Disqus - Latest Comments for subWindow

Re: Aggregate functions are not allowed in this query

Erik Peterson — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 14:10:49 -0000

omg i spent an hour debugging this. thanks so much for the post!

Re: Adding a Rake Task for SQL Views to a Rails Project

Erik Peterson — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 10:53:02 -0000

I monkeypatch the ActiveRecord schema dumper, create the views with regular migrations, and then have it get dumped to the schema as any other table would (just as a SQL string). Here's my implementation for postgres: https://gist.github.com/sub...

Re: The Exit Curve | Force of Good

Erik Peterson — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 13:58:24 -0000

I bet most of the remaining 12% of exits were those companies who had raised more than $10M. If a company raises $40M, even a mediocre exit is going to be >100M- therefore this dataset only includes the worst exits from those companies that had raised the most. You can't chop off 12% of a data set and then claim to draw any meaningful conclusions from it.

Re: Managing With Strategic Priorities | Force of Good: a blog by Lance Weatherby

Erik Peterson — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 11:14:22 -0000

This is a very top-down approach. I see little or nothing in here about getting buy-in from the people who will actually be implementing these priorities. I think an approach like this will, more often than not, come off as an ivory-tower edict from people removed from the day-to-day. It would be good to involve key employees earlier in the process, and to solicit feedback from people involved in implementation.

Re: Without comment

Erik Peterson — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:06:18 -0000

Situations where I find comments useful:
- When explaining interactions with other systems
- When explaining 'why' a certain way of doing things was chosen, ie 'algorithm foo was found to be 43.68% faster than algorithm bar, so use foo'
- When there's a precise but non-obvious reason for a piece of code, ie 'lock here to prevent a race condition when the Bar comes after the Foo'
- When something is partially implemented, ie 'TODO: add support for foo objects'. These should be temporary, however.

In general I also find that writing comments about why I've written the code *this* way to be very illustrative. It helps quite a bit to diagnose when I may be writing something that is more complex than necessary. I also find that it helps me simplify interfaces, but I'm not sure on the exact psychological reason for it.

Re: A Social Media Marketing Theory

Erik Peterson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:36:34 -0000

I think that Social Media marketing will grow much faster than that. Big companies are just now getting a taste of the kind of targeting that social media is offering. Once they get some help in that area (*cough*) and learn how to use the insanely fine-grained targeting to their best advantage, it'll be a gold rush that will put search marketing to shame.
The downside, of course, is that people aren't looking to buy when they're using social media. Most of the time when a person is displayed a search ad, it is relevant and they are someone who is "ready to buy." Tracking action rates is going to be critical to social media advertising's growth in the future. And trust me- Facebook is acutely aware of this and are taking it head on in 2010.

Re: Quote of the Week

Erik Peterson — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:47:07 -0000

Music to my ears.
Sometimes, low "supply" of entrepreneurs is a bad thing- bad companies end up getting funded because there's no one else to fund. But I think that our industry is finally mature enough that there are experts out there who can separate the wheat from the chaff, and avoid bad investments like we'd seen in the past.
I think it is a great time to be an entrepreneur, and also a great time to be an investor. People are hungry. The landscape is changing. The companies founded between 2007-2011 will be the major companies of the next generation. You can count on investors reaping a significant amount of that reward alongside entrepreneurs.

Re: Resolving to Grow

Erik Peterson — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:59:40 -0000

My first thoughts:
1) Ugh. A study? I don't expect a conclusion of the study until 2011 or later, and there's a 50% chance the conclusion gets ignored, and a 50% chance there's no action until 2014. I hate how slow government is, especially legislatures.
2) Given the makeup of the legislature (which may change after the 2010 census- hopefully), you'd be hard pressed to get any bill through that focuses on benefitting Atlanta only. Chances are there will be some kind of hodgepodge bill that focuses too much on "rural" entrepreneurs. IMHO, we don't need any more chicken processing plants. But rural representatives love the hell out of 'em.
But at least it is a positive step, and a sign that they actually are aware that we have a problem when it comes to attracting/keeping entrepreneurial talent. Here's hoping something good can come out of it all.

