I think that's less the issue here than CBS likely holding the commercial rights to Kaley Cuoco and Melissa Rauch being used together in anything that would look like an ad.
Presumably it will be in violation of Instagram's TOS to post the kind of pic that he talks about. (See Rights 4.(ii) )
But as he alludes to, it should make it interesting when someone does.
Don't forget the up-front fee of $275, so max savings are more like $300. Break-even is $10k per month.
It's a nice idea, though I don't know how many companies are in the $10k-$21k/month revenue bucket that would see a benefit. All companies processing over $250k per year can save a max of $300 per month by signing up to the fixed rate plan and then paying the normal fee thereafter.
The new fee band gives savings to those processing more than ~$10k/month, but provides no savings for smaller users.
It's not strictly for the band of $10k to $21k per month. It's anyone that makes more than $10k a month because additional swipes after $21k are the same as the opportunity cost.
This is a great deal for any company making more than $10k a day, or about $500 assuming 20 working days a month. It's starting to sound like a decent deal that should appeal to a lot of small businesses.
Which is basically anyone for Visa/MC, and even some people for Amex. Once you're reliably processing $20k/mo, your options for merchant accounts expand a fair bit.
I think what this does is retain existing Square merchants a bit longer -- ones who grew from $0 to $8k or so, are now evaluating real merchant accounts. Inertia, other advantages of Square (PWS), etc. might keep those merchants another year or two, getting them up to around $20k/mo revenue, and then Square might come out with something new for them (a Square-specific payment instrument? Pre-loaded cards using ACH per merchant or across Square with 0% fee?)
Yeah, I can't believe that more people above aren't asking this question.
From my experience in the Canadian system, if you're really sick (ie badly injured, have cancer, whatever) you actually get pretty quick service. Sure, if you walk into the ER with your kid that has a flu, you might have to wait a couple hours while they deal with the people that just got in a car accident, but I can live with that. And really, if you're chronically sick enough to still be sick in 6 days (and could wait that long, ie you didnt need to go to the ER) then the 6 day wait to see a GP is likely not going to make a big difference. (Must be noted, I've never had to wait 6 days to see my doctor when I was sick, more like 1-2, and could always just walk in if I needed to)
It really comes down to this: If you need help now you'll get help, free, right now. No questions.
If you got into China 15 years ago, you had no idea how things were going to pan out (and you deserve compensation for holding that risk). If you get in now, there's a more likely chance (I'd argue) that you'll do well, so the risk, and therefore the compensation you deserve, is lower. And holding currency is a lot less risky than equities, anyway.
The people that would be interested in a Yuan bank account up to $20000 aren't really sophisticated investors anyway.
Also, homemade chicken stock is one of my favourite things (boil a chicken carcass from the butcher with a halved onion, roughly chopped carrot, celery, some herbs, a little salt and pepper, bit of garlic, for a bit over an hour) and is super easy to do, freeze and then use as a base in a ton of recipes, or even just add some pasta and you've got a rough and ready chicken soup.
Cooking need not be difficult. By focusing on good, fresh ingredients you only need a couple to put together a great meal.
Also, great tip: Cook with spice (heat) and lots of flavour. You'll get full faster and feel satisfied longer.
Good idea is to package it in ziploc bags or small plastic containers. That way you don't have to defrost the entire pot if you just want to make a few cups of soup.
protip: homemade chicken stock makes an excellent base for risotto milanese!
Yes, K2 is is much more technically demanding climb (See the Black Pyramid, and basically any of the other less popular routes) and more unpredictable (falling seracs above the Bottleneck killed several climbers in 2008). It's usually only attempted by very skilled mountaineers. You won't find the same sort of climbing tour groups like operate on Everest - which is part of the reason why Everest, though the tallest, doesn't seem to be the pinnacle of mountaineering.
I recently met one of the 9 Americans to ever summit K2 where for every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. He quit after his friend didn't make it home.
PG: Do you find that you're encountering 'stage' creep in YC applications? Are the groups that you're funding (or even just interviewing) steadily becoming more fully developed businesses, or are lots (most?) still in the early/conceptual stages?
There's certainly stage creep, or more generally "legit creep." We get a lot more applications from startups with eminent founders, who are profitable or have already raised money, etc. But we are very wary of becoming conservative, so we make a conscious effort to make some risky bets too. The result is that batches end up becoming more and more diverse.
I'm struggling to think of an incentive for these more developed startups to apply to YC beyond association with the group in pursuit of larger investments. Have you identified any deeper motivators?
You mentioned receiving more applications from this pool. In terms of the application, do you weight in favor of these qualities?
I feel a bit awkward being the one to bring this up, but the idea is that we're supposed to give the startups useful advice. The need for that doesn't necessarily go away when e.g. you raise series A. I often give advice to post series A YC startups that they seem to think is useful.
My impressions are made from afar, but it is that YC is a high intensity immersion/sprint for founders to catapult themselves to the next level while having the support of experienced advisors and colleagues in the same situation around them. In other words, help shape and catalyze founders to become great with anything they touch (and recognize what to avoid). Strictly in the context of YC (or TechStars, Excelerate, etc.) it seems like that becomes lost when working with founders at a higher experience level.
There are a variety of "next levels" one can catapult oneself to. In the last batch we had one pair of founders who'd previously been CTO and VP of engineering at a public company, and another pair who were 19.
