> Sliced democratizes access to hedge funds. Even though hedge funds have outperformed S&P 500 over the past decade, very few investors have access to them.
Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?
I agree. I recall reading somewhere that warren buffet took a bet with a hedge fund guy a d his premise was also that a hedge fund cannot beat S&P index over a long term .
But a sucker is born every minute and I think sliced will do well for itself.
It's mostly irrelevant. No one is investing in the hedge fund average, they are investing in the hedge funds that they think will do well. It's actually the same if you look at VC funds -- the overall returns of venture funds is poor, but the returns of the top quartile of funds is outstanding. In any case, the S&P 500 is not an appropriate benchmark for the hedge fund industry as a whole, because many hedge funds do not invest (solely) in equities and those that do theoretically have different risk characteristics from the market.
Helion seems unreal. I am not ready up to date with fusion research, but as far as I know there was not even a demo or prototype in lab producing energy for a few seconds (or minutes), and they claim to have a product in 6 years. Can someone tell me what I've missed ?
You're probably not missing anything. By my (limited) reckoning, even if they can get their design to work in theory, I think they're grossly underestimating the materials requirements for the fusion reactor.
From what I recall, one of the big problems that any reactor project has is that the reaction has a tendency to destroy the reaction chamber. Not just the heat, but the neutron radiation can completely screw up the reaction chamber walls, which then need replacing. It's one of the reasons the ITER project is so large, to make it relatively robust in the face of such destructive power. I also remember reading a while back that the force from the electromagnets in the ITER project is sufficient to launch the entire reaction chamber off the ground, something like 5000 tons...
Having said that, I think it's cool that they're attempting it and I think that fusion projects have been grossly underfunded in the past. The reason why it's always 30 years away is because they're always cutting the funding!
I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I imagine they'll have unexpected escalating costs surrounding the actual building of a working durable reactor and the company will die before it gets off the ground.
"Death begins in the colon" seems to be attributed to an expert (albeit an old one), but unfortunately the adage is mostly associated with "wellness" practices on Google; it seems to be a shibboleth for things like colonics.
I realize it's hard to predict what direction a company will take in the future, but is it YCombinator's policy to incubate companies that from the start seem to be competing against each other? It seems to me that ListRunner and Medisas (http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2014/04/24/meet-medisas...) do pretty much exactly the same thing.
YC has stated several times that often companies will change ideas after they get into YC. YC thus isn't going to tell them to not do something just because it competes with another YC company.
uBiome may be onto something. I read a study the other day that said obesity may actually be linked to gut flora, which I found very interesting. Excited to see what comes of this.
Flynn could really make a dent in the PaaS space, although they seem to have a problem communicating their value proposition. I understand it's something like an open-source version of Heroku? If they take all the hassle out of deployments (everything that happens between git push and bare metal), I see a lot of Heroku users that are sick and tired of paying outrageous 35$ a month could flock over to them.
One of the maintainers here, we do agree that documentation and getting our message across a bit more clearer is our primary priority.
One of our major advantages is that we're a bit more ambitious about deploys and we try not to limit you to a certain format: you can deploy any type of application on Flynn, not just web apps, but regular applications and services like databases, mail servers and so on. We then let you connect all of these together via service discovery. Meaning that instead of limiting you to a plugin system, Flynn allows you to write your own "plugins" that behave just like regular apps.
Flynn seems to be focusing on the deployment side of things but that's only 1/2 of the value Heroku offers which is a fully managed platform. You take on that responsibility with Flynn.
I'm really excited about some of these, but particularly ubiome. It's pretty "ew, gross" to think about, but it does seem like an area of medicine and diagnostics which is open for deeper exploration, finally. (disclaimer: I met the team a couple times before in bay area tech contexts and like them)
Love the idea of Fixed, specially if it spills over to healthcare charges.
I have observed that hospitals invariably manage to saddle me with ridiculous "processing fees" and suchlike and add around $100 or more to my expected charges every time I visit them. I usually just pay up to avoid the nuisance of dealing with administrators who cannot seem to be able to communicate over email, and possible damage to my credit if I try to challenge it. I strongly suspect this is the case for a lot of middle-class Americans.
