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hazelandglasz · 7 years

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Memes and Hot Chocolate Therapy - A Sam Wilson Birthday Bang Fic

Memes and Hot Cocoa Therapy

Fic by @hazelandglasz

Art by @daisyridlay

Pairings : Sam Wilson / Steve Rogers / James “Bucky” Barnes, Sam Wilson & Natasha Romanoff

Summary: Sam Wilson loves his blog, his corner of life hacks, recipes, and DIY. He also loves to follow blogs about puppies, recipes, and memes. When he finds a blog that manages to dig up ancient relics, he can't help but be curious and sends an ask to the blogger--more accurately, bloggers. Aka this is the fic where Sam, Steve, and Bucky are ridiculous bloggers who fall in love without even meeting because of how ridiculous and sarcastic they can be. When they meet, sparks fly.

Written for @samwilsonbirthdaybang !!

Sam closes his eyes and rests his head against his apartment door. Working at the VA is rewarding, and much needed for Sam’s own balance, don’t get him wrong. That being said, some days are tougher than others, and today calls for some serious blogging to make him feel better.

He’s tired, exhausted even, but the low purr of the old laptop coming back to life is already like a siren song, a balm on his frayed nerves. While Sam’s computer slowly lights up, he goes to his kitchen to fix himself a serious “pick-me up”, Wilson style.

On his kitchen windowsill, a couple of pigeons coo at him and Sam brings them a handful of chopped up edamame beans--he always keeps a bowl of them for his friends with feathers. He smiles at the birds before pulling out a pan from a drawer. Next, Sam gets all the ingredients he needs: milk, cocoa powder--the good stuff, not the one he puts on top of his tiramisu--, cinnamon, grated coconut, vanilla (beans, no extract--seriously taxing days call for serious hot cocoa), and the honey.

Sam is about to pour the milk into the pan when he stops and thinks. What better post to make on “Sam’s Guide to DIY” than his mama’s cocoa? He takes his phone out of his pocket and gets to work.

One of the best things about his apartment is clearly the kitchen space: great appliances, lots of tabletop space, but more importantly, wonderful natural lighting.

It allows him, even at dusk, to take pictures of the pan and the different ingredients in a way that will barely require any adjustment. Twelve minutes later, his cocoa is ready, the pictures are ready to be posted, and now , Sam can finally indulge.

His blog is his pride and joy, a melting pot of life hacks and feel-good selfies, Sam’s harbour from the storm that life can be when years of war are breathing down one’s neck, carefully crafted and fed with tasteful posts. But the rest of Tumblr? That’s his chance to put said life away, if only for a couple of hours.

Sam follows many different blogs, and he has no shame about it. Puppy owners’ accounts, recipe and body positivity blogs--they all constitute Sam’s dashboard.

And there’s another kind.

The Meme Blogs.

Sam has spent many sleepless nights finding an improbable escape within the ridiculous yet hilarious waves of memes.

In his opinion, none of them are beneath him; sure, sometimes Sam comes to the conclusion that he is, in fact, too old for this shit because what exactly is funny about goats and minerals? He certainly doesn’t know, but you know what, you do you.

It’s always entertaining, that’s for sure.

And in the sea of blogs dedicated to memes, one in particular never fails to capture Sam’s attention, if only because its author seems just as puzzled as he is by the velocity of the meme life cycle.

“Memetymology”.

It’s a blog dedicated to finding the origins and multiple evolutions of a meme, through charts and surprisingly sarcastic commentaries.

Sam has so much love in his heart for whomever runs it, it’s bordering on a crush at this point.

The Memetymologist is funny, witty, and Sam cannot help but be intrigued by one of the blog’s specific goals.

He can’t help but wonder why, but more importantly how , the blog always seems to find the oldest of memes, their source, and how they came to rise from the Internet’s underbelly.

He’s talking relics, here-- prehistoric memes that are at the very source of meme culture.

Truth be told, Sam is fascinated by the Memetymologist’s focus in this matter.

So far, he has kept his admiration (and growing crush) to himself, simply reblogging what he considers to be the best analysis for his followers.

But this time, he cannot contain himself. Sam has to send the blogger a message to express his admiration.

Finding a parallel--documented and argumented--between the Mother of all Memes, Kilroy was here , and Shia Labeouf’s inspirational speech meme was a stroke of genius that Sam has to salute.

“That analysis was amazing, but how on Earth do you find these relics is even more remarkable”, he types. “Thank you for bringing back Kilroy too--as a vet, it was a sign that we were not as alone as we felt.”

He hits send, hoping nothing.

This blog easily has thousands of followers; they must get hundreds of asks every day.

His message is merely a congratulatory one--it doesn’t call for a reply of any kind.

That being said, without even bringing up memes, talking about the sense of belonging most soldiers find in seeing the little graffiti, even today, would be a good subject for his next meeting at the VC.

Thank you, Memetymologist, Sam thinks as he opens a Word document to start preparing his speech.

---

A message awaits him the next morning.

“From two vets to another, our pleasure. Care to share that cocoa?”

---

There is a bounce in Sam’s steps throughout the whole day, even as he enters the Center and does his “rounds” with the recovering soldiers. Whether it’s physical or mental, war leaves its scars on every person it touches.

“We have newbies,” Natasha whispers to him as he gets ready for his reunion.

Natasha’s past in the army is a bit blurry, to say the least, but her dry sense of humor is often the buoy Sam needs to keep on going.

That, and she is a remarkable sparring/cuddling partner.

“Newbies?”

“Back row, near the exit.”

“Hm--the brunet and the blond?”

“Spot on. Though I would have called them Summer and Winter Treats.”

“Nat …”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

Sam wishes he could tell her that she is wrong, but words fail him as he looks at the two newcomers.

Both are tall and buff--though the blond one is definitely taller-- with that look in their eyes that speaks of horrors Sam knows only too well.

A look that says that they will never be the same, but they won’t let their past take them down, darn it.

A vulnerable strength, so to speak, and if Sam is already turning into a poet over them from a distance, he’s capital S Screwed.

Blond and Tall looks towards the podium with a slightly questioning look before turning to his companion, reaching for him. Dark and Buff has his eyes downcast, hunched forward in his seat. Even from his vantage point, Sam can see that his left hand is a prosthetic, and he winces in sympathy.

Not all wounds are visible, and every person in the room has had to rebuild their lives around something they lost on the battlefield, find a way to feel complete--it’s part of their common experience, something they can help each other with.

Showtime.

Sam moves forward, rolling his sleeves as he goes--his own little ritual to get in “mentor” mode. “Good afternoon,” he says, sending his voice across the room as he usually does. “Welcome back for our regulars, I hope the show won’t disappoint, and welcome to the newbies. Promise there won’t be any hazing … from me.”

Some vets relax at his words, even Gabe who’s always so tense. Sam winks at Misty, who just happens to be sitting in front of BT and DB, and she shakes her head at him with a fond smile on her face.

BT raises one eyebrow at Sam before discreetly elbowing his companion who looks up in interest.

Two pairs of very different shades of blue are directed at him, and Sam barely manages to keep himself from humming some Johnny Cash.

Oh, no I never got over those blues eyes I see them everywhere I miss those arms that held me When all the love was there

Yes please .

“Ahem.”

Trust Natasha to keep Sam from getting lost in his own little fantasy.

Spoilsport.

“Today’s show will be about this little guy we’ve all probably seen somewhere,” he continues, launching his projector with the Kilroy graffiti. “I remember seeing it drawn in chalk on a wall when I was in Afghanistan,” he adds, reaching into his own experience to free the speech of those around him. “Though the situation was not ideal,” he says with a pointed look that sends a wave of nods in his audience, “seeing it made me realize that this … nightmare, was not our first time fighting, and that I too could survive this. I, too, could say that I was here and helped my fellow soldiers keep their hopes up.”

Someone--Sam is fairly sure that it’s Old Nick in the back--starts whistling the country’s anthem, and people laugh. Sure, it’s shaky and awkward, but it’s a laugh nonetheless.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replies benevolently, “I thought you guys were used to my rousing speeches by now.”

This time around, the laughter is a little more opened, a little less embarrassed, and even Natasha smiles.

“Now, this is my experience,” he continues, more serious, “and I would never dream of thinking that I know how you feel, but this sense of belonging, of having a purpose, is what helped me get through the worst of it. Who wants to share what, in their experience, helped them?”

The silence is so thick you could cut it with a knife and serve it with a plate of ribs.

Hmmm, I might get a early dinner at the diner. Focus, Wilson!

“Drawing.”

The voice is soft, and a lot of heads turn towards it.

Uh. Tall and Blonde. Look at you go.

No, seriously, Sam would love to watch him go, as sad as it would be to see him leave.

“Hello,” Sam says, focusing all of his attention on the man.

“H-hi,” he stammers back, his fair complexion betraying the sudden pink on his cheek. “I’m Steve--Steve Rogers.”

“Welcome, Steve,” all the group sing-songs in unison, snickering and even laughing outright.

Sam is so proud of those jackasses.

“Thank you,” Steve says, a crooked grin making an appearance on his face. “As I was saying, drawing helped me connect with my--our-- squad,” he says, pointing his thumb at Dark and Buff.

Though Winter Treat suits him better, damn Natasha for putting ideas in his overactive head.

The man glances at Steve before returning his attention to-- oh .

He’s keeping his eyes on Sam--not in a confrontational manner.

If anything, it’s an appreciative look--damn right distracting too, Sam tells himself, focusing on Steve’s words.

“It was a moment of peace in the chaos,” Steve continues, “when I could find a moment and a spot to draw my squad.”

“It was a pocket of home for us too,” Winter Treat pipes up, his voice softer than his appearance lead Sam to think it would be. “When Steve drew us.”

Sam nods. “Because he was drawing you relaxed, or …?”

“Because it was a semblance of normalcy in places where normal didn’t exist,” the man says, looking up to stare at Sam. “A sign that no matter how lonely it felt, even in the middle of the group, something else was waiting and we were not as alone as we felt.”

