My bet is on the Chinese with their enormous pig farms which feed every pig a constant cocktail of antibiotics to ensure they grow faster to be the ground zero for an antibiotic-resistant epidemic.
Edit Source: A Chinese government official in charge of a meat-producing SOE boasted about it during a presentation seeking foreign investment
The most amazing fact about John Conway is that he actually enjoys teaching (even to undergrads). Most profs of his calibre actively shy away from teaching to focus on research. Having his energy and passion made linear algebra fun. He was also always available for office hours and would happily explain anything you didn't get which is also a rarity.
Top notch guy and an evangelist for the mathematics community. Really happy he's getting the recognition he deserves.
I watched a class (a single 2 hour lecture I believe) taught by Conway at Mathcamp. It was about, believe it or not, the simple game of dots-and-boxes - except that Conway had attacked it with a lot of math and derived some strategies for winning. He was indeed a great lecturer, even though he was quite old.
The most memorable part was right at the beginning where Conway asked someone to play a 4x4 grid of dots and boxes with him 10 times in a row. As I remember, Conway won 9 times in a row. That got all of our attention! :)
I was a Mathcamper this year. One of the most common things people said to me when I mentioned that I was a first-timer was that 2015 was the last year Conway attended, and how sad it was that I'd miss his lectures and general presence around camp. :(
There's this wonderful thing (invented by Conway) they do where, in a noisy crowded assembly, one person raises their hand and stops making any sound. Anyone who notices them raises their hand and stops talking. It works extremeley well (and really quickly!), and I suspect it was Conway's general frailty that led him to come up with this.
Considering how hard it is to explain how Google Analytics works to the standard business owner, I imagine it wouldn't be hard to obscure all manners of data collection programs from oversight.
In times like this, the importance of civics education is highlighted. The very idea that people in law enforcement think it's acceptable to treat judges and the legal system with such contempt is scary. Even if you disagree with a certain law or system, you still need to respect it as a public servant.
There's precedent in pushing the envelope in law enforcement since Sir Robert Peel (if you read up on it). It's not surprising an analogous methodology has been promulgated. Hopefully a more appropriate solution is worked out.
I doubt anyone on HN would pay for a service like UFlix when the DIY alternative is much more efficient.
For less cost we use our own US-based vps, running something like the shadowsocks proxy. It's the same rig we found to work the best in China against the great firewall.
With its own dedicated IP, it would likely be cost-inefficient for Netflix to detect without blocking an entire range of legitimate IP addresses.
What about something like n2n / Hamachi / Peervpn / Freelan / IPOP / your friend in the other country borrowing you their account and hosting an OpenVPN endpoint on their home network?
I don't know why, but no public cloud to my knowledge offered even the Maxwell GPUs.
As cool as these cards are, I really hope they become available on AWS soon. The current AWS GPU instances are so weak we're contemplating buying a physical desktop setup.
March 5th - We signed up to the waitlist the instant we heard about it
April 8th - Received an invite. They gave up a form to fill out online where we had to upload some IDs and other details.
April 10th - The docusign (digital signature) email documents came along with a legal/tax guide. We filled that out on Apr 19th.
We ended up delaying for a while discussing the tax implications since we're moving from a low tax (Hong Kong) to much higher tax (Delaware C-Corp) area. Unlike Hong Kong, taxes in the US appear much much more complicated and intimidating. Ultimately for our startup, we weighed the benefits and decided to go ahead.
May 16th - Decided to go ahead with the incorporation and signed all the forms (via docusign)
May 17th - Get 15k AWS credits emails (super cool)
May 19th - Our Stripe payments account was opened "You can now accept payments via Stripe" Email
May 19th - "Welcome to SVB Bank" email with login details
May 25th - "Your Company is now incorporated" w Certificate of Incorp attached
June 4th - "Your Company now has an EIN", which a number ID to file taxes
June 21st - SVB Bank asked us to print out a few docs to sign. Basically to confirm we received the EIN.
