smakz

What are you doing at work that you don't want people looking over your shoulder? Serious question by the way - it always comes up in work environments that some people are pretty against the lack of privacy that comes along with these types of set ups, but really if you are at work there shouldn't be too much (if anything) on your screen which is private.

I'm a big fan of bull pen type environments, where it's wide open spaces and everyone is together with no walls between.

If you have that, and also offer a few "quiet rooms" where you can go if things are loud or you need to check your personal email, I don't see what the problem is.

For some reason I was reminded of this blog post:

http://jsomers.net/blog/it-turns-out

You're right, I'm not arguing very well. And please, I encourage any one not to take what I say very seriously either. If you want to invest, think for yourself, that is what I was really trying to say.

"The bottom line is this: Amazon trades at more than three times Apple's current valuation, eight times RIM's valuation and just about two and a half times Google's valuation. This is simply way too high."

The article is almost laughable in it's simplicity - if you take CNN/Fortune articles seriously please don't invest your money. This article is overly focusing on one antiquated notation that P/E is the only thing that matters, an idea that isn't taken seriously by anyone close to Wall Street or finance any more (if it ever was, seems like this idea is only perpetuated by "pop" finance drivel such as Fortune).

There are several more interesting metrics to look at when evaluating a stock, including cash flow, profit margin, return on equity, growth rates, and many more.

Amazon has been consistently growing in double digits throughout the recession. They have a profit margin of 3% (compared to Apple's lofty 20%). They have a market cap of 80 billion with annual sales of 24 billion versus Apple's market cap of 280 billion with annual sales of 65 billion.

Where is Amazon's growth ceiling in their respective markets? Where is Apple's? What is next for Apple after the iPad (which missed sales targets)?

If you are going to invest in a stock, you need to ask these tough questions and think for yourself. You can't just look at a P/E ratio and know whether a company is over or under valued. Amazon rode the recession with a 40+ P/E ratio, and now the market is picking up again. Decide for yourself whether it is risky or not to invest in AMZN.

I'm rooting for all the big technology companies to do really well: Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Ebay, Apple. Higher market caps means more flexibility in acquisitions, and these are the companies which aren't afraid to take risks.

Of course you are right, but the point remains, it is important to understand the percentage of equity that you own/will own and how that will change with future dilution.

Remember kids, when interviewing at private companies which offer stock rewards, always get firm answers about percentage owned and dilution. Getting 1,000,000 Facebook shares might sound good on an offer letter but without knowing the percentage that could be worth 6$.

Edited to remove comment about par value.

I've also heard rumors that Gmail and Adsense for Content aren't particularly profitable for Google. Of course I've also heard that the brand equity created with Gmail is very valuable and those two are extreme examples, but even based on similar rumors it's possible Google could shut down either one.

The flip side of course is that it becomes dangerous if you rely on any of Google's free services. An extreme example, but what happens if GMail isn't profitable enough? Maybe Adsense for content isn't pulling it's weight any more (if it ever has)?

411 was a fairly useful service, and while shutting it down is probably the right business move, it pushes me more and more to move my primary email account and diversifying my advertising.

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Completely agree, the name dropping around here can get tiresome quick. There was a great article on Mint vs. Wesabe posted here recently - in my opinion we need more articles like that and less Jobs is a design master/Zuckerberg is a genius/etc.

Honestly this seems like a cash grab from the federal government more then anything.

Knowing friends who worked at these companies, they never felt the anti competitive pressure, and several moved between the companies several times.

Most likely, the government found some clauses buried in some contracts that said in a foot note that the companies would agree not to cold call employees in their own respective companies. I don't even think it's unreasonable to have a contract along those lines if engineers are working directly with each other.

Although on the flip side, I think it might be valuable to send a message that anti-competitive agreements in general won't be tolerated and it's good to know that there are people watching this sort of thing.

Very true - the complexity of the system also comes into the equation when things go wrong and it takes real people to figure out why an outage is happening. Highly complex systems imply longer debugging time, and at a certain point a theoretically lower up time can give you higher practical up time just because engineers can actually understand and debug it.

A Witty Phrase Proves Nothing

- Voltaire

The point of the quote (to me at least) was to be taken more to inspire you to rethink perfection then to be taken literally at face value.