Re: No One Seemed Worried About The Economy This Weekend

Erik Peterson — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:00:21 -0000

Comparing the U3 unemployment rate of today with the recorded unemployment rate of the 1930's is completely asinine.
We've systematically been removing classes of unemployed or underemployed people from the "official" (U3) number over the past 30 years. As a result, the current unemployment numbers look very skewed when compared to history. A much better gauge as to how we're doing when compared to history is the U6 number- which includes discouraged workers and the underemployed.
http://www.bls.gov/news.rel...
The rate is currently 13.9%, and headed up quickly. When compared with the Great Depression, the current rate is still small potatoes, but we don't know how much worse things will get. I wouldn't be surprised if we bottomed out with a U6 rate around 17%- comparable to the non-peak times of the Great Depression. Again, not as bad, but still quite awful.
I don't think many people are saying that the current recession is worse than the Great Depression. However, saying that it is the worst downturn since is completely accurate and puts the current state of things into perspective.
Given the safety nets that we have now- the FDIC, social security, food stamps, welfare, unemployment insurance, medicare/medicaid, the federal reserve, the SEC, etc- we're doing pretty terribly. If those safety nets were in place in 1929, I don't think the Great Depression would have been much more than a blip. That really makes you think seriously about how fundamentally damaged our economy is- even with all of these safety nets, we're still at 13.9% U6 unemployed.

Re: My Votes My Friends

Erik Peterson — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:43:59 -0000

Kerry.
That's my entire presidential voting record.

Re: acts_as_audited gains parent record tracking

Erik Peterson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:08:48 -0000

Why Controller-level auditing? It seems like the wrong place to put this functionality. Sweepers were intended for something else, and using them in this manner just seems... "hacky".

I've implemented my own model-level auditing using Observers, with a much better result.

Re: ATDC & Coworking | Force of Good: a blog by Lance Weatherby

Erik Peterson — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:08:21 -0000

That sounds awesome. Thanks, Lance.
The only thing I would add is to make sure that part-time space is available- ie, 5 days per month.

Re: Mike's Blog

Erik Peterson — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:29:38 -0000

I did the same thing for my blog, and it took an hour or so. Probably less time than it would have taken if I had tried to hack a WP template.

Re: Observations on Observations | Force of Good: a blog by Lance Weatherby

Erik Peterson — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:32:14 -0000

HowStuffWorks was indeed originally sold in 2002, for only about $1M, after nearly dying:
http://www.bizjournals.com/...
Someone bought the assets and turned it around, but I would hardly call this a success of the Atlanta startup scene. If the original founder was even from Atlanta, and if he had succeeded without having to have a fire sale, then I would gladly cheer it as a success. But it wasn't.
We're talking about founders who start the company in Atlanta, get Atlanta funding, and exit in Atlanta. HowStuffWorks was only one of those three.
cBeyond is indeed a success of the Atlanta startup scene, I concede that. But where are the benefits? Any publicity? I see absolutely no mention of Atlanta anywhere on their website. I don't see any cBeyond veterans running around investing or starting other companies. I'd never even heard of them until just now. And even they had to go outside of Atlanta for almost all of their funding.
I'm not trying to be down on Atlanta- I'm just saying that Jeff was right, that we don't have many big successes that we can count. We have no Google, or, heck, we don't even have a Facebook or a Salesforce.com. There haven't been many big, highly-publicized, successful Internet companies here since before the bust. That's the truth.
Admitting that problem, and then working hard to fix it, is one of the biggest first steps to establishing a vibrant startup scene in Atlanta. This means we have to identify potential hits, support and publicize the living crap out of them. I just don't see a whole lot of that happening.

