dmabram

If you think the heavy work is solely in the back-end, I'd encourage you to go ahead and try to build and release a front-end. We would happily use yours if it were good. We built the Ottehr front-end after building "the proprietary service" and realizing just how difficult it was to actually release an EHR without a front-end reference. You are also welcome to point Ottehr at some other back-end service if you want. Our goal is to encourage a new generation of EHRs that better support interoperability.

"We don't like crypto for the sake of crypto—it's just the only viable way to create a new currency."

Really? The only viable way? It's like they've never heard of a bank. Banks accept deposits in USD. They invest those deposits in safe instruments like US treasuries. They return the deposit when requested. The deposits are insured by the FDIC. Just start a community bank and donate the proceeds to GiveDirectly. Poof, no crypto needed.

They required documentation (for example, the credit card statements), so a call wasn't enough, I could mail or fax. But I did call them multiple times when trying to resolve, which was also a hassle. It's absurd that fax was the only means of electronic communication acceptable. How can you not accept email or have a web application? I don't know of a single other state that requires electronic communication solely by fax. I took it as a sign that CA wanted to create artificial hurdles so we would just give up and pay, which is ultimately what we did.

California is unusually aggressive compared to other states. We had an employee with a home address in California who never set foot in California during the period he worked for us. We paid his withholding correctly to CA. Received a similar letter from the CA franchise tax board that our business also owed a CA return with a minimum $800 filing fee. They only accepted correspondence by fax, no email, no website. Since he was never in CA during his period of employment, we didn't legally owe the return, but CA said the onus was on us to somehow prove he never set foot in CA. Providing his personal credit card receipts showing daily charges for meals and such in DC (where we were located)over the entire period of employment was deemed not good enough. Ultimately we gave up and just paid the $800, it was costing more in time to argue. I've never had similar issues regarding employees in other states. If there were disputes, issues or mistakes related to tax filings, there was a reasonable process for communicating with the state tax board and resolving.

There are multiple means of contacting a competitor, you don't even have to identify yourself or your business. You can have someone else do it on your behalf. All they have to say is "I know a company being sued by troll X over patent Y. I can see that your company was in a similar situation. Would you be willing to refer me to your attorney in this matter?" How much more you choose to share is up to you.

Probably because you haven't dealt with many lawyers :-). Yes, there's a huge difference. The advice is geared towards finding a lawyer who can achieve an optimal outcome at lowest cost. Any competent IP attorney can accept the case. The difference in cost is multiple orders of magnitude.

At worst some of your competitors will ignore your request. But like I said, I have been through similar situations. Without delving into too many details, I had competitors who had no reason to help go so far beyond just a referral that years later I am still grateful. Once you've been burned by one of these trolls, you have a bit of a bond with other victims I guess.

I've been through similar situations. The "find a lawyer" comments are less than helpful, since you probably don't know where to begin and most lawyers will happily take your money without necessarily having an expedient path to resolution for a small one-person company. So here's what you do:

Write to each of your competitors, explain the situation and ask for a referral to their lawyers. You'd be surprised how many are more than willing to make a referral against a troll Also search around for any other attorneys who have filed against this troll and contact them as well. They should all be willing to do an initial call for free.

You are trying to find an attorney who has a successful blueprint for dealing with this particular troll, ideally this particular claim. If the attorney is able to leverage their prior work or knowledge, your costs are greatly reduced. Also, if the troll has unsuccessful experience with a particular attorney they may just give up. Good luck!

The great irony of Sam's bet is that, win or lose, the terms themselves prove a bubble mentality. Every one of the terms is focused on valuation, with no mention of revenue, much less profit or cash flow.

In the short term the valuation of a company is a popularity contest, in the long term it is a direct reflection of the discounted value of the cash one can expect to extract or reinvest. This is true for all investments, stocks, bonds, public, private, and even unicorns.

I have no idea if Sam wins this bet. It's quite possible that within the next five years enough of these companies are acquired at inflated prices to satisfy Sam's terms.

What I do know is when industry leaders start to use valuation itself as a metric to demonstrate that we are not in a bubble, without even the most casual mention of underlying fundamentals necessary to justify valuation, then we are in a bubble.

We do a lot of AWS work, so it is interesting to see the poor AWS performance. Any theories as to why it might be?

Is it possible to apply as a team, or only as an individual?

You're right, Buffett does include dollars, euros, yen and gold as not having intrinsic value. In addition to the link above where Buffett warns against gold as an investment, he also frequently warns against the hidden danger (compounded inflation) when holding cash. http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/09/warren-buffett-ber...