PAUSD Budget Analysis

PAUSD Budget Analysis

PAUSD spends $35K per student, among the highest in the bay area. However, we still can’t balance our budget, and always talk about cutting teachers. Where is the money going? Check out the PAUSD Budget Explorer. PAUSD has a $354 million budget for about 10,200 students, roughly $35K per student (up from about $16K a decade ago). The national average is about $18,000. Los Altos spends about $28K …

Who is reading all the stuff AI is writing?

tl;dr: If it took you twenty seconds to generate, don’t expect me to spend twenty minutes reading it. I’m seeing a massive influx of AI-generated documents: deep-research reports, meeting notes, PRDs, and strategy decks. They look professional. They follow a clean structure. But when I push for the “why” behind a specific recommendation, the logic usually collapses. Writing forces understanding: …
Public vs Private School College Acceptance

Public vs Private School College Acceptance

Comparing PAUSD with Harker: Harker doubles your top-50 odds (though there is selection bias), UCs are the most common outcome for PAUSD, and Foothill is smarter than it sounds. I wanted to get some clarity on what the actual data looks like - expecially comparing public school in Palo Alto with other private schools in the bay area. Fortunately, PAUSD publishes detailed matriculation data for …
AI and its impact on jobs

AI and its impact on jobs

AI is making building software cheap and accessible. This is unlocking massive productivity for everyone, but it also commoditizing software engineering. We are at the end of the software gold rush, and software engineering is going from elite to skilled trade. AI fixes the supply side of software engineering. Software Engineers are currently a luxury. Only well-funded businesses can afford them, …
Bringing YouTube one step closer to replacing traditional TV - Announcing VideoMirchi.com

Bringing YouTube one step closer to replacing traditional TV - Announcing VideoMirchi.com

I had subscribed to Indian programming on Dish Network, mainly to get the latest updates on bollywood movies and music. YouTube always had all the content, but never had a good way to discover it in a easy way. This is fixed now. I am super-excited to announce Video Mirchi. You can access it at http://www.videomirchi.com. Video Mirchi looks up the top charts every day and creates a continuously …
A personal review of Lytro Camera

A personal review of Lytro Camera

I just received my Lytro camera on Friday. I played with it for 2 days, carrying it almost everywhere I went. There were a lot of 'pro' reviews on the camera, but very few consumer ones, so I thought I will write down my thoughts on it. Quick summary on Lytro as a camera: What I liked: It is a very well built camera. It feels great in the hands, and its construction is high quality. Its fast. …
Smart TV FAIL. Let's go back to the Idiot Box.

Smart TV FAIL. Let's go back to the Idiot Box.

Having observed the whole ‘connected tv’ phenomenon first hand since my early days at YouTube, contributing to XBMC since its inception and being really interested in this space personally, I am very upset with the direction where Smart TV is going. I think that the future should not include 'Apps on TV', 'Browser on TV', and its also not 'Read Facebook or Check Email on the TV'. They are …
Smarter Email

Smarter Email

I love Email. It just works. It works because it is flexible, open, and anyone can use it. It works very well in heterogeneous environments as the email standard is well documented, accepted and implemented. I have looked at a ton of ‘solutions’ that try to replace emails, but nothing really works as seamlessly as good-old email. The goal of email is to enable communication and think that it can …
The Native-App economy and its future

The Native-App economy and its future

Since the launch of iPhone, everyone has been trying to replicate the App Store model that Apple created. Every operator, OEM and even independent companies are trying to create their own app stores and native app platforms. The app store/native app model is inherently a walled garden model. This is analogous to AOL in the early days of the internet. AOL was the first one to truly bring internet …

2 Year Anniversary

Next week, I completed 2 years of leaving my amazing job at YouTube to enter the world of startups. Looking back, there is a ton of things that happened in these 2 years, including starting 2 companies, having a baby, traveling, fundraising, investing, advising, volunteering, etc. There is a lot that I have learned from this rollercoaster ride, and its now time to reflect on some of the key …