What are you doing at work that you don't want people looking over your shoulder? Serious question by the way - it always comes up in work environments that some people are pretty against the lack of privacy that comes along with these types of set ups, but really if you are at work there shouldn't be too much (if anything) on your screen which is private.
I'm a big fan of bull pen type environments, where it's wide open spaces and everyone is together with no walls between.
If you have that, and also offer a few "quiet rooms" where you can go if things are loud or you need to check your personal email, I don't see what the problem is.
You're right, I'm not arguing very well. And please, I encourage any one not to take what I say very seriously either. If you want to invest, think for yourself, that is what I was really trying to say.
"The bottom line is this: Amazon trades at more than three times Apple's current valuation, eight times RIM's valuation and just about two and a half times Google's valuation. This is simply way too high."
The article is almost laughable in it's simplicity - if you take CNN/Fortune articles seriously please don't invest your money. This article is overly focusing on one antiquated notation that P/E is the only thing that matters, an idea that isn't taken seriously by anyone close to Wall Street or finance any more (if it ever was, seems like this idea is only perpetuated by "pop" finance drivel such as Fortune).
There are several more interesting metrics to look at when evaluating a stock, including cash flow, profit margin, return on equity, growth rates, and many more.
Amazon has been consistently growing in double digits throughout the recession. They have a profit margin of 3% (compared to Apple's lofty 20%). They have a market cap of 80 billion with annual sales of 24 billion versus Apple's market cap of 280 billion with annual sales of 65 billion.
Where is Amazon's growth ceiling in their respective markets? Where is Apple's? What is next for Apple after the iPad (which missed sales targets)?
If you are going to invest in a stock, you need to ask these tough questions and think for yourself. You can't just look at a P/E ratio and know whether a company is over or under valued. Amazon rode the recession with a 40+ P/E ratio, and now the market is picking up again. Decide for yourself whether it is risky or not to invest in AMZN.
I'm rooting for all the big technology companies to do really well: Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Ebay, Apple. Higher market caps means more flexibility in acquisitions, and these are the companies which aren't afraid to take risks.
Of course you are right, but the point remains, it is important to understand the percentage of equity that you own/will own and how that will change with future dilution.
Remember kids, when interviewing at private companies which offer stock rewards, always get firm answers about percentage owned and dilution. Getting 1,000,000 Facebook shares might sound good on an offer letter but without knowing the percentage that could be worth 6$.
I've also heard rumors that Gmail and Adsense for Content aren't particularly profitable for Google. Of course I've also heard that the brand equity created with Gmail is very valuable and those two are extreme examples, but even based on similar rumors it's possible Google could shut down either one.
The flip side of course is that it becomes dangerous if you rely on any of Google's free services. An extreme example, but what happens if GMail isn't profitable enough? Maybe Adsense for content isn't pulling it's weight any more (if it ever has)?
411 was a fairly useful service, and while shutting it down is probably the right business move, it pushes me more and more to move my primary email account and diversifying my advertising.
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Completely agree, the name dropping around here can get tiresome quick. There was a great article on Mint vs. Wesabe posted here recently - in my opinion we need more articles like that and less Jobs is a design master/Zuckerberg is a genius/etc.
Honestly this seems like a cash grab from the federal government more then anything.
Knowing friends who worked at these companies, they never felt the anti competitive pressure, and several moved between the companies several times.
Most likely, the government found some clauses buried in some contracts that said in a foot note that the companies would agree not to cold call employees in their own respective companies. I don't even think it's unreasonable to have a contract along those lines if engineers are working directly with each other.
Although on the flip side, I think it might be valuable to send a message that anti-competitive agreements in general won't be tolerated and it's good to know that there are people watching this sort of thing.
Very true - the complexity of the system also comes into the equation when things go wrong and it takes real people to figure out why an outage is happening. Highly complex systems imply longer debugging time, and at a certain point a theoretically lower up time can give you higher practical up time just because engineers can actually understand and debug it.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
It does seem to be a major problem with a lot of Google's latest inventions - they try to do too many things at once, and solve too many problems for too many people. Wave as a technology proved to be extremely useful in some certain circles, including corporate collaboration. I would wager if they marketed as a sharepoint competitor and increased the integration with google docs, it could potentially have been a money maker while giving more credibility to Google Docs.
