specular

Very difficult to answer this with specificity, but in general there are a number of factors that influence the amount of cash you ultimately net from a sale, including:

- Cap table: what % is owed to other founders, investors, employees, etc?

- The total acquisition price may include substantial legal and other fees that will lower the actual amount received by the owners or shareholders.

- How much of the acquisition is financed through cash vs. equity? Equity may vest over a certain time period, and be subject to certain requirements (your sustained performance, ability to clear legal scrutiny, etc.).

- Taxes.

Taking all of this (and probably more) into consideration, it doesn't seem unreasonable for a founder to ultimately net <10% of the total sale price. Again, this is all wild speculation in this particular case.

In some sense, this is exactly what decompression does. The question, if I understand you correctly, becomes one of "how is this decompression program designed?" Does it require any particular inputs? etc.

Although somewhat different than what you're describing, you might be interested in arithmetic coding, which encodes data to a single numerical value that can later be recovered by an inverse process.

Agreed. Is this pronounced "coke"? Regardless, this is a very interesting paper.

Immunity Project and BlockScore are my favorites. Both appear to be solving real problems at the right level of scope (rather than providing feature support for a niche, for ex.).

What you've pointed out is what people do, but not what they are theoretically allowed to do :)

Transporting a MacBook, Xbox, PS4, etc. from the United States back to a South East Asian country (as you suggest), is illegal. For the casual traveler there probably isn't a great risk, since they can always claim it was an accident. But for the recurrent backpacker, the risks are potentially higher.

This is really interesting -- I had the exact same reaction as the majority of the responses to this comment.

Ignoring the tax issue for a moment, I would expect the arbitrage to fluctuate with shipping costs and currency valuations, which is really interesting.

But unfortunately, it's really difficult to ignore the tax issue. In particular, China and the United States are sticklers for this, and getting caught smuggling a high priced item (I forget the threshold) won't be viewed as innocent arbitrage by customs.

This model would work equally well for drugs and human trafficking, so I would assume that most governments will/should have a problem with this form of tariff evasion.

Note: I'm not trying to imply that the founders have anything but the best intentions here. I'm simply pointing out that the very existence of a viable distribution network such as this might be of concern for authorities.

One more important item that isn't listed in the article:

Step 0 - Carefully read your current employment contract.

Employment contracts in the tech industry will often have provisions that cover intellectual property assignment and other activities. These clauses typically stipulate that any ideas, inventions, concepts, designs (etc.) that you create during your full-time employment with a company are the sole and exclusive property of the company (and not you, the direct inventor). Depending upon the country/state/region, you may have some rights afforded to you if you create (and document as such) any inventions outside of the workplace without using any company trade secrets or technology, so long as your invention does not relate to the current or demonstrably anticipated R&D of the company.

Many companies have these types of clauses in their employment contracts for defensive purposes to protect the company against copyright claims from its employees. As a result, not all companies will enforce (via litigation) these provisions and ultimately don't care if their employees are building and releasing side projects in their spare time. However, some companies do care, so you should be clear about your legal status before jumping to start your company.

I generally avoid signing NDAs simply to hear or see a pitch/concept/prototype/etc.

The real question is "what are you gaining and giving up?"

Most entrepreneurs that I talk to are filled with their own concepts and ideas (and the hard part is usually the execution). Thus, entrepreneurs will often avoid signing NDAs in order to preserve their legal purity in the event that they independently develop a similar product. This is, I believe, the reason why ycombinator and most other large investment firms will not sign NDAs.

It would be interesting to hear more about potential evidence linking sun exposure and sunscreen to malignant melanomas as opposed to basal and squamous cell carcinomas. BCCs and SCCs, while malignant, do not pose the same risks of metastasis as melanoma, so I would be much more inclined to alter my behavior given such evidence.

In general (but not always) I like to assume that balance is the key. Life is carcinogenic, and too much of anything is probably harmful.