Brynson | Full Stack Developer | NYC Onsite (3-4 days in-office / week) | $120 - $160K brynson.com
Brynson is a fast-growing SaaS company building Brynsights™, the leading business intelligence platform for the multifamily real estate industry. We help property management companies, owners, and operators unlock actionable insights by connecting data across property management systems, CRMs, marketing channels, and more.
We’re a bootstrapped startup with real momentum — and we’re looking for a Full Stack Developer with 2-4 years of experience who can grow into a technical lead role, working closely with our CTO to expand the platform, build scalable systems, and help guide product development. Our stack is Ruby on Rails with React front end.
To apply, please email a resume and brief cover letter to careers@brynson.com
I think this is generally right. We tend to focus on the one side of the slippery slope which is "descent into an Orwellian dystopia", but the other side of the logical extreme is what, that no matter what private companies aren't allowed to remove and censor certain things on their forums?
Like you said, if there were an app where 90% of the conversation was about child pornography, no one would cry "1984" if it's removed by Apple. So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control.
>So we're just having a conversation about where the line should be and if hate speech and planning insurrection should meet that standard, not beginning a rapid descent into thought control.
It obviously is. It started with child pornography which most everyone can agree on banning, now you are suggesting we apply the same ban to political discussion. That's the definition of a slippery slope in action.
> The market decided they wanted nothing to do with it.
I don't think this means what you think it means, because it doesn't appear true.
The market usually means 'the free market' i.e. raw consumer demand - 'are people buying it?', 'vote with your wallet' e.t.c., By all accounts it looked like the market did want it - because they had a rapidly growing user base. Left to the free market, Parler would have continued.
The market does not mean the CEO's of other tech companies want nothing to do with it. It also does not mean that popular opinion is that it's bad.
Been building https://zoomingle.com over the last few months, it's a group video chat service that automatically creates randomized breakout rooms to facilitate 1:1's and other small group chats within a larger group. Came up with it because happy hours during Covid had no side conversations, spontaneous chats, etc. and figured that's the whole point. It's somewhat do-able with Zoom's breakout rooms, but if you have a company of 60 people and what people to be able to chat in random groups of 3 for 5 minutes for an hour, the person manually creating all these breakout rooms would go insane.
I'd like to continue running the tech/product side, but looking for a CEO/co-founder to run the biz dev, strategy, marketing etc.
I'm Brian, a 30 y/o Canadian living in NYC (but totally happy to work with someone remotely, ofc). I've co-founded and ran the engineering teams of two other tech startups, and currently doing misc tech consulting and freelancing.
is this an entirely separate platform, or an integration to Zoom?
I think everyone has experienced the awkwardness of being in a company "party" this season, say one word and you're put in center stage for 60 people, really discourages participation.
I wonder how "natural" you could make the mingle, like if you're in one group and see three people chatting in another bubble (I'm envisioning a panel with all sub-groups in separate bubbles), can you move over non-chalantly? (Don't know why this came to mind immediately, I'm just imagining being trapped in a conversation at a party being 10X worse if there's no way to leave the bubble without everyone immediately noticing lol)
Right now an entirely separate platform, but the original idea was an integration with Zoom. Unfortunately their API doesn't support breakout room management yet (https://devforum.zoom.us/t/breakout-rooms-api/4255/111) so the idea was to build it entirely separately, get some validation/learnings, and then integrate with Zoom when ready.
In terms of mingle-naturalness, right now it's set so the organizer just says how big the mingles should be and how long they should last. So from a user's side, you're in a group with two random people (from the company/larger group) for 5 minutes, then cycle into a new mingle with two other random people, rinse and repeat. Somewhat like speed dating, you don't have any say over who you're mingling with, but it is time constricted.
Hey @econcon, I think my friend and I will give this a try. We're starting to spec everything out, and probably want to start out with laser gauge to have high accuracy. Would love to ask a couple questions if you have time, my email is just my username at gmail.com
This really resonates with me as an engineer/CTO working on a product that went into the jungle with a machete. We never anticipated how difficult it would be educate the market, so eventually pivoted to more of a "toll-road" product.
There's really a second/third/fourth mover advantage that often isn't talked about, which is that you don't have to explain the entire point of your product before convincing them that your pricing makes sense and it's worth their time. When clear competitors exist, the sale is just why your specific solution is superior (more efficient, smarter features tacked on, cheaper pricing etc.)
Love original version! Only thing stopping me from making it my regular client is the lack of "best" menu item. I love checking out day's best or week's best if I've been to busy to keep up. Great work though.
