I don't think this is hard, it is possible online, no phone calls nor paper communication.
In Germany if you want to cancel anything, you need to send personally signed letter three full months in advance.
And most of the things run as two year long contacts. If you miss the the date three months before your contact ends you get another two years automatically.
-Europe is fragmented market. It is not given that German software will be gladly accepted and used in France, Italy or UK and vice versa. There are barriers there that does not exist in the US.
-The capital market and the stock market are not as developed as in USA in terms of market participants and available funds. Going public is unlikely event. If it happens, it would not get a lot of publicity and it would not raise as much money. Some European companies prefer to go public in the US.
-There is public mistrust about big software companies. Many people are afraid that big software companies will steal and abuse their personal data.
-There is also mistrust about venture capital and generally big finance institutions that they somehow "control" the economy, exploit small family businesses, and just make money on mistreating normal people.
I know that some of this sounds ridiculous, but it is true for astonishing number of people in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. UK is a little better, but they mistrust everything about the rest of Europe.
> Many people are afraid that big software companies will steal and abuse their personal data
Cant say they are wrong. But its also a business concern for enterprise companies everywhere - US or EU so you cant really say this is an issue here. More of a requirement.
>exploit small family businesses, and just make money on mistreating normal people.
Most of the people who think so are being very stupid.
> Most of the people who think so are being very stupid.
VCs make a profit by selling startups to big corporations or big investors via IPO. Most startups have negative cash flow and make negative profits by the time they are acquired by a corporation or investors.
This means that VCs make a profit by creating negative value. Most VC-funded startups with a successful exit never become profitable.
Those few startups that do manage to IPO and eventually become profitable are usually those who happen to have a monopoly over some industry; in other words, they are only profitable because consumers have no other alternatives to choose from; so they get to set the price.
Believing that VCs create negative value is not stupid. Not seeing that it might be the case is what's stupid.
I see what you mean. But the actual point was about exploiting family businesses and mistreating people. I am not sure what it has to do with your negative value argument.
I have been doing on and off value investing as a hobby investor for 8-9 years now and can share some of the mistakes to avoid.
Company valuation is just as important as before. It is just the way it is done has changed quite a lot since Graham.
1. Company Growth (past and future) has to be incorporated in the valuation. Company with P/E 15 growing at 2% per year is more expensive than company with P/E 30 growing at 40%. This is the reason FB and GOOG are actually a value plays nowadays.
2. As already said the value of Intellectual Property, Software and Human Capital can't be easily read from the balance sheet alone. Yet these are the most valuable assets that yield highest returns.
3. If the founder of the company is CEO and large shareholder the company is worth a lot more than if not.
4. Doing all this research on your own is hard and very time consuming. There are some excellent paid stock newsletters with great track record that can do this for you for 300$ per year or less.
Do yourself a favor and use them. Your family will thank you.
Big surprise: people born rich will have more money no matter if they have college degree or not.
What the article doesn't say is that all other things being equal it is still worth it to have college education.
I don't think that the right way to motivate poor people is to tell them that even with degree they might be worse off than the rich. Having a degree will be better for them than not having it.
Learning always pays off - be it in college or not.