Very good points. Reminds me of this quote:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It does seem to be a major problem with a lot of Google's latest inventions - they try to do too many things at once, and solve too many problems for too many people. Wave as a technology proved to be extremely useful in some certain circles, including corporate collaboration. I would wager if they marketed as a sharepoint competitor and increased the integration with google docs, it could potentially have been a money maker while giving more credibility to Google Docs.

Similar situations are going on right now with Google Buzz and even Google Mail, the execution of the "make phone calls from your mail box" seems to leave a lot to be desired. It's a feature that tries to jump out at you and grab your attention as if saying "Hey look at this, we invented something new" when really it should be almost invisible until you need to use it.

It sounds to me like you are quoting verbatim something Chris Anderson might say.

Software companies in the valley have gotten along just fine charging for services and software with only giving users a token free trial. Microsoft and Oracle are doing just fine.

If you want to look at the big players on the web, there are far more public companies charging for services then there are whose main product is free. Akamai, Sales Force, Amazon, Ebay, NetFlix, Omniture (now adobe) I could go on and on.

When talking about public companies who give their primary service away for free, I can only think of 4examples with market caps over a billion: Google, Yahoo, IACI, and sometimes Monster.

There is a lot of hype about free, thanks especially to Chris Anderson's highly accessible book and influence, but if you look at the results and who really made it big (not 100 million dollar exit big, but multi billion dollar market cap big), starting with a business model where you charge your customers is the best way to achieve that.

I don't like articles like this for one reason and one reason only: it's not empirical. It's a long list of vacuous do this do that statements. What I look for when reading articles about start ups is "At start up X we did Y and it caused Z". Those kinds of relationships are helpful to me and help relate to what I'm doing. If you related it to your success at cloudomatic or a previous start up and had concrete results to relate it to I'd be more interested.

I understand these posts may be helpful to others as idea generation material, and obviously the up votes are a sign of that - but for me it's the equivalent of answering a complicated calculus question with a one line answer. Show your work.

Very interesting essay. Internet addiction is in my opinion spreading like wildfire, spreading well beyond procrastination as Paul Graham said and actually impacting workspace and home environments extremely negatively - the analogy to alcohol is spot on. You aren't procrastinating, you are the equivalent of drunk.

Introspectively, the problem with my addiction lies in the acceleration of production as well as distribution. There are more movies being produced, more novels being written, and more content in general to consume. Technology has been making producing these mediums easier and easier. Musicians used to have to write down lyrics and notes on paper - now there are programs which can practically generate a whole song for them. News can be written by your friends who just got the latest scoop at a major conference. Producing content has never been easier.

At the same time on the distribution side, the internet has made all this content available at your finger tips instantly. As bandwidth increased, it became almost too easy to spend 10 minutes watching news or entertaining on YouTube or a myriad of other free media streaming sites.

These processes will only get more efficient and more effective. As a corollary, the media which seems highly targeted and interesting to you will become increasingly prevalent.

There are no easy answers, and I for one am taking the issue relatively seriously. Getting away for extended periods of time without internet is vital - which is also why I don't own a smart phone.

Lots of entrepreneurial navel gazing going on both in the linked site and in these comments. Everybody has their own theory about the reasons x y z why company a b c is successful, be it Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The problem is every opinion is partially correct, no one can disprove anything, and there is no right answer.

The stories of successful companies are inspirational to some degree, but as a way to vicariously learn how to be successful they fall woefully short of the mark.

The best thing for entrepreneurs to do, is simply to make something happen. Build something people want, and if you fail, learn what you can and try again.

You never know and can't know which decisions are the ones that matter, so forge ahead.

It's interesting how these guys got so much traction in so little time, even when in private beta:

http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&...;

While the future of flattr is still TDB - I wonder what the problem with tipjoy was that they didn't have similar spikes - not enough emphasis on traction/getting the idea out or not enough iteration on the idea when they didn't have traction?

Just goes to show, you need to know who your customers are and how to reach them effectively and efficiently - and in the end that's the harder thing compared to building a great service.

Ideally you should of had 10 customers lined up before you even started building anything. Draw upon friends and family -- you'll need close relationships with your few first customers to know where you went wrong and get continuous feedback.

Direct email/direct mail/paid search are all going to get you a high bounce rate and very few customers. Save yourself some money and network with people who might be interested in your service.

Setting aside fool.com's slide into arbitrary pop-wall street drivel on the level of Jim Cramer, my main concern about investing in Tesla at this point is the competition. Nissan is going to have it's Leaf all electric vehicle out very soon, and not far behind is the Chevy Volt - both vehicles significantly under cut the Model S in price and will be on the market sooner.

