Victor Pontis

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    1. Why We Turned Down YC

      I've wanted to join YC for the last 8 years. I've applied to and been rejected by YC three times.

    1. Book Notes: Super Pumped and The Upstarts

      I read The Upstarts by Brad Stone which covers Uber and AirBnB's meteoric growth and Super Pumped by Mike Isaac which focuses on Uber and takes the story thru Travis' ouster.

    1. The Making of "Can I Kick It?"

      I've been in the scooter game for the past year. Scooter Map helps riders and chargers find scooters fast. Spring helps new scooter companies get started.

    2. WePark

      It’s a thing, check it out.

    3. Totaled — Book Review

      Brian Blum’s Totaled catalogues Better Place’s tumultuous journey from Davos draft business plan for an electric vehicle company to raising $100Ms as a sexy startup to spending that money quickly and irresponsibly to…

    3. The Most Human Human — Book Review

      Ostensibly, The Most Human Human by Brian Christian describes the author’s quest to beat the bots competing for the Loebner Prize, the world’s most famous Touring Test. In the contest, judges talk with humans and bots via…

    1. Scooters and Second Order Consequences

      New shared lightweight electric vehicles will change the way we get around cities, but they will also have a lot of second order effects. In this post, I predict how the rise of micro-mobility will affect nearly everything…

    1. Review of Seneca “On the Shortness Of Life”

      I really don’t understand why so many people hold this essay in high regard. Maybe I’m missing something. In my reading, Seneca is writing to Polonious, a friend or relative, who is responsible for maintaining the food…

    2. Berlin By Bike (Bikeshare Review)

      I was in Berlin for a week and there are a lot of options for getting around. The public transport system (U-bahn / S-bahn) is great, but to really see the city you should rent a bike!

    3. Walking Towards Progress

      I often find new ideas and see new perspectives when I am walking. In physics, there is a long tradition of walking as a key element of theory formulation. Einstein incorporated a walk into his daily routine. Bohr was known…

    4. Algorithms to Live By — Book Notes

      These are my super rough notes for Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. I wrote these notes for myself and cleaned them up a bit. So hopefully they make a little bit of sense!

    1. The Everything Store — Book Notes

      These are notes I wrote up after reading The Everything Store by Brad Stone. I enjoyed reading the book and learned a lot of new things about Amazon’s journey and felt like I got insight into Bezos’ mind.

    1. North Korea’s Three Body Problem

      The Three Body Problem is an incredibly gripping Chinese science fiction series. The trilogy starts during Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution, covers humanity discovering, losing to and overcoming an alien civilization, and…

    1. Your Birthday Makes Me A Better Friend

      I like meeting people and making new friends. But I have found myself struggling to stay in touch with old friends while also fostering new relationships. Being a computer nerd, I eventually ended up solving this problem…

    1. Improving by Removing Facebook's News Feed

      Facebook is distracting. My Facebook news feed gives me update after update of people I kind-of sort-of know. My ex-girlfriend went to a club with her friends last week. A kid I tangentially know from high school with just…

    1. Why I'm taking time off MIT to work

      As I write this I am supposed to be just finishing up my last first-day-of-school at MIT. I should be a senior majoring in computer science and physics. Instead, I am taking the fall off from school and right now am in San…