These simulations don't account for human choice on when they want to board. There are customers anxious to get to their seats, and so listen carefully for their zone boarding. There are customers who would rather spend time in the terminal than extra time in an upright seat so they wait until the very last minute to board, regardless of zone.
Increases in prices of checked baggage means many flights have more people carrying bags on, due to limited overhead space, there is more incentive to board as early as possible. If you don't have a carry-on that needs to go in the overhead bins, the incentive to board on-time or early is lower.
Southwest airlines, mentioned here quite a bit, incentives customers to board early (if you want a good seat, you need to get on early to choose it) and to check in early (they can better gauge % checked-in because you are rewarded for confirming with the airline 24 hours in advance). Their policy to allow free checked bags is a nice courtesy but it also means more customer check bags, reducing the time to store things in the overhead which leads to less time at the gate. Free bags is a financial play, just not in terms of additional revenue but as cost savings.
Giving is great. I wonder if down the road they will consider helping incubate these non-profits to make the return on their charitable investment even greater. They have the expertise of helping companies grow, why not give the money and brain power to help the charities too.
A side question, any idea if the contributions are from the firm or the individual partners? I'm curious about the tax break breakdown. If the company is the vehicle for donation, there is a larger ability for a full tax break on the money donated. However, it seems that for an individual, there is a maximum: "Only if you contribute more than 20% of your adjusted gross income to charity is it necessary to be concerned about donation limits. If the contribution is made to a public charity, the deduction is limited to 50% of your contribution base." - http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&#...
So, if 100,000 was donated by the company, the tax break would be 100,000. $100,000 goest to the charity and the company has no tax on that income. But for the individual, if the maximum tax break is 50%, then $100,000 goes to the charity but $50,000 was taxed at the individual's income tax bracket (likely 35%+ for these guys) so the 'cost' was really $117,500 to give $100,000. Check my math here, I'm not a tax expert but curious about they are looking at maximizing their contribution at the lowest cost.
I went through Code Academy class one in the Fall of 2011. I was a little unsure how it would turn out but Mike and Neal seemed to have everything under control.
Jeff was an excellent teacher, the class was full of incredibly passionate people and the course work was tough but effective. It's awesome to see how far Code Academy has come. Congrats!
I would recommend this program to anyone interested in working at or starting their own technology company. No more excuses to 'find a technical co-founder' - build the MVP yourself.
This seems to miss the distinction between a good speaker and a good speech. Just as there are good writers and good posts. Speakers and writers require practice, discipline to improve their craft. Speeches and blog posts should have purpose, entertain and inform.
The best way to measure a successful speech is to see what the audience walks away with. Usually, the audience walks away with a few lessons, not verbatim recall of the words spoken or written. Steve Jobs and J.K. Rowling's commencement speeches are two of my favorites. Stories provide entertainment but the lessons they learned are what the audience walks away with: life is short, chase your dreams.
Nice mention of @CodeAcademy. When does it become cost effective to train large amounts of talent at no cost to the students? It could pay off over the long term but I imagine there would be a one-year minimum lock-in to keep students at the company that trained them.
Kickstarter continues to prove that good ideas spread quickly. Where websites show viral growth in user visits, kickstart shows it with real dollars for real products. Very inspiring. Thanks for sharing this post- it lets the community get an insider view of the excitement.
That's an interesting idea. Kind of like a ghost account? Or what if you logged in with email only and then auto-followed the founder/popular members so you still get rich, person-centric advice?
gtrot.com started with Facebook-Connect login only. We didn't allow any access into the site unless you created account. The primary reason for this was that we used Facebook data to show you where your friends lived, where they've been and allowed you to connect with them on gtrot (through Facebook) so there was no "empty room" feeling when you started.
With our latest updates in November, we allowed a 'generic view' --- a user can search what's happening in a city without logging in. We've put in educational messaging and explain why the Facebook connect is important to being able to personalize results. Based on what you like, what your friends like, where you've been, where they've been etc. The data is core to the experience, but some people still don't want to give access to Facebook. We did, however, see our bounce rate cut in half when we provided a generic view. Customers were spending more time on the site (upward of 5 minutes) and even returning to use the site without the account.
I think the key is giving clarity, but this is a topic we've gone back and forth on as we don't think we can deliver on our promise of 'personalized advice in any city' without having the Facebook basis. We'll be changing this over time but for now, it's generic or Facebook account.
The site looks great-- I think the purpose that it serves is very inspiring. Continue to tell stories like yours on your site, and I'm sure it will reach the audience you want faster.
Thanks for sharing this story. I think it speaks to the commonly overlooked notion that you should set out to build a business, not just a web product. Details on which costs you chose to attack first (technical debt vs. free subscriptions vs. UX) is something all web businesses should think about.
How does the original owner feel about the revamped HitTail?