169 reputation
3
bio website dcook.org/work
location Tokyo, Japan
age
visits member for 1 year, 6 months
seen May 4 at 0:30
stats profile views 12

I'm director at QQ Trends, a company that solves difficult data and software challenges for our clients. (We often have freelance projects, so get in touch if interested.) (And, of course, please do get in touch if you have interesting challenges that you would like our world-class experts to work on!)

Typical work: doing fun stuff with data (fixing, mining, etc.), web sites (front and back-ends), trading strategies. Research: trading strategies, computer go, machine translation, understanding context, AI search algorithms. Languages: C++, PHP, R, javascript, and many more.

I'm British, living and working in Tokyo for 15+ years. Human Languages: English, Japanese (fairly fluent, 1 kyu), some German, Chinese and Arabic.


Mar
30
answered Can I pay freelancer overseas who does not have a business account?
Feb
24
answered startup CTO salary and equity
Dec
9
comment Can I divorce a co-founder
+1 for suggesting an external mediator, someone who can appreciate the beauty of good code/infrastructure that the tech team want to create, and the joy of executing a sales plan and making good money... and then explain them to each side.
Dec
2
answered Why can't I find any reliable web development help? What am I doing wrong?
Sep
9
comment Already 120,000 monthly visitors but almost no revenue
I like this idea: those 120K visitors must be getting value from your site, and human nature means people want to give back. Simply ask what features of a premium subscription would be worth $2/month (or whatever) to them.
Aug
19
answered How do I get companies to sponsor my project?
Aug
14
awarded  Commentator
Aug
14
comment VC not needed? What am I missing from these costs?
@Chelonian You give away not just a share of the profits to a venture capitalist (or any investor), but also a share of the control of the future direction of the company. If your visions and priorities are not the same then you have discord at the top of the company instead of harmony. (As a concrete examples, VCs are normally interested in each of their companies taking risks to grow rapidly, rather than slow, steady organic growth; they don't care if an individual company fails, as long as at least one of their companies gets super-rich.)
Jul
14
answered Developing an app, android or ios first?
Jul
8
comment Domain name for startup taken by a broker, should we buy it before we've built a business around our name?
Was that a personal recommendation for DNBA, or only that you've heard of them? The home page has no info without signing up, and their facebook page is similarly suspicious.
Jun
17
comment How to trust my developers?
Greedy people are greedy however much you pay them. Honest people remain honest however little you pay them. (However I don't disagree with your point. Most people have an internal fight going on between honest and greedy, and showing appreciation (and not just financially) to your staff does help prevent some problems.)
Apr
15
comment When (and why) should a small, niche company spend resources *promoting* Social Media Marketing rather than an email newsletter?
Thanks for the book recommendation. Amazon reviews are good; the consensus seems to be it is about "Why", not "How". (Which is the original poster's question.) Social Media For Dummies is recommended for the "How", and I notice the second edition was just published (April 3rd, 2012) (too early for reviews, but first edition by the same author did get good reviews).
Apr
7
answered Co-founder wants to leave, do I pay him back the money he invested into the business?
Feb
26
answered What is the real price of an Amazon EC2 machine?
Jan
22
answered VC not needed? What am I missing from these costs?
Jan
15
comment what am I giving up by letting someone else become the CEO?
Downside of having both a CEO and a president is it confuses people: who do I want to be dealing with? If the person in charge of running the company and in charge of sales is called CEO, and the person in charge of keeping the tech running and developing new tech products is called the CTO, everyone knows who they need to be talking to. (No-one but investors cares which one of them is chairman of the board.)
Dec
24
answered New Business Idea - Who owns it?
Dec
24
comment New Business Idea - Who owns it?
@Antonio "The understanding" or "your understanding"? Did you actually say in your verbal discussions "I will own the rights" and he nodded?
Dec
18
comment Do I need a tech co founder at this point?
@Adam That sounds like a fresh question ;-). Anyway, my comment (as a software developer who often works with start-ups) was going to be the same, so I just did the +1 here.
Dec
13
comment Would you sign this liability clause?
@Roger Good point - I think I was more answering a different question. Warranty vs. liability has been left vague in my contracts, and reading this thread I think I should be paying closer attention to it. But, as simple client handling, I've tried to "clean up my mess". E.g. if a bug has screwed up a database, I will repair the database as well as fixing the bug. (I guess I'm lucky to be working mostly with Japanese clients, where litigation is an act of last resort, not the first resort as in the U.S.)