If a user is having a problem, it’s our problem.
- Steve Jobs
You’re holding it wrong.
Kyle Bragger: A few random thoughts on building communities
Some learnings I’ve acquired over the past nine months building Forrst, bullet-point style and in no particular order:
- Your earliest users are vital to the success of the community. They should be people you absolutely trust and/or know IRL (the first 100 or so users of Forrst were all…
So proud of Kyle and what he’s done. Good learnings here, read the whole thing.
Debt Bubble: Will the Market Crash Because of College Costs?
Re: last night’s convo w/ my friend Mike.
Interesting timing.
I like the thesis on the surface, but I don’t agree with the conclusion (that the debt incurred due to inflated cost of college education is going to be more damaging than the housing market).
It is true that government-backed student loans inflates costs in ways similar to why health care costs are inflated. Also, universities (especially for-profit ones) aren’t incentivized to churn out great graduates, but instead to maximize government loan dollars received, which is horrible.
The key difference here is that with houses, people saw it as an investment that could be flipped for cash in 5-10 years. You can’t liquidate a college education. You can be successful without a $60k degree, but you can’t live without a roof over your head.
[…] the median VC loses money. That’s one of the most surprising things I’ve learned about VC while working on Y Combinator. Only a fraction of VCs even have positive returns. The rest exist to satisfy demand among fund managers for venture capital as an asset class.
![tedr:
heyitsnoah:
Google Translates Sigur Rós [PIC]
Heh!](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l86o3m6ghE1qz6ljpo1_500.jpg)
Obama, in this fanciful version, held up his hand. He told his aides to put away the history books and reject the New Deal comparisons. Unlike in 1932, Americans today have a raging distrust of Washington, he observed. Living through a crisis caused by excessive debt, they will viscerally recoil at the prospect of federal debt without end. “Somehow,” Obama concluded, “we have to address the crisis without further terrifying the American people.” The stimulus package, he continued, should rely heavily on cutting payroll taxes. This, he argued, will send a quick jolt to the economy without concentrating power in Washington. It will deliver a sharp psychological boost to the middle class. It might even be bipartisan. Obama noted that John McCain had a $445 billion stimulus plan along these lines and his fellow Republican senator, Mel Martinez, a $713 billion plan.
David Brooks - The Alternate History - NYTimes.com
David Brooks is an idiot. Total fucking idiot.
(via sexartandpolitics)
A payroll tax holiday was my #1 choice for stimulus all along. The payroll tax is the worst tax you can imagine — it is literally a tax on work and jobs. The stimulus has failed at its stated objectives (remember that chart showing unemployment at 8% without the stimulus, and 7% with? yeah…) and if you’re going to have another stimulus, a payroll tax holiday/cut is still the best candidate.
(via pegobry)
I disagree. Today’s unemployment is asymmetrical and structural. Some industries (like manufacturing) are making more money with fewer employees and a change in payroll tax isn’t going to change that. Other industries (technology and engineering) are desperately trying to hire talent but it doesn’t exist - everyone who has those skills is employed and everyone who is unemployed can’t afford to acquire those skills.
Frank Lloyd Wright quote
“Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.”
Spotted at Dean and Deluca in Midtown Manhattan.
The entrepreneur pays. He pays with equity.
PEG 2.0 as part of the “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold” thread.
Rafer sez:
@PEG2.0 Having been on the Common Stock end of that stick almost countless times, I don’t agree. That’s the same line@bryce took in attempting to dissemble, though I realize you didn’t get caught crackin’ on your own gig the way he did.
Maybe, just maybe, you could rationalize that the founders pay with time. But in all actuality money talks and bullshit (paper) walks. The startup is the commodity being sold for cash to the LPs. There are any number of manufacturing processes that treat the unfinished goods with little regard and where the majority of Work-In-Process inventory is wastage.
Software is easy to build and distribute. It’s easy to simply give it to someone and hope they figure it out and possess enough reason to use it well. But this type of software will eventually die out, replaced with software that teaches you how to get better at the activity for which it is designed.
Joshua Porter in Software that Teaches - 52 Weeks of UX (via 2105
)
I couldn’t agree more.
(via mikehudack)
Yes, 100%. Fits well with where we’re headed.
