inmygarage

Protip: If you're searching in the app store, don't type "The Magazine", it won't come up. Instead use "The Magazine Marco" if you want to download.

There is definitely automation, but it's far from ubiquitous and there are huge swings from industry to industry. Some industries are much farther along than others.

Also, if automation is almost everywhere how come Foxconn has 1.2 million employees?

Perhaps "democratized" would have been a better way to describe it - the point of that sentence was to convey that you don't always need a huge pile of cash or specialized equipment to make software these days. Major software absolutely requires incredible skill, cash, time and craftsmanship. But it is also doubtlessly cheaper and easier now than in years past. Though that's another post for another day.

OP here - you are right and I'm sorry if that line came off as flippant, certainly wasn't meant that way. I was trying to get across just how far the barriers have come down in the past 15 years or so.

Hypothetically let's say you reach the $500K goal. That is enough for a small team to survive for 12-18 months. Ongoing, will I have to pay $50 per year to use this service at the member level?

The reason I am happy to pay Github $25/month is because I want access to all my old projects. What is your thesis around whether people really want access to their old "feed" data (is that a proper way to describe it)?

Yep. I use disqus because there isn't an alternative that does a good job of keeping out spammers. I guess that's another angle entirely - that we use the "social stack" as a way to band-aid more obvious and pressing problems like "FREE IPAD TAKE THIS SURVEY" etc.

This is very reminiscent of Google/YouTube circa 2006. When Google bought YT it was a small team of people and a pretty nascent product that people really loved, and the usage numbers were out of control. They left the product mostly untouched and let it grow on its own. Though there was major criticism at the time, it is one of the best tech acquisitions of the past decade.

The assumption that people who pay $99 for a prototype are "cheapskates" who don't understand mobile development completely ignores the fact that the market for mobile development is growing like crazy in so many different directions and is at such an incredible premium right now that the bottom end of the market has been pretty much ignored (if you are a great iphone developer right now why would you even bother?)

But it is going to get huge. Think about web developers in 1997. They could charge a premium because there were few of them and few out of the box options (ie ugly template websites where you pay $50 for a full ecommerce site, 99designs, etc.).

Starting out doing consulting means you get to know a part of the market that most people are too snobby to touch (the whole "talking to your customers" thing) - though they are just as legitimate a customer segment as the people who will pay the egregious rates for custom.

This could end up as great lead generation for a mobile development shop. Once the customer sees what $99 buys, it's likely that he or she will want changes and probably some design work.

If you can pull together a group of designers and developers and provide the hosting and make the ever-so-painful submission process painless, you are basically creating an app-as-a-service business where the $99 prototype is the loss leader that gets you your customer base.

Two team-centric acquisitions that Google has made in recent years: Aardvark and Slide. Both were cases of products that were mostly ahead of their time or just-off re: product-market fit, and had genius teams. As far as I know, the majority of both teams are still at Google.

I think this guidebook would be a great test case for gumroad (new payment platform for content). In case you are looking for an easy way for people to pay for the PDF...

Totally second the Stripe suggestion - it is fantastic.

OP here. I think the combo of one-click unsubscribe and not sending a confirmation is perhaps a bit aggressive, and maybe it should be one or the other. Though to be honest, I am thrilled if sites have any one of the 4 (and some do).

I am a big fan of Kincaid's style. At least from my interactions with him, he has always taken time to actually learn about your product and why it's special or different. Will be interesting to see what he does next.

His departure also speaks to a bigger trend re: AOL/HuffPo, which is their apparently flippant attitude toward talent retention. The steady stream of departures not only at TC, but also Engadget, shows an unwillingness to create an environment where top writers/journalists/media innovators can thrive. Though as an outsider, it's tough to tell if this is really the case.

If any Etsy employees are reading, I am curious about why it took nearly 7 years to add direct checkout to the site -- Paypal is not known for being particularly kind to either buyers OR sellers, though perhaps there were all sorts of scaling/technical issues that took priority over something like this? It just seems like, with the amount of volume that Etsy does, Paypal's rates would be on the very high side.

Congrats - looking forward to trying it out!

Is there perhaps an argument for financial activism here? While it wouldn't be super significant, let's say you bought 1000 shares of Honeywell and shorted it today. You continued this type of action for software patent litigation in the future. Eventually it might have the intended effect and actually affect their share price, which might cause these huge companies to think twice.

