Hi Suvinay! Do you all have a website that keeps interested people updated about the upcoming Swarm hardware? I would like to follow this work. Thanks!
Thank you for your interest. We are planning to create a web page for this soon (likely http://swarm.mit.edu -- it's not live yet). Till then, you should be able to find our papers and some upcoming ones at my advisor, Daniel Sanchez's web page: http://people.csail.mit.edu/sanchez/.
I think this is a large part of the problem. I believe that the standard quantitative models used for productivity are no longer accurate. They are somewhat precise, but do not correctly reflect value that is produced.
They are valuable, except for the fact that machines can now do the disinfecting aspect of the job (the most important part) better and faster than they can.
Agree 100%. Great conversation tangent over on reddit's FI sub about this article, and specifically, the fear that those of us who were/are responsible will be taxed to support those who were/are not: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/4fhs...
For those of you who prefer the whistling-past-the-graveyard approach, Christopher Buckley's book 'Boomsday' is hilarious.
Anyone care to share how they are protecting their savings against this increasingly likely prospect?
Stanford has some fantastic opportunities, sure. But those opportunities come with significant opportunity costs (at the very least, financially). For some, it is better to attend a state school; the mental calculus involved in making this decision is rather difficult for an 18 year old and his/her family, especially with all of the noise that surrounds the college admissions process.
The relevant question isn't whether Stanford admits will do better at Stanford or elsewhere. They will be fine regardless. The question is whether Stanford non-admits should try to buy their way to prestige by attending American over UVa or UMd.
The answer to the second question is pretty obviously no. There are maybe 20 private schools in the US which are genuinely worth the price over public schools. They're not just offering a comparable to better education. They're offering the children of the middle class an entree into the upper class. (Relatedly, the con which the 2nd tier private schools are running is selling parents the idea that just paying a lot for an education is a ticket up.)
All of which seemed relevant to me since the author of TFA was making sacrifices to send his girls to Emory & Stanford.
Understood. I think one of the problems is that (fill in the blank: society, parents, students, guidance/admissions counselors, et al) seek to categorize and create blanket answers, whereas the correct answer is highly variable relative to the application. Boolean vs bayesian.
As a mental exercise, I'm imagining a product that would, given a number of inputs, produce a bayesian curve of the applicant's possible outcomes, and then selects the best school for that applicant. While developing this product sounds like a fun side project, I can't imagine it gaining traction, because the aforementioned groups would get upset (read: not pay) that Prestigious U is not the best choice for Johnny, rather, Mid-Atlantic Middle College is. It would be difficult to get the secondary actors in the process to pay as well, because there is value generated for them by maintaining process homeostasis.
Current thinking would suggest that I should have gone to, say, Bucknell over Penn State (again, I understand n=1 here, and I am not measuring my level of selective perception), whereas I am very happy with the course of events and think it produced the best outcome. I have to believe there is some grain of truth to my line of thinking and a potential for value generation in the decision aspect of college admissions.
Born in Pittsburgh, raised in Pittsburgh, started (and failed, 2009-2014) my own company in Pittsburgh, currently have an excellent tech job in Pittsburgh and am going to launch the beta product of my new company (YC reject) in Pittsburgh in June.
So. First off, I nearly cried reading this headline, and did tear up reading it. So whether or not he reads this, thanks, Paul.
Second. To the hard work of it all. I agree with every point he made, with the caveat that Pittsburgh needs to be careful with the historic preservation aspect of things: they vascillate between 'hey let's forget all of our history and blow this place up' to 'we must preserve every nook and cranny exactly as it was, even though it's detrimental towards progress'.
We could also stand to improve tax policy (lower them, significantly), and get our major employers here to knock it off with their ridiculous IP agreements. Also, I'd love it if our politicians stopped directly trying to ape Silicon Valley (or New York, or perhaps most ridiculous, the Paris of Appalachia). Let's be Pittsburgh.
