sethbannon

Worth noting that they were able to treat osteoarthritis in mice using transplanted mammalian cells engineered to photosynthesize. They also posit that this can be used to treat common degenerative diseases in humans by enhancing cell anabolism (the process by which cells utilize energy to build molecules and other things like proteins and lipids from smaller molecules). Though still much work to be done there.

Fifty Years | Recruiter / Talent Partner | San Francisco (on-site) | Full-time

The climate is heading off a cliff. Thousands die every day of malnutrition. Pandemics put the world at risk. Technology entrepreneurship can solve these problems and many more! Fifty Years is a different kind of venture capital firm. At Fifty Years we believe technology entrepreneurship can and should solve the world’s biggest problems and we only support entrepreneurs working to do so.

We're looking for an experienced Recruiter / Talent Partner to both help our portfolio founders find great talent directly and also to help them learn how to build world class talent functions internally. The role will be 50% direct recruiting and 50% coaching founders on how to recruit well -- building pipeline, interviewing, reference checking, closing, etc. Candidates should have experience recruiting at a high growth startups or building a talent function at a VC firm.

This is us: https://fiftyyears.com/

Drop us a line at hello at fiftyyears.com with RECRUITER in the subject line.

This somehow makes me feel nostalgic for when the internet was more irreverent.

One of my YC batchmates had his company acquired by Google. They quickly shut down his product (shocking!) and had him product manage Google Fi instead. He gave me access to the beta about 7 years ago. At that time, you could search for any string of numbers and it would let you see available numbers containing that string. I was able to get a number with 4 consecutive zeros in it and to this day it brings me joy every time I see or share it. Most people are not as amused but every now and then I'll meet someone who lights up when they see it. Without fail, they were also a math nerd growing up. I guess numbers tickle some people's brains differently.

Those that have "made it" are moving out of SF and the young and hungry are moving in. SF has seen a wave of Gen Z inbound recently. I'll take that trade anytime.

"the number of rental applications by people who fall into Gen Z (defined as those born between 1997 and 2012) have increased by 21% in the past year. Meanwhile, as we just discussed, rental applications from every single other generation have been lessening. Millennials, for instance, saw an 8% decrease in rental activity...

Between 2020 and 2021, people who fall into Generation Z were filling out 21% more leases nationwide, as compared with the year before. When that search is narrowed to San Francisco, Rentcafé says those 20-somethings had a 101% increase in rental applications. They now make up more than a fifth of all people looking to lease in SF."

https://sfist.com/2022/03/22/san-francisco-is-getting-younge...

I feel like I'm getting old. The youth ethos of "information should be free!" has been replaced with the reaction "gee, I really hope great journalism can make money, otherwise we won't have any".

For those curious, Alexander Grischuk did put out a fairly strong statement of condemnation of the invasion: https://worldchess.com/news/all/alexander-grischuk-on-the-ru...

Pretty brave of him.

I'm confused about how this is on the front page. The title says they've raised a Series B at a big valuation but the link is just their marketing page, with no mention whatsoever of a raise.

There's a YC company that's building hydrofoil container ships to lower the GHG emissions from shipping.

https://www.boundarylayer.tech/

Households received their census cards March 12-20 and "Census Day" -- when there was a big marketing push to get folks to respond -- was April 1. That was right when NYC was getting slammed, which happened before the rest of the country. Census workers then sent folks physically out to try and reach non-responding households, but that's super hard to do.

For those wanting to know state congressional seat gains and losses...

Gaining 2 seats: Texas

Gaining 1 seat: Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon

Losing 1 seat: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia

New York lost a congressional seat by falling 89 residents short. Given that the response window fell during the peak COVID crisis for NYC, it's hard to imagine it didn't have a negative impact on response rate.

Lichess is such an inspiring demonstration of what talented enthusiasts can build, even when driven not by profit but by simple passion. You can feel the craftsmanship and the love of chess in the app and in the speed of iteration. We could use more of this in the world.

This comment may be too meta but this post just made me appreciate Hacker News so much! Classic creative hacking guided by nothing but pure curiosity. Love it!

These accomplishments are so damn inspiring. Reminds me of this West Wing clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2HzHSeV9v8

Let's look at what a 1% US wealth tax would mean for Jeff Bezos.

He founded Amazon 26 years ago.

A 1% wealth tax means he keeps 99% of Amazon stock each year.

.99^26 = .77 = 77%

So he'd currently be worth $145B instead of $188B.

PG is saying Bezos would have left the US because of that?

Edit after twitter conversation with PG:

He doesn't believe Bezos would have not started Amazon in the US if there was a wealth tax. He thinks a US wealth tax might marginally reduce the number of founders that choose to come to the US to start a company.

