dpcheng2003

Congrats on the launch guys!

Full disclosure, I worked with Nick and Omar at Gusto. I saw firsthand how much software can help an ops team. Since we didn't have Flowdash at Gusto, we often scrambled for resources to empower our operations team. We also probably could've done a better job responding to user feedback since we were so resource constrained.

Having a tool that the Ops team can truly own is a game-changer for that iterative feedback loop and frees up the eng team. Really looking forward to seeing this product grow.

My 2c as a former Gusto employee:

The watermelon interview was no joke and not a rubber stamp. I wasn't on the watermelon crew but it was a real badge of honor at Gusto to "represent" Gusto's values.

When we hired 200+ people from 2015-2016 across two offices, the watermelon interview was critical to make sure we were hiring the right culture fit Gusties.

Glad to see this covered by FRV and posted on HN.

I used to be a PM at Gusto so I can add to Eddie's answer. As Eddie mentioned, it's non-trivial to keep the existing applications running as well as they do. That being said, a non-trivial amount of time/resources is spent making an already amazing product that much better. For example, my friends just launched a new product that lets you pick your payday (https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/gusto-flexible-pay/). To get this to work, there's a lot of data science involved to make sure you're not exposing Gusto to financial risk (it's effectively lending money). Since taxes are withheld with every paycheck, the payment flows associated with flexible pay become incredibly challenging. They're an amazing team. Go Eddie!

I think there's also some anchoring bias that happens with easy mental math calculations like 20 on 80, or 40 on 360, since the financial fundamentals don't matter at the earliest stage companies.

I'm confused by this comment. Doesn't Box sell an actual product that actual customers pay for? That's revenue.

Now if you're referring to profit, then there's enough precedence of (technology) companies choosing to invest in operations over generating a profit for growth. Amazon is barely profitable; Twitter still isn't. There's even financial engineering reasons to run a deficit. Why pay taxes when you can re-invest in your company's growth and use the carried losses as a future tax shield? Unless you assume Box and comparable companies are running a Ponzi-like scheme, which I don't think you are.

I think we can agree that investors at large firms who invest in IPOs like Fidelity and T.Rowe Price are not idiots. They use the information that is available to them and make a determination on valuation. If they make an investment in the IPO, their investment thesis is that this stock will go up (some companies do flip at IPO but it's a small minority. Source: I used to price IPOs for a living).

The market isn't a homogenous mass. It's filled with thousands of opinion-makers like you. Your opinion is entirely valid but it's weighed against the opinions of thousands of others who can shape Box's valuation. And that weighted opinion says Box was worth X six weeks ago, and now worth Y.

I wonder if there's a lagging indicator of tech bellwether decline in innovation/disruption when they introduce a dividend.

For example, Apple had a dividend in 1995. Then in 1996, Jobs came back and nixed it. Microsoft issued its first dividend in 2003. Cisco in 2011. Oracle in 2009.

As a former ibanker, I should be all for financial engineering. But when companies can do "actual" engineering, I'd prefer to spend money on growth if possible. If not... then, I guess the dividend makes sense, hence my earlier assumption.

Completely agree. Facebook's feed is its most valuable real estate and it's primarily used for photo-sharing. If you "carpet bomb" it with requests and gaming spam, it becomes irrelevant.

The discrete separation of Facebook apps may solve the problem that companies like Yahoo are facing (to some extent): The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

If you want an 11 minute read, I covered this at great length in a blog post two weeks ago on Medium: https://medium.com/p/b3c97b87a183 (4.4K views and counting).

Some additional reasons:

Yahoo's different parts cannot be traded and thus have no liquidity. There's a huge liquidity discount associated with that.

If Yahoo were to sell the pieces of Y!Japan, Alibaba, etc. on the open market, it would have to do it a structured and delayed process or else it would flood the market, dropping the respective stocks. More discount.

I put them together because they're news items on financial shows/periodicals. I am not confusing the two (yes one is illegal, the other can do good). I apologize for the unintended obfuscation.

I think it's disingenuous to project motivations for Michael Lewis. Is he shilling for the buyside the same way he was shilling for the Oakland A's? In my opinion, the only thing we know based on facts is that Michael Lewis, the author, has one objective in mind: To sell more books.

In order to sell books, the story and narrative has to be compelling. Is the story of a Canadian guy making millions of dollars at his trading desk quitting his job and starting a company (we love startups!) that may undermine a controversial trading tactic a compelling story? Absolutely. Is the story of Einhorn or Cohen or Icahn doing things like insider trading or activist investing equally compelling? Probably not, since it's on the cover of the WSJ or on CNBC every week.

