dm8

I work at an ad-tech startup, and I hear you. Ad-tech has lot of rotten apples. Advertising done right (aka unobtrusive, privacy conscious, and value additive) is a great for free information exchange. Bad ad is always bad, but ad may not always be bad.

There are lot of people working on it (including my startup) to solve the problem that are fraught with ad-tech in general and we are making progress but there is lot of inertia in the industry when it comes to change.

He got the gene editing part right. The CRISPR/CAS9 are proving that

This is good intiative. We need to simplify pedagogy.

On a related note, I always found the syntax of SQL to be great. Someone told me that simplicity of SQL made relational databases even more popular. It is one of the best designed language where even someone new to the field won't feel intimidated. I'm surprised designers of SQL haven't won the Turing Award yet.

Looks like author is focusing on grad school as in PhD only. PhD highly depends on the field. For example in hardcore sciences, to accelerate career PhD is often helpful. However, in applied fields it depends on industry to industry.

I was doing my masters with focus on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I was considering PhD but after talking with academic advisor, I realized having PhD will limit my options to either research labs or academia, for which jobs are few and far between. For industry jobs, I felt I didn't need PhD. Yes, you might be few steps below in the ladder but you can quickly catch-up as you climb.

So everyone should seriously consider where they want to end up. If research is something they fancy and their field has ample research opportunities or can be leg up in the industry with PhD then PhD is a great option given the opportunity costs.

There was an interesting thread on reddit where people were sharing their experiences with DNA tests and their parentage/ancestry. I was surprised with sheer number of them being listed/shared there. I never considered DNA tests will have such a weird side effects. It's a fascinating to see how much science or scientific tests in future can lead to weird results (not that I'm condoning cheating or anything) -

Thread for the interested - https://np.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/7mu9zn/there...

EDIT: And every now and then you see these threads - https://np.reddit.com/r/23andme/comments/8iq8hu/my_parents_a...

More meta questions - will DNA testing result in fidelity of relationships or some sort of regulation where you are not allowed to tell these uncomfortable truths?

Regardless, I'm fascinated by DNA and how much it can reveal about ourselves. Not to mention emerging trends like CRISPR.

Lyft used to do something similar couple of years ago (at least in Bay Area) in Lyft Line. I believe they had 10 min wait option wherein when you request and wait for 10 mins you'll get cheaper fare. I remember getting 10-20% cheaper fares consistently using that option. I'd regularly take 10 min wait option especially going to east bay or peninsula from SF.

Uber also has "express pool" option (again in bay area), wherein you have to wait for 2 mins to get matched.

As a rider, these options are great. However, not sure if it's profitable for these companies. I guess with higher rider/driver density, they can make it work?

Yes, even I use random forest for some of the predictions at my new project. Somehow I feel doing statistical modeling for the sake of modeling/predictions is not the right approach. I'm still new (year or two exp.) into ML/statistical modeling so I'm much more conservative in my approach.

I don't think any ML models can take into consideration the meltdown like Brazil vs. Germany in 2014 or player getting sent-off and changing the dynamics of the game. Football/soccer (along with field hockey) is much more unpredictable than any other team sport.

Can they appeal the case in higher courts?

Internet disrupted the newspaper industry. Decentralization of information happened with Internet and need for centralized information sources (newspapers, TV networks etc.) has lost it's value.

Secondly, newspapers didn't transform themselves (especially their biz models) for new medium. I work in monetization tools and trust me how frustrating it is to work with media companies (especially newspapers). They need strong CTOs/technical leaders to take right technical decisions and even if we suggest some right way of doing something technically we get ignored since they are all ignoring long terms gains for short term revenues. Invariably, they will sacrifice user experience for short term revenue.

I have sympathy for them and I genuinely believe we need strong journalism especially on local level where we need more accountability and oversight. However, I believe missed the boat on digital transformation and now PE/hedge funds are their to extract whatever they can get.

I think your parent poster was stposting. I doubt Ola will allow cash payments in Aus. In India lot of people carry cash hence they allow cash payments from what I've heard.

This forum is not like reddit for snarky/sarcastic comments. OLA folks are smart enough to cater to each individual local market. And all the drivers will be from local cities there.

I agree that it's difficult to know exact numbers at the seeds stage, but it's good to do some sort of exercise on user/customer acquisition costs, expected margins (particularly important in case of h/w products or online-offline work startups) etc.. It will help - 1. to know how long will this money last 2. can you build good business (even though it may not be profitable) before next round of financing.

And founders who do this exercise really set themselves apart as they know their business and gives strong signal to investors. Moreover, investors that I've spoken to often talk that they fund startups not only based on growth, or existing business but also ability to raise next round.

I'd like to add two more points - unit economics, and bottoms up market analysis. And these are helpful to founders, these 2 give an important insight into viability of business before you start the multi year grind in to make your business work -

Unit economics - what it'll take to make this work with healthy profit margins? This is crucial in case of online-offline startups, infra heavy products, or hardware products. May not be critical in consumer startups until they start monetizing.

