YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
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YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
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Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#2Unless there's a significant financial incentive to do so (ex: 2-to-1 match), don't give people gift cards. Gift cards are the biggest scam ever pulled by the retail industry, or more specifically, perpetuating the idea that giving cash is taboo.
The one exception would be giving a preloaded credit card to someone who otherwise doesn't have access to one (ex: a niece/nephew that's far away) and only if there are no fees associated with initially loading it. I think AmEx has some kind of cyber monday promotion for that today. If you have to pay anything more than $0 then forget about it though.
All that aside, Markhor looks interesting. I don't recall seeing them on HN (guess it's less "tech" than most YC companies) but the loafers look nice. Anybody here have any experience with them? Always on the look out for a better pair of shoes...
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#3Awesome idea this list. What an impressive (quantity and quality) - list of companies. Some of them are known to me as YC portfolio companies - because I buy from them or have heard of - but loads of them, I would not have guessed that they are YC funded.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#4on edit: There are so many of these companies that are basically stylized versions of Alibaba listing pages or are basically re-skinning of some business process that, turns out, doesn't actually need to be disrupted. Transporting gasoline to fuel up someone's car? Really? We're going to be energy wasteful just to shave 10 minutes off someone's week?
The other disturbing thing is how many of these gadgets are IP enabled. I really hope YC has some kind of IoT advisor who insists upon security at a low level.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#5on edit: There are so many of these companies that are basically stylized versions of Alibaba listing pages or are basically re-skinning of some business process that, turns out, doesn't actually need to be disrupted. Transporting gasoline to fuel up someone's car? Really? We're going to be energy wasteful just to shave 10 minutes off someone's week? The other disturbing thing is how many of these gadgets are IP enab…
Snarky dismissals of other people's work are not welcome on HN, so please don't post like this.
I tend not to post as many moderation scoldings in YC-related threads, but that was such a bad HN comment that I'll break the pattern for it.
Edit: you rewrote your comment to make it (somewhat) more substantive and less snarky. In principle that's fine, but it would have been more respectful to preserve the original context for the reader.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#6Unless there's a significant financial incentive to do so (ex: 2-to-1 match), don't give people gift cards. Gift cards are the biggest scam ever pulled by the retail industry, or more specifically, perpetuating the idea that giving cash is taboo. The one exception would be giving a preloaded credit card to someone who otherwise doesn't have access to one (ex: a niece/nephew that's far away) and only if there are no f…
> Unless there's a significant financial incentive to do so (ex: 2-to-1 match), don't give people gift cards. Gift cards are the biggest scam ever pulled by the retail industry, or more specifically, perpetuating the idea that giving cash is taboo.
The problem is that cash often feels like not giving a gift at all. If you exchange fifty-dollar bills with a sibling, it feels pointless. Gift cards can alleviate that feeling. If you give your sibling an iTunes gift card it doesn't feel like nothing was exchanged even if they give you one back.
Gifts are also an opportunity to give someone something they wouldn't typically buy for themselves. Ideally that would be a thoughtful gift but if you can't think of one, cash is likely to end up in the "general fund", while a gift card to a restaurant or a massage or a bookstore will be used for its intended purpose (with some risk of it being lost or sold on some card resale site).
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#7[deleted]
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#8Pick up one of these for the hacker/developer/AI enthusiast in your family:
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#9Unless there's a significant financial incentive to do so (ex: 2-to-1 match), don't give people gift cards. Gift cards are the biggest scam ever pulled by the retail industry, or more specifically, perpetuating the idea that giving cash is taboo. The one exception would be giving a preloaded credit card to someone who otherwise doesn't have access to one (ex: a niece/nephew that's far away) and only if there are no f…
> Unless there's a significant financial incentive to do so (ex: 2-to-1 match), don't give people gift cards. Gift cards are the biggest scam ever pulled by the retail industry, or more specifically, perpetuating the idea that giving cash is taboo. The problem is that cash often feels like not giving a gift at all. If you exchange fifty-dollar bills with a sibling, it feels pointless. Gift cards can alleviate that fe…
This is true, but I think a better solution is to just buy a gift instead of cash or a gift card.
Re: YC’s 2016 Holiday Gift Guide
#10on edit: There are so many of these companies that are basically stylized versions of Alibaba listing pages or are basically re-skinning of some business process that, turns out, doesn't actually need to be disrupted. Transporting gasoline to fuel up someone's car? Really? We're going to be energy wasteful just to shave 10 minutes off someone's week? The other disturbing thing is how many of these gadgets are IP enab…
Snarky dismissals of other people's work are not welcome on HN, so please don't post like this. I tend not to post as many moderation scoldings in YC-related threads, but that was such a bad HN comment that I'll break the pattern for it. Edit: you rewrote your comment to make it (somewhat) more substantive and less snarky. In principle that's fine, but it would have been more respectful to preserve the original conte…
Have you considered that perhaps these companies might not actually be that innovative?