Revenue vs Cost Axis

Revenue vs Cost Axis

Every business has revenues and costs. When the revenues and costs are not aligned, the business sooner or later risks bankruptcy. Let me illustrate with a few examples. A restaurant’s costs consist of raw food materials and labor. While the revenues are a function of the amount of food sold. So, in case the revenue falls, the cost of labor kills the restaurant business. A cloud kitchen, due to its reduced labor costs, is more resilient. The costs of oil (or mining) companies consist of drilling and transportation. While the revenue is a strong function of the unpredictable oil/mineral price. That’s why small oil and mining companies go out of business whenever there is a sharp fall in the price of the commodity sold. An airline’s costs consist primarily of the predictable cost of leasing the airplanes and the unpredictable oil prices to fly the plane. While the revenue consists of the number of seats sold well in advance. So, any fall in seats sold or any sudden spikes in oil prices leads to a disaster. A software company’s costs consist mostly of labor and infrastructure. While the revenue comes from the increased sales of the software. The incremental cost of serving a user is marginal, while the fixed costs are huge. That’s why landing a few big initial contracts to become default-alive can make a huge difference in the long run. An exchange takes a cut of transactions flowing through it. The costs and revenues are aligned. Further, if it is an electronic exchange, like stock exchanges or Ad exchanges, then the infrastructural costs are minimal and employee costs are less material. This becomes a pure money-making exercise.

February 8, 2025 · 2 min      Finance
Antigua, Guatemala

Language learning as an adult

Two musings of my Spanish learning

The unanchored babies of the green card limbo

The unanchored babies of the green card limbo

The US president has spoken favorably of H1-B and has promised a Green card for all US graduates. So, the only way to explain this Executive Order roping in legal immigrants is that no one in Washington DC properly understands how discriminatory the current green card system is for the Indian nationals.

January 22, 2025 · 3 min      Politics

Price variance in the United States

One weird aspect of life in the USA is not just the weird labor vs material costs but even how much the material costs vary from retailer to retailer. I have been to 50+ countries now and have not seen this variance in any high-income, middle-income, or low-income country. It taxes your mental energy because even simple tasks can have a huge cost variance. My car has two battery-powered keys. One was dead, other one started giving low-battery notifications as well. Over the weekend, I learned about different ways to change the car battery with a 100X variation in costs. ...

Kentucky Derby grounds

A day in Louisville, Kentucky

While touring United States , I ended up in Kentucky. There isn’t a lot to do in Kentucky, especially, during the winters that I visited. So, here are a few small ideas for a day trip. I would recommend starting the day with Kentucky Derby Museum which is famous for its annual Kentucky Derby Horse race. Afterward, check out the sit-in demonstration site of the 1961 civil rights movement at 501 S Fourth St . ...

A view from Taj Samundra (Colombo)

A surprisingly positive experience with Air India

After an amazing 5-day trip in Sri Lanka , we were to catch a late night Air India flight from Colombo to New Delhi. The flight was delayed due to an engine malfunction. First by an hour. Then another hour. And four-hours later, when the repair work finished, the flight pilot’s shift had already ended! An emergency flight was planned and it was supposed to arrive 20-hours later! Air India sent all the passengers to a complimentary all-inclusive stay in Taj Samundra. ...

Unhospitable Airports

There was no water fountain at the airport. Everyone was expected to buy the overpriced water bottles sold alongside the “Save Environment” banner. The bathrooms were slightly damp. The AC was only partially working. There wasn’t enough space to stand, let alone sit, in the boarding area. The boarding process was haphazard with little information being conveyed about why it was delayed. The restless passengers queued up in multiple lines that merge into each other at various points. Everyone was ready to leave escape. ...

Android Logo

Android: Don't use stale views

In MusicSync , one of the views became complex and too slow to be inflated on the UI thread. So, I decided to do some Pooling around it to inflate it on the background thread and use it on the UI thread. This made the UI snappier, reducing multiple-second load times when opening some folders. However, soon I ended up with an edge case where re-opening the activity (and not the app) led to a semi-functional app. This edge case is hard as it gets triggered only in particular scenarios where the user destroys the activity via swipe up. At the same time, the app keeps running due to the attached foreground service that’s playing the media. And on activity re-creation, I got stale views! ...

USA = Union of Sales and Advertisement

The price variance one sees in the United States is huge.

Nashville

A day in Nashville, Tennessee

While touring United States , I ended up in Tennessee. There isn’t a lot to do in Tennessee, especially, during the winters that I visited. So, here are a few small ideas for a day trip. I would recommend starting the day with Rednor Lake State Park Check out The Parthenon . It is a full-scale replica of The Parthenon in Athens, Greece. I would recommend combining your trip with a visit to the city of Birmingham in Alabama and the city of Louisville located in Kentucky . ...