Weird how they assume the pilot is left handed...
1,585 karma · joined June 29, 2008
So the next thought is that investors are somehow to blame, but no. It's entrepreneurs who aren't creating businesses that generate good investments. The core problem here is that we need to create more good businesses.
http://www.answersinsurance.com/life_insurance/why-should-yo...
(Don't click on any ads)
Awesome!
I think it only makes sense for a talented programmer who is between projects and has 1 maybe 2 weeks to invest in the potential for $10-20K of upside.
Thought is to price the app in the $5-10 per month range and target busy sales people to start. It's both a productivity tool as well as a safety thing (and can be expensed to the company).
I doubt it's much, but if we push our marketing there's a potential to generate $10-20K in FCF...
Above is a marketing video we produced (one of many actually).
Some friends and I designed an iPhone app with the goal of making it safer to make calls while driving. The app is called SafeLane and is basically a dynamic "favorite" list that you have on the native phone app. Users can add/edit/delete items on the call list in the app or using the web.
The two use cases we wanted the MVP to support were:
(1) User knows they have a 1 hour commute later in the day so, while in their office, using the web interface they add 5 calls to their SafeLane call list and they then make those calls while driving.
(2) User's assistant adds 5 calls to user's SafeLane call list from assistant's office using web interface (think sales person driving between meetings).
The reason SafeLane is safer to use than the native phone app is that the user/driver has only to select a few (larger, easy to glance at) options instead of scrolling through emails, or worse, their address book. The graphic design of the app accounts for this and has giant buttons that are easy to use at a glance.
The iPhone app is 80% complete and alpha versions are working on actual phones. The website is about half done. We spent some time/money creating a nice looking website and produced a marketing video. Check it out here http://www.reserver1.com/safelane/content/home/home.aspx (IE only right now).
If you're interested in helping finish the app (I'm guessing about 40 hours of work for someone who know what they're doing) then we'd cut you in for 50% of the free cash flow. This isn't a business but it could be an interesting app that makes a little money and (hopefully) saves some lives.
Thanks for reading.
The difference is that back then, we were indifferent to failure that cost lives.
And not just in development/testing. Once planes were deployed, if a plane didn’t come back from a mission it was “lost in action” independent if the wing just broke off in flight over some stretch of water. Read this excerpt from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P-80_Shooting_Star#Des...:
<blockquote>The P-80 testing program proved very dangerous. Burcham was killed on 20 October 1944 while flying the third YP-80A produced, 44-83025. The “Gray Ghost” was lost on a test flight on 20 March 1945, although pilot Tony LeVier escaped. Newly promoted to chief engineering test pilot to replace Burcham, LeVier bailed out when one of the engine’s turbine blades broke, causing structural failure in the airplane’s tail. LeVier landed hard and broke his back, but returned to the test program after six months of recovery. Noted ace Major Richard Bong was also killed on an acceptance flight of a production P-80 in the United States on 6 August 1945. Both Burcham and Bong crashed as a result of main fuel pump failure. Burcham’s death was the result of a failure to brief him on a newly installed emergency fuel pump backup system, but the investigation of Bong’s crash found he had apparently forgotten to switch on the emergency fuel pump that could have prevented the accident. He bailed out when the aircraft rolled inverted but was too close to the ground for his parachute to deploy.</blockquote>
So this “no bureaucracy” craze makes no sense for modern aviation design but makes a lot of sense where lives are not at risk (as is the case with a lot of software development, but not all).
That’s my $0.02.
As an aside, I was recently reading a draft of HBS prof. Noam Wasserman's upcoming book on early founder issues, and one of the things he writes about is that homophilic teams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily) underperform heterogeneous teams.
- There are no rich people and there are no poor people. I didn't see a single homeless person / beggar but I also didn't see a single person that looked "middle class" in US terms.
- People seemed really happy to talk to Americans. I remember talking to a woman celebrating her 86th birthday and she told me (through a translator that she'd "see me next year in Miami".).
- Based on my understanding of the USSR, I was expecting a cult of personality around Castro, but there was no 'Placa del Castro' or anything like that. The only cult of personality was for Che Guevara, who was everywhere.
- There were two economies...one for tourists and one for Cubans. If a Cuban had a job, like in a hotel, where they could get dollars, they would be very well off. Everyone else was left with ration cards.
- We met a kid who spoke English but was afraid to talk (or to be heard talking) in English in public. He took us to his house where we talked for several hours and then there was a party (his grandmother's 86th birthday) where we (a friend and I) drank rum and partied until the wee hours. The rum was in a really old plastic jug (from the 80s?) that they would pour they monthly ration or rum into...they saved up for celebrations.
Overall I walked left thinking that Cuba would be a great place to live for most people but if you were the "Bill Gates" of Cuba it would suck. I suspect that when the embargo ends and sanctions are over (both ways) Cuba will become the "Caribbean Tiger" like Ireland or South Korea. The population is very healthy and education but the infrastructure sucks. All they need now is capital investment and they will really thrive. I suspect in the long run (as in 100 years) Communism will have served Cuba well relative to it's regional peers that didn't experience Communism...similar to China.