Disqus - Latest Comments for WayneMulligan

Re: The Free And Open Internet

WayneMulligan — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 12:41:29 -0000

We think about this a lot with respect to our industry / business (i.e. financial research and newsletters). We use a framework we call the "Value of Information Curve" to decide which content to charge for and which content to release for free (it's a take off of the DIKW pyramid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

You can see our VOI Curve below — basically, we feel that the value of information increases as it provides a deeper level of understanding and comprehension of a particular domain or activity to the end user:
https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

Our take is that information like "Data" and "News" are a commodity and not something we even want to focus on publishing. "Opinion" pieces, while valuable and worth publishing, shouldn't be behind a pay wall. However, "Actionable Insight" (.e.g "Buy this stock...") and "Wisdom" (e.g. take this e-course on how to buy stocks on your own) are valuable enough to charge for.

Re: Penny Pot Stock Millionaires

WayneMulligan — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 14:36:38 -0000

Hey Warren, three things:

1. We've never recommended investing in any of the small-cap penny stocks out there

2. Matt issued a warning at the end of the essay and told readers we'd explain more tomorrow...

3. I encourage you to read tomorrow's essay as it will cover a lot of the points you brought up (which are all extremely well thought out and valid)..

-Wayne

Re: Better Than Bitcoin: 251% Profits in a Month

WayneMulligan — Sun, 27 Aug 2017 19:04:09 -0000

Hi Richard, sorry, I don't understand your question—if you know which ICO's you want to invest in, then you can go ahead and do that. We don't have any control over the ICO market.

Re: Three Retirement Killers

WayneMulligan — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 11:51:28 -0000

Hi, I just wanted to personally thank everyone for sharing their stories. It's encouraging to see everyone here is at least thinking about these problems and approaching them in a unique way. Conventional thinking isn't going to solve these problems.

Re: Simple Trick for Earning 10x Returns

WayneMulligan — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 23:00:15 -0000

Hi Edward, thanks for joining all of our premium research and education services. We're happy to have you and I hope you're enjoying your memberships.

Generally speaking, our paying subscribers tend to be more advanced and knowledgable about the private markets. Which is why, in our premium services, we're able to offer more advanced research and education.

However, as part of our mission to help educate, protect and inform all individual investors when it comes to their early-stage investments, we also publish a lot of free material as well. In fact, about 90% of all the content we publish is free and the vast majority of our 100,000+ members are non-paying. And for the most part, they have little to no experience in the private markets.

Therefore, we have to walk a fine line in how we craft our content. We obviously want to make our free newsletter issues (like this one) valuable for everyone (beginners and advanced investors, alike). But we have to make sure we don't completely intimidate the more novice subscribers.

Some days, those articles will be a little too basic for a more experienced investor like yourself. But we hope that we make up for it with all of the other research we publish in services like Private Market Profits.

I appreciate you writing in and sharing your thoughts.

Re: How Warren Buffett is helping me weather this storm...

WayneMulligan — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 08:22:47 -0000

Glad it helped and glad you liked The Playbook!

Re: How Warren Buffett is helping me weather this storm...

WayneMulligan — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 09:01:17 -0000

Hi Dave,

A couple of thngs...

1. No matter what, you shouldn't put the majority of your portfolio into early-stage deals. These are illiquid investments and high-risk. Only a SMALL portion of your overall portfolio should get allocated to private deals.

2. The valuation for most of these companies is still substantially lower than what you'd see in the public market or during an acquisition. That's what enables you to aim for target returns of 10x or more on a profitable investment (which makes up for the inevitable losses in the portfolio).

And you shouldn't view it as you're "only" putting $100 to work per company—what you're doing is building a portfolio over the course of several years that will be worth several thousand dollars.

Given the higher average returns of this asset class, that portion of your portfolio would grow at a faster rate than your assets allocated to stocks and in turn, lift your overall returns.

Then there's always the possibility that you invest in the next Google or Facebook and that could return many times your capital. Even if you had put $100 into Facebook when it was first getting started you would've turned it into $200,000 at the time it went public.

The trick here is to not get greedy, don't allocate more money here than you should and to be patient.

Re: Three Investing Myths – Debunked

WayneMulligan — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 17:41:39 -0000

Hey Dave. Just to make it simple: with CrowdabilityIQ you would be doing a lot more work than someone who owned Private Market Profits.

Re: Three Investing Myths – Debunked

WayneMulligan — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 16:35:02 -0000

Hi Michael, thanks for taking the time to write in (and for asking such a good questions). Full disclosure, this is going to be a long winded answer, so apologies in advance :)

When it comes to early-stage investments, the rule is, "the more, the better."

Meaning, the more investments you make, the better you're likely to do.

Diversification helps with everything — from protecting your downside to increasing your chances for a profitable return on your overall portfolio.

This is the approach professional early-stage investors take.

