366500+ entries in 0.219s
mircea_popescu: • $Another 50 per model for
the 10 models in our videos."
mircea_popescu: • $500 for promotional clothing for
the models in our videos.
mircea_popescu: " We spent way
too much money. I’ll
tell you exactly how much we spent:
punkman: "No one is in charge; it’s visibly decaying. Megatons of it, irrelevant, incapable of restoration,
the walking dead…the House of Usher."
mircea_popescu: incredibly enough, it STILL didn't work! yet nobody can ever
tell him why! because IT WAS WHITENED!!! ha-ha!
mircea_popescu: it not only made it impossible
to immediately notice
that people suck, but it also made it unobvious
to gatekeepers
that
this is a dumb idea.
mircea_popescu: check it out asciilifeform someone decided
to solve
the problem of ugc by adding... WHITENING!
☟︎ mircea_popescu: the fundamental problem here being
that if your "mathematical simulations inspired by words" actually produce stuff people want
to wear,
then you don't need it
to be an app, just build a factory ; on
the other hand, if people have
to design
themselves,
then you have
the same old problem of UGC : people suck.
mircea_popescu: "UDesign™ allowed everyday people
to generate
their own uniquely beautiful patterns for made-to-order clothing and accessories, using mathematical simulations inspired by Complexity science and Chaos
theory."
mircea_popescu: i wonder what will i be
taking in my
travels for
the waitresses and secretaries.
tp and jeans like before ? batteries, maybe ?
☟︎ mircea_popescu: vocational school, it's
true, but a damn sight better
than
the whole rest of 'em nevertheless.
mircea_popescu: "Unfortunately, having failed
to execute on our original vision, we recently made
the decision
to wind down
the company."
mircea_popescu: also, apparently all
the douchy "entrepreneurs" and serial failurerists are on medium.
mircea_popescu: Our ongoing plan was
to monetize Circa News
through
the building of a strategy we had spent a long
time developing but unfortunately we were unable
to close a significant investment prior
to becoming resource constrained."
pete_dushenski: ;;later
tell BingoBoingo so chuck lee makes it an entire
thousand words without sounding like a complete momo, only
to finish with "P.S. I’m currently in favor of scaling Bitcoin via 2–4–8, SegWit, and LN." like, wtf.
mircea_popescu: but hey... im sure
they never said nigger and so how bad could it have been! out
there!
mircea_popescu: gotta love "out
there". it's almost as good as "self-aware citizen of
the nubbins"
mircea_popescu: Better had one of
the best consumer user experiences out
there but
that isn’t enough. "
nubbins`: this is great, i'm gonna read
these over some coffee
mircea_popescu: this'd be an epic car
theft ring, really. "kicstarter decentralized on demand carbon conscious valet service!"
mircea_popescu: in
the immortal words of seinfeld, "i give some guy
the keys
to my car because he's wearing a vest"
pete_dushenski: ave offspring who
themselves marry within
their own educational level." <<
thus,
the
true story behind
the problem of idiot "boomers" is revealed :
they
thought
they
thought
they could improve on history and stick it
to
their fuddy duddy parents all at
the same
time ! derp.
pete_dushenski: in other nyooz, "Spousal resemblance on educational attainment was very high in
the early
twentieth century, declined
to an all-time low for young couples in
the early 1950s, and has increased steadily since
then.
These
trends broadly parallel
the compression and expansion of socioeconomic inequality in
the United States over
the
twentieth century. Additionally, educationally similar parents are more likely
to h
mircea_popescu: ay but it was just not working. Our model was no longer valid and were forced
to cease operations in
the city on September 7th."
mircea_popescu: We started VATLER during
the summer of 2014 as an on-demand valet service in San Francisco … We received a phone call from
the police department
telling us
that our permits had not been granted and
they gave us a warning because we were operating illegally in most of our locations…In 2 weeks, we lost major accounts and 30% of our revenue streams without any perspective of growth. We
tried
to make some restaurants p
mircea_popescu: this is like, fundamental abdication from humanity.
these people aspire
to be bugs.
nubbins`: we knew we'd run out of gas, but bobby steered and lisa worked
the accelerator and we got as far down
that road as we could. unfortunately we just couldn't pull over
to
the shoulder.
mircea_popescu: any mention of "i suck as a manager" eerily absent. "i don't suck as a manager - i gave all
the people who had no responsibility in
the matter all
the data about what a shit job i was doing.
this means i wasn't doing a shit job!
this is also how i went
through school - i
told my parents about all
the Cs i got!
this is actually better
than getting As!"
mircea_popescu: Each member of our now pared-down
team knew exactly how much runway
the company had remaining,
the status of our strategic
talks, and
the acknowledged long odds we faced as a going concern.
To
their credit,
they remained focused, productive and on-task until our final day — a remarkable expression of dedication
to
the mission and
to each other. Sadly, and in spite of
the achievements, we simply ran out of
time and ca
mircea_popescu: "oh, we were going
to change
the world on someone else's dime. what do you mean "wut" ?!?!?! WE ARE GENIUZ!"
mircea_popescu: We had a user acquisition problem, and
the best route involved a competitor…The best acquisition method I saw was
tapping into an existing network of people who had filed 1099s: like Intuit’s hundreds of millions of
tax returns, many with 1099 income. Unfortunately, Intuit released an identical competing product
to us. It’s not ideal when your best user acquisition strategy is partnering with a company who has a
nubbins`: you could fill
the oceans with people who
thought buyers would magically appear
mircea_popescu: Escribano said
that
the company’s main problem was user engagement and retention. “In every marketplace you have
the chicken-and-egg problem with buyers and sellers. We
tried
to capture
them both organically and via paid marketing, but it wasn’t enough. Getting sellers was somewhat easy, but buyers much more complicated”
mircea_popescu: Steering
the ship — handling all of
the engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and retailing, even when you’re
taking 90 percent of
the subsequent profits — was ultimately
too expensive of a proposition, especially in comparison
to other, less-handholding-oriented start-ups. “The reason why Kickstarter makes a
ton of money is
they don’t have
to do anything besides put up a website,” Kaufman notes.
