> Frankly, I'm kinda surprised if an obvious optimization like that isn't already in place - let those who care about the shape pay more for the pretty ones, and let those who don't save by buying the rest.
Oh but that's exactly how it already works in existing supply chains: "imperfect" produce gets allocated quite well with food manufacturers, restaurants and food halls, or gets donated to foster homes, hospitals, etc. And many supermarkets do in fact stock up with "imperfect" produce.
"Reducing food waste" makes for good marketing. Except it's not that true.
Thanks, very good point. Important to take into consideration though that we are operating in Mexico and aiming for the LatAm market where this looks different than in the U.S. or Europe where most food waste indeed happens at the consumer level. Contrary in Latin America, 72% of food waste occurs prior to the consumption stage and specifically talking about fruits and veggies 54% are wasted due to supply chain inefficiencies and imperfections. And that already considers the fact that some imperfect produce ends up with food factories etc.
Let me shed some more light on the situation in Mexico (and most of LatAm):
Certainly, imperfect produce is allocated to some extent to food manufacturers, restaurants, etc. - but not enough - the scale of the problem is just too big.
Surprisingly, we found that even certain restaurants that wanted to source from us because they don't care about imperfect produce, ended up asking for standards around size or colour.
Another example is what my co-founder's father still lives daily - his limes or mandarines are wasted because of being too small, too big, miscoloured.
In Mexico, we have not seen any supermarket stocking up imperfect produce, not even the very forward-thinking ones, but agree that luckily this is happening in the U.S., Europe and other places, hopefully soon also here.
When it comes to donations, unfortunately less than 5% of food waste ends up with food banks. There is still much to be done on that front too.
We also talked to several farmers who tell us they have imperfect produce on their farm which they do not even pick because they know it will be hard for them to sell and so it's not worth for them to pay someone to pick it.
What is true though is that to leave an important mark we need to get scale.
> not much of the strategy content applies to hardware companies
While it's probably a good idea to not blindly follow every single piece of advice (by YC or anyone), saying that not much of the content applies is probably a bit of a stretch. Considering how many successful companies YC has funded in the hard-tech space, I'd be receptive to at least some of their advice / insights.
You also mention:
> you have this de-facto "ship and iterate" model from the SaaS world which just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware projects.
Again, it may be a good idea to question the advice of "ship and iterate", but saying _it just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware project_ is again a bit of a stretch. As the above commenter mentions, the success of Cruise is a good counterexample.
I think you are ignoring the reasonable point and splitting hairs. One might equally say few/none of the US examples would have been possible outside of the US market (where "ask for forgiveness" is not an option), or that Cruise never shipped.
While Airbnb is clearly going through a rough patch right now, there is a clear bull-case argument for why Airbnb will emerge stronger than it's ever been after this:
- Airbnb has sufficient cash in the bank to survive the crisis.
- A significant % of hotels and budget chains will not survive the crisis --> decreased competitor supply
- People will be looking for budget options when traveling --> increased demand for Airbnb
- People will seek to make extra income to make ends meet --> increased supply for Airbnb
I honestly don't know what fraction of AirBnb's business still consists of indies renting out rooms to vacationers for short-term stays. But that market is simply hosed for the foreseeable future, if not forever. Complete lack of enthusiasm from guests and hosts alike. Driving strangers around in your car or having them stay in your home is never again going to seem like the great idea that it once did.
I think this is spot on. Every time I've been to Europe to stay in an Airbnb in the last 4 or 5 years, it's been a professional operation. Same with most of the properties in the states. These weren't people leaving their house for a weekend and trying to get some extra income. These were people who invested in real estate to get into the side-channel of psuedo-hotel business. They obviously have mortgages, likely not under the same rules of own-occupied that might potentially give them protections....
As far as AirBnb trying to get the customer base back, once the economy starts to open, even their new policies for having hosts have 24 hours between guests and rules for how to clean. How is AirBnb going to enforce that? Not to mention, their refund policy basically sucks right now, so I don't see me or my friends jumping back into using AirBnbs once travel does pick up, no way I'm committing to a vacation when we my have more surges coming, etc... I'll choose a hotel who I can cancel and not have to pay.
There may very well be a clear bull-case argument for Airbnb being successful long term, but at the moment that's not really the point.
Any long term employees who have been around long enough to even have the decision to make regarding exercising options (from other comments it appears that Airbnb switched to RSUs at some point), would be facing a massive tax liability this year.
