Metro Link Wants To Be Shown The Money 45
An Anonymous Coward writes: "I saw this article today in Linuxgram. It talks about how Linux Global Partners apparently has left Metro Link, one of its investments, high and dry. Wonder if this will affect Ximian or Gnucash." Metro Link, it turns out, has been doing pretty well in the meantime, but hasn't seen much of the $5 million dollars it expected from LGP, and as a result has been investigating other partners. The LGP portfolio lists Metro Link, but looks like it hasn't been updated in a while.
LGP is DOA (Score:1)
Lets face the facts.
LGP is run by a mayor of some city in NY. This is not even his full time job. How many VC's can run a fund and a city at the same time. GET REAL.
LGP does not have a great deal of technical people in house from what I can see, they used MS FrontPage for a web site for over a year????????
LGP focused on the desktop and since that has gone nowhere they are in trouble.
If you look at their portfolio they have had one decent company, and that company still has not even had any revenue.
I would think that these are a nice bunch of guys, but they are way out of their home court. They really have no clue how to make raise money and if they can not even fully fund what they have already promised this means that they do not have even the cash to operate.
What gets interesting is how does a VC shop go out of business.
They will get completely diluted in all further rounds in their companies due to the pay to play rule.
I would venture to say that people like metrolink has a court case to sue them for damages, depending on the contract that LGP wrote them.
They have some equity that has value, but it is all in Ximian, and that is private and with Easel announcing that they are going broke me has to ask what the Ximian equity is worth.
The whole of this is that I would expect them to implode, and take a few companies down with them. This will be a nasty sight, but in the whole the only people that will suffer are their investors, and the companies that they took.
LGP... (Score:5)
You're dead wrong (Score:2)
Let me elaborate on an example from the book. We all "know" that doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, etc, are more wealthy than the average citizen. Right? Wrong. A higher income (or inheritance, etc) does not have a positive correlation to wealth (net worth after discounting gifts and factoring in taxes). For example, a doctor may earn substantially more than the average person, but he also spends an equally large amount on "lifestyle." After all, he can't possibly match the image of a good doctor if he doesn't drive a fancy European car, live in a fancy home in an upscale neighborhood, golf at exclusive clubs, etc.
The examples go on. I highly reccomend the book above. If you aren't living in the way the book suggests, chances are that you may have a high income, but will never be truly wealthy.
That's just my $0.02, but I think that it's probably the sagest comment attached to the entire article.
if ($user =~ m/shaldannon/i) {
print "\n-- $user
}
Re:Good news. (Score:1)
Re:You're dead wrong (Score:2)
Being able to successfully plan for the future is the issue moreso than money. My own mother wasted an East Coast prep school education (scholarship) merely because she was unwilling to deal with a little government beaurocracy when dealing with a state university.
My wife now gets flack for not driving a pointlessly more expensive automobile or otherwise showing the signs of conspicuous consumption. The white trash she works with expects her to squander all of her disposable income on status symbols. They don't understand that she would rather invest now than wasting money on a Lexus.
That is why those people will never amount to anything and just may drag their children down with them into the mire. It is quite possible for "wage slaves" to improve their condition.
However, it requires something that is not often encouraged in this culture: restraint.
Building wealth requires not blowing all of your money and spending wisely. Already having money only makes the process easier. However, you still need to exercise that restraint in order for anything positive to happen.
Re:When will they figure it out? (Score:2)
Bruce
GnuCash, other portfolio companies are effected (Score:4)
It's another market casualty, unfortunately. I shut down my own venture company (which is not to be confused with LGP) a while back, due to the investment climate.
Bruce
Re:Good news. (Score:2)
How did they the uneducated public "really screw things up?" They invested in things that looked promising (the internet,) and got burned when the profit models were exposed as bad ideas (by the lack of profits.) So what got screwed up? The markets continue to buy and sell stock.
By pushing the stock market up to an immense bubble due to overinvesting in tech stock, similar to what was done with railroads in the mid-1800s, radio in the 1920s (remember the bust of october 29th 1929?), and various other tech waves at other points. There's presently a few trillions of dollars too much in the public stock market compared to discounted future earnings; if any of the old patterns hold, these will need to go over time - and will possibly go as a very sharp drop.
Presently the value of the US stock market is larger than the GDP - while historical data shows it as always regressing towards a value of 50% of the GDP, with large swings on each side.
