dchmiel's comments

Something in the article that jumped out at me was:

"But the couple still couldn’t raise money. As cash got tight, the founders asked their eight full-time employees, who are mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, to work for minimum wage, which would buy the company a few months of extra runway. The staff agreed."

The 8 employees must have drastically reduced the cash flow requirements by just being paid minimum wage. My question is, is that any different than directly investing into the company and giving the company cash outright like a VC?

The employees made an investment into the company like a VC would by giving extra runway to the company. I wonder if the employees received any equity compensation for doing so under the same terms that the Alvarez's are trying to raise financing under. Getting paid higher than minimum wage and needing financing which dilutes you or taking minimum wage reducing the need for financing but getting no equity for it seems unfair to the employees.

They never mentioned that detail in the article but it's something I always think about when founders and executives ask employees to make these sacrifices and take on added risk but without ever compensating employees like they would compensate other capital with equity for the risk they take.

I don't like to think about my caloric intake (energy input) in relation to what other people's caloric intake is. It's starting from a reference point that doesn't serve me reliably and becomes very easy to say things such as, I like to eat or have a slow metabolism compared to someone else. But if you think about it, what other people can eat and not gain weight shouldn't matter to you one bit. What happens to you when you eat and how much you eat should matter. For example, it's like comparing your fuel efficiency in relation to another vehicle. (Your metabolism) Let's say that you are a small Smart car and the other vehicle is an F-150 pick up truck. Of course these two vehicles have different energy requirements to move the same distance therefore you don't put the same amount of energy (gasoline) in both vehicles otherwise eventually the Smart car will be overflowing with gasoline since isn't burning enough. So someone with a fast metabolism would be like the F-150 truck and someone with the slow metabolism would be like the Smart car. To think that the two should have the same fuel requirement seems silly whereas people always have an example of someone who can eat more and still stay slim. Maybe they are a truck internally and just need a lot more fuel than you or I but it doesn't mean we should eat similarly to them.

People just need help to find what works for them and for a majority of people who don't have hormone imbalances starting with energy in = energy used personally is going to get them very far in their weight control and just generally understanding what happens to their bodies in relation to food intake. We focus too much on anything but energy intake (this food is a super food, and this is healthy and that isn't). I'm not saying they are not important but if you want to make quick health improvements to a large group of people, starting from energy input to output is more effective.

I used to not be able to put on mass (hard gainer). What I found was that I wasn't eating as much as I thought and really to gain muscle mass and not just mass you then need to not only be in a caloric surplus you need to look a level deeper at your macros and increase your protein in take. If it fits your macros diet would get you close to a body that you are happy with as long as you tweak your macros to what you want to accomplish.

Also, healthy foods do have merit with their micros but again if you don't have hormone issues you can eat what is untraditional considered unhealthy foods, such as McDonalds, and not put on weight or even lose weight as long as you control for caloric intake. The hard part with unhealthy foods is controlling your calories. It is really easy to eat your daily total calories in one or two meals eating unhealthy foods (McDonalds in this example) than eating vegetables and healthier proteins and carbs (lean meats and whole grains). The Supersize me guy didn't get fat because he ate McDonalds he got fat because he ate sooo many calories. Fat Head was a bit of a rebuttal showing what happens when you try to control for calories more. Athletes are known to eat a lot of calories and don't become obese but again it's about getting your energy equation to balance or off balanced in the way you'd like. (caloric surplus to gain weight and a caloric deficit to loss weight)

There will be a lot of nuance in how everyone's bodies will respond and yes watching some metrics other than weight, like blood pressure and cholesterol , will be important in our health. Starting from a high level of just understand OUR personal energy needs and then working from there will give people a lot of benefit and make discussions easier. Because I hear so often from people that what I'm eating is unhealthy when in reality I'm within my caloric intake and within my macro makeup. Just because you eat a homemade cookie or a homemade cake doesn't make it healthier than my Snickers Bar (ooh I love Snickers). And it is so much easier to keep track of my calories when eating a Snickers bar than something homemade. It really is so easy to overeat on those treats especially during the holidays because you have no idea what the person used to bake those.

That's right, with the numbers looking similar when looking at proportions of energy consumption in buildings which is slightly different from just CO2 footprint.