And that's it. In most cases, it only takes a few days once you've signed the forms to be able to start taking payments via Stripe US (so you get the cheaper Stripe US fees rather than the more expensive international fees).
As an international, we ended taking a while to decide if a US incorporation was the way to go. There's 2 reasons we hesitated:
1) Stripe released a beta in Asia where you can accept payments in many Asian countries. No more Braintree/Paypal crap so you don't need to have US bank account to use Stripe and the Stripe API.
2) American taxes are pretty high (compared to HK), and there seems to a lot more rules and paperwork required.
For us, what pushed us to go ahead despite our reservations was that we spent 1 week in SF (for our YC interview). We didn't get in, but we scheduled a lot of meetings while we were there and we realised if we were to raise any sort of significant funding, a Delaware C-corp is a prerequisite.
It would seem odd SV Bank opened the business bank account prior to the EIN (though maybe Atlas had the EIN and delayed sending it to you for one reason or another).
Can I ask what the game plan is for the annual DE C Corp compliance? Specifically do you know how much your DE franchise tax will be (did you determine how many shares were created or did Atlas)? Do you file your own DE annual report or does Atlas? Do you know who your DE Registered Agent is and the annual cost moving forward?
I'm thinking I could easyily offer those services, but it is not clear if Atlas does/plans to.
We have to file everything ourselves but we do have a few guides available from PWC and Orrickk? via Stripe Atlas that we're following as best as possible.
I have no idea what level of support Stripe Atlas will provide going forward, we have not heard anything in that regards, so we have enlisted friends in these professions to help us out.
If you do end up provided all these services in one place, let us know. It'll make my life a lot easier
I know this sounds trite, but you typically want to incorporate with either 10 million or 100 million shares (10 million being much easier to deal with) initially. Imagine giving someone .25% equity - this means you will give them 25 shares, which is a bad idea for multiple reasons, from rounding making a big difference in vesting (you vest .52 shares every month) to it not sounding impressive. You're not BRK.A.
Just make sure to pay via Assumed Par Value Capital Method.
So, the only reason why you incorporated in the US is because it is required from a funding PoV, right? Aside from that, I can't really see any reason why you would want to run things through a high tax US entity, in comparison to the sweet deal you're getting in HK (tax wise).
It's a tradeoff. If I had a lifestyle trading business, the corporate tax rate in HK is 0% (17% for revenue derived in HK, 0% for non-local revenue).
On the other hand, funding in this part of the world is pretty depressing. I have a collection of term sheets we keep to remind ourselves how bad it could've been. Personal liability, right to veto future investments, majority board control... you name it.
So we're trading higher taxes + crazy amounts of compliance, for a more managed and predictable funding process in the long run.
This is how you do great content marketing and branding.
This entire video series is about inspiring people with a side benefit of illustrating what makes YC special.
Compare this to content by other accelerators (of which there are many). It's not a lecture nor a recital of advice. It's a series of relatable and personable stories with a consistent theme. Start with "Why" you do something, not how or what.
While I agree with this being a great way to build an inspirational brand, I am convinced that it has worked because Jessica stays authentic. She sounds genuinely inspiring.
I do think they are keeping this profile in purpose. Jessica mentioned one of the things she wished she had done earlier is start YC's outreach earlier and cast a wider net with more partners. I interpreted this as her saying, this is what has worked wonders, I wish we had done more of it.
Feel free to shoot me any suggestions of content you'd find useful via email. We're always looking for more ways to make valuable and interesting content more accessible to everyone.
What you see in a 2 line press article is literally the simplest way to describe what their business is doing right now. The point of demo day is to get people interested in your idea for follow-ups.
Read: http://paulgraham.com/investors.html
There's a question on the app that asks (I'm paraphrasing) "what do you know about your market that others don't?".
Answer: What appears to be a lifestyle sized market to the casual onlooker is actually big business
Edit Source: A Chinese government official in charge of a meat-producing SOE boasted about it during a presentation seeking foreign investment