A website for Becca's mom
Jul 13, 2011, 10:42a - Business
Becca's mom, Lindy Loya, has been running her own hand therapy center in Arcadia, California for the past 10 years.
What's hand therapy? When you injure your hand or arm and need to recover your ability to use it, your doctor might send you to an occupational hand therapist (that's what Lindy is). Lindy then develops a customized program ... more »
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Gift Cards, Post-Pay Style
Jul 11, 2007, 11:44a - Business
aka
The End of Trading Money for Nothing
Gift cards are lame because you shell out a bunch of cash up-front, narrow its purchasing ability, and give someone a piece of plastic that they may never even use. It'd be easier to just lose $20 on the street and tell your friend "Happy Birthday!" Of course, you could also just ... more »
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Matt
- Jul 12, 2007, 10:02p
Perhaps I am missing something, but what is in it for the merchants in the states where escheat laws do not exist?
nikhil
- Jul 13, 2007, 5:42p
This service would primarily benefit consumers, and secondly credit card companies (as they take a fee on each transaction). Merchants would be forced to adopt this type of gift card due to competition.
For example, right now Best Buy gift cards are really big. If Circuit City, who isn't a leader in the electronics category, adopted post-pay gift cards, consumers may buy them instead of Best Buy gift cards because they're free up-front. So Best Buy would be forced to adopt the post-pay model to compete with other retailers' post-pay gift card. That's the theory, at least - it's unclear what would actually happen without trying it out. It's unclear whether consumers would prefer the post-pay model over the pre-pay, but my guess is that they would. I certainly would.
Mark Herpel
- Jul 14, 2007, 2:16p
Classic Americana. It took a lot of guts to post this.
Mark
DigitalMoneyWorld
omar
- Jul 19, 2007, 11:28p
i was thinking about 10 and 11 before i got to them; namely, thinking that those two things alone make this scheme annoying.
sure, they may never come up for the average person, but if i put $200 post pay on my card, and someone tries to cash that out and i'm over or don't have the cash, then not only do they not get their gift, i have to likely pay some fee to my bank.
this could develop a whole little cottage industry: scan your post-pay gift card here to make sure that it can do what you want it to do..
actually, you make a big point about privacy, but i was thinking that it'd be great if a buyer could check a box and have the merchant send me a picture in my email of what they bought.. "look what sandra bought with your post-paid gift card." of course, they could do this with prepay too but since they are taking my money i might be able to make that a requirement...
anyway interesting things to think about. hope you're not only thinking of where your next meal will come from at this moment.. :)
karl b
- Aug 20, 2007, 10:09p
i like the idea but like omar, #10 and #11 were the exact first and second thoughts I had of being annoying. Would be fine to give a post-paid card with $0 balance for someone you don't like.
i might have missed this but another benefit:
- have multiple persons (gift giverS) pay for the recipient's gift. For example, if Omar and Nikhil want to spend $50 each to buy Karl a gift(lets just imagine this unlikely scenario for this example), when Karl buys something for $100, the first $50 can be charged to Omar's card and the second on Nikhil's - or shared equally. A group of people would love the ease of this concept when buying pooling their money to buy a gift. Each person can provide their credit card info online and get billed later when their one friend uses the gift card. This would make it much easier to get gifts as typically one person is the decision maker in the gift card idea and others just "chip" in later.
Cash is still my preferred gift. My old professor, Joel Waldfogel, at Wharton said it best in his paper: "The deadweight loss of Christmas"
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=107&sortorder=articledate
TC
- Nov 12, 2007, 3:01p
WOW! I hate to offend you but you are thinkig WAY too much. This idea sucks major, MAJOR "you know what." You are making it way too complicated for the consumer to track when these charges come out of their bank accounts. Sounds liek you are more concerned with retailers not making money for nothing. So what. Lets say you give them religiously - a consumer could have money floating out there forever. Do you have nothing better to do with your brain, such as coming up with a solution to stop global warming? Maybe if you put all that energy into something worthwhile then you could do society some good.
