Disqus - Latest Comments for jasoncrawford

Re: Looking for Book Recommendations

Jason Crawford — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 11:06:03 -0000

Oh? What are your misgivings?

Re: Looking for Book Recommendations

Jason Crawford — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 22:12:40 -0000

Then you should be on the lookout for Pinker's forthcoming book, *Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress*, due in February: https://smile.amazon.com/En...

Re: Looking for Book Recommendations

Jason Crawford — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 16:42:20 -0000

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker. Long and detailed but fascinating and gives you hope for humanity. My summary/review: http://rootsofprogress.org/...

The Alchemy of Air, by Thomas Hager. The story of the Haber-Bosch process, which is essential for modern agriculture, but also covers the lives of the men who created it and its consequences for Germany and the World Wars. http://rootsofprogress.org/...

A Culture of Growth, by Joel Mokyr. How the Enlightenment laid the ground for the Industrial Revolution. I had to skim some parts but the chapters on Bacon and Newton were fascinating. Good summary by the author in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com...

Re: How to work with “stupid” people

Jason Crawford — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 20:23:04 -0000

Well, at a certain point you might just conclude that they aren't intelligent or competent. If that's the reality, then find somewhere else to work and someone else to work with.

Re: Post Progress Meter

Jason Crawford — Sun, 22 May 2016 18:42:08 -0000

I hate videos. Skip the video and publish the post earlier!

(OK, I don't hate videos, certainly not all videos, some videos are awesome, but in general I am about 20x more likely to read a post than I am to watch a video.)

Re: The iPhone Thought Experiment

Jason Crawford — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 20:51:54 -0000

Yeah, this would quickly lead to the collapse of civilization. People couldn't even think about creating this iPhone thing, because they'd be too busy trying to not die. And tons of people would die. It would probably be easier to just rebuild civilization from scratch than to meet the witch's challenge. I'm in the 1000+ year camp.

Re: Online Spreadsheet Database Fieldbook Now Integrates with Eventbrite

Jason Crawford — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 11:38:30 -0000

Thanks! Interested readers can sign up here:

https://fieldbookapp.com/im...

Re: Would Erasing All Human Knowledge of History Be a Good Thing?

Jason Crawford — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 16:07:46 -0000

PS: It's not as if erasing history is going to lead people to all get along with one another. Pre-historic tribes often hated and fought the tribes living right near them. We had to learn over time how horrible that is, and how to all get along (as much as we have so far). War and aggression are natural, animal tendencies; peace is an achievement. Erasing history would largely reset that achievement to zero.

Re: Would Erasing All Human Knowledge of History Be a Good Thing?

Jason Crawford — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 15:48:01 -0000

Most people already don't know history, and it's already harming us.

Erasing history would be a disaster. We'd have to start all over again—re-learning the terror of war, the danger of absolute monarchy, the benefits of constitutional republics and democratic elections, the value of freedom of speech and of religion, etc., etc.

Sure, there is baggage from history, but that is trivial compared to what we can and should—must—*learn* from history.

I can't believe that serious, educated people even need to debate this.

Re: Is Success Smiled Upon More in the US Than Elsewhere?

Jason Crawford — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 16:59:12 -0000

Agree, but those are all considered left, even far-left positions. Occupy and Warren are not mainstream.

Re: Is Success Smiled Upon More in the US Than Elsewhere?

Jason Crawford — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 14:52:08 -0000

I've only ever lived in the US, but this is correct from what I have heard.

Regarding the attitude in the US: Just look at the outpouring of emotion from the public when Steve Jobs died a few years ago. So many people who had never met him expressed admiration or gathered at Apple stores (!) to leave notes, treating place of commerce almost as a house of worship. And it wasn't because he was outgoing (he kept to himself), or because he was nice (he was famously short-tempered), or because he was a philanthropist (among billionaires he was noticeably lacking in public charity efforts). It was because he brought great products and beautiful experiences to hundreds of millions of people. And because of that, no one minded at all that he was fabulously successful in business, and rich.

We're not 100% consistent as a culture; we demonize successful business leaders if we happen to not personally enjoy their products (Bill Gates was never as popular as Jobs). But in the US a successful businessman *can* still be a beloved hero.

Re: The Anti-Science and The Anti-Economics Parties

Jason Crawford — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 23:54:08 -0000

I like Michael Dearing's take on it: “I want to create a Constitutionalist Party focused on that document. Constitutionalists get to have capitalism, open borders, pro-choice, strong defense, simple taxes, and to marry or not whomever they want.”

https://twitter.com/mcgd/st...
https://twitter.com/mcgd/st...

