supster

An IPO provides 1) a fundraising opportunity 2) a liquidity event 3) an opportunity to fulfill contractual obligations

One of the conditions of their recent debt financing was that they IPO within a certain time frame. If they believe that they don't need additional funding at the moment or can get better terms then they are simply fulfilling criteria #2 and #3 with their unique IPO. I imagine Spotify can get decent debt financing terms b/c they have such a steady and predictable source of revenue (though not necessarily profit).

Since Dropbox is making a big push into enterprise, they are hiring a ton of high touch enterprise sales people - who can't scale in the same way an engineer can.

Accelerated depreciation schedules often have tax benefits compared to linear depreciation schedules.

See here for more info: http://www.investopedia.com/walkthrough/corporate-finance/2/...

So majority of the brokers have brick and mortar operations that can't afford to compete on price. That leaves only the online brokers. Then the next step is to build a brand that attracts customer trust/loyalty, which is what Robinhood seems to be doing and to build a really nice experience which they do with their slick apps. Once customers (generally young ppl who are first time investors) are invested in the Robinhood platform, then Robinhood can up sell them on additional features/services (margin, options, API access etc). So sure Etrade could compete on price (I doubt they would want to since it would immediately hit the bottom line vs a new company not depending on broker fees), but if you look at it from a long term perspective eliminating broker fees is just step 1.

The long play is that it actually doesn't cost significant money per trade at an institutional level. The only reason the other major brokers charge you money is because it covers their brick and mortar retail costs (e.g. Scottrade) and it adds to the bottomline (e.g. Etrade). So Robin Hood is actually just giving this surplus to the consumer instead of keeping it for themselves, and building a user base / brand in the process. Eventually once they have enough users, they will start to up sell you for other services (e.g. checking/savings, margin trading, options trading, check writing etc).

True, but all major retail brokers sell their order flows to HFTs (e.g. Etrade used to sell its order flow to Citadel), so this is nothing new

True, but all major retail brokers allow investors to trade on margin (and charge you interest on it), so this is nothing new.

All the major retail brokers sell their order flow, so you generally eat this cost no matter who you use. In addition, the hidden cost is fractions of a penny on the dollar (so still better than the $5-7 a regular broker charges per trade anyways).

"The future is wireless!"

Since you buy the house upfront for cash and hold 10% on the corporate balance sheet, isn't that a significant price & liquidity risk taken (in addition to the usual startup risks)? Because the time at which that house is eventually sold and at what price is somewhat unknowable, how do you mitigate that risk? Overall, I think what you guys are doing is very cool - wish you the best of luck.

Actually hedge fund managers tend have a large portion of their net worth invested in the fund also.

I would say this one has the most traction so far: http://vapor.codes/ http://vapor.university/

Swift, the language, is from Apple. IBM simply has built a bunch of tools for Swift and would like to sell consulting services around them.

You're right, I believe it's on the road map

1. Inferred static nominal typing with generics

2. 1st class support for Optionals

3. Support for Structs and Classes

4. Native binary & scripting mode

5. Automatic reference counting (instead of garbage collection)

6. Large standard library

7. Large corporate backer (Apple)

8. Open source

9. Good C, C++, & Obj-C interoperability

10. Decently fast (https://medium.com/@qutheory/server-side-swift-vs-the-other-...)

WishCan is incredible - really well done! Any thoughts of open sourcing it? I would love to host a private version for my parents. Thanks.

During WWII the US government set wage controls, so in order to compete for employees, corporations started offering health insurance benefits. Then after WWII, the US government created tax benefits to corporations for providing health insurance. Soon the practice became the de facto way to get insured.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United...

An insurance company makes money from the difference in premiums collected and expenses paid. Because Oscar is a startup you are right that they have a significant disadvantage in negotiating rates with providers. But they can lower costs in clever ways by lowering utilization. For example they offer free preventative routine care like immunizations, flu shots; free generic drugs (thus shifting consumption away from brand name drugs); and free primary care visits (which over the long term shift costs away from costly complications (e.g. in diabetes), or ER visits). In addition Oscar appeals to a younger tech savvy crowd which will inherently utilize health services a lot less.

Google is in a really interesting spot:

- They own a significant stake in Uber via GV (formerly Google Ventures)

- They own Google Maps, which everyone relies on at the moment

- They own the most advanced self driving car and are closest to Level 4 autonomy

- They own Waze, and have a significant community there

In my mind they should acquire Lyft, let it run as is. Then when they are ready to go primetime with their self driving cars, start piloting them as a cheaper/free option within the Lyft app. If the pilot works, expand the cars nationwide and aggressively finance the fleet using their balance sheet.

This is very cool. How do you allocate the money (i.e. into which Vanguard funds and what percentage each)? I understand that you do a risk tolerance test, but how do you diversify among asset classes? Also how are you going about tax loss harvesting?

That data and content is (near) worthless if they can't serve up ads against it.

From Quantopian website: "You own your algorithms. Your algorithms are kept secret. Ideas are some of the most valuable assets anyone has. We are committed to protecting your intellectual property and keeping it safe."

More importantly, a lot goes into developing an algorithm including clean data, back testing, infrastructure. Quantopian handles all that for you, so you can focus on developing a stellar algorithm. Of course YMMV.

> why does your city or your neighbor have to have a say in how you manage your property

zoning laws

If there is no GC, could a language like Rust or Swift still target WASM?

I have very similar requirements, and I think within the next few years, Swift will fill this niche very well.