Credible consistent rumors, all of which I always get very indirectly, are that Airbnb’s internal financial projections conclude that the company would need to file to go public immediately to actually have the IPO before the end of this year.  The alternative is that the company will run out of cash and financial resources to pay its expenses and long-term liabilities beyond the end of this year.  That would necessarily imply that Airbnb needs to file for federal bankruptcy protection to keep creditors away from what few assets it has while it attempts to recapitalize and restructure its debt.  The Airbnb saga has always looked Ponzi-esque, with the final scheme being a public offering to defraud retail investors so previous investors can dump their shares real quick.  The lead-up to all of this is a series of events that have happened within days, not months.  Within the last 150 days, all of the following events have occurred: Continue reading →

Sometime early 2013 was probably “cultural peak geek”, in my opinion.  Wired thought it was in 2016.  CNN suggested cultural peak geek was 2019.  I did a list of cultural events and their dates, put them in order, and concluded that the actual peak was likely 2013.  That’s when being any kind of nerd was probably as cool as it got in mainstream society.  President Barack Obama had just begun his second term as the first black president of the United States.  Facebook had its IPO the previous May.  Apple iPhone 5, the last iPhone overseen by Steve Jobs, had been introduced in September.  The Big Bang Theory was in its sixth season of what would be a total of twelve seasons.  Comic Book Men was a new show about pop culture memorabilia.  The King of the Nerds game show to test knowledge of nerd culture, hosted by Curtis Armstrong and Robert Carradine, premiered in early 2013.  The Silicon Valley television show filmed its pilot episode on University Avenue in Palo Alto in March 2013 (I was there).  Game of Thrones was in its third season in 2013, still true to the original already-in-print books by George R. R. Martin.  The toast by Walder Frey during The Red Wedding (arguably the series’ most-remembered mainstream meme) possibly signified the exact moment when geekdom peaked.  And in 2013 so many wonderful irreplaceable iconic people were still with us (in no particular order):  Stan Lee, Stephen Hawking, Larry Harvey, Roger Ebert, Robin Williams, Harold Ramis, Sasha Shulgin, Wes Craven, Philip Seymour Hoffman, David Bowie, Gene Wilder, Alan Rickman, Kenny Baker, Carrie Fisher, Michael Parks, Verne Troyer, Adam West, Paul Allen, Peter Mayhew, Denise Nickerson, Ram Dass, Max von Sydow, Rutger Hauer.  All of that is the past.  This is kind of a sobering post, especially at this moment in the history of humanity.  But moments like this are when we must remember the good times and stay motivated about the future. Continue reading →

Yes, a pee bottle.  A bottle in which you can pee.  A pee bottle could in fact save your life.  Seriously.  With an increasingly limited number of public places where people can do anything (relax, explore, browse, shop, eat, etc), there is an ever more limited number of public bathrooms to “go number one”.  That means that everybody is forced to use the few public bathrooms still available.  Using those bathrooms is basically Russian roulette for COVID-19.  On road trips, going to the bathroom also necessarily means getting out of your vehicle in unfamiliar surroundings.  Even if you have a tour bus or RV or camper, a pee bottle can save you from having to fill up your holding tank unnecessarily.  A pee bottle also prevents possible accusations, whether male or female, that you disturbed the peace by exposing yourself in public.  And more and more people are going to drive-in movies, because walk-in movie theaters are still closed.  Using a pee bottle means not having to get out of the car and miss some of the movie.  Whether male or female, here’s how to appropriate yourself a good pee bottle. Continue reading →

Excitement about a new era of computing intersected the end of the millenium.  MP3’s, CD burners, DVD’s, hardware-accelerated 3D, and broadband.  Computing started to get really fun for non-nerds.  Consumer computers became powerful enough that there started to be specialized systems like the home theater computer and gaming computer.  The “computer” started to become what we now call a “device”.  Steve Jobs envisioned it in his “Digital Hub” strategy.  Bill Gates announced it in his keynote at Consumer Electronics Show.  As everybody partied their way into Y2K, I had the best custom system for its day.  And it would be my last truly personal computer.  Servers and networking became the popular interests for many techies.  Along with this new technology came Maximum PC, a new magazine for the new generation. Continue reading →

(Editor’s note: A conscience is consistently lacking in the startup industry.  Compliance may be that conscience.  I have more to write about compliance as a conscience, and this essay is a good foundation.  This is in thesis form for a writing credit in my second law degree, a post-doctorate Master of Laws (LL.M.) at Delaware Law School.  My professor was Aleksandra “Ola” M. Tucker, JD, ACAMS, an expert in Corporate Compliance in the Financial Services Industry and founder of Compliance Notes.)

