arjunvpaul

Ayurveda. Come to Kerala, India. I am only writing this because I would do it myself if I were in that situation. Not based on scientific evidence. Just a few personal observations of close relatives like my mother and aunt.

My aunt had a spinal injury that basically left her not able to move her body below the waist. As a last resort she was taken to a Ayurveda practitioner who bascially fixed her back up. She even goes fo zumba lessons now.

You basically have to give up everything else for several months and go through painful therapy and massages and also follow a strict terrible tasting diet.

Unless you have some kinda smoking gun, dont act on this. Move on.

If stealing your customers is as simple finding out who they are and reaching out to them, then you dont have a sustainable business model.

Focus on building your business. Get back to work.

Do whats good for your career and what makes you happy. Because if its not good for your career and you are not happy, everybody loses (company 1, company 2 & you)

A WhatsApp group for family members. I use it for the use-case you mentioned. If you have any Indian friends, just ask them to show you their "family group". chances are they might have one and use it too :-).

Yes, I have. I am sure there are a lot of flaws in my method so take everything with a pinch of statistical salt.

I wanted to test the appetite for retail stores for an application that enables them to sell online, via Chat apps like Facebook Messenger.

Here are the steps I followed. Step1: Put together a couple of videos in Keynote - https://goo.gl/iHzhDg - https://goo.gl/HL847L

Step2: Put it on my phone VLC player

Step3: Walked door-to-door "selling" it. Basically, walk in to a store and say something along the lines of "I am this awesome person who is helping a few businesses sell online via Facebook Messenger. While I cannot show you all the details yet, here's a peek at the product (use the videos to explain a couple of use cases). Would this be something you would pay $XX/month for, to be a part of? If you are interested give me your phone number, I can call you when I let my next batch of customers in"

Step 4: Out of 20 stores I approached, 12 or 13 said they would pay. (If they are asking questions about your product andhow much it costs, that itself is a huge win.) I then discounted that by 80% to predict that even if only 1/5th of the stores that said they would pay, actually paid, i would have got at least 2 paying customers if I had a real product that day.

It actually took me a year from that point, but I am "piloting" with my first customers (1 from that intial walk-in) this week. This what eventually the product looks like. https://goo.gl/ShkkWr

In my opinion, you should definitely sell your product before you start coding. It will not only build a customer base, but tell you IF there is a customer base and make the product you eventually build, better.

If you do it with a video like me, Its OK to fake a few details to make it seem as real as possible. Trust me, its better to rot in hell for "lying" to a potential customer, than explaining to your wife why you spend the savings on building something, nobody wants!

the intent was not to make you feel foolish.

Maybe its a good thing you feel embarrassed. It probably means that you haven't released late. Listen to Episode 4 of Reid Hoffman's Podcast Masters of Scale. "So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company". Forge Ahead!

Not sure if the real source can be traced. Birbal lived in the 1500's and I have heard another version atributed to another court jester called Tenali Raman who lived in the same century.

Agree on all points there - slick service, award winning, very well thought out and designed. They even tout Typeform on their website for payment purposes. But to me personally (and my thesis is, to most folks), it does not "appear" secure.

The beef is not technical, its just appearances. Using Typeform to get Credit Card information is like casting Kevin Spacey in Denzel's place in John Q. Both great actors. Spacey might even integrate with over 500+ apps soon. But who would you trust with your kid?

The way typeform has been employed here does not give the impression of security. In fact, the current impression is that your credit card numbers are been given the same level of security as your 10 was given when you answered "How would you rate our Pizza on a scale of 1 to 10?" at your local Italian joints website.

And that little sign "Secured by Stripe" is like displaying a footnote, in each scene of the Spacey version of John Q, saying "Trust this guy".

Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202).

Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost his wedding ring in a dark alley a short ways away.

Birbal is confused and asks him why he wasn’t looking in the alley, and in the street instead. Get this. The guy replies that he’s looking under the streetlamp because there’s more light there.

Moral of the story: dont ask on HN, go ask the folks who dropped off.

