The auto industry is far from a joyless place, engineers at AMG or BMW design products with the aim of fun, great design for the sake of it over economy is the only reason they exist.
I'd wager that the person administering databases at Citibank tends to have less fun during the day than somebody making a living developing apps for their own company, in much the same way that designing transmissions for a formula one team is more fun than designing transmissions at GM.
That the bigger an organisation gets the less fun it is, is the most important force driving start-up creation and there is still a far greater untapped frontier available to us than any other industry to date.
Do you know the price point at which purchase orders predominate over credit cards for payment? I'm launching a product soon and I plan to price it at $6k per year.
I assume that the software will be paid for by PO but if anyone here has a different view, I'd like to hear from you.
You'll likely need to go the purchase order route. My software is priced around $2.5K and it seems to be the transition zone between credit card & purchase order (at least from my experience).
One interesting thing you'll notice is Amex is much preferred at higher credit card levels (e.g. $3K vs. $1K). If you plan on pricing your product above $1K and want to use credit cards, make sure you support AMEX.
$10k is the most common threshold Ive seen. However, there are other issues that come into play, like if your product requires the exchange of NPI (Non-public information).
My former employer (>150k employees) had MasterCard limits that were $3k per purchase and $15k per month per card. Those were hard limits. Anything over that had to go through POs. Amex was only to be used for travel, couldn't use them for purchasing products.
Current employer (<50 employees) has us use our personal cards and get reimbursed. Anything over a few hundred is going on a PO.
Sorry, just saw your response. I need to use a PO for most any one off purchase over couple of hundred pounds and always for anything that involves a recurring charge.
A middle class lifestyle is based upon the products that companies produce, not so much the jobs they provide. A house with a garden is within reach of the masses only if cars are affordable (ford model T ) a yearly holiday to a sunny location is only within reach of those same people if travel is affordable ( boeing 747 ).
The pressure put upon established jobs originates from technology at least as much as it does from outsourcing lower skilled labour to Asia or Latin America. The unemployment we are facing now is not the result of outsourcing but of the misallocation of resources. Besides, production follows consumption and much of the investment overseas is not in service to American consumers but aims to build up access to those markets.
Middle class Americans have access to more products and services than ever before, the biggest threat to a sustained middle class is a re-inflation of houseprices and a sustained political attack on free trade, not on the lack of foresight of the CEO's of mature organizations.
The decline of the empire and being whittled down to 'just our island' has coincided with the best possible time to be alive in britain, very far from being a disaster.
As for having the wrong culture for the modern world; the UK for all its flaws, is an open and creative society and has been so for many generations, more than the vast majority of societies worldwide. There's no good reason to believe that the brits won't keep on taking in and improving on the best ideas form around the world.
Can't the same be said of accountants or wall streeters? Top founders like Bazos, Jobs and Gates all seem to have pretty solid mariages; is the divorce rate higher for people who have tried to start a business or is it just an excuse for these tragedies that people of all walks of life have to contend with?
Not having money will generally screw your chances with women and is very well documented. Instability I don't know about. I can't imagine it'd help.
Gates was funded by a wealthy attorney father. Apple got revenue fairly quickly and was huge soon after launch.
Amazon I don't know about but the site was a market darling even during the years they hemorrhaged money. That funding would provide a more stable environment than some basement shop without Ivy league credentials struggling to attract VC.
This is a different environment than any startup I or many others could attempt. That kind of financial backing or quick success helps tremendously. I could never start Pandora and struggle for years given the cost of my insulin.
If I quit my job and started a business I would sacrifice stable earnings and existing assets for the chance of ruin and success. It's different with wealthy parents or with investor confidence. There's a safety net. Not many people jump without one - for good reason.
It shouldn't be romanticized. It should be realistically assessed. If you're deluding yourself about that there's too high a chance your personal worries and rose-colored glasses will doom your business.
You may be able to succeed and many do. But if you can't admit the possibility of failure and realistically assess risk or evaluate opportunity costs you have no place running a business. I used to make money reselling computers on ebay. I made good cash. But the shit I never considered ate away at my profits the most.
The difference on Wall Street or working as an accountant is that you generally know where the next paycheck is coming. That's something most people can't handle or survive losing. Even the insurance is a safety net that a family with children needs desperately.
I was diabetic at a young age. How would my mom have coped if my dad had sacrificed insurance and steady income for the chance of riches when I got sick? Think she'd stick around?
It has the same sort of feel as GEB, he riffs about cellular automata etc, its not too demanding while still giving enough to meditate on for a few days.
Suddenly elevated status! Two billion dollar companies and 20 years in the valley, is the rest of the world really that cut off to condescend like this?
The auto industry is far from a joyless place, engineers at AMG or BMW design products with the aim of fun, great design for the sake of it over economy is the only reason they exist.
I'd wager that the person administering databases at Citibank tends to have less fun during the day than somebody making a living developing apps for their own company, in much the same way that designing transmissions for a formula one team is more fun than designing transmissions at GM.
That the bigger an organisation gets the less fun it is, is the most important force driving start-up creation and there is still a far greater untapped frontier available to us than any other industry to date.
The future is so fun its blinding ;)