To have his hastily composed message unknowingly sent back to him makes Sam uneasy for a moment.

“That’s a good thing to remember,” he says to cover his agitation. “No matter how nightmarish our experiences were, we were not, we are not alone in them. Who else wants to share?”

More people seem encouraged to speak up, and Sam lets the meeting run its course like he usually does, only interjecting every now and then to keep the flow going.

Through it all, he catches Steve and his broody friend looking at him intently. They even quietly speak in each other’s ear, all while glancing at him.

More than once, the meeting lulls into silence because Sam was too distracted to notice.

Very flattering, sure, but so very unprofessional of him!

---

The meeting comes to a close, and after sending everybody home with good wishes and homemade toffees, Sam almost starts jogging to get to the diner.

He’s not usually so ravenous when he comes out of a Vet day, but it was a good one, full of positive energy.

That, and he has a craving of a very different kind that has no chance of becoming a reality, so he’ll eat his feelings if nobody objects to his plans.

“Careful, on your left!”

Sam nearly jumps out of his skin but twists his body to let a crazy deliveryboy zoom by him on his left.

“You alright, Sarge?”

Sam huffs a laugh as he looks at the two men walking towards him. “Right as rain, Cap,” he replies as Steve and his friend who is still nameless get close.

“I hope the meeting didn’t scare you away,” Sam says, digging his hands in his pockets lest he does something he’ll regret.

As in, reaching out to see for himself if those pecs are real because damn son .

“Not at all,” Steve replies, a boyish grin on his lips now. “It was quite interesting.”

“Why Kilroy?”

“Buck, manners.”

‘Buck’ frowns at Steve before glancing at Sam. He twists his mouth in regrets. “I’m sorry, Sarge,” he says softly, “I need to … acclimate myself back to normal situations.”

“Nothing to apologize for, …?”

“James. Bucky,” he corrects himself. “Sergeant Bucky Barnes.”

“Nothing to apologize for, Sarge,” Sam says, waving his hand in the air as if to erase the whole past awkwardness. “Civilian life is quite a challenge.”

“Yeah.”

“So, why did you mention Kilroy?” Bucky asks again, and Sam would love to chat with those two fine ( fiii-iiine ) specimens, but his stomach grumbles and he can’t stay.

“Care to join me for dinner?”

Steve and Bucky exchange a look. The type of look that shows years of knowing each other (biblically? One can hope, those two together must look insanely hot. Like, Sahara hot).

“Sure. Lead the way.”

Sam’s dinner doesn’t look much, but he knows for a fact that their ribs are the best in the Tristate area.

“Really?”

Steve sounds doubtful, but he’ll eat his words when the plate arrives, and Sam has no qualms about telling him so.

If he knew that it would make Bucky laugh, he would have joked sooner, ‘cause it’s a sight to behold.

“Sorry if I have my doubts,” Steve says, sitting very prim and proper--which only makes Bucky, and in an echo, Sam, cackle even harder-- “but where I come from, the ribs are already top notch.”

“Unless you’re from the deep South like the boss here, wherever you come from doesn’t hold a candle,” Sam replies, leaning back into the leather seat and smirking at the man.

Yes, he is aware that the move pulls at the fabric of his t-shirt over his chest and arms, why do you ask.

Gotta strut the strut and flaunt his stuff.

Bucky’s eyes travel along his arm, so that’s definitely one win.

“Just from Brooklyn,” Steve replies and Bucky cocks his head and smirks like this answers everything.

“Yeah, okay, Amanda’s ribs will get you on your knees and thanking the Lord.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

The words are softly spoken, but Sam almost chokes on air.

Did …

He …

He did, didn’t he?

When he looks back at them, there is a very alluring twinkle in both men’s eyes.

“Here you are, boys,” the waitress says, startling all of them out of their staring contest. “If you need anything, let me know, alright Sammy?”

“Thank you, ‘Manda,” Sam says, sending her a dazzling smile. She pats his cheek and returns to the kitchen with a spring in her steps.

“Regular here?”

Sam unfolds his napkin. “I practically grew up on Amanda’s cooking,” he replies, taking the time to savor the smell of the smoked meat, the barbecue spices and sauce, and the garlic fries, all blending together into “home”. “Her son and I were partners back in Afghanistan. When Riley was shot, I went home and she put me back together.”

“Through Love?”

“Through food.”

“Ah.”

“Sorry for your partner.”

“Dig in, it’s better warm.” And I need to not think downward-spiraling thoughts .

The look on both Steve’s and Bucky’s faces after their first bite is one Sam needs to cherish: surprise, delight, and hunger, all wrapped into one.

“I bow to this diner’s superiority,” Steve says with his mouth full, which Sam finds way too endearing for it to be natural. “This is … like … like …”

“Like a hug in your mouth,” Sam says, picking up a fry and savoring the taste of garlic and victory.

“Exacty.”

“Sooo,” Bucky says, lazily picking up a fry and lodging it between his lips like some sort of cowboy, “about Kilroy?”

Sam smiles, thinking about his favorite blog. “It came up on a blog that I follow online,” he explains, “and I thought about what it meant to me, and from that point on, built my speech. Why?”

Steve and Bucky exchange a loaded look. “A blog?” they ask in unison.

“Yeah, I’m on Tumblr,” Sam says, his cheeks heating up. “It’s my escape from … everything.”

“Not judging, we have a blog too.”

“What about?”

“I think you know.”

Sam raises one eyebrow. “How would I know?”

“The same way I know you make a mean hot cocoa.”

“And that your kitchen is a work of art.”

It takes Sam a moment to absorb the words, and then his eyes bulge out of his head.

New York and the world may be small, but that small? No, he did not see it coming.

“Memetymologist?”

“RedWingToTheRescue?”

Sam can feel a smile stretching his lips from ear to ear, and what’s even better, that smile is mirrored on the faces of both of the men across from him.

“Why memes?”

Steve leans forward, resting his arms on the table. “Same reason you cook, I think,” he says softly, his crooked smile making a comeback.

Is that a dimple? Oh my God.

“We follow you, too.”

Sam would have noticed the blog following him back, and his face must show it.

“Individually.”

“Ah.”

“It’s very comforting.”

“You don’t say.”

“That kitchen is really amazing.”

“Want to see it irl?”

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself, but the twinkle is back so he won’t berate himself too harshly.

“I wouldn’t dare refuse such an offer,” Steve says, pulling his wallet and standing up in one fluid motion.

Sam’s throat is so dry, all of a sudden.

“The things I’ve dreamed of doing in that kitchen will rock your world,” Bucky adds, a small smile making his eyes crinkle.

Sam gulps as he stands too, and would you look at that, ends up between the two men.

“By all means,” he manages to say, extracting himself from the Buff Sandwich (the Buffwich, if you will) to lead the way.

He believed that today would be a good day, but never did he imagine it would turn out to be quite that good.

---

His kitchen has never seen that kind of scene.

Never.

Sam is never going to be able to cook without having a Pavlovian boner.

Well, that’s tomorrow’s problem, isn’t it, because all of his attention is required right now to avoid dampening the mood with an injury.

“The moment you rolled your sleeves, I wanted to take that shirt off,” Bucky growls against the soft skin of Sam’s neck as he unbuttons the offensive garment, “and worship those arms.”

“Have you looked at yourself?” Sam tears himself from kissing Steve to reply, one hand groping Steve’s chest while the other gets tangled in Bucky’s silky hair.

“Hm-hm, still want to do all the things to your body.”

“Count me in on that plan, Buck,” Steve chuckles as he meets Bucky over Sam’s shoulder to kiss him.

Sam has an hand on both their head and he angles it a little bit to the left, pressed as he is between their bodies.

Oh, he’s definitely in for a treat, wherever this goes.

Ah, treats.

“Summer and Winter,” he murmurs as he alternates between Steve and Bucky’s neck to press kisses and kitten licks.

“Uh?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, that’s--that’s good,” Bucky says. “Sam, can you--ugh, can you move?”

“No.” If anything, Sam presses even more against him, encouraged by Steve who turns him more fully towards the other man.

“You okay, Buck?” Steve says, one hand on Sam’s hip and the other cupping Bucky’s cheek.

Bucky’s eyes are black, with just a ring of blue left in them. “A bit--a bit overwhelmed here.”

“Alright,” Sam says with a sigh, moving back against Steve. “Let’s all relax and use this kitchen for its intended purpose, hm?”

Bucky and Steve give him a perfect salute. “Sir, yes sir.”

Sam smirks, shoving both his guests towards the kitchen chairs. “Wanna try my hot cocoa?”

“I thought we were.”

“You did not just say that.”

Steve snickers into his palm. “I think he did, Sarge.”

“Tsk tsk. No whipped cream for you.”

“Aww,” Bucky says, sitting at the table with his legs wide opened. “I was really interested in getting the cream.”

“He does like cream.”

“Good to know. Only if you behave then.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky repeats closing his legs but sprawling even further into the chair.

Debauched, that’s what he looks like, and Steve, even sitting as straight as he is, is not a lot better.

Definitely my treats .

#samwilsonbirthdaybang #sometimes i write #sam wilson #natasha romanoff #steve rogers #bucky barnes #fluff #memes #comfort food

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antiques-for-geeks · 5 years

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Atari 8-bit lucky dip!

The Atari 8 bit was never a popular machine in the UK. Given its relative obscurity here (...if there's one thing I'm a sucker for it's the obscure) and the fact that it's a product of a fertile period for one of the most famous gaming brands, I've always been interested in getting one to play with.

After a bit of fishing on Ebay I managed to get a 600xl for a reasonable price; old hardware is getting pretty expensive and A8's seem more expensive than most. The 600xl is the smaller brother of the flagship 800xl, and is appealingly diminutive for an 8 bit micro. It does have one main disadvantage - it only comes with 16k of ram, so until I can upgrade it to 64k I'm left with a machine that will only be able to play simpler, earlier titles.

Scrubs up quite well!

I bought a flash cart (an UNO cart, which has worked flawlessly) and loaded it with games that should play on my 16k machine. Among the conversions of popular arcade titles of the time, there were many that I didn't recognise. Over the coming weeks I'm going to trawl through all of the games I can get to work and give them each a short review ...for better or worse...