Eivind.
old skool day traders (Score:1)
ALOT of people call themselves day traders are people who have a bit of money(some people call this alot of money) and want to invest it they have a stack of saveing and they want to do something with the rest so they kit themselves out with an account on what seems to be an ebay lookalike for shares and start tradeing
old skool traders work for banks they have fund mangers who ask them to get prices on this that and the other
they have research people to produce graphs look up stats they then armed with this trade share hedgeing their bets and takeing risks but they ALWAYS make money
thats why they are employed by the bank
yeah sure sometimes they make losses but that is soaked up by profits (except for Nick who was a silly boy)
the size of the bonus depends on your profits !
these people are makeing you profits from buying good stocks and waiting for the dividends as well selling
oh and please dont play Jim Clark creation of weath by engineers card like its new its been going on since the 1870
regards
john jones
where did the money come from ? (Score:3)
was this a fund that people bought into or a VC setup ?
good companys are listed but GNU cash has a FO ?
I dont think so they are all FO's (-;
geed like the Bonds Brokers in the 80's
but this time we cant blame the fed its ALL the VC's fault and the so called analysts on bloomberg
regards
john jones
markets may go up as well as down
Re:How ironic... (Score:1)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Anti-Commercial Commercialist (Score:2)
Unfortunately, in an environment where these types dominate, it becomes difficult for a decent business to do well, or even survive. But that isn't the fault of the GNU license. That's because their competition is using theft to stock their inventories.
Legitimate ways to do business under the GNU license:
1) Create something new, and sell it. If it's based on a GNU product, you'll need to be selling just your contribution, and include the source code, but that's only fair. That's the cost of stocking your warehouse with parts for free. The amount that you can charge will be limited by the potential size of the market. Any one of your customers could potentially set himself up as your competition. So you need to adjust your pricing so that this isn't a viable plan.
2) Service. You are in the ideal position to supply upgrades, additions, add-ons, etc. You don't even need to develop them yourself. You can just offer to help your customers develop them, and, incidentally act as a backup storage fore their code (which is, as it must be, GNU licensed). So you can sell consulting, upgrading, etc. This is an low profit/low overhead business segment, but it's available, and by developing the software you are already positioned to move into it.
3) Distribution: This is the current big one. It's already pretty highly occupied by companies, so you probably don't want to move into it. At least not as your primary plan. Possibly as a specialty, rather like KRUD (Kevin's Red Hat Uber Distribution?) which specializes in CD with all the latest patches, with everything pre-tested to work AND be secure.
4) Consultant. Another popular choice, that works well for some. Here the GNU software that you release was probably developed while working for someone else and being paid for it. If you have to offer a cheaper rate to get the GNU license on your software, you can charge it of to advertising.
5) Grad Student. This isn't exactly commercial, but it isn't exactly not. Here the purpose of the GNU license is to act as an advertisement for yourself. Also, it may look good in your portfolio. And sometimes you can work it into your thesis.
These are only the options that occur off the top of my head. I haven't thought seriously about them. Many of them probably wouldn't sustain a very large business. So? Why should that be bad? Free Software is intended to promote freedom, and this generally means lots of small groups that work together rather than one large group. Saying that it doesn't support large companies is very different from saying that it's anti-commercial.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Good news. (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with balance of payments. A company can make plenty of money in overseas operations without importing or exporting squat.
Suppose I'm Kodak, and manufacture my CD-R's in Mexico, and sell them worldwide. When sold in the US they look like imports to your statistics, and thus negative. However to Kodak they are a positive part of their revenue and profit picture.
Re:fallacy of composition (Score:2)
Repatriation of profits certainly is included in the c/a, however profits are only a fraction of the total economic activity represented by the foreign manufacture and importation of goods. The net c/a from this activity is clearly negative.
What is important if the ratio of domestic revenues to total revenues. Clearly that is falling for large American companies, which of course are those listed in the public markets. Thus relying on historic GDP - market valuation ratios to gauge whether a stock is overvalued is misleading because it neglects the stake in offshore economic activity such companies have.
Re:Good news. (Score:5)
Historically a US company's market was almost all domestic. That is not true any more. A large US company often has 50% of it's revenue offshore.
Correcting for offshore economic activity and the 50 year average of 70% puts the current GDP/valuation at no more than 10% above historic norms.
Re:Metro Link is _awesome_ (Score:1)
Not necessarily (Score:1)
-------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
Perhaps not, but they sure do contribute. (Score:5)
Well, in terms of politics, they did donate the modular X architecture used in XFree86 4.0, which really cleaned up XF86s design and made closed source drivers possible (while some might not appreciate this, a lot pf people do).
In terms of technical brilliance, while Metro X currently lack some of the newer (currently nonstandard) X extensions that XF86 have developed, their X server does do a fine job of raw X performance versus the free competition, in nonpartial benchmarks.
Its a give and take relationship. I'm not saying Xfree86 doesn't rock, because they do. But so does MetroX.
Well, like everything else (Score:4)
Re:"X Windows system flame"? (Score:2)
No, the licenses are the same. The primary difference is the goals - the X.org release is designed to be a portable, stable, sample implementation for the X.org members to use as the basis for their X implementations.
