Changing the world
Outside of Silicon Valley this can mean curing cancer, eliminating Malaria and solving world hunger but within SV it means a bigger iPhone, an iPhone the size of a tablet, an iPhone strapped to your wrist or Yo (http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/18/yo-yo/)
A synonym of "This changes everything" and "This changes everything. Again"
Founder of Silicon Valley Dictionary: I am so glad to be working on products that are changing the world everyday
zazpowered over 9 years agoThe Anti Drug Test Node
An employee who mostly does his assignments and work under the influence quite often, but is so valuable to the company that the managers go through any length to prevent drug tests from being conducted on that individual or department.
We never have drug tests here in the engineering department because of all the anti-drug test nodes in the office. If we did we'd have to fire half the people who've designed our system architecture.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoMedium
A web blogging platform where independent users write out their opinions that get featured in categorized groups called "Medium Collections."
These articles don't adhere to any real journalistic standards, but are nice to read because in many instances they reaffirm your already deeply held beliefs.
I just wrote 3 articles on Medium on how starting a startup is a really difficult but worthwhile journey. It got picked up and shared by 213 Twitter users.
yungsnuggie over 9 years ago@charlesjo I don't think Twitter acquired Medium. I believe this definition needs to be corrected.
@charlesjo Fixed!
Alternate definition: A blogging platform for quitters.
Zero Billion
Any amount under 1 billion, rendering you off of Forbes billionaire's list, if you round down.
I'm not a billionaire anymore. I'm a nine-hundred-and-eighty-sixionaire, which isn't even a fucking thing. If you round down, I have zero billion.
mczajka over 9 years agoPalo Alto
Spanish for "tall tree." English for "overly priced land."
The worst part about having to move to California and begin our new software company is living in Palo Alto. I'm working out of and living in a small house I have to split with 6 other guys and we're still paying a fortune!
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoThere's a joke: Palo Alto is a 2 exit town. It takes 2 successful venture exits to afford to live there.
Vaporware
A piece of nothing. Generally used to describe something that is inexistent. "The snake oil of tech".
John: he got the investment without a product?
Andrew: he sold them total vaporware dude, he's not even sure what he's gonna build
Cloudhamza over 9 years agoZombie Startup
VC funded companies that don't close their doors after funding runs out, but also does not grow significantly. They typically generate enough revenues to continue business, but the VC is unable to divest. As a result, the company tends to shed all of its brainpower and continues to operate as a brainless zombie for many years.
All of the engineering talent has left the company. What's left is a zombie startup that should continue to operate, but nobody's ever going to make money there.
ttitus over 9 years agoThis is a good blog post about it http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/03/zombie-startups/
Social Media
The first team to be downsized when you run out of funding.
Our social media manager was let go after she accidentally posted that Reddit thread to Twitter.
firasd over 9 years agoJust go start a company
Common advice given in Silicon Valley due to the current rockstar status of entrepreneurs and how easy and affordable it has become to start a company. Tools like AWS, Heroku and Rails have made it easy for new developers to put up simple websites and mobile apps to validate their ideas. Online coding education such as Codecademy is getting better and becoming more commonplace. With all that said, not everyone is suited to be entrepreneur, companies need employees and being a successful entrepreneur is not as easy as it may seem based on the number of funding announcements you see on TechCrunch.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/20/the-problem-with-founders/
Boss: I think you have too much potential to be working here as an early employee. Just go start a company.
David: I don't really want to. The last idea I attempted was an on-demand cat walking service and it failed so badly I don't want to ever do it again.
Boss: I'll be honest. That sounds pretty bad... but I still think you should start a company.
zazpowered over 9 years agoIE Troll
A person who purposely uses Internet Explorer in front of others and claims that it is the superior browser on the market, to either mock another person or make it seem like they are completely incompetent.
Jack is an IE troll who gets girls to help him install chrome because he is "so bad" at using computers.
yungsnuggie over 9 years ago
To Pao
To have to step down from a companies executive board at the complaint of the product's core user base.
James got paod out of his company after continually getting in controversial flame wars with the companies customer base.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoAmazing
Which Steve?
