dusanbab
Joined 15 years ago
Karma
24
Submissions
38
Member since
Apr 12
Co-founder at Playup.ai. Prev co-founder/CEO at Device Magic (acquired) and CPO at GoCanvas (acq).
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Comment · 3 years ago
Gross profit, operating profit or net profit?
If you mean the latter please show us some examples of public cos with a 90% net profit margin. I don’t think there are many.
Comment · 4 years ago
A high school friend and I decided to try and port the .NET Compact Framework to Symbian OS, specifically Series 60. The company (https://web.archive.org/web/20100112091803/http://www.redfiv...) was based in Johannesburg, South Africa and although we raised funding, we just took way too long.
We were lucky enough to be able to bootstrap some things with the Mono/Xamarin .NET implementation. Initially we created an interpreter but then created a full JIT compiler. It was not easy, to say the least, getting things to work on that platform.
What also didn’t help was the level of support we got from Symbian/Nokia; our project/startup was mostly met with indifference. By the time we had a viable, mostly functioning .NET Compact Framework v2 running the writing was on the wall vs iPhone.
Comment · 8 years ago
Any particular area you’re interested in? Hacking on a side project right now with frequent flier miles and points.
Comment · 8 years ago
Unfortunately it went with it. There were some superficial talks about it winding up in the Symbian Foundation, but those didn’t materialize.
And yes, it probably points to a major problem with a small company developing critical framework or tool components when the codebase isn’t participating in an open source license.
There were many mistakes made along the way, in retrospect.
Comment · 8 years ago
Was the framework you mentioned in (1) a Microsoft project, or something else?
As a matter of interest, what did you do on the CF team?
Comment · 8 years ago
Back in 2008/9 I was a co-founder at a company (Red Five Labs) that created a .NET Compact Framework runtime for Symbian OS (featured on most Nokia & Samsung smartphones at the time). We got to a .NET CF 2.0 level of compatibility.
It was a venture-backed startup out of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Although we wrote the runtime ourselves, we made extensive use of some of the mono libraries until we were able to rewrite most of these optimized for Symbian.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100112091803/http://www.redfiv...
Comment · 9 years ago
That wouldn't be an expense though, unless they wrote it down. Nitpicking, I know. What's $200MM after all ;)
Comment · 10 years ago
Actually, this may not be a visa, but rather parole, which is a very interesting way to do this indeed.
Comment · 10 years ago
I can recommend someone I've met a few times, but didn't end up pursuing an EB-5.
Bear in mind that these projects are often not funded through traditional means and ergo are more risky.
Comment · 10 years ago
Do you have personal evidence of a good exit leading to an EB-1? You would think it would, but that category seems difficult for entrepreneurship/business.
Comment · 10 years ago
Ok so it's not just me then :)
Yes, country of nationality does make a difference to DV lottery.
Comment · 10 years ago
I'm not saying it's all roses. I'm talking about risk/reward.
I'm trying to compare it to the potential upside of any immigrant category. Entrepreneurs present some downside, but no more than any other visa/immigrant category. One heck of a lot more upside though, IMO.
Comment · 10 years ago
From personal experience I can say there are incorrect assumptions on both the EB-5 and L-1. Happy to share my experience - let me know how to PM you.