XFree86 is an implementation based on the X.org sample implementation (XF 4.0.3 is based on X.org X11R6.5.1) with support for a large variety of hardware devices added, as well as some experimental extensions, such as the Render extension used for anti-aliasing.
Re:"X Windows system flame"? (Score:3)
Interesting business plan.... (Score:3)
This shit should NOT BE HAPPENDING! And I think that the reporting on stories like this is like reporting on the moron who went out and kept buying lottery tickets because the tarot card reader told him he'd win the big one, selling his house, car, and cashing in savings bonds to finance the effort that fortunately was successful. It's like a fable with a lesson you don't want your kids to learn.
Glad they pulled it off... (Score:5)
Unfortunately, they also chose a poor VC, and the VCs couldn't raise the money when one of the groups involved dropped out. The company that the client had invested in laid off 80% of its staff and was looking to sell its technology.
It's a shame. Slimy VCs screw a lot of businesses.
Re:LGP is DOA (Score:1)
Anonymous Coward says:
Pfui - a statement like this displays massive ignorance. A lot of smaller municipalities in the US are run by their city managers while the mayor (who may not actually rank the city council) are the ones who serve as the interface between the worker bees and the business community. Even so, being elected doesn't necessarily mean that you have to work very hard at it... read up on accounts of the Commander-In-Chief's work ethic, if you're curious about that.
Pardon the off-topicness of this post... I'd just like to point out that the assumption that all politicians work at politics full-time, or that they actually govern, is incredibly naive.
Metro Link is _awesome_ (Score:1)
guess you missed this part (Score:1)
Re:Good news. (Score:5)
How did they the uneducated public "really screw things up?" They invested in things that looked promising (the internet,) and got burned when the profit models were exposed as bad ideas (by the lack of profits.) So what got screwed up? The markets continue to buy and sell stock.
I've a bunch of friends that bought Amazon or whatever, and complain to me on phone about the current price. My response is almost always the same: "why did you buy it? what was your reasoning as to why it's going to worth more five years from now?"
As we get back to having financial markets run by people who understand them and who are competent to decide which companies deserve investment, we'll see some real, solid prosperity again -- no mirage, but real creation of real wealth -- for the first time since the 1980's.
Well, there are two issues here: financial markets are "run" by providers of liquidity: they buy and sell in short term, hopefully pocketing enough spread to stay in business. The poeple deciding that companies deserve investment tend to have longer horizons: the day-to-day market moves don't affect their decisions. Companies live or die based on profits, not what the market is doing.
This ain't a crapshoot guys... do the math: look at capitalization, earnings, and sales. Avoid money-pits, buy real, underpriced businesses.
Re:"X Windows system flame"? (Score:1)
Re:"X Windows system flame"? (Score:1)
Re:"X Windows system flame"? (Score:3)
Re:When will they figure it out? (Score:2)
Microsoft does the same thing. Pay for some things, others are free.
Open mouth, insert foot.
Re:Good news. (Score:1)
If true, your theory would have the implication that the USA was selling more goods and services overseas than it imported. This is not true, to the tune of several billion dollars, and has not been for the last five years.
fallacy of composition (Score:1)
And your Kodak example does not work; repatriation of overseas profits is a positive item in the current a/c
Re:Propaganda (Score:1)
" the tax structure justly puts the burden of public finance on those who benefit from it (the poor) rather than on those who don't (the rich). The rich receive absolutely nothing from the government. They should not be expected to pay for somebody else's goodies."
What kind of ignorance is this? I suppose that the rich don't use roads, they don't have SS#'s, they don't have drivers licences, they don't vote, they don't live in organised cities, they don't use the police services, they don't use the courts or the law system, they don't use any public infrastructure at all do they? Are you ignorant or was this just a 'type-before-you-think' post? only a very small fraction of taxes go towards welfare (i assume thats what you mean the rich shouldn't pay for huh?). I guess the poor, who have no money, should be the ones to pay for all the taxes with their non-existant money.
I'm not going to argue whether or not welfare is right however theres no way in hell you're gonna convince me that those with more money shouldn't pay a larger share towards public infrastructure because the more money you have, the less important it is to your standard of living. To a rich person, $50 might be nothing more than a small luxury while to someone less fortunate it may mean the difference between going hungry for a week or eating well.
What is meant by the phrase "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is a two-way feedback system. In a capitalist society, money = power. The rich are more powerful than the poor. They not only get their way more often, they also have money to invest and generate even more funds (the topic?). That's the way it works. You need money to make money most of the time. We're all equal under the law, but everyone knows damn well that money buys a HELL of a lot of equality.