Abracadabra

TG Software / 1983

Wander round a single screen maze blasting wizards with your magic, collecting keys and treasures. To make things more exciting, the walls move periodically, changing the layout of the maze.

I really thought I was going to like this game. These single screen maze shooters are often a lot of fun, but sadly the movement of main character is stiff and awkward here. He seems to want to follow a narrow path even where it looks like you have a wider area to move in, leading to frustrating moments where you push a direction and nothing happens. If there's one thing an arcade style maze game needs it's precise control, so I can't recommend this one.

Alien Ambush

DANA / 1983

This is a fairly basic vertical shooter with a scrolling star background. The graphics are chunky, but a bit muddy - more like an early C64 game. One or two aliens appear on the screen - simply shoot them and avoid their wreckage. Sometimes they split into smaller enemies when hit. It’s competent enough, but there's not much to make this one stand out.

Alpha Shield

Sirius Software / 1983

This seems like a simplified Star Castle rip-off, and is a game which I remember previously playing on the Atari 2600. This version is very similar, though a touch more colourful. The original version seemed like a clunky attempt to get around the limitations of the 2600, substituting the Asteroids style point and thrust controls of the arcade for more traditional directional control. While it qualified as a decent effort for that machine it’s a bit out of place on the much better equipped 8-bit.

Anteater

Romox / 1983

Extremely similar to the arcade game Dig Dug with most of the excitement sucked out. A single anteater follows your ant through the tunnels left behind as you dig through the layers of earth. The goal here seems to be to collect ant eggs from a pile on the surface and bring them back to your nest. It might well get more exciting as the levels progress, but I found the first one so tedious I refuse to give it any more of my precious time ...especially as I know there are 2 different official conversions of Dig Dug itself coming up later!

Asteroids

Atari / 1981

F-ugly but functional take on one of my favourite games ever. Asteroids is one of the handful of early arcade games I always enjoy playing. It's an ageless classic, so a mediocre conversion like this is a real shame. It has chunky and jerky graphics, and the movement of the ship is too crude to properly capture the feel of the original. It's not the worst game ever, and has a handy 4 player mode if you're using an Atari 400/800 with enough joystick ports... but it's not a patch on the 7800 version, and even the cut down Atari 2600 is probably more playable despite it's inaccuracy.

Astro Chase

First Star Software / 1982

Can I skip the intro where astronaut walks slowly to their ship and takes off please? This has quite nicely drawn graphics for an early game. You fly through a maze of planets, scrolling in 4 directions. You can shoot some enemy spaceships... but what the hell am I supposed to be doing here? I’m not sure instructions will improve matters, because there seems to be no urgency or excitement to this game at all.

Atlantis

Imagic / 1983

A conversion of the Imagic Atari 2600 classic - like a simplified version of missile command designed to fit in with the limitations of the VCS. You have control of 3 defensive turrets protecting a city from an attacking space fleet. When I say ‘control’ what I mean is that you can choose to fire lasers from one of the turrets, but you cant change where they fire; one goes left, one right and one straight up. It’s purely an exercise in timing shots, made more difficult by the possibility of one or more of your turrets being destroyed. This is just a small graphical upgrade over the 2600 version. It's a playable game for sure, and gets quite frantic, but I never found it quite as fun and well balanced as its inspiration.

BC's Quest For Tires

Sierra On-Line / 1983

A sort of proto-typical endless runner, this has very bold cartoon graphics for early 80's game. You control a cave-guy riding ever rightwards on a single stone wheel. You start off by jumping pot holes and ducking under branches. There are some sections later where you have to time a jump over a river on some bobbing turtles backs. It's got some entertainment value, but I found it pretty repetitive stuff and I got stuck timing the river jumps. Bit of a theme forming here - games that wowed people with fancy cartoon graphics are often exposed as hollow experiences after a few decades have passed!

Beamrider

Activision / 1984

This is more like it! A solid version of a fun old-school shooter. This could be described as being like a simplified version of the arcade game Tempest, played out on a flat plane. You fly over a grid toward an infinite horizon, blasting enemies as they travel down fixed lanes toward your ship. I liked this one on the Atari 2600, and I like it here too. It's got the right mix of stylish but abstract graphics and frantic game-play to feel like it could have been an arcade effort of the time, something that many of these games clearly aspire to.

Berzerk

1983 / Atari

<Thwak!> ... boots Atari across the room ... I can't get this to work on my flash cart for some reason. I love this game, and I know from past experience that this is probably the best home version around (or at least the best that was released at the time). The game-play is spot on, and it has quite a bit of the metallic robot speech that livened up the arcade version. When I get a working copy of this it will get the full review it deserves.

Blaster

Williams / 1984

The only home version of a really obscure Williams into the screen arcade shooter, this is blocky and slow, with crazy psychedelic line drawing graphics. Apparently this was made before the arcade version, but was never officially released. It’s as basic as they come; you avoid things and shoot things. The game-play is shallow, the controls are treacly and the graphics are possibly seizure inducing .... and yet I somehow found this one quite appealing!

Boulder Dash

First Star Software / 1984

A stone cold classic dig-a-thon. You move through a scrolling level, hollowing out the earth a behind you to collect all the diamonds. Once all are collected you can exit to the next level. Making things more difficult, rocks dotted about will fall when undermined - a crush danger - and butterfly like enemies follow you through the tunnels you leave behind in the earth. The levels take on a heavy puzzle element - much more so than in Dig Dug, from which this takes some inspiration. The patterns of rocks have to be worked round with careful consideration to get all the diamonds. This seems like a great version that I'd like to spend more time with.

Bristles

First Star Software / 1983

Here is quite a likable single screen platformer where you catch lifts to visit different parts of the screen in order to paint all the walls. As expected, there are enemies to avoid who will bump you down a level on contact. There's also a 'lady' who wanders the halls leaving dirty hand prints on your new paint work. These have to be repainted to complete the level and she'll make you swear with rage before too long. When all the walls have changed colour on move to the next level with more walls to paint and more enemies to avoid. Being repeatedly bumped down the levels by errant enemies and lifts can frustrating, but once you have the hang of what the game expects of you it's fairly compelling.

Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom

SEGA / 1983

A conversion of the early SEGA into the screen shooter. This one appeared on many of the computers and consoles of the time, no matter how primitive - there's even an Atari 2600 version. The arcade game must have been very impressive at the time, using scaling sprites to convey the impression of barriers and enemies rushing toward you from the horizon. Sadly, like most of these home conversions, this version looks crude in comparison, sporting flickery graphics and jittery controls. It's also missing a 'trench run' stage present in the arcade which I'm sure could have been re-created in some form on the home hardware. It's not a terrible game, but has aged poorly and is ultimately pretty dull. I did like the colourful psychedelic flashing when a level is complete!

Captain Beeble

Inhome Software / 1983

This one didn't look much at first viewing, but turned out to be quite good fun, if frustratingly difficult at times. Fly around caverns on a jet-pack, fighting against the effects of gravity and blasting all the aliens on each scrolling level. Making things much more difficult, large crushing blocks fly across the level and deadly walls fry you on touch. I've always enjoyed games where you had to fight against gravitational effects, and it adds quite a bit to what would otherwise be a simple game. The graphics are quite plain, and this would be an easy game to overlook - give it a go.

#review #atari #8-bit #retrogaming #antiquesforgeeks

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ramialkarmi · 8 years

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Founder of Bustle and Bleacher Report explains how he built 2 companies worth hundreds of millions by age 33

Bryan Goldberg, 33, is the founder of Bustle, a digital-media startup with 55 million monthly readers that covers everything from politics to "The Bachelor." Its latest valuation puts it on par with Goldberg's last startup, Bleacher Report, which sold for about $200 million to Turner Broadcasting.

In his 20s, Goldberg cofounded Bleacher Report, a sports website, with three middle-school friends. After the sale to Turner, Goldberg did what successful 20-somethings should do to celebrate: He and his cofounders went to party in Las Vegas, and they paid for each of their 160 employees to join them.

"As we know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," Goldberg told Business Insider on the podcast "Success! How I Did It." "But I would say that on a scale of 1 to 10 — like, OMFG — it's probably a 10. I don’t know what an 11 would look like. I'm not going into it, except to say we all came back alive."

Though Goldberg wouldn't reveal what happened in Vegas, he did share the tips and tricks he’s used to become a successful businessman.

The podcast explores:

How four middle-school friends came up with a startup idea over beers.

How a $200 million startup acquisition actually goes down.

An "OMFG" party in Las Vegas after the acquisition, in which Bleacher Report's founders paid out of pocket for all 160 employees to join them.

How playing "Magic the Gathering" made Goldberg a good media CEO.

What to expect in media over the next few years — lots of acquisitions and billion-dollar exits.

Why Bryan tortures friends with videos of him weightlifting Facebook.

The "Success! How I Did It" podcast interviews inspiring people about the career paths that took them to the top of their industries. You can listen to the episode with Bryan Goldberg below and subscribe to the podcast on Acast or iTunes.

You can also check out another episode of "Success! How I Did It": "Tinder cofounder on what it's really like to build a $3 billion business in your 20s."

The following podcast and transcript of the interview have been edited for clarity and length.

Alyson Shontell: Bryan, you've been a founder for a decade now.

Bryan Goldberg: Yes, over a decade, which is a long time. In the case of digital media specifically, it's really for most of digital media's existence, so I can say this one thing I was early in, and it has changed a lot and it's continuing to change even more.

As long as I'm in the game here, there's more to learn and more to build and more to do.

Shontell: For people who don't know, what is Bustle and where is it now?

Goldberg: Bustle is not only the largest media property in the United States aimed at young women, it's also a platform for young women. In January, we had 55 million monthly unique visitors coming to read our content in news and entertainment, lifestyle, fashion, and beauty.

Shontell: Is that traffic partly from the Trump bump or was it "The Bachelor" bump?