The operational phase is where to look at having the largest impact. In buildings looking at a 75 year time frame you have the operational phase accounting for 94.4% of life cycle primary energy consumption. Where the manufacturing phase such as production of building materials, transportation and constructing the building accounts for 2.2% of life cycle primary energy consumption. [1]

1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778803...

I did some quick calculations to understand their stated problem of needing to higher 40 more people since it is costing them millions in lost revenue each month. "The labor shortage is costing the company some $3.8 million per month, said Marty Davis, the company’s president and CEO."

$3.8 million * 12 months = $45.6 million per year in lost revenue.

Being conservative and assuming a 10% margin on their revenue figures this is a loss of $4.56 million for the firm for the year.

$4.56 million divided by their labour need (40) means each worker brings in $114,000 of margin. So as long as they pay below that they are ahead. If they paid $25/hour for 2000 hours a year ($50,000) plus a 1.4 gross up for benefits they could hire people at $70,000 ($50,000 * 1.4) and still earn a positive margin of $44,000 ($114,00 - $70,000) leaving them $1.76 million of income. ($44,000 * 40).

What do they expect when they pay $36,000 per year (18*2000), plus any benefits?

I’ve heard this stated before as there doesn’t seem to be a labour shortage just a shortage of labour that you want to pay very little for. We don’t say there are too little lawyers or investment bankers or management consultants. Those jobs are or used to be the highest paid bringing in lots of supply from eager graduates.

The speed that the fire spread is incredible. It seemed just like another forest fire that is near a community we get up in Alberta and British Columbia. The coverage by the National Post shows the fire just creeping around Ft. McMurray on May 2 and 3 and by May 4 a large portion of the town was engulfed. [1] Before and after photos show the burnt homes and buildings like schools. [2]

I live in Edmonton (4.5 hours south of Ft. McMurray) which is taking in a lot of evacuees. It's so heart warming to see so many people rise up and try to help everyone by donating places to sleep, someone put up a website to help facilitate http://www.ymmfire.ca. 2 blocks from my home is a drop off for supplies and all you hear is car horns of support and people waiting to drop off supplies. People drove up the previous days with pickup trucks to bring gasoline and supplies to motorist stranded on the highway. [3]

The most heartwarming of the stories to me is hearing of recent refugees helping out. [4]

“We understand what they’re feeling. When you lose everything, you have to start from zero. You lose your memories, your items. It’s not easy. It’s something very sad. We can totally understand their feeling. We are very thankful to the Canadian people and we want to be a part of this society. We will do our best to be a good part of this society. By doing that, maybe we can return a little bit of the great job that Canadian people did for us”

It feels good to see the support from the newcomers, people in the province and seeing our provincial and federal governments step in with resources and funding to fight the fire and help people.

1. http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/tracking-the-fort-m...

2. http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/see-stunning-before...

3. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/national/inside+fort+mcm...

4. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/understand+what+they+feeling+...

Edits to links.

I've travelled to a LOT of countries and here is my experience using Airbnb and Couchsurfing.

The places that I used couchsurfing are the most memorable. I travelled for a whole year in 09-10 and the 5 times that we used couchsurfing to stay at someone's place was incredible and I'm still in contact with 2/5 of those stays. 40% hit rate I guess. Back then Airbnb wasn't a thing (or wasn't a big thing, can't think at the top of my head when they started) so it was either hostels or couchsurfing. You get different flavours of travel between those two. You meet more travellers in hostels which is a very different trip and experience vs staying with a local and hanging with them. It's interesting to see the perspective change between just the accommodation choice.

This year I travelled for 3 months and since I was working remotely I wanted to make sure I was productive and had my own space to think and do work with good wifi. So that meant NO hostels really. Horrible wifi in them, they're loud and usually dorms meant not a lot of me space. When looking at private hostels compared to Airbnb rentals the price wasn't that much more for a full studio in most cities so I stayed only 3 nights in hostels the whole trip.

Airbnb is great for feeling at home (full kitchen, couches, etc) and having everything you need to be productive and I made sure the wifi was great in each place before booking. But when grabbing the whole place I never interacted with my hosts since they weren't there. I never did stay in a private room so I can't comment on that experience and getting to meet the hosts that way which would probably feel more couchsurfing like.

