Story time folks! I have known Garry and Alexis for many years now. They lead our seed round and we invited Alexis to be on our board for a brief period of time.
So, when we were raising Series A, the negotiations with some new investors were getting a little tenuous. I knew and appreciated that investors are professional negotiators and do this for a living. I on the other hand was a first time CEO. So, for some time during the process, I was feeling a tremendous amount of pressure.
So, one morning I come in to the office feeling sick and questing my ability to withstand the kind of pressure a growing company's CEO has to endure. First thing I see is this short email from Alexis "How's it going? How can we help?". I had talked to Alexis and Garry a few months before about raising a Series A but I was sure that famous people in the valley with full-time jobs had more important things to do than check in on a small, pre-series A company with 10 employees.
I welled up. It was the first time in months that I had felt like someone had my back. In the end we were able to raise a successful A followed by a successful B as well but I still go back and read that 2 sentence email from time to time.
Garry and Alexis are not only awesome investors but wonderful human beings.
I hear you dude but this is clearly not "end-to-end" encryption. End-to-end has a very specific meaning. End-to-end encryption means a messaging system in which one or more compromised node from node 1 to N-1 could not eavesdrop on the message. In this solution if you get access to node 1 (the server), you get access to the message. It's binary. There's either end-to-end encryption or there isn't. This one isn't.
Will we see YC doing (specifically leading) later stage or growth stage rounds now? I think it's great though I do worry about signaling problem for companies who don't do later stage rounds with YC?
I doubt YC would want to enter India market. For all the talent and entrepreneurial spirit that Indians have our startup culture sucks. There are several reasons:
1. The infrastructure: India doesn't have the tech infrastructure. Take the 3 major e-commerce requirements for example: internet access, online payment and delivery. Even the basic internet infrastructure in India sucks. Most people access the internet over their phones because getting home internet is still a pricey affair for most people. A pretty small number of people have access to credit cards and for those who do, processing payment online is a huge pain. The postal infrastructure is also pretty bad. India post is flaky and other courier companies are pretty bad or expensive or both.
2. Government interference: Indian government is inconsistent, heavy-handed and has very little interest in improving the tech sector. Most state governments are downright hostile.
3. Lack of exit opportunities: Indian tech sector lacks big players who can provide the entrepreneurs and investors meaningful exits. The culture of acquisitions as a meaningful way to get market advantage is not there. Your only hope is sell to a American or a European company looking to gain a foothold in the region (rare) or IPO (even rarer).
4. Corruption and general apathy: To get anything meaningful done in India is a struggle. From getting setup as a company to getting a good internet connection. You have to fight corruption and apathy of the organizations (both public and private) you are dealing with.
5. Labor laws: Labor laws in India are a joke. They are a relic of the socialist times and are heavily biased on the side of the employees. Setting up any type of manufacturing or operations in India is a legal nightmare. If that's not enough, the trade unions operate as a mafia and its downright dangerous to deal with them.
There is a lot of opportunity in India too but until we overcome the problems that entrepreneurs and investors face, Indian tech startup scene would never take off.
I thought the idea of Startup School was to "sell" YC to founders there, along with the implicit idea of moving to SV. Seems like a stronger case for India than a lot of other places (great founders, but fucked up environment, so they have the most relative advantage to moving, especially if they can keep enough connections to India to continue to recruit for remote or relo.)
I don't know what Sama's plan is but it doesn't scale very well. If you plan to fund thousands of promising startups, I don't know if you would want to bring them all to the US. The biggest reason for that for the first few years startups succeed more in one geographical region (as in one industry industry segment and one customer profile) and asking them to move might not be the best of idea. It will work for some but will destroy some other promising companies.
Oh, it looks very close to situation in Russia except internet connection and online payments.
But other is looks close, I guess that setup and operate IT company from Russia is much simple, safe and cheap as offshore (in Cyprus, Belize, New Zealand etc) than local (especially if you would like to build products development oriented business).
I am sorry but are we looking at the same website. I see two static pages and a logo. Compared to more than 2 months of work that has been put in the code base by what seems like a very talented team, the efforts they have made on the "PR" is minimal (a few hours, probably even less). I think you are being extremely unfair.
This guys has a point. Yea women where is the proof that you are prejudiced against except centuries of discrimination? The last western country to give women right to vote was in 1960s. Almost 50 years ago. The fact that you make 80 cents to every dollar a man makes is not a proof of any prejudice but a proof that women are genetically pre-disposed to making less money than men. Also, feminism is bad.
\sarcasm
>I assume most who think events like this are destructive -- would answer that fairness and equality relate to negative freedom: the freedom from someone restraining you from pursuing your goals i.e. we would all be more equal if the only thing which stood between us and our goals were our own skill (or lack thereof).
Because this argument assumes a level playing field for everybody including no intrinsic factors like lack of role models, lack of representation and lack of societal support.
Here's another advice for you, what you are thinking are well-reasoned arguments are all the same arguments that come up time and again in Sociology 101 to being stated in every argument on gender and race related issues on Hacker News. So, go do some research make some new (but probably) misinformed arguments about how we live in a post-gender society instead rehashing the same bigoted crap all the time.
> The last western country to give women right to vote was in 1960s.
Women got the right to vote at a federal level in Switzerland in 1971.
> The fact that you make 80 cents to every dollar a man makes is not a proof of any prejudice but a proof that women are genetically pre-disposed to making less money than men.
No. You talk about sociology 101, so how about this nugget; making less money than someone has many more variables associated with it than discrimination (for example; part time vs. full time). This is practically an urban myth at this point. You can Google for refutations of it if you want (either 80 cents, or 77 cents) and you should be able to find a dozen decent ones.
Actually if you look at the US office of government accountability study, you'd see a completely different view.
Considering that the two cited articles are from 1993 and 1999 respectively, it might be worth it to attach more weight to a wide ranging government study from 2009.
Two things about this study: First, it only covers people in government jobs. Second, the title of the study is "Gender Pay Gap in the Federal Workforce Narrows..." meaning there IS STILL a gender pay gap. And if you read the study, about 7 cents worth of the gap was unexplained by any of the factors they analyzed.
So okay, women don't make $0.77 for every dollar men earn. If we discard all the stuff the GAO found that definitely isn't related, women make $0.93 for every dollar men earn. So, is that somehow okay because it's "only" 7 cents?
Nope, I'm just drawing your attention to the fact that it's narrowed from (the previously) stated 77 cents, and that perhaps the issue needs to be examined from a new perspective in order to continue to achieve returns.
As the previous studies cited were a 1993 study and a 1999 study covering Sweden, I thought it might be important to add some modern statistics into the mix.
The interesting part to me is on pages 84-86. If you look, you'll see the pay gap resulting from characteristics such as experience, difference in education, and difference in occupation (the three most usually cited to explain the wage gap) have narrowed significantly.
This is important because it showcases a societal shift in workforce population, from a 'glass ceiling' problem to a far more difficult one that is harder to define and fix.
With your reasoning, for example, the private prison companies would be valued incorrectly high (as do the companies that make the green lights for traffic intersections, the doors to stores, the electric power company, the wireless/phone/cable company, any company with any kind of monopoly, etc). What you're forgetting is to weigh for the difficulty to replace the company with another (that in some cases may already exist and only needs to move into the now vacant market).
