mtjl79

I know a lot of VC funds really don't favor Services and Solutions companies really well - and of course prefer SaaS due to obvious reasons. What does YC think about Services related companies? Would it be a waste of time to apply?

I'm an expat that lives here, the social healthcare system is a complete mess and garbage. As an employer, not only do I have to pay a ~30% tax over the salary of each employee (to pay this healthcare system) - in the end you must resort to private healthcare as the system is terrible. If your not half dead, you will wait hours and hours (not even kidding) trying to be attended. Aside from waiting hours and hours on end just to be attended, the doctors treat you like crap, the nurses treat you like crap - no one cares if you live or die.

Story: My wife's brother was crossing the street and was hit by a car, pretty badly at around 8pm. He was able to get able, and they took him to this public hospital. He has bleeding, vomiting (from concussion) and he waiting over 12 hours to be attended. The only they did was give him an IV for his dehydration (due to excessive vomiting for 12 hours from concussion), told him he was fine and to go home. He asked for a pill for vomiting, and doctor told him to go across the street to the pharmacy to buy it. Yes, really.

The private healthcare sector here is pretty good. A bit expensive, but good. I could have had my kids here in the "Caja" (public hospital) for free, but after hearing tons of complaints and horror stories it was better to just pay a $5000-$6000 fee to the doctors and hospital in the private sector to have each of my kids born.

Costa Rica is absolutely not a model for it's healthcare system. It's expensive, in huge debt, it's terrible, and no one cares about you. Would not recommend.

I highly doubt these terms were lifted from another app/service.

I believe the goal of this app is Sportbook related - but with a twist: it's a game right now. But I see people being upgraded to a "game for fun" to as a "Look how much money you can make if this was real money." Like Zynga Poker - but the end goal isn't you buying more Zynga poker chips to play for fun, but rather bet real money on sports.

No idea who is behind this, but I wouldn't be surprised if a Sportsbook in Costa Rica, UK or Europe is bankrolling/investing in this. The Sportbook industry is declining each year as less and less people are gambling on sports as it seems the 20-30 year olds aren't as interested as the generations before them. This is a great way to create a new generation of sport gamblers.

My 2 cents.

I just bought this. An awesome idea, I could really use this everyday.

The problem I see is, Facebook ad's are never really going to be extremely lucrative. People don't search on Facebook. They want to play games and post stuff on their walls, looks at other peoples photos, etc. etc.

I think Facebook needs to seriously think how they can monetize aside from ads. Obviously with all those users and data, the possibilities are endless.

• Job boards and paid job postings • Get people to shop for stuff. • Subscriptions services: Dropbox style storage, who knows what else, etc. etc. • Get more local and offers deals. You know where a billion people live. • Offer business services for businesses pages. Upgrades, focus on ecommerce on business pages and charge for it. • + Who knows what else? They can be a million other things.

I just thought about this for 5 minutes, and I am sure people that actually work at Facebook have weeks, months and years to think about this. I have no idea why they aren't moving faster with this.

From what I see, they are all in on FB Ads, but that wasn't the way to go. Maybe it was the surest thing in the beginning, but now - they really need to step it up.

My 2 cents.

Wow, that gave me chills down my spine as I read the old thread.

No, you're incorrect.

UX (User Experience) is about designing exactly that - an experience. It's about being extremely detail oriented, mathematical inclination (sifting through metrics, a/b testing data, CTR, bounce rates, etc.), willingness to sit down and focus on one concrete task at a time, sifting through hours of user video seeing how people interact with an application and then finding solutions to make the UX more smooth. Sound familiar to what you wrote about your "programmer"?

Not so different after all it seems.

EDIT: Everyone seems to confuse UI design with UX design. They are very different, and in some cases are different job descriptions.

I do agree with you - this possibly has real potential.

BUT I think they need more time to answer these questions:

- Is this a fad, or is Pinterest here to stay? - Can they really pump up revenues the way they think they can? And can they do it fast?

It's like buying condoms before the first date. (Sorry for the inappropriate inference.)

I just feel like they needed more time and history before pulling in these types of numbers.

Normally I am not one to comment on fundraising, and I have stayed out of the whole "bubble" debate. But, honestly, this is really getting a little out of hand now. The whole funding situation is getting really frothy.

$1.5b pretty much prices them out of any real acquisition now for the most part. So is Pinterest going to go IPO?

Where do they go from here? That's the question of the day.

Exactly. You hit it on the head.

Not all companies that operate are for profit.

BUT, The goal of a country is to amass wealth, is it not?

Countries are the largest companies that exist on the planet.

I'm sorry but, higher taxes aren't going to solve anything. At the end of the day, our spending will just not stop. We are just adding fuel to the fire.