But I did a hybrid take on my travels. I stayed in Airbnb places but would reach out to couchsurfers to meet up. And the response was so much better when you don't need accommodation since a lot of hosts just get bombarded with automated messages begging for 'free' places to stay. It helped me meet a lot of individuals in every city we stayed and it was the same great feeling when I stayed at people's places on the last trip.

The hybrid approach was pretty awesome and made me not feel lonely since the couchsurfers were a great source of information on what to do and explore and much of the time they did those activities with me.

I am still in contact with many of those couchsurfers from this past trip as well. I've hosted in my place and found that hosting helped connect also. I've never rented out on Airbnb so I can't comment on the other side of that.

What is your approach to looking at security for your hardware and data during prototyping and testing with early clients? How would you minimize what data is collected to maximize what you can learn to improve your product and service?

For those trying to build privacy and security into their products is there some resources for what should be done before putting a product out?

I have seen a list from Brian Knopf for some preliminary criteria in an article.(1) I am always looking for more standards or advice on how to create a useful product that doesn't expose the user especially marginal gain products. I mean why give up all the privacy and security just to control our lights? The gain is small but the harm is very large.

1. http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/how-to-search-the-in...

EDIT: Grammar

We share a lot in common with our neighbours to the south and it seems that the drug overdose epidemic has been happening in Canada as well. With some very alarming rates of increase due to Fentanyl overdoses. In the province of Alberta, Fentanyl detected deaths have risen from six in 2011 to 120 in 2014.[1] Other provinces are showing double and higher rates of increases.

If you were to look at Alberta alone there is a correlation to the collapse in oil prices, since it's an oil and gas producing economy, and increased overdoses. But Fentanyl is just this monster of a drug 80 times as powerful as morphine that is being laced into so many other drugs and sold to unsuspecting customers as OxyContin or laced into it. As a response to the epidemic the government is fast tracking Naloxone to become a non prescription drug since it reverses the effects of an opioid overdose within minutes.[2] I don't remember where I read that first responders (Paramedics, EMS) will be carrying Naloxone to administer it during responses.

1.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/fentany... 2.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/government-to-f...

The HBR article was written in 2008. It seems like more investors are wanting (or more like finally allowing or being forced by the market) founders to remain in control. YC started out as an experiment that founders, even young ones, were good bets on creating a lot of value.

Ben Horowitz wrote a blog post in 2010 about their preference for founder CEOs.

http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_we_prefer_founding_ceos

You can look at outsourcing creating content for your company. What you write about should be beneficial to your readers and users so simply just putting up posts week after week isn't as effective as well researched content that has direct benefits for your readers. Just mindlessly putting up "content" is not a great strategy.

I just read about this today, Audience Ops [1],[2], and the approach to helping busy founders provide valuable content looks refreshing. It could be a good place to start thinking about how to get help with your content.

(I'm not affiliated with this, but thought it was something that could help you).

1. https://casjam.com/introducing-audience-ops/?__s=ihfp4xetd9k...

2.http://audienceops.com

It is happening on my late 2013 Macbook Pro. It seemed like 10.10.2 either fixed the problem or reduced it to me not noticing. But the 10.10.3 update has made working remotely incredibly frustrating.

$50 is a small investment if you think about how much time it would take to get back to HTML circa 2015. I downloaded but haven't started the trial version of Pinegrow, so I can't speak from experience how easy it is to actually use it. But their videos show that the web editor lets you manipulate themes before you even buy them, giving you a good idea if it'll work for what you want even before purchasing. (I did try that feature out and it works well!) It'll give you the ability to modify the theme as you validate your business until you get to the level of success that a custom design by a designer may make sense.

EDIT: Link to Pinegrow

http://pinegrow.com

I'm hoping to try the co-working vacation this year to see for myself if I'm still as productive in a new city or country without being distracted by wanting to explore this new place I'm in. I think having a space where other freelancers and startups are working would make it easier to get up do some work around like minded people and still enjoy a new place.