Here's a suggestion on how you could do it. Take a look at Tumblr or Intercom and see how they collect an email first and then ask for a password and eventually more information. Collect an email address just before anyone clicks get started. So that you have a way to reach them in case they dropped off and helps you figure out at what point folks are dropping of

(My thesis: Your shady credit card collection process is the culprit. Typeform doesn't seem to fit your story of helping folks be more professional. If you are a professional trying to help freelancers be more professional, you should be using something more professional)

Sorry, if you felt, I called you a fool. Perhaps reading the story and learning who the 10th fool is would make you feel better. :-)

A bit too difficult to digest, I know. Would lab grown human meat have any other "applications"?

“Certain species of flatworm have been gradually taught to run a maze. If you grind them up and feed them to a second batch of flatworms, the second batch can run the maze on the first try.” — Peter O’Toole, Phantoms (1998)

There have been successful experiments to show that some animals may be able to acquire knowledge (memory transfer) through cannibalism. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/06/memory-transfer.aspx

You know, eat a cube of Steve Jobs to see calligraphy in a new light.

How fitting that it took the longest article that TIME has ever published to explain this. Here is a link https://goo.gl/SAqq6F (the original is behind a paywall).

If the only thing you learn is about the term "Chargemaster", then you are half way there in understanding this scam. I personally think YC should have a Call for Proposals just to disrupt the Chargemaster.

Journalist and author, Steven Brill won the Sidney award for this work https://goo.gl/StZXGA . He also later wrote a book on this called America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System . Amazon link here https://goo.gl/r2yk6A .

So its probably really hot there now. One thing you could do if space allows it, is to plant the right type of trees in a formation like this https://goo.gl/nChH4r in the east-west direction. This way, only the mid-day sun will directly hit your house. This reduces load on your HVAC system from unnecessarily being used.

For the right type of trees (grows fast, doesn't shed too much and doesn't fall over in a strong breeze etc), ask advice from a landscaper in yelp/craigslist. The garden section at some Home Depots might help you out.

More tips can be learned from just googling and learning about Passive Cooling techniques.

Where do you live? Not to come raid your fridge, just to see if Its heating or cooling that you use. There are several passive heating/cooling techniques you could use.

If, as you say the problem arose "lately", it is probably your HVAC being over extended. For starters, buy one of these babies https://goo.gl/4YFNZt (you could return it afterwards :-) and take some images of all the rooms from inside and also from outside the house. It will basically show you if heat/cool is leaking from your house.

Follow it up with educating yourself using something like this provided by your local energy company https://goo.gl/HzY3QZ OR start with a simple checklist like this https://goo.gl/wx55iC and make sure all the bases are covered.

If you want to do spend a little and do a more professional job, get one of such guys in your area to come do an energy audit of the house https://goo.gl/mTmAeg .

Aren't you curious to see how ridiculous you could look asking "Are you not entertained?!" in a Roman colosseum?

How about a fun app that lets you take famous clips from Movies and overlay your face on it. Kinda like Face Swap for video.

A blind interview application to avoid bias. With a combination of Face Tracking and Voice Modulation (see: https://www.voicemod.net), one could now have a Interviewer avatar interviewing an Interviewee avatar.

An application that could SIGNIFICANTLY reduce returns for online clothing retailers.

About 70% of garment returns are because the clothes didn’t fit as the customer expected or hoped (Source: https://goo.gl/djcgUx)

The iphoneX basically has a Kinect stuffed into it now. One could now take a high quality 3D image of themselves, store it on their profile and be shown ONLY clothes, shoes, sunglasses, gloves etc that fit them while shopping online.

Now, before you say fit is not al about having a nice 3D image. For a retailer like Asos (www.asos.com), a 1 percent fall in returns would immediately add 10 million pounds ($16 million) to the company’s bottom line. (Source: Quote from ASOS CEO Nick Robertson). How about em apples?

One thing I personally looked for is the tenure of senior folks at the companies I used to work at. It is a better indicator of whether it is worth your while staying at a company. As corny as it sounds, money isn't everything. And tenure is a great indicator of "everything considered, is this a good place to invest my working years?"

But I see that you have an immediate need. philosophical and theoretical answers won't help you :-) .

- One useful source I found was http://h1bdata.info/index.php . If your company hires H1B's then this source is gold. - Look at job postings your company does and have a friend who would fit the profile call them and ask for a salary range for that position. - One thing I have found effective is actually asking the "seniors, experts, leads, managers" the question you want answered.

Why does it annoy you? Are you concerned that you may not get a fair deal? Less happy that colleagues at the same job level may be getting paid more or less?

