January 2011
Yuri Milner, SV Angel Shaking up Angel Investing →
SV Angel and Yuri just changed the rules for angel investing. This should be interesting since it levels the field. Are we going to see a new layer of Top Tier Angel Investors?
Yuri Milner and SV Angel are offering angel investment to EVERY new Y Combinator startup.
The terms? $150,000 in convertible debt. With no cap and no discount. If you’re an investor you know exactly what that means and...
(How to do) Failing well →
Startups talk a lot about how to succeed, but talking about failing is often toned down. It’s the reverse 80/20 problem. We spend 80% of our time talking about succeeding, while only 20% are actually succeeding. Maybe if we talked more candidly and often about failing we’d get better at succeeding?
Failure sucks. Nobody wants to fail. But in the start-up world, most people are doing...
@davemcclure AARRR Start Up Metrics Chart designed... →
Predicting the future of the Internet is easy. →
… anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.
In a few years, we’ll look back in amazement that in 2011 we still used brokers to help us find houses, that doctors kept records scribbled on notepads, that government information was carefully spoon-fed to a compliant press corps, and that scarcity of information and tools was a primary inhibitor to education.
by @cdixon.
Should You Sell Your Company? →
Some insightful thoughts about when to stay the course and when to consider selling a business.
When analyzing whether or not you should sell your company, a good basic rule of thumb is: If: a) You are very early on in a very large market AND b) You have a good chance of being number 1 in that market then you should remain stand-alone. The reason is that nobody will be able to afford to pay what...
Managing Nerds →
A very neat and tongue-in-cheek piece about engineering management.
You and your nerd are surprisingly goal aligned with regard to the chaos. You want him to build a thing and you want him to build it well. You want it to perform reliably in bizarre situations that no one can predict. You want to scale when you least expect it. And you want to be amazed.
I identify completely. :-)
Mind Control with Lasers →
Mind control FTW!
So, though the human brain has over 100 billion neurons instead of the worm’s 302, and we’re not photosensitive, this project brings us 1 evil pull request closer to total world domination. with frickin lasers.
The Wording Of Steve Jobs' Email To Apple Staff Is... →
:-(
In this vein, in our opinion, the wording of one sentence of Steve’s email to Apple staff is not encouraging:
I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.
In our opinion, those are not the words of someone taking a short leave who is confident he will be back at the company soon (or ever).
What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? →
Aw, how cute. He didn’t know. :-)
In Windows you have a C:\ drive and everything beyond that is labelled with the following letter. So your second drive is D:, your DVD is E:\ and if you put in a USB stick it becomes F:\ and the following drive G:\ and so on and so on, etc. But then, what and where are A:\ and B:\?
Uh… and yes, I’m getting old.
When They Are Throwing Money At You... →
Insightful as always by @fredwilson
Focus on your business, your product, your team. Put all this stuff in perspective and don’t let it take you mind off what matters. You need money to build a business but the money is a tool, the business is the mission. Focus on the mission.
Who Really Owns Facebook? [Chart] →
(via @bantai)
Only about 4% of the company as a whole is owned between Goldman Sachs and its clients. So who owns the biggest chunk? Facebook’s staff, of course. Given the current valuation, a 30% ownership from Facebook’s staff means that they collectively hold around $15 billion.
Engineering Management at Facebbok →
Some interesting essays about what differs in engineering management at Facebook, compared to conventional wisdom.
There is a list of about a dozen of these that everyone knows; my list is a set of more (I consider) non-obvious things, things that rapidly growing technology organizations don’t find it obvious to do easily. I believe that organizations which successfully integrate these...
“In certain cases my weaknesses are that I’m too idealistic. Realize that...”
– Steve Jobs (via jacks)
Starcraft Theory and Strategy →
Next year, we’re sending all the Burters to this sweet course.
This course will go in-depth in the theory of how war is conducted within the confines of the game Starcraft. There will be lecture on various aspects of the game, from the viewpoint of pure theory to the more computational aspects of how exactly battles are conducted. Calculus and Differential Equations are highly recommended...
15 mistakes young entrepreneurs make, but don't... →
If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably going to screw up at some point. That’s ok. Entrepreneurship is a constant process of quickly testing hypotheses, failing, refining and testing again. If you’re not failing, you’re not learning, right? Well, not all fails are created equal. Some are wholly unnecessary, and I’d like to list my top 15 here. Note that...
Coding Horror: Trouble In the House of Google →
Still, this is the first time since 2000 that I can recall Google search quality ever declining, and it has inspired some rather heretical thoughts in me — are we seeing the first signs that algorithmic search has failed as a strategy?
Google search is becoming less significant for me too.
Actually, $50 Billion Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s... →
Apple hit the $300 billion market cap milestone today after their stock surged 2 percent to open 2011. That makes them only the second public company with such a high value, the other is Exxon Mobile.
Crazy, but well deserved. Which is more than I can say about Facebook who’s $50bn valuation after Goldman-Sachs invested seems nothing but insane. The P/E must be well over 150, which...
10 Websites to Watch in 2011 →
Mashable’s editors haven’t quite visited a trillion pages, but we’ve checked out a lot in the past year, and we’ve compiled a list of 10 websites we think are poised to have big years in 2011. Some of these are relatively new sites we think will catch the mainstream’s attention next year and others are older sites that we think will finally hit the big time in 2011.
Let’s End the Myth that Ideas are Worthless →
The problem comes in the reductionist thinking that translates the recognition that “execution might mean lots of shifts” into the conclusion that “then ideas are worthless.” This is simply not true. There is not a continuum with “idea” on one side and “execution” on the other that demands that if you recognize the importance of execution you all of a sudden have to diminish the importance of...
How did Spotify get its name? - Quora →
We were a bit embarrassed to admit that’s how the name came up so our afterconstruction was to say that Spotify stems from SPOT and IDENTIFY.
Should I work at a startup or as a quant at a... →
Fact of the matter is that top quants are perpetually in demand at leading hedge funds. It is an opportunity that simply will not go away. However, the start-up that strikes you at your core, is keeping you up and night, has a group of people whom you are excited to work with and where your unique skills can have a direct and powerful impact on its success doesn’t come along very often.
In a Strong Wind Even Turkeys Can Fly | Both Sides... →
“Reality is, at the seed stage, most rocketships look more like the cardboard variety you’d make as a kid than something NASA developed. Pour rocketfuel into your cardboard creation and you’re more likely to see it go up in flames than into orbit… … I fear that, in this market, people are pouring rocketfuel into cardboard cutouts and no one is telling them. I strongly believe living through...