+1 for flutter being really fun to work with. Its the most fun I have ever had working on mobile.
1,144 karma · joined May 16, 2011
This same calculation can be made for stocks based on their dividends and any terminal value from an eventual acquisition. These calculations fluctuate more because dividends are variable.
The parent's comment is right though, its something buffet often observes: If a company buys back stock far about its intrinsic value, it is transferring wealth from current shareholders to now ex-shareholders. If it buys it back below intrinsic value, then it is transferring it from now ex-shareholders to shareholders.
There is actually a wonderful story that illustrates this. Try searching for "buffet pritzker Rockwood & Co arbitrage".
The short version is that Rockwood & Co was sitting on a massive supply of very valuable chocolate, and its stock price didn't reflect the value of that chocolate. Pritzker controlled the company, and announced it would redeem shares for chocolate (a buy-back in chocolate). Arbitrage traders then bought up shares at the low price, redeemed them for more valuable chocolate, and pocketed the difference.
BUT, what they didn't calculate was that the amount of chocolate that remained inside the company was far larger than the amount that was going out to the departing shareholders. Essentially, the chocolate 'payments' for stocks were far below the intrinsic value of the company. So, every time an arbitrage trader traded in shares for chocolate (at a profit to them) Pritzker was actually getting far richer by retaining his remaining shares. Everyone was winning, but Pritzker was winning far more. In the end, Pritzker retained a much higher ownership percentage of an only slightly smaller stockpile of very valuable chocolate, and made a lot doing it.
I think I saw the full version of this story in the biography of Buffet, but I am not sure. It is super fun. It illustrates why a management team that is buying back shares below intrinsic value is helping the remaining owners increase their wealth, and vice versa.
I know three people who own a pickup (one in commercial construction, one who is a big animal vet, and one who has a horse farm). This does not appear to be designed for those people at all.
However, I think it could appeal to the same people who wanted a hummer. Driving it is just overtly confrontational. It will be fascinating to see whether there is a market for exactly this though, because Tesla is supposed to be environmentally friendly, and the people who bought hummers clearly didn't care about that (at the time, at least).
Many of the ideas touched on in the comments here so far are covered in much more detail in that book. One interesting fact is that although there is a lot of publicity from colleges about reaching out to lower income students, there are massive incentives (often necessities) for admissions offices to take less qualified kids who can pay full price.
Overall, I found the book a nuanced and surprising view of the realities of trying to manage college admissions, and of trying to deal with inequality in access to higher education.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Years-That-Matter-Most-College/dp/054...
How often do I see a similar level customer or developer pain (anguish really, from supportive customers) regarding Amazon? How often do I see it regarding Google? All these companies have so many resources, but Apple is the only one that doesn't seem to be able to convert those resources into customer focus. It's painful to watch. Where is Apple's board? It's really discouraging!
[1] https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/5-years-later-jeff-bezos-...
If you are very interested, I highly recommend Carlo Rovelli's 'The Order of Time.'[2]
And 'Your Brain is a Time Machine'[3], though I ultimately found it unsatisfying, goes directly at the apparent contradiction between our sense of the 'flow' of time, and the implications of general relativity. Although it doesn't have an answer, it states the problem clearly, and has a lot of other interesting facts about our perceptions of time.
Rovelli has also given some interesting talks on YouTube.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-Reality/d...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=carlo+rovelli+order+of+time&crid=...
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Time-Machine-Neuroscience/...
My pet educational reform is not 'free college for everyone', but rather that the gov't would pay out a percentage of the increase in W2 earnings before/after the education to the educational institution for a few years. The gov't would pay it, so it is not indentured servitude.
In order to get paid, the institutions would need to raise the W2 earnings of people who attended. I'd also like to see a requirement that the payouts be publicly reported, so that reports could identify which institutions were high achieving in this regard.
I personally think that reform might focus the system more on improved skills, and less on signaling and a fight for improved US news rankings.
Honestly, I wouldn't believe that deal, except that I have a multi-year history with stripe as our CC processor and it has been nothing but positive and as-promised.