We need to:

• Invest in the future: We need to invent, produce, and export new renewable energy sources. We need to invest in robotic manufacturing because cheap people labor is not sustainable in any country - robotic is where it will go.

• We need to heavily tax imports like many other countries in the world do. And have American made things become competitive - we have sold our souls to Asia.

• Drastically cut bullshit spending. There are billions spent every year on...bullshit.

• Invest further in Entrepreneurship, and start bringing smart people from other countries here.

Those are big 4.

The big problem is our countries expenses vs. income is too high. At the end of the day, a country is a business. And right now, we are a company that is not running well. We need to clean out the board of directors (Congress) and start fresh.

You made a mistake. "Could bare" - I think you mean "barely".

Also: You forgot a space after the comma every time you use one.

So what where you saying about his article mistakes again? :)

Are you kidding me? That is nothing like the Spotify logo. TC really turned into mostly a garbage publication.

How can they allow something like this to be posted?

I will never click on a TC link ever again.

Do a DMCA take down. http://www.dmca.com/Takedowns.aspx

It works like a charm.

You made my day. Haha, thank you.

Remember, this is Forbes.

Anyone have any idea as to why? I have been searching and haven't found any exact responses yet.

Will this somehow affect US and all of us globally?

EDIT: (From Reuters UK)

"a problem in displaying orders and deals in the main stock market section." (Reporting by Zlata Garasyuta; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/04/23/russia-stocks-suspe...

As an American who speaks multiple languages, the thing for me was learning the first. When you learn another language you get a true understand of your own language that other people don't understand who are not bilingual.

After you learn a second language, others get much much easier and the learning curve is much shorter.

How is he betraying his users? You mean the free software he built and the $2,500 in expenses he is dishing out every month?

The man has worked hard and built something amazing. Why can't he make money? What is wrong with that.

A really great idea. If you can help people make money, you can easily make money.

Or what about...

Making a Pandora like music player to discover new music from profiles on your site? You can throw ads all over that, and maybe charge a couple of bucks? Plus have musician eCommerce so people can buy stuff they like.

So I say I like "Nirvana" and your player matches me to undiscovered artists that are similar? I LOVE discovering new music.

Depending on how many impressions you have, and how active your users are - putting a FEW adsense banners will almost certainly cover your costs.

What about a way to get musicians to sell their music through you? You make a small % cut on sales?

Why not try a premium profile? Musicians don't have money, correct - but some will spend a bit if you provide value, right? You have 400k users, even if 1% converts a $xx/m that is still something.

What can you offer musicians that they need? Sales. Production. Marketing. How can you make all/some of that software dynamic?

You should try multiple things and see what works. What do you have to lose?

The first thing you need to do right now is put adsense on. Not cover your page, but in a few key places to stop your monthly burn. It will be like magic...watch.

Edit: I just googled and found these guys: http://www.hostbaby.com/

What about adding something like that on? Music distribution, websites, online promotion tools. That site/service doesn't look amazing - but I am sure you can make something a step up.

Sure some time investment and a bit of money. But you have 400k users man! Keep going and good job.

It's one of the largest IPO's in history.

http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Inc-company/Will-Facebook-be-t...

I agree. They absolutely should sell Flickr. Yahoo needs cash, Flickr doesn't fit within what Yahoo is (wherever that may be).

With all that free cash, along with the Alibaba deal, they can really make some stuff happen.

Sometimes, you need to cut off an arm to save a body.

And how do you or I know it is foolish or not? This is one persons opinion. Do you have their financials to look through? Do you really know why pink slips were given? How do you know Yahoo! isn't preparing Flickr for sale and trying to clean up balance sheet?

I don't.

A huge culture loss absolutely, I agree.

It's called a "sandwich". It's the right move to make, emotions aside.

Squeeze from top and bottom, and the middle goes. The middle is where you can make most improvements and cut costs in organizations. That is where most improvement is made fastest FYI.

It's where you start.

Higher and lower levels stay - while the middle layer is squeezed and improved first. Sometimes that means layoffs.

I think the question here is, how big is the company? Depending on how small or large the company is depends on everything.

If they are a small company, they probably would not be able to afford a large cash deal, and would probably try to sell you with royalties rather than a big cash payment.

A medium sized company, a nice chunk of cash and small royalties if any.

And a large company - it's an all cash deal.

I would go for a lump sum cash payment if you can take it, and if you can add royalties on top, more power to you. But again like previously stated, that can be a fishy area.

You are in an employee relationship, so you will never be able to audit books, or verify things that a normal founder would be able to easy reference check.

Get as much UPFRONT cash as you can. Consider royalties as a "bonus".

My 2 cents.