Your answers give rise to 10x more q's from me, but they are too specific and could be answered on a 1-on-1 email basis if the answers were more crucial to me.

Thank you for responding. Always impressed with your blog dedication, and equal treatment that you give to comments.

I'd like to hear how you, Brad, and you, Fred, answer the main question above in this post: (Certainly lots of people “would try it if it were free”, but do they actually want it?)

If a business has not "launched" or reached "the market" yet, is there any more to answering this question, as professional investors, than a simple quick gut check? Is your gut instinct even sufficient to warrant investing in any company (in today's investment economy)?

If there are so many customers willing to try the "new thing" for free or at some cost, how do you assess whether a company's initial success will last? Are there really that many cases you know of where a company failed after a short-lived initial success, because nobody really wanted what they decided to try?

The viability of "freemium" biz models has been debated to death, although I have always sided with "free is never really free". http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff...

Yes, Tom and Carlos are both very capable and were in EIT with me, but from what I do know about PeopleAhead.com, it's not at all related to this concept, although I would welcome them into a discussion with several friends of mine.

My FaceIn concept is not so much a destination website that would compete with Monster, LinkedIn, and Craigslist, but rather an enabler for employers to get their job in front of the eyes of the right applicant pool-by leveraging the places they trust and already hang out, like Facebook.

Why not allow your employees a portion of the profit that you'd typically pay to a staffing firm/agent? Especially if it costs you less time and money for a higher quality set of employee referrals.

how about: "will have to work for a law firm/company for 3 years to pay for law school debt, but will definitely leave within 3 years". Is this something you think she could really count on?

Hey there Jason, nice post, though not very hopeful for the young attorney ranks.

I have a friend who is very smart and contemplating law school for a career related to environmental policy. She's deeply passionate about it and has great work experience already, (only 26/27 I think). This is what she told me when I asked her why she needed a law degree:

- would be happy working her own farm and taking on private clients
- will have to work for a law firm/company for 3 years to pay for law school debt, but will definitely leave within 3 years
- thinks a law degree is a great fall-back (parents talking here), and a prerequisite for most jobs
- hates current job with environmental San Francisco government for a bunch of reasons, mainly the attitudes of her colleagues, and ineffectual reality of their work.

What advice would you give her? Go to law school? Go to a particular law school? Talk to someone?

http://imagdg.com/?p=10
If you follow this link to my blog, you'll see a cool video of what I think is the best of the jet back innovators, from the Go-Fast guys. Best of all its from the test pilot's perspective who broke his leg in the process. The dude has some brass balls. The New Zealand one that you referred to is simply too much expensive equipment.

My hobby is to build the first affordable human-powered-flying-bike. Sounds crazy, yes, but if you follow the link I provided, you'll see that Nasa built two iterative models, and the team's amateur cyclist pedaled it and flew across the English channel (30 miles). Actually, I'm collaborating with two or three folks around the nation on this.

Very funny Vikas. Mixing your natural awkwardness with awkward data was somehow... not awkward.

Over the years, I've read a lot of posts with "failure" in the title, and most try to spin a failure into winning if you can learn/persevere from/through the experience.

While I agree with the basic premise, you know what its like to fail. You don't want to hear this sh!t. The nature of competition is to want to win. Failing to win usually means you lose, and losing sucks. You try to understand why. Rarely is there one moment you can look back at and say, "that's when I fuc$ed up". The US economic downturn is a perfect example of this.

I'm young, (29), and I've seen grown men act like complete babies when they lose. Just the other weekend, I played a game of Taboo with a group of friends, one of which is a super talented corporate executive. When it was his turn to have my team guess the word he was reading, without saying the words he's not allowed to use in his description, he got nervous and totally blew the round. He then lost it, threatening physical violence on the opposing team members that were assigned to catch his violations, and it ruined the atmosphere from then on. He also never apologized the entire weekend.

I've also witnessed youth act with the maturity of someone twice their age. My cousin has two twins, both 8 years old, and their older brother, age 11. I gave them each one R/C helicopter each for Christmas, and the choppers have invisible lasers that can shoot each other down. One of the twins had his chopper shot down and crashed his into a very tall tree. His brothers wouldn't stop playing with their helicopters to help him get his. After crying for a 1/2 hour and whining to his brothers to let him try flying theirs, he came and got me for help. I got several tennis balls for him, and after many attempts, he finally knocked his helicopter out of the tree and was elated when he began flying again. 5 minutes later, his older brother crashed his on the roof, and displayed the same immature tantrum. This time, however, the younger cousin who had crashed his immediately landed his, and to my surprise, thought to use a water hose to lasso and rescue his older brother's chopper.

When you're failing, it sucks, and your reactions are expected to be poor. Taking responsibility for your actions, and having the conviction and courage to do what needs doing will define you to yourself and everyone around you.

then collaborate and fly we shall.

Informative post. Thank you.