admoin

Maybe a problem a few years ago, but certainly not in this kind of environment. Congrats to all the recipients.

Very hesitant to write code for this, given the risks of handling customer payment info, security issues, etc. Would definitely much prefer some sort of off-the-shelf solution, and focus on the other elements of the product.

The second point is definitely a huge issue - I'm sure it's why we haven't seen much in this market.

It's interesting that they chose to focus on undergrad business students rather than MBAs. I would guess that undergrad biz majors are going to be more flexible about career options than MBA students.

watch out for those pesky time zones!

Maybe I read this too quickly, but the vast majority of people you'd want to lend this kind of money to are either (a) not going to want to borrow money at 20% interest, or (b) have access to far lower interest sources of funding, even in the unsecured context. This idea doesn't make much sense to me.

The main reason for this major change is that even in the presence of information-sharing provisions of treaties, Switzerland refused to provide any information on most account holders that were evading US (or other countries') taxes, on the rationale that evading non-Swiss tax was not a criminal offense in Switzerland. Cooperation was virtually nil, especially in the tax arena.

Depending on the scope of the changes, this could be huge news.

...except provide companies with the equity financing they need to survive (especially in a frozen credit environment) for nothing more than a junior level claim on their residual earnings.

1) Qualified dividends are taxed at long-term capital gains rates. At the moment there is no differential.

2) There is no economic difference in retaining the earnings because although undistributed earnings defer shareholder-level tax, the income from those earnings will remain subject to current corporate-level tax and will still eventually be subject to shareholder-level tax. On a net present value basis, the result is the same. I agree it's counterintuitive.

That's pretty impressive. I will check out your site some more.

Except they process CC payments at no additional cost, have a more streamlined interface, and give you access to millions of potential buyers.

Cool site, interface, and idea, but their rate is surprisingly high for what they are offering.

a good option. can't really go wrong with a popular honda or toyota model- reliable and extremely easy to find a place for repairs.

congratulations on the new job!

blah blah blah. More meta-blather.

What is to stop people from ripping articles from wikipedia and posting them en masse to earn adsense revenue?

I would also add that one of the worst aspects of this post is that it encourages people to bug/annoy other people to pay you for things in awkward contexts.

blah blah blah. this is barely a step up from the meta-blogging about blogging about blogging that gets posted every day. although very good writers, I'm getting sort of sick of the general platitudes coupled with anecdotes that I read from guys like pavlina, godin, et al.

I'm not sure what the point of that blog post is, or if it even has any coherent thesis.

Thoroughly enjoyed this post, especially since I remember a lot of these events as they happened. I was peripherally involved in the startup also for a good amount of time, and absolutely agree with everything he's said. I would also add that a big reason we had trouble getting off the ground was that Jon was really the only serious coder we had. The rest of us involved in the startup had skills in other areas (marketing, graphic design, etc), which although useful, were really NOT what the project needed at that point.

I would also say we probably fell in love a bit too much with our first idea, and probably held onto it too long.

Oh, and think (1) low cost, (2) sustainable, and (3) ability to monetize. We had #1 and #2 down pretty well, but had absolutely no real concept of how this thing could possibly make money. Most startups are NOT going to get taken over, so unless you are in it for non-$$$ reasons, it is probably a good idea to at least come up with some way you can profit if you manage to attract an audience but not a buyer.

Less significant than it sounds (and certainly the title of the blog post is sort of linkbaity), but an encouraging sign nonetheless.

enjoyable. it's nice that we've gotten to the point where each of those possible uses is either so trivial that no one wants it (buying concert tickets from an ATM), or costs <$100 (GPS, on-demand Netflix box, webcams, etc).

Anyone who has tried to start a company in most other countries (where starting a company can take months and thousands of dollars in fees or even bribes) would never write something like this. The US is on the easy end of the spectrum, definitely.

Also, what the author seems to be suggesting is really just a "Company Corporation" or a "MyCorporation" (both large companies that do most of this work for you for not a ridiculously high fee), rather than any real change of law. I also did a google search for "incorporate", and the first few google ads were big companies that streamline the process for you.

A final small note- I would prefer that we keep a small toll charge for incorporation. It does cost the states money to process applications and keep track of filings, and it allows people to create a limited liability shield (not something I think we should be giving away for free).

This is similar to the logic that makes me think we'd be better off with a very very small "penny black" type of email tax (like 1/10th of a cent or less), just to discourage spammers.

Agreed, especially when they provide the free shuttle. The author of the blog post does not seem to have a clue.

I don't know about you, but i've gotten this advice tens of times, at least.

I think he was trying to spin it in a folksy way, but ended up dumbing it down to the point that it came across as a weak argument.

I think there are two sides to what Warren Buffett is saying. One side is nonsense, I agree - that he can make a prediction like that based on early trends. The other side, however, which is what I think he actually meant, is that, in fact, predicting from trends is not nearly what it's cracked up to be, and that there is no real guarantee of continued healthy returns from US equities, or even long-term returns to capital that are comparable to the low double-digit returns of the 20th Century. That's a legitimate point.

google checkout's features are limited, but the rates are competitive and it's essentially free if you use adwords enough

Looks very cool. Wonder if it works. Has anyone used it yet?

Fair enough, my fault. I was just suspicious because of multiple similar looking submissions from the same person in a short frame of time.

linkbait (and shameless amazon affiliate pimping) alert