nikhilkalegregg

also id add--regarding picking partners--one thing to be aware of is how your partner treats others--as nice as he/she treats you initially (whilst trying to recruit you) keep an eye on how he/she treats others he is not trying to recruit, because at the end of the day, that will ultimately determine how he/she will treat you. I overlooked these red flags to my detriment--and as soon as our company got required my CEO (who did next to nothing) sold our company's IP (which I as the CTO and only software engineer wrote alone) and cut me out --leaving me with nothing except the distinction of having sold a startup--while he pocketed all the profits, earned that distinction and went to business school (with all the other twats who train to do the same thing). For all the technical founders out there, do not join a business founder without vetting him/her in a variety of situations and trust his/her heart with your destiny.

join a startup if you are a founding partner, believe in the product, have or believe in some vision or value that you can add to a product, and if you get along with the people (and are ideally around the same age as the main founders). Otherwise, in my opinion, do not join that theoretical startup--and start your own project.

seems to me that it is a product that derives its value purely on speculation -- luckily for them--all those who have bitcoin are incentivized to be proponents of it--thereby creating a rise that is similar in scope and manner to virality on the Internet--even if people were to recognize that the value of Bitcoin was derived purely from there being an incentive to be a proponent of it for those who have it--its not clear that this truth would have any bearing nor inspire any instinct for one to get rid of it--despite it not being tangibly valuable--obviously it is reliant on electricity being capable and internet being widespread--both those things are set to continue--so what could cause a mass selling off of Bitcoin? It seems like it has some internal mechanisms to stop the downward spiral virality that you see on things with similarly viral upward ascension--because there will always be people out there with a monetary incentive to convince those peopel who are starting to sell off bitcoin that they should not--and advocates/employees who are basically employed by the good out there spreading the gospel because --its like a sales commission for them to have more people use it--while it is a great benefit to have for those who were left or are provided with a sturdy keep by their parents--it doesnt help those who dont have the money to invest--but as a tool for upper middle class kids to do absolutely nothing and live in a better or as good living situation as their parents--it does slow down some of the wage disparity between that very very top and those who are comfortable--I wish I wasnt a broke tech entrepeneur because its a great thing to have money in--and it is like a part time job--gettin other people into it--raising the value of your money--I think eventually once you have some more competitors enter the market the margins on that upward curve will shift and will create competition that guarantees the paradigm of winners and losers--if one type loses--and the value gets more aligned with the ability to pick the winner in the marketplace--then I think you may see it start to become more of a gamblers fix--and the steady upward gains enjoyed by those currently will be distributed to those who correctly forecasted the specific bitcoin to back. Due to the fact that that volatility doesnt necessarily cause a net change to Bitcoin as a product--winners/losers will make it seasaw a bit more eventually than it currently is modeling on. It mimics what one would think would be the goals of a covert upper middle class organization that seeks to ensure the continuation of capitalism but realizes that capitalism inherently creates winners and losers--so to me, I would not be surprised if it was heavilly backed by foreign governments looking to gain some supporters and appease some of the population that is for the most part getting less poor relative to the proportion of the country's income--this could get people loyal to their governments, while (assuming the government were an earlier investor in this device that incentivizes loyalty and advocation) allowing the governmentts a fairly simple mechanism to collect public funds while appeasing upper middle class part of the population that would otherwise be unrestful --and using them to quell some of the more radical elements of the populist left--who want greater wealth distribuytion--Bitcoin synthetically enables those who would otherwise be loser in the capitalist system to be winners--and as it happens those same winners--are likely the same winners whose parents were also winners relative to their age group (how else did they get the money to invest)--so in that regard it can be seen or is seen by some governments as a tool of maintaining order, and meeting people's expectations--while kinda kicking poor people in the gut who are left to assume that they werent as good as their synthetically inflated peers who (like their parents) found a way to become richer than they--thus confirming an intuition that is not illogical and providing the perfect outlet for capitalism to continue to thrive. Its definitely not going somewhere for awhile, unless the creators have a mechanism for cashing out on everyones money--in which case I would have to lightheartedly chuckle as my now wealthier friends rejoin me on the startup train--whoever wins the war on AI may be able to synthetically mimic volatility and cause it to crash if he commits him/herself to that endeavor--but that would be very risky--unnecessary--but if executed properly with the right amount of capital and with a propaganda machine that acts as the first general AI --that can advocate as a human would--rephrasing that advocacy in manyy different ways--they could find a way to create the appearance of a mass fall--only to buy at a lower point--and then letting the AI be the advocates that the humans currently are acting as--im not planning on doing that though--but if someone else wins the AI war--who knows what they could do--and if they are real assholes--that could be a way for someone to monopolize or take a great amount of contorl of the product wiht

The free-market capitalism that you are espousing, requires a ‘cash grab’ —or distribution- to function or else it is completely incompatible with technological advancement. Looping structures allow programs to increase output and efficiency on the supply side, enabling startups to undercut company's reliant on manual labor. Advancements in tech allow a single person to run an automated script that does the work of thousands of manual workers (while greatly reducing the risk of human error). However, increased efficiency on the supply side decreases the value of human labor, which consequently decreases purchasing power across the board in every industry where a manual process is replaced. The more industry's that are efficient, the fewer customers capitalists can offer their products and services too. Capitalism can’t work unless there is some degree of a 'free ride to the poor', because the wealthy cant generate revenue if there isn’t a middle class to sell their products to. Its in capitalists best interests to have the poor become the middle class—i.e., because no one can create marginal revenue if there is no one to sell things too (or the value of the good being sold deflates). Without a strong consumer market there is no incentive for anyone to do anything in free market capitalism, because there is no incentive to do something that cannot create enough marginal value to meet ones material need, and because we are all finite beings reliant on external goods to persist, one cannot create value without meeting their material needs. Would it not be a more preferable for a centralized structure to provide everyone with the basics, so everyone could study what interested them and add value to society as a whole. If the govt invested say 60k in each individual, a greater # of people be able to work on advancing the quality of life for our species, finding new worlds to inhabit, and generally speaking — adding marginal value to the way we spend our time. Instead of minds thinking about physics, and how to improve things, minds are thinking about how to survive. Is this state of affairs not a huge deadweight loss of humanity’s time? A Sanders administration would hopefully be a small, necessary, and peaceful step in the logical direction.

