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You seem to have found your destiny. Why do you even care what other people think/do? I would say: follow your path perseveringly and you will end up fine. Not having the urgent need to think about the "investor route" is a good thing. Everybody additionally involved is going to meddle one way or another.
Probably not in general, but concerning architecture I would tend to say yes. Isn’t it an important part of “postmodern architecture” to melt premodern/traditional designs with modern ones? So, conservative ideas/values seem to have some influence.
The prohibition of minarets does not have anything to do with religious freedom. You can build as many mosques as you want and you are free to pray to anyone you like. It's only the minarets (the towers on top of the mosques) that most swiss people dislike because they just don't fit in the landscape. Of course, this prohibition is an overreaction (there are only a handful of minarets already and building restrictions are strict in general), but I can understand that people think that "Heidiland" isn't supposed to look like ... e.g. Istanbul.
I second that one, plus:
I would especially check up on the persistency of the founders. Are they really dedicated to the product/company or are they going to lose interest if either VC money is used up, they have not become rich after a few months or there are harder times ahead for some other reason?
It usually takes years to build a really cool company/product, so I would make sure that I’m not the only one still putting his best effort into that project after the initial euphoria has faded away and the others are doing not much more than just hanging around … or even worse: start bitching.
Check out the following page for official information:
http://www.kmu.admin.ch/themen/00614/00715/index.html?lang=e...
The debate should not only be about Flash vs. HTML5. With SVG-Support in IE9, there's another argument against Flash coming along.
SVG is already a pretty good alternative to flash for some tasks on iPhone (eg. interactive maps).
If SVG gets the same boost like JavaScript in recent years, then SVG could be even more dangerous for Flash than HTML5.
Actually, the US isn't a net exporter anymore. You are importing far more of value than you export (2009: +45%, 2008: +66%) and that is the problem.
How are you going to pay the people abroad that dig in the dirt for copper that you actually need? Currently, the US as a whole does pay with promises (debt).
There are at least about 10 companies the size of Microsoft missing to fill that gap.
According to CIA World Factbook, you're not the largest in terms of percentage of GDP. At least Germany, Japan, Italy and even Switzerland rank better in that metric.
All of these single-metric comparisons are flawed. E.g. the world largest manufacturer? In comparison to what? Germany, a country with a labor force that is over 3 times smaller than the labor force in the US?
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
PPP is indeed a silly measure as practiced. McDonalds has almost no competitors in Switzerland (no In&Out, Jack, TacoBell or Subway across the street) - therefore a BigMac costs at least 5 times more than in the US. There are other measures that suck as well - e.g. external debt. OMG, Switzerland, Monaco and Luxembourg are completely screwed ... or are these popular banking places, that own foreign investors money that they actually are hording and did not spent it in the Looney-Tunes store at the local mall?
I know of a company that makes a living for about two dozen people selling (or better developing) ideas.
Maybe you find some inspiration on their website: http://www.brainstore.com
I fully agree.
And they need to make a good amount of money to "feed" 20 people after they exhausted the funding. Think of it this way: you need at least 95% less sales to make the same profit per person (implied you sold your app for the same price).
Was that before or after the Japanese did the same thing? I nominate you for the Ignorance-Award. I've never read such a stupid/useless Comment on HN before.
OMG, they'd better use Sharepoint ... http://www.sonova.ch/
Red Bull. An Austrian spots Krating Daeng in Asia, buys a license for all continents, designs a can, puts some carbonic acid in that “syrup”, positions Red Bull around extreme sports … and is now a billionaire (according to Forbes: No. 151 of the richest people). And his company doesn't even have a production facility.
I personally doubt that you have been taken advantage of the way you describe it. Did you really take the one product from $50 to $700+ daily revenue all by yourself or did you “only” make it easier for the salesmen to place it in the market?
If you had worked for yourself, would you have been able to actually sell the mentioned product to anyone? With 3 years out of college, I don’t think you have the necessary network and sure not a huge experience in any industry.