I still disagree.

I think great founders will start companies in the place that maximizes the chance they create an Amazon-level success, not in the place with the lowest taxes.

At some point taxes may be too aggressive but a low single digit wealth tax isn't that.

In describing the site as a bastion of free speech, the Parler CEO says “If you can say it on the street of New York, you can say it on Parler.”

But, according to the article, "the app doesn’t allow terrorist organizations or support for terrorism, the sharing of false rumors, violent language (what the site describes as 'fighting words') toward others, blackmail or pornography."

Last I was in NYC, "fighting words" were most certainly allowed, as was pornography, as was the sharing of false rumors (most of the time). Seems like he's just drawing a different arbitrary line and trying to claim he's a purist for free speech.

I don't know anything about Boost's structure in particular but there are a few ways to make this work:

1) Management fees stack from one fund to the next and can add up. The article says their last fund was $38M and that this is their 4th fund. So assuming their first two funds were $20M each (no idea if this is the case), you'd get stacked fees of $20M * 2% + $20M * 2% + $38M * 2% + $40M * 2% = $2.36M / year

2) Often VCs will taper their management fee over time. For instance, they might charge 3% the first two years, and then reduce over time, so the average is 2%. A 3% management fee on just the $40M fund would be $1.2M / year.

3) Sometimes VCs will sell a stake in the management company to fund operations. So if you expect a $40M fund to 3x, and the carry was 20%, then the management company would expect a windfall of ($40M * 3 - $40M) * 20% = $16M. The VC might sell a 10% stake in the management company that's due to received this carry for $1M now, in order to hire staff and fund operations.

Hope this helps!

[edited for formatting clarity]

Likely deep within the terms and conditions you agreed to with your private health insurance company, you did indeed give permission.

54Gene investor here. While the team is starting in Nigeria, they absolutely plan to expand to the whole of Africa. The logistics, regulations, and cultural norms differ country by country in Africa, so it's easiest to start in a single country (Nigeria) and expand from there.

This post doesn't mention what is perhaps the greatest benefit for founders of accepting a preemptive offer from an existing investor: getting a known and trusted person on the board.

At the Series A and later, founders typically have to give up a board seat in financing rounds. This is no bueno, because it means they're giving up control of the company. Board members are hard to get rid of, can often veto big moves, and after a certain point can even fire the founder CEO.

Ensuring only extremely trusted, founder friendly, values aligned people make it on to the board should be a top priority of every startup founder.

By accepting a preemptive offer from an investor the founders have worked with directly for months/years, the founders are limiting the risk of having the wrong people on the board. Founders can, of course, run reference checks with other founders on new investors, to try to gauge how they would act as board members, but there's no stand in for direct experience working with an investor.

Given that the most important things to optimize for during later stage financings are ownership and control, it makes sense that founders might trade some ownership to have more certainty about the control situation.

I wrote about some of the technical advancements driving these changes here: http://sethbannon.com/biotech-in-the-garage

Note: this post is 4 years old so somewhat out of date.

I wish you talked about the product itself instead of complaining about SaaS models vs desktop software models. But FWIW you're mistaken about the pricing. There exists a similar tool in the chemistry space called ChemDraw. It's desktop software to visualize chemistry. And the cheapest version costs over $1,500 [1]. The more expensive version costs nearly $5,000.

1: http://www.academac.co.il/cambridge.html

Congrats, Geoff!

In recent years YC has taken admirable steps to fund solutions to the world's biggest problems (the climate crisis, health, nutrition, etc). Would be curious to hear how you see those efforts evolving!

While 4B people don't have access globally, it's astounding to me that affordable broadband access is still an issue even in the United States.

Glad that new solutions like satellites [1] are coming online to solve this problem.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2019/01/16/twenty-per...

Disclaimer: I'm an investor in Astranis, mentioned in the Forbes article.

Every modern society, looking back fifty years, condemns behavior once considered normal (male-only voting, interracial marriage bans, jailing gays, etc).

I'm convinced industrial animal agriculture will be one of the things today's society is condemned for, fifty years from now.

This is really bittersweet news.

On the one hand, this is a huge loss for YC. Sam's energy and vision helped herald in YC v2.0. His leadership will be sorely missed.

On the other hand, I'll sleep better at night knowing he's dedicating himself fully to AI safety and the work of OpenAI. There's no one I'd rather have leading the effort to ensure AI development doesn't lead to a dark future.

Interesting counter argument: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...

It can be enforced with a lawsuit like this, when an investor doesn't care as much about their reputation with founders: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/crypto-bi...

Those folks will still have the opportunity to live off-grid if they choose.