Suv
- Oct 17, 2009, 1:08a
Did you do anything your Post Pay Gift card ? Landed up on your post doing some search on GC.
I am at nextinfostrategy@gmail.com ---if you would like to share your comments.
Suv
10/16/09
nikhil
- Dec 12, 2009, 10:31a
I just found some useful data. Apparently the Tower Group keeps track of the gift card market, and says that ~$5 billion will go unspent on gift cards this year. Best Buy and Home Depot each reported ~$40 million of predicted-to-never-be-spent gift card revenue recently.
Press release: http://www.towergroup.com/research/news/news.htm?newsId=5500
NY Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/12money.html
Patents and Prozac
Jan 30, 2007, 1:56p - Business
The core of current economic theory proposes that humans always act in their self-interest, maximizing their "utility function". They will do what brings them the most benefit, be it material, emotional, spiritual, or social in nature. Most capitalists focus almost exclusively on the material benefits, because they're much easier to quantify while the other 3 are more loosy-goosy. But just ... more »
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omar
- Feb 13, 2007, 7:20p
in some ways coke is even worse! coke doesn't have a patent because i'm quite sure you can't patent food recipes. so instead, they have a carefully guarded secret. reverse engineering coke, from what i've read, doesn't really give you what you'd need to actually create coke.
on the other hand, because all the information about prozac is out in the public, even though you can't create prozac without paying eli lilly (at least, until recently) you could look at what they did to innovate, the recipe, etc.. and build on that work. certainly some of that is trade secret, but since so much information about the drug is out in the wild, people can at least use this information and derivative information and innovate, if not use the actual drug itself.
it's not perfect, sure, but on the other hand the potential for increased secrecy if you eliminate IP could grow. i think it's worth examining that angle in more detail.
vivek
- Jul 11, 2007, 9:57a
But when you will take the R&D time period of 10-15 years into account it will all change.
Taking a modest cost of capital of 8% and comparing income with investment (not revenue), you will find that you will have negative return and it does not cover the money invested. Probably you will be better off buying CD's than investing in a risky business such as pharmaceutical drug development.
Just my 2 cents.
nikhil
- Jul 11, 2007, 11:42a
Hey vivek. You bring up a good point, so let's do the math. For simplicity, let's make the following assumptions. These are just estimates that I find potentially reasonable. Changing these assumptions can have a *big* impact on the results, so again I wanted to emphasize that this is all mostly hypothetical.
Some Assumptions:
- Prozac cost $900M to develop, and for simplicity let's assume $100M was spent each year for 9 years (this assumption is based on today's avg drug development cost and period)
- Prozac would have earned $1.44B in profits in the first 4 years on the market (based on no patent protection and net profit margins of 60% on the $2.4B in revenue it earned when it lost it's patent protection - the net profit margin may be a bit high, given marketing and other costs)
Scenario #1 - Conventional investing:
- 8% return (with continuous compounding) on annual investments of $100M for 9 years and compounding for an additional 4 years = $1.89B = (((((((((100 * e^0.08 + 100) * e^0.08 + 100) * e^0.08 + 100) * e^0.08 + 100) * e^0.08 + 100) * e^0.08 + 100) * e^0.08 + 100) * e^0.08 + 100) * e^(0.08*5))
Scenario #2 - Prozac development and sale without patent protection:
- Return of $1.44B on investment of $900M
Conclusion:
$1.89B is more than $1.44B, so you're right, investing at 8% would have yielded a greater return than developing Prozac, given our assumptions. But Prozac still has a decent return, though with a fair bit more risk. I guess my point is that developing Prozac would still yield a profit, and without patent protection it would likely help more people in the long-run (due to greater access, cheaper availability, and development of more derivatives), assuming of course that the incentives are great enough for it to be developed in the first place. A less-than-market return may not be enough of an incentive for some people. Then again, people earn less-than-market returns for a variety of reasons, including social benefit. For example, investing in a microfinance frequently yields only a 3% return, but some people still invest in it. Finally, increasing access by reducing prices may also increase overall revenue, as it may cause greater net consumption. Of course, it's hard to say for sure what would happen without actually trying it. Supply-demand curves are tricky things.
