Yep, and it's clear from other comments and conduct from him that he wasn't just "hungry", he was being provocative, which is fine.
10,495 karma · joined October 30, 2007
I’ve seen it happen with people who made a lot of money in cryptocurrency and then didn’t need to work anymore, sometimes with disastrous consequences (broken families, spiralling psychotic episodes).
I used to find Tony Hseih inspiring, since I saw him speak at a conference in 2009 when Zappos was at its peak.
But over time he seemed to develop a messiah complex, and with all that money combined with the loss of the anchor to normality that comes with having conventional responsibilities, it just spiraled out of control. It’s very sad.
There were times in my life where I was becoming a bit unhinged - egotistical, even a bit messianic at times. In the end I just couldn’t afford to keep going like that; I wasn’t rich and needed to work so had to figure out how to get onto a healthy path. I now count myself super lucky I never had a big financial windfall before I was forced to go through that process; I could easily have gone down a very bad path if I’d had that.
Slight correction: it's one federal government minister setting a rule in 2021 for his own department and being broadly criticized. He is no longer in office (he is now opposition leader and seems to be quite an unsuccessful/unpopular one if recent by-election results are any indicator).
So yes, it's very hyperbolic to suggest these are "going to get banned in ... Australia".
Yes, sure, we have some deadly snakes, spiders, crocodiles, a few plants like in the OP, etc. But so do many other countries/regions around the world, including the USA.
In practice, the vast majority of Australians never have any contact with them, and actual cases of people being killed or seriously harmed by these things are extremely rare, and are much less common than fatalities/serious injuries from traffic accidents, which also have quite low rates by international standards.
Australians like to think of themselves as tough, but, I dunno, we're pretty much like most other people around the world in my experience :)
Edit:
Some actual data:
There were 541 animal-related deaths reported to an Australian coroner between 2001 and 2017, with an average of 32 animal-related deaths reported per calendar year. Land mammals comprised the majority (71.0%) of deaths, followed by reptiles and amphibians (10.7%) and insects and invertebrates (8.7%).
...
Nearly one third (31.8%) of animal-related deaths involved horses.
https://www.ncis.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/NCIS-fact...
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In the same period, nearly 25000 people died in traffic accidents, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
People do stupid/risky things when young/desperate, and most learn and grow. That seems to be the case here and is normal and healthy.
Not every case of wrongdoing is equivalent to the worst known/imaginable cases of wrongdoing.
That seems like a simple and effective way for companies to manage their deposit risk.
If the government/president came out and said “we’re going to protect the system now but we may not/will not in the future and all companies should put their funds in sweep network accounts to be safe”, then it would be reasonable next time to say “should have known better”.
I understand your position that startup founders should already "have known better"; it's defensible on pure technical grounds, but just impractical/inefficient given contemporary realities.
That’s an inaccurate paraphrase.
It makes all the difference for the government to clearly indicate that they will intervene quickly and decisively to keep the system functioning rather than stand back and let depositors lose big sums, potentially triggering much wider fallout. By doing that they can minimise further costs/failures for everyone.
> If you hold cash in a bank and your balance exceeds the FDIC insurance limit, it's at some risk. This isn't new, yet seems to have come as a complete surprise to a whole bunch of people, many of whom really should have known better.
It’s just not a norm - something that people in startups or small businesses generally think about or talk about, as it’s antithetical to focusing all your efforts on building a product and pleasing customers.
I understand you’re saying it should be.
Ok, sure, maybe it should be. That’s a valid topic of discussion. It just raises a whole lot of new trade offs and costs, if suddenly every early stage startup founder now has to also be an expert in bank risk.
I share the sense of injustice when that happens, and I know it has been the case plenty of times in the past and will be again in the future, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here.
This action from the government is about shoring up the system to prevent a widespread collapse, which would hurt poor people and cost taxpayers much more than any direct costs relating to this action. It’s also worth considering that a huge driver of the economic turmoil that’s playing out now has been the government spending to support people - including/especially low-income people - through the pandemic, so it’s really not a case of poor people being thrown under a bus; it’s just a case of keeping the whole system functioning through very unstable and challenging times for everyone.
> Millions lost their homes during the 2007/08 financial crisis[0][1], did that have anything to do with merit, or was it (to use your phrase) "almost entirely due to the economic instability" caused by excesses on Wall Street?