Re: Observations on Observations | Force of Good: a blog by Lance Weatherby

Erik Peterson — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:12:30 -0000

HowStuffWorks was a Web 1.0 company (Founded in 1998) that was sold 6 years ago (2002).
cBeyond I classify as a telecom company.
My point is not that there haven't been any successes at all, but that there are so few, and that they have either been a long time ago, or were in market segments (telecom, security, enterprise IT, hardware) that don't provide the publicity (or the cash) that Atlanta so desperately needs.
"As a guy that has seen what must be 600 or so concepts over the past year I can only say that when you see one it is apparent. Very. Like in less then 30 seconds."
All the more reason to hold YC-style pitch sessions, or more events like Startup Riot. The more startups that get any exposure at all, the higher likelihood that an investor will see one of the ideas and will recognize it as great.
I'd be a big fan of an event like Startup Riot, but where each investor that comes commits to funding X number of companies who present. I think you'll get a higher quality of companies and presentations, and a larger long-term impact. But are there any investors that would be game for something like that?
I'd say "No." The investors here are too risk averse and paralyzed of investing in anything without seeing spreadsheets. This isn't even something that's specific to the valley. There's a company you might of heard of in Boulder, CO that does this exact same thing.

Re: Observations on Observations | Force of Good: a blog by Lance Weatherby

Erik Peterson — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:52:49 -0000

"Ask your parents" isn't a viable solution to the seed-funding problem. What if your parents spent every cent they ever made trying to send you and your siblings to college?
"So is Atlanta, but you gotta perform."
The difference between Valley merit and Atlanta merit is that Atlanta merit, performing is revenue, while Valley merit is the idea and the beta.
There are no web-based, B2C, or B2SMB business that have had any success in Atlanta in the past 5 years. All I see are security, telecom, and Web 1.0 businesses. Web-based companies that sell to customers or small business is where almost all of the innovation and success is happening these days. There haven't been any successful, innovative companies to get funded and strike it rich within Atlanta any time recently.
By "We don't really have any early stage investors", it is meant that there aren't any early stage investors that make any deals. Sure, there are always going to be a couple of examples to point to, but the volume is so incredibly low. We need to find ways of jump starting the volume- 10 a month instead of 1.
You're right, Lance, you have been a big catalyst in all of this. But I still pretty much classify you as an entrepreneur. And I don't think anybody expects investors to come in and bankroll any party we decide to throw. We just want some visibility, some kind of message: "Hey, we know what you're doing here, and we're interested." So far, I haven't seen any kind of message like that. At all.
I want to make it clear that I'm not goading. I'm just frustrated with the contradiction of investors complaining about the Atlanta technology environment and the lack of companies worthy of investment, while they won't seed companies, won't take risks, and won't go out and meet entrepreneurs before they leave Atlanta for good.

Re: What’s wrong with the Atlanta startup ecosystem and how to fix it

Erik Peterson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:54:27 -0000

(I had previously made a much longer reply, but WP ate it. Ugh.)

Well said, Jeff.

The problem with Atlanta investors is threefold: Size, risk and exposure.

There are almost no investors in Atlanta willing to invest less than $3M. We need more investors willing to plunk down dozens of $100k deals, and hundreds of $25k deals. Trust me, there are entrepreneurs out there to take these deals.

With the greater number of smaller deals, it is absolutely necessary for there to be lower barriers to investing. Asking a pre-revenue company for huge financials and a business plan for a $100k deal is asinine. Investors should be able to go with intuition and a 4-page primer document. Requiring a huge excel spreadsheet just shows how clueless the investors actually are. They have no idea if the business will actually succeed- they need fake numbers on a spreadsheet to fool them into thinking that it is a good deal. For a pre-revenue company, the spreadsheets are useless- they are fake numbers with crazy assumptions, and they don't do anybody any good.

You hit the nail on the head on the third one. The startup ecosystem is much better than it was a year ago, largely due to the events that have been held. But these events highlight the biggest problem with Atlanta investing. It is the entrepreneurs who have largely been spearheading these efforts, and the investors have been almost nowhere to be seen. Even when investors do come to meetings, they are very explicit about not being pitched. Investors here are paralyzed of being pitched- they have to make sure that there are spreadsheets and referrals and all sorts of craziness before someone pitches them. That's silly. Investors should be out there *asking* for pitches, not the other way around.

Only then, after these three are fixed, can things happen like you've outlined. We need a few failures, a few hits, and for people to reinvest their money when they hit and their experience with they fail. Only then can we have a balanced ecosystem.

