This looks cool from a hacker perspective, but I still haven't seen the killer use case. What do you use it for?

We hardly noticed a thing. If you go back to September 2008, four of the last eight months were record months for us (Sep inclusive). April was a record. Not just barely so, but by 18% over our previous record.

Yeah, no kidding. I want to hear about the Tribune. Why did he load it down with so much debt?

One more data point. Our business hasn't slowed down at all. February was a record month for us, even though only 28 days. March came awfully close to breaking it. Overall we are ahead of projections for 2009.

Oh and Michael we are part of Bill's empire and working toward building a sub-empire of our own.

We're an LLC, but we don't expect to raise VC. If I were starting a company today I'd prob do it as an S and then convert if necessary. Do you know if it's hard to go from S to LLC?

One thing I've noticed lately is that Big Co lawyers "de-commoditize" themselves via agressive agreements. We recently had a Big Co client insist that we sign a licensing agreement on one of our standard plans. We never do this. You either like the TOS (which are very liberal) or don't buy.

But they insisted and we told them it would cost more money, which they agreed to. The draft they sent us was ridiculously one-sided. I just kept saying no to all the crazy terms (not even involving our laywer, because I insisted this was not a negotiation where we meet halfway, just removal of craziness by them) until they finally relented on pretty much everything. The one thing they wouldn't back down on is 45 day payment terms. I told them that was fine but they couldn't have the product until we received payment. They agreed.

Eventually the deal got done, but they paid more for our product as a result, they probably spent more than the product costs on their lawyers, and they delayed their own access to the product by up to 45 days. How is the client served by this?

Wow, that's pretty cool. Congrats on the expansion!

I assume you would prefer the opportunity not to work at all?

I would also add "Don't overpay." In the rush to hire, sometimes it's easy to think higher salary == "better." And you don't always need rock stars. Worker bees are important too.

Karl, you must run into a lot of straw men in your daily life. Brad didn't say it would be easy or that Apple wanted to, he said he bet they could. You're talking about the company that spends more money on advertising than Microsoft. They have the resources. Doesn't mean they should, but it does mean they could win the bet.