Goldberg: Both. In January, we had many millions of people coming to the site for both of those topics. I'd say those were the two biggest draws. That dichotomy between really smart, insightful content about news and politics as well as some of the best "Bachelor" coverage you're ever going to find, is symbolic of who we are, as a site that is really proud of our coverage of what in the past has been viewed as very different types of topics that appeal to, often, the same young woman.

How 4 middle-school friends started a company over beers

Shontell: I want to get into all of that, and how the media industry has changed in your decade since you joined it. But first, let's go back to 2007, to those early days when you and your buddies from middle school decided to start a company. You'd never founded anything before, right?

Goldberg: Yep, and I'm going to take it back even further, to 2005, because we launched Bleacher in earnest in 2007, but the story begins in 2005, right when we graduated from college.

So, 2005: My cofounders and I had just graduated from college and we were all very above average. None of us were remarkable. None of us had gone to Ivy League schools. We had all applied to Ivy League schools; we did not get in.

None of us were remarkable. None of us had gone to Ivy League schools. We had all applied to Ivy League schools; we did not get in.

Back in 2005, if you wanted to go into business, broadly speaking, the game plan was simple. Go to a good college, and then you have two choices: investment banking, with Goldman Sachs being where you wanted to be, or Lehman Brothers, or management consulting, in which Mackenzie or Bain or BCG was the dream.

I started going down the path of management consulting. The plan was to get an MBA, and for most people like me or my cofounders, the first decade of your career — banking, consulting, business school, then back into banking and consulting — was really prescribed.

Shortly after college, we had this idea to start a "dot-com." That's what we said in those days. I wanted to launch a website, a dot-com, around sports. People thought this was so stupid. They basically said this was yesterday's dream. "This is so nostalgic of you to go think you can start a website in the year 2005." The dot-com disaster was four or five years gone and banking was so hot.

These same people seven years later, by the way, who graduated from Harvard Business School, were quitting their jobs at Goldman to go start a startup. By 2012, it wasn't too late to start a company but a lot more crowded.

Those few years after 9/11, and before Lehman Brothers collapsed, really were this dead period. There were no venture-capital firms throwing out money.

Shontell: That was the year after Facebook launched, so there was some stuff brewing. But you're right, it was kind of dead.

Goldberg: You know what's funny is, if you were to say 2005, 2006, what was the company that got people excited? You think it's Facebook and you think about the Google IPO. The one that actually got people excited was Digg.

In 2006, there was this picture of Kevin Rose on the cover of Business Week. What's memorable is Kevin Rose on the cover giving a thumbs-up and how this kid made $60 million in 18 months.

Really, for people starting companies in that time period, that was sort of the "Oh, my God." We knew that Facebook was going to be huge. We knew that was once in a decade. Lightning in a bottle.

We knew Google was the same thing a decade earlier, but the thing that was just like, "Hey, you can go do this" — regular guys can go launch a cool Web 2.0 idea — was definitely Digg, around 2005, 2006.

That's what really made us say to ourselves, "Oh, my God, we have this great idea, let's go get this off the ground. We have this business plan and this dream."

Shontell: I love that you had a business plan. That feels like a rookie Silicon Valley startup move.

Goldberg: It was sketched based on the business plans I had learned about. I had taken competitive strategy in college, a sort of pre-MBA course for what was supposed to be a very pre-MBA life. We had a four- or five-page business plan with competitive advantage and differentiation.

I give all the credit in the world to those who pivot, but Bleacher Report's game plan ... if you found that business plan from 2005, 2006, which we cannot find — my mom might have it, so I'll have to ask. But if you ever found it, you would look at Bleacher Report today in 2017 and say, "You know what? It's not identical but it's pretty damn close." The same thing for Bustle.

Our founding story is a lot like everyone else's. A group of guys got together with this cool idea. We wanted to go do it. We talked about it over beers, and 99.99% of the time people sober up the next day, forget about it, and then years later at a birthday or bachelor party they go, "Hey, remember that idea we had that we never did?" That was Bleacher Report, except we actually did it.

We talked about it over beers, and 99.99% of the time people sober up the next day, forget about it, and then years later go, 'Hey, remember that idea we had that we never did?' That was Bleacher Report, except we actually did it.

Shontell: You're a first-time founder. All of you stumble into media after this drinks meeting that you then sober up and decide to do. How are you welcomed into the startup community? You didn't go to Ivies, you have no experience, and VC's weren't really investing.

Goldberg: Back in San Francisco around 2007, 2008, it was a pretty small community. People remember it very romantically — "Oh, there weren't a lot of people, but every idea had a chance. You could be having drinks with the Airbnb guys and drinks with the Twitter guys." Some of that was true, but we weren't hanging out with them.

Between 2007 and 2011, you couldn't go raise money as a media company because no media company had ever been sold for anything valuable.

You had to say, "This is about tech." You always have to begin every VC pitch by saying, "Oh, we're not a media company. This isn't about advertising. This is about technology." Which was complete bulls---. But you know what? It got the job done, and you have to live one day at a time.

Technology is important to media. It still is, but it wasn't until about 2010 that we looked in the mirror and said, "Hey, wait a minute. This is a media company. We are a media company."

Then, when Huffington Post was purchased for hundreds of millions of dollars, we got to be a lot more out about it and say, "Hey, we are a media company. We're building this."

Shontell: You were four cofounders. How did you all split up the business, how did you start growing it, and when did you know that you had something on your hands?

Goldberg: It took years until we all had a "role." We were all critical.

People say to me, "Which cofounder was the most important?" I say to them: "Asking me which cofounder was the most important is as pointless as asking me, 'Would you rather live without a heart or lungs?'" You're dead either way. Without my cofounders, this wouldn't have happened.

We're all similar guys. We all did different things in the beginning. I was the head of tech. I got the website up. I managed the engineers, which, in hindsight, is preposterous, because I can't write a line of code. But I was the geekiest. I was, in a very superficial way, the geekiest.

Shontell: Did you have a "Star Wars" poster and they were like, "You are the geekiest"?

Goldberg: Exactly. It was literally like that. I played video games growing up. I was the first one to get an iPod and the first one to get even a pre-iPod MP3 player, so I was the geekiest. We eventually hired a real CTO, but I, for the first year and a half, got the website up and did so competently.

Ultimately, after a couple of years of doing the technology stuff, I started focusing on advertising. Again, we talk about "Why was I the one who became the advertising cofounder?"

Part of it was, I was the single one for a lot of that time, in 2010, 2011, 2012, so I could fly to New York every other weekend and babysit our very smart, very successful 20-something-year-old advertising team. Then we hired a big-name head of sales. I changed hats a lot, probably more than the other guys.

We all did different things throughout the history of the company, and I think that's one of the reasons why we've all been able to continue doing big things in media — we all saw all the parts. Media companies are complicated. They are among the most complex companies you can run.

Media companies are complicated. They are among the most complex companies you can run.

You've got a creative side, the sales side, and the technology piece, so you're thinking with all three sections of your brain.

Shontell: You got a lot of criticism as you were growing. People thought it was aggregation. They thought you had contributors you weren't paying well. So this was pretty new stuff, especially in sports. How did you deal with all the negativity, and how did you decide what to listen to and what not to?

Goldberg: First of all, we have very thick skin. You cannot be in media without having incredibly thick skin. That's just the rule. Don't go into banking if you can't work a lot of hours, don't go into medicine if you can't stand the sight of blood, and do not go into media if you do not have very thick skin.

Don't go into banking if you can't work a lot of hours, don't go into medicine if you can't stand the sight of blood, and do not go into media if you do not have very thick skin.

The fact that people found us in a distributed way — through message boards and search — versus going to http://ift.tt/xGokM3, really irked the establishment.

The term "distributed content" had not yet existed. I give BuzzFeed a lot of credit for putting terminology to some of these concepts, but Bleacher Report was doing it really early on and we got attacked relentlessly for it.

If you were to look at the game plan of what is digital media in the year 2017, no one gets more credit than us for advancing that game plan, making that game plan work. We're proud of it, but the attacks were relentless and in hindsight undeserved. I guess you can look back, and there's never such a thing as I told you so, but we feel good about it.

How Turner bought Bleacher Report for $200 million

Shontell: Let's talk about that "I told you so" moment. You ended up getting acquired for a very hefty sum, about $200 million. You were the second-largest media acquisition after Huffington Post at the time. How does an acquisition like that come about?

Goldberg: I want to make a point here because I think it's really salient now for young founders. Midway through our story, in late 2010, we hired a grown-up CEO, which really was the model until Mark Zuckerberg was such a genius.

His name was Brian Grey. He had run Yahoo Sports and Fox Sports and he lived in San Francisco, which was unusual for a media person. He became available and we said, "Hey, we need this guy to be our CEO because he's a grown-up" and our investors had been pressuring us. We didn't have a CEO. We had run it as a three-headed monster for years and years. We were in our mid-20s and people were starting to say to us, "Hey, this thing's really big. You've got 70 employees. You're making real money. You're selling to top brands. You guys should have a real grown-up CEO."

We were very mature about that. The reason I want to highlight this is because so many young founders feel it is just unthinkable. "How dare you make us hire a boss!"

Shontell: I think they see that Mark Zuckerberg never did that and he was fine.

Goldberg: And he's the model now, but guess what? Prior to that the model was Eric Schmidt and Google — Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and then the grown-up [Schmidt] who came in. Larry and Sergey were Ph.D.s from Stanford, they were in their 30s, and they still hired a grown-up CEO. They made billions of dollars and had nothing to regret.

Frankly, I think Mark Zuckerberg is the exception. Some of these companies should have grown-up CEOs. I think hiring one did help us both grow, and it helped us sell the company, because would a big corporation in New York, like Time Warner, have bought Bleacher Report from three guys in their 20s? Maybe, probably, but certainly not for sure. Brian Grey did make the company better. He brought a lot of experience, and was central to negotiating.

Shontell: But how did Turner find you guys? What was the first conversation? Wasn't it an eight-month process?

Goldberg: These negotiations take a long time and we had an investment banker, RBC Capital, on the deal.

