splitwheel (u/splitwheel)

splitwheel commented on If only someone told me this before my first startup · Posted by u/johnrushx

splitwheel · 2 years ago

Exec at a B2B software company. Joined when it was 12 people with no money, customers, or product - Unicorn company today with same exec team.

1. Agree

2. Agree

3. Chasing VCs was required for us. I have been in 100s of VC meeting supporting our CEO through two companies and many rounds of funding.

4. Agree

5. Agree

6. Full stack devs preferred. The right UI and DB specialists are game changers though.

7. Agree

8. Invest in a marketing lead machine from day 1. e.g. Glengarry Glen Ross :)

9. Agree

10. I am not a hugger. I prefer to hire people who do not give up. Everyone wants to convince you what ever you are trying to achieve will not work. If you hire people who do not do well with failing, they will really struggle with a failing fast approach.

11. Cannot relate

12. Cannot relate

13. Big companies can be helpful. But, when you are small, the numbers you generate are round off errors in their financial reports. It is very hard to align a win/win situation that keeps them interested.

14. Cannot relate

15. Agree

16. Agree

17. Agree

18. Agree

19. Agree

20. I admire companies that have grown by bootstraping. Bootstrapped high growth companies are rare. You will most likely need funding to grow your idea - great talent is not cheap.

Add: You need both a developer and a sales person to start a software company. You have to build and sell software to stay alive. #9 is very true.

Ideally, you start selling before you build - definitely sell before the product is ready. This gives many developers anxiety. Do not underestimate how hard or how long the sales process is. The worst situation to be in is that you wait for the product to be ready before you try to sell it - this is death to a start up.

splitwheel commented on Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege wsj.com/business/media/me... · Posted by u/antiviral

splitwheel · 2 years ago

There is science driving the design of products to make them addictive.

For teen girls - the apps are designed to scare them about being socially excluded. For teen boys - the apps are designed to fill their need to master skills.

The issue that the government has to deal with with app addictions is self harm attempts by girls (e.g. emergency room visits) and underperformance of boys in the real world (e.g. low college enrollment).

If you are trying to make an addictive app, this is a good reference to understand the science: https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Produc...

BJ Fogg is a good reference too: https://www.bjfogg.com

splitwheel commented on Why gravity is not like the other forces quantamagazine.org/why-gr... · Posted by u/kjhughes

evanb · 2 years ago

Is what you're getting at the fact that the distance between the earth and the other object changes from two effects (the first being the ball falling towards the Earth and the second being the Earth falling towards the ball)? That's right, of course. But that distance's second derivative is not the acceleration a in F=ma. Indeed, in both Galilean and Einsteinian relativity acceleration is detectable locally without a needed reference to another object.

splitwheel · 2 years ago

Yes - I was making a mistake. I was trying to describe the effect of both masses. When one is much smaller than the other, then the movement is mostly in one direction. When they are closer in mass or even equal, they move toward each other. For example, if you have a 1 liter water bottle filled with a material that gives it the same mass as the earth, then the two bodies will move toward each other, and the water bottle will seem to move toward the earth much faster that the 1 filled with water (1kg). If it is filled with a material, that gives it much grater mass than the earth, the earth will move toward it.

splitwheel commented on Why gravity is not like the other forces quantamagazine.org/why-gr... · Posted by u/kjhughes

evanb · 2 years ago

They do fall at the same rate, even with Newtonian gravity. For,

    F = m a
    F_gravity = GMm/r^2

so that

    ma = GMm/r^2.

Now cancel m from both sides and get

    a = GM/r^2

If you plug in G=6.674e-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2, M = M_Earth = 5.972e+24 kg and r = R_earth = 6.378e+6 m you get

    a = 9.79... m/s^2

which ought to be familiar.

splitwheel · 2 years ago

The force is on both objects at the same time. The force in F = ma is a function of the mass of both and their distance. If the mass is different in the two scenarios, then the force is different. On earth with small weights, they seem the same because of the precision of the measurement.

This is why you _weigh_ less on the moon.

splitwheel commented on Why gravity is not like the other forces quantamagazine.org/why-gr... · Posted by u/kjhughes

pontus · 2 years ago

Here's a fun thought experiment / apparent paradox.

In high school physics we learn that a 1kg mass accelerates as quickly as a 2kg mass when only subjected to the force of gravity. When I used to teach physics, the intuitive explanation I gave for this hinged on a thought experiment. Suppose that you have three 1kg masses falling side by side after being dropped from the same height. Clearly they are all going to fall at the same rate since they're equivalent. Now imagine redoing the experiment but this time taking two of the masses and placing them closer together. Does anything change? Clearly not, they're still all equivalent and ought to fall at the same rate. Now imagine doing this until those two masses are right next to each other, touching. Does anything change? Well no, all three should still fall at the same rate. But now, why not glue those two masses together and call it a 2kg mass? Once you do that you've shown that a 1kg mass and a 2kg mass fall at the same rate.

This usually convinces people, but there's actually a flaw in the argument that gets to the heart of why gravity is so different from the other forces.

To see the flaw, replace the above masses by three electrons falling next to each other in an electric field. Everything goes through in exactly the same way. You end up gluing together two of the electrons and these two electrons will accelerate at the same rate as the single electron. But if you're not careful you'd conclude that all electric charges fall at the same rate in an electric field, something we know is false.

Where's the flaw? Well, all of matter is built from some particles, and as long as you restrict yourself to particles that have the same "charge/mass ratio", the argument above works. It is true that one electron accelerates the same as 100 electrons tied together but that's just because e/m is the same for all those constituents.

So, the thing that's glossed over in my high school explanation for why 1kg and 2kg accelerate at the same rate is that the constituent particles all have the same "gravitational charge / inertial mass" ratio. Because this ratio is the same for all particles, we may as well absorbed that ratio into the gravitational constant and just use "m" in place of both of them. It's this "universal coupling" that's really responsible for the equivalence principle and what sets gravity apart from the other forces.

splitwheel · 2 years ago

1kg mass and a 2kg mass do not fall at the same rate. The Gravitational force is (G*m1*m2)/r^2. You are observing that m1 (the earth) is much much greater than m2 (the 1 or 2 kg masses), and you are simplifying to (G*m1)/d^2 because of the precision of the measuring device. Also, d is the same for both masses.