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Shifty Pony posted:It was initially coined to refer to how venture capitalists were chasing after the startup company which would be worth a lot of money. Because there are thousands of startups that flame out or just end up being mildly successful niche businesses finding and investing in the company that was the one to actually hit $1B in valuation was a near mythical event and was compared to catching a unicorn. The term "unicorn" just stuck stuck. Term was coined in 2013 and is now obsolete http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/ I still think Theranos will be the first dead one. They're more in breach of regulations than anyone else, including Zenefits (at least the now-former CEO had the stones to admit his massive cockup, though he probably didn't get a choice).
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Feb 9, 2016 04:54
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Speaking of startups and compliance failures, how about Zenefits! http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/02/zenefits-scandal-spreads-regulators-hr-tech.html quote:The legal challenges confronting San Francisco digital HR giant Zenefits are rippling across the nation, with insurance departments in several states investigating compliance issues at the startup. One of the last things you want to do is sell insurance without a license.
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Feb 11, 2016 17:39
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shrike82 posted:lol the same publication just named the ex-CEO its executive of the year in December It gets better! http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/02/zenefits-jet-com-parker-conrad-compliance-scandal.html quote:Online shopping startup Jet.com ended its relationship with Zenefits last week, during a benefits renewal period. Jet has more than 1,000 employees and was the company's biggest client, besides Zenefits itself. They couldn't scale and lost their biggest customer. A shameful unicorn.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:04
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Arsenic Lupin posted:and finally It's less about abandoning growth and more about abandoning attempts to be Facebook. Regardless, I think Google will end up buying it before too long for a bag of nickels.
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Feb 12, 2016 21:58
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Aramis posted:I got an email today from LinkedIn with the title "Your expertise is requested". I knew the odds of it being an actual consultation request were pretty abysmal, but I wasn't anything THAT bad: That's actually garden-variety user research. They're trying to get directed feedback from actual users instead of dropping money for dime-a-dozen responses from poor people scrounging for scraps on UX survey sites.
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Feb 17, 2016 06:10
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Yelp / Eat24 worker fired for posting on the internet about literally starving to death while working for food company. You left out this part: quote:I left college, having majored in English literature, with a dream to work in media This is a person that makes bad life choices. That is not the Yelp CEO's fault.
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Feb 21, 2016 21:38
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DrNutt posted:She is partially responsible for her situation, but I feel like 46% of Americans probably shouldn't be making poverty wages and that is a larger problem worthy of more blame than individuals who have trouble budgeting. Agree, but posting on medium certainly won't fix that for anyone (speaking of bad life choices, getting yourself fired from the job you clearly need by publicly complaining about it is pretty high up there). California is a pretty pro-union state, maybe she should have given organizing a shot instead. If nothing else, she'd still have a job.
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Feb 21, 2016 21:43
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Dangit Ronpaul posted:in this context it refers to "sharing economy" type jobs like uber/lyft where you're for all intents and purposes an employee of the company but you get 1099'd so the company can dump off all of its tax and insurance liability on you, as opposed to legit consulting (i.e. what you're doing) It's almost as if 1960s era labor law is out of date and needs to be updated to reflect 21st century realities.
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Feb 23, 2016 05:56
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Yahoo's history is a comedy of unforced errors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Yahoo! Yahoo search ads are dirt cheap and are helping me hit my numbers, so there's that, though the platform is vastly under-developed compared to AdWords. I used to use their weather app but they ruined that. Microsoft should buy it for a bag of nickels. If Mayer does take it private, she's just going to Joker all that investor cash.
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Feb 26, 2016 11:28
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Twitter is offering valued employees $50k to $200K to stay rather than accepting a job elsewhere. This is also a sinking-ship sign, because it means they're also having trouble hiring. Actually, even if you're able to hire, you can only handle so much turnover without operational paralysis, especially in departments like engineering that require a lot of domain knowledge for optimal productivity. Retention of key veteran employees (as well as accurate identification of who is key and who is surplus, management often fails at this) is crucial to pulling off a turnaround plan. The $ amount isn't even that startling when you consider the kind of hiring bonuses that get thrown around for the right skillsets because those people have so many options. But there's a fine line between pulling off the turnaround and crashing into the ground. Also, productive workers HATE "sit there and jerk off" jobs because there's no challenge, you learn nothing, and don't grow. I've had stints where I could get away with putting in 4/hr days but pick up extra projects to stay busy/learn/gain skills.
