ryan90

The business typically only makes 25% of what they would have. A restaurant cannot survive on that margin.

And most Grouponers are bottom-feeders. Just looking for a deal. They're also the most likely to be vocal on Yelp (there was a study somewhere showing how Grouponers/Living Social people were more likely to leave bad reviews).

Groupon's salespeople are so high-pressure and portray an overly optimistic view of what a struggling small business should expect.

Speaking from personal interactions from several business owners who have tried daily deals here. Sure, a business needs to calculate it's ROI, but I think Groupon 1) oversells the value of 'getting their name out there' through their deals and 2) doesn't explain how bad their customers are.

This it the epitome of Startup Weekends' short fall.

You simply can't start a company in a weekend. Even moreso, you can't expect to start a company with a bunch of random people you just met.

This gets complicated by the fact that not only do the team members not know each other, they inevitably all have day jobs. They all have different level of skills. Not to mention that companies shouldn't be started by more than 2 or 3 people - teams at startup weekend are typically 6-8 as I recall.

And if a team wins, they think this somehow increases their chance of success at starting an actual company.

I'm a big fan of the concept of startup weekend purely to raise awareness of what it's like to start a company. But stop it there. Nobody be looking to start a company out of a weekend event.

I'm not at all shocked at what happened here. And to the poster, it's your own fault. If you actually thought you would start something with a random "idea guy", well, lesson learned. At least read up on IP agreements first.

I disagree. Homejoy solved the annoying issues of waiting for quotes, not being able to reach your cleaner, having to sort through reviews, ect.

Honestly that sounds like you got what you deserved. Canceling the day of causes all sorts of logistical issues. You can hardly blame them for that.

This article is terrible. It cites no real sources to back up it's claims of reacharounds and churn problems. It's one person's speculation.

lawnstarter.workable.com

Austin, TX: ONSITE

VP of Engineering Growth Engineer Front-end Developers Back-end Developers UX/UI Developers

LawnStarter raised a $6 million series A from some awesome investors, and we're growing fast.

Email ryan@lawnstarter.com or visit lawnstarter.workable.com

What is better, owning 1% of a $1mm company or 0.5% of a $5mm company? That's why you shouldn't worry about dilution.

You do not properly understand equity.

If I'm a founder and I own 100% then give up half the company to investors, that 50% I give up better improve my overall outcome by at least 2x. Usually that's reflected in the overall valuation.

http://paulgraham.com/equity.html

Stock is not free. Equity is expensive if you're working for a good company. As a founder I would much rather pay out cash , but that's generally not what people are after (esp director, vp level)

Founders don't take dilution unless it makes each existing share more valuable. Unless it's a down round of course.

Dilution is life; just accept it. No employee or founder stock will ever have an anti-dilution provision.

There are plenty of people who join startups for the upside, and would gladly give up a certain amount of salary for options. Especially super-experienced people who are well-off, and would rather have more equity.

This conversation again?

This is so idiotic. Click/share-bait at it's finest.

Yes, there are awful powerpoint presentations.

Yet as someone who has worked at a company where business cases and data visualization is extremely important, I can say that Powerpoint decks are easily the most effective communication tool.

When done properly, they tell a story.

They can be standalone, or an aid to a presentation.

Yes, there are awful powerpoints. Many people abuse them. Or use them as a knowledge dump. Or fail to keep the reader in mind when creating them.

That does not mean that the platform itself is flawed.

And sure, some business areas could do better without them.

Just because there are terrible papers written, doesn't mean Word documents are bad. Just because most people write terrible emails, doesn't mean email is a poor communication tool.

The key - as with any medium - is learning how to use it to effectively communicate.

I'd love to hear more discussion on the statement "My thought is that party rounds tend to leave companies without an investor who cares enough or has pockets deep enough to bridge the company when necessary."

I did a party round, mainly because we could do it in a fraction of the time it would take to get a lead. And we did have a couple deep pockets come in. It worked out for us, but I could see it going the other way. Would love to dig in more.

OP here. It's not meant to replace mixpanel. It's to visualize KPIs that most startups have to pull from their MYSQL databases. Such as total customers, churn, ect. You would never use this for web tracking.

The biggest bias in the discussion that occurs on HN, is that most people commenting are engineers. Programming is inherently heads down, whereas a large number of professional jobs are not.

