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jamesfzhang

96 karma · joined September 22, 2015

twitter.com/jamesfzhang
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jamesfzhang··on Ask HN: How do you localize your prices?
Hey there! I work on Stripe Checkout and we recently released an update that should make selling globally a lot easier, removing most of the bullet points in your post.

Here are the docs, and please let us know if you try it out and have feedback: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/present-local-curr...

Thanks!

jamesfzhang··on Scientist: A Ruby library for carefully refactoring critical paths
I've use Scientist for every major refactor I've done--IMO it's one of the best examples of a library that does one thing extremely well and has a clean interface.
jamesfzhang··on Lyft Files S-1
This is incorrect. The S-1 shows asterisks for the co-founders and are likely just placeholders. In the previous S-1, it showed that they owned roughly 7% together.

https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/1101542615042801664

jamesfzhang··on All 50 startups from Y Combinator’s Summer 2017 Demo Day 1
One counterexample is Hearthstone. Players buy packs to have access to cards that otherwise would take them weeks to unlock. AFAIK, professional & hardcore players actually spend a lot of money buying these packs so that they can unlock the cards ASAP and study & test them for competitive play.
jamesfzhang··on Invisible unicorns: Big companies that started with little or no money
I left the company when it was around 40 and only know of revenue numbers at that point. Nothing has been announced publicly as far as I know, but it's substantial & comparable to some of the companies on this list.
jamesfzhang··on Invisible unicorns: Big companies that started with little or no money
Wistia. 10 year-old business. Raised only a seed round and has been profitable & growing many years in a row.
jamesfzhang··on Powering Twitch and Medium, Algolia (YC W14) raises $53M
Algolia is an amazing product. I've used it on several projects over the past few years and the performance & ease of use is top notch.
jamesfzhang··on AngelList acquires Product Hunt
You have no idea what the probability is. It's not 100%, but it's also not 0%. You also have no idea what Instagram's probability (and hence, expected value) was at the time of their acquisition. Having such a short-sighted, negative outlook isn't healthy.
jamesfzhang··on AngelList acquires Product Hunt
This is such a negative, short-sighted outlook. A company doesn't need an immediate monetization strategy that's open to the public for it to have value that's attractive to an acquiring company.

Edit: Furthermore, PH definitely does have potential to have a large scale revenue stream. Any "destination" site that millions of people visit daily with intent to try/buy new products has major potential.

jamesfzhang··on GM to Acquire Autonomous-Vehicle Technology Developer Cruise Automation (YC W14)
Give them some credit beyond being "amazing negotiators." Have you used their kit? The publicly released one, or the one actively in development? How do you know if their tech isn't that valuable?

EDIT: It's very hard to pinpoint an exactly value for R&D heavy startups. Their tech could easily be worth well over $1 billion if it plays a crucial role in developing & accelerating GM producing & selling driverless cars. Just know that GM sold $154 billion worth of car last year.

jamesfzhang··on GM to Acquire Autonomous-Vehicle Technology Developer Cruise Automation (YC W14)
Acquisition price of over $1 billion: http://recode.net/2016/03/11/gm-spent-over-1-billion-on-self...
jamesfzhang··on Will Bond (Package Control) Joins Sublime HQ
Congrats to Will and Sublime, great everyone involved!
jamesfzhang··on Basecamp neglected integration partners by not providing an API for Basecamp v3
TLDR:

- Basecamp releases v3

- Basecamp markets to their customers to upgrade to v3

- Some people upgraded & noticed their integrations with 3rd party applications no longer work (presumably thinking it's the 3rd party developers' fault)

- 3rd party developers aren't happy that they can't update their integrations since v3 lacks an API

- DHH says the API is in the works but hasn't been as high priority compared to other features on their list

- 3rd party developers get mad at DHH's response

jamesfzhang··on San Francisco Bubble
Agreed that it definitely depends on where you live. I don't, but could, take an Uber/Lyft for my commute everyday and it would cost about $5-$7, whereas a ride on SF public transit would take $2.25 and + 10-20 extra minutes.
jamesfzhang··on Facebook is closing Parse
I am shocked...time for Fabric to build a backend?
jamesfzhang··on Trello hits 12M users, launches Power-Ups platform
Glad to have made you laugh. I personally have never encountered any of the problems you mentioned. I used to work at a company that used Dropbox for Business and I just remember getting an email that I could connect that account with my personal one. I did connect the two and it worked fine for me. I had a simple use case so I didn't do anything out of the ordinary.
jamesfzhang··on Trello hits 12M users, launches Power-Ups platform
If I'm not mistaken, Dropbox has had multiple account support for some time (about a year?).
jamesfzhang··on Atlassian files for IPO
Revenue:

$148.5m (FY2013)

$215.1m (FY2014)

$319.5m (FY2015)

Net income:

$10.8m (FY2013)

$19.0m (FY2014)

$6.8m (FY2015)