I'm consistently surprised at the low bar for due diligence in startup funding. In my personal experience, it goes something like "send us a business plan, pitch deck, three customers (that you handpick) for us to talk to, the legal paperwork, and maybe some bank records but not usually". I always assumed investors required credentials to Google Analytics or Mixpanel or iTunes analytics or whatever to actually verify that the usage numbers are what founders say they are, yet I've never had an investor do that or even heard of it being done. It's completely baffling to me that Theranos can raise ~$700M w/o any third party testing or diligence.
This article suggest it's because Holmes is "enthralling" and investors had an "exaggerated faith in the power of medical testing". Faith and charisma are very abstract concepts, but data and testing aren't, so why rely on the former instead of the latter? As Deming said, "In God we trust; all others must bring data."
Some of this is actually the sign of a bubble in startup investing. When the market is tough, investors typically do much more diligence (they are more careful and they have more leverage). When the market is superheated, there's so much money chasing any deal that looks remotely interesting that any investor who wants to do real diligence is basically shut out by the investors who are willing to put up a check without it. FOMO overcomes the duty of care.
It's like buying a house in a hot market; cash offers with no contingencies win out over "smart" buyers who want to know what they're getting.
Was this like that? Because it seems like Theranos had a pretty tough time finding investors, or at least reputable ones. GV laughed them off. As did all the life-sciences firms.
It may be a cousin to it. In this case, perhaps second-tier investors saw it as an opportunity to get into a hot sector, with some comfort (and reduced diligence) because there were investors like Tim Draper involved.
I do diligence for a living. It's just not economical to do a full diligence on every investment when you're investment thesis is a portfolio approach.
Those are usually covered under "reps and warranties". From what I understand, even if you do "lie" (no one really lies, they just bend the truth...if you do legitimately lie, it's fraud and it's a big deal) there's basically insurance against it (formerly called "representations and warranties"). No VC I know of ever purchases it, but PE do from time to time.
It can depending on how much capital or assets are still around.
Jail is also a pretty decent incentive to make people avoid overtly lying. Unfortunately its disproportional used on the poor and minorities instead of on professionals.
In a fair world, Holmes would have to have been an absolutely remarkable 19 year old to get what she got. I mean, like Leonardo da Vinci level, once in a civilization type amazing.
It turns out she's not a very remarkable person today, and wasn't as a 19 year old college dropout either.
She's always come across as a bit of an odd duck, even when the bubble hadn't burst [1]. People (investors) likely read into her what they wanted and the myth of the genius who's too smart for traditional paths provided a convenient framework to hang a cool story off of and allowed laziness to creep in. Her impressive personal connections were fuel.
One thing to watch and keep in mind as Theranos come unwound [2]
> at the low bar for due diligence in startup funding
In the case of Theranos you also have how she was well know by Tim Draper (DFJ investor) apparently friends with his daughter. So he must have been smitten by her intellect possibly in comparison to his own daughter (my speculation but wouldn't surprise me).
"Tim Draper, the venture capitalist, said Holmes, who was friends with his daughter growing up, is the first entrepreneur he knows who kept quiet about her business for so long "so that the competition wouldn't get a chance to start."
"She had a winner and knew it," he said. His firm DFJ Venture was the first to invest."
This article isn't really about Theranos, so much as it is about the unreliability of blood testing as a diagnostic technique even when the tests are working properly.
True, but I'd say that the unreliability of blood testing as a diagnostic technique is extremely pertinent information for investors to have when investing in a company that is built on blood testing as a diagnostic technique. My point is just that it's surprising that the journalist for this story appears to have spent more time researching the subject for this article than the investors putting in ~$700M.
Again: the article isn't about whether Theranos was a good investment. It's about whether, even if Theranos had worked perfectly, convenient blood testing would have improved medical outcomes.
Yes, you've correctly identified what the article is about, and I've never disagreed or said "this article is about Theranos as an investment". I still think it's interesting to think about the article in the context of due diligence in startup investing.
Brynson is a fast-growing SaaS company building Brynsights™, the leading business intelligence platform for the multifamily real estate industry. We help property management companies, owners, and operators unlock actionable insights by connecting data across property management systems, CRMs, marketing channels, and more.
We’re a bootstrapped startup with real momentum — and we’re looking for a Full Stack Developer with 2-4 years of experience who can grow into a technical lead role, working closely with our CTO to expand the platform, build scalable systems, and help guide product development. Our stack is Ruby on Rails with React front end.
To apply, please email a resume and brief cover letter to careers@brynson.com