(sorry just missed the cutoff to reply to the main post)
Drop | REMOTE (Canada|Mexico based) | Senior/Principal Full-Stack Web Dev | React/Node/SQL | Full Time | San Francisco
https://drop.com/careers
Drop (formerly Massdrop) is community-driven commerce. We design products with input from our members and give them a place to connect, learn, and shop with people who share their interests.
Drop Engineering is a small, fast-moving team with a number of seasoned developers who have scaled web apps beyond 10M daily active users. With our combined experiences we’ve distilled good practices and processes to ensure a healthy, sane, and efficient work environment. We’re all about quality engineering, not big egos. The best ideas win here.
We are augmenting the distributed branch of our engineering team with developers in Canada or Mexico, in addition to the San Francisco-based team.
The new book Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor is slightly newer, a little more readable, and talks a lot about dilution, but otherwise covers almost the same ground.
Both books are great in understanding the space and motivations of various players.
That’s another great one! I would suggest reading the Venture Deals (which appeared quite practical to me) first and following it up with the Secrets (that’s great for understanding incentive structures and motivations of everyone involved).
Hiring remote gave my startups access to amazingly talented people where they were, not where we were. It allowed the team to work in a space they felt was productive and comfy and our employee turnover was non-existent.
When I worked as a director for a large tech company I had some similar questions. Because I joined through an acquisition, I never truly adjusted to the network of managers both above, below and alongside me.
Eventually, about a year after leaving to launch a new startup, I read High Output Management. Suddenly everything made sense. I'd strongly recommend reading it.
Many Bay Area companies are led by people who read this book, and I think you'll gain an understanding of what the mid-level managers worry about in their day to day.
Non-technical founder here. I found my side-project co-founder by talking about my ideas with everyone who might listen. He was a colleague who had a little extra time.
To invest in a hedge fund, I believe you need to be an accredited investor. Basically, you need to make over $200k a year or have a $1,000,000 excluding your primary residence.
I'm assuming you don't consider an accredited investor to be "ordinary" in this context.
Mutual funds (and ETFs) operate relatively close to how hedge funds do, but without the risky behaviors and aggressive speculation. So, I guess, a mutual fund is probably a hedge fund for ordinary people, if you take ordinary to mean someone unable weather losing a ton of money in risky investments.
I think you can probably find some ETFs and mutual funds that take highly risky stances or short sell (inverse ETFs) and those are often open to small investments. I'm not going to share them because, well, I have no idea if they're worth putting money in.
<Wild Armchair Speculation>
It comes down to what you're allowed to advertise I think. Vegas doesn't (and probably legally could not) market itself as a legitimate money-making investment, it's just selling games. Gambling = Entertainment expenditure with the possibility of prizes.
Meanwhile, hedge funds do market themselves as legitimate money-making investments, even if there is some risk involved. Unlike Vegas, who may welcome all comers who might pay the fee, hedge funds hold a fiduciary responsibility to act in their clients' best interests. That means having a policy on minimum assets or income to ensure that the clients whose money they are legally required to act in the best interest of would be able to somewhat safely absorb the losses associated with the short-term, higher-risk investments a fast-moving hedge fund might make.
On a different tack than marketing and fiduciary responsibility, nobody can sue Vegas when they bet it all on black and take a dive. Casino managers don't get daily calls from their patrons asking why the dealer keeps winning at blackjack. Hedge Funds ensuring that the people they're dealing with have lower income worries and likely some investment experience probably reduces their customer service load by a lot.
Although, after typing all this, it seems I was answering the question "Why is it alright for hedge funds to have minimum qualifications on investors?" rather than the question I think you were originally asking, "Why is it okay for Vegas to let people gamble without so much as a credit check?"
I’m a lawyer who worked for years at a hedge fund. (Also private equity funds). You can probably find one or more low cost ETFs that pursue whatever strategy(ies) you find interesting. You won’t have to deal with filing a K1 (partnership tax return) on unrealized gains. And it will probably our perform given among other things the much higher fees you’ll pay in hedge funds. I strongly suggest you don’t invest in hedge funds.
> There are some easy wins here, at least in theory. I think a great deal of fake news is spam-like and can be eliminated by similar techniques.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. As someone who ran an email newsletter tool that battled spammers on a daily basis (successfully), I see many similar tactics working.
The issue for me, however, is the subjectivity and inconsistent enforcement. Spam has clear lines drawn, especially around opt-in and authentication. Fake news is often susceptible to interpretation, especially around politics.
> For example, a defining quality of spam is that is not just it is unsolicited, but it is annoying.
Sure, that's true, but from a spam-prevention perspective and CAN-SPAM, it's mostly around unsolicited email, not the emotional impact thereof.
Personally, I think it's about definition. If we can define Fake News the same way we can define "unsolicited email" (rather than calling it spam), I think we can begin to tackle it.
> This could result in 175 million trees being planted in one year. If executed properly the Philippines will get 525 billion trees planted in a single generation.
This sounds a bit... well, odd. There are 390 billion trees in the Amazon, as a point of reference. As much as I love the idea of greening our world, how is this even feasible?
Yeah, that math is definitely wonky. I don't think the Philippines even has the physical space for 525 billion trees, and I think there was a decimal place missing.
175 million x 25 (years) is 4.375 billion, so 5.25 billion seems close. The article also mentions 10% of the trees being 525 million, so that fits 5.25 billion too.
Think of a tree as a plant that comes from a seed. Plant 30 acorns, the forestry employees will weed out the other 29 over a few years. The ratio is probably higher if you start early, lower if you start with the type of 2 year old trees you can buy in a shop.
Outside of forestry, nature ensures that the majority of trees dont make it.
Another factor is that for fast growing trees used in pulp, they get felled in massive amounts every year. Planted trees are not left alone.
I'm a non-technical founder who generally doesn't bug my team about why a change took so long but that's because they communicate with me.
Thing is, working with a developer as a non-technical team member can be a frustrating, opaque experience. Communicating progress is eye-opening for non-technical colleagues but when a programmer does not communicate, then obviously the non-technical members have no idea what's going on.
Developers can forget too, that the one small change might be holding up marketing, sales and customer support, all of whom themselves are getting flack from above about why X customer is still angry, or why the press release isn't being sent out yet etc. "Waiting on a dev" isn't an answer that reflects well on anyone.
The "Dear Client" letter wouldn't be necessary if there was more communication. It can even be automated. Here's what I see in a Slack channel with my colleagues:
github APP [8:52 PM]
New branch "fix-password-recovery" was pushed by xxxx
[yyyyyy] Pull request submitted by xxxx
#466 Improve password recovery
• Fix styling
• Ensure the visitor is signed out of all sessions
• Redirect to sign in instead of 404 when an old recovery link is visited
> Thing is, working with a developer as a non-technical team member can be a frustrating, opaque experience.
And vice-versa. Imagine knowing something very well, something quite complicated. Then not only knowing how to fix that issue, but explain it to a child. Now, constantly having to handhold that child over every step, even when they don't even need to know, and it is slowing you down having to do that. And maybe not even knowing the solution, but trying different things, and having to explain each to that child.
What you have setup sounds awful. Learn the technical side, or let them get on with the job. The updates you need should be at a daily standup.
> then obviously the non-technical members have no idea what's going on.
You still don't know what is going on, you just pretend you do.
> Developers can forget too, that the one small change might be holding up marketing, sales and customer support