Here's the thing that perhaps Paul missed when he was here, and perhaps others who aren't here can't see: I feel we've reached a critical mass of people who just DGAF (in a good way), because the opportunity costs of testing out your vision here are so low. By that, I mean that you can try out your weird (read: innovative) vision of the future, and no one bats an eye. On top of that, if you are producing a signal, it's much easier to cut through noise here. I spent a fair amount of time interviewing in SF for startup gigs, and it's not a good value proposition compared to here, to me. Finally, while the investment scene is terrible, that can be very beneficial to the right founder, because obviously one will retain more for themselves, and one don't NEED very much capital to get started in Pittsburgh. I bought my first house for $80,000 in 2013. 4/2, hardwood throughout, 1944 brick single family, 2 car garage, yard, granite, stainless, wine fridge, etc, in a good neighborhood. It's that cheap here. Anecdotal, but if you're smart with your money here, you can build your own runway.
All of that said, I'm hoping it happens. More than that, I'll work for it to happen. Onwards and upwards, fellow Yinzers. And Let's Go Bucs.
If you're not set on living in the city, housing is fantastic in the Pittsburgh area.
I live 20 minutes from Downtown and I bought my house for $74,900 in 2008. 3/2, two car garage and driveway sitting on about 1/8 of an acre.
It blows my mind when I hear how much money people are paying for housing in bigger cities. The salary would need to be significantly higher to make it worth my while to move to a place like SF or NYC to take a job.
Additionally, this area is fairly centrist politically. Sure, it's Democrat heavy but there are a lot of conservative, blue collar Democrats that balance out the urban intellectual Democrats and we have a small but intense Republican population so we never go too far in any direction. That's an intangible thing that is very important to me.
The low cost of living, the low housing costs, the abundance of college educated professionals and the variety of experiences around would make this place attractive to all kinds of people. It could become a startup hub. I'm not sure I want to see that but I'm also not blindly opposed.
> Additionally, this area is fairly centrist politically.
I spent three months crossing the US in 2009 as a tourist. I had developed a light-hearted measure of the patriotism of an area by how many US flags were seen in suburban front yards. Before I visited Pittsburgh, I had rated '1 house in 4-5 with a flag' as a very patriotic area on this scale. Then I hit Pittsburgh, and the area where my hotel was had one house in 4-5 that didn't have a little US flag planted somewhere in the front yard. Even the local cemetery was bestrewn with Old Glory all over the place... :)
Snagged my house in Morningside, which is in the city. You can still get pretty inexpensive houses throughout the East End, but you'll need to put in some elbow grease. Average prices seem to be around $200,000 for a decent home in the city. $500,000 and it's a move in ready palace.
"and get our major employers here to knock it off with their ridiculous IP agreements"
What's Pennsylvania like for non-competes? I often think what a state or province could do for startups would be to shift to California style non-competes.
Agreed. I've just gone about it by refusing to sign the IP agreements, OR by editing the document to say that anything I do on my own time is mine. Have yet to run into an issue with those approaches.
I wonder how much innovation here is stifled because there are still only a handful of major employers, and all of them have blanket IP agreements. Frankly, if I was running UPMC, PNC, or Highmark, I'd set up a VC arm and encourage any employee with a good idea (related to the industry) to start a company with seed capital from the VC arm. UPMC is KIND OF doing this (I work for them now), but they're not quite there yet, and it doesn't seem like current employees can swing over there to start their own company easily. Still, I think they're headed down the right path.
Seconding this for the lesbian community. For heterosexuals, sure, this may only be a hookup app. For lesbians? Long term relationships from Tinder abound (I say this as a lesbian, albeit one who met her wife at work).
Maybe this is not really an issue for homosexual couples, but I would never have considered Tinder because unlike OK Cupid, there's no way to filter out Republican-hates-the-gays-hates-abortions types. The question/answer filtering and profile text was the most important part of online dating to me.
It's funny you say this, because I am a Republican pro-life lesbian. I have used both OkCupid and Tinder in the past, and I 1. Didn't find OkCupid to be terribly good for filtering out those with worldview I disagreed with 2. Liked Tinder more because it forced that initial conversation with someone, which I would rather have, as I am interested in their mind just as much as their looks. Best of both worlds. YMMV.
You need to figure out the signaling then. It isn't that most people would never settle with a Republican pro-lifer, it's just that being a Republican/pro-lifer is an indicator of other incompatibilities (which usually is a good indicator of other things).
