timedoctor
Joined 15 years ago
Karma
105
Submissions
122
Member since
Feb 11
Run Staff.com and timedoctor.com reach me at rob at staff.com
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Comment · 9 years ago
I don't see how any of these solutions help. At the US border agents routinely ask you to log into your email account and search your emails. If you refuse to comply it is much more likely they will not let you into the country.
So they don't just search your laptop they try and search online accounts also.
Comment · 10 years ago
There is no guarantee the stock market will return money in the future. The past does not equal the future and in fact some experts predict that the stock market will return around 3% on average going forward. Also even if the average return was 7% most people have achieved much less than that.
Obviously it's less effort to invest in the stock market so if you're talking about the amount of effort then yes investing is easier
Comment · 10 years ago
Are you talking from your own experience? I am. I made a million dollars and it wasn't easy but it was actually a lot more difficult to invest $1 million and make more money with it. I personally found it a lot more difficult.
I think most people greatly underestimate the difficulty in investing money successfully.
If you are talking about the amount of time invested ... yes of course there is a lot less time spent investing. However if you are talking about the probability of success I would argue It's not as high as you would think to take $1 million and turn it into $2 million.
Comment · 10 years ago
I did not agree at all. In my experience it's much easier to make 1 million then it is to invest 1 million and make another million.
Also there are many startups that require zero investment capital and if you do not have a family and you minimise your expenses you can leave on very very little. If you do have a family it's more difficult but still possible.
Comment · 10 years ago
I have over 15 houses that I rent to low income people. It's very difficult. Not at all a method of getting rich as claimed in the article. Constant problems with collections, problems with repairs and maintenance (given that the properties are old and were not well maintained).
I bought these 15 houses after the crash in 2008 as I thought it was the best investment possible with fantastic returns. IN fact I would have been WAY better off buying ONE house in the bay area and renting it to one well off person. I would have made a whole lot more in net rent and in capital gain.
So I think the premise of this article is completely wrong in the majority of cases. Renting to poor people is extremely difficult and a very easy way to lose money. Many states in the US are very favorable to tenants and not favorable to landlords. You also have to pay taxes, insurance.
Seriously if it was that easy everyone would do it. I thought it was an easy way to make money and I was wrong. Not horribly wrong as I did buy the properties very cheap, but still, not an easy way to make money.
Comment · 11 years ago
We have that problem for our desktop apps. Supporting the Windows and Mac versions is much easier than supporting Linux AND Linux has less users.
Comment · 11 years ago
Less than 100 years ago it was considered NORMAL to segregate black people and prevent access to certain locations in the US. Now it's illegal and considered totally unacceptable.
Is it possible that in the future it will be considered as unacceptable and illegal to discriminate based on your country of origin?
I mean why should a black person from the US have access to different locations than a black person from Nigeria? Or why should a white person from France have access to different locations than a white person from Ukraine?
Comment · 11 years ago
This is a ridiculous idea. Might work for people who have a very simple tax return but the IRS could not possibly calculate my tax return it's incredibly complicated and is not based only on information that they have access to.
Comment · 11 years ago
I think this is simple advice and often incorrect.
For example: JIRA, it's very complicated software. Many of the complicated features I think are essential for it to get into the Enterprise market. Revenues $242 million.
Basecamp: Their mantra is simplicity (although they do not actually do just one thing, they have several features as part of their software). Revenues estimated at over $100 million.
I do no think there is one simple answer to how to build a successful startup. Focusing on being great at one thing might be a good idea for some businesses but it's not only way to do things and it's far from proven as "the" way to build a startup.
http://www.afr.com/p/technology/atlassian_sales_leap_as_reve... https://medium.com/@hungrycharles/basecamp-the-small-bootstr...
Comment · 12 years ago
For women who also want to have children at the same time as co-founding a startup, I think it's important not to underestimate how difficult this is.
When my wife was first breastfeeding I timed how long she spent breastfeeding and changing nappies and bathing the young baby. It was LITERALLY over 9 hours per day (timed to the minute). To think that it's possible to ALSO run a startup at the same time is in my opinion crazy. With older children it's a lot easier but still difficult.
I have several female friends who are also successful entrepreneurs. Some seem to make it work with their family life, but my experience is with most that they have a very hard time and that it often devastates their family life and relationships.
So yes there examples of women who run a company and also have young children, but I think they are the exception rather than the rule.
For women who do not want to have children, or who are not going to have children for many years in the future, no issue.
Comment · 12 years ago
I would probably still use them even if this information is true because we never had any important data go through their service (just testing accounts) and because I am not aware of any good alternatives.
... would look for an alternative first! But for now assuming that this is not real, anyone checked if it is real?
Comment · 12 years ago
I checked out the http://www.tarsnap.com/ website and it looks like very interesting technology but extremely unfriendly to the "ordinary" user. Perhaps not designed for ordinary users, but seems like there is a lot of potential for improvement to the marketing (which is exactly the type of content that you can teach in a startup school). They prefaced the entire content by saying that mostly you can't learn startups from a lecture, because the most important information you need to know is what the customer wants and it's specific to each market. You can learn something more general about marketing and user acquisition.
Personally I've been watching the videos online. I think the information is incredibly valuable because it's from people who have some of the most experience in the world at advising and working with startups. Even more useful if you have no experience and no prior education on what it is like to start a new venture.
Comment · 12 years ago
The attitude of renting or getting a loan for any consumer item is financial suicide.
Why they don't buy second hand I don't know? You can go to an auction site, get the same $1500 sofa for $500.