I disagree. Garmin's high end watches are styled just the same as standard timepieces, but they just happen to be serious fitness trackers (in particular, see the Forerunner 945, Fenix series, and Marq series). Even with the standard wristband they generally fit in where any other timepiece would, and even more so if you pair it with a classic metal band (which is easily swapped in). Likewise, the watch face is customizable and subdued, unlike the glaringly bright screen of an Apple Watch. It's hard to pass off an Apple Watch as anything but obvious, chintzy tech gear.

The reason people almost never mention the ethnic homogeneity is because it comes across incredibly bigoted. Put another way, it's basically saying that a strong social welfare state isn't possible in the US because it happens to have minorities - if only they could just get rid of them, there'd be no more obstacles!

What difference is it to you how someone chooses to live their life? I don't understand how this is an argument for anything except to prove your own intolerance.

Or one should never exercise at all until an acquisition or an IPO happens.

I've seen too many people exercise stock options trying to minimize tax implications down the road, only to see them eventually leave the company for any number of reasons and they end up get heavily diluted to almost nothing in future rounds. All that money basically down the drain trying to chase long term capital gains vs regular income tax rates when the likelihood that they'll make anything is extremely low.

Everyone's risk posture is different, but considering how few startups are actually successful, I would argue it's better to just assume the options are worthless and just deal with the regular income tax situation if you get lucky enough to be around during an IPO or acquisition.

You're definitely correct. "Convenience" is emphasized. If it's not convenient to exercise, don't; wait until a liquidity event.

This makes me curious: what's the total typically required to purchase one's options (not including the potential tax implications)? Does it vary wildly from a couple thousand to tens- or hundreds-of-thousands? Lottery ticket money, or significant fractions of annual income?

I think they're referring to Rock Creek Park, which runs down the middle of DC in the north and is run by the National Park Service.

Where's the Infrastructure Fund? The Education Fund? I thought a16z was all about "It's Time to Build" now. https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/

I guess even they couldn't convince themselves to want to build things. I suppose that hollow rhetoric was for everyone else and not them?

Let's be real, if Gates and Zuck can't even scratch fixing US education, then a16z sure won't touch it with a 10' pole. Edu and healthcare are graveyards of bold dreams and hubris against entrenched interests.

You think after writing the article he called his assistant and designed the plan for Crypto Fund II?

These things take time, and this was probably in the works from before.

a16z is "all about" spending other people's money.

The "time to build" nonsense was about spending taxpayer's money. That is, telling the American government how to spend it.

Consider that a16z and its clients probably do not pay much taxes. Certainly they pay less than people who cannot afford the same level of profesional services required to reduce their tax burden to the same extent.

If America builds infrastructure and better educational systems, a16z and their clients will benefit, along with the folks who actually paid for it. Whether those benefits would be disproportional in favor of a16z and its clients is left as a question for the reader.

Even google balked at the cost of infrastructure and abandoned Fiber.

I think google made a mistake. AT&T (and Verizon too) still has a monopoly on places because of cables that were laid almost a century ago.

If someone figures out the next step of search, google could disappear quickly. AT&T, not nearly.

Google is still expanding fiber. They wired a neighborhood near me and theres a vote on my HOA to wire our neighborhood.

Google Fiber and Fi were focused on getting market incumbents to install fiber and decrease mobile data costs (respectively). They were not targeted at capturing marketshare, but purely tactical, and in that regard successful.

The emergency is over. Its time to go back to normal behavior.

It’s what you write when you see the writing on the wall for the end of a superpower and you get to be right either way while you don’t do anything to fix it.

The acquisition scenarios are definitely misleading. Employees love to take future acquisition values and multiply it by their current equity stake, but it's just 100% incorrect because it ignores future dilution from subsequent rounds of investment, liquid preferences by investors, settlement of outstanding debts, etc which will absolutely reduce their cut.

Now it's one thing for employees to personally delude themselves, but it's just flat out wrong for the company to tell its employees what they can expect to make in different exit scenarios. The company is definitely opening itself up to litigation when, say, Employee 12 (0.5% equity currently) only gets something like $1M after a $600M acquisition, instead of the $3M you promised.

