Startup Culture - Copy (2).docx - The Something Awful Forums

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Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Drink up, bitches! We're back!

Soylent announced Wednesday that the company has raised $20 million in a Series A round spearheaded by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

I was actually semi-interested in the product until I discovered that it gives horrible gruesome farts, tastes revolting, and is actually just a knock-off copy of actual product lines made by Ensure and companies who employ real doctors.

I want 20 million dollars and have several terrible ideas, please throw money at me!

Bhodi fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jan 15, 2015

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 16:39

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:28

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

But it's web-enabled and part of the Internet of Things, so you might as well go with the flow.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 16:55

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Stop asking dumb questions, gotta keep moving, gotta keep hustling for investor cash. I'm pretty sure adblock penetration is about 99.9% for anyone who is reading this, but all is not lost, all you have to do is capture the imagination of someone who is already rich and they'll angel invest you 10 million dollars

quote:

We are delighted to report that technology inventor Elon Musk, creator of Tesla and SpaceX, has decided to donate $10M to the Future of Life Institute to run a global research program aimed at keeping AI beneficial to humanity.

There is now a broad consensus that AI research is progressing steadily, and that its impact on society is likely to increase. A long list of leading AI-researchers have signed an open letter calling for research aimed at ensuring that AI systems are robust and beneficial, doing what we want them to do. Musk's donation aims to support precisely this type of research: "Here are all these leading AI researchers saying that AI safety is important", says Elon Musk. "I agree with them, so I'm today committing $10M to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity."

What's that mean? I don't know exactly, considering AI doesn't and won't ever exist but I can spout a lot of empty reassurances for 10m. Can't believe I missed the boat on that one.

Bhodi fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jan 15, 2015

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 17:08

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 19:59

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

I wish I had a source link, it was asked on Quora. I pulled it from https://twitter.com/weedguy420boner/status/555530015312330754

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 20:11

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

It actually is. It's the same basic idea as the Army D-ration from World War 2 except with different ingredients. Except the D-ration was meant for emergency use during combat, not for every day nutrition.

Hacker Elites are in combat every day, fighting bugs in multi-threaded tunnels. Sometimes there's just no time to eat when you've been (agile-y) deployed.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 03:22

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

No, that's the lycos dog. GO GET IT!

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 04:07

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Hey remember firing poo poo through the O in Outpost.com?

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 04:07

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Good news, you can now buy almost double the drugs with the bitcoins you already have!

Please take them all at once and then post in the GBS TCC thread.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 17:32

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

thathonkey posted:

god i hate the word "hack" so much now. it was much better when it just meant "breaking into a computer system you shouldn't have access to"

Cyber

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 14:37

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Startup gold! Almost every comment is quotable but here are some real gems. It's like stockholm syndrome in text form. People are conflating shared hardship and camaraderie and sound like victims of PTSD, trying to convince themselves of how much fun it was.

quote:

Trying to sell a product that barely works. Trying to recruit people to work for no money. Worrying about how I'll pay my mortgage in a couple of months. Oh yeah, I'm having the time of my life.
What gets me? Right now, when there's no money and more vision than product, engineers are volunteering to help, because I'm building something designed specifically to solve their most frustrating and unproductive problems. I suspect that in six months or a year, when there's money for salaries and a decent number of actual customers, those volunteers will dry up. But I suspect a different kind of volunteering will happen, maybe with different people.
Oh, do you work on a large (multiple teams) software project? Want to know how I plan to make your life suck less? Get in touch!

quote:

Six months in the "wasp waist" of the Bank of America building on Castro street (440, I think). Air conditioning and heating that never worked (our office temperature would go from 60 degrees in the morning to high 90s in the afternoon). Once a water pipe cut loose and sent a river down the stairwell we used. There were power outages (everyone in our small company had a UPS, and this practice saved us...), and there was a spectacular chimney fire in the Chinese restaurant across the street. Jimmy Carter visited the Performing Arts center one evening, and we were asked not to go out onto our roof / balcony and it seemed like a good idea not to make the fellows in dark glasses nervous.
Castro street is (and probably still is) Asian culinary heaven . . . except that my boss would only eat at an Italian place near the railroad tracks, or at the evil hot-dog place where all the employees hated their lives and let you know it, every order.
We moved to a set of offices on Landings Drive. This was when SGI was still around; we used to walk over to their cafeteria and just use it -- nobody seemed to care -- and I'd say "hi" to some of my old Apple co-workers who had also moved on. I learned how to punch down phones and install networks, and buy cubicles and get cheap $10 whiteboards from Home Depot.

quote:

Spare a thought for us poor solo-founder schmucks who are slaving away in the basement on our own... <weary sigh>

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 18:34

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

I just found the quora links about how can I make my employees work 80 hours:

http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-make-programmers-work-60-80-hours-per-week

http://www.quora.com/How-can-you-inspire-programmers-to-work-longer-work-weeks-voluntarily

off some unexpected wisdom. Turns out, if you pay poo poo, you get poo poo :eyepop:

quote:

Most pre-Series A start-ups will offer (far) below market salary; they have to, since, generally (and as another poster said), they have only $X00,000 in the bank and no revenue. This is pretty typical.
What the 0.05% equity package indicates is that the founders probably have an unrealistic expectation about how much their venture is worth at this stage. I've seen this a few times in na�ve, young (23-25 years old) first-time founders that don't have significant amounts of experience working in start-ups and/or technology in general. This trivial amount of equity is a huge red flag, not only because its present value is negligible (guess what the risk-adjusted rate of return is on a start-up run by first-time founders?), but because it indicates that the work environment will likely be unpleasant (hellish hours, frequently changing requirements, no clear vision -- common in companies run by first-time founders).
Also, keep in mind: if these founders are foolish / na�ve enough to think they'll be able to hire a credible, valuable engineer with this package (they won't), they're also likely foolish / na�ve to get screwed by their investors. Founders are only at the bottom-middle of the start-up hierarchy: VCs are above them and LPs are above them.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 21:02

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

It's called Hotelling! It's the wave of the future!!

Except it's not. It turns out it's terrible for productivity and morale and the only companies who utilize it have primarily WFH employees.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2015 04:02

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Why not just go to the gym

It definitely looks a little ... wide

# ¿ Jan 26, 2015 19:02

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

One of my 5 main interests is consuming everything that Crate and Barrel offers.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2015 22:05

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Lil Peeler posted:

I remember when I first saw Kickstarter and other crowdfunding apps I was like "oh this is really cool and will help feed good ideas" then I find things like this and hear how https://www.shipyourenemiesglitter.com made 100000000 in it's first day.

That doesn't belong in this thread because it's an utterly wonderful idea:

That's a father who won't stop opening his daughter's mail.

# ¿ Jan 29, 2015 00:35

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

Also being on stage with a comedian who honestly doesn't give a poo poo about you

It gets more and more mean before he literally goes "This was a mistake" - skip to about 10m in

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 05:07

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:28

Bhodi: Dec 9, 2007; Oh, it's just a cat.; Pillbug

My friend got this today.

Who needs a girlfriend when you have a corporation. Work hard and get some sweets and a card. You want us to love you right. Delivered by the admin girls of course so people think it's for reals.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2015 17:41

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > Startup Culture - Copy (2).docx