Alex Salkever's Blog (28)

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I have obtained a meeting with Representative Calvin Say to discuss the prohibitive cost of health insurance for sole proprietors in the State of Hawaii, where there is no mechanism to allow sole props to enter into group buying pools. How are you handling the costs? What is it costing you? And how much has it gone up? We are paying almost $1500 a month for a family of 4 (and its very good coverage but comparable coverage for a family of four at a major employer is roughly $800-$900 per month).… Continue

I'm curious if anyone knows about this. On the Mainland, pushed by FiOS, many homes in California are getting cable modem speeds of 25 and 50 mbps down thanks to the new Docsis 3.0 specs. Does Oceanic plan to roll that out here? If so, when? And what's up with HawTel's broadband strategy? They must have some sort of upgrade plans. Any thoughts?

The buzz I've been hearing from everyone in the VC and startup community is that the uncertainty over the fate of Act 221 has frozen all investments in tech companies in Hawaii. That's because no one can responsibly estimate a proper investment amount or strategy without a clear sense of the tax implications. Eliminating Act 221 entirely would actually be better than leaving the matter in limbo any longer. I am not saying that saving or killing Act 221 is good one way or the other -- both sides… Continue

Just curious. Would love to see / meet some people working in this space that are perhaps not the big names.

Just curious. I wanted to talk to someone about what's involved in building something out that piggybacks on microblogging networks. For reference, see www.stocktwits.com. Happy holidays!

Dan Leuck and I were talking a while back about this. I wonder if some angels here in Hawaii could underwrite summer programs that would select two or three teams from UH or other local university students to develop a commercial iPhone app over the course of a summer. This could be a paid internship. The iPhone market has really blown open the commercial software market because it completely solves the distribution platform problem and it lays bare how cheaply and quickly quality apps can be… Continue

The key take-aways from this excellent video:

*VC money is really expensive because you spend so much energy getting it. Build a product instead.
*Write a blog not a biz plan
*Your ideas suck. So get started anyway.