Agreed that there are lots of well designed on-network mechanisms for this as well. My point was that early Stellar uses cases will probably involve blending on-network/off-network transactions, especially in communities not (yet) comfortable with relying on bitcoin.
Assuming two people get together to make this happen is reasonable. It's also reasonable that two other people will get together and do US<-->BTC and another two peple will do BTC<-->BRL. That gives you the 'path' to make the remittances automatic. My point was there really doesn't need to be a cross border transfer at all - simply wait until someone builds another gateway to return the debt.
For people sending money home to Brazil, well, they don't have to know anything about Bitcoin to make this work. The network just takes care of it.
Yeah! I'm really curious how long it will take for those "closed loops" to develop. I think cryptocurrency co's should be working as hard as possible to find them and get them online.
I built a feed compiled from a few different sources (places like Longreads and The New Yorker), and I check that feed for new entries once a day (scheduled rake task).
This looks like a great concept- but I have to question the one time purchase price.
Right now, Burner is top of mind for me, but I don't have an immediate need to use the app. If it were free, I would gladly download it right now, and simply pay for a number whenever a use case arises.
As it stands now, I probably won't download the app, and when a potential use case does arise, who knows if I'll remember (and be able to download on the fly) this app.
Great concept, and love the rest of the pricing model built on Twilio. I just think the Burner team might be missing out on potential additional distribution.
Why do people treat buying an app with the same amount of deliberation as buying a new car? The price is less than a large coffee at Dunkin Donuts.
I don't mean to be picking on you quintendf because I do exactly the same thing and your comment made me realize it. I am going to download the app just because of your arguement - I am going to need it sometime in the next few months and not remember the name.
There must be some cognitive bias about buying an app. I will blow $2 on a Diet Coke when I fill-up with gas with barely a second thought. But ask me to download a $2 app - Whoa! this is going to take some thought, research...
If most apps were $5 and $10 instead of free and $.99, you would probably buy the $5 apps and wish the $10 were $5. For better or worse, people expect mobile apps to be <$1 or free.
I ended up buying the app for this reason. However, in the past few months, I have also been exploring clutter, tooling, and minimizing the things in my space.
I'm moving from the East Coast to the West Coast. I'm planning on taking one car load worth of possessions. The rest, I am giving away or trashing.
In this month-long process, I have discovered that:
(1) It is emotionally draining to sort through my possessions and let them exit my personal space.
(2) Among the most common, recurring pattern of emotion/rationalization is that of fear and "I may need this in the future." Looking at it clearly, though, many of those things I bought in which I "might" need, I have never actually used. They end up being security blankets.
(3) Once it is out, this appears to free up a great deal of mental space. I've been finding things easier to get things done and try new things.
(4) This leads to more deliberation and mindfulness on the new things coming into my space.
(5) Apps are no different. There is a certain ruthlessness in deleting the apps you have purchased and the data it stores after it no longer serves.
So it isn't so much, why would you not buy a $2 app when you are willing to blow $2 on a Diet Coke. It's more that, why wasn't the $2 Diet Coke you are shoving into your body given as much due deliberation?
Quintendf wasn't necessarily saying that apps shouldn't cost money. He/she was asking why this one, considering the obvious stream of revenue that it will bring? And why even ask why? The bar has already been set for apps to be mostly free or just 99 cents. It's a basic part of human psychology to be affected by an "anchor price", regardless of rationality.
anchor price, i.e. a suggested price, which in this case is the perceived status quo of free or 99 cents. In a famous experiment, students were told to spin a roulette wheel and then make an estimate about some world fact. Even though the roulette wheel obviously* had nothing to do with the question, students who got a higher number from the roulette spin on average made higher estimates.
Agreed- there definitely seems to be some kind of mental hurdle people have about those $2 purchases. Like you, I'll probably end up purchasing it now that I've thought about it logically and because gregcohn took the time to respond to my post.
That said, my comment was more focused on the business decision of making an app like this paid. If you could effectively A/B test this kind of scenario, I wonder which approach would actually lead to more long term revenue.
Initial extreme profitability of platform and its relative openness to developers spurred massive competition. The newness (e.g. PS2 Games on release vs 5 years later) no doubt contributed to a bias towards competition by price instead of differentiation.
Now prices are anchored near $1 for the most part.
Thanks for the feedback. We gave this a lot of thought but ultimately didn't want to create an experience that was a "free" download that required additional in-app payment before it had any utility.
It's $2.00. I'll probably use it at some near-future unpredictable time. Between now and then I'll probably also spend $50 at Starbucks and $100 at the bar.