To get a balanced perspective it would useful to read up on both sides of the approach. For example, on one end you have Google's Laszlo Bock arguing in his book Work Rules, that its good that Google "pays unfairly" (https://goo.gl/3hWbQw). On the other end, are the Scandinavian countries like Norway where you can walk into a tax office and see anyone's tax return (https://goo.gl/P5WqW1)

Ricardo Perez-Truglia (https://goo.gl/4DemkS) is someone whose research touches this topic. His findings are briefly mentioned in this video (https://goo.gl/m7ECXM)

If you build it they WONT come. If they did, then the failure rate of startups won't be above 90%.

Do your homework (both primary and secondary research). You have nothing to lose by spending a few days analyzing the opportunity.

- For a project that had to do with shipping labels, used UPS's , Fedex's Annual reports to estimate the potential number of customers who would prefer that kind of shipping. So looking at annual reports of listed companies that are in the same (or similar) business would be useful.

- Looked at platforms like Fiverr, Upwork etc. and scrape their job boards and analyzed for words that would describe what you are gonna build. Reach out to those customers who listed those jobs and freelancers who did similar jobs. you will learn a st ton.

For a project involving selling via messengers used - Facebook's and WhatsApp announcements page on their blog. - Popular Newspaper articles about digital advertising (that quoted sources) Sometimes, you can google things and when you find the news articles, they might indicate the source. For example "John Doe, an analyst with Analysis Paralysis Inc, estimates there are 3433 cows who eat ketchup in the West Virginia" . You can then google that company and find useful stuff on their blog or even buy the report from them.

- For a project that involved selling fasteners to fix ceiling panels, estimated the number required by looking at US Census Bureau data on housing square footage.

- You can also use google surveys to ask questions to the target market (the used to allow you to do free surveys). Yes they might ask for a faster horse. But you will get the insight that "speed is a need". So if you do a good job asking the right questions and interpreting the answers, you will get a fair idea of the opportunity.

Maybe you could post here what exactly you wanna know, there would be folks here who would know the answer.

Don't worry about folks "stealing" your idea. If you are worried about it, go spend 2 dollars on a lottery ticket. The chances are more that you would win the lottery.

You can still monetize it right? Look at what happened so far as a market validation and build a "better" paid variation of it that includes support and maintenance. Wouldn't that be possible?

Could learn from the Pharma industry where they use techniques like changing the formulation or introducing a new drug administration route to "renew" the patent.

Instead of debating it, if it were me, I would just give a people a reason to pay and see if it works.

You could have the same product presented as: Lil Papa "recommend for individual use" - FREE/DONATE Fat Papa "recommended for business use" - 1 MILLION/month (the same thing but we send you one emoji a month and give you a proper invoice)

Looks like you already have people trying to pay you and they could easily do it if there was invoiced paid option.

If folks can make money off of "Laundry Balls" there is no reason you shouldn't off of work like papaparse.

Have you heard the parable of 2 Johnnys?

Johnny McDumbpants. Who drew on years of knowledge formulating super absorbent materials to develop special diapers for the wild Javan Rhinos.

He was 90 days away from his launching his product, when he opened Rhino Magazine to see a grinning Bill Dumb-but-Fastpants featured on the cover. Beside him was a sexy Rhino wearing an “almost identical” diaper!

Johnny then wore one of his own diapers, and then Johnny shot himself. Very sad.

His gravestone read: “Here lies Johnny who was dumb enough to develop a product for a miniscule market. A simple Google search could have shown him that there were probably only 63 Rhinos left in the wild. He did it because he could. He also shot himself because he could.”

The other, Johnny McSmartpants was inspired by diapers. But he hired Jennifer Aniston for an edgy photoshoot wearing (only) them and eating from a skinny tube of baby formula. He cleverly called it Jenniferelac – The secret of Being Jennifer and marketed it to Soccer Moms and Lady Millenials.

Elated after making a zillion dollars, he went and bought himself a Ferrari but then hit a tree and bled to death because he was too fat to wear a seat belt.

His gravestone read: “Here lies Johnny who knew people believed Jennifer Aniston. He once identified a large untapped demographic, repurposed an existing product and cleverly marketed it to the right audience. He did it because he didn’t know shit about super absorption.”

Moral of the story: Everybody dies in the end, but in a large enough market, competition is not what a startup needs to worry about. Find Product Market fit.

