Another piece of advice (equally for live or non-live TV): Keep mentioning your company name in your answers, even if in a normal conversation you wouldn't. This means if your conversation gets edited heavily (which it will if it's recorded TV) you'll make sure to get your company name in there at least once.
I would characterize the comment as more like "Attitudes towards development practices are a decade behind" (rather that the tech itself necessarily) which sounds pretty accurate[1] for most Japanese companies that are not part of the newer "Gree" wave.
This article is not 100% clear on whether it means "true" investment or just paying for a service, which is not the same thing at all.
But regarding "true" investment, It's something we looked at 18 months ago when raising our Series A. At the time it was impossible due to SEC regs around accredited investors and max number of investors (deeper analysis here: http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2012/05/26/is-crowdfundi...) so we gave up. But it would be great to have simple ways of getting it done.
I just wish someone had edited Will.i.am's quote though... I think he thinks 'reading code' is like reading music or something...
“Here we are, 2013, we ALL depend on technology to communicate, to bank, and none of us know how to read and write code. It's important for these kids, right now, starting at 8 years old, to read and write code.“
You're right to ask the question. But (a) the site isn't optimized for you, and (b) Forbes is trying to make money. So your blog post comes across as (I'm sorry to say) naive.
If you want to find out these kinds of answers for yourself, try running an advertising-supported website for a few months — it could be genuinely interesting.
I completely understand that Forbes is trying to make money and I hope they do. I assure you that I don't expect to read content for free, even if it's free. However, I believe that by encouraging me to read more of their content, in ways that would actually keep me on their site, overall would increase the number of ads that I get to see. Right now I came and I left because I was so put off by the clutter, but like I said at the end of the post, whenever I visit qz.com , I always read a lot more because I don't feel interrupted. If Forbes gave me more content and fewer ads, I would read more and would thereby see more ads. Maybe I am just not in the target audience, since I very very rarely click on the ads.
I don't know qz.com's financials, but the ad:content ratio of a profitable publication is normally a lot higher than what they have. Which suggests they're either strategically de-prioritizing advertising for the short term in order to build up audience, or they are struggling to sell space.
In the long-term, I would expect that for you to continue to enjoy quality content on qz.com, you'll probably be disappointed by an increasing amount of advertising. Whether it's in-between scrolling articles, or in the form of advertorial, or a banner at the top of the screen, it will come :( Such is the way of the world.
I was imagining a combination of metrics (and a heavy use of the Crunchbase API) that would allow you to guess their burn rate and cash remaining. Could be pretty cool. Maybe someone wants to build it?
I've been shocked since I moved to Japan about this. The most in-your-face example for me, was visiting Japanese real estate agents, looking for apartments. They'll often literally hand you a book of fax papers compiled together, four inches thick.
We've managed to survive mostly fax free at our startup and at home — but we own faxes in both places.
But my sense is, until there's something "ten times better" for the aging demographic who loves to fax, it ain't gonna change for the population at large (and it is, uh, large). Tablets (and the ability to write by hand) are one piece of the equation, but the paper-trail piece is harder.
Good post by Mark Suster here: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/09/08/should-investo...