al3x

I'm BankSimple's CTO. To your points:

1. We're more than a "customer service wrapper". We don't license our technology or outsource our support staff to other banks. Banks are our partners, not our customers, and we only partner with a small number of banks who share our values and are willing to set aside things like fee revenue to work with us. We have a symbiotic relationship with those banking partners: we bring them deposits, and they make loans on those deposits and share the resulting interest margin with us. That is one of several sources of revenue for us, but not our sole source of revenue.

2. If customers like the way we help manage their money, we're able to connect them to a variety of financial products that are mutually beneficial to our customers, our banking partners, and to us. As above, our banking partners are happy because we're bringing them new customers for various financial products, many of which have a decent margin on them (CDs, for example). We share that margin with our partners, and that's another source of revenue.

Our business is all about aligning the interests of the banking industry with the interests of our customers. Where we can create that alignment, we profit.

I'm the CTO of BankSimple. I can confidently say that there's nothing fundamentally broken about the concept or company. BankSimple wasn't the right place for Dave, but he's a brilliant programmer – seriously, one of the best I've ever worked with – who will end up doing great things no matter where he ends up. I'm really grateful that we got a chance to work with him.

To be clear: this is not the easiest business in the world to start, particularly given the slow-moving pace of the banking industry, regulatory burdens, etc. But we've been making substantial progress, and we have a growing team who do fantastic work.

You are, of course, free to be skeptical of how I present the state of our company because it's in my best interest to put a positive spin on things. That said, it's also in my best interest to be open, because we know that many of our early (potential) customers are coming from communities like this one, and building trust is critical for our success.

It depends on who you work for. If you work with us at BankSimple, you'd make the same as if you worked in our Brooklyn or SF offices. Normalizing salaries across our three locations is the only fair thing to do, regardless of the fact that we think talented developers are worth a premium.

I'm disappointed that this has gotten so many upvotes and positive comments.

There's a middle ground between web application "lifestyle businesses" (like duping credulous customers into overpaying for a time-tracking tool styled with this month's CSS trends) and trying to start the next Facebook.

There's nothing wrong with being a small software company. People have been doing it for decades now. It's boring, but there's nothing wrong with it. Don't expect anyone to celebrate you for doing it, though.

Our time on this earth is limited, and people's attention is even more limited. No wonder that more time and attention is put towards trying to execute on big ideas. Sometimes those ideas end up not working out, but we're all better, I think, for someone having tried.

As pg points out, the ideas that led to the businesses that have formed the infrastructure that enables web lifestyle businesses could not have, themselves, been lifestyle businesses. Someone has to think big, take risks, and deploy significant capital in the interest of a dramatically better world. If you don't want to be that person, great, but don't tell the risk-takers that they're "wasting their lives". Would you say the same to scientists who take big risks? Artists?

The media packaging of technology entrepreneurship is undeniably offputting. But that's no excuse for dim commentary like this.

Are you serious?

The victim in this scenario is handing their credit card to the attacker. That's game over. It doesn't matter whether the attacker has a Square, a VeriFone device, or a piece of paper for writing down the card number. If you hand your credit card to someone malicious, they can figure out how to do bad things with it.

I'm a big fan of Square, but it's important to remember that their solution doesn't remove the traditional risks of credit card usage. But then, there isn't yet a widely-deployed, field-tested alternative, at least in the US. The advent of NFC payments may put reasonable crypto in the POS flow, but I'm sure it's matter of time before side-channel attacks are discovered in the burgeoning NFC solutions.

Security is hard. But VeriFone isn't talking about security. They're using security as an anti-competitive stalking horse, and that's a disgusting way to do business.

Wow. I don't know how our team ever got anything done without this.

This is from 2009. Scala has only improved since then, although it's still not a "mainstream" programming language by any stretch. You can talk to a crowded room of programmers who either haven't heard of Scala, or have heard of it only in passing and don't really know what it's about. That's fine.

Programmers who are interested in learning and growing will always be attracted to new languages and technologies. What's interesting about Scala is that it's not solely academic. You can learn and do useful things with it at the same time. Later, when you've learned more, you can go back and improve your old code for added beauty and performance. That's a fun process, I think.

A good relationship will help you through the stress of a startup.

A bad one will make it much, much worse.

Either way, it's out of your control. If you're in love, you're in love. Make the most of it.

I try to do http://www.natural-stress-relief.com/ meditation at least once a day. When I make the time, it hugely improves my focus, productivity, and general mood.

Yes, that site is sketchy as anything. But the technique works.

I found it funny that the author quoted the bit in the Zadie Smith piece about the absurdity of the Facebook format right before you reach the end of his post, complete with tags and permalinks.

I'm not a Facebook fan, but I don't know that is does worse than most technology at being humane.

It's not a new trend. I haven't allowed comments on my blog for years. I want people to post thoughtful responses on their own turf. If someones care enough, they can respond on their own blog.

I genuinely enjoyed this comment. Really. It's probably the most passionate response I've received.

I was going to argue with you point-by-point, particularly about your false claim that I didn't include any examples (which another commenter addressed, and you acknowledged). At the end of it all, after a lot of flailing, I think this is really your thesis:

"Software is a constant process of settling for mediocrity."

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree there. If that's how you approach what you do, then I understand your position. If that's your approach, then sure, AIR is a reasonable choice. That isn't my approach, and I think it's also not the approach of the people who, much to your befuddlement, keep upvoting this story and tweeting positively about the post.

