Sorry, I guess I missed the questions on social philosophy, the economy, and taxes in that post.
Would be cool to get their take on things - I wonder if they ever made anything on their USD 7 million investment.
This is no question but it is a pondering about the financial success of the doctor's investments. It doesn't really matter but it affected many people meaning it's a social philosophical quandary. The doctors were able to accumulate a substantial sum of money at that time because of the prevailing economic conditions. There certainly are tax implications involved in the ability to accumulate the wealth and how it was invested. They probably received a sizable tax deduction on their investment losses which is more limited today. Taxes are one of the best ways to discourage savings/investment and the U.S. socio-economic environment has become hostile to investors, IMO. The perpetual dead economy makes returns on investments poor and venture capitalism extremely risky, IMO. The 3 doctor's investments would be about $16 million today adjusted for inflation. I believe that would be adequate to revive the Amiga, continue development in fpga and even burn a 68k ASIC that would make it competitive enough for low priced devices with an efficient OS like the AmigaOS. I'm an investor of sorts who has been able to outperform the markets in a huge way considering they have been the worst since FDR and the Great Depression, yet I wasn't able to make as much as one of these doctors. Instead of 3 investors, we would need tens if not hundreds of investors to raise a similar amount of capital. I would not get much tax break if I lost money and the compounded interest of the multiple taxes taken have put a serious dent into the money I have been able to accumulate while I received no benefit. The sales outlook of computers/video game hardware is poor in this economic environment and tech is riskier to begin with. The result is no Amiga today and, IMO, there would have been no Amiga then given these conditions. I think it's natural to compare the past with present. History is about learning from the past and it applies in heaps to investing. Many people don't understand the basics of investing and money or we wouldn't have chosen the wrong path and maybe we would have fixed some problems rather than making them worse.
Are they the true seeders of the Amiga? That is, would Jay had not thought of starting a computer company or seek capital, had the doctors not approached him with the idea and invested?
This is a very philosophical question. Why else would it be interesting? From the questions, it sounds like someone wanted to learn from the past. A snapshot of the past is worthless without comparing it to something. All the involved issues in this case have to be understood including investing, financial, socio-economic, marketing, etc. I'm sorry if you don't understand or don't care danbeaver. Probably nobody does and that is why we have the problems that we do. Only a few people, maybe 1%, try to invest and start businesses and we are becoming more like the 1% of the 1%.
