I smiled when I saw this question. It's a question that heavily favors people starting a company in a field they work in and whose problems they're already intimately familiar with. While this might seem unfair to some, it's probably an extremely good indicator for investment quality.

You don't have to work in a field to be familiar with its problems. You can also be a user. But one way or another, you should understand the problems well.

I would agree with you on this one. I've never worked with news publishers before but we wanted to explore how the need for distribution affected news quality and what all we could do to extrapolate from there. Ended up spending a lot of time with a fairly large newspaper and iterating on ideas to finally arrive at personalisation as a solution. We got away with a product we could evolve, revenue and lots of insider information about how the publishing industry works. And, everyone knows everyone else, so they referred us to a ton of others too! :D

But magic happens if you are the user as well as have some expertise in that area. Or at least someone on team with similar expertise. Linux was a baby similar chemical reaction only.

I would like to think that its overwhelmingly due to #2. It's a really articulate, I-know-what-the-fuck-I'm-talking-about explanation of a huge problem and market. Rest is icing IMO

I think #2 is the primary reason. We got an interview, which we didn't accept, for the Winter 2013 batch. I didn't work at Stripe then. Dan didn't found Giftly.

"No online demo yet. It might be awhile before we have a dashboard and mocking up a fake API for you doesn’t seem worth it."

Honestly my favorite part of the application. It gives the implication that "you're smart enough to understand that this would be a waste of both our times"

Agreed. The confidence and maturity it takes to make this kind of statement is a positive sign, and I'd bet the YC partners interpreted it as such.

Posted this in the comments section there, but I would love to hear your feedback as well.

I think the primary issue is constrained supply. As klochner said, barely any new housing is added and SF has a fixed land mass. But this problem is made much much worse by rent control.

If you have an apartment in SF with Rent Control and prices are rising, you don't move. This means fewer apartments are on the market, which further increases the price, leading to a price inflation cycle.

Of course, ironically now that I live in the city I would never want rent control taken away. Pretty much everyone else I've talked to, even those who agree with my assessment on its negative aspects, also find it very convenient once it's in their favor. So it's removal will likely never pass in a public vote situation.

Fixed land mass is a canard. Infill development requires little land. One Rincon Hill has almost 600 units and is built on about the size of a plot that a single-family home would have been built on, in most parts of the country.

Rent control is becoming increasingly irrelevant as anything constructed after 1978 is exempt, which is most of SOMA.

Based on the last line of his post, it looks like he was working on his own startup anyway. While the timing is suspicious, I think he might have felt that a clean break was the best solution to a situation where no one wins.

So this has actually been a pretty common 4chan prank for a while now. People give you instructions for Googling webcam IP addresses (very typically just an IP string or something similar) and then try to find something worth sharing. Just like the printer post above, it's incredible how many webcams are left completely unsecured.

I'm pretty confident this actually predates the founding of 4chan. I mean, it's not rocket science: if there is a device that can be administered via the web, then you can probably find at least a couple unsecured via a web search.

What you wouldn't have though is a large group of people dedicated to actively monitor what is being captured.

Don't be silly. USENET? IRC?

>Just like the printer post above, it's incredible how many webcams are left completely unsecured.

My guess is that making a webcam publicly accessible is more likely to be intentional than doing the same with a printer.

Of course, if the webcam is for security, then probably not. But people installing security cams should be expected to know what they are doing (LOL!).

Also on German krautchan. Watching some japanse gas station attendant receiving weird stuff via fax was hilarious.

I know I probably shouldn't ask, but did you tape it?

Ironically I think Silicon Valley will appreciate this show so much more than Bravo's attempt to glamorize it.

I work in SV, and yeah, this is a good skewer.

seems the opposite of ironic to me

It's slightly ironic that SV/tech people will enjoy watching something where they're somewhat mocked vs. fawned over, I think.

fair point. but, op was contrasting HBOs version with Bravos version, both of which presumably do a great job of mocking and fawning. which suggests the proposed source of irony is elsewhere.

I thought it was that Bravo failed by being "earnest/fawning", ie the opposite of cynical/ironic

I'm not a backer, but I've heard people on Twitter make fun of the Pebble for being a bit bulky, a bit dorky, or even "a useless novelty product that will burn out faster than the Slap Chop". But these people are short-sighted, and should be ignored, because they're missing what the Pebble represents.

The Pebble is one of the first entrants into the relatively young hardware category of wearable computers. So is Google Glass, FitBit, Jawbone, and others. But the Pebble has a place in there too. Being able to access your iMessages, Email or Calendar without taking out your phone is actually a pretty useful skill. And once people get over the "dork factor" (remember the first iPhone users?), they'll pay for a device like Pebble if it offers enough convenience.

