

More anecdotal research like the 10000 hour "rule" for mastering a skill,... also state the same thing.

Sure you can be born rich and this doesn't apply to you.

But most people aren't born rich, so, what is available to them is hard work.

Ok, I'm going back to work now. Thanks for listening

Hard work is the foundation of success. The best people I know are all hard workers. They love their jobs, they are competitive, and they work hard.

It is a privilege to be able to work in such an environment as it is so rare.

I bet if someone did an economic impact study of H1B visas and looked beyond pure salary numbers, you would find a very positive economic impact.

America was built by immigrants. Lest you forget.

Borders are a remnant of the old world. Companies need to stay competitive and tapping the international workforce is part of that competitiveness.

Have you ever changed the UI on a legacy Enterprise app. The reaction from the Windows 8 UI changes is a taste of it.

Customers hate change. They have been trained on the legacy UI. You change the UI you make their job harder (at least that's the perception).

I was part of a mobile dev boutique "shop" for a few years. We had maybe 10 projects a year, and the majority of the projects were your run of the mill projects (ie, me-too projects, simple apps,..etc) . It became just like any other job except that you had 10 bosses instead of 1. Everyone's experience is different. But my takeaway was that it's better to define your own passion projects and make it work than to be someone else's mercenary.

We should walk in someone else's shoes first before judging what they could and should do. We have no idea what her personal circumstances were.

But whatever her parents did or could do, she had little choice in it as a minor.

This articles makes sense, but it's hard to step back and be so reflective without being victim of analysis paralysis. Many times, you build a toy, something you like, and it turns out big. If you over analyze it, you may not build it because you can't predict the future no matter how well you think you can.

In many cases, analyzing your startup idea with such a complex framework will stop you at your tracks.

I prefer to follow the basic rules PG laid out (there are some overlaps) in his article on startup ideas.

She was a minor when she came over. She was just trying to survive and succeed and the laws made it difficult for her to do so.

Up until the 1960s, blacks were not allowed basic rights and access to many thing, and doing so was considered "criminal". Ditto with gays until recently.

So, anyone fighting against unjust laws are "criminals?