meterplech

Yeah, but how much would you have to spend to get 500 million users, many of which you already have credit card information for? Not saying this acquisition was necessarily worth the cost at all- but it wasn't just about the technology.

I think a side-lesson from this article is how difficult acquisitions/enterprise sales are in general. When you are working with a huge organization like Google you really need to identify the few key people in favor of your deal and who are trying to scuttle it. I think Chan was perhaps right for Google to not buy Skype, but it's a good lesson when you are trying to get Google to buy your startup. Or even if you are trying to get a big company to license your technology or be a customer. Find your benefactors and detractors and manage both to win deals you want.

I don't really think it's a good answer. To me that comment is the difference between Quora, which aims to be an opinion-based Q&A, and StackOverflow/StackExchange which aim for facts. I know his question was opinion based, but is there a need for that comment. He could very well be a happy and healthy family man who learns new languages as a hobby. And, anyway, who cares? Just answer the question with your thoughts if you have them.

I hadn't thought of this angle. I will say that when I stay with a friend (early 20s) it's typical to bring beer/food and buy the other person dinner/a meal already. I think some people could circumvent the system- but many will be happy to avoid the etiquette questions and just pay a friend-of-friend.

I think this is the killer feature for Airbnb. I have loved the idea of the service, but haven't used it because of the slight creepiness worry (perhaps unfounded, but I think common). I know I'd feel comfortable staying with friends-of-friends though. I bet this is a huge draw for many news users for Airbnb.

The markets changed a lot. I don't know much about skype but I do think that's probably a huge part of this.

I would imagine part of it is that SaaS and PaaS startups have an easier path to revenue. For most of them, a single user means revenue, which means you have more wiggle room for salary. It's also easier to do long term planning if you have recurring revenue streams and possibly multi-year contracts.

I think that's not a fair analogy. PG isn't the curator for content on HN, and while you could argue he could algorithmically alter stories about YC companies, or manually remove stories, this isn't an editorial blog. It's a collection, and the users vote stories up and down.

PG's goal from HN is to get a pulse of the tech community, see smart people who may be interesting to invest with in the future.

Arrington theoretically runs a journalistic operation, and he brings up journalistic integrity when it suits him. This is a much stronger conflict of interest for something that perceives itself as journalistic.

While the blog didn't bring up great examples of how this will hurt TC, I don't think it's an even analogy.

I am pretty impressed that Twitter is still up right now. As far as I can tell there was no fail whale during this whole news break. Big moment for the site I think.

I just had office hours with Albert Wenger. The process is really great. I tried to get into office hours last round (I think they do them twice a year?) and made the waitlist. I was then contacted this time to see if I was still interested.

I actually didn't have a pitch or anything. I'm just about to move to New York and wanted advice on getting involved in the startup scene. He was very interesting to talk to and had great advice. Highly recommend doing these office hours.

A few companies do that actually. Their analysts/consultants will work with you for an hour or so and then try to set up a longer term deal to help you. It makes sense: the economics of even an hour long meeting aren't great factoring in customer acquisition costs. I think Gartner and maybe some others do this though.

This is incredible. I think Google is doing a great job of transitioning from a startup to a big company. They have so many things like this, 20% time, and letting tech guys focus on tech and still get promotions. I feel like they are trying to make themselves the Mecca for brilliant technologists. If you aren't a startup with an "us" against the world mentality, you have to add compelling reasons to attract talent.

I think that is because investors believe in Jeff Bezos more as CEO than Larry Page. Bezos comes from Wall Street, so Wall Streeters probably have more confidence in him. Plus he has been CEO for a long time, whereas Page comes from academia and just started the role (again).

There are definitely advantages for our understanding. But, when writing highly parallelized code I always thought the linear style was somehow odd. It would be cool to see other ideas that would map more directly with that type of thinking.

This criticism seems unnecessarily harsh and focused on income.

There are real issues here regarding the role of a CEO in working with or talking to analysts and investors. You could make an argument that it serves Google's long-term interest to withhold this information from analysts and their shareholders. Or you could argue that Larry Page should answer to people who own part of his company. I'm not saying one is more right than the other, you just aren't contributing to the discussion by trashing someone based on their income.

This isn't about Larry Page vs some "loser $100k analysts" it's about the CEO of a major public tech company and their relationship with their investors.

Great post, glad you are coming back to NYC! Wanted to make a comment about your website. I think you overstate cost as a deciding factor for parents. Right now, visiting your website and searching for a tutor the cost and picture are the most highlighted factors about each tutor. From my experience tutoring for 5+ years, most people who seek a tutor for their kid (especially in test prep) care far more about the tutor's capabilities than price.

I've been meaning to write a blog post about this, but when I started my tutoring business I was very worried about what I charged. Nervously, I would bring it up at the beginning of early conversations with prospective parents. Later, I realized that parents really use those calls to establish competency. If they believe you are really competent they will pay double or triple the "average" price for your help. People consider tutoring, and especially test prep as investments, and like anyone else they care more about their ROI than their exact cost.

I think the focus for the search on Tutorspree should be on emphasizing competency. Especially for test prep. So, in the big box where price is now, it could show their applicable SAT/LSAT/GMAT score, and perhaps the number of students they have tutored before. Then it could have a one-liner like "Graduating cum laude with degrees in Mathematics and Economics" or whatever. This is addressing what the parents want (especially in ultra affluent and educationally attuned uptown Manhattan).