Bottoms-up analysis of market - what will be your CAC (cost to acquire customers), ARPU/LTV (avg. rev per user/lifetime value) etc.

Both of these things are quantifiable and it'll answer an important Q - how much money will it take for the biz to reach whatever milestones that are decided.

How does total number of employees is a good proxy for success of the company?

In my opinion, total number of employees is a bad proxy as it fundamentally masquerades the unit economics and profit margins once they have revenue in several multiples of millions (which is what founders should have on their mind all the time if growth is healthy). Also, naturally logistics related startups will have more full time employees vs. pure SaaS company. Venture business is run by outliers. And 2 of the outliers of last 5-6 years were Instagram and WhatsApp - both of which had less than 50 employees at the time of sale.

Would love to hear thoughts of YC on this.

Isn't Google X that works on risky long term bets? And once projects graduate they are folded as new companies (or bets) within Alphabet.

My understanding was that Google X is modeled after Google's own founding. Long term, research project that was successfully commercialized within 5-7 years (I believe Google started as a research project in 96).

So once companies graduate in stable/mature businesses, shouldn't they be hold to any mature/public company standards?

This is great! Please write interactive articles on similar topics.

> The gap in training and social groups above and below could mean that new automation technology causes sudden, large-scale unemployment.

This also scares me. I've often wondered, what will happen to people in a largely automated world (which could be reality in next 40-50 years). Will there be riots as employment will be unprecedented? Will it open new industries or entirely new period of creativity for humanity (e.g. industrial age giving birth to age of information)?

When we transitioned to industrial age, I believe people had similar concerns but somehow things worked out well. Can we repeat that?

How important is it to do something you love that helps you in live comfortable life?

For example, I always loved theatre and plays but I was told in young age that it's very hard to support comfortable life as a thespian (unless you are breakout success); so best not to take that as a career even though it may really work out for you.

If you are working on support/maintenance roles (in engineering) at big enterprise product company then debugging is major part of your job. I enjoy debugging as it is another way to solve problem. But for some people it gets repetitive (and boring) since you have to do that day in day out as a part of support roles.

YC's cheque size is $20,000 at max. Most venture firms that have > $100M under management won't write less than $1M cheque. Why? Because that's how their business works. So for institutional investors, it's a huge risk to back someone random whom they don't know. That's why YC is successful.

Nowadays, VCs are rarely the first money in bank. So YC and other accelerators act as a screening step for most institutional investors. And VCs can be successful by writing larger cheques at a later stage. So win-win for VCs as well as accelerators.

I'm not a VC.

1. Not all startups/business can be venture backed. Venture backed startups are expected to have 10x returns within 5-8 years of financing and swing for fences.

2. If you kill warm introductions then how are they going to do screening? There is so much noise that it's humanely impossible for institutional investors find right kind of signal (i.e. venture backed businesses)

3. Financing is hard in every situation. Be it mortgage for your house or financing your startup.

4. If you build something successful and fits into the definition of venture backed business, they will come.

5. Accelerators YC/Techstars/Angelpad successfully hacked this warm introductions problem by inviting everyone to apply. These accelerators will make warm introductions for you.

If you want to read about Larry Ellison's personality and his management style, you should read - "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corporation; God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison". (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181369.The_Difference_Bet...)

It's one of the best books written on him and the way he managed Oracle right from it's beginnings. He was damn good at selling things.

Because it's directly at loggerheads with net neutrality. And it's not free. Rhapsody may be paying for data costs. Imagine you are a small startup competing against Rhapsody. Customers will always go for Rhapsody since it doesn't count against data caps. And as a small startup you can't afford to pay required money to carrier and even if you can afford then it's at the mercy of your carrier. Why do you need gatekeepers?

This investment must've returned their entire fund

I really liked this quote - "Programmers just starting out today never had to squeeze, so it’s a little harder for them to get the right religion because they always think of resources as being immediately available. Ten years ago every programmer ran into resource limitations, so the older programmers are always thinking about those things."

And --

"I still think that one of the finest tests of programming ability is to hand the programmer about 30 pages of code and see how quickly he can read through and understand it."

Does any company run "code comprehension" tests for hiring? Any thoughts?

Satya has an MBA too. I was just commenting on my previous comment. I guess author meant that someone just with MBA as a qualification and no relevant tech background would have been bad deal since MBAs get hired in leadership role even if they may or may not possess relevant domain knowledge.

I don't think BillG would have allowed hiring someone with an MBA and no background in software/technology. He is still the majority shareholder (from what I've read) and sits on the board.

I'm curious, what do you mean by professional culture?

Majority of VCs/investors (particularly in the bay area) don't give significant importance to cold approach. Lot of savvy founders are aware of this.