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switchon A New Billionaire’s 10 Rules for Success

It was shut down by the hosting company for nothing illegal. It was just one of those - we had something very specific in our terms which you didn't read - type of things.

Nothing like gambling or illegal or porn or anything. Just a minor technicality.

I find it interesting that you would attack me or to be precise assume that I'm supporting Bob Parsons' ethical or moral fiber.

All I'm saying is -> Good strategy is good strategy.

It seems to you like a platitude. It seems to this billionaire like reality.

Perhaps you should try it before you write it off.

Besides, the stuff he writes aren't fortune cooke type generalisms. When you most want to quit is usually when you are closest to success - that's a remarkably accurate statement.

Look back at your own life and if you've mastered any skills you'll see the truth in it.

Seriously, try to imagine what you would think of the points if they were written by someone who fell into your 'good person' bucket and think about whether they hold true or not.

switchon A New Billionaire’s 10 Rules for Success

Just a quick comment on the people who're hating on the Rules of Success Bob Parsons has put up and on GoDaddy

* If one of the things he recommends turns out be of great value to you.

Then does it really matter whether or not he objectifies women or does a hard sell?

It seems that we as geeks tend to love people who pretend to be all goody-goody like Google and open source people but if someone has the balls to be politically incorrect then it automatically means that the strategy they are using must be bullshit.

He shot an elephant != His advice is not good.

Here's a little story about 'When you're ready to quit you're closer than you think.

One of my sites got closed down by a hosting company. Some stupid reason. I was thinking about closing down the other site hosted by that hosting company too - Didn't, Stuck with it and that site has ended up making me $440K over the last two years.

At the moment when it seemed most hopeless i.e. the bigger site is just nuked and what's the point in sticking with the fledgling site -> sticking with it ended up being a great decision.

That's just one example.

Perhaps rather than applying your ethics and morals filter it might help to consider his advice on its own (i.e. separate from the person). Does it stand up - are there examples in your own life that prove that?

A Colombian Cocaine Warlord might figure out the same strategic magic that Jack Welch does (perhaps something like - If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete).

It's still great strategy.

switchon Ten apps is all I need

What monastic wrote:

* I feel like he's missing the point of an ecosystem. It's fine that he only uses a few apps on his phone, and that most other people probably do the same. The problem is that those "few apps" that most other people use aren't the same "few apps" that he uses. *

All the arguments against this are arguments made by people not willing to step out of their own perspective.

1) The particular apps that are critical vary per person. 2) The number of such critical apps vary per person. 3) The weight given to these apps when valuing the iPhone varies per person.

Most importantly - in a system where iPhone is already as good or better (or if you have religion of openness, a little worse) than nearly every other phone - the apps become a huge advantage.

switchon A Look Inside the Process of One of the World’s Most Efficient Studiers

This is, in a nutshell, how to be mediocre at stuff.

It's a bit pointless going to college and spending 4 of the best years of your life doing stuff you aren't interested enough in to devote yourself to.

In fact, you could argue college itself isn't the best use of those 4 years.

I'm thankful for people like this because they leave all the outlier spots (best spots that offer the most rewards (financial, satisfaction, recognition, etc.)) to people willing to pick something they love and willing to work hard as hell at it.

switchon LinkedIn Is Worth $9 Billion? The New Tech Bubble Has Arrived.

It's certainly beginning to look like a Bubble.

A few things -

1) Everyone is assuming that revenue will explode, and more importantly, profits will really, really explode.

2) Everyone is discounting intent. A social network for networking is very different from a site you go to to find jobs.

The assumption that LinkedIn is going to destroy sites dedicated to job hunting is just that - an assumption.

There is a higher chance that people will not change their intent from social networking to jobs - than there is that people will.

3) Everyone is discounting competitors.

NEW

The biggest warning flag to me is the assumption that all these tech companies are just waiting to hit some magical figure (say 250 million users) and then they will turn on the magic tap of unlimited profits.

A company that makes a lot of profit from the get go is very different from a company that stumbles into a huge source of profit and those are both very different from a company that optimizes for customers of bad intent and thus never reaches high profitability.

NEW

LinkedIn is worth $9 billion because Wall Street needs a way to get everyone's savings into their bonuses. The party will last for a couple of years. LinkedIn, Yelp, Groupon, Facebook, Zynga, etc. and every day people will be milked.

The same strategy - release a small amount of shares and drive up prices - appeal to people's greed to make a quick buck.

