Somewhat spicy take - if the people in Area 120 were among the top 10% of Googlers you worked with, they probably weren't the right builders to start a new vertical.
Most of what makes people effective at large companies is neutral or negative value when applied to very early-stage companies.
You’re not wrong. They were among the top 10% of people I worked with in terms of passion, commitment, and creativity. They weren’t among the top 10% in terms of their skill in navigating Dilbert-land corporatism.
A significant number of the people in Area 120 projects were folks who were stifled and/or wasted in their previous Google jobs. One explicit purpose of Area 120 was to prevent the loss of these entrepreneurs to outside startups. Not incidentally, this was a form of cultural reinforcement - Area 120 burnished Google’s reputation as a good home for entrepreneurial mindsets.
I Don't think hoarding is necessarily the right word. They were using them to research potential new products or tools. The theory being that if only a few of the projects prove high value then it's worth it. That's not hoarding that's letting them flourish.
1) in the case of Area 120, this is one of the ways it was pitched to management. “Passionate entrepreneurs are leaving to work on new ideas; if you give them a place inside Google to pursue new ideas, it keeps them and their entrepreneurial energy at the company.”
2) in general, early Google used to hoard talent all the time. The founders would keep great people (or their friends) on payroll for ~ever just to have them stick around. That was most prevalent in the first decade of Google’s life, to my knowledge, and mostly applied to very senior people.
By the time Area 120 was pitched and approved (circa 2014), those days were largely gone. Area 120 was primarily filled with junior people (L4-L6) and constantly had to sing for its supper - it was not at all a sinecure.
That assertion applies to the middle 80%, IME. The top 10% are the people you can drop on to any project of any size and any org structure and they adapt quickly and deliver. They adapt themselves accordingly.
> That assertion applies to the middle 80%, IME. The top 10% are the people you can drop on to any project of any size and any org structure and they adapt quickly and deliver. They adapt themselves accordingly.
These are rather the top 10 % sycophants, not the top 10 % researchers or top 10 % programmers.
Tailwind CSS is fast fashion. Gives you a fresh look in a cost/time-effective way, entirely not sustainable w.r.t. the environment, but sells like hot cakes in any case.
The reality for better or worse is it's good enough for most companies and engineers.
I have an S and the cost is $2k a year after tax, about on par with the insurance costs of my old Camry. Probably worth shopping around a bit more if you’re still in the process.
Interestingly enough, Substack is heading down the same direction - when you get linked to an article, it now forces a full screen popup on you asking if you want to subscribe or just read.
Somehow I find that less annoying with substack, because their positioning is clearly "look, this is a newsletter, not a blog." The dark UI patterns around dismissing the pop up are annoying though.
Yeah that's the problem. I don't want a newsletter, I want a blog.
And like the OP I only care about people reading my stuff. I don't care about monetisation and I definitely don't want to put them through all the crap that medium does.. substack is not a great alternative because it's also monetisation focused for authors.
For me one problem with the newsletter is that everybody and his brother and his sister and his other brother wants to send me email spams several times a day. The only way I can keep it manageable is to remove myself from every list as soon as I can.
I've been building my own smart RSS reader so I'd much rather add a feed to by reader which puts me, the reader, in control.
I thought of it but Hacker News posts are pure text, you can't add a single picture. The reading format is also not suitable for long form, and it makes the post text kinda grey which makes it even harder to read.
So, no. The community is great but it's not a blogging platform. I could self host my blog and post links here for discovery but self-promotion is generally frowned upon. I don't want to abuse the community.
If people can upload images people will upload atrocity pictures (with the caption POST A STUPID IMAGE MEME... U DIE!), lewd pictures, CSAM pictures, and other things that will waste your time to manage if they don't get you in trouble outright. (It was super easy to get a basically G rated site demonetized with a 10⁻⁴ fraction of problem images ten years ago, it must be much worse now.)
None of the incentives changed. We really just need someone egalitarian to make the craigslist of blogs and never be tempted to stab the goose who's laying the golden eggs for quick monetization. The blogging space is too long-term for that short sighted nonsense
> never be tempted to stab the goose who's laying the golden eggs
Isn’t the whole point that there are no golden eggs? People don’t want to pay and people don’t want ads. Where would you get income for the authors and for the platform itself?