A summary for those who don't have 18 minutes:

1. Excellent introduction and overview of the debate by Chris Hayes

2. NBC General Counsel makes three interesting (cringe-worthy) points:

-jobs

-this only applies to international sites

-the internet is a lawless place

3. He is mostly shot down by Hayes who said if it really only applied to international rogue sites then people wouldn't be making such a big deal about it

4. Alexis makes the points:

-the problem of piracy will best be solved by innovation, not legislation

-the internet is not a "lawless" place and the DMCA is effective

-"piracy is a service problem" ie, if you provide better access to information you will win

5. Random other dude chimes in and says the government did a massive study and can't conclusively say that piracy is killing jobs at all... the entertainment industry is actually growing

6. NBC GC talks a little bit more, mostly being hysterical about how piracy is rampant and terrible.

Great job Alexis!!

I called the NYC office. I think the regional offices are a bit less swamped. No answer in DC.

I asked twice. The first time he said "censor the internet" and then I think he heard the shock in my voice when I asked him to repeat and he said "he is in favor of censoring illegal content." So perhaps worthy of a clarification.

Cool, I will update the piece with your point.

The call wasn't recorded and I did not get the person's name. I took clear notes and asked him to repeat that the Senator is in favor of "censoring" illegal content, which he confirmed.

The way he said "censor" really made my skin crawl - it was so pompous. Gillibrand's people were nice, fyi.

I asked twice if he had spoken with any constituents over the phone who support the bill and he confirmed twice that he had not.

But still, I am not a journalist and didn't plan to blog about this except that I was so shocked by the replies I got. Surely people who work the phones at these offices must assume that everything they say could end up "on the internet"?

That is what I thought, except that I was one on the other end of the phone. I asked each question twice. He repeated the answers twice:

-in favor of "censoring" illegal content on the internet

-has talked to zero constituents in favor of the bill, and he's the one answering the phones

Wish I had taken down a name.

The person speaking now has pointed out that there are 5 people in favor of the bill and only 1 speaking against it. She also lamented the fact that there are zero technical experts speaking.

I wish Simple would consider supporting all ATMs, not just in-network ones. And by supporting, I mean reimbursing all ATM-related fees. Ally does this. Although Ally is a bank rather than a front-end-for-a-bank, this feature has become increasingly important to me as I find myself increasingly patronizing cash-only establishments.

"[Jobs] predicted that the improvement in technology he said the iPod represented would inspire consumers to buy Macintosh computers so they could use an iPod."

While the "so they could use an iPod" part is off, he was so right about the significance of the iPod and its ability to inspire/convince people to purchase Macs, and what that meant for Apple in the decade that followed.

Founder salaries vary wildly depending on amount raised, whether the company is profitable or even generating revenue and the stage of the company. Some people pay themselves $1k/month and some pay themselves $15k/month. I figured $4k/month was a good benchmark based on a pre-series-A seed-financed tech startup that is generating minimal revenue and is not profitable.

In the beginning, people costs are where most of your money goes, by far. Whether you have employees or contractors, human capital will cost you the most.

For a typical $500K seed round, here is my breakdown for 12 months of expenses. Feedback welcome.

2 founders + health insurance + taxes = $10k/month

2 engineers + health insurance + taxes = $20k/month

1 p/t designer = $5k/month

...and you've burned through $420,000 of your $500,000 in 12 months.

As for the other $80K?

Legal Fees: $10K (or $800/month); Space: $30K (depending on where...around $2500/month); Accounting/Finance: $10K ($800/month); Server Costs + Hardware: $12k ($1k/month); Miscellaneous Expenses including random contractors here and there, marketing expenses, SWAG, a party if you want, some travel to a few conferences, food, etc.: $18k ($1500/month)

Hope this helps.

Who would you say are your major competitors?

For those looking for some background on Monsanto, take the time to read through this Vanity Fair article from 2008: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto....

Even if they did have a public email address [pitch@venturefund.com] or something like that, chances are slim that you would get a reply from a cold email/deck. This isn't specific to LV but true of most, if not all, venture funds. Ask a random VC what percentage of their investments in 2010 came from a cold email/deck and I bet it would be less than 10%. That is why incubators/accelerators - YC, etc. - have gained such incredible traction over the past few years. The model encourages applicants with no connection to the fund.