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Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

diegobasch.com

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Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

#51

Post by dougabug »

lukejduncan wrote: post #38
diego wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's awesome to work on those problems. The point I was trying to make is that in this case the company has to choose between innovating for the long term, and solving urgent problems that mean lots of $ in the short term. Internal venture projects tend to be put on the back burner when your best engineers could save 50M by optimizing the hell out of your backend.

I'm continually reminded of Neal Stephensons remark "I saw the best minds of my generation... writing spam filters." He talks a lot lately about how we've stopped trying to solve the really hard problems and instead are continually trying to sell digital "sugar water." *Source: https://plus.google.com/116416314233992548280/posts/NxCMjiQX... )

Truly defeating spam in all its guises (SEO, commercials, daily offers, junk mail) is a pretty difficult problem. How do you recognize cleverly concealed data? Spammers constantly adapt to spam filters and new/pristine communications channels which catch on precisely because they are relatively spam free. Of course, spam filters also evolve, this kind of runaway adversarial co-evolution is what leads to systems which can effectively lie/manipulate perception, or detect such.

Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

#52

Post by Estragon »

jaggederest wrote: post #27
ianterrell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$6MM invested with a 6% return provides a $360k pa lifestyle just living off the interest. That seems like quite enough for houses, spouses (well—maybe spouse; alimony could eat into that quite a bit), cars, and children.

Zero risk return is way below 6% right now. I'm not sure where you're going to find anything like that. Berkshire Hathaway is willing to guarantee you a $205,000 annual income from that sum in an annuity, which is not a bad deal at all, but it's not 'never worry about money again', it's just a really nice salary, and would be substantially depleted in the case of any inflation at all.

Earlier in the year, you could get a 12 month CD in Australia for almost 6%.

Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

#54

Post by kokey »

doug_ludlow wrote: post #3

This is easily one of the most honest and true posts I've read about Valley culture in a long, long time. Having been through this exact process, I can assure you that this is how it really works.

The strange thing is it reminds me of the late 90s, the GooBook back then were companies like Cisco.

Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

#57

Post by jcc80 »

horsehead wrote: post #40
bengl3rt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to live like a 20-something for the rest of your life, sure. Your cost structure changes as you get older and have things like houses, spouses, cars, and children.

Bullshit. I live on roughly $18k a year net. buy a house, maybe doubles or PERHAPS triples my housing allowance. Have a wife and kids and things, in total, probably triple. I don't think people understand how to not waste money any more.

Does this mean you're not going to be buying the new disposable laptops from Apple? How will you live with yourself?

Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

#58

Post by jroll »

horsehead wrote: post #40
bengl3rt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to live like a 20-something for the rest of your life, sure. Your cost structure changes as you get older and have things like houses, spouses, cars, and children.

Bullshit. I live on roughly $18k a year net. buy a house, maybe doubles or PERHAPS triples my housing allowance. Have a wife and kids and things, in total, probably triple. I don't think people understand how to not waste money any more.

A modest house in the valley costs something like $500k. With a typical mortgage you can expect to pay about 1% of the total price ($5k). That's more than triple your total expenditures, let alone housing costs.

Re: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

#59

Post by jcc80 »

By now they have some traction: hundreds of thousands of users, some of whom are even real.

I wonder what percentage of users are generally fake and how much some startups goose this number. Maybe adding in 5% worth of fake users increases an acquisition price. I'd imagine it varies by the type of app (CRM, social, etc) but that you'd probably have to get your next funding from the Salvation Army if/when you get caught.

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