Disruption of traditional industries by companies in the startup industry leads to new innovative solutions to existing problems, but that innovation also results in consequences to society by ignoring existing laws and regulations.  The startup industry consists of new companies, often just a few co-founders and an idea, and the investor network that funds those companies.  Traditional companies compete on a level playing field that is made up of well-established laws and regulations in their industry.  Startups, unlike traditional companies, take new approaches that often ignore those laws.  Sometimes the result of ignoring laws and regulations is innovative solutions and the creation of wealth.  However, ignoring laws often has costs both predictable and unpredictable.  A comprehensive compliance program is the solution to allowing startup companies to innovate while also complying with the laws and regulations that apply to everybody. Continue reading →

YouTube just turned fifteen years old. That means there was no YouTube before 2005.  And how quickly we forget that YouTube was controversial in the beginning.  YouTube was considered mostly pirate music videos, used as much as 80% of the Internet bandwidth traffic (which was in 2005 still mostly text and low-resolution images), and had no business model.  YouTube was also Google’s first major acquisition.  Google’s biggest single expense, for years after acquiring YouTube, was subsidizing all the bandwidth to watch all those uploaded videos.  Now over a billion hours of video is watched every day on Youtube and the site routinely creates new Internet celebrities and millionaire influencers.  But to get to YouTube, and communication apps like Zoom, other technologies needed to exist.  Back in the day, those technologies include QuickCam, CU-SeeMe, RealPlayer, MP3, Winamp, and DivX/XviD. Continue reading →

Or at least maybe they oughta.  After ten years, I’m disgusted with consistently hearing from many founders after they “do Y Combinator” that they wouldn’t have wasted any time on it at all if they had known the firm effectively belongs to the computer scientist’s wife (Jessica Livingston) instead of the computer scientist (Paul Graham).  There seems to be a misunderstanding that I’m frustrated about not doing Y Combinator.  Although I’ve applied, just to have the experience of applying, I would never take that firm as an investor.  For one thing, I’m already synonymous with the term “y combinator”.  For two, I don’t need the firm’s $80k (or whatever it is now).  For three, many people that have gone through the program anytime recent say that it has turned into twelve weeks of nothing more than the firm teaching everybody (falsely) why Airbnb is a great company and a great investment opportunity.  Without even bringing it up, founders says if they had known the real details of this firm upfront, and could do it over, that they would skip the stupid dinky Y Combinator shit and go to a real venture capital firm instead.  The sentiment from founders that have just finished the program is increasingly that they want to sue the venture capital firm to get the equity back and then politely tell the venture capital firm to fuck off.  This post includes my well thought-out criteria for writing it, the real history of the venture capital firm, and why I very sincerely think they should do the right thing and just go out of business immediately permanently.  I really don’t want to write this post, but after ten years I feel obligated to do so for the greater good. Continue reading →

Airbnb hosts can’t pay the rent on their “Airbnb rentals” properties because nobody in the world can travel and cities/states/countries are indefinitely banning short-term rentals (less than 90 days).  Simply put, Airbnb hosts are collectively about to, or already in the process of, break thousands of leases on their rental properties, move everything out of the properties (furniture, appliances, fixtures, etc.), and completely abandon those properties to avoid having to pay rent out of their own pocket.  This issue with hosts right now reflects the fundamental problem with Airbnb itself: that Airbnb has never owned any of the properties listed on its service and the overwhelming number of hosts don’t own the properties, either.  Airbnb announced a Host Relief Fund and claims to have $250 million dollars set aside to compensate hosts for cancelled bookings.  I personally doubt the company has $250 million dollars at all.  My opinion is that the Host Relief Fund is chasing bad money with good and a futile attempt to prevent the inevitable. Continue reading →