urs2102

One of my favorite classes with Bjarne from college was Bjarne telling us the story of a ten year-old who wrote him asking if it was too late to start programming and what he should learn so he can work as a programmer (to get started so he could be one of the best in the world at something in the field).

Bjarne says he responded by telling the kid to stop worrying about work or what he wanted to work as, and to spend time playing (both on the computer and just outside) because it was just as good as good for the mind as sitting in front of the computer and that ten year-olds could often be the best in the world at playing.

Similar to his penchant for fiction here, this is something I’ve always loved about Bjarne... despite being so good at one thing: finding the beauty in balance.

Okay, you got me: """tech company""".

I think it's probably a financial engineering company over everything else, but I mean "tech company" insofar as this post is going to the top of HN in a way a post about Regus might not.

Additionally, I think this is great to think about as far as the entire story of IPOing a big tech company in 2019.

You start with the story the bankers sell you. They all want to tell you you're going to be bigger than you ever thought possible, because, well... those fees are awfully nice.

"We're going to IPO you at 20% of $PREVIOUS_VALUATION"

The counter-argument was, well, "We don't think you're worth that much, you're probably worth only $20B."

The problem is here... well there's not really a financial position you can take here especially as the short price skyrockets. Maybe you get some smug satisfaction, but overall, everyone in the early stage of trying to win the IPO for their bank is going to tell you what you want to hear.

Now... things suddenly change, you need to shop it around. Well, maybe you don't get the number you want. Maybe you do? You edge it a little down. Yet, all the benefits you have as a private company (insert your It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Pepe Silvia meme of Mack trying to connect the dots) you can't really keep entirely as you try to collect that public check.

Matt was spot on here, of course, they're going to try and take apart some of those political rights that usually people grumble about (see Snapchat IPO) and then somewhat get over as time goes on.

Yet even that didn't do the trick! So you slash the economic upside, and once again that's not enough.

Maybe you even set the price low enough that you can hype it and it will go up, but at some point, the market will give its verdict and in this case: WeWork didn't cut it.

In many ways, it's an interesting litmus test of the health of the tech industry. Yes, there's been a bull market for this last decade, but bubble... maybe not. Maybe, this is great example of Wall Street being serious about how much large private companies are worth? Either way, what a crazy saga nonetheless. I wonder if they'll be able to (somewhat paraphrasing Matt) turn the dial from growth to revenue and approach the market later? Time will tell I guess.

Maybe we'll get an Alex Gibney documentary out of it!

It's been incredible watching each part of this unfold exactly as Matt Levine called it each week prior.

Any information on the state of the patient’s vision both pre and post-op?

If you’re going from, let’s assume, blindness, to now full vision: how does your visual cortex move from dormant to active? Is it jarring?

The rise in the popularity of self-checkout is shown to also spike incidents of shop lifting from people who were unlikely to shop lift given that defrauding a machine can feel quite different to defrauding... well, a person. With all the discussion on HN about Amazon Go and shops using CV to handle self checkout, thought this would be a great share.

This is fantastic, I think for first time founders there’s a little bit of a gap between how they see their business (primarily product focused) and how an investor sees their business (primarily market focused).

Obviously as companies mature, founders see their business and can capture the value proposition of their business in a more metric focused manner, but I’m always looking for resources like this to get a peek into what people look for in the latter stages.

From a blog I discovered earlier today, I felt like the content was apt for Hacker News bringing a sort of Girardian narrative to the startup world. Saw no comments, so thought people here would like it!