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I assume you are joking. Gambling is a closed system with fixed rules. The expected winnings form a Gaussian bell curve. Entrepreneurship is an open system. You

I assume you are joking. Gambling is a closed system with fixed rules. The expected winnings form a Gaussian bell curve. Entrepreneurship is an open system. You can change the game. The idea of expected profits assumes that profits will follow a bell curve. But in fact they don't. There is really no upper bound. To use the terminology of Taleb's Black Swan, entrepreneurship profits are Mandelbrotian. The outliers can completely change the average, to a point where the concept of the average or expected becomes meaningless.

amichail 17y ago
You could give the median profit, which is not sensitive to outliers.
- profquail 17y ago
  Why should the government be required to help you out here. Contact the company and find out some more about their platform. If they won't give you some straight answers, then it's time to move on. It's a private company, and it's totally within their right to refuse your information request, but they will also be driving themselves out of business...
  - amichail 17y ago
    Why would a company voluntarily give out information that would discourage third party developers? Does Facebook for example give out the median profit from a Facebook app?
    - profquail 17y ago
      They wouldn't. And if they lied to you, that's fraud, and you can press charges against them. If they don't lie, but they don't tell you good things about their platform (you'll have to judge the amount of 'spin' on your own)...then move on. It's really that simple. From your example, you could contact Facebook and ask for some stats about their application platform (telling them that your company is thinking about building an app for that platform). If they refuse to give you stats, either ask to be transferred to a 'higher-up', or tell them you're sorry you couldn't work together and get off the phone. If they do give you stats, you need to judge for yourself if building your app will be profitable on that platform. There is absolutely no company (or person) in the world that is going to be able to quote you a hard number on the amount of profit your app is going to make before it exists.

amichail 17y ago

You could give the median profit, which is not sensitive to outliers.

profquail 17y ago
Why should the government be required to help you out here. Contact the company and find out some more about their platform. If they won't give you some straight answers, then it's time to move on. It's a private company, and it's totally within their right to refuse your information request, but they will also be driving themselves out of business...
- amichail 17y ago
  Why would a company voluntarily give out information that would discourage third party developers? Does Facebook for example give out the median profit from a Facebook app?
  - profquail 17y ago
    They wouldn't. And if they lied to you, that's fraud, and you can press charges against them. If they don't lie, but they don't tell you good things about their platform (you'll have to judge the amount of 'spin' on your own)...then move on. It's really that simple. From your example, you could contact Facebook and ask for some stats about their application platform (telling them that your company is thinking about building an app for that platform). If they refuse to give you stats, either ask to be transferred to a 'higher-up', or tell them you're sorry you couldn't work together and get off the phone. If they do give you stats, you need to judge for yourself if building your app will be profitable on that platform. There is absolutely no company (or person) in the world that is going to be able to quote you a hard number on the amount of profit your app is going to make before it exists.