dmor

This reminds me of a client I had a long time ago who sold silane gas, which is the byproduct of making metallurgical grade silicon. It is a byproduct of semiconductor production (among other things) and very scary to store because it combusts upon contact with oxygen. So as you can imagine if there is a leak... it's bad news.

In the 90s they had so much of this stuff and it was really expensive to store and not much could be done with it, by then they discovered it could be used to coat the glass exterior of entire skyscrapers to reduce glare, and to make solar panels, and many other things. I always think of this story when I hear about byproduct management problems, and hope they'll find a commercial solution - they just might invent something new and awesome out of necessity.

In my journey as a programmer I discovered that sometimes people who told me my ideas sucked turned out to be wrong, and many of the folks who leaned on superior background were stagnant and became institutionalized in a way that is similar to a professor who relies on tenure for credibility. There are a lot of false idols to be worshipped in programming if you are looking for someone else to tell you what to do.

The elitism isn't shocking anymore, but it is sad and limiting. I want to hang out with / work with a programmer like this as much as I want to hang out with a religious zealot. Which is to say not at all.

Considering Marco left Tumblr a year before [1] they raised their last $85M round at $800M valuation [2] do you you think it realistic/possible that he had 1/8th the company after that deal?

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/marco-arment-instapaper/

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/tumblr-raises-85-million-ro...

How many of Tumblr's employees have been with the company more than a year or two? It sounds like they were only 20 employees at the end of 2010 [1] so I'm curious how many people actually got significant enough vesting to get the cash to call themselves entrepreneur-investors.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/19/tumblr-funding-office-hires...

The original headline from WSJ was “Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1 Billion” which is obviously questionable since they state in the same article that Tumblr has not actually confirmed the deal.

Now other outlets are reporting it as a done deal when it isn't. http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/05/in-race-to-be-first-o...

HuffPo, and I said it was steep not what people should expect to get.

Huffington Post, a media company, was purchased by AOL for $315M @ $30M rev. That's 10x. Stop trolling.

I should probably point out I am talking about Revenue per Impression, what the publisher earns. The advertiser may pay $.50 - $1 CPM to be shown on the impression, but it is possible for the publisher to show multiple ad units on the same impression. This analysis touches on the actual value of the dashboard today, but is ultimately focused on the expected value and potential revenue opportunity long term.

I thought I had caveated/explained that in the post but I can clarify it there too.

That might have been the case 2 years ago, but it isn't anymore. 70M uniques is a huge portion of the U.S. population, they're doing more traffic than Fox News (which has a huge influence on another huge Internet population).

Good for what? What is the context of the question.

Promising company, but this "fate" mindset doesn't really jive with the whole testing business models against reality thing.

Awesome to see "The Monk and the Riddle" referenced, it should be required reading for startup people.

I didn't say they don't exist, what I am saying is that unfortunately very few have achieved broad adoption or brand recognition, so the revenue first mindset may not be serving them as well as the first commenter would lead you to believe. It is likely my index will give more non Silicon Valley companies credit for building value, even pre-revenue.

Oh, those are qualities I understand all too well, so I guess we are fellow travelers. Months of curiousity satisfied.

I'm real. There are enough cheerleaders and I love many friends in the Midwest startup scene, but it doesn't help them to blow smoke up their asses. I'm from Seattle, another startup community in denial. It's time for an objective industry voice and it won't all be flattering.

Don't care about exit size anymore, it's all about blowing shit up and changing the world. ;)

I troll harder

I agree, not sexy != not awesome

Maybe you should ask yourself why the only Midwest startup I can think of is Dwolla?

I shut it down and I'm building something new

I don't think journalists are supposed to have an opinion. Plus their investors require they write everything in code on PandoDaily

Nah that path is too obvious, I'm making the new Dow Jone Industrial index. Way less plausible, way more fun.

I love that anyone thinks I have a grand marketing plan

Their revenue numbers maybe, but there were other signals. I am gonna find the next Airbnb with what I'm building mark my words

I should hope to be as successful as Ron Popeil! Also, weak sauce argument on your part. Try again

It's totally conscious, unsustainable revenue was our vanity metric for Referly. If you followed to Ecomom saga it was quite similar, we just pulled the plug sooner (and had no physical inventory).

As to SxSW, lol I can't deny I did enjoy taking that dig at all the attendees who should be at home working on their startups.

P.S. I've figured out you don't like me by now codex, but somehow I'm gonna win you over

Yup!

They were #1158 (-4.72 momentum) in the April index, which measures the momentum of the company in the month rather than it's overall rank in a list. The YC Startup Index and overall momentum index are two different lists with different methodologies, but I'll work on making that more clear.

Hey I don't know if you'd be up for it, but I'd love to try out this open interview format on daniellemorrill.com and we can see how it goes. Contact info is in my profile if you're interested

Can you paste the copy of one of the emails you sent to these journalists here? Right now you are the common denominator in the problem, so maybe there is something in the way you're communicating or asking that could be improved.

related post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5656697