Shontell: Were you trying to sell yourselves?

Goldberg: They had leaned in. We tried to run a process of getting others interested. There was interest, but it was very clear there was one buyer who frickin' wanted to own this thing. The banks did what they did. They got us in conversations with — I'm not going say who — but other big sports-media companies.

Shontell: Enough time has passed — you can say!

Goldberg: I'm not going to say anything definitive. Did ESPN kick the tires? Did CBS, NBC kick the tires? There was tire-kicking going on. Maybe now they're kicking themselves because they should have done the deal, though I don't think Disney has much to lose sleep over these days. They're doing terrific.

People kicked it around, but this was a case where there was one buyer who needed us. It was about five months of banter until we could get to a price.

We let the bankers and Brian Grey handle all of the negotiation on price. And look, you should have bankers on any M&A deal. People say don't. You absolutely should have a banker. It's not the first time they've negotiated.

I know that's the sexy part. For me, the sexy part was saying, "OK, this thing is going to sell in two or three months. This deal is probably going to happen. It makes sense. When it's done, I'm going to have money. I'm going to be 30 years old and I need to figure out what I'm doing with the rest of my life." Which is actually a scary position to be in.

Making a little bit of money doesn't mean that the next 60 years of your life are just sitting on a beach. That's not who I am, so I had to figure out, what the hell's my game plan here?

What do I do next, being 30 years old, having some money, and knowing that I'm not going to be hanging around Bleacher Report for the next 50 years?

Shontell: Why didn't you want to hang around?

Goldberg: I had one more thing left to do. I think you know when you have one more startup left in you. Bleacher Report was an amazing experience. The cofounder experience was critical. It wouldn't have happened without them.

But I wanted to go do my own show, and I had one market I wanted to try out. I wanted to test what I could do on my own. I think that's very natural after seven years with a band. You want to go solo.

I didn't want to go start five more media companies. I'd been saying pretty openly that I don't think I'm going to start another media company after this.

Celebrating in 'OMFG' Vegas style

Shontell: Before we go into that, you all sold the company, and you and your cofounders went to Vegas. Tell me about the trip.

Goldberg: Under no circumstances will I talk about the Vegas trip.

Shontell: Oh, come on! You were young and dumb then. It doesn't matter.

Goldberg: I cannot believe we did that.

Shontell: Why? That's what everyone should do when they sell, right?

Goldberg: No, it's not what you should do!

Shontell: Who all went to Vegas?

Goldberg: The whole company.

Shontell: The entire company, all of Bleacher Report?

Goldberg: The entire company.

Shontell: Did you pay for them all?

Goldberg: We did. The founders paid for it. We had sold the company. We had made money, and we said, "Let's each chip in like X-thousand dollars and fly the company to Vegas."

Shontell: How many people was it at that point?

Goldberg: At that point it was like 160 people, 170 people. The CEO, Brian Grey, very wisely didn't go. I think one of the fun things about having a CEO when you're in your 20s running a company is he can be the grown-up and he can look the other way. He was like, "I'm not going anywhere near this. You pay for it out of pocket. You do it on the weekend. This is not a Bleacher Report event."

It was so early after the sale that I think Turner hadn't really put their arms around us, so we had this very narrow window for the founders to pay out of pocket to do a noncompany event on the weekend to go to Vegas.

As we know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I would say that on a scale of 1 to 10 — like, OMFG — it's probably a 10. I don't know what an 11 would look like. I'm not going into it, except to say we all came back alive.

As we know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I would say on a scale of 1 to 10 — like OMFG — it's probably a 10.

Shontell: What does a 10 look like?

Goldberg: You want to know what a 10 looks like? It looks like all the things you think about in a rock-star moment. It helped build the team. It was not forgotten, and that sort of behavior never again happened, and will never happen again.

Shontell: There's not going to be some Bustle Cancun trip when you sell?

Goldberg: If we sell Bustle, and I hate to say it — and my team at Bustle is going to hear this podcast and say, "Well, wait a minute. Bleacher Report got to do a Vegas trip — why don't we?" — and I'm going to say, "You know what, because I was young then and I'm old now, and old, boring, stodgy Bryan in his mid-30s is not going to do a trip to Vegas because it's just not the right thing to do."

I'm beet red right now — thank God this is a podcast. Because you just can't do those sorts of things. Not in the year 2017, 2018, 2019, whatever it turns out to be.

Shontell: Not with social media there to capture it all.

Goldberg: Exactly. I mean, Twitter existed but things were different back then.

How to launch a second media company and scale it to 55 million readers

Shontell: OK, so old, stodgy Bryan has now founded Bustle. You bring 55 million readers to your site, which is pretty incredible, because now everything seems to be distributed. People are reading Facebook as their homepage rather than going to most homepages of publishers.

What have you learned from Bleacher to apply at Bustle, and how was this launch easier than the first?

Goldberg: Every company is tough and every day is tough in media. It's a lot easier the second time. The core structure, the core game plan of Bustle, has similarities with Bleacher Report, like distributed content.

I was scared when we started Bustle. Not just because I was doing it alone. Not just because there was a lot of pressure to raise all this money. But because sports is very easy to create a taxonomy, to know what you're going to write about.

For Bleacher, there are four or five mainstream sports and 30-something teams. You know you're going to cover football. You know you're going to cover baseball. You know you're going to write about a certain player. When going into this new world with Bustle, it wasn't so clearly painted for me. What was even tougher was I'm not in my demographic.

The only way I could think to do it was hire six or seven early editors who are very different from each other, coming from different publications, and listening a lot. Then ultimately bringing in writers and saying to the writers, what's important to you? What matters to you?

There were certain things we knew we were going to cover, like popular television. I knew we were going cover the news and an election. But there were whole worlds that hadn't occurred to me. Topics like body positivity, which is really big for us. And tattoos. It never occurred to me that tattoo inspiration was a big thing for teenage girls and young women, but it's huge for us.

Shontell: But you did have a plan, at least from a distribution standpoint, right? You knew how much traffic you could maybe get from Google versus Pinterest. How did you map that out?

Goldberg: Anyone who tells you they're getting most of their traffic from anything other than search or social, they're being dishonest or they have a very small audience. You can build a couple million loyal, type-in-URL, direct visitors. That's possible over years, but this is the distributed era, so search and social.

We're very fortunate in women's media that you can get Facebook traffic and you can get Pinterest traffic. Bleacher Report is never going to get Pinterest traffic. Twitter, in my opinion, has not been a great platform for audience building, really since its inception.

What's been a big challenge but very rewarding for Bustle versus Bleacher Report is evergreen and long-tail search traffic. This idea that you can write great content on Bustle and two years later it's still useful. Example: We might be the top result for how to mix curly hair and bangs.

There are some women with curly hair who would like to have bangs, and they'd like celebrity inspiration so they can get ideas of how to make it work. It had never occurred to me that a person with curly hair may not think that bangs fall properly on their forehead. So we create the best article ever on that topic and it's still useful one year later, two years later, three years later.

That is not the case in sports. Sports content has a shelf life of six days, at most. If it's Monday and you're making football predictions for Sunday, you will get six days of juice out of that. It's useless after. If you look at Bleacher Report's traffic, they get a lot of traffic but only a small percentage is to stories that were written years ago.

Shontell: Let's talk about your launch, because it was sort of infamous. I know you've talked about it a lot, but there was a PR debacle. You said, "I'm Bryan Goldberg. I'm going to start the first women's site ever," to which every other woman in media was like, "What the hell, Bryan?!" Talk about that.

Goldberg: Broadly speaking, in media, you do want to make noise. You do want to be noticed. You do want to be loud. You do want to be provocative. But you want to keep it under control and you don't want to piss people off. I don't believe that all attention, all press, is good press.

If everyone's yelling at you and throwing rocks at you, then you've gone too far. You look at the launch, basically I was very loud and I was a man being very loud.

I said, "Hey, this is going to be a feminist website. We're going to talk about fashion and beauty. We're also going to talk about what's going on in Syria, with no apologies about it."

The tone — I didn't know a lot of thought leaders in women's media at the time. I was an unfamiliar face, certainly the wrong face, so sort of this dude, this young, white male who's made money, talking about rocking the world and changing the world, and talking about women's media. It wasn't a great image and wasn't a great look.

In hindsight, I would've handled it differently and didn't really want to piss people off. It came from a very sincere place. I really was excited about going to market, raising all this money and launching a feminist publication. That excitement came from the right place, but it pissed everyone off.

My general advice is look, be loud, make a lot of noise. In media you have to be noticed. But there are different ways to do it. The great story, though, in the end is I'm now friends with a lot of the people who were my initial critics, so it was a great way to meet people. It's not how you should always meet people, but it's one way to meet people.

Shontell: One other thing that I thought was notable was you did get this money from the sale of Bleacher Report, and yet you decided to raise a big round for Bustle. Why not fund it yourself?

Goldberg: I put a lot of money into Bustle. I made a good amount of money on Bleacher Report, but it wasn't what you might picture. I owned a very small, single-digit percentage of the company when we sold it for $200 million.

Shontell: Well, there were four founders and you all raised tens of millions of dollars.

Goldberg: During recessions. I owned a very small slice by the end ... I owned a few percent of the company, we sold it, and so I made money, and I put several hundred thousand dollars of my money, and my family's as well, in to start these companies.

In my opinion, you do need to raise at least $20 to $30 million. Usually you can't raise that on day one, so you have to go raise $5 or $6 million, and then prove that you know what you're doing and get some traction. Then VCs will follow with a series B or series C check and get you to $20 to $30 million.

Media companies require scale. Bustle has "only" raised $37 million. That's nothing compared to our peers at BuzzFeed, Vox, or Refinery 29, who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars. So, I knew that when we raised $6-plus-million in the beginning that that was only the first step, and that we'd have to raise tens of millions more just to have a seat at the table.

Between myself and my family members, we put in close to $1 million. That's a lot of money for me, that's a lot of money for my family. We're not that rich here. It was a lot. It was a big bet, and a pretty gutsy bet. I think that's one of the reasons investors got excited is because I said, "Look, I'm putting a big percentage of my net worth into this company because I believe in it," and nothing will bring investors to the table faster than when you put your own money into something.