So, I submitted an application. It sounds like a great deal to me.
That said, you say your market is:
"Lofty AI is best for people who are: 1. Thinking of buying their first home, but are nervous about losing money. 2. Looking for higher returns than normal by buying properties in an appreciating neighborhood early."
1. I wonder if people who know they have to sell in the next three years, but don't want to sell today (e.g. a work move) are also a target market. If I know my job is going to move me in 2 years, I might like to use your service to retain 80% of the upside, but insure against downside when I sell.
2. I once read a book about real-estate investing, which said that the real way you make money is to buy rental properties with poor cash flow, 'fixup' the tenants to improve the cash flow, and then sell, repeatedly. I wonder if your appreciation-potential-evaluation/downside-insurance model applied to rental properties for sale, combined with coaching/tools for aspiring landlords, might be attractive.
It seems like right now, you are primarily using the purchaser as a source of capital, and other comments are saying "why don't you just raise the money yourself?", but if you were also using the purchaser as more like a franchisee, someone who is actively working to improve the cashflow of the property by upgrading the tenants with your (automated) advice, that might create a more interesting relationship where you have more room to add value (its more complex to analyze multi-tenant rentals, its more complex to choose high-potential landlord partners, etc).
Random thoughts. It's a very interesting idea, very original.
If you think having new users organically add dishes is useful, I might just put a big "Review a dish anywhere" button in place of that message. I didn't realize that you had restaurants in there outside launch cities, so I just gave up. If the button had been there, and I could have discovered that I could review a dish at the restaurant I went to, I would have.
Maybe it isn't realistic to expect organic growth outside of launch cities. Still, right now the search functionality seems very prominent, but the add a review functionality does not.
It might also help me with my tendency to always order the same thing once I find something I like. And, it might motivate me to try new restaurants, if I had a specific compelling thing I was going to order.
Unfortunately, I am not in your initial markets, and we never use delivery services (we go out or pick it up ourselves), but I do like the concept.
If there was a way to a review a meal at an arbitrary restaurant, I would have done so tonight.
If you choose a great co-founder with complementary skills and personality, it will drive you forward. If you choose poorly, you would have been better off staying single. The only thing that is really going to matter is your specific results. There is no reason for there to be a general rule that applies to everyone.
I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is so intelligently organized, each day building on the last. If you just read the intro chapter on amazon, you will see how clearly they thought it through
That said:
1. While teaching kids to read is good, I think the real goal should be teaching them to _love_ reading. My son is now a voracious reader, and both kids love books. The techniques we used to make this book fun include:
A. Finding something the kid really loves (e.g. tickles for my son, 'squeeze hugs' for my daughter), and pairing it with each lesson. Every lesson ended with a giant tickle or a set of squeeze hugs. You would think the kids would get sick of this, but ours didn't.
B. Massive positive verbal reinforcement. Excitement, joy, at the reading, amazement, wonder, etc.
C. Regular rewards, including little ribbons every 10 lessons, dinners out, and a huge celebration when they hit 100. Every 20-30 lessons we would do something crazy/unexpected, like rolling out a cake for breakfast (That was just fun, kids love a surprise cake for breakfast).
2. Our kids are very intelligent, but both hit a wall around 30 lessons. I think they were both about 4.5 years at the time. The book says any kid over 4 can run right through the lessons, but I don't know. For both kids, when we sensed they were hitting a wall, we decided to declare victory. We had a big celebration, and told them to book said we had reached a stopping point. Then we returned to it 6-12 months later and picked up where we left off. At that point, we sailed though the rest of the lessons.
All this said, having watched my son, I think the best thing you can do for your kid is make reading fun. The only way to develop a deep vocabulary is by reading massive amounts, and you cannot force a kid to do that.
So, as awesome as this book is, and as amazing as it was to participate in the process as a parent, the number one thing to do is not make reading stressful/negative. Kids will learn eventually, they don't need to learn early. The reason to take control of the process as a parent is to ensure that the experience is positive/filled with joy.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...