Then 90% of these companies will go down from 10 billion and $50 billion valuations to $1 billion and $5 billion valuations.

switch on The False Choice Between Babies And Startups

My dad started a company when I was pretty young and I used to see him one week a month. It's quite naive to think that less time with your kids doesn't in some way prevent you from being the best possible parent.
Anyone who thinks kids getting less time with their parents is as good or can somehow be made as good as kids getting a lot of time with their parents is delusional.
Its a very real choice.
Nowhere in the post do we see any statistics or hard facts on how many entrepreneurs succeeded in launching a company and making it successful while being pregnant or while having young kids.
Given that there are fewer women entrepreneurs than men entrepreneurs it would be a safe assumption that the number of pregnant women entrepreneurs or women entrepreneurs with young kids would be pretty low.
Besides you can get into evolutionary psychology and then it becomes pretty obvious that men have a much higher impetus to take big risks than women.
This whole movement towards political correctness has become ridiculous.
How come men don't get to bitch about not being able to have kids? Are we supposed to pretend that being biologically built to bear kids doesn't in some way make women predisposed to favor kids over startups?
The choice is very real and it's between raising great kids who get enough attention from their parents and raising a great company that gets enough attention from its founders.
Without hard data pointing out how many women started great companies while also raising kids who didn't turn out to be nutcases the girl's argument is just wishful thinking.

switch on What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?

That nothing in Science is 100% certain and it's a good idea to not get religious about it.

switch on Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

Pot calling the Kettle Black.

switch on The Ballmer Days Are Over

I think it's a disservice to Ballmer to not consider that every business goes up and down.
This chart (courtesy turar) is the real story -> http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/net_income#compCos=AAPL,GO...
It just bothers all the Silicon Valley tech press that Microsoft continues to thrash its competitors.
Google makes money via search. Apple started off with fucking mp3 players and now makes 'post-PC' devices.
It just bothers SiValley that no one can touch the Windows domination.
Microsoft made $5 billion+ in profit last quarter. The CEO who's been in charge for the last 10 years should be given a prize for surviving and growing the company's profits.
A new emerging company will always have more room to grow. If you consider each company at its core competency they are all dominating.
Google has 64% or so search share. Bing+yahoo get 30% or so. Microsoft has 90%+ desktop OS share. After 16 or 20 continuous quarters of growth Mac is still less than 10%. Apple is dominating smartphones (though Android might slow it down, notably without making any profit itself - unless you want to count it as a defence for mobile search). It's also dominating Tablets and trying to change things - because it doesn't want to fight Microsoft head-on in PCs - Just too difficult given Microsoft's advantages.
So each company is dominating its niche and trying to find ways to make its niche dominate the entire tech landscape.
Microsoft still being so dominant and the success of Windows 7 point to Sinofsky and Ballmer being God level. Growing profits from a couple of billion a quarter to $5 billion to $6 billion a quarter is extremely impressive.
Apple's growth is more impressive - However, that doesn't mean Microsoft's profits are unimpressive and it'd be foolish to take your personal dislike of Microsoft as a reason to discount some really solid work by CEO Ballmer.
Finally, Ballmer's first duty is to Microsoft and himself and Gate and Microsoft people. Who fucking cares what the vultures of Wall Street and shareholders who don't do squat think.

switch on If average salaries are 80-100k why does everyone keep getting 40-60k offers?

HN ate up my first comment so here's a shorter one (relatively).
1) Becoming a Top 5% coder will end up being a much better thing to focus on than how much money you can earn by leaving grad school.
2) I got a 48% pay increase once. An article at Quintessential Careers - you never name a price/desired salary and never disclose your past salary. There are a TON of little things like this that programmers just don't realize.
Most companies are losers - they would rather pay you $50K for $100K of work and have you miserable than pay you $100K and have you happy and contribute $1 million worth of work. You have to get them to pay you a lot.
3) Do you really want to leave grad school for an offer like this? Is it the money - because if you like grad school but would leave for a job that you don't like just for money then it would be a colossal failure.
4) Eastern Wa and Portland. Waste of your life if you're a developer.
Ideal - Silicon Valley, NYC. Very Good - Seattle, Austin, Boston, perhaps places like Colorado etc.
Portland people are cool and girls are amazing. However, if you want to be the best you have to go where the best are.
5) Your post about 'Let down by School' etc. Get out of that thinking - You are responsible 100%. You were let down only by yourself.
6) You have to figure out what markets out of the ones you like are hot.
iPhone and Android App developers are charging $100 per hour or more. So 470 hours (10 weeks) for what you are saying average salary ($47K). It's going to become even more. I'm not even talking about the best. This is top 15% of mobile app developers.
7) Why exactly do you care whether you make $50K a year or $100K?

switch on What Are The 2 Most Important Traits in An Entrepreneur?

