What would happen if you had an IPO and nobody showed up?

If a company’s public offering falls down in a forest, and nobody heard it, did it really happen?

Virtual Employees

I’ve posted several job postings for “virtual employees” and am now swamped going through the resumes I’ve received. What’s a virtual employee you ask? It’s someone who works regularly (as opposed to a contractor), but remotely located and working over the internet. I wanted to explore this concept for a few reasons.

First, it opens up the options for whom I can hire. If I were hiring someone locally, the person would have to already live here or be willing to move here. Second, it reduces expenses. For the price of renting office space alone I can hire several people. Plus, salaries in the Boston area are among the highest in the world. Good programmers are still wanting $6000 a month and more here. Third, it doesn’t tie me down to the Boston area. Should I decide to move (which I’m in the process of doing), it would be difficult to uproot an office of employees, and it would be pointless to start hiring now when I might just move in a few months anyway.

So, the hard part is who to hire. I have three job postings. I’ve gone through resumes for one posting so far. About 500 resumes. I’ve eliminated 90% off the top, just because the resumes don’t mention the desired skill sets. I’ve traded emails with a few of the appliants, but it’s difficult for me to evaluate beyond this. I’m considering hiring a company to do online screening test for me, but have no experience with that either. I think I’ll give SCORE a shout and see if anyone there can advise me.

Location is Obsolete

It’s down to this. Location (for me anyway) is now obsolete. Why then, should I live in one of the most expensive areas in the world? Yea, sure I could go more expensive, like Tokyo or New York, but by all measures Boston hits the top ten most expensive places to live.

Give me a computer and a fast internet connection and I can run my business from anywhere. Heck, I’m even starting to use virtual employees. So, I’m doing some calculating. If I sell my house, I’d have enough cash to buy a house outright and have enough left over to buy a vacation house, to live for a few years wherever I’m moving, and pump some money into my business.

What would I miss? Well, the biggest reason for staying in Boston is because my wife likes her job at Harvard, and that’s where my son is going to school. The museums and other cultural attractions are great too, but is it all worth the cost of living here?

We want to buy a new house, with something for a back yard. A half-acre would be great, but even a quarter acre would do. There’s nothing under $800,000 within a half-hour drive of Harvard that even comes close. If we accept a forty-five minute commute, there’s some nice places in Acton, but that’s a hell of a commute.

So, where should we move? My wife almost got violent with me when I mentioned India. I think it would be fun to live in Bangalore, or New Delhi for a few years. She thinks I’m crazy now. Europe? Are there places in Europe safe for Americans anymore? Certainly not France or Germany. The UK? Well, London wouldn’t really be a good choice if I’m looking for something LESS expensive, lol. So, we’re actually looking at Warsaw. Now, part of the EU, and real estate and labor are comparitively less expensive there, and there are less trade-offs culturally compared with moving to some cheap place in the USA like Texas (where there seems to be no culture).