Darrell Silver!

Advanced Chess

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:13:00 -0400

An entrepreneur once told me a story of the evolution of Advanced Chess, and it’s been rattling around in my head for awhile now.

Advanced Chess is a form of Chess where each player is allowed to use all possible resources at his/her disposal to make a move. One can use computer AI or ask friends for help. Anything goes.

The Grandmasters use Advanced Chess to help expand their minds in play. It allows them to get a different perspective on their typical Chess instincts. It’s useful in training. There are international Advanced Chess competitions.

In the beginning of Advanced Chess (I believe in the 90s), A single Grandmaster could beat a lesser opponent even if the opponent was leveraging Computer AI as a crutch. A single human could rule.

Post-Deep-Blue, Grandmasters could be beaten in Advanced Chess if their opponent had amazing Computer AI at their disposal. It was the rise of the machines. So the new unbeatable combination became a Grandmaster that leveraged Computer AI well.

But in the middle of the last decade a new winning combination emerged: a combination of Human Computation and Computer AI. The best Advanced Chess algorithms now start with a Computer AI recommended list of moves and then a crowd of expert humans vote on the best move. The combination of a crowd plus excellent AI can best a single Grandmaster plus AI.

I love this story. It’s another example of how Soylant Green (“It’s made of humans”) algorithms are taking over the world. I look for this characteristic in every startup I talk to. I consider it a special subset of a Network Effect.

Algos + humans are the future of consumer web services. Great enterprise software has been this way for years, and it’s finally coming to consumers because we’ve figured out how to get the prices down.

So excited to be an ambassador at HackNY this weekend! I...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:25:00 -0400

So excited to be an ambassador at HackNY this weekend! I don’t know if Ashton & I have the same schedule yet, but it’s all about supporting students so I’m sure he’ll be there.

(Via today’s AM New York)

YouTube has found a way to make an April Fools video that...

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 11:59:00 -0400

YouTube has found a way to make an April Fools video that launches before April 1. They get days of attention all to itself while the rest of the internet gets only a few hours. It’s brilliant marketing, and also funny.

One year later!

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:25:00 -0400

One year later!:

Quite a lot happening since then.

The danger and power of press

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:40:08 -0400

Steve Blank during his SXSW talk, as relayed by J.J. Colao of Forbes (via ParisLemon).

Even talented, hardworking CEOs and founders can get caught up in the hype. Why? Blank lists seven reasons:

1. Ego

2. Ego

3. Ego

4. Vanity metrics

5. Attract talent

6. Get funding

7. Drive customer demand

If CEOs get caught up in doing press for reasons other than the last three, he says, their companies are doomed.

Very true. Even worse: press is a hack that can temporarily drive customer demand. It is not a stable acquisition channel.

datavis: A/B This is super pretty. It reminds me of Naive Set...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:30:00 -0500

datavis:

A/B

This is super pretty. It reminds me of Naive Set Theory, which I read in my first year on working on Wall Street. The book influenced my thinking in the same way I suspect Liar’s Poker influences people who end up staying in finance.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and..."

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 09:00:16 -0500

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince. (via zachklein)

superamit: #PhotojojoWorkcation 2013 starts now! See you in a...

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 18:50:09 -0500

superamit:

#PhotojojoWorkcation 2013 starts now! See you in a million hours, Thailand! (Photo taken of the back screen of my camera.) (at San Francisco International Airport (SFO))

I’ve always been jealous of Photojojo’s Workcations. Can’t way to do this with Thinkful. Where should we go?

"Imagine you go back 40 years and you were given 25 to 30 per cent of all the future presidents, CEOs..."

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:05:57 -0500

““”Imagine you go back 40 years and you were given 25 to 30 per cent of all the future presidents, CEOs and cultural figures in the world. Would you take them and put them in separation for four years in the hills of New Hampshire and tell them to drink and ski and have fun? I don’t think so.”“”

- The FT on the future of higher ed (here)

Measuring Higher Education

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:23:00 -0500

When we talk about the efficacy of college the only accreditation worth measuring is getting a job. There needs to be a lot of room in college for self-exploration, but thankfully all that work doesn’t appear on students’ transcripts. An op-ed in yesterday’s NYTimes tears into the declining grading standards across higher education, but mostly picks the wrong target. Kevin Carey writes,

The lack of meaningful academic standards in higher education drags down the entire system. Grade inflation, even (or especially) at the most elite institutions, is rampant.

It’s true: colleges self-rank. But that’s not the real issue. Colleges grading themselves is problematic not because there’s some sort of missing regulator of college grades. Rather, it’s because the grades themselves have become less valuable after college. For employers, far more important than grades is who’s issuing them. College life is filled with partying largely because the biggest achievement of a college student is getting accepted in the first place. For the more adventurous and fast-learning students, this realization helps explain (along with cost) why dropping out is becoming fashionable. The one place where grades are still paramount is students who need them for graduate school admissions. In other words, university grades still matter to universities.