Re: Getting An Outside Lead – The Myth Of Third Party Validation

Jason Crawford — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 13:34:36 -0000

Thanks Fred. Your caveat #3 is the one I have always heard as the reason why you would get a new lead for each round—there is a built-in conflict of interest. But if the investor is willing to put an obviously good, fair deal on the table, then this makes sense.

Re: The Law Of Unintended Consequences

Jason Crawford — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 12:31:00 -0000

Unfortunately I have no confidence that the regulators have learned any kind of lesson. To quote Marc from the same interview: “When there's a problem, the answer is presumed to be more regulation — even when the regulation was the problem in the first place. This is the central flaw in how the government operates.”

Re: What Seed Financing Is For

Jason Crawford — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 14:50:39 -0000

Thanks Fred, this makes a lot of sense.

My impression, though, is while this is accurate right now, it also continuously shifts over time—has been shifting for many years, and will continue to shift. For instance, ~10 years ago you needed Series A level money (~$5M) just to build and launch a product. Today you are expected to do that with only seed-level money (~$1M) or less. In another 5 years, maybe you will be expected to do that before you get *any* money. It gets easier to build, launch and get scale every year, and so the bar keeps going up.

The valuations also go up, meaning dilution goes down for founders. The only thing that seems to stay the same is the rough amount of money attached to each label (seed, A, B, C).

(One interesting data point on valuation/dilution: In 1958, DEC raised ~$570k (2014 dollars) in its first round from ARD, and gave up 70% of the company for it. (!))

I wonder if this matches your impressions as well, having been in this business so long.

Re: Context Matters! Lessons Learned From YouTube Personalized Recommendations (And Why This Matters For Twitter)

Jason Crawford — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 23:57:25 -0000

Yup. Having worked at Amazon and been close to some of the personalization folks there, I agree with this. Go to the Amazon “Your Store” and you'll see a “why?” link next to every recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/gp/y...

Re: The npm Blog — Nicer Perusal Method

Jason Crawford — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:31:19 -0000

Sounds great, thanks guys!

Re: Book Cover Blurbs Should Die

Jason Crawford — Sun, 02 Mar 2014 11:54:22 -0000

When Scott Berkun (self-)published his fourth book, Mindfire, he only had one blurb—and it was from himself:

“You are smart enough to buy books for better reasons than a famous person you don't know saying you should. And if you're not, you will be after you read this.” –Scott Berkun

(From “The Secret Life of Blurbs”: http://scottberkun.com/2011... )

Re: Amazon's PR genius — Benedict Evans

Jason Crawford — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 11:26:49 -0000

Good point. I left the company before the Kindle launched, so I don't know how many employees have access to those sales numbers. In general, employees have access to a lot of company performance data, but it's possible that Kindle sales or other figures are restricted.

Re: Amazon's PR genius — Benedict Evans

Jason Crawford — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 10:47:17 -0000

Good observations.

I worked at Amazon 2004–2007, and remarkably, I don't remember there being a particular emphasis on secrecy—nothing to match the stories you hear out of Apple. I was even at a meeting in January 2007 where someone from the Kindle group pulled out a prototype of the device and it got passed around for everyone to look at (this had nothing to do with the meeting). Kindle wasn't released until November of that year.

My co-workers and I wouldn't have leaked anything for a simple reason: we cared about the company.

Re: The Purity Of Angel Investing

Jason Crawford — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 10:51:13 -0000

Interesting how the need to justify one's decisions to others and the desire for consensus affects a decision-making process. Maybe VC investing : angel investing :: enterprise purchases : consumer purchases?

Re: The Current State of Startups from Naval Ravikant

Jason Crawford — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 18:58:58 -0000

This was great, thanks for doing this. I never watch video but I skim and lot of articles and read whatever looks interesting.

One thing that would be great: Mark the time (mm:ss) that corresponds to each section, so if we want to listen to one part of the interview in depth, we can jump to it.

Re: Profitless Prosperity

Jason Crawford — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 13:26:10 -0000

As hinted at in that Eugene Wei piece, you should really think of a growing business as a portfolio of businesses. The older, more established businesses within the portfolio might be making money, which is then used to invest in newer businesses, which are still burning cash. If cash flow is managed well then free cash flow can be near zero.

This can be true if a business is expanding geographically, in which case you want to look at older, established geos vs. new ones. It can also be true if a business is expanding its product line, like for example if you were a retailer who started selling hosting services and then e-readers.

Re: marcusoft.net: Commitment can only emerge - it can be demanded

Jason Crawford — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 14:07:22 -0000

Good points, I think there is an important element of truth here. Thanks for posting.

Re: The Proposed SEC Rules Undermine The Goal Of The JOBS Act

Jason Crawford — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 16:31:01 -0000

Thanks, Brad. People can leave comments on the proposal here:

http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/...