earbitscom

The friends of my neighbors are every bit the stranger to me that a renter is, and there are easier ways to get into an apartment building than Airbnb.

Haha. Most starups have a website/CEO/attorney/coffee maker. Most startups fail. Don't have a website/CEO/attorney/coffee maker.

I think you forgot brand ambassadors, people who actually wear your shirt because they love your service, want to promote it, and proudly do so. These ones are the best, because when asked what the company is or does, they'll know what to say and enthusiastically do so. I know bands who wear our shirts and absolutely tell people what Earbits is when asked, which you don't get from someone who says - I don't know, I just got this free shirt at a conference.

Would love to see some info about the difference in strategy for raising in a toxic industry/vertical.

I learned of Weebly when someone complained on HN about your email communications. I immediately signed up and (with very few technical bones in my body) built a totally bad ass website for a friend of mine in 2 hours. There's a very good reason for your success. Incredible product.

If those were as common as fires and doors being deadbolted closed with child 911 callers, we might do it. You act as if the scenarios outlined by the parent are as rare as biohazard emergencies.

That's why I enjoyed it so much. PG puts thought into every word of these essays. If I know him well enough to have an opinion, that sentence was crafted as much for its contents as for its tone, and that's what made it so awesome. Any disgruntled founder saying it would have been status quo. PG saying that in an essay is just pure entertainment to me.

Oh man. This may be my favorite startup quote in all of history. "Investors make more money as founders' bitches than their bosses."

Companies only do well what makes them money. We designed our business to be good at helping artists, so yes, that's why we made them our clients. We're not shy about it.

He said "performers". If your radio station pays performers, you need to fire your accountant.

Our entire company (www.earbits.com) is built on the premise that more value can be created for artists out of streaming radio by using it as a fan acquisition tool and marketing platform for the artists and labels than by using it to sell commercials and ads. Without a doubt, the per-stream value created by the ad supported model is a relative joke, but despite my desire for artists to get more value out of streaming and the fact that Pandora is my competitor for listener usage, I continue to side with Pandora on most of these issues.

There is no reason why iHeartRadio should pay less than them because it's owned by Clear Channel. There is no reason they should keep paying ASCAP the same percentage of their revenue for royalties after someone as big as Sony ATV pulls their catalog from ASCAP representation. The Internet Radio Fairness Act was not about necessarily reducing royalties, but ensuring that all companies streaming digitally pay the same percentage of revenue. It makes absolutely no sense to me that everyone is focused on Pandora trying to reduce their rates to the same level as their competitors, instead of focusing on the fact that those competitors already pay less.

Compulsory rates that work for these companies are the best opportunity for independent artists to participate in this market. If you force these companies to secure direct deals with labels because the compulsory rates are not equitable, you will get what just happened with iTunes Radio. They will forge sweetheart deals with the major labels and treat indies like a nice-to-have group of second class citizens.

The artist community should be working harder to increase royalties paid by the companies already enjoying massive discounts. The artist community should be interested in making their music as easy to license as possible, a la compulsory licenses. If you make the rates unsustainable, and even worse, push the revenues through label accounting departments, artists will be left in the cold and have most of their share kept by labels.

Pandora has definitely gone about this in a way that hasn't worked in terms of PR, but it is unfathomable to me that all of a sudden everybody on earth forgets that the person on the other side of this issue is the RIAA. Nothing the RIAA has ever done was good for consumers or artists. Why on earth would it be now?

Pandora pays more royalties than any other type of radio broadcaster. It's time to make other companies pay more, while finding a rate and system that works for everybody and doesn't require direct licensing. Any other situation does not bode well for artists.

Not featured, have raised about $800k from AL. It took a special kind of determination.

Can they make this app also tell you when valet parking companies are falsely putting cones and signs in front of parking meters, etc? This happens in every area of Santa Monica, Venice, LA, etc. They make it look like several parking spots are legally blocked from 6pm to 2am for their valet service, when in fact they are not. It's a way bigger problem than this beach thing, but seems like it would rely on similar technology.

I tend not to do this, which is why I find myself at age 35 with practically no grudges held and very few people who I cannot tolerate or even appreciate. It also makes it easier to recognize whether something is reconcilable in business, with employees, etc. Accidents happen, people make mistakes. I often find that unless I truly believe something was done out of malice, I have very little problem getting over it quickly.

That is correct. If they make the pool pre-money, only the people who had stock pre-money get diluted. If they do it post-money, or even do part of it post-money, the investors share in the dilution.

