postaday | wealthymatters

Missed Chances!

May 2, 2014 Leave a comment

I met both Carl Page and Larry Page at a party hosted by a Stanford friend of mine in 1998.

Carl gave me his card for eGroups and said “we’re hiring”. Larry gave me his card for Google—a flimsy bit of paper obviously printed by bubble jet—and said “we’re hiring”.

I said, “Nah, who needs another search engine?” and went to graduate school.

I still have the card.

– Ka-Ping Yee

Ka-Ping Yee turned down a job with Google in 1998, the year the search engine incorporated.Considering that Bonnie Brown, the in-house masseuse who Google hired in 1999 to knead the occasionally stressed shoulders of the 40 employees who worked there at the time, became a multimillionaire when the company went public, and that by 2007 Google had already minted more than 1000 millionaires, it’s a safe bet that Yee missed out on more than the chance to knock Altavista and Lycos off their mighty perches.

This sort of thing happens when we are too judgmental and write off people as unlikely to succeed,based on appearances.

Filed under Entrepreneurship Tagged with Bonnie Brown, investing in a start up, joining a start-up, judging by appearances, Ka-Ping Yee, Larry page business card, multimillionaire, postaday, worst money mistake

Buying Friends And Influence Online

May 1, 2014 3 Comments

Whoever said, “Money can’t buy you friends,” clearly hasn’t been on the Internet recently. Today its possible to buy 4,000 new followers on Twitter for about $5 (about Rs 300). You can also pick up about 4,000 friends on Facebook for the same amount and, for a few dollars more, have half of them like a photo or post you share on the site.

If you are willing to shell out $3,700, you could have made 10 lakh—yes, that many—new friends on Instagram. For an extra $40, 10,000 of them will like one of your photos.

Retweets. Likes. Favorites. Comments. Upvotes. Page views. You name it; they’re for sale on websites such as Swenzy, Fiverr and countless others.

Many of these friends live in India, Bangladesh, Romania and Russia—and they are not exactly human. They are bots, or lines of code. But they are built to behave like people on social media sites.

Bots have been around for years and they used to be easy to spot. They had random photos for avatars (often of a sultry woman), used computer-generated names (like Jen934107), and shared utter drivel (mostly links to pornography sites). But today’s bots, to better camouflage their identity, have real-sounding names. They keep human hours, stopping activity during the middle of the night and pick up again in the morning. They share photos, laugh out loud—LOL—and even engage in conversations with one another. And there are millions of them. These imaginary citizens of the Internet have the power,to make celebrities, wannabe celebrities and companies seem more popular than they really are, swaying public opinion about culture and products and, in some instances, influencing political agendas. Read more of this post

Filed under Alternative Assets, Entrepreneurship, Tool Kit Tagged with buying facebook likes, buying instagram friends, buying twitter followers, Fiverr, postaday, social media bots, social media marketing, Swenzy, Zeus

Satyug Gold Purchase Plan

May 1, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters Tomorrow is Akshaya Tritiya,and the gold fever is spreading.A lot of people have seen pricey ads like the one to the left and asked me if its a good deal and whether they should go for it.Here is my answer:

I know neither Shilpa Shetty nor Raj Kundra personally.Obviously they make money.But how steadily is something I don’t know.Nor exactly how much.I see their names associated with a lot of new businesses.They leverage their celebrity status.They have their money in start-ups but just what assets they have and where and how any personal guarantees can be enforced,is something I can’t tell you.And the Satyug Gold Purchase Plan is nothing more than an entrepreneur’s promise to pay.An unsecured promise to pay.And as such I will analyse the product.

All business people,as long as they have a reputation of being reasonably reliable and not thieves, have access to funds from other business people.The credit is unsecured and of short term duration and the interest is over 2% per month.Some negotiation might be possible but not all that much.

Various companies come up with fixed deposit schemes.They offer some financial statements of various levels of reliability for us to peruse.Currently company deposits give you round 13%pa.

In case of the Satyug Gold Purchase Plan,depending on the tenure you choose, you get a discount on the day’s gold price.And a year later you get delivery of the quantity of gold you purchased,irrespective of the then price.So first off, you bear the price risk which will determine your final returns.Then,assuming that the price of gold remains constant at the Rs 28,000 per 10 grams,you get returns ranging from:15% to 9%.And they are neither fixed nor predictable.

So,now its your call if you feel adequately compensated for the risk of total capital loss by these rates.My only advice is to go for the 1 year option if you must.At all costs avoid the multi-year options as even ordinary FDs are better risk adjusted options.

Filed under Paper Assets, Precious Metals Tagged with Akshaya Tritiya, gold purchase plan, Investing In Gold, postaday, Raj Kundra, Satyug Gold Purchase Plan, Satyug Gold Purchase Plan Review, Shilpa Shetty

Gold On Akshaya Tritiya

May 1, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters

Filed under Paper Assets, Precious Metals, Tool Kit Tagged with buying gold on Akshaya Tritiya, Investing In Gold, postaday, returns from buying gold on Akshaya Tritiya for the last 10 years, returns from gold vs Nifty

Enterprise Value

April 30, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters Enterprise value is the figure that, in theory, represents the entire cost of a company if someone were to acquire it. Enterprise value is a more accurate estimate of takeover cost than market capitalization because it takes includes a number of important factors such as preferred stock, debt, and cash reserves that are excluded from the latter metric.

Enterprise value is calculated by adding a corporation’s market capitalization, preferred stock, and outstanding debt together and then subtracting out the cash and cash equivalents found on the balance sheet. (In other words, enterprise value is what it would cost you to buy every single share of a company’s common stock, preferred stock, and outstanding debt. The reason the cash is subtracted is simple: once you have acquired complete ownership of the company, the cash becomes yours).

Frequently called “market cap”, market capitalization is calculated by taking the number of outstanding shares of common stock multiplied by the current price-per-share. Read more of this post