Doing both would be great, but often doing both is impossible. Code is one of those things.
Don't ever code as smart as you can because debugging is twice as hard as coding. If you write the smartest code you can, you will not be able to debug it.
I imagine origami code as this kind of brilliant and amazing puzzle solution that brings a smile to your face when you grok it. And that's exactly the kind of thing I would not want to maintain for a living. Write it, sure. But not maintain/extend/debug it etc.
I think it's mentioned that part of his company was sold to brad greenspan of euniverse/intermix(myspace) fame. I don't know how much this reflects on Andrew and/or mailbits, but brad greenspan and euniverse are know for, among other things, 'legitimizing' the adware business, until most everyone realized it wasn't legitimate. Also euniverse and brad had a pretty well publicized accounting fraud scandal that resulted in him leaving euniverse. Anyone that worked in the LA online advertising business during the late 90s early 00s will know euniverse is about as shady as shady can get, without actually getting thrown in jail.
If I had to guess I'd say vc oversight is part of a larger 'lets watch all the money in the system' initiative. Seeing as how the govt has pledged upwards of $12 trillion to bridge parts of the us financial system, I can understand why the government would want to keep an eye on everything to limit the chances of something in the shadows blowing up and requiring further govt bridging. Will it work, who knows ... personally, I don't agree with it, nor do I agree with any of the bailouts: banking, auto otherwise.
“'You don’t understand,' he told me. 'If I ran ads in it, it would taint my work.'
There were a bunch of email newsletter guys who felt that way. In their stupidity, I found an opportunity."
Amazing, they're stupid because they care more about the product than making money off the product. I wish most companies were that stupid, there would be a lot better products out there.
its not an aversion to making money, there's no way to survive without making it. I will never understand the glorification of making money as an end, its so obvious, it should go without saying, yet here we are with yet another big bucks lottery article. the energy and focus should be on making things better, focusing on refining the product, with the obvious profit constraint.
"those newsletters that inspired us went out of business"
Were these newsletters a "business" at all? Did they have some other payment scheme (vs ads)? subscription maybe? If it were not a business how can it go "out of business"?
I don't think you can make a better product by sacrificing your social life on nights and weekends than by working full time on it. Otherwise, ycombinator would make founders keep their day jobs.
really? I wasn't there, but it sounds more like running ads would ruin the product to them so it wouldn't be something they loved anymore.
I'm amazed that the idea one should make money is so novel . . . it's like breathing, it should be assumed, how else does something sustain itself? The focus should be on greatness, making something better, pushing something forward (with the assumption that it should be able to pay its own way), not simply how to angle an extra dollar.
we already knew that J.F. likes to approach anything to do with 37S from the angle of highest exposure and maximum cheese, that is disappointing, but I wouldn't let the messenger taint the message, those features of get satisfaction are 100% deceptive whether J.F. said it or not.
another great quote . . he even got the timing right
''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''
besides the s&l crisis, the long term capital blowup seems to be another good comp in hindsight.
I love it, everybody has an opinion because in theory everybody is a part owner . . . AIG will be a great case study on why companies are best managed as dictatorships and constrained by a marketplace. It'll be interesting to see what happens when neither of those is in place.