1) Not reading articles about 'x most important traits of an entrepreneur'.
2) Not giving up.

switch on We should stop running away from radiation

I'd recommend The Oil Drum - http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7706#comments_top
There seem to be a small group of people who want to play the contrarian game and claim that people are overreacting to the potentially huge damage the contamination (as opposed to radiation) that Fukushima is going to result in.
It's easy to be holed up safe in Oxford and claim radiation is not an issue. Why doesn't this gentleman volunteer to assist at the plants if he thinks radiation is no danger at all.

switch on We do get out of bed for less than $10,000 dollars per day

For someone who usually writes very smart posts this is one strange post.
On one hand developers complain that they don't get paid enough and don't get treated well. On the other hand, they refuse to consider the possibility that perhaps not getting out of bed for less than $10,000 a day is exactly what developers ought to do.
If you look at the cumulative worth companies like Microsoft and Google and VMWare built up and break it down to the founders and first 10 developers - it'd be a lot more than $10,000 per day.

switch on Ask HN: Non-social media startup, 40+ founders seeks support and funding

yes, move back to sfo.
mindcrime is right - whatever you focus on will come true. your biggest enemy at this point is negative belief. Lots of 30 and 40 year olds start startups and do very well.
stop talking to your negative friend - people like that are to be avoided like the plague.
You should be first getting a lot of insight and then applying. If your state of mind while applying was similar to what it is now you might not be able to put together the best pitch.

switch on Ask HN:Anyone here not want an exit?

What about option c.
Make a ton of money. Stay private.
There's some sort of mind-brainwash that the only way to build a company is to get funding by giving some middle aged man who doesn't have the balls to take big risks himself a large share of your company.
It's the Internet. You don't need a lot of capital.

switch on Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

+1 to what lionhearted wrote -
Because programmers don't ask for more money often enough.
In particular, Programmers never focus on 'ensuring they get what they deserve'. Other people take advantage of the fact that programmers never focus on this part.

switch on Canadians Just Became World's Biggest Internet Losers.

what an overreaction. I`m in Canada and calling Canadians the biggest Internet losers is nonsense.
People who use 300 GB of data per month cost the ISP more than people who use a few GB a month. That`s just a fact of life.
Should they have flexibility to charge more - Yes.

switch on [dead]

also, just a quick thought.
You talk about your ignorance. That's true. If you could PLEASE PLEASE read any book on reality like Robert Greene or Art of War or even 50 Cent's book.
Distinguish between being a pimp, being a whore, and being a trick.
Right now their offer is them whoring you out.
Also, the more the company offering to buy you out is pretending to be good and selling you on how much you'll enjoy working there, the higher the chance they are screwing you over.
PLEASE think about what I wrote about the next big boom being around the corner. It would be madness to
a) agree to such a lop-sided deal.
b) do it at this point of time.

switch on [dead]

umm ...
The purchaser has made the deal seem very much like a standard-fair offer and has (without saying so) implied that they make an offer and that is it - they don't go back and forth on it. Truthfully I believe we would accept the current offer but it'd be a begrudging acceptance and I think it would leave a bad taste in the founders mouth.
... that's nonsense they are just strong-arming you.
Like cperciva - there is not way you don't guarantee the money. Besides we're about to begin a golden period of irrational greed. Why sell now. Wait a year or two for Facebook and other IPOs.
You've done the hard part and are profitable. All you have to do is hang on till next bubble and make 10 times what you're being offered now - at least half of it in cash.
Seriously, stop being desperate

switch on Ask HN: How can I quit talking myself out of my own ideas?

Skywing, There's a quote in one of the Assassin series books by Robin Hobb that's very apt.
There is no losing. You keep fighting until you win.
In a way what you're giving up on is not an idea. You're giving in to your fear of what it might mean if you don't succeed with the idea.
And it's ironic - because the only way you could fail is if you give up.
*
My recommendation would be to make a list of 100 ideas you've had, then give it a week to add on as many ideas as you like.
Then identify the 10-20 ideas that fall in the intersection of your natural abilities and passions. Then pick 2 and start working on both of those with a stated amount per day and with no leeway for changes until end of 2011.
So you commit to 3 hours a day on these 2 ideas - every single day. No matter what happens.
*
Also your devotion should be to the product you're making and to the execution of the idea. Once you've decided on the 2 ideas, then it's not your job to visualize failure. It's to execute and to visualize only success.
*
At some level you're scared of failure and you just have to grow some balls and take a 100% shot. If you have a son down the line, or already have one. What would you want him to think of his father as -
Someone who worried about what users might say about his work and quite without releasing anything.
OR
Someone who made something magnificent - who fucking cares whether anyone else sees the magnificence or not. It's you making it for yourself, as an artist. If you're happy with what you make then nothing else matters.

