Pasha's Profile

Awesome article! Thanks for sharing?

I’m curious, do you think some of the challenges you mentioned around finding good tenants who aren’t a hassle change when you’re in a market like SF? In SF there are so many people looking to rent a place in the city that landlords have their choice of tenants when they list (indeed the last time I looked for a place I had to interview with over twenty other candidates!). Do you think this changes the value proposition needed?

Great blog post! I’m one of the people you mention who uses youtube for free lessons and can’t imagine paying for video lessons. In particular the value of a YouTube for me (vs Fenders solution) is that if I’m trying to learn one particular song, on youtube there will be dozens of videos trying to teach me. So even if one person’s approach confuses me, another can help to augment the lesson. That’s pretty hard for Fender to replicate.

Awesome article, thanks for sharing! I think one of the biggest challenges eBay will face is overcoming it’s own brand image as an auction and listings based system. I feel like eBay is basically synonymous with these concepts. Maybe they might need to do a full rebrand and even change their name!

Also, I’m worried that even if they do become more amazonified as you mentioned, how are they going to differentiate and win (as opposed to just copying)

I totally agree with MHS above me about not being able to capture things like how confident a suit will make you feel. But I think that’s ok. In other words, I think it’s all right if this system doesn’t solve every use case. I think the value is that for the average person, Stitch Fix can help find outfits that on average are a good match. And moreover, once the system has earned a user’s trust, it may be able to even suggest items that are a bit out of the user’s comfort zone that they may otherwise never have considered or been open to

Great post! I think the current practice makes a lot of sense – keeping drivers safer seems like a super valuable accomplishment! But I worry with these sorts of procedures if it’s a slippery slope to having everything we do be tracked. What’s the right tradeoff between safety and privacy?

Great post! I personally don’t think the value in apps like Tinder is in finding the best match for you, but just making it easier to meet a higher volume of people than you might otherwise be able to. Whether or not that’s a good thing is an entirely different question!

Awesome post, love the idea! I forget which airline it was but one of the major ones started doing something similar. If business class seats were still available x amount of time before the flight, they would let customers submit a bid and auction off the remaining seats. I’d be curious to see how much revenue they were able to win back by doing that

Awesome post, thanks for sharing! The thing that scares me is the line where you mentioned they don’t have a call center. I’ve used postmates a lot for food delivery, and whenever there’s an issue I hate that there’s no way to get someone on the phone and have a quick conversation. Instead you have to communicate over email, which has a muuuuuuuch slower response time and which ends up taking so many more interactions to get to the same end result. I can only imagine that with a service like a mobile network, the frustration with not being able to talk to a live human would be even more frustrating.

Hi, love the idea! Would definitely have used it if it were available when I was recruiting! One question I had was do you worry it might become a popularity contest? In other words, if someone has a lot of friends, whom they could ask or even pressure into writing recommendations for them, is there a risk that the recommendations won’t be fully trustworthy? How would you insure the integrity of the process?

Awesome article, thanks for sharing! I’d be curious to see what the mix of coders on the platform is. E.g. are they mostly hobbyists doing it for fun, folks who are trying to prove their mettle for future job opportunities, or people trying to earn money right now. And I wonder, depending on which group is most prevalent, how TopCoder can best position itself for longterm success. E.g. if it’s mostly people trying to improve their resume, then they might not be on the site for long, and the platform will constantly need to replenish talent. On the other hand, if it’s mostly hobbyists, the code quality might not be professional level.

Am I understanding correctly that the minimum prize is $100 and the minimum charge to a person who wants to use the platform is $199? In other words, are they really making a 50% commission on the transaction? That seems super greedy. If it’s true then I’m not surprised the quality is so low, if the operation is just a money grab

Super interesting, great post! One way to see if Rotten Tomatoes is actually affecting movie sales would be to look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores for movies that came out before the site existed (many still have scores that were added after the fact), and see if the correlation between scores to box office is the same as what we see today.

Great post Brittany! I’ve been very intrigued by Wealthfront and other similar services. But the thing that’s kept me on the fence is ultimately these companies are in a sense startups. And using a startup with your wealth portfolio (vs a huge trusted player like a vanguard) seems less safe. That said, even the safest banks proved to be pretty risky in the financial crisis, so who knows

Great post Iryna! I wonder what other companies in silicon valley right now are full of hype but with empty promises. How do you think it took so long for people to discover the truth about Juicero? After the Bloomberg article came out, it felt so obvious that this thing was a sham

Great post Juan! Would love to hear more about your own experience in the beta. Did it feel seamless and easy, or were there unexpected hiccups? Did it provide you with real value or feel gimmicky?