re: Looking at M&A Aftermath"...I am not interested in hypothetical talks..."
Not necessarily its a hypothetical situation... its been a reality for those who you despise ;-). However, "CONFUSION vs INNOVATION..."; you do have a point here. I agree that one needs to see through the smoke screen.
re: Looking at M&A AftermathWhy Bay Area companies sponsor employees to watch dumb movies like star wars? Is that a reflection on the "class" of employees viewed by management?
re: Looking at M&A AftermathHmm... A person who chooses a Copsci degree over NumbTheory or Physics is just a cog in the industrial revolution anyway. Sewing is a more important degree in that aspect as you can open up a sweat shop in China and make more profit. Folks generally don't sweat where there are computers which drives up the cost of doing business because of those AC's cutting into the profits.
Startup_Shutup mentions the Art of War, which I believe I posted on LR some time ago. Between Copsci, NumbTheory, Sewing and Physics, Copsci sticks out as the one that is not an art. Just follow someone else's rules and use them or change them slightly to "innovate". Rather see the great minds trying to solve the "God Theory" that Einstein failed to complete before he died. There is still a lot of valuable work that needs to be done in that field.
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." -- Chapman Cohen
re: Looking at M&A Aftermath>> However, "CONFUSION vs INNOVATION..."; you do have a point here. I agree that one needs to see through the smoke screen.
Exactly ... unless a startup is able to show millions and millions of people are benefited from the technology offering, it should perish. Take for example Google.
I recommend "ART OF WAR" while negotinating buying startups (just let them bleed...)
Just to poke a little fun, I think Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Seattle are all North of Detroit. And eyeballing it, I think Boston is north of the southernmost parts of Canada. I am sure Buffalo and Rochester are.
re: Looking at M&A AftermathWhere the hell is Detroit?
Interestingly enough, it's the only major US city that is north of Canada ;-) Detroit began its decay in 1952. Many attribute its problems to race relations which included riots in 1943 and 1967. Others believe things really detioriated when Coleman Young became the mayor in the seventies. There was a beautiful public library in the downtown area. Now it's abandoned and dilapidated, seemingly beyond repair. Many college and school facilities have been abandoned as well. Let's not let this happen to our internet.
The answer is: stupid management.
Wouldn't it be nice if the world's problems could be so easily diagnosed. Unfortunately, the answers tend to be more complex. Which means the solutions have to be complex as well.
re: Looking at M&A Aftermath"There was an interesting evolution in the laptop business at one of the large US vendors. They first outsourced the manufacturing of the laptops. They then realized over time that the people doing the manufacturing were in the best position to understand how to do cost reductions, so they moved cost reduction work to the far east as well. Then, they realized that the cost was so important a part of the design that all their laptops needed to be designed where they were manufactured. They then realized that it would be better to have the firmware written by the hardware developers. What was a large R&D organization turned into a group that wrote specifications and "monitored" the development process."
Five years from now: the price of laptops drops so far, that, along with oil price increases, makes shipping them in from China cost prohibitive.
Headline five years from now: Dell announces the construction of a fully automated laptop factory in Huntsville Alabama.
What we have not done well, and the Japanese have in particular, is to be "flexible" about where manufacturing takes place. Japan went through that "culture" shock awhile ago, much better than we did. They at least maintained their names on the outside of the buildings.
The lesson is in cars. Detroit is almost dead. But Toyota and Hundai are building new plants in the US. Part of it is legislation, part of it is cost of transportation as a percentage of the COGS.
re: Looking at M&A AftermathExactly ... unless a startup is able to show millions and millions of people are benefited from the technology offering, it should perish.
Market forces, or maybe it's Wall Street forces, that lead people into this kind of all or nothing thinking. We mistakenly believe that the only things which add value to society and deserve investment must serve the mass markets. An example of this problem occurred in pharmaceuticals where drugs which addressed diseases affecting 200,000 or less were rarely developed. Than in 1983 Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act.
"The ODA has been very successful - more than 200 drugs and biological products for rare diseases have been brought to market since 1983. In contrast, the decade prior to 1983 saw fewer than ten such products come to market."
CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS FOR THE ORPHAN DRUG ACT The Congress finds that---
(1) there are many diseases and conditions, such as Huntington's disease, myoclonus, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Tourette syndrome, and muscular dystrophy which affect such small numbers of individuals residing in the United States that the diseases and conditions are considered rare in the United States;
(2) adequate drugs for many of such diseases and conditions have not been developed;
(3) drugs for these diseases and conditions are commonly referred to as "orphan drugs";
(4) because so few individuals are affected by any one rare disease or condition, a pharmaceutical company which develops an orphan drug may reasonably expect the drug to generate relatively small sales in comparison to the cost of developing the drug and consequently to incur a financial loss;
(5) there is reason to believe that some promising orphan drugs will not be developed unless changes are made in the applicable Federal laws to reduce the costs of developing such drugs and to provide financial incentives to develop such drugs; and
(6) it is in the public interest to provide such changes and incentives for the development of orphan drugs.
re: Looking at M&A AftermathThink about it, if indeed a startup found an avenue to own his own real estate by means of his startup, wouldn't you call it a success?
It depends. The goal of a company, private or public, is to increase shareholder value. If an employee is able to liquidate real increases in shareholder value and use that to fund a real estate purchase, I'd call that a success.
Not necessarily its a hypothetical situation... its been a reality for those who you despise ;-). However, "CONFUSION vs INNOVATION..."; you do have a point here. I agree that one needs to see through the smoke screen.
Cheers