I think they have enough users that they don't have to worry too much about a replacement. Instagram is pretty close conceptually to Facebook, but most people don't use it as a direct substitute. One thing way in the future I could see hurting them is when my generation --the first generation of users that used Facebook regularly start dying. If I'm an old man and I'm on Facebook seeing daily updates on people I used to know dying, I will probably stop using Facebook altogether to avoid terminal depression, but might just be me. However, if they can keep on-boarding the younger generations, they could probably survive that, assuming their isn't a hipper substitute by then offering users immortality.

That's a very good point. Costs certainly are a hugely significant factor that I overlooked. I suppose it would come down to how much of the in house framework you could write up front (so you wouldn't necessarily need to hire as many engineers and could cut some of those labor costs preemptively) and how well that framework is actually written. I think that there are probably too many variables to have a one size fits all solution to this question, however.

This is very helpful, thank you

I'd say curiosity, creativity, energy, drive and intellectual flexibility. I think the most telling sign of a good non technical cofounder is one who isn't satisfied with being a non technical cofounder and is actively trying to acquire the knowledge/abilities to be a technical founder, because such a pursuit demonstrates some degree of the characteristics listed above.

I think the answer to that question depends on your perspective, when you ask, who you ask, and the specific context upon which you are asking. If you asked a horny bisexual caveman 7000 years ago, he might prefer spending time with you in person and in the moment to being on Facetime with you. If you ask someone now, they’d probably prefer Facetiming a horny bisexual caveman rather than spending time with him in person. I think its mostly relative, but personally I think the taste of the magic we consume makes us require more magic to attain general satisfaction, and in that sense it is addictive and reduces joy in things like being present in the moment, since we have the means to solve our problems with more magic in any given moment.

im absolutely the cause, and fair enough. wasn't trying to get into the whole story and I probably did provide an overly favorable context for my overly-personalized question. I did not mention that I was begrudgingly the CEO despite the fact that my partner was a good 10 years older than me and had a lot of experience in the space, whereas I had just graduated college, was a relatively unproven commodity to the VCs, and had an unresolved legal matter lingering over me, as well. I certainly made a ton of mistakes throughout the venture. It was not my intention to question or make excuses for that. I am sorry my question came across that way to you. I might just need a change in scenery!

You are young. Becoming a coder is very doable at that age. I started self-teaching myself how to code a little less than a year ago just before I was 24 with no prior experience besides believing myself to be raw at math just like yourself. If you understand math, it should not be too difficult. Everything is abstractions, and you get to create the abstractions. If you think about coding in terms of just organizing tables, it makes it really easy. Some of the fancier stuff might take some time (or some copying and pasting), but most of the syntax that is probably going to intimidate you is not necessarily useful in practice. Think of it as writing an argument in a philosophy class. What are the system’s conditionality’s? What is the end goal of the program? Sound, clean and uncluttered logic with a distinct argument and point is what you are going for. Personally, I found that I learned very fast using PHP, MySQL, HTML5, jQuery, JavaScript, and the LAMP stack. It gave me the foundation to do AJAX (asynchronous calling) and learn a lot of the intimidatingly sounding frameworks which are not altogether that useful, necessarily (I only know as far as my opinion). But I would recommend checking out that stack. They work together nicely and are not syntactically challenging. Another thing I'd recommend is replacing your recreational gaming like crossword puzzles, sudoku, etc with Project Euler. Its an enjoyable way to learn while using competitive fuel/energy rather than draining any oil of finishing a task for a task’s sake. However, for me, 100%, the single most important thing was setting myself projects, and committing myself to them despite my subconscious knowing they had no chance at success. The project I chose was a music new-era napster/iTunes in the cloud website. I would recommend something similar because it is relatively enjoyable to learn/code and there are a million different ways you can improve any base product you have, (offline playing, sharing at the blink of an eye, efficient uploading, and you can get rid of Spotify, Pandora, etc. You can also make it illegal as shit and feel like a cowboy and just see how great you can make it. Chances are, it will be really illegal but better than anything else you can currently get right now. Use that as motivation, enjoy the fruits of your labor, save money, and inspire yourself to keep going.

Once you've exhausted the features you can add to a music app, you can execute any idea that you come up with that utilizes the Internet, sharing, etc. You won't necessarily become a master of 4D printing, but any theory you have about anything you can test and create a physical representation of on the Internet. Don't rush building it for the sake of finishing. Learn and understand what you are doing and your next project will have the potential of promis. I spent 3-4 months working on a website that I knew had no chance of becoming anything. However, I just kept smashing my head against the wall and making it better while slowly but surely improving my skillset to the point where new things now come easily, because I understand the philosophy. Now that I have moved on from that initial music website I can now pursue much more innovative and intellecutually stimulating projects (which I wouldn't have been able to do had I not spent so much time on a project that I knew had no chance of success). Give yourself a throw away project, commit yourself to it, and use it as training for the next one. If you truly commit yourself, you should be able to build pretty much anything you see on the Internet 1 year from now. That is not a guarantee! But you have plenty of time and there no reason not to believe that you cannot.