Even more importantly, it makes the tutors feel like they are competing on quality, not on price. This will encourage better tutors to come to your site. Top LSAT companies will pay a tutor $100+/hour and charge $250+/hour. In order for a great tutor to use your site they must feel like they have a chance to get paid at least equivalently. And, I think in the end the most likely way Tutorspree succeeds is by matching parents/students with incredible students.

</completely_unsolicited_advice>

Good luck again! I will be NYC based soon, and have worked as a tutor for many years. If you guys would like to bounce ideas off someone with that background, my email is in my profile.

I definitely think this is the best long term solution. I think culture is incredibly important to an organization. And, I liked the article overall.

But- there is some glossing over of technical ability. I am one to believe that the best software engineers and programmers are 10-100x better than the average. I think that is a belief shared on this site. Would I rather have a programmer who is 100x better who doesn't match the culture I want exactly, or the average programmer who does? Within reason, I think the 100x better guy.

It's easy to say I want the 100x programmer who matches the startup culture and also doesn't want to get paid a lot or take a ton of equity. But, hiring isn't that easy.

I think people who got into programming very early in life can be naturally condescending against those who found it later. There is some reason behind this: if you were programming Basic at 6, made your first mini game at 8, and had your first webapp in the dotcom boom at 14 you probably have a ton of programming experience that those who learned later don't have.

But, it still seems odd to me. Most fields want to encourage smart, young, undergrads to enter them. Sure, they might have shallower passion for the field at first, the point of the article was that many people were developing real love for the field.

While Stanford undergrads are expensively educated and (maybe?) fashionable, they are also incredibly smart. Most importantly, learning programming isn't like selling subprime mortgages. For someone to buy your startup you must have added some value to the world. Trading subprimes arguably does not, or has a net negative effect.

You shouldn't be so quick to knock the idea. People probably said the same thing about a stupid website that was pretty much a yearbook online. It has 3milliom monthly users, he can definitely turn it into a revenue generator and is in a great position to be strategically acquired by Washington Post (which owns Kaplan), or Princeton Review. Dropping out of MIT is a risk- but, he can always return.

While South Africa is more industrialized than other African countries, I think you are selling Google short here. They are intentionally expanding to the African continent- a hugely populous region currently under-served. While South Africa might be more developed than the rest of the continent, people there must undoubtably know the African market better than Googlers in Silicon Valley. Seems like a smart move to capture a growing mobile market.

I can empathize with the frustration, but it definitely makes sense for LinkedIn. Unlike Facebook (which also has difficulties for development), LinkedIn has many monetization strategies besides advertising. They must be strategically very careful not to let anyone else monetize their professional network graph.

They are only opening up in response to Facebook and to attract more people to the site.

New York, NY.

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Jobs section is used for YC companies only. It's a fair reward for accepted companies to get prominent status on HN.

I agree that you shouldn't screw a friend over obviously. But, there does need to be some way to make sure equity of an early stage company is in the hands of the people who are most incentivized for its success. Ideally Gates would offer a contract where he could buy shares from Allen to make sure he and his family was taken care of. But- I do understand the logic of trying to ensure key stakeholders in the company are leading it.

That's completely fair. I agree with that. But, we don't know if this was a discussion between the two (Gates and Ballmer) with the intent of discussing it with him afterward.

It seems to me the biggest allegation here is that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tried to dilute his shares when he was diagnosed with cancer the first time.

I hate to seem callous here, but, that might've completely made sense. God forbid if Allen had died, the company, still pre-IPO startup whose main product was MS-DOS (pre Office or any version of Windows) would want its shares controlled by people with business interests in the company. When you are a startup you want to align incentives properly and yes, people who are unfortunately unable to contribute, even if it's through no fault of their own probably shouldn't have huge amounts of stock.

Besides that allegation I don't really know what else here is that negative on Bill Gates.

edit: MS-DOS not MS-DOC. Mistyped

I don't get it- you are right, this isn't part of their core competency. And, that's why they were smart to only buy one show, with two big names attached to it. They are reducing their risk and seeing if they can play in the content game. If yes, they will likely buy a few more shows and grow that competency.

Commenting doesn't help. If you don't think it's appropriate, flag the story.

I think it's interesting to see their early focus on hiring the right people. They are even hiring for a College Recruiting Program Manager already- even when they only have about 50 people at the company. That's thinking big from the beginning.

Also- given all the MBA hate on HN, I thought it was interesting that they asked all their "business" positions to have MBAs.

Whether or not Google has a responsibility isn't really the question. The fact is that developers care about two things when they decide which platforms to make apps on. 1) Where is the money, and 2) How easy is it to create apps on that platform.

Just recently there was a blog post about a developer complaining about how hard it was to make apps on the new Blackberry tablet.

So, in my mind, no Google doesn't really have a responsibility to make developers happy. But, yes they have good business reasons to: more and more people flock to the OS's with the best apps. As for whether or not these exact demands are fair or not I can't comment because I don't develop for Android, but I can definitively say Google should take heed and make sure they can continue to be seen as a developer-friendly OS.

Edit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2263882 <- the HN link to the aforementioned blog post.