It is clear that there will be some debate and uncertainty around a fair-market-value for Airbnb shares in light of COVID, but AFAIK any capital gains, and therefore tax liability, will be based on their most recent funding rounds (which were obviously based in the pre-COVID world)
It would be interesting to know the fair market value of their next 409A valuation compared to the previous one. The reduced FMV could shift the equation and help those laid off employees exercise at least a portion of their shares when otherwise they would be unable to responsibly do so. Oh, and it would reduce taxes on vesting RSUs for remaining employees too. The worst hit may be those that receive RSUs or exercise options before the write-down, huh? Airbnb should hurry then...
Would be interesting to know what % of AirBnb Hosts do it on a semi-professional basis. I get your arguments for the mom-and-pop opening your house and all that. But everytime I've been to Europe, or to big cities, the AirBnbs were almost always part of a bigger operation. And then there's all the people who bought rental properties to operate their own AirBnb rentals.
Anyway, my hunch is that the percent % of AirBnbs that are actually people utilizing their excess space (initial AirBnb model) is small vs more hosts entered via owning and operating their own hotels through buying leveraged rental properties and the AirBnb platform....
> A significant % of hotels and budget chains will not survive the crisis --> decreased competitor supply
The actual hotel properties are not going to be abandoned, demolished, or converted into something else. Hotels will continue to run as hotels, tho possibly with a change of ownership/management.
And, hopefully, just hopefully, governments will actually step in and stop the supply from going back to AirBnB, helping alleviate some of the housing crisis in their country (I know AirBnB is a huge issue in Ireland, and several of my Irish friends are praying it fails to force all those apartments and houses back on the market; I am myself, as I'm possibly moving there this fall for a masters.)
The funniest case will be if governments don't even have to step in - I've read cases of AirBNB hosts being extremely overleveraged in their "investment" properties. With some luck, they'll be forced to sell or convert to long-term rentals (which are _very_ strongly protected where I live) to avoid defaulting on the cheap debt they gorged on.
There is, unfortunately, the risk of others doing the exactly the same thing subsequently, because they'll see this as a black swan event that will clear out the market of smaller overleveraged AirBnB "hosts", leaving them to purchase the properties in question. There are some big players, such as "The Key Collection", who are heavy users of AirBnB, with a large number of properties, as well as more legitimate properties like hotels, guesthouses, &c.
There are a few important things to keep in mind.
The Irish government has not been very good at enforcing the law around this kind of thing, and I see no reason why that should change, especially as the biggest party on the government side of the Dáil was the main party in the last government, and their records on housing (they're basically Tories) is notoriously bad. The other party in the proposed government is an ideologically similar party, and the one the caused our economy to implode due to property speculation in the 2000s.
Yeah, that is an unfortunate situation that Ireland has found itself in. I know several of the people I've talked to (most of them native Irish speakers), are really upset about it, having voted for Sinn Féin, and them getting the majority of the votes but not ending up controlling parliament.
Still, at least the outlook will hopefully be decent for me if I do move there this year (depends on how I think economy is going...and if uni's actually do open in September).
One hilarious part of all this is that I'm not strongly contemplating getting a mortgage and buying a place _purely_ on the basis that between taxes and repayments, it would cost me 2/3 the amount I currently pay in rent.
> I wrote this yesterday as an example for my kids.
> A lot of people learned how to make web pages using view->source. Replit is view->source for code, plus a server you can run a copy on. A generation of kids will learn to program from it.
> A generation of kids will learn to program from it.
Undergraduates at mid-tier schools are already using it nearly exclusively for their lower-level coursework. And mainly by word-of-mouth. While I've seen all the students using it to essentially do code reviews, I haven't seen any professors mention it to their classes.
Not an exhaustive survey by any means, but I'm currently getting my second bachelors, in computer science from a city university. We have some Discord servers with CS students from a variety of schools, and repl.it seems to be a primary resource for everyone. You may be able to get more reliable statistics by determining location of users with repl's named "HW", "Assignment", "Lecture", "Exam", or common course prefixes like COSC, CSE, etc. ('CS', and 'Quiz' might not be as reliable for isolating academics).
It would be useful to have private repl's for students, as it's a technically a looming academic integrity issue to have most student's repl's public[0]. I understand this is potentially a breaking change for your freemium model, but there's a bit of a time bomb waiting there. Whether it's a tempest in a teapot or a "real" problem, and for whom, is debatable.