Take for instance you yourself are better off filtering out all the Republican/pro-lifers because of the baggage they'll bring with them.
Usually the signally has evolved to be different. You don't say Republican, you say Libertarian (considering gay rights being one of the topic of difference).
I'm registered as a Republican, and in theory, would rather date a Republican than a Libertarian. In unsurprising news, every woman I have ever dated has been a Democrat, and my wife is a Democrat from a socially democratic country. She will be joining me in voting for Gary Johnson in the upcoming presidential election, but is voting for Hilary in her party's primary.
It's funny, I used to look at the types of signaling you reference when I was dating (do we like the same things, have the same outlook, etc). I have found my greatest happiness with my wife, and the only two signals there I used were her work ethic and intellectual capacity. Well. And she's the hottest woman I've ever seen. All three, and I couldn't wait to put a ring on it.
As someone who doesn't like to be used as a political boogeyman or have their rights dangled in front of them when it's convenient, I will never understand this.
I go back to the old-school, small government intellectual Republicanism (this may sound crazy to many of you, but I assure you, at one point it existed). I realize that this is currently not where the party is (see: Trump, Cruz, Jindal, Carson, Palin, et al), but I believe in trying to change it from the inside.
Current and future quality of life for myself and others trumps paying lip service to ideals that are never realized.
Given the past ~30 years, saying that is the equivalent of saying you're a Nazi jew, because the Marxist in you likes some principles of national socialism. I still don't get it.
If she didn't qualify her comment with the statement about often voting libertarian, you'd have a point. But the political spectrum she fits into is currently covered by the Libertarian (big-L) and Republican parties (specifically, a minority libertarian portion of the Republican Party). A pro-life position would push someone back towards the Republican party, along with the fact that the Libertarian Party isn't going to win many major elections any time soon (maybe if Trump gets the nomination and the Republican party finally fractures?).
Bingo. My academic studies of political systems, US politics, game theory and economics leads me to believe that a true free market economy is the causa sine qua non for a more tolerant and free society.
I also believe that one cannot legislate social mores, and that the government does not, can not, and should not grant or even 'uphold' rights. Further, I believe that free markets CAN and HAVE caused (on net) greater social change than any legislated social change, and that on an individual level, free markets are the best channel for allowing minorities/oppressed individuals to champion their cause while simultaneously avoiding and stamping out oppression.
Ergo, I dedicate myself (and my vote) to the goal of an entirely free market. In essence, I swipe right for the Austrian School. (Go ahead and groan).
"Current and future quality of life for myself and others trumps paying lip service to ideals that are never realized."
Agreed. However, I bet we differ on the means by which one should go about achieving/obtaining (I separate those words very deliberately here) a high quality of life for oneself, and the means that will help others. If you're truly interested in a political conversation, and open to learning, my email is in my profile. While the HN community may benefit, we are going on quite the tangent from the main topic. Cheers.
The best way to do that is to actually read their little bio, assuming they put one in there, and look for typical indicators for that kind of alignment: talking about guns/shooting ranges, pictures of them at the shooting range, pictures of them with a dead deer, etc. Finally, if that fails, try just asking them when you have a match and start chatting.
I like the idea of being able to filter people too, and I find I can tell a lot about people from their OKC profile. The problem, however, is that OKC is basically a big waste of time because everyone desirable has moved to Tinder, and the few decent women on OKC don't respond because they get too many messages, and I end up spending way too much time writing messages with zero return. With Tinder, I don't have to waste my precious time 1) reading through a profile to see if this is someone I should spend time writing, and 2) writing a long, thoughtful message, only to get no response. If a woman matches me on Tinder, there's a decent chance she's actually going to respond. It's probably something like 33% chance I'll get a response on Tinder to a match. On OKC, it's probably less than 1%. If that means I have to spend a little more time text-chatting to learn about them because the Tinder profiles are so sparse, that's still a giant time savings for me.
... among others, all of which I had marked, with the correct answer set as "mandatory". If someone answered enough of these with the wrong answer, you won't even see them (if you do, you'll have a high "enemy" percentage), so you won't waste your time talking to them.
I have been on a date with a conspiracy nut, and can confirm that this is something I'd want to filter out if I was still dating and not in a long-term relationship.