It would be so easy to price the stocks if they could be traded in the open market. Professional traders and collective-behavior would solve this for everyone.

First off, congrats on the launch and for tackling an underappreciated problem with EVs.

I'm excited about the concept, because it has the elements of something great. But I'm skeptical about the "sharing economy" approach of renting out time on home chargers. Like others have mentioned, the real problem is affordable, available chargers at the user's residence, rather than trying to make more chargers available in residential neighborhoods.

But the other problem that EV users have, especially users that aren't simple there-and-back commuters, is that they need predictable and dependable charging while away from home.

I own an EV myself, and I can't tell you how many times I've made a trip somewhere during the day, expecting to have a charger available, only to find that they're all taken when I arrive. This is somewhat alleviated by networked chargers, where you can see whether they're available beforehand, but there's been many occasions where the charger is snagged by someone else while I'm driving there. Because of this I'm extremely cautious about driving too far in a given day, and in fact, end up using a regular gasoline car if I know I have to drive beyond the range of my EV, since it's too hard to tell if and when I'll be able to charge along the way.

So where your concept comes in is the ability to reserve chargers. That means I can actually plan my day, plan a road trip, etc. And ideally the chargers will be in the same places I actually want to go - along freeways, in shopping centers, downtown, etc (i.e. not far off in residential areas).

I could definitely see this as a service that could plug into existing networks (e.g. EVGo, Blink, Chargepoint, etc), although getting them all to play nice together is difficult. But I would heartily applaud someone who could organize and simplify EV charging away from home and make it dependable and predictable. Good luck!

Hi Jason,

I can tell this problem has affected you and you have thought about it deeply. Really appreciate your feedbacks. Overall I agree with you completely. The biggest assumption regarding this startup/project is that the p2p charging market can be build up to a substantial size beyond just one-off emergencies or long road trip cases. This is something some folks doubt and something I'm betting my blood, sweat and tears in. What makes me confident is my own experience. I was FORCED to try the couch surfing type of charging with Plugshare first that I was super skeptical of myself, and LUCKILY my first experience worked really well. I also noticed with just 2 simple features the experience can be mostly consistently good. There are more than 10,000 hosts on Plugshare, and if the experience can be consistently good, it could turn into THE largest charging network in the world. We are not there, but I want to get there.

There are any number of reasons why someone is unable to install a charger at home. Highest on the list is that many people rent, and therefore aren't in a position to install, either because the landlord won't allow it, apartment doesn't have parking, or installing is not affordable/practical.

The other issue that comes up is that anyone with an older home most likely won't have the electrical infrastructure to support a Level 2 EV charger, either because of the existing wiring or because the home is served by a <100A panel.

So that's why many can't make the investment you take for granted.

www.phasefour.io | Electrical Engineer | Full-time | Los Angeles | ONSITE

Who we are Phase Four is a space technology startup developing next-generation plasma propulsion technologies to advance space missions through unprecedented innovation and cost effectiveness. We are venture-backed and currently under contract with DARPA to deliver spaceflight hardware in 2016.

Who we’re looking for A talented electrical engineer with a diverse skill set, ideally with experience in power electronics and RF circuit design. The job will include everything from high level board design, production, testing and iterating, to fundamental spacecraft hardware layout and manufacturing. We're only seven people currently, so the EE will work closely with everyone on many aspects of the project. Help us further enable the development and exploration of space.

Qualifications Design, assembly, and qualification of surface mount/solid state DC-to-RF circuits (MOSFETs) Rapid turnaround and iteration on prototype circuits, from design through laboratory testing Mastery of PCB layout and assembly techniques Entrepreneurial mindset and desire to work in a hands-on, intense, and dynamic work environment

To apply Email us a resume and a cover letter with a description of relevant electrical engineering design projects to careers@phasefour.io

NOTE: Must be a US citizen or permanent US resident (green card holder) to apply, since we work with export controlled technology (ITAR).