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The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Curiosity rover uses a calibration target attached to a shoulder joint of the arm.This image combines a close-up of the calibration target with a view of the rover to illustrate the target's location on the rover. The MAHLI calibration target includes a penny, color chips, a metric standardized bar graphic, and (just below the penny) a stair-step pattern for depth calibration.When calibrating a camera, there are typically 3 things that are used:Some sort of a color palletA line chart of some sort to identify the fine resolutionA real object, to make sure there isn't something fundamentally wrong.NASA followed this same suit, choosing the penny to be the real object, claiming that it give homage to the practice of using coins to get a sense of scale in photographs. If you take a look below, you will see color calibration targets, resolution targets, and the penny, for the final touch of realism.The penny is on the MAHLI calibration target as a tip of the hat to geologists' informal practice of placing a coin or other object of known scale in their photographs. A more formal practice is to use an object with scale marked in millimeters, centimeters or meters. When a geologist takes pictures of rock outcrops he is studying, he wants an object of known scale in the photographs. If it is a whole cliff face, he'll ask a person to stand in the shot. If it is a view from a meter or so away, he might use a rock hammer. If it is a close-up, as the MAHLI can take, he might pull something small out of her pocket. Like a penny. Of course, this penny can't be moved around and placed in MAHLI images; it stays affixed to the rover

Thanks for the A2A. There is not one or two quick metrics that can tell you that a stock is under or over valued. Now, you can easily see how statistically cheap it is - in absolute terms, vs. its own history, vs. peers, vs. the market, etc. However, that doesn’t give you the answer to the question that you are asking.Now on average, the lower the traditional valuation metrics (e.g. P/E, P/FCF, EV/EBITA, etc) the more likely that the stock is undervalued. Why? Take 100 stocks with a P/E of 5x on trailing earnings and call it Group A. Take another 100 stocks with a P/E of 25x on trailing earnings and call it group B. Group A, on average, is discounting either a) that earnings will significantly stair-step down right away or b) that earnings will decline at a steady rate for a long time. Group B, on average, is discounting the opposite - that earnings will grow at a far above-average rate for a long time. Is it possible that those futures may come to pass? Sure. Is it likely, for a large group? No, barring very unusual circumstances/unique selection bias. So on average - reversion to the mean works, which is why on average, valuation metrics like P/E, P/FCF and EV/EBITA can give you a basic insight into how optimistic or pessimistic are the long-term fundamentals that the market is discounting. Statistical value investing has been shown to add value over the long-term, across time periods and geographies, as is shown in this study from Brandes.There is really no substitute to understanding the business and estimating its intrinsic value if you really want to assess a stock as a potential investment.I follow Silver Ring Value Partners’ Five Step Research Process:Company Quality Assessment - assess the quality of the Business, the Management Team and the Balance Sheet.Analysis of Key Economic Variables - what is a handful of key variables that I need to understand to be able to approximately estimate the long-term economic characteristics of the business?Financial Modeling - model a range of possible futures for the business based on the range of likely outcomes for the key variables.Valuation - estimate a range of intrinsic values for the business based on the financial modeling in step 3.Behavioral Checklist - a customized list of questions to check for common behavioral biases. It’s very important to practice behavioral defense, for reasons that I elaborate on in this article.

