modi15

Its not India's great failure. It is India's great achievement. We need to move people rapidly from rural area to urban cities and India is doing an awesome job at it.

Can you explain in a bit layman terms what exactly has been done here ? What I understood is that there is a single NN trained for multiple tasks - but what is the benefit ?

There have been a flurry of alarmists posts like these but somehow I cant wrap my head around how will we run out of water. I stay in Bangalore and some people do have the problem of water - but for the most part it doesnt seem to be an issue of 'lack' of water perse but mostly distribution issues.

Bangalore has been having intermittent rains throughout the summers and even though few people use them now, but if situation gets dire almost everyone should be able to setup a rain water harvesting system and get by.

India is also installing solar at a rapid pace and the cost of electricity is going down. The next level solution could be just to use sea water that India is surrounded by, and use some of that solar power to filter this water.

Somehow I dont get all this alarmist news. Maybe im missing something.

The fundamental premise of the framework is that PMF is a discrete event and the journey of a company can be thought of as pre PMF and post PMF. The reality is that most founders will be unable to articulate when and if PMF has been achieved.

A journey of a startup to scale is better categorized as a continuous series of PMF points where the product evolves to target a continuously changing perception of the target market in the eyes of the founders.

Obsessing over PMF as a fundamental metric will limit founders from exploring the true complexity of the ecosystem in which a startup operates in and can often be a stumbling block in optimising for their subjective outcomes.

There is no such thing as a Product-Market Fit. The article is at best marginally useful in thinking about your startup and at worst will take you on a tangent of intellectual mastrubation which can be a completely misguide you on how to think about your startup.

Startups exist in a complex ecosystem of competing forces. This ecosystem changes all the time. Your product and the market are only two of the multiple factors that could influence your startup. Even then, what constitutes your product and how you define your market will also change throughout the course of your startup.

The ideas behind 'product-market' reduce this complexity into an intellectual exercise whose premise that product should fit market for success to happen is too simplistic and inaccurate. Assuming the product-market fit theory and extrapolating to corollary's and model's the kind this article portrays is great for an MBA classroom workshop but little else outside.

I havent actually. But I drive a car with a gear(stick) and whenever I drive a car without one it feels that I can use the hand to hold some coffee or get some texting done.

I do get your point regarding cognitive fatigue though but I think we need a conclusive statistic rather than one thrown by Tesla.

Beats me why hasnt Tesla auto pilot been shut down already. If the car is on Autopilot then people will get used to it and use that time to check on mail, call a friend or simply doze off. Some of these guys will end up getting killed and 'we told you so' simply doesnt cut it.

EDIT: The accident rate is a statistic thrown by Tesla and only serves the purpose its meant to serve. Do we have any statistics on accidents caused comparing the situation when car is on auto-pilot vs similar cars driven by similar drivers under similar conditions without autopilot ?

3.) Solo founders might slap on an unemployed friend with marginal utility to overcome the bias of investors not funding solo entrepreneurs.

4.) Solo founders might hire an 'employee' and give him the label of a 'co-founder' as a performance appraisal.

Looks pretty cool. I didnt know what CBT did but reading through your app helped me understand. Maybe start with a quick explanation of how CBT works and then explain how hte app helps you along.

Seems to me that this trick could help in better decision making even with an audience which doesnt identify of needing CBT. Maybe branding it as a general purpose utility might help adoption.

> Also, the public hospitals in India are a joke. They are terrible. Although some of the best doctors in India come from there.

How can they be terrible and have the best doctors at the same time ?

> Cleanliness is another major issue in Indian hospitals. Even in the best ones most staff don't follow basic sterilization procedures that are common in the western world.

You mentioned before that some private hospitals are amazing, yet here you mention that cleanliness is an issue in indian hospitals. How can they be amazing if cleanliness is an issue ?

> So all in all its great that the hospitals in India are affordable to a cross section of Indians but they can be better with better government oversight and having well trained and passionate nursing staff which might increase costs.

Are you saying that all the nurses in the US come all 'passionate' ?

Indian cities are a mess for a very different reason - they dont have elected city governments - you might ask why but the answer is too detailed to give here.

You should host it somewhere.

Its Indian version of tabloid news. AFAIK some local enforcement agency passed a rule banning PUBG near to school exams.

'Thums Up' is the best soda ever for me - very distinct nutty taste. And a dry lingering after effect.

I think most of the research like these are pretty much useless. This is because they assume that the success of a startup has correlation with the founders/co-founders - there well might be, but imo the biggest correlation with success is time.

Some startups go bust when they are launched in an unfavourable climate - sometimes the tech is too raw, othertimes the market is just not ready. Move them a couple of years before or after and they take off. Lots of startups which take off, dont keep the momentum - market forces disrupt startups a lot more than the other way around.

When a startup takes off, often for no fault of the founders/co-founders - it creates a strong incentive for the founders to keep aligned and work together. If a startup does not take off it creates a strong incentive for founders to NOT work together.

Often when a startup takes off - or if it raises a big round from a huge VC it creates a strong signal for co-founders to get on board. Case in point is dropbox - they got accepted into YC and it allowed the founder to 'hire' a co-founder.

1. First figure out plan B - what happens if you are not able to raise funding in the next 6 months.

2. Assume a position of power - you will make this company big even without funding because plan B is in place.

3. Talk to investors from this position. You are smarter than them. You know more about this business. You don't need this particular investor to invest because others have already signed up.