Re: Who Wants Seed Money?

Erik Peterson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:13:59 -0000

Lance, I don't think it is wise to extrapolate from this small of a sample size. I think that the audience on this particular blog has been at the startup game for a couple of years, and subsequently have moved beyond the YC stage.
There are definitely, DEFINITELY, lots of entrepreneurs out there who would jump at the chance. We just don't know where they all are.
But judging from the responses, I think what might be less risky, easier to setup, and a good starting point for the above would be a co-working program. Something that isn't centered on money, but would provide all the advantages of community, motivation, and education.
I think just getting a bunch of smart, business-savvy guys in the same room together to work would be a remarkably great thing for the community. Look at all the benefits reaped from startup weekend, and that was just three days. Imagine if we could string that kind of environment along for months at a time.
Would that be worth equity to me? Definitely. Is it worth 5-10%? Probably not. However, the startups would be a bit more mature, so 2.5% of these companies would be worth more than 10% of a just-started-today startup.

Re: Who Wants Seed Money?

Erik Peterson — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:34:13 -0000

I had kind of heard of BoostPhase and Profounder, but I'm skeptical of attempts like that until they start seriously talking about taking applications and funding. I understand that it takes a lot of time to raise money and organize the structure that a YC clone necessitates, but forgive me for not taking those entities seriously until they actually manifest themselves.
I can answer all of those questions, and I would definitely consider that kind of offer. My product is kind of mature right now and has other specific encumbrances that might not make it a good fit for such a program.
But, 6 months ago? 2 years ago? My answer would have been "Hell Yes!" It was exactly because of the lack of a local program like this and my decision to stay in Atlanta that I chose another path- pretty much the only one available to me which would get me to where I wanted to be in a year or less.
(I hate talking vaguely, but you never know how much you can actually disclose at a stage like this.)

Re: Quotes of the Week

Erik Peterson — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:41:37 -0000

Wow, there's a lot to say.
Alan: "Also, a lot of the devs seem to be less willing to do sweat equity than the business guys." Why should I do "sweat equity" for somebody else's idea? I'd put in more time than the person running the business side, but would probably get less equity. It is unfair, and I'm not surprised that there aren't any developers willing to play that game. But I don't think that's really the problem.
More generically, I have a business degree and know how to write a business plan, but yet I'm a developer and can actually implement these ideas myself. There are tons of people like me, and where do we go? The Valley. Atlanta ignores smart, business-savvy developers- treating them like minions of "real" business people. I myself almost moved to the Valley in February. Luke Olbrish, Vinny Fiano and Nate Clark have all left in the past year because of this. These guys are much farther ahead in their goals of running a startup than they would be if they stayed here. Nate's story, in particular, is interesting- if he were in the Valley when he started his company two years ago, I think it would have succeeded. It was exactly because of the lack of funding here that he failed (In my opinion. I can't speak for Nate.).
I think Wei is right. There should be more of a push in the Angel community to give smart, business-savvy developers some seed money. It isn't charity, and it isn't a handout. Taking the Y-Combinator "shotgun" approach to seed funding has been massively successful, and I think Atlanta angels are ignoring it at their own peril. The thing with $10-20k of seed funding is that it allows both a higher quantity while maintaining quality of the ideas that get funded. I do not see a downside.
The current set of protracted, effort-intensive methods of getting 100-250k of funding are simply not working. Look at the GRA/TAG fiasco. How come the ATA only funds a handful of companies a year? It is a complicated dance that is, frankly, bullshit. This kind of crap doesn't exist in the Valley. Out there, if a smart guy has an idea and wants to get funded, they can. It makes no difference if they have a team or if they have any connections. A smart, ambitious, completely unknown person should be able to get funding all by themselves. You can't do that in Atlanta. You can in Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley's Funding Equation:
Smart Person + Good Idea + Seed Money = Success
Atlanta's Funding Equation:
Smart Person + Good Team + Connections + Huge Business Plan + Huge Excel Spreadsheet + 6 Months of Song and Dance + Seed Money = Success
This is the problem. Anything else is skirting the issue.
Take a look at the hugely successful companies of the past 10 years. Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg was a college student working with a couple of friends out of a leased house. Peter Thiel came in and invested in them, without a business plan, without protracted negotations, without revenue, and without connections. Thiel stands to make 100x what he invested. Google: Andy Bechtolsheim invested $100k in Google, when it was just a couple of college students with a great algorithm. Once again- no connections, no business plan, no revenues, no protracted negotiations. He probably earned >100x return. Almost all of the medium-sized ($10-50M) acquisitions of the past 5 years followed this pattern (MyBlogLog, Reddit, TextPayMe, Zenter, ParaKey, anywhere.fm, Omnisio, Auctomatic, Writely, Jaiku, GrandCentral, FeedBurner, etc, etc, etc)
This is the missing link in Atlanta. Angels who are willing to fund smart guys with good ideas- without connections and without business plans and without a protracted negotiation. I understand why the Angels in Atlanta don't act like this, but you can't pretend like it is not the problem. If you want an ecosystem like the Valley- if you want to keep your entrepreneurs in the state, then you HAVE to be more risky and you HAVE to lower the barriers. Any complaining past that is hypocritical.
(Sorry if this seemed blunt. But I, and a lot of other entrepreneurs around here, are very sensitive to this issue.)