There was plenty that was wrong about the way the 07/08 crisis was handled but it was a very different situation. I think it was terrible that people lost their homes, as well as jobs and businesses, through no fault of their own. It was mostly due to government regulations and bank lending practices that enabled people to buy houses they couldn’t afford. It was very wrong that the bank execs who oversaw it kept their jobs and wealth.
The SVB scenario is nothing like this. Depositors have not caused an economic crisis that will hurt poor people. SVB execs caused it and regulators contributed. And so SVB execs are losing everything and regulators are fixing it at little/no cost to taxpayers, but to the benefit of everyone who will keep their job, many of whom are low-income workers.
Language like this suggests your primary concern is punishing tech bros for having too much money.
I’m happy to have a conversation about the excesses to tech industry funding rounds and salaries. I’d probably mostly agree with you.
The solution is not to evaporate their bank accounts for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of their work and are almost entirely due to the economic instability continuing to play out since the pandemic started.
For a start, there’d be nothing moral about it whatsoever, and more importantly, it would affect countless low-income people, just as much or more than rich tech bros.
The regulation of SVB doesn’t seem to have been particularly lacking. The shortfall is not very large and should be covered by asset sales and some fairly small industry levies.
What exactly is the moral hazard here?
The executives and investors should lose everything. That will send the right signal to other bank execs and investors. And regulators should make some minor changes to balance sheet requirements and perhaps insurance thresholds/charges.
What do we expect corporate depositors to learn, aside from that their deposits are never safe, which would crash the whole banking system?
I share your concern about moral hazard. What I think you’re doing is letting your desire of an idealized outcome eclipse consideration of the least-worst workable outcome, which is realistically all we can hope for.
It makes no sense for every business owner (and a business doesn't have to be very big to have more than $250K in the bank) to have to spread their funds across multiple banks and do ongoing due diligence across each bank's investment activities.
We're talking about farmers, used car dealerships, builders, and countless other kinds of businesses who would suddenly be expected to develop an aptitude for financial hedging and risk assessment. It would be incredibly inefficient and make it not worthwhile for many people to be in business at all.
The whole point of a regulated financial system is that regular depositors can expect that if the regulations are being met and the regulators are verifying that the banks are in good shape, you can trust that your funds will be safe.
The right response to this situation is to change the guaranteed limit for corporate bank accounts, and, sure, increase the fees that banks (and indirectly, corporate banking customers) pay for that. The wrong response would be to tank the entire banking system to stick it to the tech bros.
It's a fun theory but doesn't hold up to more than a few seconds' thought.
- founders from outside the U.S. or from certain countries
- operations/investments in certain countries
- operations in certain industries/market segments (including ones that are completely legal but are considered high-risk)
- founders/directors with previous bankruptcies/insolvencies or any criminal history
- activities anywhere near any legal grey areas or risks including things like cannabis or hallucinogenic substance sales/research even if legal in the company’s region of operations
Those come to mind now but I’m sure there are others.
It’s not just about accepting deposits but offering lines of credit, credit cards even with low balances, international transfers, insurance and other services crucial to the smooth functioning of a company.
Banks are inherently risk averse, and mainstream banks just don’t have the expertise or resources to look at startups and evaluate their risk profile, so will just refuse service based on anything slightly outside very narrow safety criteria.
Silicon Valley Bank is a bank too and still has to be quite conservative, but has been far more willing to do the work to accommodate the more risky/unconventional aspects inherent to startups.
A low-quality take is that if a company is in any way suspect it doesn’t deserve to be in business, but that position just wipes out swathes of innovation, research and wealth creation, and leads to a scenario where only people who are already rich (and American) can start startups.
Do you have any thoughts about what nascent startups should have done with respect to banking when other banks wouldn’t help them?
Fuji Xerox: W 340 x D 238 x H 189 mm Weight 4.6 kg
Brother HL-L2370DW: W 356 x D 361 X H 182 mm Weight 7.2 kg
But yep, the Brother units are certainly good for performance and cost, and I'd probably go for one of them rather than an HP.
Fuji Xerox doesn't make it or anything like it anymore. HP has one that looks similar [1] – could that be as good? The equivalent Brother models all seem much bigger and uglier.
I'm not looking forward to having to replace it, whenever that day comes.
[1] https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-laserjet-m110we-printer
I'm not convinced about this, for anything other than small or midsize cars without reversing sensors/cameras (which most recent cars have).
The large-ish wagon (Subaru Outback) I have is pretty impossible to park head-in in most off-street car parks, whereas it's quite easy/safe to reverse into even quite tight spots, particularly with the use of the camera.