They had an OK if under whelming run with the Tesla Roadster, and I applaud Elon Musk for beating the majors to market with an all electric highway going car - but to bet the company on a luxury electric vehicle is very very dangerous. Something to consider is the recent cool response that Lexus' 200h received compared to the Prius.

I will be watching from the side lines on Tesla whether they sink or swim. If people interested in the electric and alternative fuel vehicle sector, I'd recommend looking into Cummins Inc (CMI) - a company which is actually making good money in this sector, growing nicely - and may be off your radar.

On the other hand, they already have 400 million users, which is about 20% of the entire internet population in the whole world[1]. Part of me is thinking what exactly are they waiting for? Something tells me even if they were at 100% internet population, they would still be making meager profits and have an underwhelming IPO. But then again I'm a glass half empty kind of guy when it comes to Facebook.

[1]http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

I would say no. The strongest analogy between Tesla and a recent IPO I see is Clearwire - similar circumstances, large capital intensive business with some hype behind the technology but no real revenues to back it up.

Getting into an IPO on day one is usually not a good idea unless the company has reliable revenue and there is a reason to expect 20-30+% growth near term (Google, First Solar,etc). Many ipos will look like Clearwire (and for example, American Apparel, Isilon, and to some extent Rackspace etc.), a IPO price which stays steady then a significant drop.

Tesla won't have a reliable revenue increase until 2012 as far as I can tell, which is a long time of stagnation which the market will not take kindly too, IMO.

It's amazing how many of the automated trading programs think exactly the same.

If you ever tried to actually read on an iPad you would understand why. The glossy screen means you can't read in natural light, and the backlit screen causes eye strain. For long stretches of reading, iPad can't replace books the same way the Kindle can.

Although I'm personally not surprised that books aren't that popular on iPad, but I was curious if people would overcome the above deficiencies with the form factor. Early reports seem to indicate not yet.

I've only got one question for apple: What's next?

It seems to me that Buffett's reaction to Goldman Sachs is a little more emotional and a lot less objective then his other investments.

While I agree that the specific charges against Sachs should be proven first, it's hard to deny the questionable behavior and dealings that Goldman has been involved in since the bailout began, not the least of which was the ex.Chairman and CEO being the Treasury Secretary and billions of dollars disappearing as part of the initial TARP program.

It seems Buffett really wants Goldman to be a pioneering American investment bank with a solid ethical reputation, but unfortunately for him the reality is less rosy.

In some sense I think he might have a point.

I think the iPhone is a lot like the Wii console. Touch screens on phones are somewhat like WiiMotes, it's a novel approach but I do think it's questionable whether touch screen technology has staying power.

One of the biggest signs it is a fad is the inability of competitors to gain significant traction with similar devices. "WiiMote" like accessories for other game consoles has largely fallen flat, and likewise there hasn't been a significant touch screen competitor to iPhone.

Whether you agree or not, just looking at the market trends I don't think having a touch screen or not is going to be a key differentiator in the next big smart phone.

It's tempting to play armchair investor and criticize YC's choices, but they've been doing this for a few years now and if at first you don't understand the choices, dig deeper.

For me, it seems at first glance to be a good mix. A few pretty obvious starting business models for some, really good synergy between the groups with their ideas, and in general it seems to reflect the scope intended for seed stage start ups.

Sure not all of them are at first glance overly ambitious in trying to change the world, but I'm also not convinced that a good majority of them can't end up doing just that.

Many of them fit perfectly with YC's philosophy of "intuitive hacks" that a group could bang out and try to build traction for in a three/four month incubator time frame.

Rather fluffy article but one point I'd like to raise is that it is odd for a consistently profitable company to avoid debt.

Debt can be a good thing, it can help finance growth or reduce monthly costs to increase cash flow. For the same reasons there could be justifiably good financial reason to get a mortgage even though you could pay for the house in cash, relating to tax benefits and other incentives.

Once you are consistently profitable, or have a high paying job that affords significant personal cash flow, you might be inclined to forgo all debt entirely, but on the other hand once you are in this scenario you are the least likely to default on a debt and have the capacity to take bigger risks by borrowing without ruining either your credit or causing an immense about of stress.

It's great I guess that they don't take the debt approach, but it's not necessarily a positive thing, and I bet I could look at their financial statements and see tons of opportunity to leverage debt that would free up cash flow so they could be making better use of their capital.