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Mar 11, 2016 18:52
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Arsenic Lupin posted:There's the problem golden handcuffs are intended to solve (see above) and then there's the as-built meaning. When you're at a company that does this, it signals that the smart people are fleeing, and you should too. Taking the money ties you to a sinking ship. Unless you have personal reasons for staying, such as not wanting to relocate or not wanting to switch jobs in the near term, it's wiser to leave before you're pushed or become unhirable. Agree. Taking the money is basically a calculated risk that the turnaround will work (esp if you personally can score a huge win in the process to build your career on) - or that you'll be able to get in time anyway, depending on how the contract is structured. Also this: foobardog posted:Basically, if I'm doing a job and I can't do anything but sit around and surf the Internet, I don't want that job because I'd rather surf the Internet at home where I can look at porn and poo poo and take naps, and don't have to drive to work.
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Mar 12, 2016 00:32
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mitztronic posted:Pebble laid off 25% yesterday(ish?), I'm trying to keep a list of companies that have been scaling back on some level, some via news announcements and some through my network: The fintech space is going to be rapidly adding notches to this belt. I'm at one of the lending startups and we laid off ~20% a month ago because the burn rate was too drat high but uh we're doomed and I'm looking for a way out. Much of the space is expanding deeper into subprime, and we all know how heavy exposure to that plays out.
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Mar 25, 2016 21:44
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Discendo Vox posted:Anyone have a clear idea of the status of Box? I want to get my stuff out before it collapses. I wouldn't worry too much about that (you should always have local copies anyway), one of the majors will buy the corpse (and all your data) for a bag of nickels.
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Mar 25, 2016 22:56
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Shifty Pony posted:What exactly is fintech? I've read so much of the yospos bitcoin thread that seeing "disrupt" and "banking" makes me instantly suspicious. Basically any tech "thing" that's for money instead of whatever. The most visible subsegment is online B2C lending (Lending Club, SoFi, etc) but there are also B2B lenders, investment/money management apps like Acorns/Mint/Betterment/Wealthfront, new mortgage entrants like Rocket Mortgage, plus whatever else can skirt existing regulations. The basic idea is "banking, but easier/more modern. Most will go bankrupt or get bought by existing financial institutions. Bitcoin isn't disrupting poo poo.
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Mar 26, 2016 04:59
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Bird in a Blender posted:From what I can tell, it's just email/online marketing, although they try to aim it at getting people to blog, vlog, etc. about your company instead of regular advertising. Of course they wrap this pretty mundane stuff in some weird cult like atmosphere to make everyone feel really good about being a bunch of ad men and women. The technical term is "marketing automation." The core function is email automation (barely-solicited spam) while the umbrella term for the rest of what you mention is called "content marketing" - the ecosystem amounts to you writing poo poo that people read to get their email so you can send them emails. They've been losing a lot of ground to Marketo, which does the same poo poo but without the weird cult poo poo that appears stolen from the Zappos playbook for no good reason. I'm in digital marketing at a failing startup so this thread is basically about my existence.
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Mar 29, 2016 21:15
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Vanity Fair interviewed VC Chamath Palihapitiya, who had a lot of fun things to say. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/chamath-palihapitiya-interview-says-start-ups-are-mostly-crap quote:The reality is, great companies can go public in any market. When we talk about the I.P.O. slowdowns what we’re really saying is that there really just aren’t that many good companies being built. We need to divorce ourselves from venture capital as an occupation and focus on using capital as a way to take really big bets on things that just seem totally audacious. Right now we haven’t done enough of that, and the result is that most of the things we’ve funded are mostly crap and largely worthless.
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Mar 29, 2016 22:17
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Holy poo poo none of this has anything to do with unicorns.
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Apr 4, 2016 06:42
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walgreenslatino posted:Exciting news in the field of Marissa Mayer's severance These parachute contracts are so preposterous that they should be banned to save companies from themselves.
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May 2, 2016 21:23
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sbaldrick posted:A 40% tax rate on my 300 million dollars, the horror. A REAL 40% tax rate on completely hypothetical 300 million dollars. The tax should be levied when you try to sell the drat things, not just trying to keep your claim. It's a completely bullshit setup.
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May 3, 2016 04:34
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ComradeCosmobot posted:I don't think anyone has brought up one consultant company's idea to encourage startups to commodify sleep. I like how this "branding group" (whatever the hell that means) is named after the stupor you find yourself in if you take too much ketamine. Genius marketing stunt for Casper, their target demo will eat that poo poo up.
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May 6, 2016 01:30
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