I wouldn't use the term "information bubble" to describe this sort of filtering. It's not as though a person is unaware of those who believe differently regarding topics like evolution or the moon landing, or will never hear those arguments. It's just not necessarily a good idea to try to form a romantic partnership with someone who you don't respect because they believe a position you consider to be "crazy".
As someone with 10+ years of mad success in sales/marketing/hacking growth, from my own startup to Fortune 500 level in several verticals, here's what you have to do:
1. Yeah, sometimes you just gotta cold call. Even better, show up. Ever watch the original Wall Street? Bud Fox calls Gekko every damn day. To get in front of your very first customers, you need to be doing this too. Go to where your ideal customers are and start talking with them (tangentially) about your product.
2. MAJOR CAVEAT: This first conversation should NOT be about you, product features, design, how much VC you've landed (or want to land). No 'push notifications' here guys. You should be listening to your customer, asking them about what problems you THINK they have that you THINK your product will solve. If it's not the type of product to obviously solve a problem (maybe you've not figured out what problem it solves or it's something that's more for fun), let the customer play with it and ask the customer high-value questions while they use it.
3. Here's the secret to successful sales in one sentence: it's not at ALL about you or the product. Remember that, listen, and your customers will start giving clues away about how to sell to them. If you get good at asking the right questions, it's like calling the Nintendo cheat hotline back in the day: the wins come really easily once someone tells you how to do it (I'd like to publicly apologize to my parents for the 1998 phone bill right now).
4. Always, always, always track the conversations. Every one. Even that 2 second one getting coffee this morning. Look for patterns (what worked, what didn't, similarities between cohorts at different stages in the buying cycle, what questions you asked that elicited the most helpful responses, etc). As Paul Graham says, to get your first users, you have to do things that don't scale. However, assuming you do this successfully, you'll need to rapidly build systems that do scale, so doing this extra work now will pay off like mad. Moreover, these conversations should help you find opportunities for the next iterations of your product. In the book Traction, the authors talk about doing sales and product iteration concurrently, and they're 100% right. If you do one without the other, you're going to struggle.
5. BE where your customers are. Remember when you had the hots for someone in high school? What would you do? Everyone, and I mean everyone, tries to put themselves near where this person is--maybe you sit nearby in class, or try to pass them in the hall, whatever. Same stuff with landing customers. Pretend like they're your crush, find out everything you can about their industry, their job (what they REALLY do and worry about, not just their title and organization), maybe some things they enjoy. It's okay to be a little creepy when prepping and strategizing sales--more info is better, because it helps you develop a more holistic picture of your ideal customer, and that narrows down the channels you should try to succeed. Just don't be obvious about your prep. Remember: the will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.
6. Sales come from emotion. One of the biggest problems I see when engineers sell is that they use language that makes sense to them and is technically correct, but makes the customers feel stupid. Metadata to you is a 'wikipedia for your most important software' to the lay person. Make sure you emphasize the BENEFITS to the potential customer--they don't actually care about the feature. If you have a sciences background, you will probably screw this up. That's okay, just keep working at it--if you are cognizant of this and work to correct it, you'll be doing sales like the sales pros in short order.
This is definitely not inclusive, and each bullet point deserves its own book, but in my experience, they'll deliver the most value for where you are at now. Write letters, send emails, show up early and late, go to where they are, and keep the conversations about THEM. Sales are based on trust and likability (and it helps, but isn't necessary, to have a best-in-class product). You can do it.
It's funny you ask this, because I'm trying to find a job leading sales/marketing/growth at a startup company (Series A or after) right now (started applying hard yesterday). Email me and I'll do a no-fee consult (email's in my profile); if anyone else in the community has questions, feel free to reach out as well. Even if you're not in my target company demographic, I believe in good karma. Good luck guys.
Reminded me of this article (link below with TL;DR). So we have two strong examples of how changing environment can reduce crime and improve lives. Perhaps we should change our current educational and judicial policies?
TL;DR: after hurricaine Katrina, many people who relocated from the lowest-income, highest-crime areas in New Orleans (and many of whom had previous convictions) improved their circumstances--reduced recidivism, higher standards of living, etc. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/starting-over-d...
