aptimpropriety
Will you name the companies, and give further specifics? Otherwise it's hard to tell what really has changed.
I'd say this is not new, nor unique to tech. Finance, consulting et. al have been dealing with this for years - both with new grad offers, and with banking/consulting to PE/HF offers (often analysts have their next job within 6mo of starting their first job).
It's also somewhat valued in the business / consultant crowd for talking through assumptions and making estimates of problems.
Two factors that make me want to start my future kids late:
-Social maturity: it's way easier to handle social dynamics with a year extra of emotional maturity. Particularly important in high school and college
-Physical maturity: older kids often perform very well in high school sports. I, for example, grew and gained ~15-20lbs after I graduated high school (playing sports). That would have made my HS sports career much different, and therefore college prospects as well
I don't see any reason to starting kids early for upper/middle class folks, besides parent's bragging rights.
If these securities have been held for <1 year, their gain/loss goes into the short term bucket. So losses (in this case, writedowns) can offset the size of distribution, which is a bad deal for investors.
To a personal investor (e.g. mentioned in the world of WealthFront/Betterment), this is 'tax loss harvesting'.
You're right that it won't be a large drop in the bucket. It's not news because it's a large drop in a bucket, it's news because its a valuation change on companies many here follow. Nonetheless, one could object to poor management if Fidelity didn't take this action, regardless of size.
Note - this only gets at the 'why now' part of the motivation. What it means for 1) their internal company valuations and 2) implications for shareholders without liquidation preferences is more interesting.
My suspicion (from experience in the mutual fund industry) is that this is tax accounting related. Overly simplistic explanation: Mutual funds typically distribute short term capital gains at year-end, which is taxed as ordinary income (~40%), not capital gains (~15%).
Managers of funds that hold private securities actually have the choice to 'mark down' the prices of their securities in any given month. Think of it like valuing a house - if you want to value your total net worth, you can mark your price as what you want, to an extent (see Trump). Managers often use this flexibility to 'bury' losses in down times, or for tax advantages.
Finally, can't agree enough about who loses in these cases. Employees who vastly over-value options are the folks who lose in this case. Investments made by institutional folks like Fidelity are too small to even register as a blip to their overall funds, and those funds are diversified and managed to handle downturns in sectors like this.
Isn't the ethos of Silicon Valley to 'hack it together' with tape and glue? Moreover, I'm pretty sure that's the reality of almost every high growth company. I'm sure you could find matching stories from within almost every winning unicorn: key bugs they didn't catch, poor decisions that cost them along the way, leadership gaffes, etc.
I think there are a couple interesting points to consider that the other comments address: difficulty of direct services, customer acquisition costs, 1099s. But we should expect more from reporters than to throw in every other possible anecdote they could dig up.
Most software companies will retract upgrades when they're not stable. Are the stakes different here? At first glace, yes, but upon second glance, if your magical test is replaced with a normal blood test in a Theranos booth, you're probably Ok. In that case, Theranos is just a sales/marketing company - which is a viable business too.
I've used their service and was pretty happy with it. A large share of YC companies use them too.
"oh no" = hat tip to an [unexpected] unpleasant feeling
"oh yes" = hat tip to an [unexpected] pleasant feeling
Take the "Did you see any birds at the park?" "yeah, no, I didn't see any" = "Oh yeah, it would have been nice to, but no I didn't see any.
This stuff is already being done legally, with certain industries and within certain financial institutions. Just seems like these guys were just caught in an unfortunate legal snag - otherwise they just seem like good traders to me.
The two headsets were 1) voice chat with your team 2) large 'surround sound' headphones that really signaled direction.
Heh. A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - you could say this is even more the case with hardware.
I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere else.
In the last 5 years, many manufacturers have had substantial YoY growth - the luxury segment had 13.4% YoY growth in 2012. [2]
[1] http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/autosblogpost.aspx?post... [2] http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1081451_bmw-tops-u-s-luxu...
If you watch competitive PC gaming, you will notice that even professional gamers will often 'spam' their hotkeys in low activity periods, typically the beginning of games. Some people claim that it is simply for actions-per-minute stats, but I could see it as some kind of setting of mental/physical cadence.
My question to you - if you thought the article was off-target, why submit it? Seems pretty disingenuous to me.
I went to a major public university my freshman year and transferred to an Ivy League school once I decided I wasn't satisfied with my experience at the public university. It ended up actually being significantly cheaper for me to go to the Ivy League, and opened up a world of opportunity and support I would have never found at my original school.
Since then, my sister has also attended the same Ivy League (you see a lot of families/siblings at such schools) almost free of charge. I could also go on about how the resources and individual support from a private school (effective tuition of 50-60k) far exceed that of a public school - even a top UC.
