The truth is we didn't want to sell to big pharma, they would have shelved likely. Cures don't make profit, treatments do. This is why we wanted to create a company that could put this out to market in less than ten years, get it approved by the FDA as a breakthrough and have it in market in 5 years. Subsidize it to people with need and low income.
These are the reasons we felt being in control of the destiny of it was the safest bet. But so far, it seems that the easy way out is to sell it, which would mean it would not become what we want it to be, a cure to various diseases.
This shows that you don't understand the market well.
"Harvoni, made by Gilead Sciences, has cure rates of between 94 and 99 per cent. It is the successor to Gilead’s Sovaldi, which has accrued more than $7bn in US sales since it became available in the final quarter of 2013.
Early data suggest Harvoni is poised to be even more of a success."
Also, the goal of ALL cancer treatments is to cure the cancer (other than maybe slow growing prostate cancers and cancers where there is no cure available and the best you can do is palliative care).
I've restarted a citizen journalism blog (as I've been a hack freelance writer/editor for 15 years now). If there's anything I can do to help, by all means. I'm actually working on an interview with this gentleman:
And so the synchronicity of this post hit me. If anything, I want you and your team to know that you are not alone in facing resistance from fears of the medical establishment. We build machines with faulty parts to maintain repeat customers (such as in the contrast of light bulbs made a century past that still do their job, compared to current toys that die out after so many weeks, etc). That mentality started with Edward Bernays, and it has infected every industry- particularly healthcare. But there are black sheep out there, I sincerely want to believe there are persons with means willing and able to challenge the status quo.
If you feel your team has something golden, then word needs to spread. This may even be more important than profit margins, as another commenter alluded to, and you need to really weigh such a thing.
How has Teamspeak worked out for you? We're actually building a similar product that's specifically for teams. I'd be curious to hear your feedback on it as it may be helpful for you. Here's a quick walkthrough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7HBXuhT7Q Let me know if you have any thoughts / ideas.
One of the big downsides of Mumble, Teamspeak and Ventrillo is that they aren't made for business. This means they are really hard to get up and running, which is especially annoying when you are just just trying them out. We're actually working on something similar to these tools but built for business.
We're currently in private beta and I'd be interested to get your input on what we're building. We've got a quick walkthrough here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV7HBXuhT7Q and you can signup for the private beta at http://speak.io
Is your product OS-X focused? One of the big things about Mumble for us was the cross-platform support, we have developers on Linux, OS-X and Windows all talking together every day.
Yes, currently we are OSX only, but that's for this initial private beta. We'll be expanding to other platforms very soon. If you think it could be helpful for your team I'd love to reach back out when we support other platforms :)
There's also a personal element. It's nice to see the faces of the people you work with throughout the day. Certainly has helped to create a tighter social bond on our team.
Hmm what gave you this impression? In fact we've been using Sqwiggle daily since our very first prorotype :) Tbh I don't think we would get half as much done without it, we certainly wouldn't be as connected given that we're a distributed team.
Hey there, Eric here from Sqwiggle. Thanks for the detailed comment! Seems like you may have encountered a bug with busy mode. If you have it enabled, no one should be able to initiate a conversation with you. They can, however, "ping" you, which will allow you to choose to accept the connection. But it's possible I mis-understood what the exact issue was, if so, feel free to clarify :)
We definitely resonate with the general privacy concerns and are working on a mode which will allow you to turn the camera off, which we'll have completed very soon.
If you end up giving it another try, please let me know if you run into any issues or have any further feedback. Thanks!
I meant to drop you guys a message a while back, but just never found a moment to do it.
There was a redesign a few months ago, notably this was when the camera became inactive if you were alone in the chat room. The issue with the busy state is, prior to this software release/version the busy flag was never removed unless you removed it or initiated a chat (after you accept the ping).
After the redesign, the busy flag was removed when any of the following conditions occurred:
1. You manually removed the busy flag.
2. A video chat is initiated (you are pinged and accept the call)
3. You became the only person in a chat room.
As I mentioned, it's been about 2 months since I last used Sqwiggle, so I'm not sure if the above is still true.
Thanks for trying out Sqwiggle! Solid feedback, we're working hard to make the experience more seamless with the OS. Would love to hear if you have any other thoughts or ideas. Let us know at howdy at sqwiggle dot com.
I love it too! I think you hit on a really important point. Working from home drastically improves quality of life since you're able to interact more with people you care about. It also helps you develop more of a passion for your work when you're not being micromanaged. Helps you to feel more free and in control.
Great that you're trying out Sqwiggle. I'm actually one of the co-founders so please let me know if there's anything we can do to improve your experience. Also any feedback you have is super helpful!
Thanks a ton! Indeed having an interesting product helps, but what good is an interesting product if your email gets chucked straight into the trash because it's too long, or seems too arrogant? ;)
