Viewing profile — mikepmalai

Storytelling is a very effective way to interview job candidates. It's a good way to tear down inflated candidates to get to the truth, but more importantly it's a good way to unco…

Agreed. Charts are narrative. They are the visualization equivalent of TLDR. It captures the presenter's gist of the data but doesn't tell the whole story.

U.S. could probably address this issue if they moved to a territorial tax regime. It would bring a lot of offshore cash back to the United States (especially in tech) that can late…

So what parts of the "American Dream" are cut and/or subsidized with debt to fit reality? Median household income is about $50K so there's about a $80K shortfall between the $130K …

From what I've seen, low churn businesses tend to have 1 or more of the following characteristics: 1. Network effects: Your product is a key (or highly integrated) part of an indus…

Here's one way to figure out the valuation of your bootstrapped company. If you continue running the business and pursue your current operating plan, how much cash will you have in…

TLDR: 1. Still more runway for smartphone usage - 30% mobile penetration 2. Tablets growing with plenty of penetration opportunity - 400M+ tablets vs. 800M Laptops and 1.6B smartph…

For those interested in getting a good overview of perpetual vs. SaaS business model I highly recommend Dave Kellog's post on the topic. He discusses both the operational and valua…

Turn off the music and scroll through playing Daft Punk's Recognizer on the Tron soundtrack.

When Facebook first reported strong earnings on Oct. 30, the stock was up ~15% in after-hours trading or ~$18 billion in market value. Those gains were basically wiped out when the…

Many of the emerging enterprise centric companies you hear about today initially got their start selling to SMBs/sole proprietors. Instead of targeting large enterprises from the g…

Recruiting is a very interesting process. Unless you happen to be pre-IPO Google/Facebook/Hot Start-up, you are typically constrained by the following: 1) The kind of person you wa…

It seems like with enough time we become institutionalized to a certain way of life and will reshape our happiness to fit perfectly to that world. Oddly, first time I saw the world…

I'd put money on most cleaners not having hobbies =) (Sorry couldn't help myself...I come from a family of very blue collar folks and it's a running joke that your hobby is sleep) …

> To each his own, but would someone really want to keep cleaning professionally even if they were wealthy? I could easily seeing less-than-profitable but creative hobbies being wa…

Agree. While it probably wasn't a big financial win, I think Reddit was a big win for the YC brand and highlighted what the program was all about.

Way to turn an entire generation into a caricature. I think a more important workplace trend is Gen Y managing Gen Y. You're seeing fewer and fewer Gen Y vs. Baby Boomer culture cl…

Maestro looks really interesting. As an excel power user and fan of spreadsheet innovation in general, I always felt that an excel disruptor would probably look and feel more like …

I think there are a couple interesting issues with self-driving cars. 1. Liability: How does an insurance company properly underwrite a self-driving auto policy? How is fault/liabi…

Hybrid. Appears they'll operate separately but All State will play a big role in improving their pricing and claims process. Should be interesting to see how Allstate balances Esur…

I'd focus more on the analytics than the affiliate revenues. Most bloggers I've spoken with on the topic say the visibility/analytics they have on their affiliate revenues is poor.…

For now I have a really long email password, but I'm considering moving my sensitive data/email out of my general email account and into a new email address that requires 2 factor …