curt

This is what I wanted to do and the exact reason why I left the biotech industry. They don't like crazy ideas.

You're right, missed that part. Was wondering how they got around the FDA. Now it makes complete sense.

Came up with an idea (edit: wrote in generalization, took to much credit, sorry, didn't want to bore everyone with details) 10 years ago, everybody thought I was crazy for wanting to inject HIV into people. The idea I had was to treat the human immune system like a computers anti-virus software and upload treatments using the HIV virus. Didn't think the FDA would even allow something like this for at least another decade. Really believe HIV is the key to ending disease in humans, even possibly aging.

Wonder how they handled its affinity for mutation? That was the big hurtle.

EDIT: xd corrected me. They did it in vitro. Which explains how they got around the FDA.

Really, down voting a post that tries to explain the Austrian School of Economics. Trying to suppress a view point are we?

This is exactly right. Not many people understand the Austrian School of Economics, whatever you want to call it, "supply side", "tax cuts", not even the politicians that campaign for it. Not all tax cuts are created equal and the goal is not to get people to spend money but invest. The only tax cuts that work are across the board cuts that change long-term behavior. All these credits and "targeted" cuts don't do anything and might even hurt. The goal of tax cuts are to spur investment by lowering the required return on investment allowing capital to flow into more productive projects (manufacturing, startups, etc).

Don't know why more research hasn't been done on Boron fusion. Since it gives off an electron you don't need any turbines or heavy equipment just a transformer. Instead we spend billions on H2 H3 fusion. Makes no sense to me.

Also there is a big difference between GOING to college and GRADUATING from college. A ton of people drop out during their first or second years.

Rare Earths are deposits of exotic minerals used in nearly every advanced technology today (wind mills to MRI's). California used to produce the entire world supply until China undercut the price. As demand boomed (prices going way up) and China started using them as a trade weapon so companies started looking for sources in more stable countries.

Exactly. How about all the unemployed horseshoe manufacturers (blacksmiths)? Technology doesn't kill jobs, it improves efficiency so capital can be deployed elsewhere. The problem today are the hurtles government places in the way in the form of regulations and taxes that inhibit the efficient deployment of capital.

The divergence is that to form a single job a knowledge worker requires far less capital compared to a manufacturing job. A developer needs 10k in equipment to be productive compared to 100k's for a manufacturing job. When you actually adjust for the US regulatory and tax environment the gap increases even more, making overseas manufacturing a no-brainer.

There are tax, liability, and business issues. Trust me it's a mess especially when you try to minimize the tax liability, you can do all sorts of crazy crap.

No, they hire the best and brightest to work for the government and hold them accountable. Something western governments refuse to do with government workers usually because of union/civil service work rules.

But what ends up happening then is that Singapore for example actively works to import entrepreneurs because their best and brightest went into government.

It's not the laws themselves (with some exceptions) but the paperwork required to comply. For example Singapore has many of the same laws as the US but they really focus on streamlining the bureaucracy so it's not as heavy a burden.

Even if Apple wanted to the regulations surrounding manufacturing, especially on a large scale are crazy. Can't tell you how many operations are moving overseas not because of the labor costs but because of the bureaucracy, paperwork, EPA, and regulations in the US.

Great response but there's still going to be a ton of damage done to the brand that will really hurt their long-term growth. How many millions of people are hearing about Airbnb for the first time in a negative light. That's hard to overcome. They raised their round to fight off any potential competitors, but they just made a huge opening for one of them to exploit.

Now that the big news outlets are reporting on the incident, Airbnb's future growth might really suffer. You only get to make a first impression once and this is a big negative first impression. It's going take a lot of time and cost a fortune to undo the damage.

This hugely benefits their competition, now people know a service like this exists and might explore their options. But they will likely stay away from Airbnb. Never understood how they haven't offered insurance as an addition, it doesn't take that much work to create a policy with an outside firm or two.

Find someone to look over your resume and cold-call CEO's/hiring managers of companies you're interested in.

It's my first time ever applying to job postings. Started looking a few weeks ago and found out my resume was crap, after getting some advice and rewriting it my response rate is 75%.

If you're interested in a company and think they might need you, just email the CEO a short note. You'd be amazed at how often you'll get a response, a couple even introduced me to other CEOs looking for someone with my skill set.

The two key's points to communicate: why are you interested in the company and what can you do for them.

Swiss Francs, Silver, and investing in foreign stocks (Brazil, India). Mostly the later now.

Great idea but hope you guys are changing the UI/UX. The diagonal lines being blue and the text being blue cause the eye/brain to want to close the shape which is quite distracting. Take a look at the contrast and fixing the anti-aliasing.

Really think about the emotional response you want to trigger in your customers. For a lot of people this is a very harrowing experience and the design should provide comfort. There's a evolutionary psychological response called the savanna preference, it triggers a clinically tested calming emotional response. Should work wonders. If you have questions about how to trigger different emotional responses (trust, calm, etc) in the design, feel free to reach out. Plan on writing a blog post about it at some point in the future.