At Betable, four of us do CrossFit. It's not sadistic as the title says, though I'm sure that can depend on the gym. The one in SOMA is pretty supportive and accommodating, probably because they deal with a lot of startup engineers :)

Anyway, was struck me about CrossFit and really any group exercise routine is how much more it makes you tax your own body. When you're at the gym, you don't push yourself. You run comfortably fast on the treadmill, lift a comfortable amount of weight, and do it at a comfortable pace. Group exercise is great for breaking you out of that habit and making you push your limits. It's too easy to pretend that 45 minutes at the gym, 15 of which is "cardio" and 15 of which is "cooldown", is going to change anything.

I was a crossfitter for about 2 years at the South Bay Crossfit gym (Jason Khalipa's).

My big takeaway from that was that olympic lifting is much more fun and rewarding than CF for me. (Note to HN pedants: for me.) The only problem is that it's hard to find a big box with a barbell, let alone two or three.

This article has fired me up again.

Go to the sports palace in south sf. The guy who wrote the Olympic lifting book mentioned in the article coaches there.

Huh, that's interesting. I go to a CrossFit affiliate that actually focusses pretty intently on olympic lifts. Each one hour session includes 20 minutes of practicing a specific lift. The two - olympic lifting and CrossFit - have become so intertwined in my mind that it's difficult to imagine one without the other.

I've been doing Crossfit for about five years, at multiple facilities. The really good CF facilities, including Crossfit Southie in Boston where I currently go, place a huge emphasis on powerlifting and olympic movements. Take a look at the Crossfit Games workouts (http://games.crossfit.com/), and you'll see snatches and deadlifts everywhere.

The problem with Crossfit is that it is an affiliated brand. Every CF facility pays about $5,000 per year to use the Crossfit brand, but each facility is independently owned and operated, and so the programming at each facility is usually unique. There exist a number of questionable facilities, especially out in California where the concentration of gyms is much higher.

The Crossfit affiliates need to start doing some quality control. As I've watch the program expand over the past half-decade, I've been excited at how many people the gyms have helped, but dismayed at how the trainers at some facilities don't share the same love or ability for the basic lifts.

Yeah that's the point I was trying to make. CF turned me onto Olympic lifting and after awhile, I just really learned to love Oly lifting but lose my devotion to CF.

I'm doing Crossfit for about 1.5 years and sometimes it's pretty tough. E.g., last week there was a workout that I was 100% sure I won't be able to finish, though eventually I did even though it took me 20 mins more than more fit people, and I had to scale down couple of parts from prescribed. But thinking back about it, I constantly realize there's no way I'd push myself so hard if I weren't on Crossfit program. And that's probably why previous years of "exercising" here and there did very little for me, but with Crossfit I am feeling real progress. I am still very far from where I want to be, but at least I am feeling some movement towards the goal. And while Crossfit can be very tough sometimes, right on the border of "are you kidding me? you want me to do what how many times?", it usually works out pretty well.

"...how much more it makes you tax your own body. When you're at the gym, you don't push yourself."

Says who? This seems like a false premise to me.

Personal experience (his and mine). Same basic principle explains why people work together in offices instead of at home: peer pressure prevents you from slacking. And personal trainers take this up yet another level, because it's a lot harder to give up when somebody's in your face telling you that he knows you can do one more rep.

And yes, of course there are people who can put in supremely productive 9-to-5 days at the home office and/or whip themselves mercilessly in solo workouts. But they're a minority.

A really good way to counter this, at least for me, is to keep track of your progress in a notebook or on your phone. It helps a lot to be able to say "oh, I was able to do 2 more reps than average this time" or "Hmm, I've been on this weight for a couple of months, maybe I should go up." Plus it's a good motivator -- it's a lot easier to go the the gym when you can see how much progress you've made.

I think he meant that, if you're not careful, you'll lapse into going through the motions without pushing yourself. In other words, you need to push yourself. And he says being in a group will help you actually push yourself.

A roommate of mine (former D1 track athlete) loved to do CrossFit solely because the group atmosphere forced him way beyond his boundaries. The first 4 times in a row that he went, he pushed himself so hard that he threw up. He could not stop raving about how it got him back into such relatively good shape so fast.

Which CrossFit gym in SOMA are you referring to? (Mine is awesome, too. Just wondering if it's the same one.)

