adamtmca

You couldn't know that without information about demand elasticity on his product. Decreasing the price could have increased the profit he extracted from his customers.

Your comment got down voted because your tone was arrogant & you didn't actually add anything to the discussion.

Here is an example (my own) of how to make a comment about business minutia on HN.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2863071

Don't write like you are some sort of genius because you know more about accounting/finance/ops/whatever than people on a forum which is predominantly engineers. ("No, no, no, no.")

The article was about basic accounting principles, not enterprise valuation.

Its unlikely that anyone who was reading that article to learn about the basics of accounting would be able to gain anything at all from your comment.

Seems like something my mom or the local news would mention when talking about how phones can "do just about everything these days" but wouldn't actually get used.

"Well Cathy, theres even an app to keep track of your tab when your out on the town! Isn't that something John, now off to Simon for the weather"

That said, you are obviously talented designers - the site & the app look really nice & will definitely make a great portfolio piece.

Is the fact that Google and Facebook alone are worth more than the combined market capitalization of the entire entertainment sector getting any play in this discussion?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=entertainment+industry+...

Ah, good point.

I was thinking that if you are bothering to ship up the feedstock why not just ship the spare parts themselves? But you are right, this would reduce the total mass they needed to lift to orbit.

Haha, good point. The acronym didn't even cross my mind when I was using it.

Can anyone recommend something similar to Stripe or WePay for Canadians.

The video on the right offers a good overview of their findings.

I'm not saying these and other business phrases aren't widely misused or used as a way to sound smart while saying nothing. But in case anyone is interested:

Synergy

The term comes from M&A and refers to scenarios where the whole (after a merger or acquisition) is worth more than the sum of the parts. For example, a steel foundry which acquires a competitor and can now buy iron at a lower price because it buys in higher volume. The increase in profitability of both foundries from the decreased cost of iron is a "synergy".

Value-add

Comes from Michael Porter (I think) and refers to the idea that each of the activities a company performs on their inputs before the final output should add value to the final product. If the company is unable to add value through one of those activities it's something they should pass to another party. This leads to phrases like "is our customer service call centre a value-add or should we outsource it?"

Their iphone app is usable, definitely not amazing.

Try ordering two of the same kind of dipping sauce or removing toppings from a pizza.

(I just had used it haha)

Don't Bloomberg and Reuters offer something similar built into their news feeds? Not that this would negate what you are doing, just wondering.

Higher IQ = go to college/ university = experimentation.

I would also let them set the time of day for the notification.

What would the equivalent of a popped tire look like? I couldn't help picturing shrapnel..

The fact that the writer hasn't actually researched an important part of their largest competitor's business model doesn't speak well for Womply.

How did you find your way to hacker news?

He didn't say the topic wasn't relevant, he said getting to an insightful comment required wading through a ton of garbage. I tend to agree.

Designing comp packages that work is incredibly complicated. Anyone who proclaims some sort of blanket "solution" to the problem of how to compensate "bankers" probably knows so little that they don't know what they don't know. Normally in situations like that people on hn don't comment at all, but because this issue is so political everyone thinks they have the answer and need to share it with the world.

Thinking about them separately is a mistake. Apple is able to execute many of their designs because they can lean on their suppliers & manufacturers. Similarly apple is able to deliver high margins, price iPads at 500 etc because they make design decisions with the supply chain in mind.

I never understand why people try to pass judgment on a transaction like this. Their suppliers are real businesses who are capable of modelling their cash flows and deciding whether or not this is profitable. No one ever stops and says, "wait.. it makes business sense to sell to Apple, but this is lame so let's not do it".

Applied to yc with this idea couple years ago, cool to see it in production. Sharing a loyalty card with a group of friends (i.e. when anyone makes a purchase everyone gets a stamp) was one of the social features we were excited about, I'm interested to see what they come up with.

See my response to sanderjd above.