I think there's monitization models somewhere there. Off the top of my head, you could go the email route and charge for "premium" features. Analytics, custom domains etc.
Either that or it could to be run as a loss leader for some other service
The thing is there's no money in charging writers, really. There's just not enough of them, and they aren't going to pay you enough (certainly not to reach golden egg territory). You must monetize on a per reader basis if you want real revenue.
that seem like what somebody would pay. If you'd assume somebody spends 4 hours a week blogging and their time is worth $25 an hour you'd be putting $400 of hour of labor in a month and spending $40 for hosting is a fraction of that. That $25/hour would seem low to some people but high to others: some people are time-rich and cash-poor and others the other way around.
The horrific truth about the "Next Medium" is that it is going to appeal to people who are too lazy to write a successful blog by having GPT-4 write their blog posts for them.
From my perspective there's nothing wrong, but most of the population that has ever even heard of Github think of it as a complex programmer's only thing.
I remember a project I did some time ago where we required Github integration, every employee of the company was supposed to have a Github account, it was even part of the onboarding day, there was a very internal knowledge base page on how to setup Github, and EVEN then people would just hear the word "Github" and freak out saying a bunch of people in the company would never ever be able to setup an account there.
companies have to make money at some point, it's not coincidence all these same types of sites do the same thing once they've burned through their VC money and have to make money. Hosting this type of stuff is a commodity service, it's why you constantly see a churn of people from each VC subsidized service
I think you hit the nail on the head - at a certain point caring about every single rule isn’t effective or is actually net less effective.
On HN I’ll use correct punctuation, grammar, and a wider set of vocabulary because there’s a good chance my message will come across more clearly.
For general emails, I’ll write with simpler language because it’s very much a get-in-get-out activity especially with more senior stakeholders.
For work comms, what’s the value in typing HN-style? Everyone already knows everyone else is smart. I believe communicating tone is more valuable than perfect punctuation and grammar, which make it much harder to get that across.
Or as my grandma used to say - you don’t treat people you want to be treated, you treat them the way they want to be treated.
> at a certain point caring about every single rule isn’t effective or is actually net less effective
My point is the exact opposite though: I've been writing like this for all of my life, for at least 40 years, to write like I don't care I need to actually think about it and put a lot more effort into it, because it feels unnatural, looks wrong and makes me immediately doubt of the quality of the content I produced.
Especially at work, where when I write something, it is for other people to read, sometimes many.
But I also capitalize my personal notes.
So, to me, your explanation of why you don't do it sounds like "look at me, I don't follow rules because we are all smart here, right guys? ... right?".
Don't want to be offensive, but correct grammar should be muscle memory by now.
Relying on muscle memory is good because it works on autopilot and let you focus on what's important.
That's fair, but your writing style mostly optimizes for you, your comfort, and your speed. And I say that as someone who started memorizing SAT words at the age of 8 - most people actually prefer to read a high school level (myself included in work contexts).
I didn't learn this lesson the hard way until I was past my mid-20s. When you write something for others, it's far better to optimize for them rather than for yourself. Let's say you spend twice as much time writing something in an 'odd' way, but it gets your 50% more reach or alignment or funding. That's probably actually a great use of your time.
> So, to me, your explanation of why you don't do it sounds like "look at me, I don't follow rules because we are all smart here, right guys? ... right?".
It's not about being contrarian, it's about the tradeoff. Tone is incredibly important in most situations.
When you write with perfect grammar and punctuation, most people don't know how to read into the nuance. Happy? Joyful? Pleased? Content? There's very little, if any, common understanding of the intensity or undertone in those adjectives. Imagine you're working with a new PM and he tells you the team's progress is 'acceptable.' What does that mean exactly? Is he happy with it? Is he mildly annoyed? Does he feel like things are off track and actually wants to talk more?
So how do we build this common understanding? It turns out most people have actually already built up a language with their friends! Through texts/DMs/etc. So when that language is ported over to a work context, most people immediately grasp it.
You can conform to the world or the world can conform to you. <-- A sentence where tone would be helpful.
> When you write with perfect grammar and punctuation, most people don't know how to read into the nuance
I still can't understand the argument here, it sounds so off that seems fabricated to me.