I was actively involved in Rotary in the 90s/00s via a Rotaract Club (for 18-30yos), and even then, there were many women, many non-white members, and plenty of people under 50 in the Rotary clubs I visited.
If some clubs/areas are still dominated by white, older males, it is mostly due to the difficulty in attracting any new members into volunteer organisations these days (mostly as it's unfashionable and people have other things to do), not due to any exclusionist policies.
As tptacek pointed out above, favours/karma can go a long way, so it’s not necessarily the case that you should never do anything for a discount or pro bono.
It’s a matter of setting the right expectation. If you’re doing a favour, make it clear that that’s what it is and what the limits are, and avoid letting that become the expected ongoing deal.
https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
I can testify as to the troubles that flow from doing work for discounts or gratis; I'm currently four years into a client relationship where I started out by helping them out of a desperate situation with a cut-price block of work, then they've continued to build their business on the basis that I (or other consultants) can keep providing ongoing work at comparable cut-price rates. Any time we try and explain that they need to increase their budgets if they want to keep funding further enhancements work, they protest that they're a non-profit with very limited budgets - they just can't accept that it costs big dollars to do this kind of work on an ongoing basis. It's just super-hard to adjust the expectation once the client has locked in an idea of what the work is "worth".
Re your questions, the best answer is maybe - I'll only really know when I get more public about it, which I plan to do soon, but I have some promising signals. I'm well aware funding is a major issue at the moment, but some or maybe all the concepts are very relevant to "current things", and I'm happy to focus on what I can get funded in the short term and put the other concepts on the backburner till later.
FWIW, I have a lot of conviction about all the ideas I have in mind - hence having already put a lot of time/money/learning into them over several years wanting to work on all of them rather than just one.
I'd love to connect if you're interested to know more, share any more detailed input, perhaps be involved in some way.
My email is in my bio and I can easily be found on LinkedIn, so feel free to get in touch.
The obvious response is that I should just pick the most promising one and focus on that, and put the others to one side.
Reasons not to do that are:
(1) all are quite important (addressing significant problems for important industries or consumer groups), but for different reasons,
(2) I actually enjoy the working on different things - each has appeal for different reasons,
(3) I'm an older founder with a family/mortgage, and see it as more prudent to spread my risk across a few different bets than go all in on one (which I've done before when I was younger), and
(4) though the concepts are quite different in terms of industry/product functionality/technologies required, I can see some commonalities in the types of people that would be interested in working on these ideas (for the same reason that I like working on all of them), but also some differences in the fun-vs-importance/impact of each, and I feel like there's some advantage in being able to rotate team members from one project to another every few months, spending some time on the more fun things, and then some time on the more "important" projects - or whatever they prefer.
But I'm still wrestling with the pros and cons of going this way vs just focusing on one thing. I'd be happy to hear thoughts from people as to whether this kind of thing could work, and what pros/cons I might not have considered.
[1] Several years ago I worked as an employee for an agency/studio that did "we'll build your startup for you" kind of work (not for equity, just cash); we had some solid wins, but for the ones whose startups didn't work out it was hard to see all that money (usually founder savings) go to waste, and I would never want to do that again.
It's the kind of question that's asked in interviews because it has several answers and a good candidate should be able to think it through and suggest a reasonable number of them and demonstrate their ability to creatively think through a problem. That round covers can't fall in seems one of the simplest and most important, given that a cover that falls in could kill or seriously injure a worker.
https://www.livescience.com/32441-why-are-manhole-covers-rou...
The Stanton Warrior drain cover: https://www.google.com/search?q=stanton+warrior+drain+cover&...
They were produced by Stanton Ironworks in Derbyshire, which closed in 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkeston#Stanton_Ironworks.
Many of them must have been replaced with a different brand since then as I noticed fewer had the Stanton Warrior brand when I was last in London in 2019.
The British electronic music producers The Stanton Warriors took their name from these covers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanton_Warriors.
(Also, at adds with the old Google interview brain-teaser, "Why are manhole covers round?" - they're rectangular. So I guess it they don't care so much if these ones fall in the hole, probably because they're not holes that workers go down into).
Everyone can play the game of saying everything horrific in the past or today is directly attributable to the economic system that they oppose and that their opponents advocate, and we can even go further and play tricks like this: "Nazism was really a left-wing system in nature". See, it's great fun.
Ultimately it's pointless though; it doesn't persuade anyone to think differently about anything, and serves only to make the writer feel righteous, without needing to go to the effort of formulating and advocating something genuinely better and workable for the future.