HiLo

What the fuck! They are breaking laws related to protecting people from discrimination! And all you can focus on is, hey, there's other people doing bad things too! Why can't you get mad at them? Seriously wtf.

EXACTLY.

Complete straw man? Which YC companies are listed on the NASDAQ? Exploit might be the appropriate word, but most of the SV VCs come from tech backgrounds these days, not finance.

Why? All of YC's companies are worth $30 billion, and it's the resounding success? How many deals that big does Wall Street do each week? How big are the biggest hedge funds in terms of AUM? What about average hedge fund size?

I don't think they're "successful jocks" at all, although I'm glad you have no experience there - I know you think all the best PHD's are going to SV but maybe rethink that.

If you can convince an owner to sell his company, and another company's management to buy it, all with a machine, well, then you've pretty much created superintelligent AI and it's not just Wall Street that would need to be worried at that points, it's literally everybody. You think a machine can convince a crusty CEO of a company to give up his empire building, spend more time with his kids, and hey, maybe accept a slightly lower multiple too? Or rather, a machine that calls Goldman Sachs at just the right time to offer them an emergency credit line on terms that haven't been offered before - only after convincing them that these terms are actually favorable to them and that your standing will be able to help hold them up? Perhaps they, too, can make the decision about storing oil for a storage trade - maybe they can vet the vessels, the captains, the port agents, the inspectors, the storage tanks, the insurance companies, the financing banks, and the counterparties, and maybe then they can build good working relationships with all of them in order to get them to fix all their mistakes when they inevitably happen? Will a computer go to a bank executive and actually persuade him that these activities should be profitable and safe, when it's not always such a sure thing they will be? Will a computer know not to blend gasoline to a certain spec because hey, there's a chance I might actually want to blend it with something else because this guy has a position and I think I can talk him into adding to it? What I'm getting at is, it's obvious you don't understand how Wall St works.

Nobody was talking about jocks. I'm talking about the people running hedge funds, private equity funds, investment banks, and trading houses. If you totally fail to see how most of these are social activities to their very core, with numbers there as support, then of course you think it can all be automated.

What you aren't factoring in is Wall Street is probably on the cutting edge of automating work - DE Shaw, where Jeff Bezos worked prior to Amazon, was implementing many of the same statistical methods that are just getting big now, all the way back in the 90's.

So I complained about PG specifically posting pseudoscience, and you come back saying "well how will jocks feel when they're automated." I just don't see this going far.

1. I would agree but this doesn't reflect the reality and underlying political reasons for regulation and enforcement. I would imagine the large fine (lol jk, a $7mm fine is a joke) was to send a message that stonewalling a public regulator is not acceptable. Maybe "unrelated," but as this is a discussion, I do find it ironic that the tech community hates Comcast and wants the infrastructure to be treated like utilities, and then is okay with their own golden child (uber) running all over a public utility... When they were trying to enforce antidoscrimination measures. The reason Uber can do this is the same reason Comcast can hold everything hostage (yes I know that's very simplified, I'm on my phone). The fine is very trivial compared to the damage discrimination has done to this country - it must be known that that is totally unacceptable.

2. Fair

3. I disagree. I think looking at the ethics of companies who have historically picked fights with CPUC is quite telling, and cited an example.

It's almost like PG and his posse is part of the reason for some of the toxic culture in SV. But God help you if you say that...

My open resentment for them aside, I do wonder why he feels qualified to comment on the economics of income inequality. Just cause you were tangentially involved with something does not give you room to run roughshod over well established economic research.

This would be like Alan Greenspan telling you about which technology companies are solid bets. Or an electrician telling the architect that the building is actually designed how the electrician sees it, not the architect. Like wtf?

I would love an official YC response because I know many in the financial and economics community who see SV and PG specifically as kind of a joke would love a debate, rather than PGs masturbatory, illogical, pseudoscientific rants.

Just like they eventually fell into compliance with certain cities, right? Where do you draw the line? Uber has a record of flagrantly, openly, defiantly breaking US laws - this fine came after they were stonewalling CPUC. If I were an institutional investor, at this point and looking towards the future, I would be furious for risking future business viability by continuing to openly flaunt your unwillingness to follow regulations. I would also probably sell my stake. There are plenty of other companies with room to grow that aren't running US Federal (and state!) government risk.

Let's think of the other companies that tried fucking with CPUC and evaluating their ethics as well. We can start with Enron. Travis is a smart guy but probably not as smart as those guys and even they got fucked. Even with their attachment to the hip to the federal government. Even with their company that was effectively many times bigger and more influential than a ride sharing app.

This is going to be wildly unpopular but 7.6 billion would be a number worth mentioning. (Although I also feel VW should be banned from the US, no negotiations.)

What kind of message do you send by only fining them a tiny portion of what they were only able to make by breaking your laws? I'm 24 and I know my peers already justify their potentially unethical business decisions by citing Uber. Really all I've taken away from this is to not really worry about state laws.

Lol these types of assumptions, that I have the luxury to just interview for weeks on end, really get to me

"And here is the Apple Watch that tells us every time you smoke a cigarette, or think something shameful. Healthy mind healthy body."

What would be the infrastructure this time? Instacart drivers at the ready...? The whole ecosystem that's been pushed seems to be being pushed precisely because there's no infrastructure involved, leading to the asymmetric cost structures so championed by PG/YC.

I like how he tries to quote a "Nobel prize winning economist" as an appeal to authority, but then (without naming him) insults Picketty's work, which will probably win a Nobel. PG is a smart guy but he really should stick to his areas of expertise, him and Marc Andreessen both frequently make basic finance and econ theory mistakes. PG's claim that he is in a position to speak with authority on inequality is like an electrician claiming he is in a position to speak with as much authority as the architect concerning the overall progress of the building.