When you read the Divine Comedy (we study it in high school in Italy) the grammar is not in current modern Italian, the style is from 550 years ago, the poem is written in hendecasyllables in terza rima [1], the references are often obscure, but in no point of it the tone is hard to understand, because the author conveys it explicitly.
l’ora del tempo e la dolce stagione;
ma non sì che paura non mi desse
la vista che m’apparve d’un leone.
Questi parea che contra me venisse
con la test’alta e con rabbiosa fame,
sì che parea che l’aere ne tremesse.
Dante is saying that it was a beautiful day of spring, but not as beautiful to not be scared by the sight of a lion that went his direction, looking enraged by the hunger, making "the air tremble"
Writing is a non-verbal, not-in-person, form of communication, you can't look for what's not in it.
Assuming a neutral tone unless specified otherwise, it's always the best bet.
Also, as I've said before, improper grammar could also mean "I don't know the grammar of your language well enough", if I'm writing French, I make a lot of mistakes because I don't use it very often, so the tone is the last of my concerns and the people reading it could easily think it's from a 9 year old kid who hasn't finished primary school yet.
If you think that correct grammar is more than just "the proper way to use the language" you're most probably seeing too much into it.
> Imagine you're working with a new PM and he tells you the team's progress is 'acceptable.' What does that mean exactly?
it means "acceptable"
in a scale from 0 to 10 acceptable is >= 6 and < 7
> Assuming a neutral tone unless specified otherwise, it's always the best bet.
I actually believe most writing is non-neutral in nature. Every word choice and sentence structure conveys meaning, intentional or not.
For example, why did Dante describe the sight of a lion as making "the air tremble" rather than cause "a stillness in the air"? Or a slightly more powerful variant, "a silence in the air"? My guess is that he wanted to call attention to how dominating the lion's presence was, that even the air was humbled/scared. That's how intimidating and commandeering the lion was. (Very intentional word choice here by me to pair with enraged!)
Maybe that's the wrong interpretation, but we also have people who study exactly this! The nuance of literary works and their meanings.
The article mentions a difference between 'lol' and 'haha' - if you boil it down, is that really so different from 'the air tremble' vs. 'a stillness in the air'? It's word choice again, ultimately.
> Also, as I've said before, improper grammar could also mean "I don't know the grammar of your language well enough", if I'm writing French, I make a lot of mistakes because I don't use it very often, so the tone is the last of my concerns and the people reading it could easily think it's from a 9 year old kid who hasn't finished primary school yet.
Maybe this is why we disagree - I believe that once relative fluency is assumed, tone becomes more important.
Mandarin is a great example here. Most people who are just starting to learn Mandarin focus on vocabulary, pronouns, etc. But once you get to a more advanced stage, it reveals a really unique twist.
Informal 'modal particles' [1] are optional in sentences but also can significantly change the mood. You'd never use them in formal writing (they're not exactly professional), but in practice people use them in everyday written communications. Interestingly enough, they're by default pronounced in a neutral tone but can also be inflected with more emotion even though Mandarin is already a tonal language.
English doesn't have modal particles, and the closest equivalent I've seen are these Gen Z Netiquettes (which aren't only for Gen Z as a few people have pointed out).
---
As an example:
1. 吃饭: eat food
2. 吃饭吧: eat food, we should (friendly but also commanding)
3. 吃饭吗: eat food, want to? (friendly but more suggestive)
---
In English, you could write it like this instead:
1. food
2. we should get food
3. want to get food?
---
But that's not exactly right, because Mandarin also has formal sentences for those forms:
1. 吃饭: eat food
2. 应该吃饭: should eat food
3. 要不要吃饭: want to eat food or not?
---
So closer parallels in English instead could be:
1. food
2. food :eyes_emoji: [2]
3. food? :drooling_face_emoji: [3]
---
And as the article mentions, you can even merge 2 modal particles into a new one that's equal to the combined mood of both. For extra nuance!
e.g. 吃饭了吗: eat food, have you already done it? (friendly)
I think there's some truth to the idea that emojis are a bit of madness (but are also here to stay), but I disagree that nuance doesn't exist in written communication. It's existed for hundreds of years already, as mentioned above in the Dante example. Emojis are just a modern-day version of nuance.
