Jeffrey McManus

An Adaptive Gas Tax for California

jeffrey — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:45:35 +0000

As a California native and a small business owner, I’m a big fan of the California High Speed Rail project. Investing in transportation infrastructure will be vital not only for California, but to show the rest of the country how awesome it can be to have an excellent transportation infrastructure. High-speed rail will have short-term benefits (construction jobs) but I’m more interested in the long-term benefits to the economy. Having a fast, reliable way to get to LA by lunchtime will open up new business opportunities for Bay Area businesses.

The project is in trouble because insane Central Valley interests are screaming louder than the people who are for this, and the antidemocratic Republican minority in the legislature blocks funding for schools, much less new infrastructure projects. (This is the case even though we’re slated to spend 400% more on widening existing freeways during the time that high speed rail is being built — and for some reason, nobody’s complaining about where the money’s going to come from for that work.) Fortunately the project has a friend in Governor Jerry Brown.

I think that a temporary gas tax is one way to fund high speed rail, but you can credibly make the argument that gas taxes are regressive (that is, they hurt poor people disproportionately). The problem with that argument is that gas is a commodity and its price affects everyone (even if you don’t have a car, since gas is used to transport goods to market). But for whatever reason, you don’t ever hear people decrying the normal fluctuations in gas prices. So what if it were possible to make a new gas tax appear to be indistinguishable from the normal up and down fluctuations in the price of gas?

It should be possible to apply a gas tax over time (say, six to twelve months) as a way to soften the blow of a new tax — call it an adaptive tax. Since retail sales of gasoline are tabulated electronically, implementing this shouldn’t be too difficult. Say that the price of gas starts at $3.75 a gallon, and we’re looking to implement a 50 cent a gallon tax within twelve months. You start by applying a fraction of the increase (say, a nickel) in October or November, when the price of gas is naturally lower anyway. So after month 1, the price goes to $3.80 a gallon (although the retail price might not change at all because the underlying commodity price might have decreased during that time).

Then, each month you add between two and ten cents a gallon to the tax depending on the average retail pump price. If the commodity price is high, the tax that’s added that month is lower. If the commodity price dips, you can add a little more that month. When you hit the 50 cent a gallon goal (hopefully before the summer starts), you stop. The idea is to make the tax seem to disappear in the noise of normal fluctuations in the price of gasoline — we don’t want the price to spike all at once, but rather to be phased in evenly over time.

It’s conceivable that gasoline retailers would try to game this (by disproportionately increasing the pump price in response to the tax), but I don’t think that any one retailer has enough pricing power for this to be an issue.

Is this sort of a flim-flam? Yes, but most everything else in politics is, too. Will it soften the blow of a tax increase? Maybe. One way or another, it’s certainly better than the options we’ve got today.

An Adaptive Gas Tax for California is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Lush, “For Love”

jeffrey — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:47:13 +0000

Here’s another dose of early 90s shoegazer. I think I’m obsessing over this music now because it was popular the year I moved to the Bay Area, 20 years ago this April. Woo!

Lush, “For Love” is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Lush, “500 (Shake Baby Shake)”

jeffrey — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:47:58 +0000

One of my fave 90s tunes. It’s an interesting exercise to see the original UK version of this video and compare it to the US version, here — the fetching Miki Berinyi got significantly sexified up for US audiences. Shoegazer no more!

Lush, “500 (Shake Baby Shake)” is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Both California Senators Support SOPA/PIPA

jeffrey — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:53:42 +0000

I was pretty much done with Dianne Feinstein after she sat on the sidelines during the 2010 healthcare debate, but I was pretty alarmed to hear that both she and our other senator, Barbara Boxer, are co-sponsors of PIPA (the senate version of SOPA that would give big businesses the right to shut down web sites if they linked to content they don’t like — which is to say, nearly all web sites, including those of many legislators).

People are planning a big day of action on Wednesday, January 18. Some content sites including Wikipedia will shut down for the day in protest of the proposed legislation.

If you’re a Californian you should call both of your senators to let them know that giving Rupert Murdoch a kill switch for the entire Web is not okay. From the Hackers and Founders Meetup, here are their contact numbers:

Senator Barbara Boxer’s contact information:

DC: 202-224-3553
District: (510) 286-8537

or email her via Contact Congress.

Instructions on what to say to register your opposition.

Senator Diane Feinstein’s contact information:

DC: 202-224-3841
District: 415-393-0707

or email her via Contact Congress.

Instructions on what to say to register your opposition.

Both California Senators Support SOPA/PIPA is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Advising Startups in 2012

jeffrey — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:43:36 +0000

One of the favorite things I do is provide advice to startups. Most of the assistance I give to other peoples’ companies is done through my consulting firm, but I’ve done the advisor-for-equity thing once so far (back in 2008, when Twilio was a three-person company) . In 2012 I will have room in my schedule to do it again for one or two new companies.

Stuff I’m good at:

Supporting businesses that create products that target software developers. My experience in this area is world-class, and there are not too many people in Silicon Valley who have done it longer than I have.
Providing polish to consumer Web-based applications and workflows, coming up with ideas for making them better, and coming up with ideas for aligning new products and features to the business.
Introductions. I’ve been around the block for quite a while, I’ve worked at/for several established companies, and I know a lot of people.
Helping with the kind of stuff that falls in the scary grey zone between “engineering” and “business” (also known as “talk to the English majors, talk to the MBAs, talk to the software engineers, then talk to the customers”). These are the kind of roles that two- and three-person startups hate to staff because they frequently don’t represent full-time jobs, which is one reason why it makes sense to have advisor help here.