Similar situations are going on right now with Google Buzz and even Google Mail, the execution of the "make phone calls from your mail box" seems to leave a lot to be desired. It's a feature that tries to jump out at you and grab your attention as if saying "Hey look at this, we invented something new" when really it should be almost invisible until you need to use it.
It sounds to me like you are quoting verbatim something Chris Anderson might say.
Software companies in the valley have gotten along just fine charging for services and software with only giving users a token free trial. Microsoft and Oracle are doing just fine.
If you want to look at the big players on the web, there are far more public companies charging for services then there are whose main product is free. Akamai, Sales Force, Amazon, Ebay, NetFlix, Omniture (now adobe) I could go on and on.
When talking about public companies who give their primary service away for free, I can only think of 4examples with market caps over a billion: Google, Yahoo, IACI, and sometimes Monster.
There is a lot of hype about free, thanks especially to Chris Anderson's highly accessible book and influence, but if you look at the results and who really made it big (not 100 million dollar exit big, but multi billion dollar market cap big), starting with a business model where you charge your customers is the best way to achieve that.
I don't like articles like this for one reason and one reason only: it's not empirical. It's a long list of vacuous do this do that statements. What I look for when reading articles about start ups is "At start up X we did Y and it caused Z". Those kinds of relationships are helpful to me and help relate to what I'm doing. If you related it to your success at cloudomatic or a previous start up and had concrete results to relate it to I'd be more interested.
I understand these posts may be helpful to others as idea generation material, and obviously the up votes are a sign of that - but for me it's the equivalent of answering a complicated calculus question with a one line answer. Show your work.
Very interesting essay. Internet addiction is in my opinion spreading like wildfire, spreading well beyond procrastination as Paul Graham said and actually impacting workspace and home environments extremely negatively - the analogy to alcohol is spot on. You aren't procrastinating, you are the equivalent of drunk.
Introspectively, the problem with my addiction lies in the acceleration of production as well as distribution. There are more movies being produced, more novels being written, and more content in general to consume. Technology has been making producing these mediums easier and easier. Musicians used to have to write down lyrics and notes on paper - now there are programs which can practically generate a whole song for them. News can be written by your friends who just got the latest scoop at a major conference. Producing content has never been easier.
At the same time on the distribution side, the internet has made all this content available at your finger tips instantly. As bandwidth increased, it became almost too easy to spend 10 minutes watching news or entertaining on YouTube or a myriad of other free media streaming sites.
These processes will only get more efficient and more effective. As a corollary, the media which seems highly targeted and interesting to you will become increasingly prevalent.
There are no easy answers, and I for one am taking the issue relatively seriously. Getting away for extended periods of time without internet is vital - which is also why I don't own a smart phone.
Lots of entrepreneurial navel gazing going on both in the linked site and in these comments. Everybody has their own theory about the reasons x y z why company a b c is successful, be it Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The problem is every opinion is partially correct, no one can disprove anything, and there is no right answer.
The stories of successful companies are inspirational to some degree, but as a way to vicariously learn how to be successful they fall woefully short of the mark.
The best thing for entrepreneurs to do, is simply to make something happen. Build something people want, and if you fail, learn what you can and try again.
You never know and can't know which decisions are the ones that matter, so forge ahead.
While the future of flattr is still TDB - I wonder what the problem with tipjoy was that they didn't have similar spikes - not enough emphasis on traction/getting the idea out or not enough iteration on the idea when they didn't have traction?
Just goes to show, you need to know who your customers are and how to reach them effectively and efficiently - and in the end that's the harder thing compared to building a great service.
Ideally you should of had 10 customers lined up before you even started building anything. Draw upon friends and family -- you'll need close relationships with your few first customers to know where you went wrong and get continuous feedback.
Direct email/direct mail/paid search are all going to get you a high bounce rate and very few customers. Save yourself some money and network with people who might be interested in your service.
I'm a big fan of bull pen type environments, where it's wide open spaces and everyone is together with no walls between.
If you have that, and also offer a few "quiet rooms" where you can go if things are loud or you need to check your personal email, I don't see what the problem is.