When I was a kid I saw a movie or TV show about a guy who had won one of these in a contest, but then threw a party and never completed the build out of the house... so the kit was left in parts all over the plot of land he won.
This might be one of the biggest issues in America today. We have a seemingly large number of folks, or perhaps a small number of highly vocal ones on social media, that believe the system is so rigged against them and that they have no chance of improving their lot in life.
At the same time as this pessimism has permeated America, a global, friction-free marketplace for services and products has emerged that anyone can tap into: the internet and mobile phones.
This network is not only available to all, it also hosts the keys to the kingdom, with every single skill and clever strategy for building these products and services unlocked, for free, for everyone, on YouTube, Coursera, etc.
That's the disconnect I'm concerned about... so many people in America are giving up on the American dream, while other countries are copying it (i.e. China).
1. ICO founders are getting a quick education in the fact that "anyone can sue anyone at any time" -- no matter what paperwork you have folks sign.
2. What are the damages if they just give the money/coins back? That's the easiest solution for these ICOs: a 100 days buy back/escrow period?
3. Another easy solution is to have these ICOs hold the proceeds in escrow and release of funds quarterly for five years to the startups/projects and giving the investors the ability to refund half or 75% of their remaining commitment (i.e. a 25-50% penalty for leaving the project early).
had the founder on recently https://youtu.be/rdRSUJkvmxM -- seems like people who invested knew what they were doing going in.
>3. Another easy solution is to have these ICOs hold the proceeds in escrow and release of funds quarterly for five years to the startups/projects and giving the investors the ability to refund half or 75% of their remaining commitment (i.e. a 25-50% penalty for leaving the project early).
I've seen something similar to this in another ICO. They set up an ethereum smart contract that would distribute 90% of funds raised to the project over 4 years. If an investor wanted out, they could send their tokens to the contract and (iirc) it would burn them and refund the investor with ETH at a 10% haircut to the original buy price. Alas can't quite remember the ICO or the exact details (it was in a random whitepaper I read).
Not fun for them, but nevertheless a very interesting lawsuit. What I am interested in is the fact they used a Swiss foundation that they don't actually control.
What happens when a US judge allocates damages for certain actions? They declare personal bankruptcy? US judgements are also not always enforceable abroad, so is it imaginable the foundation gets to keep the money regardless of the outcome of any lawsuit? I would guess so.
Ethereum was the first cryptocurrency to form a foundation in Zug, and its a popular structure. Generally the code and system are open sourced, and a nonprofit foundation controls the money raised in the ICO.
It's not so clear. For Ethereum, it worked well. The foundation is non-profit, financing the creation of an open-source system. And those who donated get to use one instance that system. The rights to use the system come in the firm of transferrable coins, and can turn out to be valuable.
It is not an ideal construction, but can make sense. The foundation is used as a funding vehicle for a common prpject, but it is still non-profit.
The problem is not that setting up such a structure is possible, the problem is the lack of suitable alternative legal structures that are better suited for the job. For that, regulation needs to be relaxed.
Video is a great background on Tezos, why they chose a Swiss foundation in Zug, how the money is budgeted, how they chose the trustees for the foundation, the token presale, etc
NYT and Netflix are an exceptional value at $10 a month, but those are large scale consumer content. In the B2B content space, any content that saves folks a couple of hours a week is worth a LOT of money.
in this case, $10-25 a month is nothing... really, it's like zero dollars in the context of a business executive making six figures.
Still not sure I'd pay for it out of pocket (but who knows!), but I missed the B2B angle on the first read and was reacting to the price point as a news consumer. IMO neither the article nor the premium page does a great job of showing me that kind of value -- the only allusions to B2B value I saw were "research reports" in the article and "let us be your research team" on the page. But I suppose that's because you're still figuring out what premium should be.
Hope you figure it out and wishing you success here. I love me some email.
I'm a longtime subscriber to Launch Ticker (their tech/startup newsletter). It lets me very quickly be kept abreast of fundraising and M&A activity relevant to my startup. Saves me about 30 minutes a day of visiting several popular tech news sites, so well worth $10/month to me.
I hear people say this from time to time, but I think once you get to college and into the workforce you start to center your life around TXT and email.
I view each email address as an LTV of $10-50 and every phone number as 2x that. Owning emails and phone numbers is the great asset any startup can have -- but so many founders miss this!
Maybe. Over the past few years, we gained a few B2B clients who actually insist on using Whatsapp over email. We've resisted it somewhat (the final confirmation must still be sent over email), but if the trend continues, I'm not sure we'll be able to.
We built our own CMS after realizing there is nothing out there. Our CMS has the email-based paywall system, plus manages all the opens and pre-subscriptions (i.e. you can subscribe to new newsletters before we launch them).
We just added a secret new feature: inside.com/alerts, which allows us to send news to people by SMS if they can't wait for the emails.
In terms of paid newsletters, there will be 2-3 in each of 1,000 vertical with over $100-250,000 in revenue each based on what I can see.
I've never been able to find this movie.