We're using a bit of Ruby, but not C, and mostly Scala and Clojure. Either way, I think reliability is a process thing, not a technology thing.

Nope.

You can dismiss the "verbal minority", or you could treat them as leading indicators. Personally, I'll err on the side of building something that's up to my standards rather than seeing if I can get away with mediocrity.

It's entirely possible to focus on both stability and, say, a quality desktop application. If you're under-resourced to accomplish both goals, maybe you didn't plan correctly.

Examples? I've seen okay looking GTK and QT apps running under a specific OS or distribution, but usually when you try to run them on a different OS they fall apart.

This quote from the post says it all: "I actually haven’t finished the book yet – I’m at the end of the first chapter".

It's great that the author is learning a new language, but maybe wait until you've actually done something with it or at least finished the book to write about it? First impressions don't mean much.

That's probably the coolest coding project I've heard about in years. Please do share.

I'm kind of surprised that this conversation is solely about founders (well, and which Porsche to buy). There's only a few founders out there, and a lot more regular ol' employees.

Here's the thing about the scenario in this post: the founders and investors that are swinging for the fences and taking big risks probably have their nest eggs in place. But what about their employees? A modest exit could mean security for them. That exit may not cement the founder's "legacy", but it might give a few, a dozen, or even a big group of people a stable financial footing for the first time in their lives. What's more important? What has the most utility? I'm honestly not sure.

Having been an employee in that scenario and now a founder, I can see both sides. Personally, I'm glad to see more investors making sure that early employees get an opportunity to get a bit liquid if their founder bosses decide to shirk acquisition offers and spin the wheel of IPO fortune.

Ping me. al3x@al3x.net

I met my wife on OkCupid. We weren't a highly-rated match (70-something percent, IIRC), and I was a bit outside the geographic area she was looking in. But we got to talking on the site, based in part on shared musical interests, and here we are.

I think the lesson is: OkCupid is great, but don't assume that their system is going to do all the work for you. Most of the people I was better matched with, according to the site, weren't in the least bit interesting to me.

You might want to back up "competing just fine" with something.

Numbers on Compete (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/foursquare.com+gowalla.com/) suggest that Foursquare is pushing quite a bit more traffic than Gowalla, at least on the web. Most reports suggest that Foursquare is also beating out Gowalla in terms of users.

(Full disclosure: I have friends at Foursquare, Gowalla, and on the Lift project. I don't really care about any one of them "winning", I just like facts.)

Thank you. I've never understood why Scribd exists at all. The web has done fine at moving documents around before Scribd, and it'll keep doing it fine long after they disappear.

There are people who like a "fun" office culture, and there are people who don't. What these companies are doing is creating workforces that are, in part, self-selecting.

I have my opinions about the value of workplace wackiness, but it gets the hires in the door. The question is, are those the right hires?

Features like invokeDynamic don't impact Java developers much day-to-day, but they should make JVM languages like JRuby and Scala faster.

Most coffee shops fail at their primary function: serving a quality cup of coffee.

In years and years of being cafe-obsessed, I've never seen shop fail that went the extra mile with their drinks, whether by roasting their own beans, training their baristas to competitive levels, or simply buying good beans, milk, and machines.

I read this article some time ago, and didn't see the obsession with coffee shine through. Without that passion, a cafe will be replaced by the next hip or quaint establishment that pops up to cater to idling customers.

It may be repetitive, but so were the many books and articles about that recent stock market crashes and housing crises. These things matter to a lot of regular people, and by extension they should matter to entrepreneurs.

There's opportunity here.

First off, I work from a coworking space that's a five minute walk from where I live, so I don't have a commute.

Secondly, 90 minutes is probably on the high end for a workout for me. If I'm pressed for time, it's closer to an hour.

Also, I don't know that I always work 9 hours a day. Realistically, I probably work a normal 8. I also often eat lunch at my desk, which shaves off half an hour from your estimated eating time.

As for chores: I pay someone to clean my apartment. I'd rather spend the time on other things.

I don't watch much TV. I also don't spend a lot of time hanging out with friends during the week. My wife and I don't have kids yet, so "family time" often consists of her and I reading or watching a movie together.

I'm sure it'll be harder to stick to this schedule when some of the above changes.

Here's where I get 90 minutes: stretches, about 30 minutes on an elliptical, another 25 on an exercise bike, then weights, then crunches, then stretches. I mean 90 minutes for the entire gym-going process, not like 90 minutes of flat-out cardio or heavy-duty lifting. That would indeed be ridiculous for someone who isn't a professional athlete. Like I said, that routine works for me; it's what I need to feel like I got a good workout. But I also want to try other techniques. Part of the appeal of CrossFit is that you get a "better" workout in a shorter period of time.

You can find sources that say dropping carbs is bad idea, and you can find sources that say dropping carbs is a great idea. Again: it's what works for me. I'll still eat some whole grains and other "good" carbs.

If you noticed, the bit about the German/English heritage ended in a joke, suggesting that I was exaggerating a bit there. But since you bring it up: yes, I've seen plenty of portly English and German folks, and also some quite fit ones. Like you say, it's all about diet, and that's why I'm being careful about mine.

I probably should have put massage in there. I don't get massages regularly, but man do I ever feel better when I do. Good suggestion.