I'd gladly pay the same amount to Fixed to act as an intermediary between me and said 70s-era administrators, if only to let them know that someone is looking carefully at their exorbitant charges, and possibly even contesting them.
Couldn't Square or some other "big" player come in and implement payments via bank account and simply put Kash out of business? I know nothing of the domain, but it seems relatively straight forward to do, no? PayPal already let's me send money to any individual with an email address (and maybe a PayPal account?), so couldn't they just change their fees to 1% flat for businesses tomorrow?
Sure, a big player could implement this model, but they may not take the risk or make the investment if their current model is successful.
Also, it certainly doesn't mean they'll put Kash out of business if they do (and if the Kash team succeeds). For example, I don't expect Amazon Local Register to put Square out of business.
You're not missing anything. RBC has such a service though the entry fee to participate is high and they don't advertise it. It has a traditional enterprise sales cycle.
nichodges|11 years ago
Hedge Funds on average do not outperform market indices such as S&P 500. I'm curious as to whether this was TechCrunch's take on the problem, or the startup's?
jayp|11 years ago
http://longbets.org/362/
Buffet (S&P500) is leading against hedge funds on the aforementioned long bet: http://fortune.com/2014/02/05/buffett-widens-lead-in-1-milli...
Disclaimer: I am on Buffet's side on this long bet. Management fees are the devil. I am all-in for low-fee index funds.
manishsharan|11 years ago
pbreit|11 years ago
tpeng|11 years ago
seren|11 years ago
adwf|11 years ago
From what I recall, one of the big problems that any reactor project has is that the reaction has a tendency to destroy the reaction chamber. Not just the heat, but the neutron radiation can completely screw up the reaction chamber walls, which then need replacing. It's one of the reasons the ITER project is so large, to make it relatively robust in the face of such destructive power. I also remember reading a while back that the force from the electromagnets in the ITER project is sufficient to launch the entire reaction chamber off the ground, something like 5000 tons...
Having said that, I think it's cool that they're attempting it and I think that fusion projects have been grossly underfunded in the past. The reason why it's always 30 years away is because they're always cutting the funding!
I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I imagine they'll have unexpected escalating costs surrounding the actual building of a working durable reactor and the company will die before it gets off the ground.
27182818284|11 years ago
Just of late I came across this graph which says something similar: http://i.imgur.com/JyUZDe2.jpg
tptacek|11 years ago
dr_|11 years ago
argonaut|11 years ago
kyro|11 years ago
dkyc|11 years ago
archseer|11 years ago
One of our major advantages is that we're a bit more ambitious about deploys and we try not to limit you to a certain format: you can deploy any type of application on Flynn, not just web apps, but regular applications and services like databases, mail servers and so on. We then let you connect all of these together via service discovery. Meaning that instead of limiting you to a plugin system, Flynn allows you to write your own "plugins" that behave just like regular apps.
benologist|11 years ago
rdl|11 years ago
parennoob|11 years ago
I have observed that hospitals invariably manage to saddle me with ridiculous "processing fees" and suchlike and add around $100 or more to my expected charges every time I visit them. I usually just pay up to avoid the nuisance of dealing with administrators who cannot seem to be able to communicate over email, and possible damage to my credit if I try to challenge it. I strongly suspect this is the case for a lot of middle-class Americans.
I'd gladly pay the same amount to Fixed to act as an intermediary between me and said 70s-era administrators, if only to let them know that someone is looking carefully at their exorbitant charges, and possibly even contesting them.
cm2012|11 years ago
conorgil145|11 years ago
What am I missing? Thoughts?
unknown|11 years ago
[deleted]
maxbrown|11 years ago
Also, it certainly doesn't mean they'll put Kash out of business if they do (and if the Kash team succeeds). For example, I don't expect Amazon Local Register to put Square out of business.
baudehlo|11 years ago
huhtenberg|11 years ago
http://ubiome.com/
GregorStocks|11 years ago
To be clear, Sliced is open only to accredited investors and has a minimum investment of $20,000.
Jemaclus|11 years ago