Prior to this aside from being a patron of restaurants my only knowledge of the restaurant biz was based on Setting the Table which Fred Wilson blogged about here:
"Airbnb makes its money in real estate. But everything inside of how Airbnb runs has much more in common with Facebook or Google or Microsoft or Oracle than with any real estate company. What makes Airbnb function is its software engine, which matches customers to properties, sets prices, flags potential problems. It’s a tech company—a company where, if the developers all quit tomorrow, you’d have to shut the company down. To us, that’s a good thing."
Those 5k deductible policies still cost $500 a month for family in a small group and leave you really exposed to 15k per person (max out of pocket) and max 45k out of pocket for the family. That's not inline with what healthcare should cost. An individual may pay $75 for that same policy but still have exposure of around 15k per year max out of pocket.
The HSA plans are just as expensive as middle of the road plans as well and are geared towards people who save a lot to begin with.
a 64 year old with a drug problem and 3 kids is looking at 31k a year (worst case, 6k best case).
what, exactly, are you looking to have happen? it's either socialized, where healthy people subsidize the sick, or it's not, or there is some gradient between the two.
I think, right now, you're looking at about 6k/year per person. you can divide that up however you want... billg pays all of it, you pay your own way, or some point on the gradient between the two. regardless, the money has to come from somewhere. I kind of like the obamacare, everybody contributes something model. I think i'd prefer it as a straight up tax, but FREE MARKET IS AMAZING, RAWR, so whatever. that's fine.
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or we just let people die. i'm not ok with that.
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I need to qualify that, this is only for people that aren't poor or old (which medicare and mediaide cover already) or for veterans (which have their own system) or kids (chips it think it's called). this is exclusively for working class kinda folks who never went to war. the other 60% are already covered by socialized medicine.
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why the hell am i participating in an /r/politics discussion on hn? i'm obviously dumb.
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Thank you for simply downvoting and not replying. this way, i can go to sleep not worrying you're expecting a reply.
The average age of a tech startup founder is 39, and a % of those have families. They should not have to risk financial ruin as a tradeoff for starting a company that could provide jobs.
Exactly. I'm in this position now: a single breadwinner with a child. As a Canadian, I don't risk financial ruin for any health-related issues (unless I travel to the US without health insurance, of course).
This was a big factor in me making the jump to founding a company from up here in Canada. Hiring folks with families in the USA was a huge pain for us, specifically because of the health care issues. We were paying a lot for them to extend their current health care from their previous employers, and one had the added stress of having a pregnant wife at the time we brought him over, with all the complications that brings to the health insurance story.
Hiring a fellow Canadian was basically a cakewalk.
Honestly, I hope America gets universal healthcare as well. I just don't get "if this is struck down, it'll pave the way for true universal healthcare." I think, logically, that universal healthcare would be more likely without the individual mandate in place. At the same time, politically, this will come as a major blow and be seen as many voters as a court rejection of socialized medicine in the US (even though that's not the conclusion will even draw).
It's not paving the way, it's removing an obstacle - this act while weakening insurance companies on one level, makes them much stronger with more guaranteed revenues, thus making their lobby stronger. A stronger insurance lobby would oppose universal health care with more determination.
I worked on a small scale cluster at a pharma company 6 years ago. The scientists goal was to discover new compounds to patent without having to do the screening by hand. The cluster would screen thousands of compounds simultaneously all day long. It was very interesting work.
Ryan I am impressed with all of your achievements including http://thinkvitamin.com/ but I am not sure your advice is as sound as your business. Your team has built a great brand globally over many years with the conference business, and in my opinion you have done a nice job leveraging that brand equity for your new startup.
I do agree that if you are building a revenue focused company, you don't have to go to San Francisco.
But it's hard to argue against how easy it is to raise money or get acquired in the valley vs anywhere else in the world. Look at how easy it was for Path and Instagram to raise money and to get cheap money at that. In other markets many VCs want to see revenue not just traction and that revenue can work against you and lower your valuation - making the money more expensive.
For reference to Instagram, see this Chris Dixon interview with Kevin Systrom
"He also talks about how the serendipity of Silicon Valley contributed to the formation Instagram, remembering a party that Dixon once threw in San Francisco where Systrom ended up meeting his key angel investors."
It does make me a little sad that there are companies that are not "revenue focused". It would be a shame if the word "revenue" started getting thrown around with the same disdain as "lifestyle business".
This was Part of 5 of a series that begins here:
http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-...
Prior to this aside from being a patron of restaurants my only knowledge of the restaurant biz was based on Setting the Table which Fred Wilson blogged about here:
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/01/setting_the_tab.html