For my coursework, all C++ code must be complied with a .replit file containing:
This is because everything is "turned in" on ZyBooks, which uses these options.
It's very, very cool that you let us change the compiler+options using either a .replit file or directly compile and run from the repl.run command line. However, most of my peers never discovered that the repl.run command line was interactive -- and certainly didn't find the .replit file feature. As a result, some moved away from repl.it mid-semester (generally migrating permanently to CLion) because clang "fixes" too many errors for them and things would "work" on repl.it but not on ZyBooks where it matters. For this reason I think there's potentially some use in putting a compiler/compile option inside each repl's side navbar's setting button menu. If this doesn't seem appropriate (for example because repl's in many language don't need to change compiler/options), then I'd recommend at least putting a link there to an explanation on .replit files for better discoverability.
Speaking of ZyBooks, I think the Repl.it company could compete well in the educational space. In particular, I think OpenStax would be a good organization to get in touch with, depending on how it fits your financial model / philosophy. Most broadly though I find there is an incredible lack of rigorous application of the _science of teaching_ in online learning solutions, dating back to Khan Academy and affecting every online learning platform since. Here's an example of what I'm talking about [1]. The linked video is somewhat long/boring and very low production quality --- but I hope the concepts in the content stick with anyone who works in edu-tech. I'm often very surprised that given the budgets of companies like Khan Academy, Udacity, etc that I don't see strong evidence they used a small portion of the money to consult with an expert who specializes in techniques and science of teaching.
Lastly, (at least as of 8 weeks ago) when the repl.run console is broken out into a separate window (great for multi-monitor displays!), it did not display segfault error messages in the break-out console.
This happens with any red-colored text in the repl.run window - it displays in the primary editing window's console, but does not display in the broken out standalone repl.run console window. It was very difficult to determine why my code wasn't outputting anything after a certain point, but also was not throwing any errors :)
For example:
int main(void)
{
main();
return 0;
}
Case A: Using g++ via .replit in main window (same .replit file as shown above in this post) ('exit status 139' is printed in red):
Case D: Using clang in main window ('exited, segmentation fault' appears in red text):
> clang++-7 -pthread -std=c++17 -o main main.cpp
> ./main
exited, segmentation fault
>
Case E: Using clang in repl.run breakout tab/window ('exited, segmentation fault' does not appear at all, in fact nothing appears):
>
Lastly, I'm sure this is asking for the moon, but eventually it would be incredible to have debugging tools in the development environment (step through, current values of variables, and maybe memory inspection) - this applies to nearly every language you currently support. More specifically to C++, some people may also enjoy having features similar to those found at https://godbolt.org/ although I'd imagine that's a very niche group of people at the moment. You're serving a very wide audience as it is.
My classmates are extremely impressed with the quality of repl.it - the deep feature set does not seem to have compromised usability at all. My classmates are also very impressed with your 'careers' page, I would keep that up for engineering roles as you grow, if not necessarily also for non-technical administrative roles.
I prefer https://glitch.com for this type of thing, because it works so well for kids. I love how people on it can ask each other for help in real time. Its a great site and community
This is exceptionally well-written. And it looks like YC's design has stepped up quite a notch too :)
Quick question: how to reconcile these two almost-conflicting views:
1) Raising money is the CEO’s job. If you are the CEO, you should plan for it to be your sole, full-time focus.[...] Do what you can to avoid distracting others with fundraising. Co-founders or other executives are typically only brought in to answer specific questions (e.g. CTOs handle technical diligence), and usually only at the full partnership stage.
Even in the rare case of co-CEOs, it’s best to have a single point of contact. Investors want to see a clear decision-making process, which generally requires a final decision-maker. (https://www.ycombinator.com/resources/prepare-your-company)
2) Signing on with a Series A lead is the beginning of a 10 year relationship. If all goes well, that’s how long your board member will have a say in your company. As such, optimize for your board member, not vanity metrics, like valuation. (https://www.ycombinator.com/resources/how-to-choose-an-inves...)
Given point 2), shouldn't non-CEO founders also be involved in at least some meetings with investors to weigh in on who they want to have as board members?
I don't think these are in contention. It's the CEOs job to focus on fundraising, it's other founders (and key hires) job to focus on doing the thing they are raising money for.
But that doesn't mean it's the CEOs decision alone when it comes to choosing - there is a lot of legwork to be done before you get there though. I'd absolutely expect other founders to be in later meetings, and a sounding board before then.