In your original post, you mention:
> Not doing it [capitalization] proves that people either don't care or don't know the basic rules of the language, which says a lot more than doing it properly.
The third (more charitable) possibility is that people are intentionally doing it for nuance. For example, I capitalize in formal emails with customers but use lowercase with friends. My guess is that most people I work with do the same, and more importantly know others are also aware of this.
So at work, I can either choose to treat my coworkers as closer to customers or closer to friends. You can likely guess what that means. (<-- another example of a short sentence where tone is lost - was I amused? condescending? factual? <spoiler> it was the first </spoiler>)
Lastly, while you may personally disagree with the existence of nuance, it's hard to deny that a large chunk of people do infer nuance from text - just looking at this HN thread alone! So the takeaway I'd lightly (and not firmly!) suggest again is that it's worth optimizing for others in certain situations even if it seems like madness.
> I actually believe most writing is non-neutral in nature. Every word choice and sentence structure conveys meaning, intentional or not.
Neutral as "exactly what it says", not "without any inflection".
Tone in writing is conveyed through how sentences are formed, which forms you use, what kind of words you chose, how verbose/succint you are, etc.
Capitalization does not mean anything special, it's only a grammar rule used to separate sentences and make reading easier.
if someone thinks that not capitalizing sentences means being informal, why not write in plain incorrect English, or using some street slang, or communicate by sending memes, where is the limit?
English speakers make a lot of fuss around things that are common in many other languages.
Mandarin is one, Italian, my language, is another (we have modal particles too).
If you want to be formal there's a form called "dare del lei" ( address someone in the third person ), if you want (or can) be informal it is called "dare del tu" (address someone in the second person, the regular you)
> The third (more charitable) possibility is that people are intentionally doing it for nuance
> So at work, I can either choose to treat my coworkers as closer to customers or closer to friends
Which is a lot of effort for little gain, at the risk of sounding sloppy.
There are much better ways, like using "Hi Mark" instead of "Good morning Mr. Stuart"
> , it's hard to deny that a large chunk of people do infer nuance from text -
Agree, from text not from text structure.
Text can be formal, informal and every other degree in between.
Structure can only be right or wrong, style only good or not good.
norwegian nobel committee oslo on behalf of the bureau of liberal international the global federation of liberal political parties I have the honour to bring to your attention our support for the nomination organized by the drugs peace institute of senator leila de lima of the philippines embattled democratic leader and internationally recognised human rights defender for the prestigious nobel peace prize
this is a very formal text in a not very good style (wall of text / blob of words)
EDIT:
So closer parallels in English instead could be:
1. food
2. food :eyes_emoji: [2]
3. food? :drooling_face_emoji: [3]
---
My version.
Words are free, use them.
Emojis are not as universal as people think, do not translate linearly across cultures and are not as easy to type.
I wouldn't say "food" as a single word to mean "here's your food" not even to a dog.
That's fascinating - even as a kid my sense of smell has been near-nonexistent. Whenever I've read descriptions of powerful smells in books, I've always written them off as overly flowery language.
Reminds me a little generally of how some have an inner voice when they read and others don't.
Fridays generally are slow for very normal human reasons. Especially afternoons like this one.
We have an interesting setup where we do every other Friday off - the logic being that we combine 2 slow Friday afternoons into an entire day off. Everybody gets a 3 day weekend twice a month for longer breaks or road trips.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how it’s panned out in practice. Feels like a nice middle ground.
Campaigns against disinformation are bound to fail because everyone has a different interpretation of the truth and assumes that everything else is “disinformation” (with quotes this time).
Much like social media generally, disinformation is now one of the chief scapegoats across the aisle for all that’s wrong in the world.
Also, readers should know that The Free Press is Bari Weiss¹. Vanity Fair described her as "a provocateur", which is the kindest-possible interpretation of her editorial philosophy.
> In 2021, Weiss compared her own professional travails to Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist who was threatened with being burnt at the stake if he did not renounce his scientific views.
Not seeing how I did any discrediting, just thought it was interesting as I was reading through it. I intentionally wrote this in a neutral way - e.g. I could have just as easily mentioned John Carmack and Oculus.
