Something in the article that jumped out at me was:
"But the couple still couldn’t raise money. As cash got tight, the founders asked their eight full-time employees, who are mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, to work for minimum wage, which would buy the company a few months of extra runway. The staff agreed."
The 8 employees must have drastically reduced the cash flow requirements by just being paid minimum wage. My question is, is that any different than directly investing into the company and giving the company cash outright like a VC?
The employees made an investment into the company like a VC would by giving extra runway to the company. I wonder if the employees received any equity compensation for doing so under the same terms that the Alvarez's are trying to raise financing under. Getting paid higher than minimum wage and needing financing which dilutes you or taking minimum wage reducing the need for financing but getting no equity for it seems unfair to the employees.
They never mentioned that detail in the article but it's something I always think about when founders and executives ask employees to make these sacrifices and take on added risk but without ever compensating employees like they would compensate other capital with equity for the risk they take.
I don't like to think about my caloric intake (energy input) in relation to what other people's caloric intake is. It's starting from a reference point that doesn't serve me reliably and becomes very easy to say things such as, I like to eat or have a slow metabolism compared to someone else. But if you think about it, what other people can eat and not gain weight shouldn't matter to you one bit. What happens to you when you eat and how much you eat should matter. For example, it's like comparing your fuel efficiency in relation to another vehicle. (Your metabolism) Let's say that you are a small Smart car and the other vehicle is an F-150 pick up truck. Of course these two vehicles have different energy requirements to move the same distance therefore you don't put the same amount of energy (gasoline) in both vehicles otherwise eventually the Smart car will be overflowing with gasoline since isn't burning enough. So someone with a fast metabolism would be like the F-150 truck and someone with the slow metabolism would be like the Smart car. To think that the two should have the same fuel requirement seems silly whereas people always have an example of someone who can eat more and still stay slim. Maybe they are a truck internally and just need a lot more fuel than you or I but it doesn't mean we should eat similarly to them.
People just need help to find what works for them and for a majority of people who don't have hormone imbalances starting with energy in = energy used personally is going to get them very far in their weight control and just generally understanding what happens to their bodies in relation to food intake. We focus too much on anything but energy intake (this food is a super food, and this is healthy and that isn't). I'm not saying they are not important but if you want to make quick health improvements to a large group of people, starting from energy input to output is more effective.
I used to not be able to put on mass (hard gainer). What I found was that I wasn't eating as much as I thought and really to gain muscle mass and not just mass you then need to not only be in a caloric surplus you need to look a level deeper at your macros and increase your protein in take. If it fits your macros diet would get you close to a body that you are happy with as long as you tweak your macros to what you want to accomplish.
Also, healthy foods do have merit with their micros but again if you don't have hormone issues you can eat what is untraditional considered unhealthy foods, such as McDonalds, and not put on weight or even lose weight as long as you control for caloric intake. The hard part with unhealthy foods is controlling your calories. It is really easy to eat your daily total calories in one or two meals eating unhealthy foods (McDonalds in this example) than eating vegetables and healthier proteins and carbs (lean meats and whole grains). The Supersize me guy didn't get fat because he ate McDonalds he got fat because he ate sooo many calories. Fat Head was a bit of a rebuttal showing what happens when you try to control for calories more. Athletes are known to eat a lot of calories and don't become obese but again it's about getting your energy equation to balance or off balanced in the way you'd like. (caloric surplus to gain weight and a caloric deficit to loss weight)
There will be a lot of nuance in how everyone's bodies will respond and yes watching some metrics other than weight, like blood pressure and cholesterol , will be important in our health. Starting from a high level of just understand OUR personal energy needs and then working from there will give people a lot of benefit and make discussions easier. Because I hear so often from people that what I'm eating is unhealthy when in reality I'm within my caloric intake and within my macro makeup. Just because you eat a homemade cookie or a homemade cake doesn't make it healthier than my Snickers Bar (ooh I love Snickers). And it is so much easier to keep track of my calories when eating a Snickers bar than something homemade. It really is so easy to overeat on those treats especially during the holidays because you have no idea what the person used to bake those.
That's right, with the numbers looking similar when looking at proportions of energy consumption in buildings which is slightly different from just CO2 footprint.