If you want to run a sales team, open office is almost mandatory. The energy you hear from others closing deals causes you to become energized, creating a compounding effect. An ops/customer success team needs to be open office so that agents can quickly exchange off the cuff conversations with each other in real time.

The point is, there are different office layouts that work for different types of people & workers.

<insert beating dead horse gif here>

This really shouldn't be a shocker. I was diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school and have been on and off medication ever since. A large number of friends in the professional world use these stimulants regularly.

I think that these drugs are very useful for short term sprints where one needs to focus, or do rather mundane tasks. But it's incredibly easy to become dependent on them. At one point, I could even begin to focus unless I had the max dose of adderall and a strong cup of coffee.

I don't judge anyone who uses stimulants to increase performance. Just because I was diagnosed with ADHD doesn't mean I'm not using them as a performing enhancing drug; it's just legal for me to do so. However, I would encourage everyone - whether you're prescribed or not - to use them in moderation. It's very easy to build up a tolerance and become dependent, and once you're dependent, you're no better off than where you started.

No app just takes off like that. Even so, you have to deal with the challenges associated with it.

I'm a huge cynic when it comes to Snapchat and in no way agree with it's valuation, but they've made some pretty big moves and Evan has shown to be more than competent.

When you're competing for the cream of the crop, yes it's hard.

Poaching is a commonly used term to describe this. It's been used for a long time.

I've had jobs where working from home was the greatest thing, and jobs where being able to shout over to coworkers and have face-to-face conversations is irreplaceable. It depends on the work and the team dynamic. Developers working from home makes a lot of sense in most cases. Trading futures makes absolutely zero sense. There's no one size fits all answer.

I was a beta tester of Smarthost (smarthost.me) and it helped me rent out my house for SXSW for the first time. Well worth the money!

Personally I'd be bored out of my mind. I already can't wait to get back to work every monday.

Just because there are two tax accounts at one address does not automatically make them fraudulent. Could it not be one person is filing it on behalf of others? Granted, it is absurd that this was not checked, but is this lunatic truly asking if it's a good idea to release bank information of people his company sees as fraudulent? I'm pretty sure this is satire, but wanted to make sure.

I'd guess that the lowest one wins.

While i'd love coffee on demand, it seems like the margins are so low. Already I feel ripped off paying $3 / cup. Add another $3 delivery charge and I'm really getting gouged.

With everything on demand, I wonder if even the most succesful will ever come close to profitability. I use Favor frequently, which costs $5 per delivery no matter what. There's no way they're making much money on this if it takes a courier 30 minutes to get my order. I hope I'm wrong but just my 2 cents.

This is a great article for us marketers whose primary goal is shares and pageviews.

Unfortunately, it's sad to think that this is the state of journalism. <sigh>

Note, that I was and am raising a question, not making an argument.

Let's assume that open office floorplans result in a decrease in productivity. The author mentioned that the open office plan did create a sense of camaraderie. Suppose that people attrited or you lost out on recruiting talent because your office felt too old-school, or they left because other startups felt more fun. This is one instance where long-term productivity could suffer for the sake of near-term productivity.

I'm not saying that this happens, but it's something to consider. In fact, we're in the process of selecting office space right now, and it's a lot easier to find law firm style offices with only rooms - no open space. We've decided against it - and are going with open space (plus a few quiet rooms) for a couple reasons. First, we don't want to lose out on the fun factor. Being able to shoot the shit with your friends may be distracting, but it makes the workday a lot more bearable. Our particular dev team actually agrees with this, but I could definitely see the counter argument. The other reason is that it makes much more sense for our sales team, call support, and operations guys to be able to shout questions to each other in real time. Try giving an inside sales rep his or her own office - their numbers plummet because they are no longer immersed in the competitive environment of a sales floor.

Any way, I'm just trying to make the point that there are downsides to having a traditional cubicalized office that could erode the immediate benefits.

This article is a classic case of "link journalism".

Not a single study she linked to is conclusive and applicable to all situations. The studies merely suggest that there may be drawbacks to open offices.

Additionally, she mentions the camaraderie among teammates masking lost productivity. Who's to say that this doesn't contribute to the overall well being of the office? Even if it does mean some near-term productivity is lost.

Each company is different, and each department within the company is different. We just moved into an office space, and our sales floor is much different than our dev area. Sweeping generalizations like the one made in this article aren't helpful for anybody.