Thiel has argued that there is a "bubble" in higher education -- that is, on average, American's over value it. Not that higher education is meaningless or that going to a top school and getting good grades doesn't signal that you are: smart, ambitious, hard working and would fit in with the academic culture at a hedge fund.
As a Canadian I find the persistance of the "small vs. big" government narrative in American politics bemusing - there is no small government party in the states, only branding.
Also, price earnings would be a pretty foolish approach to valuing Facebook - I wouldn't be so sure that you are so much more sophisticated than the imaginary bozos you are criticizing.
This is an article on dealbook - everyone reading knows the difference between market cap and price per share and the market cap is in the first paragraph. Headlines include the price per share of stocks all the time, it doesn't mean the readers or writers are stupid.
I noticed you were using Shopify. You could probably add a lot to that $10,000 by selling a varient of your store's design on the Shopify theme store. It looks awesome.
It's a deceptively focused/small offering to start with but they have the key components required to become a credentialing system outside of the university/college system.
It's easy to look at YC startups and say they aren't pursuing massive visions but the truth is many of them are just starting with some tiny subset of a big problem.
When you click on a piece of work on /browse/ it takes you directly into the "gallery view" for that piece, rather than to the artist's profile page. This is a bit jarring. I would consider taking users to the artist's profile first and letting them enter the gallery view from there.
Planet Money also did a follow up on one of Bain's deals that went right. TL;DR Bain bought a company, levered it up, restructured it and successfully took it public.
The company executives all got bonuses, Bain made a ton of money and the workers got to keep their jobs. The company is still running today.
The act of re-issuing the shares would have the opposite effect on supply, causing the price to go back down. You can't create profits by retiring and then reissuing shares.
Look for the areas of your business which are complementary with theirs. For example, maybe you are able to monetize traffic at a higher CPM than they are - if they were able to drive traffic from their existing properties to your site, what would be the improvement in their total profitability? Maybe your service could increase engagement with their existing properties and drive more total page views. Etc etc. In theory the acquiring firm should be willing to pay for some of the value that would be created as a by product of integrating your site into their business.
This is a nitpick but the author has missed the historical context of Eric Reis's lean startup methodology.
"It was Japanese management theory in the 1980s. A few weeks ago, before our collective attention shifted to the Facebook IPO, it was whatever Steve Jobs had done, from hallucinogens to yelling at your employees."
His link for Japanese management theory points to "theory x" but what it should point to is the toyota production method. Eric Reis's lean startup methodology is a repurposing of lean production methods pioneered by toyota. It's an extension of the same management theory, not just a random fad in business thinking.
I wasn't "using Iceland as an example for other countries" or trying to imply that the Americans should have let their banks fail. I was simply relaying a quote which suggested that the expected result of declining pay on Wall street had also been observed in another country.
