HN user
So this is the level of finance/accounting sophistication now expected for a business with a valuation of $30m–60m? Maybe I'm out of touch. I think this guide lowers the bar unnecessarily.
It's really not. The overall tone is "You don't know anything about finance/accounting as an inexperienced leader but that's okay! - Just outsource it! Oh and here are some tidbits so you can pass off as knowledgeable in conversation"
Marco Arment has been one of my favorite makers to follow over the years. Awesome.
Too much to address so I generalized.
I don't have time to go into details but the very big problems you could encounter mainly revolve around misses on compliance because you took a very lax approach to Finance ie. accounting standards, tax rules, payroll records, stock options and more. Just as a very simple example - I've seen a $1 million MRR company get eviscerated for not paying attention to something as basic as sales tax rules.
This is just a bad piece of content marketing.
If you just raised a $30-60+ million Series A and are relying on anything in this article, you will have bigger problems. It is this self-righteous approach to finance/accounting that gets companies into trouble down the line.
A UI for accessing my ebook library on my ios/mac devices. A custom fork of Calibre-Web
You can buy a shoebox in the sky or something tattered in the middle of nowhere. This is by design of course. All hail the central planners
This article and many like it "assign fault" to the labour by making too many assumptions about the cause of the decrease in labour productivity being a decrease in labour effort, motivation etc. In reality, this just a misrepresentation of the metric. Not sure why you don't think this would anger some people.
Well put. I am the same way.
I view it as the vector of my past experiences and knowledge. Though, I do have to be careful not to conflate gut with excess of any emotion ex. greed, hope etc. I am also carefully aware of when the "rules of the game" might be changing but that might be the "data" you are describing.
Agree completely. I like the point on disagreement of value and OP should be prepared to move on.
I just want to add that OP should negotiate for the future and not get too hung up on trying to recover the past or think they are entitled to any equity appreciation they missed out on. Sticking too much to principle might just leave resentment lingering. While it is possible to negotiate to make up for the past I think there is more value in focusing on the future.
ie. Even if OP negotiated harder now, the equity is unlikely to be gifted to make up for the past. It may come in the form of vesting options but that will likely be structured to only gain value from the time of grant (now) onwards. That... or OP will get lower % equity than would have been received in the past. Knowing this, I think it is still better to correct it going forwards than worry about any missed appreciation.
"...the retail giant has pledged to become the Earth's Best Employer, not just for frontline warehouse workers but for corporate and technical employees, too..."*
* As long as it doesn't interfere with the share price and exec bonuses
Who says it will only be Edwin?
[Insert name] from Stripe here... [Insert apology] [Insert vague explanation] [Insert promise to investigate and resolve]
I love how you worded your advice here and I agree this is the best approach because macroeconomics is a "social science".
Everything you hear and understand about central banking as it exists today is just part of the prevailing school of economic thought. It is not the only way forward and many would argue it is not even the best way forward (but we are always led to believe it is)
If only these studios appreciated that they could compound the value of the IP by rallying the existing fans (ie. "early adopters") instead of trying to jump straight to the "majority" audience. It is just corporate greed mixed with hubris. The Foundation tv show is another example of this short-sighted approach.
Definitely not Gandalf
"Engineer good, MBA bad" ...there I fixed it.
Unfortunately, this anecdote re-enforces a stereotype. The CFO in this story is bad and so is senior leadership and the board for allowing the new CFO to run amok. Not all new CFOs are bad and not all CFOs with leadership will destroy a company.
I feel for you. From what I hear, the population in the Netherlands has a unique appetite for overleveraging to buy a home (and this is coming from someone who lives in the most overpriced housing market in the world)
I think the environment has changed since this was project was executed. I am not familiar with the industry but it now seems like travel companies and airlines have more ad-hoc control of their online prices. Someone please correct me here.
Back then (2012) I used a startup called flightfox to find the best travel deals for me (they have since pivoted to corporate travel management). I assumed they performed analysis similar to this article plus some other magic and it worked really well.
Today, I find more deals through "deal spotting" - a community or algorithm scours for deals and then those deals are shared within a community or on a website.
Sorry I disagree - I am not saying they are purposefully influencing the flow of capital but their ideas are brought up for discussion by the so-called experts a lot more often because of who he is and how much they manage. Most managers are also not experts in making macro plays
The definition of "right" within market dynamics isn't simple - prices will increase with the increased flow of capital regardless of whether the underlying ideas are sound. Changing the opinions of money managers can change the flow of capital. Just saying it is possible.
Your anecdote isn't equivalent here. You weren't broadcasting your idea to millions of people managing billions of dollars. If you did have that kind of power, it could have helped javascript/python/Google/startups get adopted faster.
You will not struggle to find Bridgewater/Dalio talking about the following themes: - The concept of "Debt cycles" (From Dalio's book "Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises") - Interpretation of monetary policy effects on markets - Emerging markets (Mainly China) and the rise and fall of "reserve currencies"
The ideas and narratives put forth by Bridgewater/Dalio over the past 1-3 years are permeating markets and shaping investor sentiment more than you think. Both retail and institutional.
"99% of cognitive effort is tip-toeing around all of the unused functionality minefields"
This almost always goes unrecognized. Not sure if project manager's fault, the actual software or just the horse-blinders everyone puts on when implementing the ERP
We are still really, really far away from near full automation in accounting.
If there was a universal API for financial data exchange between companies then maybe it would be accelerated (starting with Accounts Payable Workflows). Would be my dream to work on a project like this. As for the non-data entry part of accounting, we are even further away in terms of automation.
Software engineers will come along without domain expertise saying "how hard can it be?" They inevitably hit a brick wall when they realize why it's difficult. Even the incumbents with new solutions are selling automation snake oil right now - looking squarely at Microsoft and Oracle.
On 2)... TSMC produces the M1 and it will be interesting if they eventually enter the fab business... Apple is one of the few companies with the required capital. This is all on the heels of the news that Samsung is planning a foundry in the U.S.
This has been my investing thesis on SPACs as well. While it may be obvious to most investors, comments like this that share the idea will make it harder for me to get in early. Selfish, I know.
On decommissioned servers, if there is no variable speed control you can solder resistors to the fans and just monitor temps.
Personally, I am not a fan of shorting but in addition to "liquidity" there is also "price discovery". Using excess leverage to short and floating 150% of the shares short is potentially a problem but the same would be true if it was the reverse (ie. buy or long positions). Price manipulation is the real problem here.
Given more capital and a reasonable amount of time, the short sellers in this instance will be correct. The value of the GameStop stock using commonly accepted valuation methods of our day is much lower than $300 or even $100 per share. Unfortunately brick-and-mortar companies with declining revenue and no visible growth prospects are valued differently than high flying tech stocks. Keep in mind that I understand the rules of the game dictate that shorts can be squeezed and the share does not have to trade at the commonly accepted valuation.