andrew311

> it’s difficult to look at people like Graham — people who aren’t as bright as they think they are

Graham’s (alleged) arrogance about his brightness isn’t really the issue here. Let’s face it, he is bright. That’s not what is causing this boredom/dismay, though.

The issue is that somehow the rest of us became entranced by the “cult of Graham” and his thinking about startups/founders, and collectively we made his way into the way, ostracizing those that lived their life outside the idealized startup paradigm that Graham crafted. Creation of this dismay isn’t on him alone, it’s on all of us.

To me, the real issue is that content in apps is temporal with a lack of visit history, unreproducible feeds, and a lack of deep links. This means I often lose my place when a momentary switch to another app causes a refresh on the first app. Even worse, sometimes switches are accidental from a push notification popping right before I click something else at the top of my screen. Websites have this unreproducible feed problem, too, but it generally isn’t as pronounced.

A memory seared into my brain from the 90s:

I was in the highschool computer lab, working on a website for the school IT administrator. She wanted me to include a patterned background, blinking marquees, GIFs, the whole nine yards. Another student was working on the project with me, sitting next to me. We were both facing the window, away from the door. The admin left the room. I told my fellow student these choices were extremely tacky, and I questioned the life choices that led her to the point of thinking this looked good.

Turns out she came back into the room and was behind me the whole time. Boy, did I feel like a jerk. I apologized.

What a different time that was.

This argument falls into the trap of comparing the average home to the stock market. If I was primarily concerned with returns, I would never buy the average home. That would be a home in the middle of nowhere. I would only buy in major metro areas with diverse, heavily entrenched industries and a strong desire among people all over the world to live there (places like NYC). If you look at the numbers in those places, the story is very different. On home value alone, you see appreciation of 8-12% per year on average since 1990 (despite at least three recessions during that time). Covid will impact the desire to live in major metro areas but not enough to seriously impact these returns.

If I wasn't concerned primarily with returns and instead on just saving money over renting, the math is still way better in any of the top metros in the United States so long as you plan to reside there for 5+ years. And if you aren't living in a major metro, you still need to find a place to live, so you might as well make 1% annually on that money as opposed to just giving it away in the form of rent.

In my experience, renting makes sense when you need to pay for flexibility, because you aren't sure if you will stay rooted in one place for 5+ years. Otherwise, buying for many people is a win financially and has been for decades.

Did anyone else read this title as “NYC Pilot (that flies planes) Tries Mental Health Responders in Place of Police” instead of “NYC Tries Mental Health Responders in Place of Police”?

Does Atlas setup vesting for the founders?

What colo company did you use?

I should clarify that it is certainly doable for widely recognized companies, but it’s very difficult for the majority of startups that no one has heard of even if they have some success. Also, getting on these marketplaces also goes much better with company cooperation and many startups don’t have the time or willingness.

Selling private shares / options on the secondary market is near impossible if the company isn’t on something like SecondMarket. Right of First Refusal, Co-sale Agreements, and the challenges of sharing information with a 3rd party make this difficult. That said, has anyone succeeded and written about their experience?

I agree wholeheartedly. This is important and will provide balance. That said, often people have some sort of passion, their job might be a manifestation of that passion, and they want to connect with peers.

An alternative way of looking at it: whether or not face to face is important for the specifics of the job, it might be important for emotional connection between humans, fulfilling a common human desire to connect with peers and be happy on the job and _outside_ the job. In other words, we might want to be around peers for social (non-job) reasons.