It's a different twist on traveling that doesn't bind you to trying to see as much as you can in the 3 weeks you have off a year. You can really get to know a city or country if you stay there for longer. I don't really want a work life balance, I want it more intertwined so that I can do my work while living my life and co-working might just give me a chance to do so. Joel at Buffer was right about not wanting to have a deferred live plan where we work to then enjoy life.(1) I think with today's technology and forward thinking bosses and company's its possible to do great work wherever we are.

I still need to test this out and see if I am actually productive. This fall I spent a week in Vancouver and a week in Fernie and was really productive even in a new environment. I think the co-working spaces around the world will just make it that much easier for me to do longer trips. I'll have the reliable internet and quite space if needed to do good work without worrying about the wifi at coffeeshops and worrying about my gear being stolen if I get up and use the bathroom.

1. http://joel.is/why-we-go-on-international-retreats-3-times-a...

I don't think I would, currently don't pay for any news subscriptions. As someone, mentioned it's free. Which is interesting because even though I can get my TV shows and movies for free online I do pay for it with a subscription to Netflix and Hulu.

Maybe the difference is that I see news as temporary. Once I read it I want newer information, not really to go back to old news. Certain long form articles I bookmark but I find I rarely even go back to those. With TV Shows and Movies I can always go back and get some enjoyment from re-watching. Maybe the news doesn't have that lasting value that I feel justifies spending that I do for other forms of medium of information such as books.

I think for me to pay for news it has to not be easily reproduced by someone else. You just can't easily make a similar hit sitcom or breaking bad as can others retell what is happening in the world. Though I do want my news to be written and told by professional objective individuals I haven't been able to find a model that gets me to pay yet.

EDITs for grammar.

You're right on that dynamically it is a very interesting problem and something that from my exposure to economics, economists seem to spend very little time analyzing.

Changes beget other changes and so on. Finding the steady state level of change would be challenging yet interesting to model.

I see responsible debt with personal loans also playing important parts as loans to startups and corporate investments. It serves a function of distributing capital where it can be used most effectively at a smaller scale.

A creditor needs only say 5% a year return and will be willing to lend. I may need money now to buy a new computer or repair my car which has value greater to me than the 5% my creditor values if my car/computer allows me to work effectively or even work in the first place.

Countries without broken social structure such as Sweden and Norway also high debt to income ratios. Debt is not about having to pay for things that we think the state should pay, its strictly about our consumption patterns. And some of us debt finance high value items such as education and some of us debt finance lifestyle increases. http://www.norges-bank.no/pages/93708/Staff_memo_2013_05_eng...

It is better for yourself and the creditor to just bypass the horrible and at times abusive debt collectors, but this would create a perverse incentive to ALWAYS default on loans.

Creditors asses your potential for default and base the rate of lending on that risk. In your scenario the rate of default would always be high therefore the rate that you borrow at would be extremely high, think loan shark high. Or you would find that no one is willing to lend money and this would cripple an important part of the financial system. Think student loans never existing.

Why worry initially about a disorder that only affects 5–7% of people. Fix the transportation problem for a large majority of people first, anyone else still has existing transportation as an option.

I always thought of striving for balance as the wrong goal and that flexibility should be it.

Why not give workers flexibility to work when they are productive on work tasks and flexibility to focus on family when that is the most productive outcome. This could alleviate a lot of pressure that everyone feels with the need to balance work and life. What are we trying to balance? 3 hours a night with kids every night for 18 years doesn't mean you balanced your life.

Some people may want to drive their kid to school and then go into work focused. Then chooses to work out and take time to eat a healthy lunch and then work some more and then picks their kids up from school. Stay with them at home till the other spouse comes home and then switches into work mode while the kids are being fed and washed by the other spouse. Read to them a bedtime story and tuck them into bed before some more highly focused time to work again before going to bed at a time they find reasonable sounds good to some people.

Not all people but some. We just need the flexibility to choose to work when we're most productive and when don't feel guilty being away from the kids. How many here like wake up late but work late into the night boarding on the next morning, while others are up so early its still night for others?

We're not identical cogs as much as our education system and society, based upon the needs of the industrial revolution, tried to produce. Give people choice and you'll be rewarded with healthier, well adjusted and productive employees and families.