Frankly, if you don't it's a red flag.

'Magic the Gathering' can make you a good media CEO

Shontell: This is your first time as CEO. What have you learned?

Goldberg: First of all, it's a lot of fun. It's a different capacity than being the founder.

Being a media CEO is a very specific type of CEO. There are a lot of media CEOs who are unsuccessful and very few who are successful. If you want to know how to be a successful media CEO, I will tell you right now.

This framework works every time:

The job of a media CEO is to balance three power bases: your editorial power base, your sales and marketing power base, and your tech and operations power base. If you ever let one of those three gain hegemony over the other, your company will fail. Think of it as a three-legged stool. If one leg gets too long, you will fall off the stool and you will crack your head open.

If you look at most digital-media companies, the CEO came out of one of those three camps. In some media companies it was founded by a techie person and they think that data and AB testing and headline manipulation is the key to success, and they want to see the data, data, data. The editors are saying, "You know, this isn't just about data." The sales team's saying, "Hey, there's a lot of art and science to this."

I've seen a lot of media companies that are too techie and they fail for that reason.

Shontell: I think you need to have a creative person at the helm and someone who's analytical.

Goldberg: Exactly. And look, I love to write. I'm not a creative type; I don't think anyone looks at me and goes, "Oh, Bryan's an artist," but I do love to write. The one thing I know I will do one day long down the road is I'm going to be a writer again, because I love it.

But I'm also an economics major. I love data. I'm very business-oriented. I'm very comfortable in financial conversations, but I'm also very at home with editors, talking about writing, editorial, and like I said, there's a geek part of me.

For example, play "Magic the Gathering." Every month at Bustle I host "Magic the Gathering" night —

Shontell: Wait, what's that?

Goldberg: You don't know what "Magic the Gathering" is?

Shontell: No.

Goldberg: If there were a studio audience they'd all be laughing, like, "You don't know what 'Magic the Gathering' is?" It is ostensibly the nerdiest thing. It's like a wizardry card game where you have ogres and goblins and vampires and they're battling it out.

Shontell: You play this at Bustle?

Goldberg: I play it at my house and all Bustlers are invited to come play it with me. It's like the nerdiest thing ever. It's so nerdy that I've played it all my life, but when I was in high school I had to stop playing it because I was just embarrassed, because I was a high-schooler and I cared what people thought.

I still play the game now. I'm very open about it, but truly, it's like the geekiest thing ever, and I love it and I'm proud of it. I go to tournaments. I don't win — I'm not good at it. To be good at this game you've got to play it more than I play it. This is a whole separate conversation, but I do nerdy, geeky things, and I'm not afraid to go party at a club until five in the morning and then the next day over lunch play "Magic the Gathering." I'd like to think I'm multitasking.

Shontell: You're at clubs till 5? You told me that it's old, stodgy Bryan now.

Goldberg: Well, yes, but old, stodgy Bryan in New York City. That's different than being old, stodgy Bryan in San Francisco, where one goes to bed at 11 and wakes up and hikes.

On the media industry

Shontell: I will save you from yourself and switch the topic. It's important to cover what the media industry is doing right now. You've had 10 years of looking at it and being deep in the weeds, and you're an ad guy at heart. So what trends are you seeing in advertising right now?

It seems like everyone was thinking, when BuzzFeed was raising $200 million and Vox was raising $200 million, that TV dollars were open to them, but now it seems like all of the ad money that's flowing to digital is really going to Google and Facebook, and publishers aren't getting the cuts that they had thought about. What are you seeing?

Goldberg: So I'm going to give you a couple of high-level theses that I believe are correct and I have high conviction about. Conviction No. 1 is, dollars are not leaving TV anytime soon. The dollars are just too big to move. You can't pull deals that measure in the hundreds of millions of dollars out of TV so quickly. Media takes time, because we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in play here, and those are very cumbersome amounts to move around. The dollars are going to stay in TV a long time.

It's still king. It's an aging king, but it's still king. Thesis No. 2: Yes, Google and Facebook are going to get a lot of the digital dollars. Maybe it's half, maybe it's two-thirds, maybe it's three-quarters. But that duopoly — it's called a duopoly, but be careful using the term duopoly, because there are a lot of very powerful interests who have a lot reason to make sure that Google and Facebook don't get a true duopoly.

If you go talk to the CMOs who are spending billions of dollars, they have a true, strategic, existential threat in the idea of a duopoly.

If you are a major CPG company, or a major auto company, and you let your media supplier be only two companies, you are putting yourself in an extremely dangerous position. So the marketing people, who are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of marketing and who are going to spend $80, $90, $100 billion on digital spend in the future, they realize that Google and Facebook are terrific avenues for advertising, and they are two of the most efficient, data-driven, outstanding places to spend your marketing money, no doubt about it. But they're not going to let them get a complete hegemony because that would be a true danger.

Then they would be at risk of losing pricing control, so Facebook and Google are going to get a lot of money, but the traditional media companies, the publishers, are still going to have many billions of dollars at play. What I think we're going to have to see is more consolidation. I don't think that your buddy's blog is going to get a piece of that 30 billion. If Google and Facebook are not getting $30 billion of those digital ad dollars, your friend's blog with 300,000 readers, they're not going to make a play.

You look at telecom, and there are only two dominant players. You look at a lot of industries, you know, airlines, there are only three players right now. Do I think there will be a day, three, four years from now, where there are literally like three media companies, perhaps subsidiaries of giant telcos? Probably, and everything's going to roll through it, and they will have power.

Shontell: So if you're a media company right now, what do you do before that three- to four-year period when all the consolidation happens? How do you keep surviving?

Goldberg: You just keep growing and you keep doing your thing. You just keep getting better. As long as the big media companies, the traditional players, are not getting better at digital — and they're not. In some cases they're doing absolutely nothing as long as they're not improving ... The Bustles and the Voxes and the BuzzFeeds, we're getting much better at what we do. Bustle today versus a year ago, you can't even compare.

I think some of the others would say the same thing. We're all getting much better at what we do. We're all getting, in the eyes of big players, more legitimate. We're growing our revenues. Think about how much flak BuzzFeed has taken on their revenue growth — and their revenue growth is really great. People are like, "Oh, my God, they didn't triple revenue this year from $130 million to $400 million?" You can't triple revenue every year.

Bustle tripled revenue last year. We tripled revenue. I'm telling you, we're not tripling revenue every year for the next three years.

Shontell: You did $30 million last year?

Goldberg: We did close to $10 million the year before and we did close to $30 million last year. It's almost all direct sales.

Shontell: That's unusual because a lot of people are trying subscriptions, which I haven't seen you try. Everyone's trying to dive into video, which you guys aren't doing much of.

Goldberg: I should probably be talking about it more, because I think part of video is how much do you talk about it. What I will say is yes, direct ad sales is still the model, so when I hear Medium say, "We're going to figure something else out," I'm like, give me a break, Medium. I'm not a fan of that particular company's moves and the announcement that Evan Williams made, because he basically retreated from advertising and said, "This is BS." No, advertising is a $200 billion industry — you just gotta be good at it and you gotta offer something to your clients and offer something to your readers.

Subscription can make you money. There are, like, three publishers who I think can make real money: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker, and maybe a couple others here and there — Vogue. Even for them advertising is critical. If New York Times has a terrible year in advertising, it's really going to hurt them.

Advertising's a great industry. Anyone who's like, "Oh, stay away from advertising." That's complete BS. That's just people who don't know what they're talking about, frankly. It's a huge market. Companies like Vox or BuzzFeed should be looking to grow their revenue significantly. No, we're not going triple it every year, that's not reasonable, but it will grow significantly. It will grow linearly.

Shontell: If a founder came up to you and they were like, "Bryan, I want to start a media company right now." Would you recommend it?

Goldberg: It's hard to start now. It's hard to start now because of scale. That's the biggest impediment. If you didn't start a few years ago, you're not at scale today; if you're not at scale today, it's harder to be in some of these advertising conversations, because at Bustle we can go to an advertiser and say, "Here's what a million-dollar deal with Bustle looks like." If you're an advertiser, a CPG advertiser, you don't want to write $50,000 advertising checks.

Shontell: How do you get scale?

Goldberg: You need a lot of money up front.

Shontell: Because you're buying traffic?

Goldberg: No, well, you're buying a lot of salaries. You're hiring a lot of people. I was just walking around Business Insider's newsroom and — I don't know — it looked like there were a hundred people in the room. You draw big audiences; you do have to create a lot of content. No one wants to admit you have to create a lot of content, but look, how much content does Time Inc. put out every day? Hundreds of stories a day. It's across dozens of properties, but Time Inc., in their giant office downtown, is doing hundreds of stories a day.

You need scale, and the scale begins with, like, the scale of a newsroom with 50, 60, 100 people in it, or more. A thousand people, in the case of The Journal and The New York Times. If you're going to go higher, a hundred employees, you need millions and millions of dollars, because you're going to burn a lot of cash, and I burned a lot of cash in the beginning of Bustle. Now we're making good money, but when I was burning a lot of cash in the beginning my investors were scared.

They felt like we were driving full speed toward a cliff. We burned an eight-figure amount of money in 2015, and we burned very little and much less in 2016. We're not going to burn anything in 2017, hoping to have a good profit line, but those first years where you burn cash before you can recover and grow your sales, those are painful years. That's a scary PNL.

If you're a CEO and you've got to go to investors and say, "Guess what! We're going to burn $12 million next year, but I promise you revenue is coming later" — that's a scary statement to make. And I'm very lucky. I have very supportive investors who understand media, and so they were with me on the ride, and we're driving 80 miles an hour toward a cliff, and they're totally cool with it and get a little nervous, but I'm like, "Don't worry. The revenue is going to come in a year."

You gotta have people that do that, and unfortunately if you're a first-time founder in media, knowing how to do that, knowing how to drive 80 miles an hour toward a cliff, when to throw on the brakes, when to speed up, how to jump over that cliff and land on the other side — very hard to do if you haven't done it before. You'll probably screw it up.

