thegenius's comments

Go fuck yourself

please fix article grammar

ebitda is not a poor metric for a stable business like duracell because interest charges (the most suspect component of ebitda) are not going to be wildly outside industry norms. it's also an interesting metric in general because it seeks to normalize true operating earning power across businesses if all other things were equal (tax rates, interest charges, fixed asset related charges).

if you're evaluating a business and they tout ebitda as the only thing you should care about, you should look at net income in relation to it. for example, a mountain of debt or stupid financing terms would lead to high, maybe unsustainable, interest charges and ebitda would obscure the businesses' true circumstances. otherwise, it's reasonable to consider ebitda.

best luck man. keep on building, your work speaks for itself

I didn't get the impression that Miles is naive to these things or that he was soliciting this sort of advice from internet strangers. Far from it in fact.

It looks like he knows exactly what he's doing and is very passionate about creating things. I got the impression he is looking to branch out and create value, have a good time with other people. If I was in S.F. Bay, I'd meet up and see what he has to say.

I opt for the less glamorous title owner/operator

Yes. This. The OP is NOT leading a team of programmers. He is asking HN to lead his team of programmers. "lead" is not a noun. It is a verb!

the best way you can improve the quality of code is to LEAD BY EXAMPLE. you're not alone in that you've been given a leadership position in a circumstance outside your control, and it's naive to think that even if you were given your pick of the litter, that they'd all be A players who respect you and don't want your job, have issues with your quality, etc.

You absolutely cannot control people. The only way to get people to do things, and i mean the ONLY way is to get them to WANT to do it. Therefore, you have to ignore the people who aren't cooperating with you and focus on the one's who do. Treat them like gold and be willing to make compromises with your quality standards because they will not be the same as yours. Then, as you make inroads on the project together, the rest of the team members either have a choice to get on board or get left behind. It is that simple.

How to be a horrible founder: SPAM your users and raid their inboxes.

doesn't provide much insight. it says to build a website and submit your apps to the blogs, which is pretty insulting actually. not surprised coming from dice, the recruiters' den.

i've probably watched every youtube interview, speech of both of them, and read most of the important articles and books (superinvestors graham doddsville, snowball, shareholders letters, on and on). this is a great summary of what i've gleaned from their wisdom as well. i couldn't say it any better

I have it and it's great. At first you think it's just some arrogant old man who is full of himself rambling on, then you realize you're dealing with a genius, and you can't put it down. The thing that resonated with me is his multiple mental models approach to life. He basically feels that one just needs a basic college education and the ability to apply the most important concepts from each course in a combinatorial way, and that if you specialize too much, you're likely to make an error (to the man with a hammer, everything is a nail). Lots of other stuff on human error.

The Almanac also pointed me to "Influence" by Robert Cialdini, which is one of Munger's most highly recommended books.

That is the quickest summary I can give from my ipad

In an interview today, Ginni Rometty sounded like a TechCrunch Disrupt participant on HBO's Silicon Valley. "We are reorganizing this company around analytics, around cloud, around social, local, mobile" I can't believe she actually said SoLoMo.

Then later in the same interview: "Clients asking for more flexibility in our software to deploy for new workloads — social, local, mobile."

If anyone else caught her in Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit just a few weeks ago (available on youtube), she appears anxious as hell with Warren Buffett in the crowd watching her. No wonder with a 0.02 EPS to report and a last minute ditching of the 2015 roadmap.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/10/20/ibm-ceo-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bixGVxcTLc

while the idea has merits, i would not trust you with my most sensitive data (especially if it is reversibly encrypted or plaintext), i would feel like i was paying for an added secuirty risk, of which there are too many already. also it doesnt seem like there are assurances against you abusing my data like there would be if you were a lawyer i had entrusted to execute my will. there's no personal relationship there, so i don't feel comfortable.

Just got mine! http://i.imgur.com/KcvlmZ3.png

Don't be so condescending.

often times startup ceos are accessible, so you might really dig into a company and its ceo, and write a few well thought out letters to the ones that resonate with you the most. be careful here - there's a ton of smoke and mirrors in this space and you could end up with a real egomaniac that's done better blowing smoke than delivering value. startup ceos want talent who will scale our their visions - the more that you can demonstrate that you just want to work hard learning how to solve the problems theyre working on, the more compelling you will be. good luck - theres a lot of opportunity out there.

Fair enough - I can appreciate your point of view and logic.

Not at all. You're discounting the fact that $50 is a month's wages to some people in some countries or that a loaf of bread cost a wheelbarrow's full of trillion dollar bills in Zimbabwe. A person might buy a watch like that because the amount is disposable, and they like the craftsmanship. It's you're assumption they're trying to impress people because you've formed a value system through your experiences in life, and you can't see it through any other lens that your own.

Someone who can buy a $2.75 M dollar watch likely looks at life very different than you do whether they go and buy a watch like that or not. Don't assume people who get what they want are naive, greedy, vain etc. They might have different reasons that on a relative basis are just as good as any you'd have.

Not really. It's all very relative. I don't see what difference it makes if you have 3 billion dollars and spend .09% of your wealth on a watch vs. having a net worth of 10 thousand dollars while spending $50 on a watch, which would be over 5 times the amount relative to net worth. As a first-world inhabitant of moderate means, you could argue there are better ways to put that 2.75M to use, but so could a third-world inhabitant of lesser means with your $50 watch.