No one ever thinks wimpy bureaucrat when they hear CIA or NSA. They think security clearance, report to the president etc. Thats definitely part of the reason why the CIA can pay relatively low starting salaries for economic and financial analysts (I checked) and still compete with the banks for high quality talent.

It's interesting that you say that.

I was actually primarily referring to the non-financial side of the employment decision which I would argue is huge. That's why I said "they want to work for big dogs rather than wimpy bureaucrats" instead of pointing out that the SEC could never pay them as well as BMO or GS.

Setting aside whether you think this to be true the perception among undergrads headed into finance is that investment banks offer work environments which are high intensity, committed to excellence, meritocratic and so on. To them the idea of being involved in some sort of paper shuffling bureaucracy is really repulsive.

The truth is there are still lots of people who don't hear that their buddy got a job at GS and immediately think they are some sort of a scumbag.

I haven't responded to the comment below about the CIA but I think that rather than proving the point that its all about the SEC being underfunded it actually shows how culture/ perceived importance of the work/ mission/ impressing your friends etc etc can totally outweigh an organizations ability to pay when it comes to attracting talent (Wimpy bureaucrat certainly isn't the first thing that comes to my mind when someone says the CIA or the NSA). The CIA's entry level economic analyst positions top out at 90k which is where most entry level IB positions start, yet the CIA still manages to attract some of the United States' best and brightest econ/math/finance graduates.

Probably also true - I think a lot of sec prosecutors end up in defence positions later.

That said, I just can't see how they could ever attract or develop the financial minds required to keep up with wall street.

Case in point. Harry Markopolos is a fraud investigator who works for institutional investors "big dogs", not the SEC.

He looked at Madoff's returns, the strategy they claimed they were using and took "4 hours" at home to figure out that it was fraud.

Here is a choice section of Markopolos's testimony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1A7LdW0Y_s

I think a big part of the problem is probably talent.

A hot shot kid coming out of a C.S./engineering program wants to work at Google or Facebook or a startup, not the federal government. A kid coming out of an econ/math/finance program wants to work for a "big dog" at an investment bank or a PE fund, not some wimpy bureaucrat.

People, not computers, make financial crises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

This article is just describing/ confusing the difference between accounting profits and economic profits.

"That's a wonderful thing, but from an accounting perspective, just because you're not properly calculating expenses, doesn't mean it's profit. To be fair and more accurate, founders should look at their fair market value to determine actual profitability."

No. From an accounting perspective you "calculate" things based on what you actually paid or were paid.

"If you weren't charging yourself any rent for that space, nor paying yourself anything, and the business made $100/day, would you really consider that profitable? You could have rented the space out at fair market value for much more money than that. I'd argue you're losing money -- and I'd be right."

No, you'd be wrong. They are making $100.00 a day. This is a very poor return on equity but it is still a profitable endeavour.

Accounting profits = Revenues - expenses. Economic profits (what he is unknowingly talking about) = Accounting profits - opportunity cost.

I don't think there is any way Paul Carr's incoherent rambling is going to take a minute of my time away from the economist - thoughts?

Not to pile on, but:

> Many people want government-run health care in the US. Legalizing illegal drugs will add to the already large amount of addicts. Do we really want more addicts in our hospitals? I also don't feel like I should be forced to pay for your poor life choices. Regular Drug users should immediately get a huge increase in healthcare costs.

First, the fact that drugs are illegal has done nothing to make them difficult to get - I think most university students would agree they are about 3 text messages away from any drug they might want. People don't avoid drugs because they are illegal, they avoid them because they are concerned about addiction & health effects.

Second, addiction is a public health issue, not a law and order issue. Do you know how expensive it is to imprison someone vs sending them to a rehab program? Take a look at Portugal - treating addiction like the health issue it is works and it's cheaper.

> We still have tons of people suing the cigarette companies because they cause cancer. I can only imagine how many lawsuits will be in our court systems if there is a company selling heroin.

I won't argue the premise but surely you would agree that a backed up court system beats DEA agents getting their heads blown off on a regular basis.