rwebb

bummer. i bet kids love clicking on ads.

being able to serve kid-targeted ads to kids on the web would be awesome. massive click-throughs i bet....and somewhat slimy. even better would be parental control on what ads were served to their kids. give the parents a cut on CPC if they let their kids see ads? spitballin...

i agree. this study is similar to Kaplan's horse/jockey analysis:

http://www.vcconfidential.com/2006/04/horse_or_jockey.html

but both studies ignore the fact that there are massive differences between a good start up CEO and a good public company CEO...

fb seems like the most likely thing i can think of that made them implode if they truly had a "spike in demand"

we're switching to M5

http://www.m5hosting.com/

great prices and great service so far

I've heard good things about Chase small business loans. This looks like a good resource for info on lots of banks:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,5837,00.asp

Interest free credit cards are an easy way to go as well. 1 year interest free and then you can switch it to another card or take out a loan from your bank directly with a fixed rate and pay off the card.

symfony is the good stuff.

yes...that's probably the most confusing part of the article. :)

I see your point, but the title of the article is "Chrysler, Want To Make an Extra 50 Billion?"

My point is that if it was written by some dude in a day, it's not going to make anyone $50 billion, especially Chrysler.

Thanks. I've read The Goal.

My point is that Chrysler itself was recently sold for less than $10 billion. Maybe Cerberus bought because they knew about this code that was written in a day and now they are going to turn them into a $50 billion dollar software company?

Look out SAP & Oracle...

Uhh...where does the $50 billion come from again?

very interesting...although basing your model's assumptions on another random startup may not be "better" than making your own assumptions. they are a good guy check guide if nothing else though.

MediaTemple has been down for ~3 hours for us this morning. I have now rescheduled the demos I had planned for today and asked MT for 1 year of dv nitro service ($750/month) to keep us with them. I'm sure they won't give it to us so it's time to look for a new provider. 3 hours of downtime on a Monday morning are not OK. Any suggestions? I've heard good things about these guys:

http://www.m5hosting.com/

Your Man in India (YMII) is actually a service designed for Indians in the US to use. Brickworks is their task outsourcing business. They are not taking on new customers right now because of all the interest caused by 4 Hour Work Week. Get Friday is Brickworks' main competitor. They currently take about 2 weeks to respond to an inquiry (in broken English) and you then have to give them you CC# and commit to a monthly minimum and wait another 3 weeks before you can try the service. All reports I have seen have been very positive once the service starts, but I'm not holding my breath. Ask Sunday is a start up that was offering a month of free tasks (or 30 tasks total) for free with promotional code "beta". I use them for some business outsourcing stuff and have been quite good. I bet they are going to start getting overloaded with demand as well.

At the end of the day, for non-code business outsourcing (research, online tasks, etc.) the services don't save you that much money (US temp agencies are ~$18/hr - these Indian services are around ~$15). And obviously the best type of tasks to outsource are repetitive homogeneous ones that don't require subjective decisions.

I blogged a bit about some of these services here:

http://blog.robwebb2k.com/2007/07/29/ask-sunday/

web app guy in lakeview...

not to mention the american idol analogy thrown in, which suggests that YC/TS and the traditional incubators that the article confuses YC/TS with actually announce winners and losers. so they are really confusing the YC model + traditional incubators + business plan competitions all at once. sort of surprising that was written by kauffman folks.

Sort of interesting...not very accurate.

i think it looks sweet. i was just thinking about how long it will be until they get bought...then i was thinking about who would buy them. anyone but microsoft? i'm guessing they will try to roll out for other email clients though? then who? interesting to think about...

not a good article. the "ponzi" theory is good, simply because the advertisers pumping $ into the network haven't gotten proven returns (lots of the FB networks that have venture backing are pumping in their own ad inventory and subsidizing their own networks - not sustainable). the whole "evil" thing is laughable though. wtf?

i tried to add a comment when i submitted this, but it didn't let me? maybe i did it wrong. the company has been around since '95 so this looks more like a PE type investment - they probably have pretty stable cash flows so fund raising is to let them take on some debt.

those pictures are embarrassing. at least he doesn't have a yankees hat on.

cramer wants more people churning the stocks he talks about.

indeed. and there will be a massive influx of banker, private equity, and hedge fund b-school applications this year. i'm guessing the majority of that article was penned +2 months ago.

business school is good for: 1) building a network 2) changing careers 3) getting a brand on your resume.

yes they are keeping the market efficient. and if people investing in "vice" type companies are amoral blood suckers, what about people that work for casinos, beer companies, tobacco companies? the delivery guys? the brew masters? what about the regulators that allow those companies to do what they do? what about consumers of those products, keeping the companies in business? when is the last time you drank a beer? played online poker?

eh...but their base claim is "comprising", but it's a business method and i fell asleep about half way through. i'm no patent attorney though. what makes you say it's tight?

patent: http://tinyurl.com/2lomvg

1. A method for a computer system to use human assistance in performing tasks, the method comprising: automatically and under control of a first computer system, causing a task to be performed by, identifying a first and a second subtask of the task, wherein the first subtask involves speech recognition; retrieving information about past quality of results of one or more humans when previously performing subtasks other than the first subtask; using the retrieved past quality information to facilitate performance of the first subtask by one or more humans, the facilitating of the performance of the first subtask including, identifying one or more required capabilities for performance of the first subtask; dispatching the first subtask to a remote second computer system of a first human for performance by the first human, the first human identified as being one of one or more humans who have capabilities that satisfy the required capabilities for the first subtask, the retrieved past quality information including past quality information for the first human when previously performing multiple subtasks other than the first subtask, the past quality information for the first human being at least part of the capabilities of the first human that satisfy the required capabilities for the first subtask; and receiving a first result from the first human via the second computer system, the first result generated by performance of the first subtask by the first human; providing payment to the first human for the performance of the first subtask; and generating a result for the task based at least in part on the first result.

i need to use the word licit more in conversation.

awesome.

"An investor tries to fund (as far as they can tell) all the good startups that approach them."

Is this your strategy with YC? There has to be some limit (x) on the number (n) of companies you can take on, making YC a x/n for 5000 + 5000founders, no?