Man it feels good to hear somebody else say this. I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot sometimes business-wise by not participating regularly in Product Hunt but I find that it's just not inviting. I don't feel a part of the club. I browse, find cool products, click through, and that's about it.
But I rarely comment as it just feels forced, like I'm standing next to a circle of people having a conversation at a networking event and I'm a few inches outside the circle, and it's clear I'm not a part of that circle.
"Yes, it still an echo chamber which I believe actually hurts the startup community because it incentives them to work on products which have zero value outside the echo chamber."
This. I hate this. I love the idea behind Product Hunt and I was on there early on. I've discovered some great products from there but I find it increasingly becoming centered around Product Hunt itself and startups in general.
I suppose that's only natural as the community posts for the community, but I feel like there's so much more potential with a site like this.
I'm not in the valley. I'm in Chicago. And Product Hunt increasingly feels like some huddle of startup guys in the valley smiling at each other over the latest do-hickey they made.
We used Sendgrid because in additional to transactional email, we needed parsing and events. Sendgrid was just the biggest name at the time so I chose it.
All the Sendgrid competitors offer the same functionality for lower prices now, so there's little reason to choose Sendgrid today, in my opinion.
I can't find another email provider to give out dedicated IP addresses for less than sendgrid. We whitelabel a lot of our service so this is a significant cost.
Hah! I was thinking the same thing. Being based in the US, I was very confused by what the headline meant. Even in the article, they never explain what a "boot" is.
We live in such an auto centric society. I often think, why do we have the parking lot in shopping centers go all the way up to the front door (so you have to cross in the path of cars to enter the building)?
Why don't the aisles go directly up to a big sidewalk/walking area in front of the building and that's it? You could have turnarounds every few for picking people up and something dedicated for emergency vehicles, but it's crazy that you have to cross in front of cars to enter the building, when there's 0 reason for those cars to drive right in front of the building!
I'm confident you could alter the current design to allow for extremely easy emergency service access to whatever part of the building needed, without having a giant ass road right in front of the building's front door.
Correct. You can indeed have an aisle that supports emergency and delivery vehicles without allowing daily vehicle traffic to the front of the building.
Ok, this caused lots of discussion, so here it is.
I am Mexican, living and working in Mexico. Interest rates for a house are in the ballpark of 10%. This can be either very bad (on a 30 year mortage, you end up paying back about 3 times as much as you originally borrowed), or very good (early payments go straight to capital and have a disproportionate effect on the total amount paid, specially during the first few years). We also have a government mandatory housing fund, paid by your employer, at 5% of your salary (meaning everybody's salary is 5% less than what otherwise would be, but still).
So, we did the rational thing. We rented while we were young and our careers were taking off, we tried to avoid lifestyle inflation when we got raises, and when we finally bought a house we threw every spare cash we could afford until the monthly interest came out of our employers fully. That happened last December (after sinking Christmas bonuses into the mortage).
So, while it requires discipline, it's not that impressive. In this country, paying your mortage using the plan designed by the bank is the same as making minium payments to your credit card. You just keep paying interests without making much of a dent on the capital.
He/she would only have to pay 3.28 times his normal payment in order to pay it off in 1/5th of the time. It's paid off more quickly because by paying more, you reduce the amount of interest that accumulates.
On a $100k 20 year loan at at 5.7% (I know, example), interest paid would be around $67k (so total $167k). By paying 3.28 times more per month ($2300 per month versus the $700 normal rate), the interest paid ends up being only around $12k.
Also, by having refinanced recently, when the rates were stupid low. My mortgage interest rate is lower than my student loans interest rate, and on at 15-year mortgage. Along with making extra monthly payments, you're in the 7-year payoff range. All depends on how much of your income you put to the extra payments. I don't make mad bills, but it's still quite feasible.
If you're lucky, you might be able to pay down lump sums of your mortgage every year without penalty.
I have a mortgage through Tangerine (formerly ING) and can pay down 25% of the original amount during any calendar year - assuming I have the cash, and feel that avoiding that interest is better than the return I could otherwise get investing the cash.
But I rarely comment as it just feels forced, like I'm standing next to a circle of people having a conversation at a networking event and I'm a few inches outside the circle, and it's clear I'm not a part of that circle.