As Liz noted, Fred Wilson’s MBA Mondays should be required reading for just about everyone, but especially for designers. (Nearly everything Wilson writes about is fascinating — his A VC blog is among the most fervently-read in my daily roundup.) Here’s Wilson on a fundamental business concept, the Time Value of Money:

Money today is generally worth more than money tomorrow. As another commenter to last week’s post put it “you can’t buy beer tonight with next year’s earnings”. Money in your pocket, cash in hand, is worth more than cash that you don’t actually have in hand. If you think about it that simply, everyone can agree that they’d rather have the cash in hand than the promise of the same amount at some later day.

And interest rates are used to calculate exactly how much more the money is worth today than tomorrow.

These interest rates are determined by many factors, but among them are inflation and risk. In aggregate, these rates frame the behavior of markets:

Markets set rates. Banks don’t and governments don’t. Banks and governments certainly impact rates and governments can do a lot to impact rates and they do all the time. But at the end of the day it is you and me and it is the traders, both speculators and hedgers, who determine how much of a discount we’ll accept to get our money now and how much interest we’ll want to wait another year.

Also excellent: his plainspoken breakdown of how to read through a Profit & Loss Statement. Makes me wish I had MBA Mondays back in high school.

James Archer delivers a sharp analysis on the limits of fixed-fee billing:

Fixed-fee projects turn the agency and the client into enemies; they’re competing against each other. The agency is trying to wrap up the project as quickly and efficiently as possible, and the client is trying to get as much value as possible out of the agency by constantly requesting changes, adding scope, etc.

Reading this article, I often found myself nodding in agreement.

In this article from Slate on the difficulties of running small restaurants and cafés, former Lower East Side coffee shop owner Michael Idov explains the simple math of making such establishments work (and, as a result, why they often don’t): “There is a golden rule, long cherished by restaurateurs, for determining whether a business is viable. Rent should take up no more than 25 percent of your revenue, another 25 percent should go toward payroll, and 35 percent should go toward the product. The remaining 15 percent is what you take home. There’s an even more elegant version of that rule: Make your rent in four days to be profitable, a week to break even. If you haven’t hit the latter mark in a month, close” (via Big Contrarian).

I thought I was all set with the conceptual underpinnings of the I’m a Mac / I’m a PC campaign until I read John Gruber’s thoughtful post on Microsoft’s new campaign. Gruber writes, “Apple does not sell operating systems. They sell computers. Microsoft does not sell computers; they sell operating systems. […] Apple and Microsoft are undeniably engaged in one of the longest running and most interesting rivalries in business history, but it is very odd in that it is an orthogonal rivalry. Apple’s direct competition isn’t Microsoft but instead PC makers who sell computers running Windows. […] The framing of Apple’s ads is not about either/or. Not a choice between two rival products, like Democrat/Republican, Chevy/Ford, Coke/Pepsi. The framing instead is special vs. regular. Not Coke vs. Pepsi but Coke vs. ‘soda.’ […] Windows is not the Mac’s rival or competitor. It is the omnipresent homogenizer that weighs PC down.”

Five types of businesses, according to Pine & Gilmore’s book The Experience Economy: “1) A commodity business charges for undifferentiated products. 2) A goods business charges for distinctive, tangible things. 3) A service business charges for the activities you perform. 4) An experience business charges for the feeling customers get by engaging it. 5) A transformation business charges for the benefit customers (or ‘guests’) receive by spending time there.” The more you move up the chain, the more stuff you might have to give away to get to the next stage. There’s a succinct review here.

Before the SEC shut him down at age 15, Jonathan Lebed made a habit of hyping penny stocks in Internet chat rooms from his New Jersey bedroom, and then selling them as word spread and interest gathered. A classic “pump-and-dump” strategy. Lebed later settled with the SEC, forfeitting $285,000 without admitting any wrongdoing. He continues to trade actively and sell stock tips through his online newsletter. I first learned about him Michael Lewis’s great article several years ago in the NYT Magazine, where Lebed’s childlike “playing” with the stock market reminded me of Glenn Gould’s more musical “playing” of it.