charlesbonello

So the concern is that a debt financing would be smaller than a potential equity financing by some order of magnitude, as it's constrained by trailing cash flow rather than future opportunities?

Both answers are correct, and make sense. I guess my question is fundamentally: is this a problem of supply (i.e. - not a lot of appetite to fund debt at these levels) or one of demand (entrepreneurs just prefer equity).

Jesus, this is a tremendous idea and opportunity.

Love to see big academia getting behind this, and looking at incubation in a different way.

I'm a little biased given that the program I started espouses almost the same exact structure as this, and of course get press coverage on the same day. http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2013/09/04/meet-rta-sum...

Great job.

Thanks for the feedback. I tend to agree with you about the fact that the analytics and backups offered are not new, but the accessibility to designers is, and I'm glad that you pointed it out more explicitly than I have -- especially given your experience.

I also think that in some ways, the 'usability' of each technology is the big hurdle that must first be cleared before "marketing" becomes the key differentiator. I approached this with the thought that among the existing (or discussed) technologies, any improvement in the technology or functionality is, at best, incremental. That, along with some other factors, is why I suggested that marketing would represent the key differentiator. Glad to hear other thoughts on that, too.

You're all awesome. Thank you for the input and time.

Thanks for the input. I tend to feel the same way, and am wondering if there's a gap in the online/offline purchase cycle there for a product or service I'm overlooking. As a corollary, I see eBay and Amazon fighting to get closer to "immediacy" and wondering if they're off base. That's another discussion, I guess.