Great. We agree to these terms. Thanks, Sam. Welcome to Team Earbits.

No connections. Got rejected once. Accepted second time.

The competitive aspect of demo day and investing in YC companies drives prices up. Investors are trying to maximize returns and some may feel these prices are not justified or that their capital can be put to better use investing in a company with similar results and a lower price tag. I do think this can be a mistake because the resources a YC company has at their disposal can increase their odds of success and create opportunities other companies will struggle to secure. I know that we have had more opportunities because of our YC status and that has made our company more valuable.

Revenue does not equal profit and they want to scale quickly. They may have only $150k in profit on $1M in revenue and want to run operations at $250k in monthly expenses.

You're forgetting that they are talking about the companies getting $1B valuations, not all startups. If you line up 100 companies that are Instagrams, Pinterests, Facebooks (when it was valued at $1B), etc, one of them getting to $100B can absolutely be a 1% chance.

Just fyi, this is 100% broken on my galaxy s3.

I don't see how they could do that with a regular site, given they would need to access the files on your computer, or cache an insane amount of music. But perhaps that's one of the things their Chrome app does that their regular web destination does not.

There is a bunch of functionality that you can do with Chrome apps, such as desktray alerts, background music streaming, etc. Most of the "apps" in the store do not do this and are mostly just links to sites, but there are plenty of things you can do with Chrome as an app that go beyond regular browser capabilities.

They were leveraging p2p streaming to reduce their costs.

I tend to fall in this camp as well. Maybe for an artist I already like but haven't Liked on Facebook I would do this, but it amazes me how many times I go to a band's FB page that I don't know and have to Like them to listen to their music. I have never done it, and they have lost any potential to convert me.

When we created our virtual currency that users earn for taking actions like these, we consciously decided not to make it a "Like-gate", but instead to give you credits anytime you do these things, and then you can spend them at your convenience. It may result in fewer fans, but they'll be far more qualified as someone who heard you and liked you enough to engage, as opposed to engaged in order to hear you, and then later blocks your posts in their Newsfeed.

I feel pretty good about this given that our biggest source of traffic is the Google Chrome Web Store and use of our Chrome application doesn't show up in Alexa rankings. We're fairing way, way better than Alexa would have you believe.

It is not about whether it's moral to eat meat. We have laws that protect these animals from unnecessary cruelty. Their murder is permitted for food production. Kicking them, taunting them, housing them in unbearable conditions - these are all illegal under the law. There is no reason why filming such abuse in undercover investigations should be made illegal, let alone an act of terror. This simply makes it easier for these people to commit crimes.

Your link text is benign, set between accusations and hyperbole. You could have emailed Jeff with context on what you were thinking. You didn't. You tweeted asking him to DM you about a conversation you wanted to have, not him. He told you he was busy. You could have emailed him context then, you didn't. You posted a page publicly saying you planned to save a bunch of the data from his site. He asked you if you were planning to scrape his data and said he thought doing so was uncool. You didn't answer the question. You said you weren't doing anything uncool, which is a matter of opinion, not a clarification of fact, and again acted as though it was his responsibility to pursue clarification from you.

Your approach was wholly unprofessional. The reason it pissed me off is because I know what kind of person Jeff is to those entrepreneurs who approach him professionally, respectful of his time. He is completely approachable, super friendly, and incredibly generous with his time. The reason he wasn't here is because your approach lacked common courtesy and respect. You acted as if he owed it to you to reach out and discuss your project. He doesn't. Then you all but slandered him in your post, paraphrasing him with things like "So long, suckers," which is something that anybody who knows Jeff knows could not be further from his attitude about anything.

I'm glad you came around to respecting Jeff's request. It's too bad you didn't approach the situation as reasonably from the beginning. I get tired of seeing good people have their name tarnished around the community by people whose sense of entitlement leads them to paint a one-sided picture of someone who has worked so hard to contribute to the community, simply because they didn't get what they wanted, how they wanted it.

I don't think having an easily incited mob of trolls supporting your view validates what you've done. I think if you take a step back and look at the situation subjectively, you'd realize you owe Jeff an apology.

It really doesn't matter what tone you read that note in, all of Cameron and team's behavior is completely unacceptable, unprofessional and unethical.

I'm sorry, are you saying that stealing from larger companies is okay? Anyway, I'm done here. This behavior is scandalous, rude and shameful. I don't think I need to defend this view point anymore than I already have.