acconrad

We're not getting divorced as much because we haven't had a lot of time to be married. I know it accounts for that in the article but it just seems silly to declare us better at marriage when we've barely had time to know whether we should get a divorce (I'm on the older side of millennials too).

Prioritize the important stuff and delegate away the things you know you need to do but don't have time to (or are lower in priority).

No joke my first client was from a HackerNews "Who is Hiring" thread. I had been doing part-time freelancing while working a full-time job, and had enough of a portfolio that they took a chance on me. That was my first 5 months, and now I'm in month 11 with a 2nd major client that I got through my network of people in my local city.

No way! I went to grad school with Andy, he's a great guy, his channel is very good

1. The industry changes so much I can't really tell if/when my skills will be truly dated (I work in front-end web/UI)

2. Sales/marketing. I'm a consultant and I just want to code and have work, but all of this stuff is just such a constant drag on my time.

I remember ogling over the this and Dreamweaver and begging my parents to let me have a copy. It seemed like it could do everything at the time!

At this point (with cricket powders, et al) I think a big reason is because it's so dang expensive.

If crickets are touted as this miracle protein that are easy to farm, low impact on the environment, and are still considered to be undesirable, then why are these companies charging $35/lb for their protein powder when you can get whey or pea powder for $6-8/lb?

One of the few times Bettridge's Law of Headlines doesn't apply. "Survive" is an extreme word here, but I do see a big issue w/ index funds. Perhaps an unpopular opinion - but I believe index funds will be the next major bubble that cripples the financial system.

It's one massive way to persist the same inequality status quo. You know what made Bezos so rich in spite of a company that doesn't make much accounting sense? When everyone is betting on his success by blindly investing in index funds.

Bet on the winners (because they're in the S&P 500 or some total market fund), even if they aren't performing that well by their accounting metrics. Everyone will be so invested in propping up the largest companies (or at least the US/China economic moneymakers) that when a few big players seem to be doing something egregious, it will be a tsunami of sells as opposed to a small wave.

When everyone is playing and no one knows how to play (because why do I care what the market does? I just let the index fund manage for me), it just reminds me of the advice "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is". The current narrative is: you don't need to know how to invest (neither does your investment fund manager). Just bet on everything, and we'll all win. And by we, we mean the fat cats who are taking in that investment money you're giving us. You'll make a meager return, but we'll make oh so much more.

That's a very broad statement. Owning vs renting is dependent entirely on the local market. It hasn't been a good time to own in Detroit for a long time. It hasn't been a good time to rent in San Francisco in a long time.

I'm a competitive athlete (powerlifting) and I've been experimenting with a flexitarian-style diet where the vast majority of my calories are from plant-based foods but I "supplement" with sardines and eggs to fill in the deficiencies.

With vegan diets, the most commonly deficient nutrients are: protein, calcium, choline, selenium, vitamin B12, vitamin D, iron, and zinc.

2 cans of sardines can provide almost all of the vitamin D, selenium, and B12 you need in a day, and a majority of calcium and protein, with a serious dent in your choline RDA as well. Not only that, they are among the most sustainably-caught and lowest-mercury fish you can eat.

Add in 3 pasture-raised, farm-fresh eggs and you've hit your RDA for choline (via the yolks) and protein.

The rest of your nutrients can be covered with vegan foods...for the remaining common deficiencies, a few scoops of vegan pea protein to finish up your RDA for iron with that athlete boost I need of additional protein.

Sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, lentils, garbanzo beans, cashews, and quinoa are all excellent sources of protein and zinc.

You can bring in advisors - they have connections and can provide input without requiring they give you cash and in exchange they will take significantly less equity.

I'm not surprised. The default for starting a startup seems to be that you need VC funding because you need to monopolize as fast as possible and having extra cash will allow you to get there sooner than if you were to bootstrap.

What we're seeing is that growth is able to happen in spite of the frothy VC environment, not because of it. So if it is possible, then why would you have to seek funding? If you think getting VC money is good because you should get VC funding (or because getting some will get you press in TechCrunch) then you're thinking about it all wrong.

