garry’s subposterous

Good to know what packs the biggest punch!

During World War II the English sent daily bombing raids into Germany. Many planes never returned; those that did were often riddled with bullet holes from anti-air machine guns and German fighters.

Wanting to improve the odds of getting a crew home alive, English engineers studied the locations of the bullet holes. Where the planes were hit most, they reasoned, is where they should attach heavy armor plating. Sure enough, a pattern emerged: Bullets clustered on the wings, tail, and rear gunner's station. Few bullets were found in the main cockpit or fuel tanks.

The logical conclusion is that they should add armor plating to the spots that get hit most often by bullets. But that's wrong.

Planes with bullets in the cockpit or fuel tanks didn't make it home; the bullet holes in returning planes were "found" in places that were by definition relatively benign. The real data is in the planes that were shot down, not the ones that survived.

I didn't want to give away the kind of freedom. When you have 50 licensees on stuff like that, you are handcuffed.

Big = not as fast, not as fun. I dig it, John.

All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.

Interesting read at The Atlantic.

Makes me worry the coming health reforms will be just more band-aids instead of major surgery that is desperately needed.

Huh, that is looking pretty familiar.

Founderitis is akin to an active, engaged parent who is a wonderful caregiver until the child reaches adolescence. As the child enters its teens and requires an increasing level of independence to properly mature and prosper, the Founderitis parent tries in vain to restrict the influence of outside factors and limit the child’s ability to act autonomously.

When you take any money at all from a big VC in a seed round, you are effectively giving them an option on the next round, even though that option isn’t contractual.

Great explanation of the issue here. It's a potentially lose-lose situation. If the VC wants in, they can collude/drive down the price of your Series A. If they don't, then you smell bad and can't raise again.

Multiple people in the know advised us to steer clear of this option while we were raising.