Suppose you decide (as did Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg) to start a company. Your product is a software platform that integrates a wide range of media devices, including laptop computers, desktop computers, digital video recorders, and cell phones. Your initial client base is the student body at your university. Once you have established your company and set up procedures for operating it, you plan to expand to other colleges in the area and eventually to go nationwide. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, you plan to go public with an IPO and then to buy a yacht and take off for the South Pacific to indulge in your passion for underwater photography. With these plans in mind, you need to answer for yourself, and potential investors, the following questions: What is an agency relationship? When you first begin operations, assuming you are the only employee and only your money is invested in the business, would any agency conflicts exist? Explain your answer. Suppose your company raises funds from outside lenders. What type of agency costs might occur? How might lenders mitigate the agency costs? What is corporate governance? List five corporate governance provisions that are internal to a firm and are under its control. Briefly describe the use of stock options in a compensation plan. What are some potential problems with stock options as a form of compensation? Briefly explain how regulatory agencies and legal systems affect corporate governance.

Neon light company of kansas city ships lamps and lighting appliances throughout the country. ms. neon has determined that through the establishment of local collection centers around the country, she can speed up the collection of payments by one and one-half days. furthermore, the cash management department of her bank has indicated to her that she can defer her payments on her accounts by one-half day without affecting suppliers. the bank has a remote disbursement center in florida. a. if neon light company has $2.90 million per day in collections and $1.18 million per day in disbursements, how many dollars will the cash management system free up?

Onsider the following subscription behavior information from genie, a web site that provides tools for constructing a family tree (ancestor search). subscriptions cost $9.99 per month, but you are charged for the entire year at the time of purchase. there is a one-year minimum term when you sign up for the service. once purchased, subscriptions are set to renew automatically unless the subscriber cancels them. when a membership renews, it renews for a one-year term and again you are charged for the entire year. there are no variable costs associated with providing this service to an individual customer, but genie does engage in customer relationship activities that they believe will increase customer retention. these customer relationship activities cost genie about $10 per year per customer. based on a sample of 1000 customers that joined genie five years ago, near the time when the company was founded, they were able to determine how many of those customers remained subscribers in the second year, third year etc. based on this information, genie calculated the average annual retention rate to be 20%. genie uses an annual discount rate of 8%. a. last year, genie spent $10,000 placing advertisements on google. genie management believes that these advertisements were responsible for about 300 new subscribers. would you recommend to genie management that they purchase more google ads? b. suppose a newly-introduced loyalty program increases the number of customers that remained to 30%. does this new data change your answer to 9.a? c. do you have any hesitations or concerns about making recommendations to management based on your above estimate of customer lifetime value?

Which of the following would cause a shift to the right of the supply curve for gasoline? i. a large increase in the price of public transportation. ii. a large decrease in the price of automobiles. iii. a large reduction in the costs of producing gasoline