“It’s too early to hire a VP of Sales!” The VC said to me. “You should be doing the selling!”“I hear where you’re coming from,” I said. “And believe me, I will be selling.”“’Ken’s’ been part of the company since I started it.“Without Ken, we wouldn’t have gotten funded,” I said. “One of our investors insisted we have the sales piece figured out.”It turned out we were both right.I did need Ken to start the company. I don’t think we would have been funded without him.But the VC was right too. It was WAY too early to have a VP of Sales.I was the most effective salesperson the company had early on. The company was my idea, and I was passionate about what we were doing in a way that Ken never could be.So do the selling yourself when you are starting out. You’ll be…The most effective salesperson your company has because you know the product(s) the best, and…You, the CEO, will care the most about winning deals because it’s your company, and…You’ll learn the sales process for your company, so you’ll know what to look for when you eventually hire a true VP of Sales.I wish the list of mistakes you can make with sales ended with hiring a VP of Sales too early. There are many more mistakes you can make with startup sales.Here’s my list of other sales and marketing mistakes to avoid:A. Hiring a B player for VP of Sales because this is the best person you can find.I made this mistake too.Ken didn’t work out because he didn’t want to put out the effort required. He was burned out from too many years on the road. So I hired an Executive Recruiter (the right move) to help me find a replacement.I looked at hundreds of resumes and interviewed around twenty candidates. And none of the candidates were what I called “Wows”.A Wow candidate is someone that blows you away on every metric you are looking for. But we just couldn’t find a Wow candidate.The reality is we were just too early to attract a Wow VP of Sales candidate. We needed more traction to attract the Wows.And we just weren’t there yet.But there were two candidates that stood out from the rest. Both candidates were good solid “B” players.So what should I have done? Easy. I should have passed on both candidates, and I should have kept running sales until we got to a level where we could attract a Wow VP of Sales.I ended up hiring one of the candidates. He did some good things for the company, but he wasn’t at the level we wanted.The moral of the story is hire only Wow people. So, while you’re interviewing you shouldn’t…B. Keep a weak VP of Sales once you realize you’ve made a mistake.We all make hiring mistakes. And hiring a VP of Sales that doesn’t work out is common.What you do next can determine if your company survives. You need to terminate that VP of Sales that isn’t working as soon as you see it.How quickly can you see if a VP of Sales is working out? The answer is as fast as your sales cycle is.Let’s say your sales cycle (the amount of time it takes from a lead being captured to a lead turning into a customer) is six months. You should know by the end of that six month period if your new VP of Sales is working out.Here’s the mistake too many people make: They hope things will get better.The problem is you’re burning through time while you wait. And time is the enemy when you’re building a company.Let’s say you’ve hired an awesome VP of Sales. Don’t screw it up by…C. Setting the initial revenue targets for your VP of Sales.Oh, I know it’s tempting, but don’t do it. You want your new VP of Sales to own the numbers.Even if the numbers are low, let the new VP of Sales set the initial numbers. You can step in later if the VP of Sales isn’t aggressive enough. Read Mark Leslie’s awesome HBR article on the subject here: The Sales Learning Curve.Okay. How else can you screw up sales? There’s…D. Thinking you have a repeatable sales process when you don’t.What happens when you get that first big win? Maybe it’s not even a big win, but a medium sized win.It’s human nature to believe the floodgates have opened, and you now have a repeatable sales process. You probably don’t.What does a repeatable sales model mean? Exactly that. Something that is consistent.A repeatable sales model doesn’t mean that sales have grown 30% month on month for one month. That’s just not enough data.A repeatable sales model does mean that sales have grown 30% month on month for the past six months. And you have a set of predictable actions that have led to the outcome.But maybe things aren’t going as planned. And you can make it worse by…E. Hiring for growth that doesn’t happen.This is a classic mistake.You get a couple wins, and you start feeling good about yourself. And then you hire a large sales team and a staff to support them.Then sales slow down, and you end up laying-off the same team you just hired. Talk about a huge morale killer.But you can make it worse. You could…F. Farming out a portion of your sales activity to an outside consultant.Let me explain.Let’s say there’s a group of people that, allegedly, have extensive contacts in a region where you have no presence. The group comes highly recommended.You meet with the group several times, and you are impressed with the group’s knowledge. You hire the group on a monthly retainer.And the group does nothing except take your money.That’s where the alarm bells should go off. Never pay outside sales reps (which is what a group like this is) a retainer. Ever.The commission you are giving them should be enough of an