I don't think it makes sense to term this prediction in price of gas. Even as they say in the study, one of the most weighted factors in a purchasing decision is the number of charging stations available. It's the cart and the horse, even if gas is $5/gallon, consumers won't be super motivated to buy cars b/c of a lack of charging stations, and charging stations won't be built due to a lack of existing demand.
These things need to happen together to make the change, not just the gas price hike. Like others have alluded to, there needs to be more of a cultural shift or incentives from the government.
I think it makes sense to do this study with more focus on number of charging stations or public/private investment in the space rather than gas price.
I totally agree. We have over 100 domains and 10 SSL certs with GoDaddy. Sure it gets a little annoying opting out of upsells, setting the domains to manual renewal, and changing the registration to 1 year with every purchase, but it adds a net of maybe 15 seconds to the purchase. That's well worth the savings and the flexibility they actually provide through DNS controls.
Their customer service is great and you can always get in touch with someone if you need any kind of support. Also, the iPhone app is really great. I don't know why that doesn't get more attention, but it's the most powerful Domain or DNS management app I've seen out there.
Like Callmeed, if you want to avoid them 100% b/c of Parsons, then I respect that. Otherwise, they're a budget provider that does a good job when stacked up against other budget providers in different verticals.
This sounds a lot like the design studio at Apple. It's basically Jony Ive and ~10 designers who have full rights to prototype new products, even if they're completely random. I think a telling difference is the fact that this is a part of the core myth of Apple and the emphasis on beautiful design and small teams. It's not some hidden away secret.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Appl... - "Jobs swiftly brought Ive in from the cold, moving the designers into a building on campus and investing in the latest rapid-prototyping equipment. He also beefed up Apple’s security, locking down the design studio to prevent leaks and installing a private kitchen so designers wouldn’t talk shop in public.
I don't think you've been a member of the community long enough, then. On YC, I certainly find a correlation between the points for a certain comment and the thoughtfulness put into that comment. This isn't true on other systems (reddit, etc) where clever noise is preferred to depth, but I generally find the most helpful comments getting voted up here.
The only other motive it suggests is garnering as much publicity for their innovation/company as they can. Facebook is notorious for being able to magnify a small announcement into a big event and reap the dividends -- remember the announcement of a redesign via 60 minutes? If you can get media and influences to come pay attention to cool stuff you're doing, why wouldn't you?
Totally agree. Some of the most influential "design" companies of the past decades weren't actually started by designers. Apple, Mint, etc. are renowned for their beauty, elegance, and design foresight, but that's just because their leaders had great taste not actual design skills.
> 5 years later? $350k minimum. There was a structural change in the economy that hasn't since reversed and doesn't look like ever reversing.
This was the fallacy that got the US into so much trouble. When real estate rises quickly and consistently, people think it's a guaranteed perpetuity. That's not the case. Any investment can go down in value and almost surely will at some point in time.
Why is the premise of the title and article that DMB makes money and other bands don't? Plenty of other groups are raking it in.
While record sales might be down, I bet the amount of musicians able to make a living wage today, solely from music, is much greater than it was in 1990. This is due to the same technology and disruptiveness that has shaved 10% off the earnings of the megastars.
The story should be about how smaller bands are now able to be much more successful, not that a mega-band can still pull $70 million while others have been reduced to (gasp) $50 million.
Even if it doesn't live up to expectations of the cartoon, I can guarantee more people will download this app than would have without that promotion. How would that be a failure? Unless they spent a ton of time making the cartoon, which they don't mention doing.
"We have a very flexible work culture that is focused on putting good, smart people in positions where they have responsibility and trusting them to do a great job. What the ‘work’ actually looks like is much less important to us."
I wish the site had a nice Features Area, so I could get an overview of what the product will do without actually signing up for it. I bet you'll lose some legitimate customers who would rather read about the product before making a "purchase" decision.
We didn't pay ourselves until the company was profitable. This was somewhat easier since we started the company while in college and had pretty much no standard of living to maintain.
We didn't take any funding, so it really wasn't possible to pay ourselves before becoming profitable unless we took on other debt. We decided we'd rather be individually poor with a company than individually wealthy with no company.
Once the company was profitable, the partners agreed on a goal-oriented pay structure. The base was under market value compared to other opportunities, but was still more than enough to easily live on. Then, by hitting reasonable revenue targets, salary would increase quickly.
There is not even close to enough information in this post to take it seriously. How big was the sample? Who were these taters? Are they even beer drinkers? Etc., etc.
Oh, most definitely. I think most of my requirements could be extended to just about any founder. I still spend probably 10% of my time making simple text changes in our CMS.
These things need to happen together to make the change, not just the gas price hike. Like others have alluded to, there needs to be more of a cultural shift or incentives from the government.
I think it makes sense to do this study with more focus on number of charging stations or public/private investment in the space rather than gas price.