I see employees and founders fall into different categories depending on when they join.
Founders and first group of employees are the creators. The ones who often care deeply and want to bring new ideas to life, creating value for customers (and eventually shareholders) - Higher risk for this group.
As the company grows but is still early on the journey, the next group tends to also care and often want to protect whats been built while helping creating new value. This group likely wants to earn a bit more having joined later. This group are taking less risk as there are likely already a few rounds raised at this point.
The company continues to grow and starts hire more staff to help it operate at scale. These people are disconnected and tend to arrive to extract more value than the groups before them. These are often managers or extra execs, more sales teams on commission etc.
This new group is not here to defend whats built and often arent as invested in the idea. They didnt join out of a burning desire to see the world get better - they are here to earn well and push their careers.
I think this is where founder mode helps. It keeps the ones who care deeply about the business, the idea, the customers, the world, the employees etc in the know. They keep their finger on the pulse and can help steer everyone away from just chasing personal gain. They can bring back the guiding principles that may have been diluted through various levels of "those who don't care as much".
I think early employees - those taking the most risk aside from the founders - could also be leveraged here. In fact, I think those early employees could be considered mini-founders if they are are still around at later stages.
Gotta wonder if it would be better to instead focus on making it easier to source keratin from a bioreactor / cell culture. Crash the market with "counterfeit" rhino keratin which is as good as the real stuff anyhow.
I'd guess that most buyers of objects made from rhino horns are more interested in its rhino horn nature than its keratin composition. If keratin became suddenly abundant, I doubt it'd impact the rhino horn market very much
I know nothing of that market though, could be entirely wrong
I also know nothing of it, it's just a fun thought. In a previous life I really enjoyed faking parking permits and IDs and transcripts and stuff... it would be pretty fun to return to that but this time be one of the good guys: faking rhino horns for the sake of protecting actual rhinos.
I think being able to produce reliable supply chain traceability is indistinguishable from keeping detailed notes on a criminal conspiracy. None of the players want that besides the consumer. Never happen.
Sure, but it isn't clear to me that China actually cares about stopping rhino poaching, and I imagine the major players in the conspiracy never set foot in South Africa, and just have local low level agents (ie the ones we are told are so poor, they need to poach the rhinos to survive) exposed to consequences.
And feathers, turtle shell, but they are made or another type of keratin.
To be honest, each the keratin of each animal is slightly different, with small changes of the composition, something like plastic that can be made softer or harder tweaking the compostition.
Anyway, I guess it's not about the exact composition, but the "magic" part of the rhino horn.
I highly suggest googling solutions that you think are rather obvious. It can often lead to surprising results as things can interestingly become complex. And at the worst case, you find that your idea works and you can throw in a citation to give your proposition more weight. Seems like a win win to me and at very little cost in time.
Buyers aren’t interested in “keratin” - they are interested in “rhino horn”. This is about mystical benefits from phallic animal parts. You aren’t going to tackle the market by fueling it.
Only a small percentage of the population are in a position to afford to install private solar. So while its great for some it doesn't help solve the issue for the majority.
The thing is, the small percentage of people who can afford the panels already subsidized a large part of the energy supply to the population. In the south african townships, illegal connections to the grid are very common and a substantial part of the population lives in such areas.
3.5GW is almost 4 levels worth of loadshedding...ok sure it won't have 100% efficiency but South Africa is one of the best countries in the world for solar.
If solar keeps getting installed at this rate, loadshedding will be just about completely averted within 2 years, for the entire population - whether you have solar or not. Poor people are benefitting from solar already from lower loadshedding levels, and by having more reliable power at work (since many businesses are now running on solar out of necessity...and generators of course)
SA still has a mostly functioning grid, just an ancient fleet of coal power stations and badly built new ones that don't give the power needed.
So while many homeowners wouldn't have installed solar if they weren't forced to, they (myself included) are also discovering that unlimited free power when the sun shines is awesome, and with a decent Lithium PO4 battery it's not hard to be fully off grid for much of the year. "Green loan" schemes from many banks are covering installation costs and it's easy to save more than half on you electricity bill since most of SA is really sunny.
+ the environment is a big winner...the more power plants worth of power that can be installed in solar & wind, the more old coal plants can be shut down forever.
It took me at least 5 years as a software engineer with a CS degree to reach that per year in South Africa.
I understand cost of living adjustments etc etc but $15 per hour in SA would help so many people dramatically. We have a huge number of citizens living below the poverty line.
For perspective, our minimum hourly wage is 23.19ZAR per hour which is roughly 1.49USD.
In the us you don’t multiply hours worked by 40. Minimum wage workers have few protections and are assigned less then full time hours to Avoid paying benefits. They can also end up with shifts like 2 on 2 off 2 on where employers don’t pay for gaps between peak hrs
Numbeo is a site that offers comparisons between cost of living in various cities.
It tells me that rent for a 1 bedroom in Johannesburg is around $440 USD per month. In Denver, a mid level American city, you would be paying $1790 usd.
Also keep in mind that if you want health insurance in the US, you might end up spending $5k-$10k for just the insurance, getting care for anything beyond a yearly checkup is going to cost more.
In SA we also have to use private health insurance as the state run facilities are really bad. We have no safe public transport and those who can afford their own car usually have one. Our policing is sub par and many have to pay for private security.
We also have a very high income tax rate. Up to something like 45% depending on your level of income.
If I for instance saved 10% of my salary vs someone earning comparatively the same in the US, I would have far less buying power in the world in general.
Overseas holidays are something very few can afford. Spending ZAR overseas is rough.
No doubt there’s a reason that so many SA choose to work overseas. My point was more that $15usd an hour just doesn’t go that far in the states, even though it sounds like a very livable wage outside of the US.
Even within the states there are massive discrepancies. $15/hr in San Francisco probably means you are on the edge of homelessness. Meanwhile that same pay in the southeast might be enough for a modest life.
It isn't clear if its illegal to use ones Single Discretionary allowance (SDA) (1m ZAR per annum) or applying for and using a Foreign investment allowance (FIA) (further 10m ZAR per annum) for crypto.
If exchange control was applied fairly as was the interpretation up until recently, then staying below those amounts in ZAR terms would be fine. However, that may not be the case any more.
Good question! I am not sure! I had a brief look at their 2020 and 2021 report but I havent been able to see how they got the data and reached their conclusions.
Its worth noting that their entire business is built around detecting blockchain based illicit activities.
Founders and first group of employees are the creators. The ones who often care deeply and want to bring new ideas to life, creating value for customers (and eventually shareholders) - Higher risk for this group.
As the company grows but is still early on the journey, the next group tends to also care and often want to protect whats been built while helping creating new value. This group likely wants to earn a bit more having joined later. This group are taking less risk as there are likely already a few rounds raised at this point.
The company continues to grow and starts hire more staff to help it operate at scale. These people are disconnected and tend to arrive to extract more value than the groups before them. These are often managers or extra execs, more sales teams on commission etc.
This new group is not here to defend whats built and often arent as invested in the idea. They didnt join out of a burning desire to see the world get better - they are here to earn well and push their careers.
I think this is where founder mode helps. It keeps the ones who care deeply about the business, the idea, the customers, the world, the employees etc in the know. They keep their finger on the pulse and can help steer everyone away from just chasing personal gain. They can bring back the guiding principles that may have been diluted through various levels of "those who don't care as much".
I think early employees - those taking the most risk aside from the founders - could also be leveraged here. In fact, I think those early employees could be considered mini-founders if they are are still around at later stages.