kdsudac

I'm sympathetic to Sergey's views but I'd think he of all people would understand the utility of political parties as huge marketing machines. The DNC and GOP have a) eyeballs/audience which leads to b) donors/money.

Although imperfect, there is some substance in this analogy Political Parties:Elections::Search Engines:Online Marketing

Great guide! I've often thought about trying some DIY resin castings and this is by clearer and more thorough than anything else I've found online.

For the impatient jump to the 3:00 mark to see the cockroach leg dance.

Which is why California is such a startup magnet...cause of those high state taxes in Nevada, Texas, Oregon!

"Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is."

I was wondering whether this was the case. Is there actual data to back this up, or is it just anecdotal?

So by wirelessly docking your smartphone you've basically turned it into a hyper-portable desktop, right?

So now the only difference between your smartphone-desktop and your traditional-desktop is the OS it runs, right?

So which OS do you want to run on your desktop? I can promise it isn't a mobile OS.

Maybe a new hybrid OS (Ubuntu for Android or Windows 8) can offer the best of both worlds, but I'm skeptical.

Steve Blank would say get out of the building and talk to customers.... let them decide. Pounding the pavement is a lot of work, but you are actually passing the buck to the people who will ultimately decide the fate of your business.

Congrats! Could probably use some screenshots and a blurb explaining what your product does. At least 1 killer use case.

"we just initiated a group policy 13 months after our doors opened"

Doors opened means started development or launched? If after you started development, how long were you in development?

"Regardless, I don't see the need to 'scratch your entrepreneurial itch' as a valid reason to stick you neighbor with your medical bills."

What if you change your statement to:

-->I don't see the need to 'educate children' as a valid reason to stick your neighbor with your school bills.

-->I don't see the need to 'protect your life' as a valid reason to stick your neighbor with your police bills.

The reason the government provides these services is because it is in the common interest.

I'm sure if you think a little while you can come up with some reasons why having universal health care might be in our collective best interest.

You can figure try to figure out the "why" for specific cases but it's tedious work and comes down to subjective opinions that can't be generalized to other cases. The theoretical worth of the shadowy middlemen (whether they gov't or insurance companies) and where the blame lies can be debated. All these arguments rely upon theoretical simplifications of very complex systems--meaning they are almost impossible to model.

What's more important is the "what" as in what are our alternatives. Luckily, we have tons of empirical data from other countries and they all tell the same story: America pays more money, with poorer results.

So why not just copy the models of other countries?

By relative risks you mean the possibility that an event occurs that requires medical care?

If so, there are many cases where a founder or their family member has a pre-existing condition that makes them uninsurable. If someone loses the genetic lottery and has a severe case of asthma it can greatly change their calculus. Would you advise someone to start a company if they knew that in 12 months they'd have to hit it big or give up due to the prospect of future medical bills?

Nice catch, that's an important piece of fine print.

Wow, order of magnitude cheaper than S3 (1 cent per month vs. 12-14 cents for S3). Data transfer priced the same.

Drawback is "jobs typically complete in 3.5 to 4.5 hours."

Seeing as how people tend to be pack rats, I can see this being huge.

Pre-arranged meetings are the first thing that jumps into people's minds, but do telecommuters really want to replicate the experience of being in meetings? For me, one of the nicer aspects of telecommuting is I can call into meetings and during portions of the meeting that don't apply to me (or are boring) I can work (or surf the web).

On the other hand, people do have a love/hate relationship with meetings: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120519462810425677.html

I can buy into the importance of impromptu meetings. I wonder if the Double team can figure out a way to market around impromptu vs pre-arranged meetings and love/hate meetings without alienating too many people.

Another competitor designed for industrial settings: http://collaborate.io

Disclaimer: I'm the founder

My point is those thresholds aren't that high for people like "doctors, lawyers, small business owners, senior managers, corporate officers, etc."

Senior level engineers, accountant, etc could have net worth exceeding $1 million once you factor in home ownership, 401k, stock portfolio, 401k, IRA, etc.

Potentially you'd open up angel investment from the 1-2% to the 5-10%.

I checked out the video. Was disinterested until 0:50 mark. Once I saw minimum investment as low as $1,000 my interest went up. Kinda lending club meets kickstarter.

Probably a fair amount of people (myself included) would like to be an angel investor. For people who are rich but not one-percenters cutting a check for $100,000 for a risky investment is a high barrier to entry. I'd be more inclined to make 10 x $1,000-$2,000 investments (bets?).

Could be interesting for niche markets if it bring in people with expertise, high income and are also decision makers in their day jobs: doctors, lawyers, small business owners, senior managers, corporate officers, etc.

I agree with your sentiments, and have also been frustrated by this. I don't have answers but can only offer apologies and rationalizations:

1) I think the smart phone mismash disaster was largely because of carrier's keeping phones lock down. Carrier's wanted a cut of every transaction so kept locking out features that could jeopardize their place as a gatekeeper and toll collector. Apple--high on success of iPod--had enough mojo to get AT&T to play ball. After Apple broke the carrier lock down the other carriers had to follow suit.

2) Finance is as much sales and marketing as any other business (perhaps even more). VC's want to buy a company and sell it for a profit (hopefully quickly). Once they see ABC startup being sold for $100 million, they'll start looking for the copycat DEF startup to buy a piece at $10 million that they can flip for $20 million. VCs have to look at the technical risk as well as the financial risk and arguably the financial risk trumps all.