They don’t “bet it all on black” by putting their money into a single idea. To minimize their risk and maximize their gains, they build a portfolio of investments.

For example, look at the strategy of a top-tier venture capital fund like Union Square Ventures: over a 5-year period, Union Square Ventures will make about 25 to 50 investments.

We recommend individual investors do the same thing.

With Private Market Profits, you can begin building a portfolio of at least 12 start-ups in your first year.

For those deals, Crowdability does all the work for you: before issuing any recommendation, we do countless hours of research and due diligence, and we perform a deep financial analysis on every deal’s profit potential.

But some investors want to build their private portfolio more quickly.

So for those investors, we offer a service called CrowdabilityIQ.

CrowdabilityIQ identifies private deals from all over the web. Then it aggregates them into one central place, and provides investors with an easy way to screen and filter for the ones that meet their criteria.

Essentially, CrowdabilityIQ provides “dealflow” so you can look at additional early-stage investment opportunities—but when you find a deal you’re interested in, you’ll still need to do more research on the opportunity yourself.

So if you're comfortable finding deals and performing hours of research on your own, then CrowdabilityIQ is probably a good solution for you.

If you'd like to get an inside look at our research—research we spend weeks (and sometimes months) putting together—then Private Market Profits is probably more your speed.

Re: Double Your Returns With One Simple Trick

WayneMulligan — Sat, 14 May 2016 15:36:14 -0000

Hey Dave, thanks for commenting—I know I owe you a reply to a some earlier comments as well.

The deals you've been seeing on various platforms to date have all been for accredited investors. Therefore, the minimums have been on the high side (even though they're still lower than traditional angel investment minimums).

However, with Title III coming out in just a couple of days, investment minimums will be as low as $100 for some deals.

Meaning, with a $10,000 allocation to early-stage investments, you could theoretically invest in 100 different start-ups. And that's actually what investors *should* do. Diversification gives you the best chances of protecting your downside and picking profitable investments.

Re: Drug Dealers Give Investing Advice

WayneMulligan — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 11:39:51 -0000

Great story! I never heard that one before, thanks so much for sharing!

Re: Read This or Go Broke | Crowdability

WayneMulligan — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 11:13:47 -0000

Traditionally this wouldn't have been possible. But given the new laws and websites around Equity Crowdfunding, folks can now invest as little as $100. Check out our Resources page for more in-depth information: http://www.crowdability.com... - especially the Equity Crowdfunding 101 Report.

Re: Paul Aitken Interview | Crowdability

WayneMulligan — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 15:46:28 -0000

Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback.

I guess my goal here was two fold:

1. To speak to the subscribers who DID access this deal - and give them a little something extra (i.e. the interview), and

2. Highlight the fact that we DID show you this opportunity just 7 weeks ago. It's super important that you guys read the essays, but it's also important that you check your Monday issues as well.

The Monday issues have all of the latest deal flow that we aggregate from around the web.

-Wayne

Re: Graffiti

WayneMulligan — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:25:09 -0000

Late to the party here, but I had to comment on this. Graffiti was a HUGE part of my teenage years, as was technology/hacking.

I went to the Manhattan High School of Art & Design which produced (in addition to a few notable fashion designers) some of the best graffiti artists in the city. Many of whom are now running graphic/web design shops here in NY.

A lot of similarities between tech entrepreneurship and graffiti:

1. Anti-authority/Rebellion -- "Why shouldn't I paint that wall? Because someone said so? Fuck that." vs. "Why shouldn't I start that company? Because everyone says it's a bad idea? Fuck that."

2. Risk Taking -- Ever see some of the graffiti on the outside of the Hell's Gate Bridge or the rooftops on the 7 line? Takes a lot of balls to hit a spot like that. Also takes a lot of balls to try and start something from nothing.

3. Creativity and Innovation -- Forget simple tags and the fill-ins you see on the street. Look at what guys like Daim have been able to do with spray paint (image attached)...'nuff said.

I'm not sure how many folks would admit it, but I suspect there are plenty of NYC born & bred entrepreneurs that grew up in the 80's and 90's that at least dabbled in graffiti back in the day.

Re: Fun Friday: What Sports Team Would You Buy If You Could?

WayneMulligan — Fri, 30 May 2014 23:03:40 -0000

Dunno about an entire team, but new crowdfunding concepts like Fantex (athletes going "public") are starting to get really interesting. No reason why an entire team couldn't float some shares in a similar way one day.

Re: New Outlets & New Voices

WayneMulligan — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 12:11:04 -0000

Based on that definition, one could argue that longer form content - like one would find in premium financial publications - should command a premium price.

But there probably isn't a hard and fast rule to any of this -- it's more like porn (you know it when you see it). :)

The "nature" of the content probably matters a lot here as well. My partners and I use the DIKW Pyramid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... a lot when thinking about content businesses.