You should seek VC money if you need the money (with a very serious definition of "need"). If you don't, why would you:

* Have a boss (outside of your customers)

* Give up a board seat

* Give up control of your company (and possibly eventually a majority of that control)

If you need enough money that doing the above 3 things is less painful than basically your business dying, then yes, you should seek funding. Actually I want to emphasize the "less painful" part. Don't read this as "if your business will die otherwise, seek funding."

Sometimes you should let a business die. If family is important to you and raising VC money and working even harder to keep someone else happy will possibly end your marriage, and ending your marriage is more painful than keeping this startup alive, you should probably let the startup die.

And that's okay!

What matters is you seek VC money for a very specific reason, and it is vital for you and your business for the right reasons.

My relationship with money. I make more than like 98% of the population but my parents grew up middle/lower class so I'm just constantly worried about having enough for retirement, and having enough money for kids, and having enough money for their education, AND any possible illnesses/issues having seen families with health insurance crippled by things like cancer treatments. It seems like no matter what, I find myself cutting my own hair, using grocery bags for trash bags, and generally being a bit crazy in the frugal dept while also socking away 85% of my paycheck because it just feels like there is not enough.

I only started a few weeks ago so I'll let you know, but I can say so far I haven't been militant about using melatonin every day and already I'm still able to go to (and fall) asleep at the earlier time.

Yes, at a minimum because I'm not scrambling to get ready for work because I've already been up a few hours and have time to handle my own personal projects in the morning as opposed to in the evening when I'm too tired to make the effort.

Every day. Read the SlateStarCodex article for an explanation on why

This feels like this article was written in response to this article from Slate Star Codex since this also mentions DSPS:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-tha...

> I have it fairly bad. My body naturally wants to go to bed around 2 a.m. and rise around 10 a.m.

That was my cycle as well and I wouldn't describe it as "fairly bad" it's definitely later but not egregious.

The SSC article recommends .3mg melatonin 7 hours before desired sleep and it worked like a charm for me (along with rituals for earlier sleep and better sleep hygiene).

Within a few weeks I was going to bed at 10pm and naturally waking up at around 7am. Now I regularly operate on this schedule and I was kind of surprised at how quickly I was able to adjust.

I've always toyed with the idea of going to Burning Man but I'm turned off by how popular (read: the big, comfy trailers and the stratification of attendees) it has become. Is there a retreat that still is all about art / society-in-a-box?

Did you mean private?

So even if they are a market leader, give them more cash? I get why Uber does it because they have serious commoditized competition with Lyft, but Slack does not seem to have even a close 2nd place.

It's about time. Unfortunately not time for this audience...mostly. It mainly applies to low wage workers, though there is a loose garden clause as well as provisions for hourly workers (which I guess can include us contractors/freelancers).

It's a step in the right direction but falls flat in addressing the competition in high tech with SV...which sounds like exactly the sort of timely pandering a guy like Baker would do right before re-election season: let the working class know he's "got their back" while still keeping the people lining his pockets happy. For a guy who calls himself a Republican he's sure got a backwards idea of how free market competition works.

I'm new to venture deals (just read the book of the same name) and I have a question:

Slack seems to be in peacetime: aggressive growth, buying things like HipChat. If they're dominating the market, why would they need to raise money?

Inventory is up as well in many locations: https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/08/lawler-few-hot-ma...

Signs are pointing toward a correction in the home price insanity, hopefully this will make things more affordable for everyone.

How do you like that compared to something like Solidus?

https://github.com/solidusio/solidus

Do you know anyone who is in the e-commerce space for marijuana/e-cigs/adult? What are they using for payments?

It's the Magic Formula (EV/EBIT and ROIC) and it has not always performed well:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4116677-greenblatts-magic-w...

Yes, I agree! Metrics are extremely important in screening out for value stocks. What I'm saying simply is that there is no singular magical metric that can wipe out hours and hours of research. To simply list all stocks by EV/FCF ordered by cheapness will not automatically create a winning portfolio.

The same could be said for Facebook. What you're referring to is an irrational market responding to news and creating a sale on an asset. "Facebook on discount, buy now!" If you bought at the nadir of the $FB dip you'd already be up 7% right now.

Yes, those things do exist, that doesn't mean those companies are value stocks. Facebook is still trading at a P/E ratio of 28, and an EV/EBIT of 20, both of which are high. Was it a discount to it's current momentum? Yes. Was it a discount based on value? I'd say not.

