By comparison, Supercell which has the #1 top grossing app (Clash of Clans) and #4 top grossing app (Hay Day) was reported to have $15M in gross monthly revenue, which is far less than Vesterbacka's statement about Rovio, but closer in line with Rovio's Finnish filing.
Angry Birds Star Wars is currently #46.
Maybe the merchandise and licensing is where the money is at?
Yes, that is why it is very difficult to get a change of venue out of the Eastern District.
That's just one of the reasons why ED Texas is so deadly.
Others:
In the ED, it is extremely difficult to get a motion to stay pending review of the patent by the USPTO. The court also moves very quickly, which compresses the financial burden of defense into a short time period. The fast moving court also makes it difficult to get a review completed by the USPTO in time before trial.
That said, the AIA compels the USPTO to rule much quicker, increasing the probability that you can get the patent invalidated before it reaches trial. However, the cost of the new review process is incredibly expensive: hundreds of thousands of dollars if you have an average lawyer. Could be a million if you have a top law firm billing you.
It's the result of an incredible bd and ad sales team. If you look at the senior team, esp in sales, it's a lot of very senior CNET veterans who took along most of their experience and contacts from CNET to Meebo.
Shouldn't you narrow down "build a big business charging consumers"?
Even in just digital goods, there are general software companies (Microsoft, Intuit, McAfee), gaming companies (Zynga, EA, Valve), online dating companies (Match, Eharmony), geneology (Ancestry), health (Weight Watchers Online) that make 1+ orders of magnitude more money than Evernote.
Most of them also have freemium models. What's special here?
Actually, at very high volumes (where the non-recurring engineering cost is sufficiently amortized), the larger equivalent component is more expensive, since you are using more material to manufacture the component.
Obviously, other factors, like process yield can be a factor here as well, since a lower process yield for the smaller component would increase its price.
Even with that definition, there was Shozu, which was founded in 2001 and raised over $36M. At least by 2005, they had significant traction with their mobile photo sharing tools.
I would totally disagree that the theory is sound. The fact wrist-based actigraphy correlates at all with REM phases is not scientifically validated in any robust way.
I'm not entirely convinced that "society starts conditioning for gender roles very early". You'd have to show me hard data. On the other hand, there is fascinating evidence to prove the reverse:
Case in point is David Reimer, who received the first ever sex re-assignment surgery conducted on a developmentally normal child at age 22 months. David became Brenda.
"At age 2, Brenda angrily tore off her dresses. She refused to play with dolls and would beat up her brother and seize his toy cars and guns."
""When I say there was nothing feminine about Brenda," brother Brian Reimer later recalled, "I mean there was nothing feminine:
She walked like a guy. Sat with her legs apart. She talked about guy things, didn't give a crap about cleaning house, getting married, wearing makeup. We both wanted to play with guys, build forts and have snowball fights and play army. She'd get a skipping rope for a gift, and the only thing we'd use that for was to tie people up, whip people with it. She played with my toys: Tinkertoys, dump trucks. This toy sewing machine she got just sat."
What's sad is that the longest comment thread in that post was about Java vs other languages. Not getting into analysis paralysis about technology is probably another lesson to insert into that post.
posting this as an example of highly misguided thinking. though I am curious about "Three-fourths of executives at venture capital-backed startups say patents are vital to getting financing, according to the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey". Who are these executives?
"Regardless, in the end a judge is going to be asked if a $1,000 passive investment really should be worth billions of dollars in 6 years. The answer to that question in our country is 'no.'"
I would hope that in this country, if the investment is backed by the proper legal documents, that the answer would be yes. that whole rule of law thing.
Otherwise, are you saying that if one makes an angel investment of $1K for 10% of a company, that a judge should back other larger deeper-pocketed investors against the angel primarily because the judge would ask "if harming the millions of dollars of investment is proper on behalf of the guy who put in $1k."?
If you can make the cut at a top investment bank, hedge fund, PE firm, etc, it's fairly trivial to accumulate $1M in liquid assets after 10 years of work. Much much easier than trying to sell your startup for > $1M.