Only the top 1% of people (by creativity) are useful to creative companies. People in the bottom 99% reduce productivity. So yes, creative companies all need to compete for the top 1%.
Todays's logs are similar to other days. I guess the traffic is high for a shared account, but I've never noticed it being slow so I didn't think about it.
I would have been happy to respond to an email saying I should upgrade & pay more, but even after a few emails with tech support that option didn't come up.
The only limit they advertise for that class of account is data transfer, and because it's mostly just serving uparrow.gif -type files we're well below that limit.
Tax credits are one of the reasons I didn't start my business in Canada. (I'm Canadian and I know the workings of some Canadian tech companies, but my current projects are all in Silicon Valley.)
The way it works is that you get 50% of your R&D expenses back from the gov't, in cash, several months later. To claim it, you have to write reports explaining the R&D value of each project. Besides the obvious bureaucratic overhead, it ends up affecting the organizational structure of the company. It distorts the way the business is run, maybe by only 20%, but that's enough to make you lose in the market in the long run.
It was a little more nuanced than that. The point was that young people were willing to take risks because they had little to lose and no responsibilities. He mentioned that (at the time) he slept on a mattress on the floor, so he wouldn't be trapped by possessions and paralyzed by fear of losing everything. People with mortgages and retirement plans are (rationally) conservative, and they won't take big gambles with the company. You have to admire his commitment.
James cites the law as a good example of drawing fine lines around difficult issues, citing the definition for amounts of LSD. If you don't know about this, 500 micrograms of LSD is a dose, but you can't see anything that small so it's normally distributed on a chunk of blotter paper weighing 1000x as much. So when the law says that possessing X amount of LSD is a felony, does that include the blotter paper? The courts have said it does. Is this a triumph of the law drawing fine lines around difficult issues, or were lawmakers just ignorant of basic measurement techniques, prosecutors greedy, and judges easily fooled?
An example consequence of this interpretation: having 0.5 oz of pot is a minor crime. But if you mix it with 10 lb of lawn trimmings, you now have 10+ lbs of material with a detectable amount of a controlled substance, and you're theoretically guilty of a major crime. This is not a law written by science majors.
Giving credit to the legal system for sorting out such a broken law is like giving credit to Vista for having a stylishly designed BSOD.
Wise advice. Some of the things you have to do to succeed -- firing dud employees, saying no to early acquisition offers, telling girlfriends that work is more important than them -- are at least as hard as drowning a puppy.
Maybe the next round of YC interviews should have a qualifying event requiring a big tub of water and a trip to the humane society.
Transportation has been in the post-functionality age for a few decades now. Getting from A to B is taken for granted, and choice of vehicle is almost entirely driven by aesthetics and style. And it makes a huge difference. Try going on a date in an M3, or a 1987 Firebird, or an xB, and see the different reactions you get.
This vehicle is relevant because it's a genuinely new thing, in a field which only sees about 1 new idea per decade. (not to channel Zuckerberg here or anything...)