That's the hesitation for young founders going into media. I hate to be the guy who's like, "Oh, I got in the door but now it's closed," but it is a different world, because when I and my cofounders started in 2005, it was a new world and there was no one to say, "I've done this before." It really was sort of fresh powder. It's not anymore, and so I do mentor and invest and support a lot of young, really talented media founders, and I give them all this important advice I can give them, and some of them are going to make it.

Shontell: OK, so there is some positivity out there, but it's getting harder. That's the bottom line.

Goldberg: It's getting harder. There'll be fewer winners, but the ones who win are going to win big. I mean, there are not a lot of venture-backed sectors where there are going to be many, many multibillion-dollar exits.

Shontell: You think that's the case here in media?

Goldberg: Yes, yes. They are perfect growth-stage investments. There's a reason why firms like Fidelity have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into these media bets. It's because they're going to make a great return, but they're only pouring money into a select few because there are going to be a half-dozen winners. There are not going to be 30 or 40 winners. But there will be multibillion-dollar exits.

On torturing friends with weightlifting videos

Shontell: How much can you lift these days? I see your Facebook and Instagram videos all the time with you and your trainer.

Goldberg: People say to me, "Don't write editorial, don't write politics on Facebook, because no one wants to hear what you have to say." So it's like, great, you know what? You'll get weightlifting videos.

Shontell: Yes, you have a lot of them.

Goldberg: The text messages I get from my closest friends, the people I should be listening to, say, "Bryan, don't you ever upload another weightlifting video or I will unfollow you and never talk to you again."

I'm like, "Well, guess what! That is the one thing you can do to make me upload more weightlifting videos!"

At some point last year I said, I want to be able to bench press a lot. There's no particular reason; I just want to be able to do it, so I've been working out three times a week.

For anyone who's a sports fan, if you're a fan of the NFL and how things work in the NFL, it's not about how much you can bench press; it's how many repetitions of 225 pounds you can do. You know what the combine is, the NFL combine, where the college players kind of show off their strength and ability to the pros? The great test in the NFL combine is, how many times can you lift 225 pounds? In a bench press, that's two plates on each side of the bell.

I think the record in the NFL is like 30-something. If you can do 10, even in the NFL at certain positions, 10 means you're in the conversation. I can almost do 10. I will never get to 20. I will probably never get to 15, but my goal before I'm done is to be able to do 14 repetitions of 225.

If I can do it, it will be filmed. It will be streamed on Facebook Live. You can all watch it.

Shontell: Just what I want to see.

Goldberg: Every few weeks I really go for it and I'm like, "This is going to be the day." I set up the little Facebook Live and I try to do it, and that's when I always fail. And once I can do 14 reps of 225 you will never see it again. Then I'll gain all the weight back.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: HENRY BLODGET: This is where digital media is headed next

#Tech Insider #Arab #Entrepreneurship #sillicon alley insider

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT STARTUPS

Why not? It could be the reason they don't have any more, and yet they have harder problems to solve, but I think we will have to work at things you don't like to get you to the point here, vice versa. But in practice it would not matter much where I put this threshold, because few probabilities end up in the middle of raising a round, the round is the first round of real VC funding; it usually happens in the first 5 minutes. When you look at how famous startups got started, a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people have set for them. The board will have ultimate power, which means a you don't have any. Bayesian filters, it would be more convenient for all involved if the Summer Founders didn't learn this on our dime—if they could skip the Artix phase and go right on to make something customers wanted. All they care about is what happens in the first year. We decided we ought to be able to draw like Leonardo, you'd find most would say something like Oh, I can't draw.

Most data structures exist because of speed. Semantically, strings are more or less united was divided into haves and have-nots. Maybe what you'd end up with wouldn't even be a spreadsheet. Founders are often surprised how quickly investors seem to know when they started exactly what they were trying to write systems software on multi-cpu computers. But there will be other equally broken-seeming ideas in the writing than will fit in the watertight compartments you set up. Is there some test you can use something like continuation-passing style to get the effect of first class functions. Eventually something would come up that required me to use it. This is no accident. The non-gullible recipients are merely collateral damage. We may be able to sell some of their own premises, however crappy, than the offices of their investors. Fair or not, investors do it if you let them.

I thought that I could keep up current rates of spam filtering, I would consider this problem solved. And it's particularly dangerous that the 5 paragraph essay is really a list of n things is so relaxing. But in that case I really was trying to make Web sites for art galleries. Not necessarily. Ten years ago VCs used to insist that founders step down as CEO and hand the job over to a business guy they supplied. When the tests are narrow and predictable, you get cram schools on the classic model, like those that made up the language itself. But he insisted it was good, so I read it, let alone negotiate the terms, so the aircraft oscillates about the desired configuration instead of approaching it asymptotically. If the posts on a site are characteristically of this type are only a few decades old, and rapidly evolving. We started Viaweb with $10,000 in seed money from our friend Julian, but he was sufficiently rich that it's hard to come up with new ideas is practically virgin territory. Somehow the idea of the selfish gene. It's like importing something from Wisconsin to Michigan. I usually advise them to take the leap.

They'll just have become a different, more conservative, type of investment. You can find groups near you, but angels, like VCs, will pay more attention to deals recommended by someone they respect. Once we actually took the plunge into e-commerce, it turned out to be surprisingly easy to compete. 2% of the fund back to the institutional investors who supplied it, because his email was such a perfect example of this view: 80% of MIT spinoffs succeed provided they have at least one and generally two steps before VC funding. The user doesn't know what it means. The Cro-Magnons would have been in much better shape. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will stop working, and the distraction of having to deal with clients could be enough to make money, or morph it into any number of other kinds of work equally, but one is that people will assume, correctly or not, investors do it if you let them.

Though the nature of future discoveries is hard to measure in large organizations, and the distraction of having to deal with clients could be enough to make money. VCs as sources of money. But I don't think there was a change in the world just switched them from bad to good. As a result, so it is unfair to delay. Where you go to college still matters, but not all jobs offer internships, and those that do don't teach you much more about the work than being a batboy teaches you about playing baseball. When you see these ideas laid out like that, it's going to be two-faced, you have more freedom of choice. People a hundred years, it seems less real. But all it would have.

No one actually proposed implementing numbers as lists in practice. 99 float/min 1/b nbad where word is the token whose probability we're calculating, good and bad. But measured in total market cap, the build-stuff-for-yourself model might be more fruitful. Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. Our experience was unusual; vesting is the norm for amounts that size. It does not seem to have looked far for ideas. This was particularly true in consulting, law, and finance, where it led to the phenomenon known in the Valley. There was a lot more people investing tens or hundreds of thousands than millions. O-data. That is, no matter when you're talking, parallel computation seems to be merging with the descendants of Algol. Yahoo is too. Nonhackers don't often realize this, but one is that people were doing it before, just haphazardly on a smaller scale.

VCs'. The advantage of the statistical approach for so long the large organizations in a market can come close. So you'll break even if you trade half your company for something that more than doubles the company's average outcome, you're net ahead. The initial idea is that, to those people, it can be too attractive. Someone riding a Segway looks like a more sophisticated type of essay. When one person is in charge he can take risks that a committee would never agree on. If you get inspired by some project, it can be a professor, or make a lot more people investing tens or hundreds of thousands than millions. But if you make something dramatically cheaper you have to give a talk and I haven't started it a few days beforehand, I'll sometimes play it safe and make the talk a list of n things is the easiest essay form, it should be better not just for evaluating new ideas but also for having them. Strings only exist for efficiency. They're more likely to arrive at it. I think founders will increasingly be de facto series B rounds. In a list of n things similarly limits the damage that can be learned.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #practice #ironies #thousands #CEO

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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WHAT MADE LISP IS SO GREAT PROGRAMMERS IN

I watched it happen to Reddit. Which means that what they're taught in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature. Meaning that unpleasant work pays.1 Or we can improve it, which probably doesn't help. You have to do whatever seems best at each point. Both of which are false. And because Internet startups have become so cheap to run a startup.

However, all the pressure is in the direction of over-engineering.2 The only thing worth talking about first is the problem you're trying to do in an essay about color or baseball. Can you cultivate these qualities?3 Second order issues like competitors or resumes should be single slides you go through quickly at the end. Better to release something that could be taught better by itself. And if we, who were 29 and 30 at the time, but human life is fairly miraculous.4 They don't even know about the stuff they've invested in. That compat disc player wasn't a typo, guys.5 If it's hard to tell good hackers when you meet them. If all you want to avoid being surprised, the next thought after that should be: and the reason I can't believe it will be either a view of the New York skyline shot from a discreet distance, or a real estate developer building a block of shoddy condos in a month.6 Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the bills.7 Customers may drop off individually if they can no longer afford you, but you're not going to go out of your control i.

That may be what writing things down leaves in your head: don't get your hopes up.8 The professors will establish scholarly journals and publish one another's papers.9 Users love a site that's constantly improving.10 The presentations on Rehearsal Day are often pretty rough. Running a startup is to focus on that problem. To someone in school now, that may seem an odd question to ask. There is an irrational fear that no one could tell. I got back I didn't discard so much as by good taste and attention to detail. So far, anyway.

We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. Google and ITA, which are among the most pleasing of foods, were all originally intended as methods of preservation. People from other rich countries can scarcely imagine the squalor of the man-made things in them, it would seem an inspired metaphor. Nerds are unpopular because the other girls would make fun of it, we were ready to.11 It might seem that the answer is probably: some of each. Even Google probably doesn't think that.12 One group got an exploding term-sheet from some VCs.13

Why did no one propose a new scheme for micropayments? It will be argued that it is a good time to start a startup to starting one, and may never have one. Essays should aim for maximum surprise. Everyone said how determined and resilient you must be, but going through it made me realize that the determination required was still understated.14 Even Google probably doesn't think that.15 I took to refer to web-based database. For example, why should there be any limit to the number of people who can draw like drawing, and have them do most of the applicants don't seem to mind a minimal version 1, if there's more coming soon. You can't hire that kind of talent.

