HenryTheHorse

Good for you. Raising money for a Prof. Services business is not easy (acquisition is the more common route) but know that investment firms that consolidate similar (or complementary businesses) under one umbrella have their pros and cons. This is what you should be asking:

* Obviously, you need to understand their valuation model (EBITA-multiple, Revenue-multiple etc.)

* What's the operating model after the firms are merged? Who calls the shots? How many seats for you, the investors and the other founders (of other firms) on the board?

* What's the likely exit for the post-merger entity? (IPO is extremely unlikely for a professional services firm in 2018.)

* How will your team be protected from potential merger shakeout? (Personnel in Accounting, HR etc are always the target in such mergers.)

* How will the merger affect your company culture?

* Will they be comfortable in letting you talk to other founders/CEOs as part of due diligence?

> one of a founder's most valuable assets is a deep understanding of the customer's problem(s) and how to solve them.

IMHO, it's the ONLY thing that matters - and like you, I too learned it the hard way. Optimizing for non-existent (or non-critical) problems is a very common mistake.

Can I just say, kudos for being considerate, compassionate and inclusive?

Thanks - so the integrations could also be maintained by the partners. That makes a lot of sense.

I'm curious - given that they support hundreds of integrations across so many platforms, all with their own product roadmaps etc, how does Zapier actually develop and maintain these integrations?

What happens if Google or Trello or Salesforce changes their APIs? How does Zapier keep up?

> The "manipulative" implications the author is making could be applied towards print journalism just as accurately.

Yes - and it does apply. Editorial control and fact-checking are the two MOST vital aspects of good journalism. Any idiot - I mean, any Fox news anchor - can make up facts and report them.

> podcasts being popular without Apple having to release an app for it.

Apple was arguably the MOST important distributor of podcasts, given that they had millions of devices (including iPods - you could download/sync podcasts onto the classic iPod) in the market.

I am also not picking up the "old media is better" vibe here. Non-fiction/investigative podcasts need quality control, editorial control etc. It's hardly a gatekeeper thing.

I have some questions for you:

* What do you mean by "efficient way"? Piano pedagogy is an old system that's been perfected over 200 years. What aspects of this system do you believe to be inefficient?

* Are you trying to supplement piano lessons taught by a teacher or are you trying to replace a piano teacher?

* Are your target students looking to learn classical piano or pop or jazz? Do they want to learn basic chords to sing along with, or do they want to learn to play instrumental pieces?

Which problem exactly are you hoping will go away by eliminating copyright? There was innovation and progress before copyright and there has been innovation and progress with copyright.

You've heard of Lina Khan and her paper on this topic? It was on the front-page of the Times last week.

* "B2B" is a catch-all term. There's indirect/MRO procurement and there's direct procurement. It's very hard to break into direct procurement without also owning the product/manufacturing. So yes, that does mean Amazon is going to go after the bigger MRO market. (This is a space they excel in already.)

* Amazon is operating in the marketplace model, not just in the conventional e-commerce model. This means their inventory can be MUCH BIGGER than anyone else's with FAR LOWER operating risks. This is what is worrying Grainger and others.

* Also worth noting that Amazon has more or less given up on product quality and instead, chosen to focus on Fulfillment and Supply Chain quality. With a marketplace model, that could lead to major headaches (while still giving the B2B buyer perfect delivery and a great price!).

Such a moving, poignant poem. Thanks for sharing.

> Reading a Harlequin novel?

In general, a work in a visual medium - a painting, a comic book or a film - supplies ALL or most of the inputs. A book supplies only some of the inputs and we, the readers, supply the rest.

Here's the thing: a good reader supplies good inputs and an average reader supplies average inputs. This is why children are described as "imaginative readers". They "live" in the story-world whereas we adults skim through it.

So even if it's a Harlequin novel, you can make it as vivid as you'd like. But that effort will be substantially more than watching even a good film adaptation of a Harlequin novel.

I'm a little conflicted about the authorship of "The Word". The chord progression is very Paul and the chorus is very John.

> In the first three lines "word" is by far the most stressed note, and they are all the SAME note. In the last line the stress is on "heard", which rhymes, and is again the same note.

That's how it's supposed to work. The downbeat (or the accent) is on "word" in each line and in the last line the lyric changes to "heard" instead of "word.

So I'm neither expecting syncopation here nor am I noticing anything unusual there.