Feel free to email me if you'd like to chat.
I like the dichotomy of songwriter vs. producer - but I would guess it isn't always so discrete - i.e., production and mastering is essential to conveying the emotions and moods of the songwriting. In fact, I would argue the lyrics are often overemphasized in analysis - they are more of a vessel for tones and cadence of the song.
It's my belief this is an oversimplification - many of these songs are written in different keys, which can create different sounds and feelings of songs. Sure, you can transpose them to a common key (as they've done here), but at that point, it's not really the same song anymore. Also, I've found that chord progressions can be quite flexible if only 'snip-its' of certain songs are being used, namely the standard chorus or verse. Much of the genius of songwriting comes in transitions or bridges.
I'm not denying this is not entertaining, and it works to an extent, but I would say that there is a degree to which this hinges on the widespread renown of these songs. It's not so easy to say they would have become so popular if they were all written in the same key, and not the one of the original artist.
Pop music is frequently spoken down upon, that it's 'talent-less' or 'garbage', but it really is like any other expert discipline - if it were so easy, there wouldn't be such a saturation of experts dominating the field. My opinion most of the talent is in production - Dr. Luke, Red One, Max Martin, etc.
And also - 'cutting edge' for the average upper class Joes, not cutting edge with technology. A well designed, sleek/sexy - even if simple from a functionality standpoint - app can really get people excited.
I feel a little bit bad about my post, because it is so far from being data-driven, but it's what I have observed from watching 40-60 something SVPs, CXOs, and partners. "Can I do that from my iPad?" is a common question.
I think it's hard to put actual numbers to it because it's not a $$$ per app kind of metric - it's a signaling mechanism that a company is still 'with it', and not losing touch. Sort of a 'cool/current' factor, but also a consumer trust that they will be able to operate at the cutting edge if they desire.
What would prevent them from doing so, which in theory could be a nice additional revenue stream for them (stealing [a part of] your 2% away)?
Consider the following experiment:
Smear some mud on your arm. Now, using a jet stream the power of a squirt gun and very low precision, wash it all off in 10 seconds. Not so easy. Then - imagine if you put mud on a place with hair! Not only will it not be clean without some actual washing, we haven't even gotten to the drying part yet.
Fact of the matter is, these do not replace toilet paper. I thought they were OK (Google) until I decided to use toilet paper after - and I was shocked and disappointed. My routine simply got longer and more complex, with a small value add of washing with water instead of dry paper.
Sorry about the grim detail - I think the 'squeamish about bathroom routine' point of the article is right - just in the wrong way!
-TV / Internet / Phone bundle
-Electricity
-Water
-Car insurance
-Gym memberships (?)
-Daycare
-Food
-Interest (home mortgages / loans etc.)
-Clothes
Almost all of the suggestions in this thread are effectively replacements for one of the existing services in one of the categories above. That means you'd have to beat the incumbents (challenges: investment, infrastructure, partnerships, etc.), or create a new market demand. I love the idea though, keep thinking. "If it were obvious, everyone would be doing it".
Things that come to mind: a personal trainer that is delivered through the internet and scalable? Some kind of 'make my grocery list and just have me pick it up' service? Financial engineering that decreases the interest on a large pool of loans (ha!)?
Also widely known as fish oil, and is prescribed for the same reasons fish oil is recommended in supplementation. Only difference is fish oil is marginally less concentrated, much cheaper, doesn't have the 'pharma' tag and isn't prescribed.
In the industry it's known as one of the biggest cash cows for GSK - it's earned them many billions.
SOPA may pass. It may not. He doesn't care, and it doesn't matter. The MPAA and RIAA started working on their legislative strategy to pass a new anti-piracy bill in late 2010. SOPA was designed to raise the noise. Everyone is playing right into the entertainment industries hand. The lobbyists are laughing manically at the ignorance of the mob. Even Wikipedia and reddit have played into it."
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/old7e/sopa_is_ba...
While 'the number of drinks imbibed is the wrong way to measure drinking' is an interesting point, I wish he had actually spent time discussing the actual research / anecdotes that he mentions, which should have been the meat of his article.
I usually expect more from the atlantic.
It could provide an interesting perspective on this hot topic of 'painless activism'. While getting tested is pretty easy, there are still plenty of points of process attrition for those to drop out (or not get started).
This is (in part) explained in the box to the right. Then there is also the 'population statistics' differences.
Epidemiology is a strange field. Because of the difficulty of balancing specificity and sensitivity, "99.9% accurate" tests often end up meaning that even if you test positive, you have a small chance of actually being infected.
Statistics are scary, especially to policy makers. If you tell someone "homosexuals have up to a 5000% higher chance of getting AIDS from sex", that can have a pretty big effect on policy.