What came to mind when I saw the list was what is might say about the founders that YC is selecting.
You could easily conclude from this list that it's rich peoples kids creating solutions to imaginary problems - "Oh, how could my poor feet possibly survive the arduous journey from my front door to the uber in an off the shelf pair of shoes? I need a tailor!".
I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt though since these companies are presumably a small subset of those they've invested in.
A more charitable explanation might be that since these companies are in SV then it makes sense for them to start out selling stuff to affluent customers who are not overly price sensitive.
As someone who has perpetual trouble finding well fitting dress shirts off the shelf - the MTailor thing seems interesting. You do raise something valid - I suspect they're selling affluent customers, because they're easier to reach, and are willing to try something novel.
If you have a sewing machine it takes less than 15 minutes to tailor a shirt down (just put it on inside-out, pin, and sew).
Made-to-measure mail-order dress shirts are an idea from the 1990s AFAIK. A while back I collected some promotional offers from in-flight magazines and online and ordered a big stockpile of white made-to-measure dress shirts. With the promotional pricing it came out to less than $20 a shirt.
As with any menswear business, the main problem is customer education. Men in the US dress like slobs, do not care that they dress like slobs, and do not want to spend money on clothes (85% of apparel revenue comes from womenswear).
The issue in my case is not the trunk. I'm a 'gentleman of size' (6'3 300 lbs) which means to find something that fits my neck, I have to buy a shirt large enough to accommodate another large person inside of it with me. I also, do not have a sewing machine, nor do I have a good place to work, or time to do it. I've had trouble finding a place locally that will do bespoke clothing.
I would rather not dress like a slob, but barring me finding a place to make me something that actually fits (for a good price).. everything I buy will fit somewhat awkwardly, and make me look as if I'm wearing several flower sacks sewn together or somewhat awkwardly in fit in other ways.
You can get a demo shirt from ModernTailor for $20 and then as many perfectly tailored shirts for under $100 as you want. As the earlier commenter said, these companies have been around for years.
Some questions for anyone who happens to have been following this closely:
1. What exactly is being stored? I have seen stories/comments saying it is domain names visited from web browsing but does it also cover other internet activity? Or is it being left vague?
2. Does the requirement to keep data for one year come with a corresponding obligation to delete it after that? Are they allowed to keep it longer (perhaps summary/derived data for cost reduction) ?
3. Can the organisations with access make bulk requests for all the data or do they have to request records one ip addr/person at a time? (yes, I know an IP is not a person etc).
4. If the data does have to be destroyed at some point does that only include data collected by the isp or also include copies made by those with access?
5. Are there any published numbers on roughly how many people will have access to collected data?
The new guy publicly throwing the old guy under the bus is actually a a step in a recommended strategy for turning a company around. See this blog post from Marc Andreessen's archive: http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_big_companies_part1.html
I remember a book amount management consulting and it mentioned one firm (only referred to as the "Butchers") who only ever recommended this one action regardless of the actual state of the company. Of course they spent vast amounts of chargeable time analysing operations to produce data that supported the conclusion they had already made.
Thanks for the link - just bought it. I've seen some of those techniques used during my time working. P.T. Barnum was right - "There's a sucker born every minute", especially in management.
This is something I would both love to develop something for but could never allow into my house. I know I could do both but it feels kind of wrong to make anything that might encourage other people to have one given the terrifying privacy implications.
What I dislike about Jasper is how it deals with modality: you have to say 'Jasper', wait for it to recognize that and confirm to you it's gone into 'listen' mode, then say the actual command. This delay is what made it not acceptable from a ux perspectice. I prefer to have all my commands prefixed with the keyword (I use 'computer' but from what I read online, 'jarvis' is a more popular choice...)
Jasper also writes audio to disk, then runs command line tools on those files. I haven't tested if this is a significant source of latency.
I use this. Yes, latency is kind of big, but it's tolerable. The big difference for me is that you have to program every command. I've never used the Echo, but my understanding is that it has a ton of pre-built commands that you can use: set a timer, what is the weather, play somesong, etc.
For jasper (pocketsphinx) you have to manually program the action for all of these. So it's a lot more setup. I still like it and use it all the time though.
I don't see why people are upset or surprised about this. Apple is a pioneer in making electronics difficult to open up and play with.
It has always been their approach to control every interaction that every customer has with every part of their business and every product produced by it.
I accept your correction. In fact, now I think about it, essentially 0% of apple customers would likely be aware of this possibility at the time they make their purchase. I should have considered that most consumers won't follow stories like this as closely as the tech crowd.
I do stand by my assertion that it is legitimate for apple to behave in this way though. They get to present their business as they choose to just like any other company and the customer get to choose whether to accept their terms. Personally I don't but, empirically, most other people seem to.
I would however support requirements (as legislation) that consumers should be made aware of such practices at the point of purchase such that they can factor it into their buying decision.
Yeah, Apple are evil geniuses. They are prodigies at making money and expanding their business, at the expense of their users. It also seems like a majority of people on this site have some kind of Stockholm syndrome with regard to Apple. I guess making people reliant and locked in to their system is part of their genius. Of course people in that situation will find ingenious logical contortions to go through to justify their continued faith.
Also, mass downvoting of this comment in 3. 2. 1 ...
Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted.
You will, of course, be down voted – because of your childish insistence that anybody who thinks differently from you is suffering from some kind of illness.
The best way that I could explain it is with the phrase "out of sight, out of mind." Issues have much less of an impact if a person doesn't see and feel the direct consequences in their lives.
This sounds like a general problem with modern democracy. Theres so much going on that none of us can keep up with it, including the people who work in politics full-time. The inevitable result is an inability to make intelligent decisions in our own interests. The wisdom of the crowd is all that saves us, except when it doesn't.
That website reminded me of parrotsecrets.com made & written about by cringely [1]. It is designed to slowly increase excitement in the reader as they progress through the page (that's why it repeatedly insists you slowly read the whole thing instead of skimming) as it leads them towards a sale.
a guy I know very well does websites like this. He uses a bit more tech behind it with bandit algos etc and nets 1 to 2 million a month. He has been at it a good number of years now.
Background: I bought my mum one of those customisable calendars for christmas where you can upload your own photos for each month. Since then I’ve been wondering how the on-demand printing industry works. My calendar was cheap, good quality, & delivered next day which I thought was very impressive.
I decided to do an experiment to see what I could learn. As a first step I’ve made some mug designs and I’m using zazzle.com for the manufacturing/purchase handling etc. This lets me see how their funnel works for product designers. I picked mugs because I wanted some for myself.
I needed a niche audience for my experiment and I chose HN readers. Mostly that was just because I am already familiar with the audience but using HN also gives me the benefit of being able to reach customers quickly and free of charge via a Show HN post.