References: - https://goo.gl/2ZKjVL - https://goo.gl/G136qs

Had the same idea :-). To revive freight tunnels. With the advancements in self driving tech and tunneling tech this would seem feasible.

Amazon could finance them and then rent capacity it out to other companies.

A pilot perhaps in Chicago by reviving the old freights tunnels - https://goo.gl/ErJQFx

The Swiss were/are considering them too - https://goo.gl/PNMRrE

Too many Kids and Pets die of heatstroke every year after being left in vehicles - https://goo.gl/FFDbEr

How about an internet connected Amazon Echo like device that with camera and vision analysis https://goo.gl/SoUzEi . It can basically learn to - subtract the vehicle https://goo.gl/x4uKVU - sense when temperatures are at dangerous levels - Take a picture and send it to certain pre determined phones alerting the owners that a kid or pet might be in the car.

Maybe we can even wire the car to switch on air conditioning till help arrives, alert local authorities to go check on the car etc.

Another way to have an API that would let sites like reddit, hacker news, you tube have a live feed of "potential kid in hot car" images that could crowd source a second level of human verification.

I am not entirely sure but there maybe some truth to the suggestion that animals can sense earth quakes in advance - https://goo.gl/j4sLFw - https://goo.gl/YrSzJm

How about a pet owner data collective that predicts earthquakes? It would work by having some sort of Fitbit accessory for our pets which would collect and share their electrical signals via an app. Machine learning could then correlate these signals with actual earthquake activity and learn how to predict quakes (or if we would be able to predict them). Maybe just in time before the next big one hits the Bay Area :-) .

There might be a way to meet both your needs. If you are satisfied with everything else, there is no harm in letting the hiring process go ahead. Ask the employer to send you the offer letter but don't sign anything yet.

Once you have the offer letter in hand, CONSULT A LAWYER on your own dime to prepare the following. (Even if the employer's lawyers prepared the agreement and modified clerky agreements, you would have to get your own lawyer to review any agreement before you sign them)

Step 1: Write down your verbal agreement in an email. For example: "Thank you for the offer letter. I would like to take this opportunity to document in writing what we discussed over the phone. Specifically, -- As part of my employment agreement, you will provide me with a blue pony within 2 business days of my landing in SFO. -- Within 90 days, You will also provide me with a visa and bear all costs for the same. If this is also your understanding of our discussion. Please send me an email back specifically stating that."

Step 2: -- Strike out any clause in the standard agreement that says that there shall be no other verbal or written agreements (your lawyer can help identify these sneaky clauses). Initial all pages. Sign it. -- Attach and Send it back to him/her. -- Ask him to make 2 copies of that set, initial all pages AND any struck-out clauses and send one copy back to you.

This way he/she gets to use Clerky and you get a good written documentation any agreement.

If he refuses to do that. Don't take the job.

NOTE OF CAUTION: Its not up to your employer to give you a green card or a visa. The US Government has to give you one. Your employer will have to pay "thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer" to a visa or green card anyway.

I started at this corporate in Liechtenstein, fresh off my MBA. But, realized a year in, that I would not be a good culture fit.

Let my manager know, beginning of the 2nd year that I would like to transition out and my reasons for leaving. One thing the manager made me clarify is that if I was going to be working for competition. In that case, he felt it wouldn't be wise to have an extended transition. (I was not and considering starting my own startup)

He let me keep my sign on bonus (clue: enough to buy a model-3 Tesla) that I was supposed to pay back if I left before end of 3 years and I agreed to stay until end of 2nd year so that we could have a smooth transition and handover.

The departure was only announced to the wider team, 2 months prior to actual departure.

Allowed the company to have a non-disruptive transition, know exactly why someone was leaving (not some bulls*t reasons) and me to validate and get started on my company right after I left.

Of course, I had a going away party and the good folks even pooled some Swiss francs to put towards my startup too :-).

Thanks for the pointer about meetup.com . seems to be very active in Bangalore. Could be helpful to make fundraising connections too. Signed up for an event too! thanks!

awesome! thats a great idea to use linkedin premium to find folks closer to home.

If are really curious, I would be glad to explain on a call on how a customer finds us, how a sale happens and money is collected.

don't wanna post exactly how that is done publicly (yet)

Thanks for pointing that out. I actually do have only multiple monitors. (not machines)