Unless you believe that Matt Tabibi is not a reputable journalist or that the Twitter Files lack credibility, this feels like a very defensive gut response.
The biggest revelation from the previous dumps were that Joe Biden's team requested Twitter remove posts of Hunter Biden's nude body from the site, and they obliged. This is content moderation and completely reasonable.
The latest revelation is that Twitter tried to keep antivax shit off the site. Everyone paying attention knew that was the case already, and was the right thing to do (Hacker News should do that, too).
The biggest issue isn't the dick pics, but him smoking crack and potentially having sex with an underaged woman. He just happened to be naked while doing/potentially doing those things.
He also was not the candidate, did not have a chance of getting a government position like his predecessor’s children, and there was no public interest in seeing his acts. It would have been newsworthy if they’d tried to hide the story of Hunter’s addiction but it was public knowledge already along with Joe’s desire to help his son get treatment.
>He also was not the candidate, did not have a chance of getting a government position like his predecessor’s children
And? Does that mean we should suppress evidence of crimes that are posted on Twitter because of that? If I committed a crime, should Twitter delete the articles and pictures?
> It would have been newsworthy if they’d tried to hide the story of Hunter’s addiction but it was public knowledge already along
It is more than just addiction. He may have had child porn on his computer and may have had sex with an underage girl.
There is also the question of how he got such a cushy job with no experience and a drug addiction.
>with Joe’s desire to help his son get treatment.
Joe seems like he genuinely cares about his son and wanted him to get help. I don't think that is relevant though.
Twitter isn’t law enforcement so, no, there isn’t a requirement that they provide free hosting and promotion for everyone alleging a crime. In this case, they briefly used their hacked materials policy until deciding that it didn’t apply to the news coverage but did continue to yank non-consensual nudes under their existing policies.
If you genuinely believed that Hunter Biden had child porn or whatever Giuliani imagines, you’d definitely want that offline since there’s no public benefit to circulating criminal materials and law enforcement is definitely going to investigate it.
>Twitter isn’t law enforcement so, no, there isn’t a requirement that they provide free hosting and promotion for everyone alleging a crime
I didn't say they should be required to. I just think they should be consistent on their enforcement of the rules.
>In this case, they briefly used their hacked materials policy until deciding that it didn’t apply to the news coverage
Why didn't they do that when GiveSendGo was hacked (the hacking was not in doubt) and names of people who donated to the Freedom Convoy were leaked?
Like I said, I have an issue with the selective enforcement of the rules. If they want to ban material that is hacked that is fine, but to not do it when everybody knows the materials were hacked is ridiculous.
>but did continue to yank non-consensual nudes under their existing policies.
I am fine with suppressing non consensual nudes. I am not OK with suppressing articles about them.
>If you genuinely believed that Hunter Biden had child porn or whatever Giuliani imagines, you’d definitely want that offline since there’s no public benefit to circulating criminal materials and law enforcement is definitely going to investigate it.
No one was suggesting they should be releasing the child porn. I am advocating for allow news articles about it.
I fail to see why then it is Twitter's responsibility to report this to the general public or even allow its existence. Authorities exist for a reason, twitter is neither part of the judicial, executive, nor legislative branch, nor does it have any jurisdiction in conducting research into criminal offenses and prosecuting people.
I fail to see why Hunter Biden needs to be held at a different standard than other people, especially given that he did not hold office, nor was in the process of doing so via cronyism, nor did he make millions off his [non existent] position in the government.
>I fail to see why then it is Twitter's responsibility to report this to the general public or even allow its existence.
Should Twitter remove all evidence of other people's crimes or just Hunter's that get posted?
>Authorities exist for a reason, twitter is neither part of the judicial, executive, nor legislative branch, nor does it have any jurisdiction in conducting research into criminal offenses and prosecuting people.
Nobody is asking for Twitter to arrest Hunter or hold a trial. They just wanted to be able to spread information about the crimes.
>I fail to see why Hunter Biden needs to be held at a different standard than other people
He was held to a different standard when Twitter removed people posting pictures and articles about his crime. If I committed a crime would Twitter ban those pictures? Doubt it.
>especially given that he did not hold office
The only time Twitter should allow evidence of crimes is when the person is a government official? Seems like a weird standard.