The operational phase is where to look at having the largest impact. In buildings looking at a 75 year time frame you have the operational phase accounting for 94.4% of life cycle primary energy consumption. Where the manufacturing phase such as production of building materials, transportation and constructing the building accounts for 2.2% of life cycle primary energy consumption. [1]
I did some quick calculations to understand their stated problem of needing to higher 40 more people since it is costing them millions in lost revenue each month. "The labor shortage is costing the company some $3.8 million per month, said Marty Davis, the company’s president and CEO."
$3.8 million * 12 months = $45.6 million per year in lost revenue.
Being conservative and assuming a 10% margin on their revenue figures this is a loss of $4.56 million for the firm for the year.
$4.56 million divided by their labour need (40) means each worker brings in $114,000 of margin. So as long as they pay below that they are ahead. If they paid $25/hour for 2000 hours a year ($50,000) plus a 1.4 gross up for benefits they could hire people at $70,000 ($50,000 * 1.4) and still earn a positive margin of $44,000 ($114,00 - $70,000) leaving them $1.76 million of income. ($44,000 * 40).
What do they expect when they pay $36,000 per year (18*2000), plus any benefits?
I’ve heard this stated before as there doesn’t seem to be a labour shortage just a shortage of labour that you want to pay very little for. We don’t say there are too little lawyers or investment bankers or management consultants. Those jobs are or used to be the highest paid bringing in lots of supply from eager graduates.
Presently this is stalled because it is too counterintutive. People can't get their heads around the possibility of paying their gardeners and window cleaners more than their accountants or lawyers. That's the middle class version of The End of the World As We Know It.
This to me explains the existence of firms like Home Depot and the increasing popularity of prefabs.
"Presently this is stalled because it is too counterintutive."
No, it's supply and demand. Plenty of humans can physically rearrange stuff but only a few can (or are authorized) to perform legal services. I also wouldn't bet against the white collar incumbent's ability to make it illegal to replace them.
Everything is S&D, but not necessarily based on rationality. Analogy: The shopping activities of Jews and Muslims don't have an effect on pork prices high or low.
A great many people in our society place higher value on their status than on realizing rational market moves. And to rub salt into the wound, many middle class can't afford a $200-500 dollar callout because their wages have been stagnant as well.
I'll say it again: the existence of Home Depot and other home improvement stores is evidence for wage stagnation.
> Plenty of humans can physically rearrange stuff
It might seem that way but I believe we presently have a building labour shortage. Anecdotally I don't know many master craftsmen, that species seems to be rarer today.
> white collar incumbent's ability to make it illegal to replace them
That is true but that's a problem with government.
There's a limit to how far that can go as well. I see a lot of young entrepreneurs undercutting legal and accounting online.
I don't know. Lots of people in consulting and other white collar gigs will admit (over a few beers) that their job is peddling bullshit, putting together spreadsheets, and really isn't that difficult.
Yea, some people can't cut it in jobs like that, but that doesn't really say anything. Some of my friends that are physicians would struggle tremendously to do the programming and statistics in my line of work, but they will likely always earn more money than me.
Most jobs aren't as difficult as people love to pretend they are. The vast discrepancies in pay across America are probably not warranted in many cases.
Ah but physicians prove my point - the state typically requires many years of education and licensing to be a physician - whether you use the skills learned or not.
>but they will likely always earn more money than me.
Probably so. In the US I think this is because physicians have been very good at getting the state to drastically limit who can practice medicine. There are nearly zero limitations who who can practice programming, and barely any limitations on engineering.
Think about it - if you needed a to pass an examination, get a license, and spend years on post-undergrad schooling & forced unpaid internships programmers would have very high salaries.
I absolutely agree, but if much of the "value" you provide is via protectionist legislation then all we are saying here is that blue collar workers should lobby for extremely high entry points and credentials for their jobs so they "have the right" to earn decent salaries.
I think that's just a terrible idea all around. You should be able to earn a great wage without suppressing the market to justify it. Or rather, people should not be rewarded for building/propagating high entry points to their careers. I get WHY it works out the way it does (bc capitalism), but it seems that in the end we all lose out.
Yes but then they have to increase pay for all the workers not just the 40 new hires. It might not pay off at that scale. That lost revenue is probably not indicative of per worker revenues.