Michael Lewis does not have a responsibility to educate main street about the nuances of HFT, although as a secondary benefit of his noble pursuit to sell more books, he does shine a light on the topic. In this regard, Lewis is exceptionally successful. He's sparked a debate, he's created controversy, he's made smart people discuss a topic they had previously less interest in.

Think about what Moneyball did for professional sports? Lewis was hardly the first (e.g, Bill James) but he popularized it so we, the general population, could discuss the topic with some conviction and knowledge. If he can do the same for HFT and trading in general, then good job. And he sells more books.

Someone posted this on /r/Startups a few days ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/21s1e0/massive_che...

From the 60 Minutes piece: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-us-stock-market-rigged/

What's amazing is that Tesla has been providing NRE R&D for OTHER automotive companies for years already. Last year, $15 million of their revenue was from development services but as early as 2011, $55 million of revenue (>25%) was from basically doing powertrain design for companies like Toyota and Mercedes.

Link to last 10-K: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/0001193125140...

Tesla will definitely make a killing on batteries. I actually think the supercharger network is going to REMAIN proprietary as a competitive advantage for Tesla vs. other electric car companies. As someone who's done research in this in the past, there are already well-established standards adopted by the IEEE and companies like GE for charging. This is obviously to encourage the adoption of the technology.

However, since most electric charging networks are run by private companies or utilities, we may have the "roaming charge" issue that telecom had once upon a time. In other words, if you lived in Texas and got your electric charge from your local utility as part of your monthly bill, you may have to pay "roaming charge fees" for charging in California.

But if you're on the Tesla network, the "fuel" is part of your purchase price. This is Apple-level walled garden tactics and it demonstrates the foresight of Elon Musk and his team. What an incredible entrepreneur.

Haven't used it myself but lots of people I respect like it. Still not "there" yet for what we're discussing but it's a low-friction proxy.

Not what I said at all.

Not my argument. If theoretical Klout existed, it'd take into account all signals (social, search, semantic analysis, weights based on expertise, etc.) to determine the "best" at something--a super pagerank for people search if you will. This should negate individual bias.

Exactly. +1.

To the question below: No, it does not irk me.

I respectfully disagree with your argument because that's not the one I'm making.

I think the general consensus from Klout detractors is that a single "score" cannot encompass someone's influence. Some people are more influential in certain circles than others.

Of course, there is a broad-based influence score you can apply to people, in the same manner that Super Bowl ads are expensive because they reach a broad-based group of US TV viewers. If Justin Bieber reaches that group better than President Obama, than his higher Klout score is accurate.

But under that assumption, his Klout score (and many other Klout scores) are meaningless because we don't think of ourselves in that context. This is why, for example, HackerNews karma points are not fungible to Reddit's /r/AdviceAnimals karma points.

I agree. I guess my original comment was not more clear on this. The sell-out was the hackneyed algorithm, not the $200M.

As a startup founder, let me take the contrarian view on this because I can see how it all went wrong. Klout, for the most part, had a very ambitious goal.

Given all our activity (direct or indirect) that is being captured on social networks and general internet activity, there was some inherent value (which we'll call a "clout score") in just knowing who was the "most popular" on these networks.

Now imagine you took in all the interest-graph related and search data, and refined that "clout score" to the niches and groups where that individual was most influential. In this hypothetical alternate universe, you can use clout scores and deduce, for example, that "so-and-so" was a more influential voice in the battery materials science community (i.e, cathodes) because her white papers were being shared more often on social networks and getting more backlinks.

But Klout didn't do that. Klout realized that to get to market quickly, they applied an arbitrary algorithm to social activity, which would encourage artificial activity on Klout to "game" the system. In another different alternate universe, this would be applauded as a successful growth hack and Klout would be filing their S-1 today. But in our universe, people saw the algorithm as hackneyed, particularly when Justin Bieber had a higher Klout score than the US president.

This go-to-market strategy was likely (I'm presuming) influenced by VC investor dollars and the perceived need to be always growing, driven by TechCrunch mentions and HackerNews front page posts. And to some extent, they were successful. They raised a lot of venture dollars, cashed out a few early employees (again, presuming) and convinced some really smart people to join and grow Klout.

But now that they've sold out, they can never do what they wanted to do. And in some ways, they've tainted that idea for others who may appreciate the "clout score." So selling out for $200M--for recurring revenue from large brands, patents associated with social activity scoring (didn't fact-check this but guessing) and great employees--is not a bad outcome for Klout or for Lithium.