So... don't come around with your snobby pole + arse attitude generated by your greedyness and fear. Maybe you should try living in the shoes of one of those you fear for a while to see what hardships they go through and that the cards are OFTEN stacked against them. Maybe then you would give up yelling 'THEFT THEFT' when a man steals a loaf of bread from your bread factory so he does not go hungry one more night.
"just connect this to..."
BZZT.
Makes me think of a different AC (Score:1)
-- CEO Nwabudike Morgan,
"The Centauri Monopoly"
Jaysyn
Anti-Commercial Commercialist (Score:1)
Is no one else bothered by this at all? First we say 'screw comercialization' then we say 'invest in out project'. I could understand this from BSDs which have a commercial-friendly licenses, but little funding. But GNU is essentially spitting in the face of corporations, so why are they so desperate for corporate funding? It's like Apple asking Intel for a donation of millions.
Re:Good news. (Score:2)
I think it would probably be more accurate to say "By its very nature money flows towards those who *have it* and know how to get it and keep it (The Rich) and away from those who do not (The Poor)." It's a lot easier to have your money work for you when you have some money to "play with", so to speak... risking capital is generally a luxury afforded to those who have capital to risk.
Not that the poor can't become rich with sufficient skill or luck (or the rich can't become poor with vastly insufficent skill or luck), but it's easier to make a million bucks when you already have that first million, even if you just inherited it from daddy...
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Re:Well, like everything else (Score:1)
"X Windows system flame"? (Score:3)
Is this hyperbole, or is MetroLink responsible in some basic way for XFree86 and X.org?
My own experience with MetroLink hasn't been so good: a few years ago, I ordered a copy of their "accelerated" X server, but it arrived without acceleration support, and they never delivered the promised update.
Re:When will they figure it out? (Score:1)
When will they figure it out? (Score:4)
Re:You're dead wrong (Score:1)
For example, a doctor may earn substantially more than the average person, but he also spends an equally large amount on "lifestyle."
Now compare this Doctor to a minimum wage slave. Because the Doctor has more disposable income, this gives him access to far more power and influence than the guy who flips burgers for a living. The Doctor can take percentage of his income and leverage it, using the power and influence he has, into more money, power and influence. While the poor sucker working at Burger King, spends most if not all his money on survival. The reason for this is the basic nesseccities of life cost the same regardless of your income, a gallon of gas costs the same no matter what. This is also why economic down turns can have devistating effects on a poor person and almost no effect on a weathy one.
Case in point, If the person who makes 50K a year lost 90% of his net worth he will be homeless within a month and not be able to feed himself or his family. if someone making 500K a year lost 90% of his net worth, it would hurt, but he could still live on 45K a year. If a person who makes 50 million a year lost 90% of his net worth, he would still be wealthy at 4.5 million a year, and Bill Gates wouldn't even feel a difference in his lifestyle. If getting rich was as easy as buying a book, then everyone would be rich, as it is the only people who get rich off them are the people who write them.
Re:Good news. (Score:5)
We've had a few years where the uneducated public got into the stock market and really screwed things up.
I half agree with you here, there are members of the unwashed masses who got into the stock market and made very wise decisions, picking good stocks while they were low and sat on them, while avoiding to IPO rush. On the other hand there are the Day Traders, these are the people who tried to cash in on IPO's and make money on minute changes in the stock market, these people got what they deserved. It is an interesting stastic I read some time ago in Time Magazine, they said that 90% of Day Traders loose money, and the same 90% would have made money in 1999, if they had sat on the stocks they had in January all the way through December.
no mirage, but real creation of real wealth -- for the first time since the 1980's.
Maybe the 80's aren't such a good example, in the 90's we had Day Traders, but in the 80's we had Junk Bonds. Ever hear about the Savings and Loan bailout, that cost tax payers a few billion dollars. The only real fact about wealth which is not a mirage is the old saying "The Rich get richer and Poor get poorer". By its very nature money flows towards those who know how to get it and keep it (The Rich) and away from those who do not (The Poor). This fact has not changed regardless of which party is power or who the President is throughout the world and throughout history.
How ironic... (Score:1)
Heh.
Re:Good news. (Score:1)
Actually, "By its very nature money flows towards those who ..." control in some way access to a
necessary or desirable resource. This may be by
means of controlling the results of
production (not really the means as Marx thought).
This may be by thuggery, or by organizing workers,
etc.
Having money already only helps in such matters. More generally, those who have been able to get rich in the past will (usually) be able to get richer in the future and those who have not done so are not likely to do so in the future.
No amount of skill is sufficient if someone else controls the results of applying that skill.
That first million is useful in acquiring the vital control that I mentioned above. It may in fact be vital in acquiring that control (by means including owning Marx's "means of production" or owning distribution channels or by means of buying influence with a goverment that is controlling or rgulating the normal flow of commerce.