猪会飞

You have to get from point A to point B. You don’t know if you can get there. What would you do?

Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?

What method would you use to look up a word in a dictionary?

Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announce that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens?

You have eight balls all of the same size. 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you fine the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?

How do you cut a rectangular cake into two equal pieces when someone has already taken a rectangular piece from it? The removed piece an be any size or at any place in the cake. You are only allowed one straight cut.

How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

What gives you joy?

Mike has $20 more than Todd. How much does each have given that combined they have $21 between them. You can’t use fractions in the answer. Hint: This is a trick question, pay close attention to the condition)

How many times a day a clock’s hands overlap?

Two MIT math graduates bump into each other. They hadn’t seen each other in over 20 years.
The first grad says to the second: “how have you been?”
Second: “Great! I got married and I have three daughters now”
First: “Really? how old are they?”
Second: “Well, the product of their ages is 72, and the sum of their ages is the same as the number on that building over there..”
First: “Right, ok.. oh wait.. I still don’t know”
second: “Oh sorry, the oldest one just started to play the piano”
First: “Wonderful! my oldest is the same age!” Problem: How old are the daughters?

If you look at a clock and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands? (The answer to this is not zero!)

Four people need to cross a rickety rope bridge to get back to their camp at night. Unfortunately, they only have one flashlight and it only has enough light left for seventeen minutes. The bridge is too dangerous to cross without a flashlight, and it’s only strong enough to support two people at any given time. Each of the campers walks at a different speed. One can cross the bridge in 1 minute, another in 2 minutes, the third in 5 minutes, and the slow poke takes 10 minutes to cross. How do the campers make it across in 17 minutes?

If the probability of observing a car in 30 minutes on a highway is 0.95, what is the probability of observing a car in 10 minutes (assuming constant default probability)?

In a country in which people only want boys, every family continues to have children until they have a boy. if they have a girl, they have another child. if they have a boy, they stop. what is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

You have an empty room, and a group of people waiting outside the room. At each step, you may either get one person into the room, or get one out. Can you make subsequent steps, so that every possible combination of people is achieved exactly once?

A USA Today article reveals that MySpace has now reached 47.3 million members. The Blog Herald also reports that MySpace "is growing by an amazing 160,000 new users a day, according to MediaPost.

USA Today gives a rundown of numbers for SNS sites, c/o comScore Media Metrix. They note that "in the past year, the number of visitors to MySpace (from homes, workplaces and colleges) has skyrocketed, making it the Web’s top social networking site:

MySpace.com
Nov. 2004: 4.9 million
Nov. 2005: 26.7 million

Facebook.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 11.1 million

Xanga.com
Nov. 2004: 5.8 million
Nov. 2005: 7.9 million

Bebo.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 1.5 million

Friendster.com
Nov. 2004: 966,000
Nov. 2005: 1.5 million

Tribe Networks Inc.
Nov. 2004: 62,000
Nov. 2005: 515,000

Linkedin.com
Nov. 2004: 123,000
Nov. 2005: 354,188

Orkut.com
Nov. 2004: N/A
Nov. 2005: 83,000

Source: comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks, Inc.

For some reason, USA Today didn't include LiveJournal in their chart. According to official stats, LiveJournal currently has 9 million user accounts - but only a little under 2 million are "active". That would put LJ at number 3 or 4 in the above chart.

The demographics of SNS sites are interesting. LiveJournal users are skewed to 16-20 years and are 2/3 female. MySpace is said to be mostly < 22 yrs and general consensus is that it's a younger user base than LJ.

All of these SNS services have a very young user base, so in many ways it's a battle for the hearts and minds of Generation Y and beyond. MySpace may be winning in numbers, but recent controversy shows they can't get complacent.

Venture capital takes ownership away from you; do you really want to do that?

It was 1999, at the height of the boom, a few months before the bust of April 2000 so he can be forgiven. I stood before a crowd of entrepreneurs gathered at a hotel on Route 110 in Melville, on Long Island. They'd each paid $50 to come hear the collective wisdom of bankers, other entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants, and venture capitalists. I was the keynote speaker and before me stood a twenty-something entrepreneur with that look in his eye.

