Ouch. I literally did this. Built a site to buy/sell textbooks. Moved abroad, learned the language. Built a business to teach travelers the local lingo. 10 years later, it was acquired (at a loss). Currently on (9).
Apparently you can survive about 40 seconds in a vacuum. One option would be for one pilot to enter (as quickly as possible!) then put the CMP into a spacesuit, then re-admit the other astronaut. No clue if they could enter and re-pressurize the capsule within 30 seconds- sounds like a long-shot.
The loans don't actually come from the school- they are often government-sponsored, though those typically cap out at $12k a year or something. The rest you have to get through private loans, and the school has no way to forgive them- unless they want to write a check to my loan provider.
Because they still want people that can afford to pay $50k/year to pay it. Lowering tuition lowers it for everyone. If your parents make $300k+/year, then you'll still be paying full tuition. But as their income is lower, currently you'll get some need-based financial aid. The problem is that this aid is a combination of "scholarship" and "loans". The goal here is to remove the loan component.
The problem still is that middle-class families get stuck in a gray zone. I went to Brown, and my parents made enough (~$110k) that I didn't get financial aid but they also couldn't pay $40k/year.
I'm not affiliated with Docker in any way and I'm just speaking from my experience. My only connection to Steve Singh is just that my company still partners with Concur.
Concur became a behemoth in corporate travel, and companies that competed against them or didn't want to work with them eventually had to.[1]
It sounds like you don't know a lot about the corporate travel industry which is fine. I'm sure a lot of people would love to get "conquered" for $8B some day.
My company has been a partner of Concur for several years, starting back in 2012 when the original founders (Steve, Raj and Mike) were all still there.
Steve was easily the most-respected leader in the travel industry- even people that disliked Concur admired Steve. He was articulate, created a clear vision for Concur that they maintained even as they grew like wildfire, and he inspired trust and goodwill with Concur partners.
I get the "oh no, SAP executive" instinctual reaction, but Steve is clearly an entrepreneur at heart and considers himself an entrepreneur (it took them 20 years of grinding and ups and downs to build Concur what it is today).
There was also a comment about him leading the company to exit in 2-3 years. I seriously doubt it. Concur's stock symbol is CNQR which isn't a coincidence. They didn't build Concur to sell it, they built it to conquer, which they had basically done when SAP bought them. Plus after 20 years I imagine $8B sounded pretty good, but I don't think their approach was ever to try to "flip" the company and I doubt he would join Docker if that was the intention in any way.
Under the terms of the transaction, LogMeIn will pay $110 million in cash upon close for all outstanding equity interests in LastPass, with up to an additional $15 million in cash payable in contingent payments which are expected to be paid to equity holders and key employees of LastPass upon the achievement of certain milestone and retention targets over the two-year period following the closing of the transaction.
Under the terms of the transaction, LogMeIn will pay $110 million in cash upon close for all outstanding equity interests in LastPass, with up to an additional $15 million in cash payable in contingent payments which are expected to be paid to equity holders and key employees of LastPass upon the achievement of certain milestone and retention targets over the two-year period following the closing of the transaction.
Another reason is that playing DraftKings or FanDuel does actually make watching football more interesting- you care about games you otherwise wouldn't care about. Many people will happily continue to lose $10/week for the benefit of enjoying watching the NFL more.
Online poker isn't as fun when you're consistently losing money- there's no "outside" benefit.
I agree that its not for nothing and does help cover legitimate expenses Apple incurs. That said- its not a one-way street. The app ecosystem is one of several key drivers for iPhone/iPad sales- that alone probably justifies the cost to Apple.
Also- the point of this pitch is that the extra revenue means much more to smaller developers than it does to Apple, and that Apple in fact wouldn't lose that much revenue from such a scheme.
The path forward, with benefits for restaurants and our entrepreneur here, is this: see if people are willing to pay for reservations at in-demand restaurants. If so- great. You clearly can't scale this without getting restaurants in on the game. So- partner with the restaurants. Charge $20 for a reservation. Give the restaurant $10. The restaurant made extra money, their no-show rate goes down, the diners already have skin in the game and are likely to spend more than average patrons, and our main man here makes some cash.
To me it seems like an innocent-enough experiment. If he wants to scale it, he'll have to make it work for restaurants too. And if he does- great! Margin-stressed restaurants get an extra source of income.
As an entrepreneur in the travel space, my guess is that this move is primarily a PR move, and actual Bitcoin transactions aren't expected to move the needle in any substantial way.
If its primarily a PR move, the reason for starting with hotels is simple: Expedia, and all the OTAs (Online Travel Agency), make the VAST majority of their profit from hotel bookings* due to two factors:
1) Airlines pay extremely small commissions (starting with when Delta announced 15 years ago they wouldn't pay commissions on flights)
2) Hotels pay extremely high commissions, since unsold hotel rooms disappear as inventory the next day
Assuming the goal is PR, Expedia cares much more about getting consumers to think of Expedia as a place to book hotels than they do booking flights- thus they are "starting" with hotels.
*For example, in 2013 Priceline sold 270M hotel nights and 7M airline tickets. Of their $7B in revenue and $2B in profit, very very little came from airline ticket sales.
I'll just say that design quality of presentations, especially for startups who need credibility, is extremely important. Powerpoint- while it doesn't do it for you- is the easiest way to look credible without doing all of your slides in Adobe software.
For internal company presentations, perhaps it doesn't make sense to do fancy powerpoints. But if you can't make a presentation that looks credible, it betrays confidence in your ability to deliver on a product/service that is legitimate.