Good question - the non-CEO founders should have a chance to meet the VC, but that usually happens as a final step to confirm that there's no terrible interactions.
For what it's worth, I haven't personally seen this dynamic derail a deal.
You are right. Design is now a first class citizen thanks to Zain Ali joining YC as designer in December. Lots of more things in the works https://twitter.com/zainali?lang=en
While I personally find Asana clunky and slow (I've used many tools for project management: Notion and Jira are by far what I personally enjoy the most, followed by Airtable at a distant 3rd), Sam Altman's perspective on Asana are interesting to look at for a more positive outlook on the company: https://blog.samaltman.com/asana
I'd argue the outcome of this will be that Facebook will launch their own payments infrastructure on top of WhatsApp. There was no need for crypto or a Libra association to begin with.
Exactly this. Facebook will definitely move forward with some kind of payment system. Libra would have been fantastic for them if it had worked out but it was never their only option. They won't give up on Libra yet though.
I d certainly download whatsapp if they did. It's just mad that there is no such service in the west. It makes a lot of sense really, they 'd avoid the whole negative publicitly and they could have released it as quietly as they did with facebook credits long ago
> There was no need for crypto or a Libra association to begin with.
If you're in control of the currency it provides you more flexibility and the blockchain aspect arguably makes it easier to manage the accounting as well.
Erik Torenberg's Village Global [1] was started fairly recently and is already extremely highly regarded in the start-up community. Much more so than Techstars or any other non-YC accelerator in my impression.
Paul Graham wrote an essay on this topic, aimed towards high-school students. His advice: stay upwind http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html
> Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway.
> Suppose you're a college freshman deciding whether to major in math or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can go into almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.
> Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for "don't give up on your dreams." Stay upwind.
I did pretty much like he advised, though I haven't seen this article before now.
I got bored at high school and life in general. I discovered programming and thought that it's fascinating. So I decided to learn programming. I self-learned and started building my own projects, big and small.
But now a couple years after my biggest regret is exactly the same, why did I waste so much time at high school and why didn't I start earlier.
as the years go by, one accumulates baggage. if one has lived a life that is. in the form of debt obligations, family obligations, healthcare costs if unlucky, risk aversion and so on.
my own example, i have literally zero free time to pursue any opportunities at all, whatsoever. i work, i come home and take care of family, i sleep for a precious few hours, repeat.
dedication ain’t the issue.
and i’m a highly paid worker. the people that live 2 hours away, the g bus drivers and so on, they do not have opportunities that can be addressed merely be dedication.
I think a better word to use would be "optionality". Keep your options open. You want to maximize your options. Do things that increase your options later.
The future is unknown, and we are actually making decisions for our future self. When you're 18 or 25 you don't even know what interests you will have when being 35 or 40, at least I didn't know.
What Graham is saying is to make decisions that will allow you more choices in the future.
It seems different to me. You analyze and make the upwind decision for as long as you can. Analysis paralysis has connotations of hand-wringing over what to do, and the subjective of experience of what it feels like seems major to me. You still have a course of action you want to execute, a goal of staying upwind a bit, no excessive hand-wringing necessarily required.
Go study math, never get a degree because you haven't studied enough (according to experts) or you weren't talented enough (according to reality), and find yourself in debt, older and with no degree.
You'll totally not regret having listened to advices like this.
He doesn't tell everyone to study math. In his speech he mentions that you should be searching within your abilities, and that you need to find out what those are.
> So far we've cut the Standard Graduation Speech down from "don't give up on your dreams" to "what someone else can do, you can do." But it needs to be cut still further. There is some variation in natural ability. Most people overestimate its role, but it does exist. If I were talking to a guy four feet tall whose ambition was to play in the NBA, I'd feel pretty stupid saying, you can do anything if you really try. [2]
> We need to cut the Standard Graduation Speech down to, "what someone else with your abilities can do, you can do; and don't underestimate your abilities." But as so often happens, the closer you get to the truth, the messier your sentence gets. We've taken a nice, neat (but wrong) slogan, and churned it up like a mud puddle. It doesn't make a very good speech anymore. But worse still, it doesn't tell you what to do anymore. Someone with your abilities? What are your abilities?
Oh but that's exactly how it already works in existing supply chains: "imperfect" produce gets allocated quite well with food manufacturers, restaurants and food halls, or gets donated to foster homes, hospitals, etc. And many supermarkets do in fact stock up with "imperfect" produce.
"Reducing food waste" makes for good marketing. Except it's not that true.