The speed that the fire spread is incredible. It seemed just like another forest fire that is near a community we get up in Alberta and British Columbia. The coverage by the National Post shows the fire just creeping around Ft. McMurray on May 2 and 3 and by May 4 a large portion of the town was engulfed. [1] Before and after photos show the burnt homes and buildings like schools. [2]
I live in Edmonton (4.5 hours south of Ft. McMurray) which is taking in a lot of evacuees. It's so heart warming to see so many people rise up and try to help everyone by donating places to sleep, someone put up a website to help facilitate http://www.ymmfire.ca. 2 blocks from my home is a drop off for supplies and all you hear is car horns of support and people waiting to drop off supplies. People drove up the previous days with pickup trucks to bring gasoline and supplies to motorist stranded on the highway. [3]
The most heartwarming of the stories to me is hearing of recent refugees helping out. [4]
“We understand what they’re feeling. When you lose everything, you have to start from zero. You lose your memories, your items. It’s not easy. It’s something very sad. We can totally understand their feeling. We are very thankful to the Canadian people and we want to be a part of this society. We will do our best to be a good part of this society. By doing that, maybe we can return a little bit of the great job that Canadian people did for us”
It feels good to see the support from the newcomers, people in the province and seeing our provincial and federal governments step in with resources and funding to fight the fire and help people.
I built and posted the ymmfire.ca site on Tuesday evening to help the first wave of evacuees driving down. The response of people opening their homes, recreational properties, and spaces has been incredibly overwhelming. We're still helping match people but I've changed things up so I'm not the bottle neck now.
And if you have a site, maybe consider adding a link to donate. I built some low tech copy and paste banners that you can find here: http://ymmfire.ca/redcross
That is a great description. This fire had been raging South of town for a few days. Some southern neighbourhoods were evacuated temporarily.
We woke up on Tuesday and the sky was blue, and the fire was largely contained.
Then it jumped the Athabasca River (which is a kilometre wide). That's when panic set it.
I live in the Thickwood neighbourhood. We went from "hey, better get organized in case we need to evacuate" to "get the hell out now!" in about 20 minutes.
I've travelled to a LOT of countries and here is my experience using Airbnb and Couchsurfing.
The places that I used couchsurfing are the most memorable. I travelled for a whole year in 09-10 and the 5 times that we used couchsurfing to stay at someone's place was incredible and I'm still in contact with 2/5 of those stays. 40% hit rate I guess. Back then Airbnb wasn't a thing (or wasn't a big thing, can't think at the top of my head when they started) so it was either hostels or couchsurfing. You get different flavours of travel between those two. You meet more travellers in hostels which is a very different trip and experience vs staying with a local and hanging with them. It's interesting to see the perspective change between just the accommodation choice.
This year I travelled for 3 months and since I was working remotely I wanted to make sure I was productive and had my own space to think and do work with good wifi. So that meant NO hostels really. Horrible wifi in them, they're loud and usually dorms meant not a lot of me space. When looking at private hostels compared to Airbnb rentals the price wasn't that much more for a full studio in most cities so I stayed only 3 nights in hostels the whole trip.
Airbnb is great for feeling at home (full kitchen, couches, etc) and having everything you need to be productive and I made sure the wifi was great in each place before booking. But when grabbing the whole place I never interacted with my hosts since they weren't there. I never did stay in a private room so I can't comment on that experience and getting to meet the hosts that way which would probably feel more couchsurfing like.
But I did a hybrid take on my travels. I stayed in Airbnb places but would reach out to couchsurfers to meet up. And the response was so much better when you don't need accommodation since a lot of hosts just get bombarded with automated messages begging for 'free' places to stay. It helped me meet a lot of individuals in every city we stayed and it was the same great feeling when I stayed at people's places on the last trip.
The hybrid approach was pretty awesome and made me not feel lonely since the couchsurfers were a great source of information on what to do and explore and much of the time they did those activities with me.
I am still in contact with many of those couchsurfers from this past trip as well. I've hosted in my place and found that hosting helped connect also. I've never rented out on Airbnb so I can't comment on the other side of that.
What is your approach to looking at security for your hardware and data during prototyping and testing with early clients? How would you minimize what data is collected to maximize what you can learn to improve your product and service?