E.g. say you handle all the technical risks, come up with a great company/product, but the VC finds out there is no market for them to sell your company. The financial risk trumped the technical risk. What does the VC do now? Hold onto the company for a few years and running it as a cash flow positive business until the market turns? That's what I'd personally do, but I'm not a VC.... and VC's aren't in the conglomerate business (running cash flow positive companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Danaher, etc).

Finally, I am encouraged by some posts like this from dshen that takes a somewhat contrarian view of VC/Angel: http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/the_case_for_ha... Some of the VCs/Angles he cites might be good to look into.

Interesting question, and I could hypothesize all day about issues you'd have to work out: -> liability if stuff gets stolen? -> 24/7 access? (if you're renting storage space in the basement, do you have to give renters keys to your house?) -> Look at pricing for storage places and then ask yourself what pricing makes sense for both parties. Like if $70/month gets you a 10x12 storage space at a professional site how cheap would a c2c alternative have to be? Maybe $40/month? Would $40/month be worth the hassle of storing someone else's stuff in your garage?

Best approach is probably just send an email to the storably people to get the straight dope. Looks like their team is still intact.

The most unbelievable part of your story: you didn't know how to use your own bike pump! From your description it sounds like a pretty common design.

Looks cool, but the hybrid structures created in the video don't look very impressive. They look like something kids made (it probably was made by kids).

I think if the video included at least one 'sexy' structure it'd attract way more customers.

The public library is your friend, especially if you live in the right area. For example, many California libraries are in a program called Link+ that allows you to borrow books from other libraries, including college libraries.

Even if a book you want isn't in the library's catalog, go talk to a librarian. They can work some magic.

I'll have to check it out. I didn't even know the IPython notebook existed until I saw this post, but it would've been incredibly useful in the past.

I wonder what it would cost?

Amazon S3 pricing starts at $0.125 per GB per month. So if you just want to store an extra 500 GB that's gonna run $62.50 per month on a HDD!

Given SSDs are 5-10X more expensive who would be willing to pay $300-$600 per month?

Serious question: Any S3 users out there who would pay 5X as much for better performance? If so, what are you working on?

Seagate and Western Digital are way too busy making money hand over fist selling hard drives :)

A lot of the SSD companies aren't really making that much money. The fabs to make the memory chips are huge capital investments and suppliers have historically been bad at managing supply and demand leading to volatile pricing.

Hence the current drop in prices cited in the original article.

A cross-platform multimedia platform that renders (relatively?) consistently across most browsers. Thank god we got rid of that!

Can't wait to tweak my HTML5 for all permutations of OS and browser! Hooray!

I'll give you one example from the electronics industry: Solid State Drives.

Of course, this technology was built on the shoulders of the IC industry and decades of hard-core research by individuals and companies.

My friend's MacBook Pro has a SSD. She really likes the MacBook Pro because it boots fast (awesome!). Apple didn't invent the SSD, they weren't the first ones to put it in a product, but they were the first ones to put the product in my friend's hand. To her, Apple is a incredible innovator.

So they didn't innovate the SSD, they just did a great job of integrated and selling. This illustrates my original points that Apple is "incredible at business; excellent at marketing; great at product design; mediocre at innovation;...great design and system integration"

Shaping entire industries might be a little hyperbole, but I'll happily concede they have shaped entire product markets (e.g. mp3 players isn't really an industry; consumer electronics is an industry which they helped to shape).

So we agree they shape markets, but that doesn't mean that the innovate. They are two different things.

What's your source for your definition of innovate? I was intrigued by it, but a quick google search only turned up someone's blog for their homemade artisan bags: (http://www.jaxonbags.com/jaxon-bags/innovate-invt-make-chang...). If this is your source, then that's good for a chuckle. :)

P.S. I don't mean to be a jerk in my response. Just engaging in friendly banter.

I noticed you answered my question by asking another question. You bring up an interesting point and I'll answer it; however, I'd appreciate it if you returned the favor and gave me a straight-forward answer to my question.

Q: And how much was it that suppliers were being pushed by Apple into being 'innovative'? Would anyone be producing laptop size retina panels if not for Apple's demand? How long would we have waited for retina laptops if we had to rely on HP, Dell, etc.? A: I have no facts on this and probably only LG and Apple insiders really know. If I had to guess I'd say: LG has been in the display business for decades and have had a long R&D program to research how to make better displays. They (and other companies) figured out how to make very high-res displays at a cheaper price (i.e. they innovated). LG then shopped the technology to several suppliers. HP, Dell, etc. were interested but knew that such a product wasn't a good fit for their product mix and would be too expensive for their typical customer. Apple saw the opportunity (kudos to them) and are able to command a premium price from consumers so they locked up a deal with LG.

Did Apple innovate? Personally, I'd just say they saw a market opportunity and ran with it.

I guess the real point of difference here is how far we can/need/should stretch the word innovate.

To put a twist on your metahphor: Your boss comes to you and says "hey if you can make X go 10 times faster for 50% less, they'll sell like crazy" You then spend a couple weeks figuring out how to achieve that goal. Does that mean he innovated by seeing a market need and setting a goal? No, he saw a market need and deserves a pat on the back for that. You innovated a solution and deserve a pat on the back for that.

Disclaimer: I've been a long time apple hater so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I get particularly annoyed when people describe Apple as an innovator. They're really just a mainstream cross over hit, while the real innovators never get the spotlight.

Apple is: incredible at business; excellent at marketing; great at product design; mediocre at innovation;

How much of a MacBook Pro is Apple innovation? and how much of it is doing a great job of pulling together supplier's innovations with some great design and system integration? Even OSX and iOS are derivatives of BSD.