Internet and Telecom

 In the article you will learn: why IT investments are less risky than any other industry when exactly the investor enters, and when it is too early for him to do this why venture happens only in IT and biotechnology and nowhere else and a few more interesting things. Let's go. When they talk about the digital economy, everyone recalls William Janeway's book Capitalism in an Innovative Economy, which has been part of the Financial Times Gold Library since 2012. The book is based on the study of Dr. W. Genway, where both the device of the digital economy and the sources and mechanisms for its financing are studied. The main idea of ​ ​ the book is that venture capital went into the digital economy not because there are more risks, but because in fact there are less risks than in other sectors of the economy when it comes to research and development. Venture capitalists are willing to finance innovative companies, not because they suddenly caught fire with the idea of ​ ​ risking...

A very useful article both for investors who evaluate young companies for financing, and for entrepreneurs who want to attract venture capital and turn  company into a large corporation. It amazes me when a journalist writes an article about a promising startup (for example, preparing for a public offering of shares), and scornfully says: "They don't even make a profit!" I cite journalists as an example, because it is they who support the myth that profitability is ALWAYS a priority, and I hear many entrepreneurs, even the most adequate, repeat the same mantra. There is a normal relationship between profit and growth. To ensure faster growth, it is now necessary to find resources for investments that will begin to bring results only in six months or a year. This is most easily explained by the example of sales managers. If you hire 6 sales managers with a salary of $120,000 a year, then your monthly expenses will increase by $60,000, although these sales managers may not ...

 Trading platforms consist of two parts: supply (sellers) and demand (buyers). To build a site, you need to combine both sides of the market. And in order to control this market, you need to have a better vision on both sides of the market than anyone else - in real time. In other words, you should see the point of view of both the buyer and the seller, and you should know, in real time, that buyers want to buy and what sellers want to sell (and at what price). Creating and managing a trading platform is a very difficult task. Fortunately, mobile Internet makes it much, much easier. The almost universal penetration of mobile devices today allows you to "connect" both sides of the market much faster and cheaper than ever before, and then, in real time, control the supply of this market and the dynamics of demand. My partners and I really believe in the business model of trading platforms, Everything is just beginning, and we continue to look. The best way to create new markets...

I first thought about my business in early 2008. I needed investments, so I had a lot of interaction with all kinds of investors, as well as imaginary investors and consultants to find investors. I spent a lot of time communicating with them, and most of it was wasted. I want to share the accumulated experience of communication with investors and give some advice to other start-ups. So, in early 2008, I had a business idea and a desire to quit my busy job and start working for myself. The business idea was such that it required certain capital expenditures, and there were no funds of its own - so without investors there was no escape. So when I started the prototype development, I started looking for investors. I first pursued my search by those who were heard: Venture and sowing funds, business angelic associations, start-up party. All this took quite a long time, but the result was 0. Why? Then I realized that any unlaunched business would almost certainly not be financed if the inve...

I went to CISCO certification courses in the 11th grade. I was, as always, the youngest in the group. Around the place were adults — heads of IT departments, and I was 16 years old. We had a very cool instructor. We had a good time with him and he was talking about how difficult it is to get the last level of the SSIE. He's being handed in Brussels, in the lab. They bring there for 8 days, give a huge test for theory and a real task: "Here's the equipment, set up this scheme, do what you think is right." The teacher complained that it was difficult to gain practice in working with networked iron. They are expensive, and then only the big three operators had them. If you work with networks there, you can gain the necessary level of knowledge and experience. You don't work, you can't. The teacher had a friend who worked at MTS, and he said constantly: "Michael, the problem is you're teaching. You know only theory well." The friend was the opposite ...

Imagine a world where suddenly two fantastic things happened—parents lost their ability to influence their children's decisions, completely, absolutely. They just physically can't give them any advice and cause guilt. Second, the army was canceled in this world. I'm ready to put a lot of money on what universities will start empty the next day. In another year, two-thirds will close, 90% of the faculties will disappear, and in two years no one will remember why they were needed.  When I think about it, it hurts. I have a couple of friends who were kicked out of the university. They like to talk about it this way: "Do you know who else threw the tower? Gates and Jobs!" I'm not the enemy of higher education myself, but I don't want to argue with them. I feel that education today has big — just giant — problems. I think Valve founder Gabe Newell said the best about this: "In a few months at Microsoft, I learned more about software development than in a c...

Sometimes things are applied unexpectedly and not in what they were designed for.  In the 1960's Ken Thompson, the programming legend, wrote a computer game Space Travel for the Multics operating system. The system was a Bell Lab project where he worked with Denis Ritchie. Later the project was closed and to continue playing in his Space Travel, Thompson decided to port it to the computer PDP-7. The tools that it created for the port then formed the basis of the Unix operating system.  Thompson wrote the first three versions alone. Unix needed a system language, so B came up. Later, Denis Ritchie, a colleague and friend of Thompson, picked up the development and wrote C. That's how most of the modern technology was built, and there was a desire to play a computer game and pet projects for fun. Ken Thompson has built a brilliant research career in computer science. In the mid-2000s, he joined Google, where he and Robert Pike and Robert Graysmer created Golang, one of the most p...

The stock market from the point of view of the programmer is a set of data that must first be obtained and then analyzed. The terms of the task: I am interested in the shares of American companies on the daytime timeframe so that every morning my robot sends me an automatic report on yesterday's market dynamics. If there are other markets with other timescales - good. I don't want to pay money for the data yet. I note separately that I am not in any way affiliated with any of the organizations mentioned in the article. I just look for ways to solve  problems, and share my experience. How to get quotation data free of charge? I am aware of the following possibilities: Open REST API - register on the site, get the access key, and you can work REST API broker - you open a demo account with the broker, you get the API access key, you can work API of the trading terminal - opened a demo account, launched the terminal, upload data Exotic options Open REST API Alphavantage . Registrat...

Even well-established private companies are constantly at risk of failure, as evidenced by some startups that stopped  operations this year. PitchBook collected data on the 25 most expensive startups that failed in 2018; three of these companies have existed for more than 20 years and were still forced to close. We present a list of 25 most expensive startups that failed in 2018. 25. SDCmaterials - automotive nanotechnologies Year of foundation: 2004 Maximum estimate: $48 million Amount raised: $26 million The main activity of SDCmaterials was the creation of nanomaterials for automotive catalysts in order to minimize harmful emissions into the environment by the automotive industry. SDC developed and patented processes for the manufacture and integration of catalytic materials, which provided a step-by-step improvement in the performance of the underlying platinum group precious metals, which are key for emission control. The company was invested by such giants of the auto industr...