I was a management accountant prior to starting my company - as non-tech as you could get.

I co-founded with an engineer, so it was always a clear cut - I did sales, marketing, finance, he did engineering, we both did product.

No huge issues, I rely on engineering, but I now rely on sales and marketing, and all the other functions.

I considered learning to code at the start, but really you need divide the tasks and stick with what you are good at.

>80% of start-up networking opportunities are in the valley

This is BS - if a company knows all the answers to these questions, then the company is not innovating. The hardest thing about innovation is finding out who else believes your vision. The assumption that a good business has answered all these questions is the assumption that this good business is not innovating. Revenue forecasting for new products is hard, and investors who add value to high risk start ups must recognize the risk in innovation. If you want answers to these questions, either insist on bullshit stories or invest in old school businesses. No risk = no return.

If you ask a company those questions and the answer you get is "we have no idea, we're innovating", wouldn't you agree that's a flag you ought to investigate? Eliminating risk in business isn't your goal as a leader or investor, but managing risk is.

A fool and his money are soon parted.

After we raised our series A, the new investor insisted we change our name. The old name kind of sucked. We discussed it as a team for months - it was a pure time-sink, never getting to agreement, so looked into hiring a naming agent - I thought it would be like $1000, a full day workshop, beanbags, hit the bong...... I contacted a namer and it was like $45k....WTF....$45k for a fucking name. I tried haggling, and she brought her fee down to $15k, but this would be for a list of 10 names.

Fuck that! I pushed through my favorite name and moved on.

these type of prices are common in the old world of business.

I know a non-profit, that paid $30,000 for a logo and a tagline, and thought they got an awesome deal, since the going rate is like $150,000.

That's an OK number since it likely covers more than just a logo and a tagline, but rather a full brand, positioning and identity definition.

But $15K for a name alone is an overkill.

Convertible debt sucks for angel investors, they are taking far more risk than the VCs but are only getting a 20 to 30 percent discount.

Nowadays though, convertible debt actually has a pre-money valuation tied to it and is just a faster financing mechanism.

The most important thing about taking VC funding is the money. Its real money that you can spend now. We raised $3MM and this allows us to iterate on the product and the pitch and to get it right. Without funding, there would be no way that I could have done this business, with a wife and two kids, ramen is not feasible for dinner (more than twice a week anyway).

Its very bad comparison. A couple of problems: the comp is purely of retirement savings, however the college kid is spending more on consumption per year all through his life (not considered), also the assumption of 8% returns is unlikely.

Stay in college kids!

The article has a huge flaw in not comparing equal consumption.

The interesting question isn't how much retirement savings you'll have at the end, but how much "net return" you get from the college degree.

I'd like to see a Net Present Value calculation of the two choices instead of some flaky calculation assuming a fixed 5% savings rate.

VC investment is great for founders, you can pay yourself a real wage (no more ramen), you can hire, and really make the company a success. Giving up 30% of the pie to have $5M in the bank is pretty good methinks. Sure, you may get kicked out, and / or the company may fail, but with some cash in the bank you are THE MAN for a couple of years.

For the longest time I wouldn't have agreed with you but I had a change of heart while exhibiting at this one conference and this 21 year old guy came driving up in an expensive car while my 2004 Chevy Cavalier was being parked. There is a certain amount of hardship a person can take but it can go too far. Even going from Ramen to Cup of Noodles would be good sometimes.

respectfully, I posit that the right to information outweighs the potential negatives for which it may be used. If we were to allow what you suggest(cultural sensitivities) to be a legitimate basis for the suppression of knowledge, then clearly we should begin stoking the fires for our book burnings.

I think you're missing the point. As was indicated in the article, these maps were already available on the web. And presumably you could find them on, well, google.

This is not a censorship issue. This is about being sensitive to the outcome of your actions. Information wants to be free, sure, but some information is hurtful. And as a publisher you have a duty to at least take that into account.

Perhaps this means not adding documents with hurtful slurs in them to Google Maps (especially in a format that can easily be used to aid further discrimination). Or, perhaps a better solution is ADDING information and context to these maps. After all, the remedy to bad speech is more speech.

Obviously Google should have the right to post the maps and line them up with modern-day Japan with no further context, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Would this argument apply to a library as well? Would you want this map to be removed from the library? A map store?

Google not like a publisher. A publisher would be the one that ordered and funded the creation of this map.

Google is more like a library with a really fast full text indexed card catalog. They take the content from the publisher. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

Google just created a link to this data in Google Earth. You can add context to the data in Google Earth.

Well, no. But I wouldn't necessarily want Mein Kampf on the recommended reading list for school chilren. Not without any context, anyway.

Recommended - no. But the "recommended" part is only in your post. I'm not sure why you mentioned that.

Otherwise - Yes, Mein Kampf is available to everyone who can use internet / library / ...

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

The things selected for inclusion on a Google Maps tab are an editorial choice. I'm suggesting they are analogous to a "recommended book list" -- a subset of all the available books that a librarian has chosen to highlight. Just as being listed in Google's index is analogous to being shelved in the library. (Surely, no one here is suggesting that anything be removed from Google's index.)

Clear now?

So if google was around in WW2, and Himmler published a map of where all the Jews lived - you would support the publishing of this map?

This is more than "cultural sensitivies", Burakumin suffer from outright racism, they cannot get jobs, they cannot marry outside their group. Any informational support for this injustice does not get my support.

If it might incite immediate violence, then there is a possible argument for limiting distribution of something that would cause or significantly aid violent acts. But the threat of violence would need to be imminent for it to be justified. If anything, though, better communication and information availability is often recognized as empowering to populations.

If you can hire a company to check where someone's ancestors lived, I think it's already out of the bag. You can't just pretend the maps don't exist.

Pretending they don't exist isn't the same as adding an easy-to-use tab that lines them up with modern Japan.

This would be a much different situation if, say, Google was being asked to remove links to these maps from their index.

And not publishing them (or worse, editing them as suggested above) would make Google complicit in pretending the issue doesn't exist.

I have a meditation hack that works real well for me.

Imagine a sine wave, a real smooth one (or a circle, with a revolving point on the circumference). Breath as a sine wave, very slowly and gently reversing the direction of your breathing. Reverse so gently, that there is no clicking or jerking. It is actually quite hard and requires a lot of patience and focus. It is incredibly relaxing.... give it a try.

In contrast to the majority of the rest of the posts, I have found meditation to be very valuable to relieve work related stress.