111–120 of 267 posts
And then somehow they managed to totally disregard their customers' needs and screw everyone with the Mandrill changeover. Seriously, has everyone forgotten that fiasco? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713 I'll never trust them or use them again, after that. No way no how.
The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…
I used to work for a company based in Conyers, GA, and would hang out in Atlanta when I traveled there. It is a great city. However, there is a huge cultural shift outside of Atlanta for people used to Silicon Valley or NYC, because the rest of Georgia is definitely... different.
But seriously the city to country gradient is pretty steep outside Atl. However I doubt if rural Georgia is all that different from rural upstate New York. I know people who grew up in both and it sounds about the same. You can just get there faster in Georgia.
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WhatsApp raised "outside funding" of $250k from ex-Yahoo employees before publicly launching the app in November 2009. They then got another $8 million in April 2011 from VC firm Sequoia Capital. However, Jan Koum was already talking to Jim Goetz of Sequoia a year prior to that (Spring 2010) and it took several months of negotiation to close the deal. I don't think people would call Whatsapp a "bootstrapped company".…
WhatsApp actually used pricing as a way to slow their growth and give Jan Koum's team time to scale their infrastructure. He talked about it in startup school a couple of years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-pJa11YvCs
Yes, I've seen that video. Increasing the price to slow growth is a separate tool from weighing pros/cons of VC money to grow huge. At the time of Sequoia's 2011 investment, WhatsApp was estimated to have ~30 million users. It seems that Jan Koum felt it made more financial sense to get $8 million from Sequoia rather than from his customer base. If JK could raise subscription prices higher ($2? $5?) without his customers complaining to "self-fund" that $8M, that would have been financially better than giving up 10-15% of company ownership to Sequoia. He must have liked the first vc financial deal because he went back to Sequoia again for another $52 million.
If JK is ever on stage again, maybe somebody can ask him why he didn't get that $60 million from his user base. It would be interesting to hear his thought process.
The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…
Is it practical to live in Atlanta without a car?
When I moved just a little further out the car was absolutely needed.
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I'm in Atlanta. It's a great place to work for a non-tech corporation, but the startup scene is so so. Most of the "tech" startups fall in to one of two categories. First, ones that will not get traction and are doing something that someone else is already doing or two high tech boiler room operations where they hire a few tech people and an army of sales types to try to sell it. Sadly tech people in Atlanta are seco…
I beg to differ. I work for Pindrop. We have a unique product and we're growing steadily, with serious funding to boot. https://www.pindrop.com/about-pindrop-security/ https://www.pindrop.com/what-we-do/ We're also hiring: http://grnh.se/iwk5m4
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How's the political climate? It doesn't look so great from my initial Googling: Georgia is one of the states suing over the transgender bathroom issue. Per Wikipedia Georgia doesn't include sexual orientation in their laws against employer discrimination. Anything else folks from SF might be concerned about?
California is also one of the states being sued [0]. You obviously don't know much about Atlanta but seem to know a lot about Georgia by browsing wkikipedia. Our LGBT community is one of the largest in the US. California probably has more backwards people than Georgia fighting against stuff like this. [0] http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/26/california-tra...
The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…
I grew up nearby, in Greenville, SC, and Atlanta was "The City". But, I've never liked it. Even with family there, I'd never consider it a place I'd want to live (and I really like my family!). I also don't choose to live in SF, but I'd pick it long before Atlanta.
That said, it is a growing city with a ton of opportunity. I know some folks who've moved there from other cities and they almost immediately found good work in their industry of choice (film, where they'd been struggling for years in Austin, having to have a second job in retail just to make ends meet). So, sure, cost of living isn't bad and the economy is definitely booming. But, it's not a nice city, IMHO.
The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…
Is it practical to live in Atlanta without a car?
That said, I don't live on one of those routes and don't really encounter much trouble cycling or boosted boarding on the roads.
The Atlanta tech scene is blossoming, just like our film industry. We have a couple of incubators, including a few that are funded/supported by Georgia Tech. The cost of living here is super cheap, and there are brilliant and talented people everywhere. We have satellite offices for tons of major tech companies, so there are traditional tech jobs too. Earning $200k here while the cost of living is so low is phenomina…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How's the political climate? It doesn't look so great from my initial Googling: Georgia is one of the states suing over the transgender bathroom issue. Per Wikipedia Georgia doesn't include sexual orientation in their laws against employer discrimination. Anything else folks from SF might be concerned about?
California is also one of the states being sued [0]. You obviously don't know much about Atlanta but seem to know a lot about Georgia by browsing wkikipedia. Our LGBT community is one of the largest in the US. California probably has more backwards people than Georgia fighting against stuff like this. [0] http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/26/california-tra...