Not the OP but worked out at United Barbell and they are phenomenal. I am no longer convinced that CrossFit is the right thing for me to keep doing so I stopped it and replaced it by running 5+ miles and doing the big 3, but it definitely is the best thing that ever happened to me fitness wise.

Yeah, sadly this lawsuit is just "cost of doing business" for Best Buy. They earned $140m in the first year, they only had a % chance of paying out for a lawsuit, and the lawsuit was worth less than 20% of the $140m earned. They just profited over $113m (plus the benefit of money now vs. money later) from destroying a startup

Business as usual in America nowadays :/

No, to both of you. No no no. Best Buy didn't "earn" 140MM; according to this story, they achieved 140MM of revenue. Revenue for Best Buy is the price tag on consumer electronics. Bust Buy doesn't pull those consumer electronics out of its butt; it pays vendors to acquire those goods, marks them up, and sells them to customers. Best Buy is a public company and is required to account for this difference, which is its gross margin. Best Buy's gross margin hovers around 25%.

If it all this suit cost Best Buy were the damages and penalties we already know about, then they are already close to wiped out on the deal (27MM vs. ~35MM, less legal). But that still doesn't capture it, because Best Buy spent money to clone this startup's offering and also to run the company and keep the lights on in the stores, which are expenses not captured in Best Buy's gross margin.

Incidentally, the 22MM figure also didn't get pulled out of some judge's butt. If you read the jury's finding, it's the amount of unjust enrichment Best Buy achieved by misusing Techforward's property.

In the very worst case scenario, virtually every penny of profit from this program was redirected from Best Buy to the winners of the lawsuit. But it's even more likely that Best Buy took a bath even beyond the imputed profits we're talking about.

That's a good point - revenue is not profit - but I'm not sure it is it a conclusive point. First, why would you assume the final estimate of revenue which came out of the sausage system of the legal system, with Best Buy's lawyers presumably heavily incentivized to knock down the estimate at every point in every way possible, is remotely accurate? An economics book on cartels and their prosecution I read (_Global Price Fixing_) noted dryly that the estimates of illicit revenues and hence profits in the cases were nowhere near what an outside would calculate especially in the case of the vitamin cartels.

(A more picayune point is that a small profit or a loss to Best Buy in one case doesn't mean that its practices are not a net expected profit; indeed, if they weren't losing an occasional case, they probably aren't taking enough risks to make the most possible profit.)

The gross margin comes from Best Buy's SEC filings. They have every incentive in the world to report the highest possible margin.

Not really, best buy and any other company of its size are more concerned with tax filings (which should be an "Ah Ha" moment for those of you at home), which generally gives companies an incentive to jack up costs and consequently decrease revenue. If you want a better idea of what their margins actually are you best bet would be to talk to a good (read: independent) investment analyst.

Also, best buy pays ~27 million (adjusting for the time value of money over two years at 2.5% gives us 25 million, btw) for a golden goose they can reuse year over year and had they build it themselves they wouldn't have had it immediately. I don't have all the details, but the project (including legal costs) will likely pay for itself before 5 years is up. They also mitigated any risk with building it themselves and doing it wrong which would cost additional time and money.

As a side note, I am curious if the court decision has any impact on the possible of Best Buy whoring out their duplicate system.

This comment suggests that Best Buy, a publicly traded company, is incentivized to minimize its gross margins. That is an extraordinary claim.

Meanwhile, Best Buy no longer operates the buyback program. The program wasn't a golden goose.

Best Buy is priced in the market in part based on their margins.

That is the nastiest comment I have ever seen on HN. Why?

Your point would be right if companies SEC filing matched their tax filings. Companies are ALLOWED to keep a set of Tax record books and accounting record books and pay taxes based on the profits from their tax books. The Tax books have been screwed with beyond all belief, the SEC ones not so much. My wife is a CPA and I've got a masters of finance and have spent time doing the tax book game.

I'm willing to bet the $5MM in punitive damages put Best Buy squarely in the red if they weren't there just after the $22MM.

Where do you get the numbers for BB's gross margin? Isn't 25% a bit small? (also does it mean they mark up the vendor price by 25% or that 25% of the consumers price tag is profit?)

I googled "Best Buy gross margin" and this was the second result: http://ycharts.com/companies/BBY/gross_profit_margin

Your calculation ignores the likely dozens of other companies Best Buy and other BigCorps have screwed over with no consequences whatsover. They rolled snake eyes in this case but this will still be business as usual until damage awards become 100x actual damages, since 99 times out of 100 the BigCorp's lawyers will have their way.

My calculation ignores a whole world of injustices and unfairnesses, because it is about this particular case.