If this is actually true (I've never tried to get a VC job) maybe partners in VC firms should plan better because they'd end up with better hires instead of the dregs who can't find a job anywhere else. No wonder some VCs are completely useless.
My guess is that the SSA didn't factor how poorly American's would treat themselves over the next 65 years. If they had their projections for life expectancy would have dropped inline with what they are today.
Either that or those fantastic flying cars we all though we were going to have by 2011 were supposed to have contributed to a longer lifespan.
Why is it surprising that a country could shut down access to the internet? It's not as if the internet is some sort of magic cloud where packets fly in and out to destinations across the world. It's a system. It has points of failure just like anything else. Granted it was built to survive failure but if you didn't build your internet infrastructure like the designers envisioned it's probably pretty easy to turn it off.
When I lived in NYC I was really surprised to find out that most transatlantic cables terminated in this tall windowless building on Duane and Chambers street. If you basically took that building away you probably could turn off the internet for a good portion of people in the US. Or at the very least make it hard.
My point being - in Egypt there probably is a similar building that houses all of their DNS servers, lines to other countries, etc. So its not hard to believe that someone just decided to walk in and turn off the power.
I totally agree. It's such a piss poor way to rank universities I can't believe they published it. The data isn't even really complete so there are a bunch of universities (like the University of Waterloo) in the 76-100 ranking that should be in the top 30 that aren't because they haven't bothered to do all of their homework.
If 4% of founders in YC are female I would be interested to know what the breakdown of male/female entrepreneurs are for businesses outside of tech. My initial guess is that there are a lot more female entrepreneurs outside of the valley than there are in the valley. This article (http://www.examiner.com/women-s-entrepreneurship-in-washingt...) would seem to (albeit not definitely) agree with that assumption. So if we think there is a significant difference I would be really interested to see a profile of a female tech entrepreneur and a female non-tech entrepreneur. That profile would reveal a lot about why more women don't create technology startups.
In the end I think women are quite entrepreneurial and can make the sacrifices, tradeoffs, and decisions necessary to succeed. I just don't think the type of businesses that most women are interested in creating are technology in nature.
Based on this move I wonder how much truth there ever was to the rumor that Google was considering buying Trulia (http://kara.allthingsd.com/20091218/open-house-google-has-al...). The infrastructure they have is basically the same so they would have encountered the same infrastructure issues with the retirement of Google Base.
Congrats to the folks at Hipmunk. I've always really liked the simplicity of this idea for travel search.
I do wonder, however, how long they'll be able to continue to link directly to the airlines. I'm assuming (and this may be an overly broad generalization) that as they build out features for users this will naturally force them to create interstitial's between the carrier's website and their own. I seem to recall that Kayak was very similar in terms of its relationship with carriers when they initially started. But as they built out more functionality they created more for the user to do on their site distracting them away from the carrier site.
So although TechCrunch thinks it interesting that American isn't cutting out Hipmunk is this really going to be true in the long run?
"The promising thing is that companies like Groupon, Facebook, and Zynga are already making money, whereas early dot-coms were just a promise to make money."
And this statement neatly wraps up why we have a second tech bubble. Because average investors still don't understand the risks inherent in new companies they will anchor off of something familiar (revenue) instead of really diving into the business fundamentals.
Out of the whole article I think the key point to take away is the fast reaction in face of a bad hire. Because let's face it - there is no fool proof way to hire people. So accept it and make sure you have the systems in place to reconcile a failed hired. I personally like the techniques used by companies like Facebook and Zappos to 'counsel out' people who aren't a fit for the organization. But these 'counseling out' sessions are extremely bad for the employee since its a signal to future employers that something was missed. So in the minds of the next person who interviews someone that was 'counseled out' there will always be a nagging doubt that they too missed something.
"While the liberty movements in the West are busy enough doing good job fighting off the surveillance wave at home, the totalitarian customer segment remains steadily serviced, by the virtue of civil opinion there being discarded and silenced."
That's a bold statement. I agree that liberty movements are fighting. But I don't think they are winning. We've definitely taken a few steps back in recent years. There are more cameras on every street corner and more companies are using facial recognition software to spot people as they go about their day to day business. I don't think that's progress.
I disagree with Fred Wilson that a multiple of 25-50 EBITDA is not unreasonable. I think it's completely unreasonable at this point. Let's for a moment consider what a 25 or 50X EBITDA multiple means. In the long term that would imply that Facebook's revenue is 25BN or 50BN (assuming 1BN of revenue now). Apple's revenue right now is 60BN annually and Google's is a little more than 25BN. Either of these is fair if you assume that Facebook has a monetization plan that is at a minimum as good as Google search and at best as lucrative as consumer products (ala iPhone, iPad, iPod). Right now there isn't anything to indicate it's either of those.
So a multiple of 25 or 50x EBITDA is done on faith that Facebook is smart enough to figure it out. Frankly before I'd invest I'd like to see some proof of that. Right now all I see are display ad's and that isn't enough.