Those are usually covered under "reps and warranties". From what I understand, even if you do "lie" (no one really lies, they just bend the truth...if you do legitimately lie, it's fraud and it's a big deal) there's basically insurance against it (formerly called "representations and warranties"). No VC I know of ever purchases it, but PE do from time to time.
It can depending on how much capital or assets are still around.
Jail is also a pretty decent incentive to make people avoid overtly lying. Unfortunately its disproportional used on the poor and minorities instead of on professionals.
In this analogy you seem to believe the trajectory for this toddler is set in stone. The reality is at it's infancy (which is where Space X is in the grand scheme) it can look very promising but turn out very bad, or a competitor can drastically outpace. Any valuation should discount for the level of risk.
A lot can happen over time. 10 years ago MySpace was by far the dominant social network and Blackberry was the mobile powerhouse. Seemed like neither would fall with so much momentum behind them but we see how that played out.
For better or worse, the "someone" who will offer the bundle will likely be Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Their entire business model is based on bundling content to provide it at lower cost than an a la carte.
It's unlikely things will change for them just because they move away from a cable box to apps. In essence that is what they are already doing. Even today you need a cable subscription to access at least a third of the content on Apple TV.
The problem with that argument is young people spend so much time online. So, it often ends up as a 90$ / month bill for 4-5 hours a week of entertainment. What's really missing IMO is leveraging the huge backlog of entertainment where Netflix only scratches the surface. Cable was great when there where few options for cheap mindless entertainment, but what people want in entertainment not just the NFL or the latest gossip.
So, I suspect long term we are going to see a push for more 'timeless' entertainment. You might only get 100k viewers this year, but if your still pulling 50+k viewers in 20 years that's a lot of revenue over time. Make a great cooking show and it's still worth watching even if it's 20 years old, a travel log of eating establishments ages poorly.
First off Ryan, I think its a great platform. As a very frequent visitor to the site I would have to reiterate that it is frustrating that I can't really participate in the conversation where there is an aspect of the product that I would like to ask the founder more about. Hopefully you guys can create a way that doesn't result in spam, but feels a little more inclusive.
IMHO, a good way to do the comments would be to focus on Q&A with the founders (or someone affiliated with the product) address the question. As a visitor I would like to easily be able to see which questions have been answered instead of scrolling around to piece together the conversation.
Certainly looking forward to seeing what you have planned for PH.
Thanks for the feedback -- I too really like the conversations with founders/builders.
I'm actually testing threaded comments in staging right now (might release today) and soon after we are adding a "badge" next to the founder's name so that it's clear who made it.
Not to take anything away from this young man (and Maker Studios) success here, but I thought it might be a good time to point out how YouTube math works. If his channel generates $4 million in ad revenue, Google/YouTube keeps about 45% and issues a check to Maker for the remaining $2.2m. Maker then takes another 10-30%.
Still a substantial sum in the end, but I felt the title may potentially be misleading.
> The 24-year-old Mr. Kjellberg, who created PewDiePie five years ago, has parlayed his persona into a brand name that pulls in the equivalent of $4 million in ad sales a year, most of it pure profit.
If it's $4 million "mostly profit" I would take that as what he gets before taxes. If he pays his taxes in Sweden I think closer to 70% of that would disappear.
What do you mean, 'disappear'? I'm pretty sure taxes charged on income doesn't just flow into government and then suddenly vanish without a trace.
> The 24-year-old Mr. Kjellberg, who created PewDiePie five years ago, has parlayed his persona into a brand name that pulls in the equivalent of $4 million in ad sales a year, most of it pure profit.
And I'm pretty sure the title isn't misleading - it's $4 million after YouTube's cut, which seems to check out, having cross-correlated other sources.
'disappear' was probably a wrongly used word. It's money that will never be his, the income tax is paid to the government and they use it like any other tax money.
There are different levels taxation in Sweden if I recall correctly the upper level takes out 70% of the income, that is income earned after $200.000. So if I understand it correctly that would mean he needs to pay $2.660.000 in taxes on those $4 million.
I could be wrong though, but that is my understanding of it. If he's got a corporation where the money goes, that's an entirely different thing. My assumptions are it's a sole proprietorship or equal to that.
Right, so there's a 57% income tax. But if it's a sole proprietorship he also has to pay the "employer tax" or whatever it is called.
I know nothing about taxation in UK, but I guess it also depends on where he has his company (if any) registered. Either way, it's a lot of money even if a lot of it is tax.
They also got rid of the person leading that deal and the Twitter Music app that they shut down. They appear to be taking a new approach that goes beyond what is trending.
It still costs money to acquire new users. It's easy to think when something becomes a household name there is no need to keep spending to bring new users on. As with most social sites the bigger the network is the harder it is for competitors to come in and steal their position. Pinterest user base is still "only" around 50 million. Thats 5% the size of Facebook.
Additionally the markets are not treating tech stocks so well right now, this might last another three months, and it might last a year and a half. What you know for sure is that you don't want to go out and try to raise money when the market is really down. You'll be terribly diluted if you're even able to raise money at all. They get what you can now, because they don't know how long it will be until the IPO.
These are only a couple of the considerations, if they are planning an IPO very soon then there's a completely different motivation. Hope this helps.
You also basically described the movie The Game (with Michael Douglas). If you haven't seen it I suggest you check it out.
I always thought this was a cool idea. I'd imagine this couldn't effectively be done for less than a couple hundred thousand considering the number of people who would have to be working on this full time.
As for the full-time-ness? Yeah, totally. I think there's something to be said for big, serious roleplaying games which effectively can take up your entire life for a certain amount of time, and I think a lot of people would do it.
In some scenarios, it could be cheaper to do since you could involve multiple people in the same experience.