4. Treat investors like shit. Dont look too eager to setup meetings. Schedule meetings a week out atleast. When you drop into a meeting do NOT spend more than half an hour to 45 minutes. Do NOT answer all questions for investors - be selective about information you disclose - push answers to next meeting - make yourself scarce.

5. Do bullshit padding around your entire story. If something doesnt sound too good dont disclose that information. Make up stuff to make things look good.

There are people who will find the points above ethically questionable. These people most likely dont know what it takes to raise money.

I dont really need the study. I stay here and experience this on a daily basis. There is nothing in the study which contradicts what I said. People do visit private hospitals if public hospitals dont meet their needs and such visits can definitely bankrupt people. That doesnt have to mean that the govt. hospitals are doing a bad job or that private hospitals are inaccessible.

Interesting comments here but imo India already has a pretty fantastic healthcare system. People who argue against spend some time understanding the US healthcare system and the disaster it is.

India already has health insurance by private companies but its probably not used extensively. Something like this is basically a government run insurance scheme - it will most likely be a no-frills service, offer standardized plans with fixed reimbursements and provide some tax benefits for enrollment. There is very little that can go wrong here and probably pretty good upside. This is the kind of things that make for very good politics and there is no harm in the govt. capitalising on it.

That being said most of India has access to govt. run hospitals which offer near free services. The article paints a grim picture of these facilities and that might be largely true but I frequent govt. hospitals all the time even if I can afford private. They are quick, almost free and doctors are pretty good.

I think maybe the problem is that energy is broadly a solved problem as far as US is concerned. You guys have enough energy that you need and the means to pay for it. The world might move to solar/wind but it doesnt really matter to the average joe in the US because things are pretty good already.

Countries like India, Solar is huge. We don't get enough energy even in our richest cities. Most people cant afford to pay as much as they do. Using coal to fire electricity plants is clogging up the air. Solar has the potential to change a lot here.

Doesnt really matter what Andy intended - when Google bought it this is what they had in mind and it has been driven consistent with this policy.

Google is absolutely at fault here and EU is the first of what should be many more cases against them.

Not really. Each ATM in India is defended by a human.

This was pretty good last year but this year isnt forward looking at all.

Also they missed the 100 mn new internet users which came online in India the past year and the rock bottom mobile data rates which enabled it.

The concern is that Sam is offering this advice for founders not investors - and many would lap it up given the authority he has and make suboptimal decisions about their startup.

I think YC is probably HEAVILY influenced by appearance. Wrestle with the data little bit, check all the right boxes, prep that video, get some intros and your YC MBA is set.

Customers largely couldnt care less about one-man shows and even if in any specific case they do, it is very easy to 'look' like a company on the internet or in real life.

Amazon has always been a one-man show - but maybe thats why they never made money.

Broadly disagree with ALL the points, except for the first one.

IMO this happens with a LOT of standard advice regarding startups. The problem is that there are as many ways to do a startup as there are founders and its too tempting for VC's to infer 'wisdom' from their immediate samples.

I suspect that this happens because as an observer its extremely hard to distinguish causation from correlation. Also, it seems that VC's tend to view 'emergent' success in terms of their own work ethics.

Sam's not the only one though. Paul Graham did this too with his two founder rule for startups.

I was simply implying that Yoga and Ayurveda both originate from the same 'body' of ancient indian literature called the Vedas. I am no expert though and cant comment on how closely related they are.

I suggest you check once more around a month from now - 21st June, World Yoga Day, to be precise - from any of the thousands of yoga practitioners that you will find clogging the streets of your city.

'Educated' people once believed the earth was flat. We all know how that worked out.

Nepal has rejected Ayurveda products manufactured by one company because of contaminants. How is that a statement on the efficacy of Ayurveda ? There has been contamination found in batches of Coke/Pepsi bottles also in India - none of it is a statement on the efficacy of the underlying product.

Yoga was pseudoscience once. Now there is overwhelming evidence in support of it. Ayurveda descends from a similar lineage. The turmeric latte that the western world is infatuated with at the moment is just the tip of the Ayurveda iceberg.

The only reason Ayurveda isnt backed clinically is because it hasnt been subjected to it. But it will, exactly the way Yoga did. Yoga and Ayurveda are backed by science the just not in a clinical sense because it wasnt possible back then. They still went through an iterative development phase rooted in experiments and observation.

Also, the link you quoted doesnt discredit Ayurveda at all. Its about medicines sold in the name of Ayurveda having heavy metals.

I use their toothpaste all the time. It has a very earthy organic flavor and immediately contrasts with the strong 'chemical' taste of traditional toothpaste.

To be fair, the toothpaste though is an exception. Most of the patanjali products are similar to other products on the market - the only difference seem to be that they skip the strong flavors/chemicals in favor of the basic ones and market it as more 'organic'. The subtext is that they are also a LOT cheaper so the market laps it up.

Indians have a widespread distrust of western personal care products and the science of Ayurveda is considered superior. Patanjali has taken the first step in monetizing this belief at scale. I don't think they would be the last.

Ayurveda is poised to go the way of Yoga. Everyone should get ready to hop on.

Firstly, It doesnt have to be illegal. Monopolies decrease choice for the customer and hamper innovation. That reason should be good enough and has been good enough in the case of telecom.

Secondly, if there is enough competition than why has Google enjoyed overwhelming market share for such a long time ? This doesnt happen in any other industry, not with any other company and definitely not in any industry as lucrative as search ads.

Thirdly, Search is critical infrastructure. Google is known to hire lobbyist to supress research unfavourable to it. How do we know that publishers do not self-censor content critical to Google lest they get bumped from search.