Gross profit, operating profit or net profit?

If you mean the latter please show us some examples of public cos with a 90% net profit margin. I don’t think there are many.

If there are any, they're private and keeping an extremely low profile to increase their run time before potential competitors catch on and come to eat their lunch.

People with a lucrative gold mine don't talk about it until the mine has run dry and their winnings are secure in the bank.

Ask that guy. I would guess it is none of the three, i.e. he did not deduct a salary for him, but I really do not know.

A high school friend and I decided to try and port the .NET Compact Framework to Symbian OS, specifically Series 60. The company (https://web.archive.org/web/20100112091803/http://www.redfiv...) was based in Johannesburg, South Africa and although we raised funding, we just took way too long.

We were lucky enough to be able to bootstrap some things with the Mono/Xamarin .NET implementation. Initially we created an interpreter but then created a full JIT compiler. It was not easy, to say the least, getting things to work on that platform.

What also didn’t help was the level of support we got from Symbian/Nokia; our project/startup was mostly met with indifference. By the time we had a viable, mostly functioning .NET Compact Framework v2 running the writing was on the wall vs iPhone.

Any particular area you’re interested in? Hacking on a side project right now with frequent flier miles and points.

Was the framework you mentioned in (1) a Microsoft project, or something else?

As a matter of interest, what did you do on the CF team?

Worked in the Compact CLR Execution Engine, IL Verifier, and other stuff. On (1) both were done at MS but ended up as proof of concept.

Post Sathya Microsoft has moved to a more open model, hence the full blown CLR on Linux.

Back in 2008/9 I was a co-founder at a company (Red Five Labs) that created a .NET Compact Framework runtime for Symbian OS (featured on most Nokia & Samsung smartphones at the time). We got to a .NET CF 2.0 level of compatibility.

It was a venture-backed startup out of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Although we wrote the runtime ourselves, we made extensive use of some of the mono libraries until we were able to rewrite most of these optimized for Symbian.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100112091803/http://www.redfiv...

Nice! Thanks for the info. I think that an update to the post is due, turns out that I missed quite a few!

What happens to that code once the company disappears?

Unfortunately it went with it. There were some superficial talks about it winding up in the Symbian Foundation, but those didn’t materialize.

And yes, it probably points to a major problem with a small company developing critical framework or tool components when the codebase isn’t participating in an open source license.

There were many mistakes made along the way, in retrospect.

I remember this! Good memories

That wouldn't be an expense though, unless they wrote it down. Nitpicking, I know. What's $200MM after all ;)

Actually, this may not be a visa, but rather parole, which is a very interesting way to do this indeed.

I can recommend someone I've met a few times, but didn't end up pursuing an EB-5.

Bear in mind that these projects are often not funded through traditional means and ergo are more risky.

Do you have personal evidence of a good exit leading to an EB-1? You would think it would, but that category seems difficult for entrepreneurship/business.

Ok so it's not just me then :)

Yes, country of nationality does make a difference to DV lottery.