robbfitzsimmons

Joined 15 years ago

Karma
87
Submissions
47
Member since
Dec 18
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/robbfitzsimmons; my proof: https://keybase.io/robbfitzsimmons/sigs/yQ3Y73930Lywic1QLZMZ86TOocRGtdVV0VhZskBKQjk ]
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Recent submissions

Comment · 8 years ago
Highly recommended! Watched it on Netflix a few years ago and teared up several times.
Comment · 9 years ago
The scare quotes around "invest" in the parent imply (correctly, in my view) that buying anything with this kind of volatility / lack of intrinsic value is not an investment, rather a speculative bet.
Comment · 9 years ago
Does anybody subscribe to this magazine (1843)? I subscribe to the parent magazine The Economist, and this sounds appealing, but $50 for 6 issues seems steep (and no online subscription).
Comment · 9 years ago
> If you're using AdBlocker, fair play, I don't blame you. But please consider chucking me a couple of quid: https://monzo.me/ewanvalentine

Am I missing something? It's a nice set of thoughts, but I can't imagine paying to have read somebody's personal blog, and would have been vaguely weirded-out at him having ads on it.

Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 10 years ago
Plus daily $5 lunch specials, which basically sustained me through a startup and grad school...
Comment · 10 years ago
I don't have any such anecdote, but I can't even think up a hypothetical, either. If said bootstrapped company was both "well-executed" and didn't fail because it "didn't have the money," what kind of reasons would you be thinking about?

Losing to a competitor would mean you're not failing because you didn't find a market need. So you would screw up managing it, or by not spending to market/hire/add capacity fast enough. The only other reasons I can think up seem idiosyncratic (maybe well-funded competitor got regulatory approval or a big partnership from a VC intro?).

Comment · 10 years ago
Instead of going through contortions trying to break bad Slack habits and worrying about the API getting shut off, maybe it's worth checking out something made for the purpose.

In the original post from the AgileBits team quoted at the top, that team tried Basecamp, which to me seems to do a good job of separating thoughtful/long-form discussion from chat, along with the weekend-pause feature.

Comment · 10 years ago
Small point, but the handoff was in early 2014, not 2012.
Comment · 11 years ago
Came here to recommend Hemingway. Even if you keep these values in mind, with a linter it's much easier to do.

I haven't yet found a Chrome extension which does Hemingway-esque linting on all text input fields, like Gmail or (god forbid) comment sections. Somebody (maybe me) should make this.

Comment · 11 years ago
Even taking your skepticism about Chinese investment at face value, having LP involvement is tremendously different from operational involvement or investment committee involvement.

Having been involved in LP reporting at a seed fund, I can say that it happens regularly but infrequently (quarterly, or at most monthly) and at a 30,000 foot level. I've really never seen LPs interact with portfolio companies at a seed stage, beyond chatting at a cocktail party after the annual meeting.

Besides, given the nature of the platform, if they're looking into trends and products, isn't that information publicly available (this is just adding money behind the top syndicate deals on AngelList)?

Comment · 11 years ago
Ceres = goddess of the harvest (grain, bread) Bacchus = god of the vine (wine) Apollo = god of light (enlightenment / knowledge)
Comment · 11 years ago
Everybody who reads HN should pay Ben Thompson $10/mo for his Daily Update (this is the once-a-week public version). The man's writing has unequivocally had a major impact on my ability to think about technology, and is the only email I read before coffee in the morning.

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