If getting $150k before doing pretty much anything else was standard, it would be significantly easier to create sub-billion dollar companies. I've looked at multiple companies that wouldn't have needed further funding at all beyond about $75k unless they wanted to accelerate growth further, and would have made all of their participants extremely wealthy.

And in +10 years, activist investors come in and lament how much more valuable the shipping business and the e-commerce business really are when separated, as the legacy network doesn't necessarily fit the needs of the newer one :)

This happens a lot with commodity shipping at least.

Haha touche

Fair points, but I didn't say it was because of their cash dealings. I was suggesting it more because of how the cartels operate. Also, claims that local gangs would be able to compete against cartel-aligned gangs (which is already making a huge assumption that they aren't one and the same) strongly disagrees with spikes in violence in Chicago, arguably (obviously) the largest hub for Sinaloa volumes, as well as Baltimore.

My suggestion was merely that I would be balls paranoid about security if I was tied to a dispensary in the US, no matter how legal, not because of cash, but because once one person uses that strategy (violence) they all will, such as how cocaine dealing became significantly more violent permanently once there was a wave of violence in the late 70's / early 80's.

Ah, you hit it on the head. My neighborhood is full of these types, and that's the catch - you can keep your family together, but, just like happened to me standing at the ATM yesterday, the kids ride by on their hoverboards and you hear one of them telling the other how their dad had to go in to work (again) today - just like he always has to on Christmas.

I know most people here mean marijuana legalization when they say drug legalization, but there is absolutely no way meth, cocaine, or heroine will be legalized within the next 15-20 years, which is fairly long-term from a business perspective, by which I mean that they are not worried about their status as a going concern even if marijuana is legalized in the US. Their violence also is a complement to their ability to hold control of the routes / networks to actually move these products in any significant volume. It ensures they get paid whether they control production or not.

Furthermore, one industry in which violence will prove to be an asset but hasn't yet had an opportunity (like the guy below me claims) is profit recovery from legal dispensaries inside the US. Dispensaries and their owners have huge targets on their backs.

This is a very simplistic view of the cartels, and a very US-centric view as well. This doesn't really factor in the local / native view of these groups, which see them much more as semi-heroic for standing up to the imperial Americans and corrupt, oppressive home governments. The cartels recruit heavily and are huge organizations - giving those poor, unemployed guys from backwood areas a mission "greater than themselves" really is a timeless strategy that has worked well for thousands of years, especially when that vision involves power (violence) and wealth.

I hear you, I really do, but plenty of guys in finance and trading work these hours and are expected to maintain regular families.

Is somebody really trying to quantify meaningful, long-term human relationships?

I kind of thought almost by definition that these things were more nuanced than that. Some of the thing that gives them so much meaning over the long run, in my opinion, is the variability in these relationships. Kids making good with their parents, old friends putting past qualms behind them, neighbors finally taking the time to talk to one another, etc.

Agreed. I simply can't imagine what would happen if our federal fiscal policy was left up to the 50 states individually. Jesus that would be bad. Texas, my personal and favorite example, would go from an economic powerhouse to unable to support its economy, ever, if anything went south, pun intended.

Something of a straw man when speaking of paying off people who are long dead, versus people are were actively trying to get their products to market at the same time as you.

You also assume that there is an alternative to having arbitrary subsets. We're dealing with the law, which is almost by definition an imperfect compromise that we put up with simply because it's better than the alternative.

Kind of like how some people are arbitrarily thrown in jail, under the same legal system. Without rambling, I feel like you are just assuming an impossible and nonexistent counterfactual.

Furthermore, in this case, we aren't talking about paying off the guy who set up the sewer system 100 years ago, we're talking about paying off the people who had a patent 7 years before you, and you decided to say "screw them" and use it anyways. As if Apple didn't know it was violating those patents? Come on. Why should companies be allowed to operate outside of the system we, as a society, set up?

Patents are a bit more nuanced than "touch screen on a phone."

Of course, the headline is misleading, as per usual...

From the article:

"By 2008, foreign currencies such as the U.S. dollar and the South African rand had become de facto currencies thanks to a booming black market. The following year, the government announced that it would officially allow businesses to use these currencies, effectively abandoning the Zimbabwean dollar.

The new agreement would add the yuan to the list of currencies used for public transactions, and the Zimbabwean government said it would encourage its use."

No, don't you get it? They clearly weren't giants if they couldn't do everything themselves, so it's okay if we don't do everything ourselves, not pay them, and make more money.

(obviously kidding)

I couldn't disagree with you more.

If you don't know HOW to build a multi-billion dollar product without stealing prior work that isn't yours, WHY should you be able to sledgehammer your way into lots of money by preventing somebody else from getting paid for what they did?

Furthermore, a current lack of sufficient resources to pursue an idea does not mean that you never intend to do anything with it. The poster seems to think that the arbitrary amount of "a few years" discredits any prior work, as if it doesn't take people much longer periods of time to get their life in order and bring their life's work and ideas to fruition.

I thought this was the one where they used that like $35 streaming software or whatever (I'm a finance guy, I know that probably sounds stupid) and were able to take over the controls, hence the landing?

>If a startup does not have money to pay employees then founders should raise more.

> then think this way: how that startup is going to attract talent from established companies (whose expertise are needed if that startup wants to become big).

THANK YOU so much for saying this

And how many heroes does the world revere for rising up and doing something about similar situations, even if it was in the past? There are a lot of people dealt very shitty cards. What this is trying to say is that, even in the most horrible of situations, people have found a way. You can too.

I think this is generally great advice, not just for raising scientists.