I think it is important to note that there is a big difference between weeding out resumes due to a heuristic like experience, and weeding out candidates based on experience.
Take the oft-quoted Tristan Walker/Foursquare example. If Tristan had simply sent his resume to "jobs@foursquare.com", It's likely that Dennis and Naveen would have hardly looked past the first lines of his resume. However, because Tristan worked his ass off to reach out directly, he was given a chance to do amazing things despite his inexperience.
I entirely agree that inexperienced people shouldn't be discouraged from trying to punch above their weight. I just believe that the bar for them to gain entry is a bit higher than submitting a resume.
I certainly won't disagree that the rejection was a mistake (since admitting that mistake is the whole idea of the post).
However, it is worth noting that when we rejected Dan, we rejected a skilled developer. We did not reject a (skilled+proven) developer as you asserted.
Our mistake was in failing to see past Dan's relative inexperience in the areas that mattered to us. We knew he was skilled, but we were unsure how well his raw talent would translate to our product needs at the time. In other words, he was not "proven" in the ways that mattered to us.
Obviously, Dan has now developed enough of the social proof needed to be classified as (skilled+proven), but I think he would be the first to say that his skillset last year was very different than it is now.
Many companies regularly pass on very good people who simply don't fit an immediate defined need. I think this is a common mistake, and one that isn't just made by corporate HR drones and technical recruiters. Part of the goal of this post was drawing attention to how common this mistake is.
"Many companies regularly pass on very good people who simply don't fit an immediate defined need. I think this is a common mistake, and one that isn't just made by corporate HR drones and technical recruiters. Part of the goal of this post was drawing attention to how common this mistake is."
There are always stories going around, maybe true, maybe urban legends about how, for example, IBM could had an opportunity to buy Xerox and could have owned the copier market (which was a really big deal at one point). People talk about how a company passes on an opportunity and, after the fact, what a mistake it was.
What the stories never mention is how many ideas they passed up that never amounted to anything. They only focus on the mistake they made.
You can't hire everyone and you used your best judgment given what you needed and what you saw. If 42floors hadn't written the blog post and it hadn't appeared on HN this situation with Dan wouldn't mean anything to you you wouldn't even know about it.
Actually, I think you made the right call to reject him during your initial interview (based on your telling), and you second-guessing it simply because another company is publicly kissing his ass is worrying. Your reasoning is sound to turn him down, and you don't have to hire everybody; the rest of your comment basically reinforces that point.
I, personally, know three people in college who have turned out Web apps, iPad games, and even Linux drivers for underrepresented hardware. I think their accomplishments are great, and for every Dan Shipper I bet there's six or seven people not getting the same milk and honey publicly. This hero worship on HN is tiring, and that you're buying into it (and second-guessing your hiring decision!) is just wrong. It's bad for your company to admit it publicly, too, because you're too easily bandwagoned.
You made a decision. Own it, and don't give in to the flavor of the week that HN is lauding.
I dunno. I think you're taking this post a little too seriously. Seems like the OP wanted to give a shout out to a friendly professional acquaintance whose name was making waves in the ecosystem. In doing so he also made a point that you do have to pass on people you think interviewed well.
Changing your mind about a decision at the time based on how little experience Dan Shipper had at the time much, much later after he gained experience is not "wise".
I strongly suggest you add this to the post itself. If not early on, then at least at the end. My thought that "they probably let Dan sign off on this, but it would be good to know for sure" distracted from focusing on the broader point of your article.
I strongly agree with this point. I was also very distracted during this very good post wondering if Dan signed off on it before it was published. By the end I assumed that was the case, but the message would have been better served without the distraction.
I should probably note that the use of the word "rejected" was done to emphasize the humor of the situation (we rejected someone who is now being publicly recruited), and to draw attention to what a mistake it was.
I would completely agree that A level hiring isn't about rejection, job descriptions, or assembly lines. That's why I am such a fan of what Jason Freedman is doing at 42floors.
To your second point, I remain a firm believer that early stage companies (less than 10 people) in this hiring environment should be open to bringing on A players, even if they don't fit into an immediately defined role.
Anyone who has actually dealt with Dan in person knows that he is a humble, quiet guy who would never seek to misrepresent his work in any way.
I first met Dan shortly after the launch of wheremyfriends.be, and he was effusive in his praise of the work both Wesley and Ajay had done as they collaborated on the project.
Agreed that there are lots of well designed on-network mechanisms for this as well. My point was that early Stellar uses cases will probably involve blending on-network/off-network transactions, especially in communities not (yet) comfortable with relying on bitcoin.