While roaming through the numerous excellent business articles on the Wall Street Journal online, one particular nugget of gold hit me a few days ago. Did you know that the US has the second highest corporate tax rates in the world? That is, unless you’ve started a business in California, Iowa, New Jersey or Pennsylvania (among others) in which case you surpass the levels companies in Japan, the highest overall in the world. A new study from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has confirmed that “corporate taxes are most harmful for growth, followed by personal income taxes, and then consumption taxes.” The study says “investment is adversely affected by corporate taxation,” and that the most profitable and rapidly growing companies tend to be particularly sensitive to high business tax rates.
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There are an ungodly amount of resources out there that says when doing a startup, you should raise money from either friends, family or fools. For the 10 years I’ve been trying to execute that statement, I was only able to do it twice. Unfortunately the amounts I raised were too low to help reduce any risks and ultimately the startup didn’t really go anywhere.
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For most people, doing taxes is a chore and it’s an after-thought reserved for the second week of April. For business owners and people who are expecting a fat return, we start thinking about them in January.
For the early birds, you are in luck. You are the audience that H&R Block and other companies are interested in targeting. Read more…
I’ve got to agree with Wei a bit. Some of these developers look very good. They have a good backgrounds. But they throw a blanket statement at you with a “cover letter” that is far too generic (why do I care if you’ve been developing in .NET for 3 years when I clearly want a LAMP project done?). They try to oversell themselves by giving information that I don’t care about. I’m very happy that you all have ISO 9000 certification, but that’s, for the most part, useful only in manufacturing where an actual product is made. Code isn’t exactly the same thing. Now, tell me you guys use Extreme Programming or Spiral Programming methodoly and I can get a feel for what you’re all about. I’ve sat here for the last 3 hours looking at people who are bidding for our work and I’ve only come acros 3 people that I feel good about. Either the general web programming population isn’t as mature as I would hope or or they are just horrible communicators.
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For a startup, the runway can best be described as the cash flow you have to keep operations afloat. The use of the airplane runway paints a vivid picture because once you reach the end, you are forced to either take flight or crash and burn. Unfortunately for most startups, they usually result in the latter. However, choosing the right plane and having a clear flight plan may help you avoid tragedy.
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