A question often posed my computer programmers who seek to make a point that Steve Wozniak could write code and Steve Jobs couldn't (making him the superior founder in their minds). It's often used to indirectly defend their own insecurities in their lack in ability to communicate with other human beings or make things that people actually want.
Erlich: When I sold my company, Aviato, I wanted to give back. That's why I started this place, to do something big. To make a difference. You know, like Steve.
Richard: Uh, Jobs or Wozniak?
Richard: Steve Jobs or Steve...
Erlich: Oh, I heard you.
Richard: Which one?
Erlich: Jobs.
Richard: I mean, Jobs was a poser. He didn't even write code.
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoImagineer
A term given to creative people employed at Pixar and Disney. When engineers say that they are imagineers, people tend to figure out they work at Pixar and a part of their soul dies after digesting what they've said.
Justin: I'm a software engineer at TubeMogul. What do you do?
Dave: Well I'm glad you asked! I'm an IMAGINEER at Pixar...wait where are you going?
yungsnuggie over 9 years agoNomad
An entrepreneur or remote employee that can work and travel all around the world because the only things they need to be productive are internet and laptop.
Last year I had an amazing experience as a nomad working out of Starbucks in over 30 countries.
zazpowered over 9 years agoDigital Nomad
@koqoo true. I should change it
Lean Startup
A startup philosophy that attempts to combine the aspects of product driven with customer driven resulting in often successful, and simultaneously mediocre apps and websites that fails to bring forth truly disruptive technology.
Bob: I've spent all day doing customer development surveys for my Uber for tutoring app. Alice: That's nice. I just finished some testing for my needle-free vaccine delivery system. Bob: [Walks away feeling sorry for Alice, who has no clue what his customers really want and won't be able to pivot after sinking such large R&D costs]
Mcat over 9 years agoSam Altman
The current president of Y Combinator and successor to SV investor and essayist, Paul Graham.
In his own words Paul Graham says that "Sam is one of the smartest people I know, and understands startups better than perhaps anyone I know, including myself. He's the one I go to when I want a second opinion about a hard problem."
Today he spends his time moving YC forward, dealing with the waves of entrepreneurs trying to impress him in superficial ways in an attempt to garner entry into the incubator (I once hacked a non-computer system by [insert something borderline illegal here or morally questionable, albeit pretty smart]. He tweets declarative statements about his idea of the perfect founder, similar to how a teenager would describe his or her perfect boyfriend or girlfriend (not to his own fault, it's his job), as well as tweets about how well YC is doing in general.
Sam Altman says that the best founders live in the same apartment as their co-founders so we've decided to move in together! We're even going to sleep on the same king sized bed and mention it on our app, so we'll probably get an interview for sure.
covfefelord over 9 years agoHunted
Your product or service has been featured on http://ProductHunt.com
Person 1: Dude! This app is sick. Did you get hunted yet?
Person 2: No. What's that?
Person 1: Never mind...
Travis over 9 years agoErlich Bachman
A man of the hour. He sold his company Aviato. Now, he runs an incubator out of his house which also happens to be where Pied Piper is headquartered in. He invested in a few other ideas which never came to fruition. He played a critical role in coming up with an innovative and truly disruptive dick jerk algorithm.
In season two, he helps Richard raise a seed round by going around negging a bunch of investors.
There's no need for an example. He is the verb, noun and the everything else that matters in this world. Just watch this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9_PfruyLlU enough said.
svhunt over 9 years agoMechatronics
Waterloo's most difficult and arguably best engineering discipline. Noted by its difficult admission process, large number of top tech emloyees/startup founders and highest suicide rate (per student enrolled) in Canada
Person A: what did they guys behind the MYO at thalmic labs study? Person B: They were the fortunate few that actually made it through Mechatronics at Waterloo without killing themselves Person A: isn't that the same as they guys behind bufferbox and kik messenger? Person B: Yeah, they are probably all laughing at their classmates at Google, Facebook and Apple who took offers over starting their own company.
JonWilkins over 9 years ago
Did Twitter acquire Medium?