"Because of the need for speed, Atlanta has a great big expensive hole the size of Florence that does very little beside getting a small fraction of Atlanta workers to their jobs a bit sooner, barring any accidents."
=> how can you compare a city in a country like Italy (60M people, 116K sq miles) with an interchange in the US (323M people, 3.8M sq miles) and conclude that? Of course the US have enormous transport infrastructures, simply because it was a need during the 19th century to have a full "colonization" of the land instead of only large cities with high density (just think about agriculture) and it is now a need for a competitive economy to have low costs of transports per km. Sure we have to improve the energetic efficiency of our transports, but that won't be done my taking comparisons that make absolutely no sense
If you look at their business with a low-level standpoint, they will struggle to radically differentiate themselves from Google Drive, iCloud, Box and co in terms of features. But their business is not first based on features, but rather i) infrastructure and ii) execution. For infrastructure, given their growth and funding, they seem to be reaching the critical size that makes you a leader/key player in the market. If they keep combining competitive pricing and quality of support, the incentive for companies to switch will be meaningless. For execution, the fact that they are already CF positive demonstrates a strong ability to grow profitably = great execution. I don't say there will be no hurdles on the road, but they have pretty much all they need to avoid them
I guess it's not only a matter of revenues. I don't think Uber really cares about divulging revenue - they've done it over the last months for some geographies to prove they're right. I think they care more about where the focus must be = if you're private, you can keep growing without thinking too much about the bottom line/EBIT/EBITDA; when you're public, that's another story, investors (not only individuals) carry about dividends to make their ROI - of course value of the stock is another key element
That gives a market cap of $1.15bn (82,200,793 shares*$14/share). Based on public information, Twilio's revenue run rate would be around $150M, so that's x8 for Revenue and x20 for EBITDA (40% margin seems reasonable in the telcos industry). Fun fact: AT&T market cap is $248Bn, x5 EBITDA. Just thought it would be funny to compare the two
Because you have to dig a bit. I have spent quite some time in the area and all main officials are in close relations with Chinese. Take the PM, Hun Sen, who is publicly linked to the Chinese (by family)+ gave all the key oil exploration contracts to Chinese corporations. Have a look into the latest International Transparency report, you'll see that there are increasing doubts about his "transparency"
"It's hundreds of miles from China" => since when that proves anything?
They're clearly not the only ones to do that. For instance Social Capital provides all portfolio startups with a comprehensive data analytics platform and a team of data scientists. For recruiting, almost all large VC funds have one or more dedicated talent sourcing people - Index, Accel, etc. Bottom line: I don't see any specific reason to justify a 3% management fee, except the cofounders' unique insights and contacts in the Valley and their personal relations with LPs
Given the curse of the area, I'm kind of afraid by the discovery: place got partly destroyed by the Khmer Rouges, then robbed by my fellow French and is now under tight management by the Chinese. I really hope this will benefit Cambodians
> Top universities already have plenty of brand recognition and get way more applicants than what they can accept. The monetary value of any additional marketing is probably very close to zero for them.
You can apply that reasoning to any large organization: once it's known/famous for its excellence, an overwhelming majority of their marketing investments have small return. Still, they continue to invest in marketing because they know that this excellence has to be maintained. That's exactly what they should use MOOCs for - and they initially did
Just tried F# on https://www.codingame.com/games/puzzles
Don't really see the use case for me, but fun to try smthg new => "one new language a day keeps the boredom away"
Really excessive and sometimes completely out of the road:
"Open standards are always going to be inferior to closed ones. How many of our web evangelist are using an Apple laptop, the most closed ecosystem around?"
You have many open standards that are superior to closed ones, simply because it unleashes creativity of the community. Many techies use Apple because they build an amazing user experience, based on a closed but very large ecosystem - go to the App Store and you'll see most of the apps you need
Agree on technical questions + what he says on "team fit" really doesn't make sense: "You are NOT hiring for "team fit"
I have never heard a definition of "team fit" that didn't end up sounding like "let our bias run free". Phrases like "looks like they belong here" are terrifying. More insidious are complaints like "doesn't like the same social activities we do". Grow up. Your office is not your frat house, and socializing with your co-workers outside of work is not some crucial test. There is no requirement that you like someone socially as long as you want to work with them." You don't ask people to be exactly like but you expect them to be able to work in a cool mood with you and to share things. Who would hire somebody that doesn't get along with the team??!!
I really got emotional when I first read the article. LAN parties were that epic moment when you felt you were part of something new, we were initiating the new socialization process we are all now accustomed to. Nerds kind of disappeared in my mind
Just learned about Tom Perkins. Definitely was not perfect but Gosh those guys had some guts to try what they tried at a time when everybody was so big on traditional corporate finance and so fearful on new tech companies. RIP
Yup, hence the need to have it open source, otherwise that's just too much time spent for little return (leads datasets are too limited for significant uplift)