markhelo

"Microsoft has been killing it over the last decade regarding dev tooling and experience, so it is not a big surprise."

To be fair, for all the flack Microsoft got/gets, the dev tooling for Windows ecosystem is miles ahead of anyone else and world class. Perhaps I am biased as I worked there at one point, but since I don't anymore, I have also seen tooling from Apple and Google and they are a couple of decades behind. There is some truth to why Steve Ballmer went ballistic with his Developer chant, they really built great tooling for developers.

Its likely that both OS's allow you to do it, because it is part of their testability APIs. I have used an app on Google to fake my location because a restaurant that is hard to schedule (90+mins waiting) requires you to be within 1 mile of it before getting on their waitlist.

I don't remember her name but I once met an experienced market researcher about 10 years ago who worked for Lego in the 80's and 90's to study their users and figure out how to grow the company. She basically went on to explain the complete strategy that you still see them executing. Lego identified that at the core, there are 4 different needs. 1. Kids who like to imagine and create characters on their own and build Legos they can play with. This is typically at an early age. Hence the generic sets around trains, cars, dollhouses, etc. 2. Kids who love their favorite characters and play with them - hence Lego did partnerships with Marvel, StarWars, Disney, etc. 3. Kids who like to display their work with pride, build it once and never touch it again - hence the architecture series. 4. Kids who like to build and rebuild different things from the same set - hence Lego technic.

She used Kids to mean not just by age but anyone who is a kid at heart :) After hearing it, I can't unsee it in a Lego store and am always amazed at the genius of doing market research. We have glorified these things in startups, but when done properly it helps any company.

What about the third option which is you building 100% of a competitor who knows how everything works and can compete effectively?

Life360 | Software Engineers, Product Managers | San Francisco, San Diego | Onsite | Full-time

With over 10 million active users and $90 million in venture funding, Life360 is the world’s largest mobile app for families. Today, we are very focused on location sharing and safety, but our mission is to become the must-have Family Membership that gives families peace of mind anytime and anywhere.

Our team is focused on building technology that helps families feel safe and together even when they are outside of the home and apart. From personalized location-based alerts that help make daily coordination easier, to advanced sensor tech that can detect if you are in a car crash and automatically send you an ambulance, we are leveraging smartphones to their fullest extent to reinvent how families get through the day.

You will be joining Life360 at a key moment in our history. We doubled active users and tripled revenue in 2017, and we are scaling our team to accommodate this rapid growth. We currently have 75 full time employees, with offices in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and San Diego.

Reach out to us at [email protected]

Sam's entire post has one line about Hillary and ten about Trump.

Instead of trying to demonize Trump, perhaps it is important for you to advocate for your candidate. As the president said, go work for your candidate. People are not dumb. The contrast will be clear and then people can make their own choice.

I know its hard to compare, but would you say, "Buy my product to stop the other product from being successful because the other product makes claims that are outrageous". Rightly everyone then says, "Why buy any of the products?" Or "Let me try a third product".

Professor Jared Diamond explains more of this beautifully in his book Guns, Germs and Steel. Definitely a great read and there is also a Nat Geo documentary narrated by him.

I love this idea. However I am not too surprised that YC is doing this. YC is a different kind of corporation. Instead of hiring engineers, they hire startups. And just like any well established company, they are now investing in R&D. Make no mistake, there will be a commercial bent to the R&D that YC does and there is nothing wrong about that. R&D should not be just about publishing papers but advancing new ideas in the market too. So overall I hope this takes off and they bring ground-breaking research out of this venture.

Wello - San Francisco, Software Engineering

We are Wello, a small company acquired by WeightWatchers last year? It is a best of both worlds, brand recognition and no more fundraising and worrying about stability.

Here's why you should consider us:

We were a team of 4 acquired by Weight Watchers International, a brand recognized by almost everyone, including our moms.

We have already built a few products that were launched and are growing under the WW brand.

We are looking for engineers with Mobile, Web and Backend expertise. We are also looking for developers who want to have fun with large scale data. Did you know that the WW has been tracking food data from members since since 2003. Imagine the stuff you can build on top of that long history of data.

We offer competitive compensation and great health benefits.

All 4 of us are staying even after the 1yr mark and now growing because we love what we do and believe in our mission to make people healthier. We have diverse backgrounds (Stanford, Bain, Google, Netflix) and we are looking for you to come join and teach us new tricks!

If you are interested, email me at amol dot kher at weightwatchers dot com and we can catch up over phone or coffee.

Clinkle did raise 25 million as well, nevertheless this looks cool and hope it is affordable.

Isnt there a Step 1.5 - Make your own internal messaging app then?

Curious to hear what team you were applying for?