Even the most genius products seldom sell themselves. Marketing may seem “banal” to you, but in reality it requires good talent and experience. And even if have both, the whole thing is still highly unpredictable in comparison to the outcome of some programming task.
Therefore, I don’t think you should feel exploited. As I see it, your employers gave you the opportunity to concentrate on what you like most and can do best.
In short: yes, you are too impatient … and maybe too focused on money.
Of course it hurts to lose any business just because some of your potential customers think your company is too small.
Serve the customers you can get now well. Not only does “many a mickle makes a muckle” (a Scottish saying that reflects pretty well a saying we have in Swiss-German) but also the concentration of risk is much lower.
And don’t forget: most companies/customers are (too) small by themselves and many of them prefer suppliers that make them feel more like VIPs than like numbers (we don’t care about you - you’re too small for us).
It’s not only a disadvantage to be small. And after you have proven that you have come to stay, bigger companies will notice it one day.
Stop using fake names immediately and start responding with your own name in all cases. Many customers will probably think: “there seems to have taken place a reorganization; cool, now I have a single contact person for all my concerns”. They probably won’t even bother to ask where the other guys are. And if they ask and you really don’t know another way out, end this odyssey with a last single lie: you had to lay them off.
It is far worse if your customers find out by themselves that you lied to them. And I would say this is rather a question of when than if. Some of them will notice that all your employees have the same writing style and/or make the same spelling errors. I’ve once uncovered a “fake” company this way. The quality of their/his service was still as good as in the beginning, but I just couldn’t trust them/him anymore …
Of course, you may lose some projects for beeing “to small”, but it’s even worse beeing known as a liar.
I would recommend learning JavaScript. Java, VB, PHP, etc. are pretty much all the same in comparison to JavaScript. I’m not talking about syntax or patterns but about general purpose. In my opinion, JavaScript is the most important complementary technology to the - what I call them - backend languages.
Today, web-enabling almost always is a requirement. People usually want access to their applications with their iphone and in the worst case (the battery just exploded, notebook lost, etc.) from a cybercafé.
Sure, you can web-enable most (business) applications with pure HTML/CSS. But if you take advantage of the power of AJAX (XMLHttpRequest), you can build GUIs with such high performance that it feels (almost) like a regular desktop application and therefore people often don’t even care about installing the available client-application on their office computers. People love it if they don’t have to install anything at all.
I would start with something like that: Imagine you’re abroad and your notebook just fell down the stairs - it’s broken. What would you like to have access to in that situation from a cybercafé. Maybe an address book? Now imagine, that the cybercafé you are into has an awfully slow connection and they charge you a fortune for every single byte that travels their connection. So, your address book should be fast as lightning, means: nothing similar should go over the wire more than once (search box, headers of your address list, pagination elements, etc.). There's nothing that can beat JavaScript in solving this problem.
The article you linked to does only look at static data. That’s to simplistic. What if you factor some dynamic data into that equation?
For example Germany: this country exports about 20% more of value than it imports per year, while the US imports about 60% more of value than it exports. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
Doesn’t look so bad for Germany anymore if you consider there will be a tomorrow, does it?
I know, this is a simplification to, but it’s up to you to investigate further using a little more trustworthy source than something like “Loans & Debt Consolidation - Get Cash NOW!”
How does buying stuff on credit increase your standard of living? At short notice, this may be the case, but this kind of behaviour is not sustainable. You know, there will be a day when the bills become due. What are you going to do then? Pass them on to your children?
It is really weird that Americans feel “we’re rich, you’re not” because of all the things they “possess” (on credit).
I wonder how many members of these armies of homeless that populate the US streets are where they are because they lived a live today they couldn’t even afford tommorrow.
I can’t see much difference in comparison to a shotgun. I have had training with the older Sig SG 510 and the newer Sig SG 550 assault rifle of the Swiss Army and they’re both about as easy to use as an airgun.