Whereas we felt pretty sure that we could hold our own in the slightly less competitive business of generating Web sites for people who did. It's only temporary, and if our experience this summer is any guide, this will be a good founder. It works.16 Most hacker-founders would like to spend all that money to get software written. If you lack commitment, it will be that bad. It doesn't do justice to the situation to describe it is all the data we have so far. It's a far more intense relationship than you usually see between coworkers—partly because there was a Mac SE. All these guys starting startups now are going to be an instant success, like YouTube or Facebook. Surprises make us laugh, and surprises are what one wants to deliver.17 Those helped get it started, but now that the web mattered again. If you can claim that the median visitor generates 12 page views, that's great. Technical tweaks may also help.

Notes

Or a phone, and no one is going to call all our lies lies.

Bankers continued to live a certain city because of that generation had been bred to look you over. Unless we mass produce social customs.

One sign of the auction. But their founders, like the application of math to real problems, but a blockhead ever wrote except for that might be a source of difficulty here is one of them. A knowledge of human nature, might come from all over the super-angels will snap up stars that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

If idea clashes became common enough, a VC who read this to realize that. It's hard to say about these: I should add that we're not professional negotiators, and they hope this will be coordinating efforts among partners. But increasingly what builders do is not writing the agreement, but I wouldn't bet on it. Without visual cues e.

Which means if the similarity extended to returns. These range from make-believe, and when you graduate, regardless of the main effect of low salaries as the investment community will tend to damp this effect, however, is he going to do certain kinds of startups have exits at all. Even the cheap kinds of content. Which means it's all the other direction.

One valuable thing about startup school to potential speakers. 9999 and.

For example, probably did more drugs in his early twenties. Org Worrying that Y Combinator is we can't believe anyone would think twice before crossing him. The few people have for a startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work the same thing twice.

The real decline seems to have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because a great thing in itself deserving. Learning for Text Categorization. If they're on boards of directors they're probably a real partner. See, we could just expand into casinos than software, we don't have to do it well enough to incorporate a prediction of quality in the US since the war had been climbing in through the window for years while they tried to shift the military leftward.

But when you lose that protection, e. Something similar happens with suburbs. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, both your lawyers should be designed to live in a place where few succeed is hardly free. Some are merely ugly ducklings in the computer world recognize who that is allowing economic inequality start to leave.

And maybe we should be working on your product, just as you can see how much of a company they'd pay a lot about some of them consistently make money for depends on them, just the kind that prevents you from starving. If you have to do business with any firm employing anyone who has overheard conversations about sports in a world with antibiotics or air travel or an acquisition for more than you otherwise would have met 30 people he meets at parties he's a real partner. The cause may have to do better.

To talk to corp dev is to protect themselves. Think it's too obvious to us that we don't have the balls to ask permission to go the bathroom, and the opinion of the court.

No one writing a dictionary to pick the former, and should in some ways First Round Capital is closer to a company's culture.

In A Plan for Spam I used a recent Business Week, 31 Jan 2005. Maybe markets will eventually get comfortable with potential earnings.

For example, probably did more drugs in his early twenties. We didn't know ourselves which VC firms regularly cold email. Presumably it's lower now because of the marks of a smooth one.

The first big company CEOs were J.

Programming languages should be your compass.

Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. They shut down in the latter.

Thanks to Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, Ariel Poler, and Kevin Hale for their feedback on these thoughts.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 8 years

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STARTUPS AND ENGINEERS

At first there's a list of the most common lie they're told. When you're operating on the Daddy Model. But if you can't sell content? Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. But when Verisign sends me email offering a FREE Guide to Building My E-Commerce Web Site, that's spam. There's nothing more valuable than a technical advantage your competitors don't get it. If valuations change depending on the current fashion. What bites them the second time is a confluence of three forces: The company is spending more now than it did in the first place; if we could handle the detail, we could all probably move on to the next sentence you'll actually explain what you've made more effectively than any verbal description. When you first read history, it's just as well if you do raise a huge amount of money, you have to have practical applications.

Works for a big company and their own startup they seem to have rooted themselves in Tampa on 118k, but they're not entirely orthogonal. The company issues 200, 000 a year at a big company? You can't say precisely what a good hacker. Not necessarily a company that made programmers wear suits would have something deeply wrong with it. A McDonald's franchise is controlled by Sun. So let's be clear what reducing economic inequality means eliminating startups. He tried to make each link unbreakable. Hacking is something you learn best by doing it, and we can't be in a town that gets praised for being solid or representing traditional values may be a way to do that? They don't need that, but history suggests it's dangerous to guess what the eventual equity round valuation might be. There were two types of investors vary from five thousand dollars to the market value of the work done by small groups. So instead of entrusting the future of hardware, users would follow.

A cluttered room saps one's spirits. Work for us, the premise was, and perhaps be discouraged from investing in the companies that made them work for the big company will get wrong if they try to understand a problem space well enough that they don't realize how incompetent they are. Could a trend based on them be that powerful? You can take out the whole point of technology. Founders arriving at Y Combinator talked about a company that grows fast. The number one thing you want in your language may be related to how you express it the way you can walk around it the way you might in a couple years ago when people were attacking us for not funding more female founders than exist, they all thought. E.

So as a rule of thumb for choosing friends. This is the lowest form of these is to disagree with the author's tone. For the same reason we're bad at what we're bad at what we're bad at. But most err on the side of conservatism is still erring. What they didn't realize was that it could be because you're living in the future, but just to make the byte code an official part of the training of engineers. I can't draw. And that's just so far. What we know of their predecessors comes from fragments and references in later works; their doctrines could be described as speculative cosmology that occasionally strays into analysis. In the best case, this consultingish work may not be determined enough to make a company successful. But most VCs are.

Find one and launch it clearly but apparently casually in your talk, preferably near the beginning. The people who want you to stop bickering. So being hard to sell. We never had enough bugs at any one time than we could say as we were designed to be changeable. They'd been thrown off balance from the start. Chance meetings let your acquaintance drift in the same way that living in the future should not depend much on how you deal with html. Fashions and flourishes get knocked aside by the difficult business of solving the problem at all. There's no way to get a good grade. But really the two cases are not as bad as they sound.

A crowded market is actually a good sign when your answer resembles nature's. If these guys had thought they were going to be Make something people want. And the way most fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through brand, and our applicants were people who'd read my essays. Who can say which of two proofs was better. And someone who's being whisked along while seeming to do no work—someone in a sedan chair, for example. If you want to understand economic inequality—and more importantly, the founder who handles fundraising should make a conscious effort to do this, I would be learning what was really what. What's so great about Lisp? Don't worry if a project doesn't seem to be dead, were like VC firms except that they took a much bigger role in the startups they funded.

So the lower we can get a job. He told me that he would want to underestimate the power of investors as a whole must be giving people something they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the same situation, and if you're not. It's more important to grow fast. So maybe I'll try not bringing books on some future trip. Google survived to become a duty rather than a weekend. The degree to which people help one another in more subtle ways we mislead kids. An essay is supposed to be about technology and design. For example, suppose you have to be just one valuation.

There are times in most of the other way. There are signs that this is concealed, because what other people thought of it on the spur of the moment, there is no limit to the number of startups per capita varies by orders of magnitude more. And they think of companies like Apple or Google have offices there, but I doubt it. One YC startup negotiated terms for a tiny round with an angel, and moreover, a quick 10x return. But if you're thinking about turning in some new field they don't understand—tends to make investors very skittish. You have to find the most common proposal to be for multiplayer games. Fairchild Semiconductor, the original Silicon Valley startup, weren't even trying to start a company. And yet my plan to study philosophy remained intact. For example, in the case of contemporary authors. You don't need to say any more than there is a natural fit between smallness and solving hard problems, but deciding what problems to solve. Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves.

Notes

It shouldn't be that some groups in America. If you have is so hard on Google.

If the response doesn't come back. Forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups. But having more of the most fearsome provisions in VC deal terms have to admit there's no lower bound to its precision. They're an administrative convenience.

One YC founder told me about several valuable sources. A few startups get started in Mississippi.

One of the paths people take through life, the government. I make the people they want impressive growth numbers. A related problem that I see a lot of detail.

The empirical evidence suggests that if there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs, and others, and don't want to see the old car they had to bounce back.

There are aspects of startups is very high, they don't yet have any of his professors did in salary. Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation implying that lies believed for a long time by sufficiently large numbers of users, at least seem to be doomed. Which helps explain why there are few who can predict instead of admitting frankly that it's up to two of the first language to embody the principle that declarations except those of dynamic variables were merely optimization advice, and one VC. Moving large amounts at some of the anti-dilution, which handled orders.

Some VCs will offer you an artificially low valuation, that they violate current startup fashions. Now the misunderstood artist is a new business designed for scale.

Cell phone handset makers are satisfied to sell hardware without trying to describe what's happening till they also commit to them this way probably should. You'd think they'd have something more recent.

9999 and. Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for stopping spam.

The greatest damage that photography has done to painting may be even larger than the valuation turns out only to the point where it was true that the applicant pool gets partitioned by quality rather than for any particular truths you'll learn.

Scheme: define foo n n _ Arc: def foo n op incf n _ Erann Gat's sad tale about industry best practice at JPL inspired me to address this generally misapplied phrase. But a company tuned to exploit it. I couldn't believe it or not, under current US law, writing in 1975. As a friend with small children pointed out by Mitch Kapor, is deliberately intended to be sharply differentiated.

Note: An earlier version of this essay will say I'm clueless or even being a doctor. Technology has always been accelerating. They don't know how to allocate research funding moderately well, since human vision is the unpromising-seeming startups are simply the embodiment of some power shift due to fixing old bugs, and anyone doing due diligence for an investor or acquirer will assume the worst.

If you want to sell, or income as measured in what it would certainly be less than the long tail for other kinds of work have different time quanta. 8%, Linux 11. Founders at Work. Instead of laboriously adding together the numbers like the stuff one used to do better, for the ad sales department.

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