incentive. Pass if it isn’t enough.Onto marketing screw ups. At the top of the list is…A. Paying for leads.Of all the scammy, crazy ways to blow money, paying for leads has to be right near the top of the list.It’s kind of like what Pied Piper did near the end of Season 3 of Silicon Valley to show user growth.Paying for leads just never, ever works out. Why? The quality of the leads usually sucks.Think about it. Why is someone going to give you high quality leads instead of using the leads themselves? It just doesn’t make sense.However what really doesn’t make sense is…B. Not having a marketing plan.Not having a plan, if you can believe it, happens more often then not. So how do you win if you don’t have a plan?It’s the old “Build it and they will come model.” Somehow customers are just going to find you.I was just talking to a CEO a couple of months ago. The CEO was wondering why his business wasn’t growing.“How do customers find you?” I asked.“Through our website,” he said.“And what are you doing to drive traffic to your website?”There was a long pause. It was clear he didn’t have a plan.So what did he need to do? Have a plan!You can’t just expect customers to find your website. Those days are long gone.You have to figure out how your customers are going to find you. And you’re going to have to figure out how you’re going to nurture these opportunities into leads for your business.The other common mistake you see entrepreneurs make regarding marketing is…C. Jumping from plan to plan.Jumping from plan to plan is almost as bad as not having a plan. In fact, maybe it’s worse because you’re likely spending (wasting) money.You see CEOs jump from plan to plan if they have never done marketing before. For example, I was advising a CEO on his marketing strategy.The CEO had developed a plan to run ads on Facebook. The ads ran for a couple of days and then the ads stopped running.I asked the CEO what happened to the ads? He said, “The ads aren’t converting, so I decided to run ads on Google.”You have to give your advertising plans a long time before they will pay off. And two days is just not enough time. You’re just getting started.You have plan on a lot longer time if you expect your marketing plans to pay off. When you jump from plan to plan, that is a recipe for disaster.You should test your marketing first, and then build out your strategy based on your testing. The testing is likely to take at least one month if not longer depending upon the marketing you’re doing.The thing about marketing is marketing has an iterative effect. You need to be consistent with your marketing. I saw this iterative effect with my last company.We were consistent with our marketing. Each marketing campaign built on the success of the previous campaign.The results were okay to begin with. And the results kept improving with time.And that’s what you need to do. You need to market week after week and month after month. Marketing builds on itself. The more you market, the better the results you are going to get.Moving from plan to plan will make you look schizophrenic and that will not work. Your marketing plan is like a good wine. It needs time to breathe.Speaking of being schizophrenic, this next one is another common mistake…D. Having too many marketing channels at once.So, instead of just focusing on Facebook, you’ve decided to focus on Google. “Oh yeah, let’s go add in some print advertising. We’ve got a lot of money to spend, so let’s go spend money on radio and TV advertising too.” You get the idea.It is a huge mistake when you are starting your business to focus on multiple channels at once. Start with one channel and get it to work.When you master that one channel, then you move onto a second channel. When you master the second channel, and you think, “maybe I can increase the audience by including a third channel?” Then you can move onto a third channel.But do your marketing in this stair-step approach of one channel at a time. You’re going to find that mastering that one channel is going to be difficult enough.Down the list we go. This next one is just unthinkable in today’s world, yet I see this mistake again and again…E. Not measuring your results.It is criminal in today’s world, with all the digital tools you have available, not to measure your marketing results. You should be measuring everything you can think of.Whether it’s return on investment which you should always be measuring, or…Whether it’s cost per click, or…Cost per action, or…Cost per lead.You can measure all of it. And the beautiful thing about measuring your results is you have benchmarks.Now you know whether you are improving or declining. You can see whether you are improving.There is no more guesswork like there was for me back in the day.Let’s say you’re doing everything right, and you’re getting a positive ROI on your marketing. Then you don’t want to commit this last sin…F. You’re not spending enough money on marketing.Let me ask you another question. You’re getting a return of $4 for every $1 you are investing in your marketing program, but you’re limiting your marketing budget.You’re measuring your results, so you know exactly what your return on investment is. You have a plan. You’re using the stair-step strategy, so you’re not jumping from strategy to strategy.The question is why aren’t you spending more money? Seriously, what’s stopping you?For more, read: What Are The Five Fatal Mistakes That Will Kill Your Business? - Brett J. Fox