Share the Carpool
Jun 6, 2006, 10:39p - Business
Yes, it's time for another carpool idea - these ideas are about the only good that comes from me commuting 2-3 hours per day.
Today, I was driving to SF on the 101 at around 6:30p. Of course, there's bumper-to-bumper traffic, and of course, the carpool lane is flying by. Then, out of nowhere, I see a car with 4 ... more »
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Anonymous
- Jun 20, 2006, 7:34a
good idea. there's something similar already out there. you can pick up someone (a random) at a pick-up site in, say, berkeley, and ferry them with you to sf.
http://www.ridenow.org/carpool/
Simple Mart - The Fast, Simple Place to Shop
Apr 24, 2006, 11:37a - Business
Every time I go into Target, I end up spending way too much time there. Usually I just need to get some soap, a bottle of contact lens solution, or some detergent. Instead of a quick, simple trip to the market, I'm overwhelmed with a super-sized parking lot, over 15 brands of soap combined into 3-packs, 6-packs, 9-packs, 12-packs, and ... more »
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omar
- Apr 24, 2006, 1:03p
i understand your plea but i have a different solution..
i think i'll buy things like detergent etc.. from now on on amazon.. i'll just need to make sure i keep good track of when i need things!
Roy
- Apr 24, 2006, 1:48p
If you narrowed the product offerings down enough, maybe you could fit it all into a really large vending machine. Then you could put machines in many convenient locations (like ATMs)
Simran
- Nov 7, 2006, 8:48p
I painfully remember my trip to a Costco, different than the one I go to usually. It took me around 40 mins to figure out where the petfood was.
Rent-A-Carpool
Mar 18, 2006, 10:40a - Business
I spend about 3 hours commuting roundtrip to work everyday. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, so here's my latest: rent-a-carpool.
The premise of this business is simple: drivers rent a companion to drive with so they can drive in the carpool lane. You could imagine charging drivers $0.20 per mile or minute for the companion. Each ... more »
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Sachin
- Mar 18, 2006, 11:17p
Sounds cool. but it defeats the purposes of the carpool lane (setting aside the argument of whether caprool lanes work at all).
I seem to remember something about people picking up passengers in order to avoid bridge tolls. But I may be making that up.
David
- Mar 18, 2006, 11:40p
Interesting idea. There's a beautiful Curb Your Enthusiasm ephisode where Larry David picks up a sex worker to ride in the carpool lane to a Dodgers game.
http://www.tv.com/curb-your-enthusiasm/the-car-pool-lane/episode/296200/summary.html
Aki
- Mar 19, 2006, 10:59a
Yeh people pick up others (I think you actually need 3) to cross the Bay Bridge via Casual Commuter (http://www.ridenow.org/carpool/). I know a few people who've done it and say it works, it's just a little weird.
David
- Jun 9, 2006, 3:00p
I search google for you.... hear is the resulting site.
http://rideshare.511.org/carpooling/
Brillant idea, truly
Blogging instead of Jobbing
May 8, 2005, 10:05p - Business
I think it would be cool to be able to blog for a living. I was thinking about this the other day on the long drive to the WC (Walnut Creek) from my job in the MV (Mountain View). In thinking about how I could pull something like that off, it became clear that this problem was but a single ... more »
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Keith Gould
- May 23, 2005, 7:06a
Hi!
Slashdot uses the model that you find most palatable. As a paying subscriber, the ads are gone, but most fun is my news 15 minutes earlier than non-paying subscribers.
Accelerating the Speed of Progress
Apr 16, 2005, 6:59p - Business
Many companies are focused on creating the best user experience. However, they are also focused on ensuring the success of their business. To stay in business and earn high profits, they're interested in creating products and services that have high switching costs. This is great for their business, because it means that users will be less likely to switch to ... more »
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