Hacker News: joncooper

New comment by joncooper in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2026)"

joncooper — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:02:55 +0000

Location: NYC / Old Greenwich, CT

Remote: In-person or hybrid preferred but would consider remote

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Software, systems, people, finance

Résumé/CV: https://hn-may-2026.jon-cooper.workers.dev/

Email: gazing_recite454@simplelogin.com (forwarded)

******

Interested in FDE, deployment lead, product roles; open to others.

Broad and deep experience and expertise across finance, technology, leadership.

- Arbitrage and discretionary trader/PM at bank and hedge funds

- Co-founded VC-backed virtual gift card company, sold to giftcards.com

- CTO/CISO/partner at a $1.4B peer-to-peer lending fund

- Ran bank-wide analytics and then marketing technology at First Republic

Looking to join a high velocity, passionate, talent dense team who execute relentlessly.

I like to work with others to build software, systems, teams, and businesses and am good at it.

IQ+EQ personality, positive-sum mentality.

New comment by joncooper in "Uncovering insiders and alpha on Polymarket with AI"

joncooper — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:16:59 +0000

An agricultural company hedging the price of soybeans is precisely hedging, not speculation. The insider information they have is their supply/demand/pricing picture. That's different than the colloquial definition of insider information which I've always taken to tie to event occurrence (or not).

New comment by joncooper in "Show HN: Moltbook – A social network for moltbots (clawdbots) to hang out"

joncooper — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:29:22 +0000

This is fascinating and well worth reading the source document. Which, FYI, is the Opus 4 system card: https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/4263b940cabb546aa0e3283f35b686...

New comment by joncooper in "Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test"

joncooper — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 18:45:49 +0000

I'm surprised when people are surprised that Google's interview process is obnoxious. That's pretty well established by this point, both by Google employees and others.

New comment by joncooper in "Gun-safe OPSEC. Manufacturers passing out codes"

joncooper — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 01:16:09 +0000

Probably should take the logo off of the image of the safe if the intent is to avoid naming the company.

New comment by joncooper in "Numerai, a hedge fund built by a community of anonymous data scientists"

joncooper — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 00:45:13 +0000

"It is intuitively obvious that an open access hedge fund will generate more intelligence than a closed system built on a pre-internet, pre-cryptocurrency, pre-AI organizational design."

Really? Because the folks with the magic black box aren't capable of funding an Interactive Brokers account to keep 100% of their upside and 100% of their IP?

(Also: risk management and order handling are harder problems than signal generation.)

New comment by joncooper in "LendingClub CEO Resigns Following Loan Sales Review"

joncooper — Mon, 09 May 2016 22:03:03 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset-backed_security

New comment by joncooper in "BYOT: Bring your own team"

joncooper — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:50:44 +0000

Among other factors, salespeople have a large variable component to their compensation. They tend to be highly economic animals in a way that most engineers are not. Hence a former boss can easily convince them to join up by making a compelling argument about their prospective earnings.

New comment by joncooper in "BYOT: Bring your own team"

joncooper — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:49:01 +0000

It also skips the part where the team being hired gets a large signing bonus.

New comment by joncooper in "San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March"

joncooper — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 18:02:49 +0000

I'd take it a step further and argue that asset appreciation was an intended outcome of ZIRP.

New comment by joncooper in "Twitter Names Jack Dorsey Chief Executive"

joncooper — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 18:08:38 +0000

Are you a professional investor?

New comment by joncooper in "Why Fogbugz lost to Jira"

joncooper — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 18:16:59 +0000

Agreed. I kind of don't get Trello. Always thought of it as kind of a lightweight "stack of cards" analogue best used for simple high-level planning along the lines of a Kanban board. Is that how people use it?

New comment by joncooper in "Silicon Valley’s Economic Indicator: Caltrain Ridership"

joncooper — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 00:45:22 +0000

No, but the prevailing myth is part of what a previous commenter referred to as the area becoming the new Wall Street. All the carpetbagging MBA types I'm acquainted with who would've gone to NYC/London in the go-go mortgage bubble days are here now. It's the logical place for a talented young person with hustle to go and try to get some.

New comment by joncooper in "Open-Source Loan-Level Analysis of Fannie and Freddie"

joncooper — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 16:46:25 +0000

The toolchain isn't the point. That's the difference between someone with business judgment and a plain ol' geek.

New comment by joncooper in "Open-Source Loan-Level Analysis of Fannie and Freddie"

joncooper — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 16:45:41 +0000

Agreed. This kind of thing would definitely get an interview from me as well. Stands out very well against a sea of indistinguishable resumes from big-name schools. There's simply no substitute for actually showing that you can do quality work!

New comment by joncooper in "Swift gems for creating reliable, concurrent OS X desktop apps"

joncooper — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 15:13:29 +0000

If this interests you, definitely consider taking https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive

New comment by joncooper in "The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up in the U.S."

joncooper — Thu, 14 May 2015 16:44:00 +0000

Please email if you do.

New comment by joncooper in "Ask HN: Thoughts on a hedge fund investing in my seed stage startup"

joncooper — Thu, 14 May 2015 16:40:40 +0000

The term "hedge fund" covers a tremendous range of firms. That said I would look out for the same things you'd look out for in any funding arrangement: price, control, dilution, liquidation preference, unusual rights, etc. If you're just looking for money, it all spends the same as long as it doesn't come with onerous terms. However, you won't get any of the putative benefits of working with a "real" VC: access, guidance, services, follow-on funding, etc. You definitely do not want to end up with a cap table comprised of one line item for founders and one line item for the "hedge fund"'s investment on some weird-ass terms; that will make it nigh-on impossible to secure follow-on funding. I would feel best about taking this kind of money if I had a "real" VC as the lead investor and the hedge fund folks were minority, pari passu, and personally known to me. Also, DO NOT sign any document without legal support. Make the legal relationship, spend the money, understand what you're being asked to agree to, and PUSH BACK if you don't like the terms being offered. A broken structure is not the foundation you want.

New comment by joncooper in "The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up in the U.S."

joncooper — Tue, 05 May 2015 01:36:18 +0000

Would love to buy you a beer and hear more of your story, should you visit SF.

New comment by joncooper in "Amazon Elastic File System"

joncooper — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 18:34:57 +0000

Love it. I hope they can deliver meaningful throughput.