switch on $80,000 a Month in App Sales by Outsourcing Everything

Let's break it down.
1) Release a bunch of free apps. 2) Take the holiday season - the single month with the highest sales and traffic. 3) Round it up a little bit to get to $80K a month. 4) Find as many people as you can who're willing to believe the story. 5) Don't lie - just let people extrapolate - Say $80K in a month and let people assume that means $80K per month.
Their website is the classic long form sales letter.
Make it long so people get invested. Offer $2600 worth of value for just $300. Then knock another $200 off.
Appeal to the total idiots who think a 'free' ready to go app that is included will start making them $5,000 a day.
Quote examples like iShoot + kitchen table without telling the whole story i.e. the guy's programming experience and the actual number of months spent and the strategy he used.
A fool and his money are soon parted. These two gentleman are taking upon themselves this painful task.
If we set aside ethics it's just a strategy - One guy builds a super valuable product and sell it at high price to smart people who value it.
Another person builds a house of cards and targets people's greed and laziness.
Notice a few things -
1) Their insistence that they spend just 5 hours a week on this. 2) Their focus on showing earnings from a single month - the month in the year that has the most sales. 3) If you were to wish for a easy, no hassle way to make lots of money - You'd dream up exactly what they are claiming. It's absolutely perfect - you don't have to know coding, you need just 5 hours a week, and you'll start making $5,000 a day within 60 days.

switch on Mike Maples: “You Have to Be Willing to Throw it all away” [video]

great point.
personally, am sick and tired of VCs pretend they know stuff and that they care about entrepreneurs.
If they care that much why don't they just give away money for free to the startups they think are promising.

switch on [dead]

Don't understand this.
The guy's telling the Bingo Card Creator guy he should be making more money. Which is absolutely true because he has the skillset to make millions a year.
How is this bad in any way - it's not.
It's not psychoanalysis. It's just a guy saying - Dude, You should be making a lot more money with your skillset.
Option 1:Let your ego get in the way and stay at under $60K a year.
Option 2: Learn from the advice, even if it isn't sugarcoated, and get to $1 million+ a year.
Why do we have to sugar coat everything. Are we women now? Are our feelings getting hurt?

switch on Ask HN: anyone leave a high paying job to work at a startup?

speaks, are you trying to find a rationalization to stick with what you're doing?
the whole 'fun' thing has two aspects.
There's the practicality aspect i.e. business in general and startups in particular are painfully difficult and you can't really win if you don't like (or ideally love) what you jump in to.
If you can work only 8 hrs a day but your opponent loves his work and words 14 hours a day you're screwed.
There's also the reality aspect. NO ONE ever does a start-up without motivations like money and pleasure and importance.
If your prime modality is making money and comfort then a start-up isn't right for you at all.
Also, all your reasons for wanting to do a start-up are meaningless. stepping stone to other opportunities?
if you're taking such a big risk fucking do something that is the ultimate opportunity.

switch on How did non US citizen founders funded by YC get allowed to work in the US?

apply for a hsmp visa in UK or canadian permanent residence.
Most of the advice in this thread - except for the first two - alain and tololRon - is very very dangerous - it'll get you barred from US forever if you try some of the stunts recommended.

switch on Wealth anorexia a.k.a. hating yourself because you're not Larry Ellison

what about people who want to money for the the joy of the experience itself?
isn't anyone here addicted to making money - it feels amazing.
anyways - it's glad to see that one girl and this guy writing all these posts and weeding out the non-serious people.
lionhearted's comment is spot on - Not very many people go all out to be a billionaire. If posts like these keep proliferating the numbers might go down even more.

switch on Hey, Guys, It's Totally Okay If You Don't Get Rich

she's neither male nor rich so her advice is bogus.
there are some things that are just true - all other things being equal women prefer men with money.
Even when all other things are not quite equal women prefer men with money.
here's a quick way to test it - list all the men she's ever dated/been in a relationship with and check on how many earned significantly less than her and how many earned significantly more.
This is the worst advice anyone could ever give anyone interested in doing a start-up. It's typical woman advice - they don't tell you what works - just something that'll make you feel it's OK to be a loser.

switch on Is Google at Risk of Becoming the Next Microsoft?

Yup. +1 to that.

switch on You’ve Either Shipped or You Haven’t

great point. It's worth mentioning this applies to pretty much every field and especially to things that have had a lot of effort put into them.
Cooking, acting, coding, shipping, public speaking, being a doctor, pretty much everything.
Perhaps the better statement would be -
You've either produced something of quality and stood behind it or you haven't.

switch on What does Dustin Moskovitz think of the Facebook movie?

what are you worrying about. if they're making movies that are hating on intelligent + tech people that's a great thing.
It's the greatest role reversal ever - the tech guys are hooking up with the girls and being hated by the jocks.
you're totally missing how awesome this is.
Would you rather have society's stamp of approval and win a popularity contest OR get billions and get all the girls.