Re: Quotes of the Week

Erik Peterson — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:29:15 -0000

I think that VC in Atlanta is based way too heavily on connections.
If you're, like Jeff said, a kid coming straight out of college with a dream and some smarts, it is impossible to get funded unless you have connections. Trust me, I was (and I still am) that kid. You can try to pitch to people, but they'll just smirk at you and say, essentially, "Aww, that's cute. Talk to me again when you have some connections."
An MBA with a few connections, a bad idea and no implementation ability gets much further in Atlanta than a C.S. grad with no connections, a great idea, and all the implementation ability in the world. This is exactly backwards to how it is in Silicon Valley these days. I wonder why they're more successful.

Re: Summer Rails Plugin Series #2: needs_approval

Erik Peterson — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:47:08 -0000

So, two things: One, I updated the code on Github just now. That might help.

Two: You need to install the plugin in the example app. I left that part out of the instructions. Just do:

script/plugin install git://github.com/subwindow/...

Inside of the example app, and you should be good to go.

Re: Obamanomics

Erik Peterson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:04:33 -0000

There's almost no correlation between the stock market or the economy as a whole and capital gains/dividend tax rates. In the 90's (until '97), the capital gains tax was 5-8% higher than it is now, and our economy was much better, as a whole.
The problem now is that our lowered tax rates and increased government spending have created an enormous debt, which needs to be paid off or else the entire country runs the risk of economic collapse. Sure, raising the capital gains tax is risky and might have some adverse effects on the economy, but the cost of continuing to run $490B deficits is much, much higher.
You shouldn't chastise a man who is laying out a plan to do what needs to be done, even if it means doing some unpopular things (like raising taxes). I'd be much more wary of the guy who says he can cut taxes, increase spending, and still magically prevent the federal debt from increasing. One guy is a realist, one guy is in some kind of economic fantasy land. You might not like the numbers of the realist, but at least they're... real.
And no, Obama's behavior has nothing to do with the current stock market. The ripples of the subprime/credit mess and oil are what's causing the current stock market. Obama has a better plan to deal with both, and has a better plan to make sure similar things won't happen in the future.

Re: Where To Go For Inspiration?

Erik Peterson — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:52:10 -0000

Fred,

I work for a company called Skribit, and we make a content suggestion widget for blogs. This may be what you're looking for. Basically, you ask your readers "What should I write about?" in a sidebar widget, and then they post suggestions which get voted on by your users. It is a very easy (and useful, we hope) way of gathering what your readers are interested in hearing about.

We're looking to expand this idea of inspiration beyond just the sidebar widget, and I would love to discuss it further with you. If you like, you can shoot me an email at erik !at! skribit |dot| com.

Re: A Blast From The Past Quiz

Erik Peterson — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:30:07 -0000

Masayoshi Son is on the cover of the magazine.

I have no idea who the VCs are, unfortunately.