But I'm sure once upon a time, Joe Fernandez (the founder), had a grander vision. This is hardly a bad consolation prize, but what if...

I'd love to see the accounting on that (see it; not do it). It makes sense since they're not customers and free accounts are part of their lead-gen strategy. Good pick-up.

Sales & marketing for enterprise software is still the largest expense item for most enterprise software companies.

Even though more software is self-serve and provides zero-day value, the biggest enterprise customers still need the Sales & Marketing machine, from front-loading marketing which generate leads for sales people/sales engineers to customer success, etc.

For the longest time, the guys driving the best cars coming out of Oracle's parking lot were the sales people. That's changing, but not as quickly as we expect.

As a point of comparison:

Box R&D: 37% of revenue S&M: 138% of revenue

Salesforce (based on last SEC filing) R&D: 15% of revenue S&M: 53% of revenue

Oracle (based on last SEC filing) R&D: 14% of revenue S&M: 21% of revenue

Interesting exception is Workday (based on last SEC filing) R&D: 39% of revenue S&M: 42% of revenue

This is still a winner-take-all business because a typical enterprise customer is still 2-3 years at the minimum (depends on the product; ERP tends to be much stickier). Box is encouraged to spend expensive investor capital to focus on growth (and in the process, limit their tax exposure).

I think it'll be interesting as Dropbox moves more towards the enterprise how much of the typical "enterprise sales" playbook would they adopt?

Agree to disagree my friend. I wish you well.

What are we discussing? Who has more power? I'm really confused by your argument because I don't think we're arguing the same points.

Can we get back to my original response to the original post: 1. Is finance irrelevant to tech as the OP suggests. I think we can both agree that it is NOT irrelevant although we can both agree its importance (as a % of GDP and in society) has diminished.

2. Does Icahn have LEGAL legitimacy for his claims. I think we both agree that there is some legitimacy, even if we don't believe in it.

3. What is the desire to pit tech vs. finance coming from? Why can't both co-exist? Who values Facebook? Investors who make money off it.

By the way, if you think YC is going to beat Berkshire Hathaway in terms of net IRR during a comparable time-frame, you're either trolling or have a limited history of venture and angel investing. Furthermore, it's worth noting that Berkshire is doing this at a much larger base, which makes Buffet's IRR that much more impressive.

Who said anything about funding new companies?

We're talking about leverage and wealth generation. Big AUM means bigger fees. Non-VC funds like hedge funds and private equity are incentivized to have huge funds because they get the fees. Since most of their work is financial engineering, more AUM means more leverage and is an advantage.

Large VC funds are disadvantaged because they're investing in growth. A 20x return off a $5M investment is more common than a 20x return off a $100M investment.

I don't think it helps either community to pit one against the other. Finance and tech are different and serve different purposes and let's leave it at that.

New power/wealth generation is and will be in finance for the foreseeable future. I can go into great detail on this but for TL;DR purposes, I will generalize: finance > tech in making aggregate money because finance only cares about making money and tech cares about a lot of other things, which in turn generates money.

I moved into tech because I liked it, not to make money. If I were still in investment banking, I'd be making 7figures a year (and killing my soul in the process). This is not a judgment call; it's a personal choice. There exists good-willed bankers as well as selfish, rent-seeking coders.

Moving money around has not been limited to the 19XXs. It's been around since humans put a face of an important person on some piece of metal (actually earlier, but it lacks the imagery).

While you can be 100% correct, it's a straw man and irrelevant to my point. You can simultaneously believe finance is rent-seeking and still 100% agree with my points in response to the original post: 1) finance is much larger in capital markets; 2) Icahn has legitimacy even if he turns out to be wrong; 3) We should not dovetail into a finance vs. tech argument.

I can't presume to understand Carl Icahn (as you admitted as well) but IMHO, this is untrue and can lead fellow HNers into an echo chamber.

First, Wall Street's role in capital markets towers over Silicon Valley. Venture Capital Assets Under Management is approximately $200 billion. Blackrock, the world's largest fund, has $4.3 trillion AUM.

Second, while I believe pmarca acted entirely in good faith and is legally in the clear, there is enough "there" to begin fighting a proxy war. For example, the (tech) market was more forgiving when Dan Loeb fought Yahoo because it got the outcome we wanted (Marissa joining, Yahoo focusing).

Let's not conflate what is arguably an ill-advised but legally legitimate proxy war with a misdirected turf war between finance and tech. As a point of reference, I'm a tech co-founder (who poorly codes) and a former investment banker.

I think the real story is how Satoshi unveiled the elusive Newsweek reporter. I didn't realize those were still around! /sarcasm