It's an interesting question where the limit of our utility is. As I said in another thread recently, I'm pretty sure we don't bump up against it in practice, because once startups raise sufficient money, their investors wouldn't let them do YC even if it would be a net win for them.
In what way are the 'legit' applicants conservative? Normally that term would imply less risk combined with less reward, but I would think these applications merely offer less risk.
True. If notable founders are willing to do Y-Combinator even though they could secure financing elsewhere without giving up a percentage, then there are many cases in which YC should accept (HipMunk, for example). That also speaks volumes of YC, if established entrepreneurs will come back to YC for a second time.
When people ask why they should do YC, I always come back to this example: if Steve (of reddit and now hipmunk) took Y Combinator funding -- with his wealth, connections, and experience -- why wouldn't you?
I totally agree. I'm sure that it would screw with their pricing, but I really just dont need 50GB, and can get by with the 3GB that I have now. Sure I'd like a little more (and frankly, would happily pay $5/mo for what I have now), but I just dont have enough stuff that I'd like to sync to fill up that $10/mo bucket. They did used to have some smaller plans, so they must have got rid of them for a good reason.
Thats just how salary works. I've never looked at it as "You're getting paid to do N hours of work", but rather, "You're getting paid get X work done."
In the UK your employer cannot force you to work more than 48 hours a week, but written into my contract was a clause waiving that maximum. I dont think I've ever worked less than 60 hours a week. The weeks where you work 80+ hours, you just try not to think about the hourly rate...
I declined to waive my rights in this regard. The 48 hour work week is evaluated over a 17-week sliding window. I strongly believe that healthy business relationships require that everyone's selfish interests be aligned. This simply isn't the case if an employer can decide to extract extra labor out of you without extra pay.
Thats just how salary works. I've never looked at it as "You're getting paid to do N hours of work", but rather, "You're getting paid get X work done."
At my previous company, the assumption was, "You're getting paid to get X work done, and if you can finish it in 40 hours/week, then we need to keep adding to X until it takes you 60 hours/week to get it done." How is that different than "You're getting paid to do N hours of work per week", with N > 60?
That's the farcical part of it. You are getting payed to get X done. Then can you go home after you do X if you did in 30 hours? Can you just tell your boss: you tasked me with doing X, it is done. I am taking a half Thursday and Friday off?
Of course not. That will be met with a look of disbelief and shock. They will probably quickly assign your another thing Y that takes another 40 hours to complete so now you have 10 hours to complete the new 40 hour job.
Because there is no payed overtime everyone is relying bonuses. And guess what happens with bonuses? "Sorry this was a tough year so we had to reduce bonuses this year, but thanks for your great work".
What's to stop them though giving you tasks in which 40 hours would the expected amount of time it would take in a perfect world then especially in software it will tend towards 60 because of unexpected bugs conflicts, waiting on others work etc.
I don't see how this could possibly benefit the employee, I mean if the job is going to require an average of 60 hours a week fair enough but the whole signing away your rights in this regard feels like a bait and switch on the employers part. It depends I guess if they were upfront in the workload expected and set the salary to reflect that.
Certainly I understand that there are times when someone would choose to waiver the rights, a startup with interesting tech and probably equity would be a good example.
I was certainly expecting that the workload would be high going in, and I have no issues with working that much (and in fact, I work less than I was expecting to when I signed up). The bait and switch would suck and probably happens to a lot of people.
I completely agree that there are times that someone would want to waive those rights (I did). And if you don't waive them for somewhere like a startup (probably more applicable early than late stage), what does that say about commitment/expectations?
This is the kind of thing that I was trying to shed light on in this post. I think people who want to get into big companies (not saying you do) don't understand that the hours can sometimes be hell. It's a truth that people don't really like to talk about, work life balance be damned.
Did you write that clause in? Because AFAIK that waiver has to be agreed by you first before they slam it in the contract as terms and conditions of employment.
I always took PG's Hacker-centric culture to mean one of hacking in a broader sense, and not strictly applied to coding.
I believe that a hacker-centric culture is one that promotes innovation and is purely meritocratic, with a constant drive to improve and better absolutely everything.
So from my (very much outsider) perspective, Apple would definitely have a hacker culture, but it's not just about the code.
Loosening the definition of hacker culture to "successful companies promote innovation and grade on merit", then yes, I agree. However, at that point, you can also claim the Toyota, earlier days of GE, and Walmart have hacker cultures, and I don't think that's true at all.
You can broaden pg's statement so it's never false, but that strips it of its interest and utility.
I think you're absolutely right: if you take it to mean anything, then it has no meaning.
However, as mechanical_fish touches on below, the definition of what a 'hacker' is (I think) is pretty misunderstood. Hacking is a creative process; are we trying to define creative people/roles/cultures merely by the tools that they use? That sort of limited scope feels extremely hubristic.
So maybe I didnt clearly express my point, and used bad examples: I'll accept that. The article seems to believe that Hacking = coding, and thus Hacking Culture = coding culture, which I think is a pretty limited way to look at things. Hacker culture is all about rejecting restrictive and unnecessary bureaucracy and procedures, and instead focussing on giving people the freedom and tools necessary to perform better and in a more creative way. Which I dont think really applies to your examples. A lot of places that claim innovation and free thinking still do so within a pretty rigid set of rules.
Presumably it will be in violation of Instagram's TOS to post the kind of pic that he talks about. (See Rights 4.(ii) )
But as he alludes to, it should make it interesting when someone does.