Employers of new grads care about three things: which college you went to (pedigree), how much drive you’ll have on the job (grit), and whether you can perform on day one (training). The economics of a shrunken economy aside, employers hire from the best schools they can find, and that’s not really changing.

For degrees that lead students into employment (of which there should be more), there’s really only one measure of a successful education: getting a job.

Our tree comes alive!

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:40:38 -0500

Our tree comes alive!

"When I try to tell them my name over the phone, they can never spell “Komer”. So now I..."

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 01:18:00 -0400

“When I try to tell them my name over the phone, they can never spell “Komer”. So now I just say my name is “Jordan”, which is where I’m from.”

- My old office mate, Komer. Customer Support is the new Ellis Island.

"At Facebook and Google, they know your underwear size before you walk in the door,” this person..."

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:10:00 -0400

““At Facebook and Google, they know your underwear size before you walk in the door,” this person said. “At Yahoo, it was clear they hadn’t even Googled me.””

- NYTimes quoting an entrepreneur contemplating an acquisition.

Surely, there’s some middle way here.

"Fraught and messy though an artistic life may be, is there a drug that can induce the euphoria as..."

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 15:44:00 -0400

“Fraught and messy though an artistic life may be, is there a drug that can induce the euphoria as energizing as that intensely fragile moment when the muse passes through one and the artist becomes the simultaneously perfect and flawed instrument of expression? No, there is not. Even as the inner voices battle it out, intoning “You suck!” and “Eureka!” in equal measure, creation is – like the loosest of teeth just begging to be toggled by the curious tongue – a joyous torment, in whatever form it takes.”

- David Rakoff in Half Empty

Startups have that, too. Plus, there’s money and you build things.

"After completing an apprenticeship to a confectioner in 1873, Milton S. Hershey founded a candy shop..."

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 13:16:00 -0400

“After completing an apprenticeship to a confectioner in 1873, Milton S. Hershey founded a candy shop in Philadelphia, which failed six years later. After trying unsuccessfully to manufacture candy in New York, Hershey returned to Pennsylvania, where he founded the Lancaster Caramel Company, whose use of fresh milk in caramels proved successful. In 1900, Hershey sold his caramel company for $1,000,000 (equal to $27,936,000 today) and began to concentrate on chocolate manufacturing. In 1903, Hershey began construction of a chocolate plant in his hometown, Derry Church, Pennsylvania, which later came to be known as Hershey, Pennsylvania. The milk chocolate bars manufactured at this plant proved successful, and the company grew rapidly.”

- Via Wikipedia. In other words, Hershey was a kickass serial entrepreneur. He started his first company at 16, and when it failed at age 22 he started another one in the same space. After a $28m exit at age 43 he started his third company, which 110 years later now has a market cap of $16b.

superamit: They’re holding a Jelly at New Work City in...

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 08:16:02 -0400

superamit:

They’re holding a Jelly at New Work City in Manhattan this Friday. Come, bring a laptop, and work with us for the day.

I’ll be there. Hope you can make it!

RSVP: Jelly on FRIDAY, June 29, 2012 - Eventbrite (free!)
(Thanks to Tony & Darrell for organizing!)

In December, during the most difficult time of my professional...

Sun, 27 May 2012 13:47:00 -0400

In December, during the most difficult time of my professional career, I found this note in my jacket pocket after Startup Xmas. The sun has almost faded it away:

Dear Darrell, You are awesome. Own it. -Tony

Perpetually is now Smarsh Web Archiving!

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:39:51 -0400

After an incredible roller-coaster of three short years, I’m extremely proud to announce that Perpetually has been acquired by Smarsh! The technology as we envisioned it — perfect, interactive archives of any website — is already thriving under its new name: Smarsh Web Archiving.

I’ve also joined Smarsh to grow web archiving across its 15,000 customers.

We’ve all been sprinting to make today’s announcement possible. Our success today is as much due to the passion of the Smarsh team as it was the Perpetually team and our investors’ risk appetite over the years — all of which paid off nicely.

But there’s one group whose impact cannot be overstated: The NYC tech community.

The Perpetually story proves how beneficial it is to be a tech startup in NYC right now. After many coffees, dinners, drinks, calls and emails in December, it became clear just how much of a support system we now have here. The people who helped make this deal work were VCs, entrepreneurs, family, salespeople, engineers, students and even an ex-Goldman banker. Most had no financial incentive to do so. Many other friends from SF helped for sure, but NYC offered a diversity of talent unavailable anywhere else.

The last three years have been a wild ride, and perseverance has paid off. Next time at 1000x!

Fourth annual ski holiday with The Brits! St. Anton am Arlberg...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 20:46:00 -0400

Fourth annual ski holiday with The Brits! St. Anton am Arlberg edition.

Normal For NYC Private Schools

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 01:04:00 -0500

High school fundraiser, on phone: ... And what degree did you get from your college?
Me: B.A. in art history and computer science.
Fundraiser: Just the one degree?
Me: Yes. Just the _one_ degree.
Fundraiser: And would you like to list a spouse? What is your wife's name?
Me: Uhhh... No. No wife. No.