I belong to a fair number of value investing forums and made money off of the strategy for a while. Here's why I think this no longer works in the traditional sense and what works now:

The rise of quants, ETFs, and instant information has largely arbitraged away value mispricings. So if it looks like a bargain, it's probably a value trap.

So where can you find value? Where the above things are not present. Quants work for big firms. Goldman Sachs can only make a dent if it does massive deals. As Buffett said, he could still do great things with $1mm AUM, but with billions, he can't make small plays anymore. So individuals can only find value where the big players (GC, ETFs) don't play. This means micro caps, foreign stocks (Japan comes to mind as a hot spot for value). The problem is two fold:

1. The above-mentioned pool is very small.

2. It's riskier.

So you have to do a ton of research to avoid the value trap mistake, often with way less information since these stocks aren't subject to the same 10K/10Q auditing that American stocks are.

Now you've researched something so much you're biased to believe it working since you've sunk so much time into it. And because you've sunk so much time you don't have the time to research the rest of the investment pool, so combined you see these value investors who are very concentrated in some highly-convicted bets. And thus, the ones that win, win big and can claim there is always value to be found even in a market dominated by momentum investing. The rest lose to value traps, and lose big.

So what's the takeaway? It still works. The low numbers in terms of P/E and P/B that are in books like The Intelligent Investor don't work. You have to relax those constraints quite a bit. And you can't be looking in the S&P 500.

I used to think I could do this as a hobby. And I did. But I think I got lucky based on the amount of time and research I did. To be demonstratively good at value investing time and time again requires robotic levels of dispassionate patience, and research that demands a full time job.

Note the restricted stock portion, you may not have received restricted stock as an early employee

I had to do something similar when I started my consulting business. I was very aggressive about finding work, and it breaks down like this, for every week day:

1. Reach out to 5 contacts in my network. Ask them if their company needs any contracting work. If they don't, can they recommend 3 people who might even remotely need it OR if they ever worked with consultants before and used a firm.

2. If there are leads, follow up with up with them (usually around 3) asap. Get to a conversation in person or over the phone.

3. If there are prospects, promise them a 24 hr turnaround on an estimate and get them a statement-of-work/proposal in that time. Building trust is about doing what you'll say. You'd be surprised at how many people will not follow through on super simple things like this.

4. If there are potential buyers, you should have put in your SoW/proposal that you'll check in within 48 hours. Make sure you check in! Do revisions, get on the phone, do whatever it takes to ensure that they feel special and valued and you want the business to be mutually beneficial.

I was able to close multiple six figure deals with this strategy.

In terms of the money part - stop charging an hourly rate. Do fixed price projects or charge by the week/month. Yeah, it still comes out to a "per hour" amount if you amortize over 40 hours in a week or 160 hours in a month, but sell on the intangible benefits. Your customers don't have to sweat phone calls any longer. And YOU don't have to worry about being on the clock all of the time. Focus on results instead of minutia in billing.

$200 is going to be tough to get with any regularity if you're brand new to consulting. Brennan Dunn is a great dude but in my experience the whole "double your rate" thing doesn't just come out of thin air when you already have a high starting point. Easy to do if you're doing commodity work like CMSs or basic data entry. Not so easy to do if you already have a high salary and you're in a specialization like mobile.

Start with $200. If you only get nos, drop it to $150 or $175. Drop until someone bites, but realize the more potential closes you have because you're reaching too high, the less time you'll spend earning a buck. You can always work up to that with every subsequent deal - maybe start at $125 or $150. Get cash coming in, and then continue to source deals for when this gig ends. Keep turning down folks that won't meet your STARTING_RATE * 1.1 to 1.25, or whatever. Easier to stay in business and keep the lights on that way than just start throwing out what is effectively $400k a year when no one knows who you are.

Thank you for the feedback! Do you have examples of screen caps you like? I had considered this but decided to take it out because of wanting to keep to the old school terminal aesthetic. Plus since I do a lot of programming, I figured linking to the site to see how it works might be more useful than simply a screen grab, since I'm not the one usually doing the design (which would make sense at that point).

User experience and performance go hand-in-hand. Users get frustrated if a site loads slowly or doesn't function. So I made sure to have a site that does those things (plus web performance is one of my specialties).