For those trying to build privacy and security into their products is there some resources for what should be done before putting a product out?
I have seen a list from Brian Knopf for some preliminary criteria in an article.(1) I am always looking for more standards or advice on how to create a useful product that doesn't expose the user especially marginal gain products. I mean why give up all the privacy and security just to control our lights? The gain is small but the harm is very large.
We share a lot in common with our neighbours to the south and it seems that the drug overdose epidemic has been happening in Canada as well. With some very alarming rates of increase due to Fentanyl overdoses. In the province of Alberta, Fentanyl detected deaths have risen from six in 2011 to 120 in 2014.[1] Other provinces are showing double and higher rates of increases.
If you were to look at Alberta alone there is a correlation to the collapse in oil prices, since it's an oil and gas producing economy, and increased overdoses. But Fentanyl is just this monster of a drug 80 times as powerful as morphine that is being laced into so many other drugs and sold to unsuspecting customers as OxyContin or laced into it. As a response to the epidemic the government is fast tracking Naloxone to become a non prescription drug since it reverses the effects of an opioid overdose within minutes.[2] I don't remember where I read that first responders (Paramedics, EMS) will be carrying Naloxone to administer it during responses.
This really hits home to me as one of my best friends and one of the most brilliant people I have ever met died 6 months ago from a fentanyl overdose alone in a motel room. I met him in the #django channel on irc about 10 years ago when I was learning python an django and we ultimately later became great friends and he came to live with me in California for a time and did consulting work. He was always way ahead of the curve with technology - he knew about technologies, platforms, and architectures before anyone else I ever knew would know about them. He also suffered from the disease of addiction and ultimately his life ended all by himself in a motel room in Texas after taking a bad batch of fentanyl. It was a complete and total waste and if pisses me off more than words can describe. He could have been working at Google but instead all he got was a short obituary in some small town in Texas. His death has motivated me in many ways in my personal life and in my professional life and I really hope that we as a society can figure out a way to prevent other people like him from losing their life at such a young age and having such a horrific ripple effect through their friends and family that is a total preventable waste. It sucks :/
My cousin died of a Fentanyl overdose last year. This is the worst part of the criminalization of drugs, IMO. If heroine weren't criminalized, I'm sure my cousin would have gotten actual heroine instead of fentanyl -- which you have to be an anesthesiologist to administer properly, not a dumb red-neck.
Of course, if oxy were legal (and I know that oxy is kinda legal but only while they're getting you hooked. Once you're an addict it becomes criminal) he would have stuck with that instead of moving up to the cheaper and easier to get heroine.
The therapeutic index of opiates narrows continuously as addiction proceeds. Users have to skate closer and closer to dangerous levels to reach the same level of intoxication.
While dosage, purity, etc may possibly make the drug more predictable, fundamentally it doesn't matter which drug your cousin was taking. The longer he remained addicted to opiates, as a class, the greater his risk of death by overdose.
You have to be an anesthesiologist to administer fentanyl not because handling it safely is so difficult, but because managing high opiate tolerance is extremely dangerous.
My brother died from fentanyl in 2014. It is so strong that it is harder to dose correctly and to manufacture into even batches. Things sold as something else are getting laced with it. Even when people do know what they are getting, small uneveness in the mixing of a large batch can cause multiple deaths.
It isn't just due to the normal generic tolerance increases over time, and it isn't just about all opiods being complete substitutes for one another; they aren't. Half-lifes matter, some research shows some affect repiratory pathways faster than others relative to their other effects, etc.
My brother would have likely died from heroin even if fentanyl didn't exist, but there is something more to the wave of fentanyl overdoses than you are making it sound.
I don't necessarily agree with the parent post about legalization, legal sources boomed in the 90s through doctors and brought about a lot of the current epidemic. Would complete legalization be a net positive? I don't know. It would have upsides and downsides.
The therapeutic index of opiates narrows continuously as addiction proceeds.
Whoa there. That's not correct. As you develop tolerance to the "high" you also develop tolerance to the side-effects, namely respiratory depression (what usually kills you during an overdose).[1]
"Tolerance to the analgesic effect of opioids can begin
after a few weeks of around-the-clock dosing, as does
tolerance to the respiratory depression effect of opioids
(and other side effects except constipation)."
