Disappointing. There's no discussion of how much they paid, or how they actually got their domain name. From the article, it makes it seem as though they are in a lease to buy situation.
Really good point which I had thought of as well. I will try and see if I can find out the price. (Hopefully this thread will still be going when I find the answer).
Found this (in the mean time) (doesn't mean it was posted legitimately):
Ironically for a community so adamant about data liberation, there is no way to delete your posts or identity. I am surprised there aren't laws to force site owners to allow users to delete their information.
The last time Blake Ross cloned an app for Zuck was when Facebook Answers came out to compete with Quora. I guess Zuck feels like Snapchat is a threat? I wonder if he tried to buy them.
Blake Ross Clones usually scare people, but they never work out. I don't think Snapchat has much to fear.
French entrepreneurs are upset because they can't get as rich in an exit as they would like, so they protest? And you want the rest of the country to support you in this? Okaaaaay.... This is the sort of greedy childishness that we could do without in the tech business world. If you're in it for hacking cool shit, you're not going to spend this much time thinking about your exit. This is similar to people protesting the tax rate on lottery winnings -- absurd.
Greedy childiness? We sweat our asses off trying to build a business and overnight we're being told that in the rare case we do get an exit, it'll be taxed at 60% as opposed to 30%. How is that either greed or childiness? Do you even know what the live of a founder with little funding and no personal income can be like?
And of course we love what we do, but bills don't pay themselves. And maybe one day I want to have a family and a better income to support it, as opposed to not paying myself for over a year now (goodbye savings from 5 years of working before that), year during which I did pay my team btw.
(Trolling here but) perhaps president Hollande can take an example from another famous president and claim " If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet".
Ah, so there's the taboo against wanting to be rich babarock was referring to. As a francophile european, I am grateful for your volunteering to be poor so my vacations will be cheaper. Keep up the good work!
It was mainly in reference to the attitude (how DARE you want to make money?). Step number one in creating growth is to stop casting suspicion on the ambition and successful - and France is not alone in being bad at this, most of "old" Europe is.
But anyway, thinking you can fix the deficit by doubling your already high capital gains taxation while your neighbor Belgium, which whom you have open borders and share a language, have a 0% rate is ... naive, at best. Same naivety covers the 75% income tax rate, which is attempted applied to the single most mobile class of people ever to walk this earth.
On the other hand, who paid for the education of your employees ? Who pays when they go to a hospital ? Who built the roads they use to get to work ? Who is going to give them money when they get old ? Who pays the policemen who protect your office from robberies...
I see you. You think government paid for all those things. Let me correct your view: You and I pay for all those things (through government which takes it's own cut out of everything).
yes, and if you pay less taxes, then it won't be able to pay for it, and if a government can't pay education, then there's less employees competent enough for your start-up.
Same goes for a lot of thing the government pays. And government is the only one who is (realistically) able to pay for it.
We're not talking about paying less taxes. We're talking about the more and more taxes to pay for a government that is -in essence- broke. Hollande basically promised everybody everything and is now facing reality. Like they say: "You can deny reality, but you can not deny the consequences of denying reality".
Let's face it, there's not an infinite number of unnecessary spending, at some point you have to be close to a balanced budget and even though I think taxing entrepreneurs too much is a bad idea, they aren't starving and I think asking for a little solidarity isn't too much to ask.
You probably don't want to pay for "those lazy public sector employees" (and if you do, forget this sentence) but it's just a front for selfishness.
"Asking for a little solidarity" is in my opinion not the point. You know, entrepreneurs are a resourceful bunch. Every society needs people that are willing to take risks. Hollande is acting like he's on an island. I can tell you right now his actions are causing reactions. Startups that won't happen in France/ Paris but in Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, London... All are just a few hours away.
By the way, you make it sound as if being selfish is a bad thing ;-)
They are it's not something to rejoice about...
"“Seen from abroad, France is the last country where an entrepreneur wants to go,” Marc Simoncini, the founder of French dating site Meetic. com, said in an interview on BFM TV last week.
We can all agree that France isn't entrepreneur friendly but it's easy to say "don't tax us" and it's a lot harder to find places where money can be saved.
Right now if you want to tax the high middle class and higher (that includes entrepreneurs who can leave France), they threaten to leave, I don't see how starting negotiations by making threats is a good thing.
I would suggest not looking at the people and raise their taxes, but instead look at government itself and see how they can spend less. (Not talking about cutting benefits but the size of government itself and everything regarding it's operations).
Notice many people working at tech startup in silicon valley are either A) Rich already and went to Ivy League or could afford a good university education, or 2) Foreigners who got their education elsewhere.
When you get a chance, go find a copy of your national budget and find out how much of it goes towards education, health and infrastructure. Then stop using that argument.
OK. Not being fluent in French, and not knowing the vocabulary used in France, I can't evaluate these and find other sources. But, for one thing, however, the pie chart doesn't seem to include debt payments. Also, a proper comparison would include the regions.
