You can use fuzzy numbers to get varied output, and if you want to do MC you can use the API into your model to call it with whatever distributions you want and aggregate the output. But no, our UI doesn’t natively support doing a MC sim because the demand is frankly less than you’d expect. :)
The exercise of modeling your business helps you become aware of all that you don’t know, which helps you stay humble and curious and focused on answering the right questions.
The Babe Ruth effect of VC's needing big hits and the entire industry being a hits-driven business (unicorns, PG's Black Swan Farming, etc.) is a relic of the VC industry being not-long-tail compatible (i.e. offline).
This will change, and more money will be made in the fat long tail than the hits.
Re: "By binding the payback to profit" -- but it isn't bound to profit. Re-read the terms. It's Founder Earnings, which is profit PLUS any founder salary above a 'low but fair' threshold. You can be breakeven or below zero and still have shareable earnings with a SEAL if you are making a market rate (not low but still fair).
I spent days thinking this through and would be happy to explore your objections in a higher-fidelity forum or longer-form format than HN comments.
For now, suffice to say I have no incentive to mislead founders.
Yes, absolutely. The key question in my mind still (after finishing the article) is what startups actually WOULD be smart to take money on these terms (what kind of business model, unit economics, and growth trajectory would they have to have for it to make sense).
My guess is it's a narrower slice of the startup population than Earnest intends. And my prediction is they will update their terms to broaden the slice.
Senior Engineer | Riskpulse | Austin, TX | Full Time | ONSITE
Riskpulse is looking for a senior, full-stack engineer to join our team of engineers, scientists, and meteorological researchers solving problems across the complete supply chain.
On any given day you will be:
- Writing high-performance Python and Javascript code powering web and native apps
- Coordinating distributed data processing across our AWS cluster
- Code-reviewing and mentoring other engineers
- Analyzing mountains of data to surface valuable insights for our customers and fuel future product development
Requirements:
- B.S. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical discipline
- Strong experience with one or more of Python, Ruby or similar object oriented dynamic language
- Distributed systems experience with strong knowledge of Linux internals
- Knowledge of Python scientific tools such as Numpy, Pandas, SciPy, etc.
Preferred:
- Javascript experience with Backbone.js and React
- Experience with GIS (PostGIS, ESRI, Mapbox)
- Big-Data Analytics: Machine learning, GraphDBs
Riskpulse is a web-based risk management platform that allows logistics managers to align their operations with environmental conditions, saving them money and avoiding losses. Trading clients subscribe to our products to identify demand risks and mispriced markets. We also perform directed research for our clients to provide them with unique insights on their route risks or a proprietary edge.
I enjoyed all the mentions of weather, as Paul T. at the Memphis GOCC is someone I've had the pleasure of talking to about some of those issues.
I'm the co-founder of a company whose mission is to synchronize climate and commerce. Would love to find out what you're doing these days as you are clearly a SME (almost beyond belief) and I'm guessing I could learn a lot from you.
CEO of Riskpulse here. I've been through all of the monetization trenches for weather software and we are now capitalizing on real demand in B2B/enterprise. If either of you guys ever want to connect to talk shop or (in)formally partner or share ideas, let me know: [email protected]
This resonates. We raised just under $2m through a seed round and then were fortunate enough to be able to raise a bridge that deferred any crunch. But then we did 2 other things: we focused our sales, marketing, and product design on the greatest pain within a single industry (instead of 3) and we reduced expenses. Now growth is great and we are very close to being able to say that raising money is completely optional indefinitely, and no matter what investors do or don't decide, we will be fine. A wonderful feeling but the challenge to get to that next level has also been nearly inexplicable. Great post-mortem.
I think you're underestimating how hard all those non-coding skills are. When you laundry list "UI, branding, PR, etc" I can almost see you doing a hand-wavy motion. The reality is, anyone that's truly awesome at non-technical things deserves some equity for the 10X-100X growth they will help bring to the business. The truth is you can be 8 years in, but only 10% of the way there.
On a related note, we are adding earthquakes to Riskpulse.com this week. It's amazing how much scattered and rich data there is, but it's just that ... scattered.
You can use fuzzy numbers to get varied output, and if you want to do MC you can use the API into your model to call it with whatever distributions you want and aggregate the output. But no, our UI doesn’t natively support doing a MC sim because the demand is frankly less than you’d expect. :)