The look said it all. He had the idea. He was going to solve the problem. He was going to be rich. All he needed was the capital to make his idea -- putting free postcards in the checkout aisles of supermarkets; postcards that were really ads -- graphically-enticing, hip images of Entenmanns's chocolate donuts and Tony the Tiger -- but nonetheless ads. He stood during the Q&A period and he told his story as a prelude to asking his question -- the question. I braced myself:

"So, even though I'm cash-flow positive, I can't even get a meeting with a VC. Why is that?"

I blew out the air from my lungs and surprised him with my response. "Why do you want to sell half of your profitable business?"

In 1999, though, I knew the answer to my question. After the huge run-up in the value public companies -- companies that had been backed by VCs -- entrepreneurs came to see venture funding as a requirement, the key to that elusive golden door behind which all happiness lay.

I went on. "Look…this is your first business, right?" I turned to the audience, most of whom were in their mid-forties and fifties, "How many of you have run businesses before?" A few hands shot up. I zeroed in one guy, your typical gray-haired exec. He told us his first business -- his current business -- was manufacturing specialty airplane engine parts. He'd launched the business in the late 1970s after he'd left Grumman. "And how did you raise the capital to get going?"

He smiled; he'd just finished paying off the second mortgage he'd taken out to get going, he said.

I looked at the parts manufacturer, pointed to my young questioner still standing in the dark room, and said, "And what would you have done if your business had low-initial capital requirements and was cash-flow positive from the get-go?"

He, and a bunch of his peers, burst out laughing. My young entrepreneur was still puzzled.

I tried to explain. "The best possible way to finance your business is from free cash flow. If you can meet your capital needs without selling equity or without taking on personal debt, do it. It's that simple." Moreover, I continued, if growth continued the way it had -- he'd done more than $3 million in revenue and $1 million in EBITDA in his first 18 months -- than he'd have a very valuable business; something he should want to own as much of as possible.

But, as I said, he should be forgiven. Given the amount of attention venture capital gets, it's easy to assume that selling equity is the only, if not the best, way to raise capital. But the truth is, even if you one day do need to sell equity, put off that moment as long as possible.

At the end of the talk, I grabbed my young friend and explained why I felt VCs weren't interested in his business (the idea is easily replicated; it's labor-intensive to refill racks in checkout aisles -- which is why the magazine-rack business is dominated by a few large players. It's not scaleable. Moreover, it's unlikely the business by itself could go public so the only exit strategy is a trade sale and, at that moment in time, VCs were interested in finding businesses the public would buy.). Naturally, he continued to pursue VC backing, without much luck.

When financing your business, look at all your options first; look to your savings, look at your personal expenses and see if there are ways you can do without. One VC I know used to ask prospective investees if they really felt they could afford to be an entrepreneur.

That's partly a purely financial question; can you really cut your expenses to the point that you could drastically reduce, or even forego altogether, your salary. If not, are you sure that running your own business is right for you?

Moreover, are there friends or family from whom you can borrow the initial capital to get your business launched? Often times, a wealthier parent, sibling, or relative is an ideal source of capital. But be warned: borrowing from friends and family carries a huge emotional risk. One woman I know has a challenging relationship with her now-retired father; much of her adult life has been defined by a quest to seek his approval. She recently took money from him as an investment (he bought stock in her new company; he didn't lend her money). If her business fails, she will have an even more challenged relationship with her father.

Only borrow money (or allow take an investment) from friends and family if you're absolutely certain they can afford to lose it all and that doing so will not jeopardize your relationships.

In the end, the best way to finance any business, and pay your bills, if - of course - out of cash flow. That is, make the business pay as it goes. Need to expand to take advantage of market conditions? Use your profits. If you don't have the profits, maybe you shouldn't be expanding.

Of course, that's a simplification. Many small business owners know that making a profit and receiving the cash that goes along with that profit are two different things. There are a number of ways to use your accounts receivables to smooth out the an unpredictable cash flow. Companies as diverse as American Express and UPS to your local bank all offer mechanisms that can help.

Only after you've explored all these options, should you consider venture capital. If you do, not only will you preserve more equity for yourself but you'll increase the likelihood of raising the money; after all, there's no company a VC likes to fund more than a company that doesn't need his money.