For example, with a marketplace of search algorithms for different use cases that people can submit and which could be rated or ranked like browser extensions.
Some parts of Western Washington might fit your criteria. Maybe Western Oregon as well and Northern California. I mean north of the Bay Area and towards the coast -- temps are more extreme the further inland you go. Large parts of Northern California, Oregon and Washington have a lot of nature -- national forests, etc.
I’m wondering how many commenters here actually live in NYC. Delivery bikes are a menace. A 20-something guy in my building recently started hopping around on crutches. Athletic guy. Got hit by a food delivery bike and fractured his leg. I have a near miss at least once a week. They’re like darts that pop out of nowhere even on sidewalks, at full speed, sometimes swerving at the last second. Zero respect for any traffic laws. It’s especiaily dangerous if you have a dog as I do, esp when crossing a street, bc a bike can slice into the leash in the space between you and your dog, since the bikes pop out of nowhere so fast. I’m exceedingly cautious at night now in scanning around me at crosswalks.
I live in NYC and I bike every day. I have no problem with e-bikes and I think the fact that they are getting confiscated is extremely misguided given that they are receiving praise in many other cities as a smart alternative to cars. It's insane that the police in NYC are so concerned about these bikes killing people meanwhile there are dozens of bicyclists dying every year due to car accidents and virtually no bicycle-related pedestrian deaths. Biking is by far the most dangerous thing I ever do by an order of magnitude; I've almost been crushed by cars multiple times, I've actually been brushed by cars a couple of times, and multiple friends of mine have been hurt. I'm considering stopping biking because of this, but the truth is that it is so much faster than taking the train or walking that my morning commute from Greenpoint to LES would not really make much sense without a bike. I find it ironic that police are notorious for parking in bike lanes causing bikes to have to veer out into traffic to get around them, which is extremely dangerous. (See http://copsinbikelanes.tumblr.com/)
I understand that bikes are more concerning than cars for pedestrians due to being quiet and going the wrong way, and I hate as much as the next guy. It is bicyclists' responsibility to obey traffic laws. It seems that the police should enforce the laws against these e-bikes going the wrong way or not stopping at stop signs, not for existing in the first place.
When I tell folks in the US my bike has a bell they say "psssh like a car will hear that" they always seem surprised when I point out it's more of a polite alert to people walking. Because who walks, after all?
Also without the constant deadening roar of internal combustion, bells are fairly audible.
I know this will anger bikers, but: as a pedestrian in New York, I'm way more afraid of bikes than I am of cars. Cars are dangerous if they hit you, yes, but (a) you can basically always hear (and see) them coming, and (b) they very rarely drive against the traffic or run red lights.
Bikes, on the other hand, frequently zoom down one-way streets against the flow of traffic, rarely make any audible sound (whether ringing a bell or shouting) so you can hear them coming, and treat traffic lights as suggestions.
I can't count the number of times I've almost gotten hit (as a pedestrian)by a biker when I'm crossing a street with the walk signal, because a biker decided that he could barrel down a one-way street, against the traffic, and didn't even need to bother to slow down for pedestrians walking with the walk signal.
Yes, not all bikers are like that. But there are enough of them that they pose an actual problem for NYC pedestrians.
I work at a hedge fund and spend most of my time shorting stocks, especially healthcare/biotech/pharma stocks given the plethora of fraudulent companies in that space. I remember reading about Theranos several years even though it's private, and thinking there is no way this thing is not a fraud. I predict this will eventually be revealed as the biggest fraud ever in silicon valley. It just checks off way too many fraud boxes, based on my personal pattern recognition.
Funny thing is that dating as a primary use case led to the creation of social networks in the first place: Friendster -> Facebook (poking, checking out classmates) -> $223 billion market cap.
What's the reason for the gratuitous insult to people with an mba? It's quite a prevalent theme on HN. I'm an mba, and it's an offensive stereotype. I've noticed over the years that it's one of the more common strawmen that commenters like to use on HN. I did an mba at Harvard many years ago, and I would suggest that the level of entrepreneurial hustle among a typical cohort is far higher than that in a typical engineering program. It doesn't take much googling to find lists of mba's who've founded prominent companies in the valley or elsewhere. Anyone doing that would discover that your slam is nothing more than ignorance or just plain bias for whatever reason.
