Welcome to the club brother. Best post I've read here about the reality of owning your own business. Its not easy, you work your ass off, and you pay some other professions to keep the govt away - but its the only way to live.

if you are an s-corp you need to have more than one client -- or the irs will eventually get annoyed. thats not that hard to do though - and this is what accountants are for -- to make sure you dont have issues like that. As someone who worked corporate and is independent now -- all of these reasons not to go independent are just fear talking. And the feeling that its safer inside of a corporation -- that is to put it bluntly - a lie you are telling yourself so you can sleep at night. the only barrier to working for yourself is getting over your fear, and getting your first client.

Ive sold companies and taken them public -- the channels for sales are the following: Lawyers -- in my market there are a couple of big law firms -- each has a deal guy for this stuff -- get to know him. This is what linked in is for -- not so much slashdot ip lawyers -- unless there is a patent here -- probably not. vc's -- this is really where you are -- you have a product - you proved it can sell ( the games you make, not the framework ) - and now you want to raise money for some business talent to help monetize it. be prepared to part with most of your company, lose control and have an outsider as ceo. Its not that bad -- and is really the stage you are at. not all of your team will want to do that -- too bad -- they can leave, but they will leave some ownership behind as well. if your company turns out to be sale worthy -- they as well as your new ceo will have the contacts to make it happen -- mostly that happens when you dont need it to. now for the next question -- how do you get vcs to pay attention to you -- thats still challenging -- but at least its the right problem. Good Luck

It is -- and there are a lot of people just as skilled as you that are out of work. Some of them might feel some ownership of the project and want to get it done. Some of them might understand that we write code for a living and this is part of the package. Some might leave at 5 when everyone else on the team is pulling an all nighter to get a project out the door. Its the job of the manager to make sure the project gets done -- then clear out any morale crushing behaviors that showed up -- because unemployment is at 10% right now -- Its 5pm and I have a new guy I need to interview.

We used to have a company called TSR that behaved this way -- they sued all of the their fans that tried to keep D&D alive and didnt understand the economics of this type of community. When wizards got the license -- regardless of all of the harping on this forum about them -- they embraced this type of community and created the OGL. Their discussion with publishers was we can either fight over each piece off the pie or try and make the pie bigger. It was a completely different approach and it worked amazingly well. GW will figure that out at some point -- or go away like TSR. GW has every right to protect their ip -- it is theirs and they spent a lot of money developing it -- it just may be bad business to go about it the way that they are. And Im sure ill get abused for this next comment -- but with all of the slamming of wizards in this forum about them not being open -- you are confusing open for free. Open is important for the community -- free is not. If free is the most important aspect of a gaming system -- stay away from rpgs -- I play them and I want professional content created by talented people -- and those people like to get paid.

Besides the constitutional reasons that it is like this that will not change --- lets look at what would happen if you allowed local govts to enforce everyone to collect thier taxes. I know my fair city - Philadelphia -- would within a week decide that all items ordered on line were subject to a 15% tax that they wanted collected. They would cry poor and make all the same arguments here - but mostly they like taxing people that cant vote them out of office and would present this as a way to help local busineses. Soon every township that has a guy on the board that feels mail order places are biting into his business would tax this whole concept out of existance -- which is why we have a clause in the consititution that prevents interferance with inter state commerce -- because without it -- we would.

Because states are looking for every dime they can get -- and see dollars here.

This behavior is called dumping and is what monopolys get in trouble for. Selling something for less than your cost of production for the purpose of gathering market share and shutting out competition. If their name was Microsoft - they would be in court now.

dont buy that bundle -- the zone player is the main part you need here -- its 400 bucks. dont buy speakers from them -- there is no way they will be anything worth listening too. if money is tight -- dont get their remote -- they have an iphone interface that is actually very nice and free.

thats why we sell more expensive amps -- makes the install seem cheaper. but seriously -- in the custom av business -- a typical project is 60% gear and 40% installation.

because they just work and it fits the requirements. If you dont want to pull wire through your walls -- this is the way to go. If you are willing to pull wire and put speakers in the walls -- there are a couple of other options -- but the install then becomes more expensive than the gear -- and this is slashdot where the next post after a sonos post is 400 for an wireless device with a built in amplifier and an incredibly good interface that can be controlled with a touch screen or an iphone -- why dont we put a noisy linux box there, download some codec -- write an interface all by ourselves that our wife wont use and forget that we needed an amplifier - that would be cheaper.

not sure what your definition of open is as it regards amx -- it has a complete programming language that controls every one of their products and you can add non-amx products to any project. Whats closed about that? -- Now the price thing -- no argument there.

its not pointless -- its just not for you. We put these systems in lots of houses and when they are done right they make complicated systems very simple to use. Most of our projects have 8-16 rooms with digital music, video networks that can put any source on any TV and simple remote controls that make the whole thing work. It aint cheap, but done correctly you can make these systems work for competing viewpoints of husbands and wives. Typically husbands love tech -- dont mind seeing a stack of equipment in a room and see it as a normal part of everyday life that they need 3 remotes to watch a movie. Wives want to see the stuff disappear -- which is why you put speakers in the ceiling and have touchpads control music instead of having a stereo stack in each room you might want to listen to music in. These systems also let you have a nice clean look in media rooms. Most of our projects we put every piece of equipment in a server rack and control it all via RF remotes. This lets you just put a TV over the fireplace -- or just have a plasma and in wall speakers in the family room without having to cram a bunch of stuff into a piece of furniture you didnt want in the room. This is not for everybody -- but to our customers ease of use and aesthetics are important and they are willing to pay for them. Now there is a DIY crowd out there trying to use home depot quality stuff and x-10 tech. If this is all you look at, you will think the field hasnt moved in decades. The enthusiast market is filled with incomplete solutions and hacker tech. It may be fun to play with, but it aint wife friendly and it wont be reliable. This group tends to get overly focused on the cost of the gear and has very high expectations of performance ( this is from my viewpoint as a professional in the space ) As a company weve stayed away from projects where people want to use x-10 level of gear. Lastly -- and way off topic -- but there is some chatter about wifi growing up to handle these tasks. I'd put that at not likely with the current state of that spec. Its fine for laptops roaming around the house, but its too unreliable for home automation where it needs to work 100% of the time. We try to have anything that needs that kind of connectivity have a dedicated ethernet or we never really trust it. Its not all wifi's fault -- the embedded device code for wifi that is in most touch panels and equipment in the automation space has no clue how to handle a multi channel wifi network where it might roam -- this makes it pretty bad for what most people expect of it.