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The author has some serious design and coding skills. I just wish they were more precise about what it is (a window manager? an gnome user theme?) rather than trying to brand it as a javascript-based operating system.

I do a lot of work helping early and mid-stage companies scale their workforce and technology. Some companies scale by the seat of their pants: they hire people for specific needs as they arise (e.g. servers crashing, or too many sales requests coming in). Other companies scale in a more organized, planned process, like having a big vision of becoming a global company in 5 years. In both of these scenarios, especially because you don't have a co-founder, you're going to find that it's hard to give your #2 hire a sense of agency. You'll likely feel disappointed in their style (different coding practices, different customer interactions, etc.) and want to micromanage. To help with this, start them off on a non-mission-critical project (like expanding to a new region or building a feature that's been in the backlog), and be clear with them about what "success" means for that project. Having the definition of success be written by them, in their words, will also help ensure a two-way communication here. After they have a successful project under their belt, you'll find it easier to trust them with more important work. Also keep in mind that right now you have a product, but when you hire your second employee, you'll also be establishing a culture, so it's worth putting thought into what culture you want to promote.

Markov chains are much simpler than Markov models. The lecture starts off with the simpler idea to motivate the more complex one that you're describing.

I clicked on this link expecting a conversation about commenting in code, which is broken for several reasons. Commenting on this post seems to work for me though.

We stuck with facebook to keep it simple, but I agree it would be really nice to login via twitter. This is definitely on our roadmap, but I don't think we'll get to it for this time. If you have a great idea and think you can get people to vote for it (where they're on facebook), then feel free to email it to [email protected] and I'll try to enter it in on your behalf.

I completely agree with this. One skill that I pride myself in is being able to internalize others' ideas. For example, I'm working on a startup right now (it helps that I have equity), and am pretty happy when I'm still up coding at 5am because I just want it to work perfectly.

Part of the reason for requesting others' ideas for this, is that there are so many domain experts for domains other than technology that I want to meet,learn from, and ultimately help.

Thanks for reporting this. It looks like the database connection went down just as you were submitting. I'll switch to a better database tonight to ensure the connection stays up. Would you mind trying to submit again?

You're right, if the winning idea is "build the control software for a self-driving boat that can search for a missing airplane," then the tech certainly will not be easy (and would be pretty awesome). What we were getting at with that line was that there are lots of great business ideas that can be prototyped without solving monumental technical challenges, and having a solid prototype isn't enough for a startup to succeed - it's only the beginning.

Sorry about that, we had the permissions set too strictly. It's fixed now, and I want to thank you for bringing this to our attention before the competition starts.

I don't see any ethical issue here, but if there are hard feelings involved (like you're leaving his investment high and dry), he could make things difficult for you at company B. I suggest talking to your new boss at company B, asking them the same question, and if appropriate for an introduction to the investor. Mr. X will likely want to know why you're leaving company A (is there something wrong with his investment?) and will appreciate that you're checking with him about ethical concerns.

This is what I love about consulting - I can experience different team cultures and projects, and learn what works and doesn't work for various teams.