I rarely, if ever, pay for data or information. But I regularly pay for knowledge and wisdom.

Re: New Outlets & New Voices

WayneMulligan — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 11:27:38 -0000

Not sure I understand...

TheStreet failed due to poor execution, not to a bad business model. There are plenty of financial news / newsletter publishers that are just as big (if not bigger) than TheStreet and MarketWatch.

Re: SkillShare -- are you saying that if the content is cheap and not shareable, you'd potentially pay for it? Because one could argue that SkillShare chooses not to make their content shareable - "classes" could just as easily be pre-recorded (e.g. Linda.com, Udacity, TED, etc.) - and a WSJ subscription is even cheaper by those standards.

Not trying to bust chops, just trying to understand the framework you apply to premium content both as a consumer and as an investor. Fwiw, it's a question I ask myself a lot re: the future of my industry (premium financial content).

Re: New Outlets & New Voices

WayneMulligan — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 23:06:20 -0000

(this might be a dupe, having trouble posting): How do your personal consumption preferences reconcile with some of the companies your firms have backed over the years? SkillShare, TheStreet -- both premium content / information services businesses.

Re: SXSW PanelPicker

WayneMulligan — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 07:12:42 -0000

Definitely going!

Re: Fun Friday: Discussing Disqus

WayneMulligan — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 08:11:39 -0000

I guess it depends on the primary goal of the homepage. Is it to attract more blog integrations? Brand advertisers? Discovery mechanism for commenters?

As it stands right now I don't get a clear sense for which user group this homepage is trying to reach out to the most. Whichever one it is, the messaging targeted at that group/goal should be prioritized.

If the goal is to attract more blog integrations, I'd think about bumping up the call-to-action and minimizing the conversation map. I'd also reduce the "community of communities" to a tag-line and have a clearer value proposition statement. Providing social proof is important but I think it can be done in a more direct way. I also think given how long disqus has been around most existing communities know about it, or at least know about 3rd party blog commenting systems.

In other words, they've moved up a few levels on Eugene Schwartz's "customer awareness" scale. Now they need to show why they're THE solution to use, as opposed to something like LiveFyre.

If the goal is to reach brand advertisers, then the conversation map makes a bit more sense, but then why have that messaging all the way at the bottom and the "Add Disqus to Your Site" call-to-action all the way at the top. Again, based on the goal I'd consider modifying the info-hierarchy. They might also consider adding a dedicated navigation item at the top for this group/goal.

And if the goal is to get more people commenting and provide community discovery, I'm not sure if the conversation bubble/map UI is the best way to go. It doesn't allow me - as a potential commenter and community member - to rapidly surface content that's relevant to me. A newsfeed, twitter stream, etc., could potentially be more engaging as it would allow me to see more of the content people are commenting on (and comments they're leaving) at a glance. Whereas right now all I can see are topics and general comment activity before having to click through to see anymore.

Just my two pesos.

Re: Lincoln

WayneMulligan — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 11:43:36 -0000

I also LOVE Lincoln's story as it relates to entrepreneurship. Especially for those who are struggling with their first failure or setback -- the man was the personification of "persistence".

He failed in business, lost elections and struggled with depression -- which brings to mind Brad Feld's recent post on Depression and Entrepreneurs: http://www.feld.com/wp/arch...

But yet, he survived, persisted and became one of the greatest leaders our country has ever known.

Re: How To Be In Business Forever: A Lesson In Sustainability

WayneMulligan — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:25:25 -0000

Fred, I couldn't agree more, but I do wonder if saying ROI is for the "Wall Street" guys might not be the best way to classify it. I mean, ROI is a tool, it's actually a very good tool, that one could use to make business decisions.

Where it gets difficult to use (and where we separate the good managers from the bad) are on the inputs.

If you're quantifying "Return" based on too short a time period then you're right, you might not make that mobile investment. You might try to protect your cable monopoly. So if your input on the Return side is off then you'll obviously make the wrong decision.

But that doesn't mean the framework in and of itself is flawed, the tool is only as good as the guy who's using it.

Re: Leftover Takeout • Coordinate scene from “Boomerang”. Sartorial...

WayneMulligan — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:27:14 -0000

Amen, some classic lines in that movie..dunno if I'd give it a "Top 3" ranking though. Out of curiosity, what's the #1 fav EM flick? I've gotta go with either Trading Places or Coming to America.

Re: Leftover Takeout • Coordinate scene from “Boomerang”. Sartorial...

WayneMulligan — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:27:25 -0000

Better scene: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: No Battle Plan Survives The First Enemy Fire

WayneMulligan — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 10:53:36 -0000

I prefer Mike Tyson's version: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face" -- which is what it feels like when your product gets no traction, you can't get an investor meeting if your life depended on it and you realize you're back to the drawing board after months in development.

My jaw hurts just thinking about it :)