Thursday, June 23, 2011

Source my crowd

A tsunami in New York City. If you could make the visual effects of a movie about a tsunami in NYC look as good as the video in that post, you could probably make a bit of money. But the big question is: after 15 minutes of that, what more do you want? It's kind of like producing porn, nobody watches more than 15 minutes of it. What are you going to do, develop characters and show how their lives are changed or whatever? Nobody cares, it's a freakin' tsunami!
Note that our official position is that you shouldn't use laser pointers to play with cats as it really frustrates them. Just get some aluminum foil and a string and the cat will be more than happy. Add catnip to the equation and your cat will be in heaven. 

Godspell
So you too can invest in a Broadway musical. It's crowdsourced! Sign up here!
Actually, you'll note that you cannot sign up there. The minimum investment is a thousand dollars. Note that this is not a Kickstarter project -- you're actually becoming a member of an LLC when you fork over your cash. As the producer points out, he had to become a Series 63 Licensed Registered Representative (Securities Agent).
Funny Pictures - Cat Gifs
see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!
Now the State of New York, with it's lovely regressive policies, bills an LLC $100/member per year. That means if you've put in, say, $1000 to an LLC, the value of that money to the LLC is only $700 over three years. So the State eats at multi-member LLC's which have small investors.
The only advantage to having a whole bunch of members in your LLC is that the fees are topped off at $25,000 per year. So over three years the fees paid to the State will "only" be $75,000. From New York Small Business Law:
LLCs generating income in New York must pay an annual filing fee of $100 multiplied by the total number of members in the LLC with a minimum fee of $500 and a maximum fee of $25,000 (single member LLCs have to pay $100 annually).
I figure that the costs of operating the Godspell LLC will be somewhere in the order of $300,000. That's my guess. And that's just to operate the LLC -- no actual production costs or salaries. Just lawyers, accountants, and fees. Theoretically those costs could be as low as $150,000 or as high as half a million dollars.
The State, making it as hard for small businesses as they possibly can.

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