We’ve Moved!

Well, I warned you that this would happen.

Investing by Accident has been rebooted, and we’ve moved to a new platform. We have a whole new website and you can find the blog athttp://www.investingbyaccident.com/blog. (Or, you should be able to as soon as the DNS updates.)

You should definitely check it out. I am posting Investing by Accident’s most sought after content in easy-to-find “pages.” This is good because it looks super-professional. Also, by offloading the pesky “content” to “pages,” we can keep the blog short, light and full of snark.

Looking forward to seeing you in our new place!

Reboot Required

I have been avoiding an uncomfortable technical matter relating to this blog. I don’t like to talk about technical matters because I am somewhat of an expert in this area.

However, we all must do things from time-to-time that we are not comfortable with, like taking our babies to tipat chalav to learn that we are truly terrible parents. Frankly, it’s amazing that they let us take our babies home afterwards.

Several loyal readers have indicated to me that they no longer get email updates when I post a new blog. I told them to do what any computer expert would tell them in this scenario: reboot your computer.

Apparently, this did not fix the problem. Of course, I knew it wouldn’t because the problem has nothing to do with their computers.

You see, “rebooting your computer” is something computer people like me tell ordinary people to do to give them time to figure out what the real issue is. Incidentally, this explains why it has been taking longer and longer to boot your computer over the years. This is being done by design to give me more time to figure out how to fix things.

In any case, while they were rebooting, I checked to see what I could do about this problem. I am an expert in this area, so I don’t think it will come as a surprise that I have no idea. However, I decided on a course of action that I think makes sense in this case: I am just going to start the blog all over again.

It’s already been a year since I launched Investing by Accident. In start-up years, that is about three decades, which makes us way overdue for an update of our strategic roadmap. 

Hopefully, the email will work this time around. If not, we can always try to reinstall. 

Making Me a Millionaire

As my loyal readers already know, I am a mysterious vessel of innovative ideas. At first it looks like there are only enough ideas for one start-up, but it turns out that there are enough to last all eight nights.

In this continuation of my hi-tech millionaire series, I present an open appeal to fund my new hi-tech start-up.

I believe that extraordinary innovation starts with the mundane. Through the simple observation of our everyday world, we can think of creative new ways to make our lives our better.

I am currently enjoying the relatively unique opportunity of 11 weeks of paternity leave. This has afforded me ample opportunity to engage in the everyday reality of caring for babies. Naturally, I have channeled this opportunity to develop several highly innovative ideas in baby care.

You can trust my innovations because I have a distinct advantage in the space. As the partner parent to the internet’s foremost non-expert on parenting, I have access to one of the most insightful minds in child rearing. We have engaged in countless hours of intense brainstorming sessions around my ideas. Or, we would have if we were able to hear each other over all of the crying.

Hi-Tech Babies

Let me jump right in to our flagship product: The Internet Connected Breast Milk Flow Monitor.

This innovation occurred to me while searching the internet for “how do I know if my infant is eating enough?” Judging by how quickly this came up in auto-complete, it is clear that this is an all too common question for parents of infants.

If you bottle feed, the answer to this problem is very straightforward. It’s just a matter of measuring how much you give your baby at each feeding.

However, I was very alarmed to learn that parents who breastfeed have only primitive means to answer this question. The only option is to measure your baby’s output and infer from these imprecise diaper measurements that your baby is eating enough.

We can do much better! The Internet Connected Breast Milk Flow Monitor will be able to measure exactly how much input your baby is receiving. At first, I thought we could obtain these measurements through a specially designed mouthpiece for the babies, but then I realized that it would better to design an adapter for the mothers.

The adapter is great because it will also be designed to control the rate at which the milk is dispensed. This will solve a huge problem today, as currently there is no way for mothers and babies to control the flow. Clearly, this is a problem that needs to be solved because why else do bottles come in many different “stages”?

This is a hi-tech product and the most powerful features will come from the built-in internet connectivity. We can do all sorts of things with internet connectivity that you definitely will want. For example, we can automatically post Facebook status updates on how much your baby is eating.

But even more impressively, we will be able to collect data from babies all over the world on how much they are eating. We can do almost anything with this data. For example, I’m positive that we could use it to cure ebola. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense because we are just at the beginning of the hype curve on “big data”.

Roadmap

I have a roadmap that includes many more innovative ideas for this hi-tech baby company, but I can’t tell you any more of them until you send me your investment. And now is definitely the time to invest. For the right price, I would even sell you the entire company.

Accidental Millionaires

I interrupt my normally scheduled detailed analysis of a random personal financial issue for an important message:

CONGRATULATIONS!

To my friends at Glide, who were just in the news for receiving $20 million of funding on a reported $100 million valuation. Wow!

And also, to my friends at Aorato for being acquired by Microsoft for $200 million dollars. Well done!

You’ve got to hand to these hi-tech millionaires. While the rest of us were busy writing snarky blogs about PFICs, these folks were bringing innovative new products to the world.

Who knows? Maybe they were even doing it on purpose.

As the internet’s foremost non-expert on multi-million-dollar hi-tech companies, it is only natural for me to provide a penetrating commentary on these deals. Fortunately, to guide me in my analysis, I recently received these two actual accidental questions:

#1. “How could Glide possibly need $20 million?”

This question comes from the internet’s foremost non-expert on parenting. Unfortunately, it clearly misunderstands how hi-tech companies work. I personally have visited Glide’s offices, so what I am about to say is absolutely accurate.

Glide does not have a full-time barista to make coffee for their engineers.

Shocking, I know. It’s hard to believe how far they have come while having to prepare their own coffee. Thankfully, they now have the funding to address this critical gap in their business strategy.

Glide on, Glide!

#2. “What will be the next big innovative idea that will be worth millions of dollars?”

I have pondered this question for as long as I have known up-and-coming hi-tech millionaires. I personally believe that great new ideas comes from relatively simple observations of our everyday reality.

I am currently enjoying paternity leave and my everyday reality is about babies. This has given me ample opportunity to think about clever and innovate new products in the up-and-coming field of hi-tech baby care.

As an open appeal for funding my new company, I will publish these ideas in next week’s blog. Unless, of course, someone acquires me before then.