His company employs one full time person whose job is to improve safety. The guy runs safety competitions (days without a serious accident) with prizes, does reviews, researches equipment and practices, etc.
He will also tell you that the biggest safety improvement they ever made was drug testing. He resisted it for a long time because he feared it would be difficult to hire people, but after they did it he became a big advocate of it.
With remote work, computer science is much more global, so someone could easily be trained by a union and then go work for a company that doesn't support the union.
Interestingly, this is one of my Dad's main complaints about unions these days: That our city trains great carpenters, but then they are recruited away to non-union areas.
* Vocational training: unions in our area run schools to train craftsman (e.g. carpenters). This increases productivity and screens for quality.
* Shifting workforce: Construction companies expand/contract as they get big jobs. The union is a clearinghouse that enables tradespeople to switch between companies as they expand/contract. The union also helps by running benefit programs that travel with the workers.
* Commodity-ish labor: Most carpenters have about the same productivity, so it makes sense to negotiate their compensation in bulk. Unions don't work as well when productivity/value varies greatly between workers.
I also worked as an apprentice carpenter for several summers during college. I wouldn't say that the carpenters I worked with had a glowing view of the union. They seemed suspicious that the union reps were corrupt, and talked about how they would "shut down the job" over minor union infractions. They also believed the "hall" was corrupt/political in how it matched carpenters who were out of work to jobs. Several were also contemptuous of what they saw as the union discouraging hard work (if you were working hard, you were "ruining the job.")
The main point I am trying to make is that unions are complex from both the employer and employee side.
That is why I suspect the only solutions to climate change are:
* Develop an energy source which has a lower-cost and equal practicality to carbon-emitting sources, or
* Find a way to mitigate the effects of carbon emissions.
Otherwise, conservation in rich countries is just going to be replaced by consumption of the now cheaper oil/coal in developing ones.
I don't think it is realistic to ask people with far fewer conveniences (washing machines) to abandon their hopes of a better life by conserving (if people won't give up private jets, can you really expect much poorer people to give up more necessary conveniences?)
1. The amount that a company can sustainably pay you is dependent on how much value your efforts have in its industry. Software has significantly higher margins than medicine, law, or almost anything else. As long as those margins are sustained, it is possible to pay high salaries. (As buffet says: I'd rather work for a mediocre company in a great industry than a great company in a mediocre industry).
2. But companies don't want to pay high salaries, so they will look for substitutes. Substitutes could be technology (RDS instead of DBAs) or increased supply of quality programmers. So far, it seems like these big companies haven't been able to find good enough substitutes to force down wages.
3. If you are looking at FAANG salaries, you are looking at the top of the income spectrum. The top of the income spectrum for lawyers and doctors is quite high.
4. Market economies reward value (outcomes) not merit (hard work). Hard work is correlated with outcomes, but it is not always a perfect correlation. So, looking at programming and saying it is less 'hard' than law or medicine doesn't say much, the question is how much value the person can generate, and how much of it the company can capture.
Personally, I don't think doctors are the answer. I used to really like the idea of high-deductible. But eventually, I just came around to the idea that only the gov't can fix it (with lots of tradeoffs in that fix, obviously).
My wife is a doctor, and at this point, I think single-payer is the least bad option.
Ideally, I'd also like to add an internal electron-based web app that runs only on my machine as well, though that is lower priority than the standard web app.
You are right that it isn't that much effort to try it. I find it annoying because they never seem to work for me. In a world where our behavior is closely tracked, I have come to wonder if the coupons don't work for me because some algorithm has figured out that I don't care.
Which actually takes things full circle from the original comment I was responding to: I wonder if online coupons are now so sophisticated that they can _only_ be offered to the price sensitive. If so, I suspect even more strongly that they are still a good/relevant marketing strategy.
I wasn't making any comment on the social good of price discrimination. I agree with you that some pricing strategies (buying in bulk, buying without loans/interest, rewards cards, etc) may tend to reward the wealthy. But that wasn't related to the point I was trying to make. I was trying to say that coupons seem like they could still be a useful marketing strategy for improving companies average margins per sale.