Even if you walk around in public with your assault rifle, nobody becomes suspicious. Active members of the army have to show up for a mandatory shooting program every year and shooting matches are very common too, so “Rambo look-alikes” on the streets aren’t an unusual appearance in Switzerland.
Nevertheless, 40% of all homicides are commited by cut and thrust weapons and “only” 10% by guns. The latter accounts for about 70% in the US.
But what if they encounter them?
"I could theoretically develop a solution within a day, but I have no idea what you are talking about!"
I hope such programmers make sure that they can work on the next twitter and such things and don't have to implement solutions for financial controllers and the like.
"... with the exception of ease of deployment"
Sometimes, this actually is a significant (technical) advantage.
Of course, PHP is not perfect, but which language is? Sometimes, even the old VB(A/S) can be the best choice to solve a given problem.
In my opinion, languages aren't the end in itself - they're just tools. I've get to know programmers that use "kiss-ass" technologies but cannot solve (business) problems.
Again, an example I've mentioned before: I you have no idea what the "De Casteljau"-algorithm is about, how could you implement a adequate solution for a given problem with any technology? But if you do, there's not so much difference implementing it with Canvas/JavaScript, SVG, VML, Whatever.
I would say: keep focusing on fundamentals. Learning new technologies is pretty easy if you do understand the basic rules that they are all based on.
For example: I you have no idea what the "De Casteljau"-algorithm is about, how could you implement a adequate solution for a given problem with any technology? But if you do, there's not so much difference implementing it with Canvas/JavaScript, SVG, VML, Whatever.
Knowledge of the fundamentals makes you priceworthy. There are enough Visual Studio and other Wysiwyg-Clickers (What is NMEA? There's no button for that in my IDE ...). What is hard to find in software industry are people that really understand what they are doing.
What industry? That sector accounts for less than 20% of US-GDP.
Besides that, if the dollar becomes worthless, how will your "industry" pay for raw materials that have to be imported?
Of course, you can at least buy oil in dollars ... but what if that changes, too?
Our share of foreign nationals accounts for about 22%. That is almost 10 times the share of foreigners in the Czech Republic and about double the amount of the USA.
If a multicultural experience (four official languages) is boring, then you are right.
Sorry, but Switzerland is a little bit more than just bankers, watches, chocolate and cheese.
The following site is focused on freelancers but there are also full-time jobs listed.
... as long as the article has not more than about 3-5 paragraphs. I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist.
We have plenty of news. What seems to have gone missing in online news in general is deepened analysis. So, these youngsters sure have heard of all the news - but do they really get all the information needed to really understand what they heard of?
Personally, I have never heard of a "letter to the editor" that complains about a too long article in print. This is something I first saw and now frequently see on the Internet.
I'd like to mention another problem in the B2B space: customers often feel uncomfortable buying from very small businesses. And in decision processes where Consultants are involved you can almost be sure that they usually do recommend bigger companies.
I'm a one man show myself and I've experienced the problems described above many times. Even in one case where I was the only bidder who could actually prove with a working prototype that I would be able to realize the rather complex solution, they chose one of the big players who could only provide prettier brochures (btw. they had to shut down the project after burning over 100K).
Furthermore, it is often not easy to enter conservative markets as a new player. Established companies are almost always preferred in such markets.
Therefore, my recommendation would be (it worked well for me): Look for companies that already are doing business in your target industry successfully, try to win them as resellers and become an OEM. This way you can profit from their reputation and you can reduce your marketing/sales efforts, too.
I don't know if this tip comes too late for you, but that would be the first thing I would try right now if I were in your position.
Personally, I couldn't disagree more. Specializing to early would narrow your window of opportunities.
A sixteen year old boy doesn't really know what's going to happen during his lifetime. Maybe, one day he would really love to program for a company that specializes in statistics - he would be hopefully lost if he didn’t even know what quadratic equation means.
Another example: in general, you don’t need geography and/or history for your daily job. But you would look pretty stupid if you asked your Swiss customer: “You still have that god save the queen sh*t”.