>nor was in the process of doing so via cronyism
How did he get his job in Ukraine and why did the prosecutor get fired at Joe Biden's request if it wasn't for cronyism?
>nor did he make millions off his [non existent] position in the government.
He did make millions in a nongovernmental position that he was given due to his relationship with his father though.
> He was held to a different standard when Twitter removed people posting pictures and articles about his crime. If I committed a crime would Twitter ban those pictures? Doubt it.
First, if a crime was committed, which you have no proof of except accusations from shady or borderline criminal entities, he could very well get prosecuted.
Second, you can ask to have content removed, nobody is stopping you, no executive orders or legal threats were issued.
> How did he get his job in Ukraine
No idea, but I am fairly certain that Biden can't appoint people as board members to companies he does not own.
> and why did the prosecutor get fired at Joe Biden's request
Citation needed.
> if it wasn't for cronyism?
Umm, I take it you took issue with Ivanka's positions and the 2 billion $ deals with the Saudis, yes? I am just asking questions here to make sure you are consistent. Also, unlike Ivanka and co(-conspirators), he was __NEVER__ appointed to an official position in the US government.
> He did make millions in a nongovernmental position that he was given due to his relationship with his father though.
It does make quite a bit of a difference between inside and outside, don't you think? I hope you were proportionally outraged over Ivanka and Jared:
> Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working in the White House, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by CREW. It is impossible to tell the exact amount as the income is sometimes reported in broad ranges and cover four months of income before Ivanka Trump officially joined her father’s administration and nearly one month before Jared Kushner joined.
While Jared (Trump's son in law, appointed to __FEDERAL__ position, ergo more cronyism) signed a 2 billion dollar deal with Saudis. So are you equally outraged over this level of cronyism? Again, here is a definition of cronyism to help you:
> the practice of favoring one's close friends, especially in political appointments.
> no executive orders or legal threats were issued.
that is a pretty interesting high bar to uphold
> No idea, but I am fairly certain that Biden can't appoint people as board members to companies he does not own.
That was an open and shut case of corruption, you playing innocent ("no idea") does not make it less so.
> Umm, I take it you took issue with Ivanka's positions and the 2 billion $ deals with the Saudis, yes? I am just asking questions here to make sure you are consistent. Also, unlike Ivanka and co(-conspirators), he was __NEVER__ appointed to an official position in the US government.
This is literally whataboutism. In the meantime, twitter did not remove information about Ivanka and the Trumps, on the contrary.
In an alternate reality, wouldn't you be pissed if Google removed all bad information about the Trumps?
>First, if a crime was committed, which you have no proof of except accusations from shady or borderline criminal entities, he could very well get prosecuted.
There are literally pictures of him smoking crack. I don't fully remember, but there may have been a video of it as well. Do you think it is a deep fake?
>Second, you can ask to have content removed, nobody is stopping you, no executive orders or legal threats were issued.
That isn't what happened with the Hunter pictures and articles though. The government asked for it to be removed.
> No idea, but I am fairly certain that Biden can't appoint people as board members to companies he does not own.
I never suggested that happened.
> Citation needed.
Joe Biden said it himself: "I'm not going to -- or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said -- I said, call him. I said, I'm telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."
This was the prosecutor investigating the company Hunter Biden was working at. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but there was a clear conflict of interest.
> Umm, I take it you took issue with Ivanka's positions and the 2 billion $ deals with the Saudis, yes? I am just asking questions here to make sure you are consistent.
Of course I am against this. The difference is Twitter didn't ban any articles about this like they did with Hunter.
>Also, unlike Ivanka and co(-conspirators), he was __NEVER__ appointed to an official position in the US government.
I don't think this matters. The only reason (as far as I can tell) that Hunter got the job is because his dad was in an official position in the government. No different than the Trumps.
> It does make quite a bit of a difference between inside and outside, don't you think?
No. Corruption is corruption. Criminal behavior is criminal behavior.
>I hope you were proportionally outraged over Ivanka and Jared:
I am proportionally outraged at Ivanka and Jared as I am Hunter. I am not proportionally outraged over the situation since only one was censored by Twitter.
Most of what makes people effective at large companies is neutral or negative value when applied to very early-stage companies.