The profile for the kind of company this would probably work for:

It would probably make sense for you to be located in San Francisco, since that’s where I am.
Your company should have a Web or mobile product in development, or at least a prototype. (If you’re at the “idea stage” an advisor engagement might work, but the idea would have to be pretty compelling.)
Your company should have at least one technical cofounder (or a non-technical cofounder who is becoming a technical cofounder).
You are not competitive with the stuff we’re working on (professional technical education).
In terms of funding and revenue, you fall into one of these categories: you are currently pursuing seed funding, you have completed a seed round, you have decided to never pursue venture funding, or you’re bootstrapping. (If your company has already raised a significant investment round, you probably don’t need an equity advisor, a consulting engagement would probably make more sense.)
You should be prepared to swing for the fences. Look at the trajectory of Twilio from 2008 to the present for a sense of what this means.
You should be prepared to do a standard deal for equity advisors.

Knowing me personally (or getting a strong introduction from a friend) goes a long way here, because if I’m going to advise you effectively it’s important that we are able to communicate well. The best way to contact me regarding advisor engagements is at @jeffreymcmanus on Twitter.

Advising Startups in 2012 is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Morrissey, “Everyday is like Sunday”

jeffrey — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 16:19:03 +0000

Just got tickets to see him play in Oakland in December. Stoked!

Morrissey, “Everyday is like Sunday” is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

WKRP in Cincinnati End Credits Song

jeffrey — Thu, 19 May 2011 19:59:35 +0000

We always suspected that the lyrics were made up, this proves it.WKRP in Cincinnati End Credits Song is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.Related posts:Not the Worst Eurovision Song Contest Entry Ever. On the Other Hand, French. The Best Theme Song in Television Screencast Video: Installing WordPress 3.0

WKRP in Cincinnati End Credits Song is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Dear Microsoft: Here’s How To Communicate with Developers

jeffrey — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:38:18 +0000

0) State what your technology is and what problem it’s trying to solve on the product’s web page. Use plain, practical language. Hint: “professional-quality business applications” does not mean anything.

1) Don’t use a video. Use words first, then use a video to convey, you know, visual concepts, if necessary.

2) If you use video, the video has to actually work. See:

Dear Microsoft: Here’s How To Communicate with Developers is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Real Courses Have Instructors

jeffrey — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:55:01 +0000

One of the very interesting things we’ve learned since launching CodeLesson at the end of last summer is that a lot of people have no good sense of what it means to take an online course, even though the concept of taking an online course has been around for a very long time (predating the web, in fact).

There’s an unfortunate namespace pollution at work here. I see this done by companies that want to associate their media products with the caché of the classroom or the university. For example, “iTunes U” is not a “University” by any stretch of the imagination. Any “online course” that’s comprised of web pages and/or videos is not actually an online course. And so on.

Videos can have value, obviously. But let’s not trick customers into thinking that your pre-recorded online video is the same thing as an “online class”.

By our definition, a real class has structure (including a start date and an end date so you can coordinate the class with your schedule), a set agenda (so you know ahead of time what’s covered in the course) and a way to reinforce and verify what students have learned (using hands-on exercises and quizzes).

And, crucially, real courses have instructors. Without an instructor, students have no straightforward way to get questions answered, you have no idea when you’ve learned something incorrectly or incompletely, and you have no idea whether you’ve achieved real proficiency.

At CodeLesson, we charge money for nearly all of our courses; this enables us to hire world-class instructors who can spend time answering students’ questions. The amount of money we charge students is generally more than you’d pay for a pre-recorded video, but a little less than what an American college student might pay for a university course. But a common criticism of our model is “why should I pay you when I can get what I’m looking for from Google” (or Bittorrent, etc.)?

You can learn stuff by Googling, sure. When you look something up on Google, you get 1,000,000 search results for every phrase you type in, you have no sense of whether the information is complete or even accurate, and you have no sense of when you’ve learned enough to be proficient in the subject you’re interested in. This is totally fine if you’re looking for a high-level overview of something. But it’s not an ideal tactic for managing the continuous knowledge acquisition that a professional should be basing their career upon (particularly if the value of your time is greater than zero).

Not everyone is an autodidact. Not everyone should be an autodidact. I think that people are forced into being autodidacts because the two institutions they historically relied upon to convey technical skills (the university and their employer) have utterly failed at supplying the material that technical professionals need to learn today. This didn’t used to be the case (I’ve blogged a few times and over at the CodeLesson blog about how I traveled the world doing developer training in the 90s).

But the point (and I do have one) is that it’s no longer necessary to travel the world to get access to expert knowledge. Learning can happen online, effectively. And it’s terrific that there are lots of formats and price points out there. But it’s time that we make a clearer distinction between the different types of online learning to avoid snowing prospective customers.

Real Courses Have Instructors is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.

Apocalypse Then

jeffrey — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:22:57 +0000

Of most concern to the president himself, one high-level aide said, is the perception that the United States would once again be meddling in the Middle East, where it has overturned many a leader, including Saddam Hussein. Some critics of the United States in the region — as well as some leaders — have already claimed that a Western conspiracy is stoking the revolutions that have overtaken the Middle East.
“He keeps reminding us that the best revolutions are completely organic,” the senior official said, quoting the president.

Countries that supported the totally pure and utterly organic American Revolution: France, Germany, Spain.

Discord Grows in Washington Over a Potential Role in the Libya Conflict – NYTimes.com.

Apocalypse Then is a post by Jeffrey McManus of Platform Associates. Follow Jeffrey on Twitter.