Sure, it surprised us all when revenues and earnings turned out to actually matter in 2000, but it's 2011 now, man, and the future's so bright I've got to wear shades! The fact that I can download 14,511 apps that allow you to share photos of your cats is the only indication you need that we're living in the post-earnings era.
Making money is for squares. As long as you can line up that Series P round, the party's still on, man. Rock it, don't block it.
What exactly do you mean by "large customers"? We run several million dollars worth of credit card transactions per year( through cybersource and authorize.net right now ), and we pay at or near the wholesale interchange rate.
Even so, our accounting department still can't fully untangle the mess of foreign transfer and conversion fees, float-related costs, gateway fees, amex vs visa discount rate differentials, pci compliance service fees, and all the other horrible shit that Stripe eats for you, in order to give me a straight answer as to whether or not we currently pay more or less than 0.30 + 2.9%.
This is not a hit on our accountants, cybersource, stripe, or our merchant bank - just making the point that it's not so easy to state categorically that Stripe's fees will turn off somewhat larger volume customers.
"and really who isn't unhappy with the world right now?"
Most people who are capable of rationally evaluating the standards of living we currently enjoy versus that of any other point in human history usually aren't that unhappy with the world right now.
I say this in the general sense; of course at any given time, N individuals will be hitting the bottom of the barrel, but the barrel is getting shallower and shallower with each generation.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes; apparently I'm factually incorrect, and the Global Human Development Index is actually declining?
I must be living in a different version of the United States than the author is. I don't think I've ever experienced the kind of false optimistic outlook referred to here. Is this a Silicon Valley thing?
Most people I talk to about our business are fairly realistic about the challenges we face, or progress thus far, etc.
It's been many years; We've been building this company fulltime since 2005, and on a part time basis since 2002. Bootstrapping is a slog, since you make expansionary investments from cash flow only.
Yes, I have a co-founder. In fact, he's the majority owner.
1000 years? That is a timeframe long enough to virtually guarantee the occurrence of the Singularity, so I would have to say Vinge/Kurzweil/Eliezer/Goertzel/De Garis, or whomever switches on the first self-modifying artificial general intelligence.
My current business began as a side project many years ago. At first, I was building/managing the technical aspect of the business( website, integration, inventory systems, fulfillment systems, etc )remotely on an average basis of 20 hours per week. I say average because some weeks I did nothing, and other weeks I worked more than my "day job".
Growth was so strong that I ultimately made the decision to jump ship from my prior company and make my current company a fulltime endeavor. It was one of the most difficult decisions I've made in my life, as the cofounder of my prior company was very close.
During this time, we've grown from < $100k/y revenues to > $5mm ( making an effort to be vague here ), and still enjoying good growth. We are profitable and never took a dime of VC.
Hopefully this anecdote answers your question sufficiently.
kloncks is probably utilizing hyperbole in making comparisons with the great thinkers of western civilization.
That said, we do still talk about Edison, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, over a century later. A millennium? Probably not, but the point is valid, even if off by roughly half an order of magnitude.
Yes, but with links. So it's definitely worth billions.
Edit: Now that I've actually looked at the site to ensure I wasn't speaking out of ignorance, I noticed that the external links are not rel="nofollow". This will be a brilliant breeding ground for SEO spam.
Well, I think the question of "who pays for it", while important, is orthogonal to this particular issue, which is about increasing the available supply.
If a poor but healthy south asian immigrant wants startup capital to open a restaurant, and Amit wants a long and fruitful life, a legal market that allowed such a transaction would dramatically increase the supply of available materials. And it may even be possible that this increased supply would drive the end cost of living tissue down.
Now to be clear, I don't want to detract from Amit's immediate issue - this thread should be about helping him, not lead off a discussion that has nothing do to with his immediate problem( nobody here is going to change the legal framework within a month ). But I would like to at least understand the downsides to allowing markets in living tissue.
Here's an unpopular thought, but one that may not be on the list of "things too taboo to think about" for HN readers.
What if marrow donation was a for-profit industry, or at the very least a nonprofit or government-run industry that allowed people to sell their marrow at market prices? Would Amit and thousands of others in his position be resorting to begging for access to life-saving treatments, or being put on waiting lists that are far too long relative to their prognosis?
My guess is no, with the exception of people too poor to afford access to such materials - which are already so cost prohibitive that this is already a problem. I've never understood why the notion of making a market in organs and other medical materials is such taboo.