The paper I reference has a great example of just how much morphine you can give to someone in pain:
"The final dose escalation was to 1,100 mg/hour of
morphine IV plus 100 mg IV every 10 minutes as
needed. MK lived 3 days on this morphine dose. He was
somnolent his last day, but he could be aroused to take
fluids with gentle verbal stimulation."[1]
Just to provide some context, if you were to break your leg and go to the hospital, they'd probably give you 10 mg of morphine IV every 4-6 hours. This guy was on 1,100 mg every hour around the clock.
The therapeutic index is the ratio between the necessary dose to achieve desired effects, and the dose that incurs dangerous side effects. Both doses rise with tolerance, but the ratio between them narrows.
That opiate-tolerant fellow on 1,100mg/hr of morphine required around-the-clock monitoring by experts.
You are missing an important point. Fentanyl is loved by traffickers because you can order it from China and its extreme potency means it's easy to sneak across borders. Moving an amount the size of a brick across borders and then selling it as oxy or cutting it into heroin could make tens of millions of dollars on the street. This extreme potency, however, means that it must be mixed/pressed perfectly or you end up with "hot spots" - a chunk of fentanyl in a pressed "OxyContin" pill that's fatal.
you're not characterizing overdose correctly. it's often people coming from pharmaceuticals and not knowing what they're doing, or not knowing the potency or contents of their drugs.
The majority of overdose deaths occur after a period of abstinence (getting clean, running out, etc.) followed by using the same amount (or more in the case of withdrawal) of the drug before the cessation. It can take as little as 48 hours for your tolerance to drop by a meaningful margin.
My ex-girlfriend died in September of this year from a heroin overdose. She was in the process of getting clean and then relapsed.
Another reason for a large amount of overdoses is drug mixing - people taking oxy and then xanax and then they're dead. But I think your comment and the guy above you both refute hapless's claim that most people who die from an OD are simply misjudging their own doses. In truth, I believe very few people misjudge their own doses. Drug addicts are notoriously good at knowing the exact amount to get them high. Why? Because too much is a waste (they try to extend their supply as long as possible) and too little won't have the desired effect.
In addition to your reason for ODing (use after a period of abstinence), the recent rash of ODs in my state are because dealers & suppliers are cutting their dope with fetanyl and other stuff that the drug user isn't/can't account for.
One of the more common "mixes" that also happens to be particularly dangerous is drinking EtOH while taking an opiate (or other depressants). Unfortunately, as beer or liquor holds a different cultural status, it isn't always listed with other drugs.
If there is any opiate involved, it will invariably be written up as a "oxy/heroin overdose" even if the main problem was the 10oz of liquor consumed the same evening.
> As a response to the epidemic the government is fast tracking Naloxone to become a non prescription drug since it reverses the effects of an opioid overdose within minutes.[2] I don't remember where I read that first responders (Paramedics, EMS) will be carrying Naloxone to administer it during responses.
Naloxone should be handed out at needle exchanges no questions asked, it has no side-effects if you are not using.
IMO whoever supported requiring prescriptions for Naloxone and syringes should be tried for crimes against humanity.
The HBR article was written in 2008. It seems like more investors are wanting (or more like finally allowing or being forced by the market) founders to remain in control. YC started out as an experiment that founders, even young ones, were good bets on creating a lot of value.
Ben Horowitz wrote a blog post in 2010 about their preference for founder CEOs.
"But the couple still couldn’t raise money. As cash got tight, the founders asked their eight full-time employees, who are mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, to work for minimum wage, which would buy the company a few months of extra runway. The staff agreed."
The 8 employees must have drastically reduced the cash flow requirements by just being paid minimum wage. My question is, is that any different than directly investing into the company and giving the company cash outright like a VC?
The employees made an investment into the company like a VC would by giving extra runway to the company. I wonder if the employees received any equity compensation for doing so under the same terms that the Alvarez's are trying to raise financing under. Getting paid higher than minimum wage and needing financing which dilutes you or taking minimum wage reducing the need for financing but getting no equity for it seems unfair to the employees.
They never mentioned that detail in the article but it's something I always think about when founders and executives ask employees to make these sacrifices and take on added risk but without ever compensating employees like they would compensate other capital with equity for the risk they take.