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Probably similar to a software consulting firm, but yeah different than a software product/service company.

It's been many years since I've run my own mail server, but especially if you are running your mail server on a public cloud, you should make sure you aren't on any blacklists like Spamhaus: https://www.spamhaus.org/lookup/

EDIT: Looks like this is one of the things https://glockapps.com/ checks.

A home is no different from a car in that it also depreciates, things break, needs to be maintained, repaired, etc.

The only real difference is that in major populated areas, the land it sits on tends to be rare and valuable, which allows its value to keep up with or even exceed the rate of inflation.

> but I don't think it really was elevated to the collective conscious because of that.

It was elevated because of the massive PR push by Theranos itself. I never even heard of Theranos until they did a massive PR push in 2013 or 2014. That, combined with the fact the company is valued at $9 billion, apparently has no actual working product and numerious other interesting facts about the company including it's well-connected-to-Gov (and large) [former?] Board of Directors, co-founder who committed suicide, at least two-large corporate partnerships that blew up (Safeway, Walgreens), etc., etc.

That's all standard stuff. If I was at a company for 11 years, I'd sure as hell want to cash out. Whether their offer is a good price or not, who knows.

You are talking about fraud (I'm assuming wire fraud, chargebacks, stolen accounts, etc.) which I would put in a different category of risk for a financial institution than money laundering. These activities would lead to direct losses, whereas money laundering would not.

I assume allowing laundered money through your institution is of less concern, since it would not lead to a direct loss to the institution. This is assuming you are not knowingly allowing the laundering to occur and you are following all AML and KYC regulations meant to prevent money laundering. If these standards are not met, it may lead to fines and having regulators watch your institution more closely.

Defending yourself in case someone breaks into your home - far more likely in an urban area than rural.

> solely to make money is not optimal for the public good.

Is there any example where the sole pursuit of money is ever optimal for the public good? Or even that individual?

Pivoting? Adding Ethereum as another asset on their exchange is not pivoting.

> Am I just too lazy to make things npm modules, or is there something larger at play here?

Yes. If you want to re-use your JavaScript, build small CommonJS modules. ES6 modules are here, but the loading part is still TBD.

Use Browserify or Webpack to package up the modules if you want to use them in the browser.

I think you're right, but there are plenty of companies (especially startups with new founders/inexperienced engineers/no engineers) that could use some help with running a software team. It's definitely doable.

Try contracting.

> 1) make tickets non-transferrable (but refundable)

This is apparently what Louis CK is doing for his latest tour. I ordered tickets and I have to pick them up from the box office with ID starting 1 hour before show starts. Or I can request a refund.

Although, the article mentions "family" making 150k-250k. So this implies two incomes, so each person making 75k-125k, which seems like a more accurate reflection of middle class in SV.

Yeah, I think this is a bit exaggerated. Housing is a lot more expensive in Palo Alto/Silicon Valley than the rest of the US - but not that much.

That may be standard, I'm not really sure, just remember everything is negotiable.

It's common for companies to have a 90-day window to exercise your options after leaving the company. There are some friendlier companies with longer exercise windows. See: https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise-windows

Thanks for clarifying that - I remember hearing about the project a while ago. I looked at the most recent documentation and it did seem more like a P2P network, although I just assumed there was also some concept of decentralized DNS within the project as well.

Can you expand on that? How would one be able to render the equity worthless?

My best understanding of a typical "right of first refusal" clause is that it gives the company the right to match any offer by a third-party buyer.

This would add some friction to the transaction, in that the company could have some specified period to consider the offer, leaving the pending transaction with a third-party buyer in limbo (or discourage the third-party from even considering the transaction). But if the company refuses to buy back the stock at the terms of the third-party offer or the period of time for the company to consider the offer expires, then you could go ahead with the sale to the third-party.

Related:

* Namecoin https://namecoin.info/

* cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

I think I know which articles you are referring to, and I think the cited figure in those articles of 250k were BS. The real salary I believe was a base of 120k + estimated value of stock options (probably inflated) + benefits.

Just curious, where are you located? I'm from the midwest and my experience was similar to yours where most people were hostile to the idea of starting a business. Complete opposite experience in Silicon Valley though.

Yahoo has basically 3 things that are still valuable and are actually pretty good: Sports, Finance, Mail. I occasionally use Yahoo Finance myself.

Much of the advice around startups is actually centered around the idea of "fooling yourself" or "faking it 'til you make it" or other strategies of positive thinking. Working on a startup is a rollercoaster of emotions and using these strategies can be helpful. Real wisdom may be found in knowing when to fool (lie to) yourself and when not to.

There's no argument here for not relocating to an even less expensive geography than the one you've mentioned here.

Anyone else wondering why the author was concerned about a random person not being able to activate an account using a random name with their email?

just watched it... no.

What is the incentive for Facebook to add encryption here to WhatsApp? Don't they want to mine every piece of data about every person that they can? I can't imagine there is that much customer demand?

Pretty good advice so far regarding working arrangements. After pursuing a startup idea for 3+ years and having it not work out, I would also encourage you to question why it is that you need 6 months before getting an initial customer. Learn quickly and fail as fast as possible.

1) Can you pitch your idea to customers first to gauge their interest, get initial feedback before building?

2) Can you presell customers, get something like a letter of intent signed?

Misleading article: This was a business plan competition. Details are not immediately clear: http://www.itcsz.cn/