I guess the perception is that MBAs are trained to become a part of an already established traditional business and not a ground-breaking start up, their skills are specifically trained to support the current form of corporations. This notion is supported by entrepreneurship courses from people like Steve Blank. Moreover, MBAs are perceived as being unable to grasp the technological advancement, "getting in the way" of technology and insisting on leading because they have such a degree and not because of their real-world skills (and often insisting on non-sensical and "trendy" priorities), and this sentiment is pretty common amongst typical techies.
That perception is not entirely without merit, but it's a little dated. Steve Blank, fwiw, teaches and lectures at the MBA programs at both Stanford and Berkeley. MBA programs, like those and many others, are actively embracing his methodology, and methodologies like his.
Modern, top-tier MBA programs are increasingly driven by entrepreneurship, and less by traditional, hidebound business courses and corporate line-management skills. A lot has changed, and much of it changed in reaction to the embarrassments of the late '90s. Furthermore, engineers make up an increasingly large percentage of MBA cohorts these days; the old MBA/engineer dichotomy could use a refresh. The two skill sets -- engineering and analytical business strategy -- are often quite complementary. MBA programs have recognized as much, and today, being an engineer is a serious advantage in an MBA curriculum.
That's not to say you won't find your fair share of entitled, naive, or opportunistic MBA students in any given program. They're still around. But their numbers are dwindling, because many industries (finance and consulting notwithstanding) have realized they don't want that type. In time, these people will become the exceptions, and not the rule. That may already be the case at many MBA programs.
I'm not here to play apologist for the reputation MBAs have earned in the tech world. A lot of it has been deserved. At the same time, a lot of it is no longer as fair or accurate an assessment as it once was.
It's an HN thing. You just have to ignore it - it's based on ignorance not malice.
I'm an "MBA type" running a very early-stage startup and I am only too painfully aware that cold-calling is the way forward to get our first few hundred sales. Somehow we spend so much time reading about digital marketing, and optimising this sign-up flow, and A:B testing this and that, that we forget that a significant number of users can be persuaded to use your product just by being compelling and enthusiastic.
Pure "cold calling" isn't the only way (but I've been there too) predictablerevenue.com/book changed the course of my first company by helping us fail faster. We built some internal tools to support the 'Cold Calling 2.0' process he lays out in the book and when we realized our product wasn't sellable, we pivoted our company around the tools we built.
6 months in, we're doing more revenue each month than we did all of last year.
I was going to say, the other source I find really good at the moment is http://saastr.com/, but I now see they are the same author. Thanks for linking - I'll check that book out. I'll be the 1st to admit I need all the help I can get to teach myself to be good at sales.
Because to us developers, we've seen a lot of business folks who just don't get what it is we do. Unrealistic expectations, no concept of technical debt, endless pushes for solid deadlines despite being told things won't happen on those dates, no understanding of what it takes to scale things past a certain level, etc, etc, etc.
If you're an MBA with a CS degree, or even simply someone who has actually done your share of boots on the ground dev work, this attitude probably doesn't apply to you. MBAs have a perception, rightfully so I think, of not really understanding what happens to turn all of their great ideas into working software. There's also nothing like company wide (or god forbid, external) emails promising features by a specific date without having consulted developers on timelines, or worse, having consulted them on the timeline without taking into consideration that it requires moving everything else they're working on down the line to meet that deadline. "Oh, it's just adding a textbox here, plugging it into a formula, and spitting it out over here here and here, how hard can it be? An hour tops."
Hey, i am not an MBA, but working on my start up, i feel there is a NEED for some formal business training. I mean there are so many businees things I am trying to figure out and i feel I can't be the only one doing this. They must have come up with formal standardized processes for this now. And i am sure they teach you all that stuff during an MBA
That dude always gives really bland, re-read advice (lol at his jaw-dropping at some random cold-calling people, sounds super privileged to me, and he always insults folks while he's at it). King of the Aspies here at HN.
I considered doing an MBA once, and see the value. The issue is not MBA's per se, but that there are a bunch of people taking MBA courses, especially at lower tier schools, that are essentially all about hustle without any underlying substance. Think the pointy haired boss from Dilbert.