Actually he does have the right to prioritize spending in such an instance and therefore does not need congressional approval. It's a power of the Treasury Secretary. Clinton did it in '95 during the government shutdown.

The US won't default unless the President chooses to, there is still plenty of money to make the interest payments on the debt, it's under 10% of revenue. All we have to do to balance the budget is go back to what we were spending 8 years ago... Only 8 years ago... That's how much the government has increased.

What would happen is the government would be forced to make cuts in other areas. There is still enough money for most of the entitlements and the military but other areas would undergo drastic cuts.

Government Spending to stimulate the economy doesn't work, the best quote is from FDR's own Treasury Secretary and creator of the New Deal where he said in front of congress, "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And an enormous debt to boot!"

Correlation does not mean causation.

What we need to do is go back to the Clinton level of spending. The revenue side isn't the problem. If you look at when the rates were changed, revenues on the upper income individuals actually increased. That's how it's always worked. Harding cuts, Kennedy cuts, Reagan cuts, Clinton cuts all increased revenue in relation to the rates changed.

People need to realize increasing tax rates does not mean increased government revenue, decreasing rates does not mean less revenue. Economies don't work like that due to how capital is deployed.

You don't need a 'crash' you need a correction to fix all the manipulations of the economy by the federal government. When the federal government subsidizes a product (housing, ethanol), taxes/regulates it to an extreme, or spends your money it creates an inefficiency in the economy. The other problem is the lose monetary policy of the Fed since Nixon took us off the gold standard, that also needs to be corrected. There has been one study I know of that showed a very strong correlation between tight, non-inflationary monetary policy and GDP growth over 200 years of American history. Politicians and the media rail on business and wall street for causing the problems, when nearly all the crashes in American history can be tied mostly to faulty federal monetary policy and exacerbated by legislative policy (Smoot-Hartley).

The United States is not a democracy, it's a republic the founders knew the danger of mob rule. The solution to the problem are term limits, so politicians don't worry about their jobs and the next election, instead they worry about the people they represent.

PS. Ron Paul is in Congress, Rand Paul his son is in the Senate. Ron Paul is also retiring after next year.

Let me give you my method, it might help. Don't go head first full bore into an idea at first. Build a quick, cheap prototype with only the main features and see how your target customer responds. Gives you a ton of feedback while validating or invalidating your idea without wasting a huge amounts of time. You might find that you need to pivot your idea or target a different group. So don't waste time and money on an idea before you prove the underlying assumptions.

It's really hard raising funding without a huge list of credentials and contacts. That was my world, I bridge the gap between the digital- physical world. Had it down to an art form and could produce a mobile-physical, web-physical, or pure consumer electronic prototype for about $10k. But I did most of the work myself. Under a normal setting with a normal team you're talking $50k for a prototype. That's why it's hard to start, too many things to know.

Also the channels have far more barriers, getting into Target and Wal-mart is a pain in the ass and I know them. That's where you make the real money on a consumer electronic devices.

If you have questions about it, I seem to be the person everyone contacts so feel free. Take a look at my blog curtgeen.com might help you get an idea on how to do it.

Never done import/export but have had products and parts manufactured there. What I always do is contact the manufacturer directly or their sales rep but prefer to go through part distributors or suppliers that way you know they aren't likely to screw you over or they'd damage their reputation.

Find something you like, believe in, and has growth potential. Then go after it.

There are quite a few based in the Caribbean since it's awesome to live there and a short hop to the US. Only problem is the US has made it a habit of arresting visiting CEO's of these companies.

This will end up at the Supreme Court, the only question is when and how.

There are a few things to think about. First if you put their name on it, can they then enter the market with a competing product acting as though their app is yours. Second, is it a permanent arrangement? If you can get in a cancellation clause and aren't worried about the first their isn't much too lose. Every 30 days do the math and figure out how much revenue they are bringing to the table if it's more than 50% than you are gaining from the deal.

It took me a week to make my first app, with no prior objective-C experience. Though I did know how to program in C beforehand and the app was really simple (it was a bar game to measure reflexes).

The apple guides are really good and there are so many free examples. Also Standford has a great series I used after I got started, if you have any prior programming experience it will get you up to speed fast.

Find a niche and own it.

Really think the next batch of big companies are going to be those that bridge the digital-physical divide. Seamlessly integrating physical products into the digital world. It'll start off in the entertainment space (there are a couple already) and then branch out into other areas. The problem, there aren't many people that have experience in both web based and physical product areas.

Also I'm waiting on the mobile and social game companies to take their brands into the physical world with television, merchandising, movies, and everything else. Huge opportunities to build continuing long-term brands. Hollywood is so risk adverse, if you can bring a proven property to multiple media types with a known market, it's a no brainer.

There are also huge opportunities in the developing world, they rely far more heavily on mobile devices which presents a huge opportunity.