I am experiencing booking dates errors, my host's emails to my airbnb inbox was not forwarded to me, my host is trying to get in touch with support on live chat but they are not answering, plus the website is down now too. what's happening over there? I wonder.
google was offering much less than what Microsoft was bringing to the table ($700M) - and they turned that down too. I think if Google up their bid (at least trying to match Microsoft's) Yelp might have gone for it just because it was Google. http://news.accuracast.com/internet-7471/yelp-turned-down-mi...
I think Google should have just paid more and buy Yelp rather than Zagat.
I think most entrepreneurship events will consist of majority HN users so maybe they are already meeting each other at some many other events that no one has saw a need to create an official HN one (I have not heard of one yet). But I think it's a great idea :) and I would love to attend it! Maybe there should be a HN pre-meeting before each entrepreneurship event since we're all most likely to be there already! Speaking if event, if any of you are interested in meeting me (I'll wear my HN username for easy identification), a fellow HN user, I will be at this entrepreneurship event on Nov 11 :) http://rainmakers3.eventbrite.com/
I think the failure of ipad killers can be attributed to them "having NO humanities and liberal arts in their DNA." as Jobs once said about Microsoft and Google. "They just didn't get it. Even when they saw the it they couldn't even copy it well." I think for that reason no ipad-wannabe-killers (present or future) will come close to displacing the ipad unless they manage to trump it in design/UX/UI. Currently, their only strategy seems to be waging a price war in hopes of covering their cost price(at the very least) and gaining some market share (at best).
Looks like NYC is soon becoming a tech hot spot with Google setting up an office and Stanford (maybe setting up)... lol. I can almost hear the West Coast VCs rejoicing across the country.
No doubt Peter Thiel means well. Thiel Foundation is a non-profit organization. Today it announced Breakout Labs which aims to fund very nascent research proposals — opportunities that are too early stage or radical to attract dollars from VCs or government grants.
Only time will tell if the gamble pays off. Like when Amazon started spending heaps of money building warehouses and people thought they were crazy. It paid off in the end. Efficient shipping attracted customers.
I disagree. I think selling your company doesn't make you any less of an entrepreneur (btw jobs did sell his companies NeXT to Apple in 1997 and Pixar to Disney in 2006).
The Paypal founders sold to Ebay for 1.5B and many of them went on to do other great and innovative things with that capital. I think being entrepreneurial means having the passion to start new things and sometimes that requires you to sell your old company/ies to fund it. I admire the courage to sell a successful/profitable company in order to built something from scratch again.
Elon Musk said: I think it's better to try doing something which requires low capital as kind of your first company. With the success of that, then take capital from that and plow it into your second company. That's what I did, basically. http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/elon-musk-starting-a-compan...
Peter Thiel doesn't seem to think dropping out is such a bad idea. He set up The Thiel Fellowship to give 20 students Under 20 $100,000 to get their business ideas off the ground and quit school.
I wonder what "confidential trade secrets" they took along with them considering that Groupon's product is more of a market risk than a tech risk and so easily cloned. I don't think that Groupon is going to win this one because the Valley's laws has very favorable towards employee mobility. Many engineers here have Google, Facebook etc on their resumes hiring is so competitive here and Groupon better get it and focus their energy on employee retention schemes instead of futile law suits.
This shows that when consumers band together they can make a difference in corporate America. I wish we were more united in standing up against other products that are,
1.environmentally unfriendly (petrol)
2.abusive (child labor in Nike Sweatshops)
3.cruelty to animals (chicken farms)
Sadly, I think most consumers only united when it's hurting their pockets. Otherwise, they turn a blind eye.
Groupon is a classic example: they have over 1,600 salespeople in the company. This number represents 75% of the total Groupon staff (http://www.centernetworks.com/groupon-roundup) I don't think they are particularly innovative. Low barriers of entry. It's just about how fast you can scale and yet it made it to the IPO stage. Few startups ever get to see that. Thus (with all do respect) I disagree with Jobs that a tech startup run by a salesman is doomed (although some might argue groupon is not really considered "techy"). I think a startup needs a good mix of a hacker, a hustler and a designer. Jobs was all 3 and that's what made Apple work.
Very true but I think perhaps people are conditioned to think that they can replicate the success if they learn from successful people first hand. But I think people who have failed have a lot to teach us as well. As Edison once said,"I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb." :)
So true. The hardest part is taking away features from your own product. We need to learn to let go of non-crucial features. built. launch fast. iterate faster.