assbot: Here's what
they don't
tell you when
they bring you
those papers
to sign on
Trilema - A blog by Mircea Popescu. ... (
http://bit.ly/1O6aNyh )
mircea_popescu: ” and its unnamed acquirer a “no-show”. Adds Graj: “They backed out leaving us with a huge legal bill both for Dine In and myself personally, a huge debt
to note holders, and no VCs
to
turn
to. A hard lesson
to learn and one I’ll be
taking into my next venture.”
mircea_popescu: “We knew acquisition was
the best course of action,” says [Evan] Graj.
That eventually led
to Dine In being approached in February by a major Internet company active in
the online food space, and it’s my understanding
that by April — and significant legal fees later — a sale had been agreed.
Then at
the eleventh hour
the deal unexpectedly fell
through, leaving
the restaurant delivery startup “high and dry
mircea_popescu: alternative and private, seriously ? what, like your wife & daughter ? why are
they chained in my closed
then, if
they're
this private an' alternative ?
pete_dushenski: this is actually an incredibly strong signal
that
the product in question is doomed, if
their landing page says "as seen in nyt, good morning america, etc."
mircea_popescu: but anyway,
there's going
to be A LOT of busting kneecaps of uppity ustard "capitalists" who imagine
they actually get
to have a say and whatnot.
mircea_popescu: nobody in china ever saw
their faces before
the day
they were locked in a hut and burned alive, but hey.
THEY
thought
they were part of
the conversation.
mircea_popescu: this is a little like being a chinese diplomat reviewing
the records of
this obscure
tribe, meanwhile crushed,
that apparently
thought it had sent lots and lots of ambassadors, expeditions, generals, so forth.
mircea_popescu: all
the
things nobody heard of from all
the people nobody heard of.
mircea_popescu: o-founders said
they saw “little chance”
that
they would be able
to generate revenue, pivot
their product or secure additional funding."
mircea_popescu: In
the email, co-founders Karthik Balasubramanian and Brian Moyer stated
their belief
that
the movement of investor interest away from consumer-facing applications for
the
technology was also a factor. Balasubramanian and Moyer wrote: ”While investment and activity continues
to occur it is focused on private and alternate chains rather
than bitcoin or other public chains where Bonafide operates.” As a result,
the c
pete_dushenski: "i don't want
to succeed if it means i can't be ME ! what am i, some sort of sellout ?"
assbot: Logged on 15-12-2015 19:39:26; mircea_popescu: ascii_field by
the
time
that's done, my dear alf, everyone who's still asleep ain't never waking up again.
mircea_popescu: epic. "i am exactly who i wanted
to be : a failure. unfortunately,
this also means i die now. so long!"
☟︎ mircea_popescu: We achieved what we set out
to do, even if
the final result didn’t end up with us becoming
the next Buzzfeed. We never wanted
to be
the next Buzzfeed. We always wanted
to be who we were, Pixable. And it was working. Unfortunately, circumstances [despite reaching 9.4M active users and 58M monthly video views] … made it difficult
to raise money and continue on."
mircea_popescu: btw asciilifeform
the same iac/spamcorp owns
the princetown review, your favourite!
☟︎ assbot: Logged on 16-12-2015 12:05:29; mircea_popescu: deedbot-: [Contravex: A blog by Pete Dushenski » Contravex: A blog by Pete Dushenski] << hey, maybe stick some more pete dushenski in
there, pete_dushenski ? just in case
tis not clear!
mircea_popescu: ah, as per intel
they actually bought okcupid for 50mn, so prolly should shed some zeros.
mircea_popescu: of only practical interest here, remember
that for every $1000 added
to your 401k, you can expect
to buy about a cent;s worth of
turkey at some point down
the road.
mircea_popescu: numbers are probably not exact, but
they are certainly & guaranteedly closer
to reality
than
the bizarro view where "apple has 1 dollar means apple has 1 dollar".
mircea_popescu: also, seeing how InterActiveCorp ( NASDAQ: IACI ) consists of at least 10% okcupid and claims
total assets of 4bn, we can estimate
the value of
the bezzle! if 4k worth of okcupid is perhaps 10% of
the business self-valued at 4bn,
then every dollar a us corporation owns is worth ~0.001 cents of actual, honest
to god,
turkey-buying dollars and 0.999 cents of pure bezzle.
mircea_popescu: this puts
the per-capita value of an ustard (that LTV
thing discussed in some earlier links in log ) somewhere in
the 1
to 10 cents.
mircea_popescu: on
the basis of all
the foregoing, i would say
the market value of okcupid is definitely under 10 btc and perhaps over 1 btc.
mircea_popescu: on
the other hand, of
those 2-300 people, should you have
the curiosity
to include a link strategically in your profile, you might discover
that exactly... 0%, as well as 0 per
thousand actually click.
mircea_popescu: as
the boost
takes about an hour,
this caps
the okcupid revenue from
this line
to somewhere around say 20 bux an hour ? which sounds just about right.
mircea_popescu: this is practically a straight advertising deal, and i have
the numbers : out of
the ~150-200k people onlione
they claim perpetually,
the 1-2 dollar
thing buys you about 300 over an hour, so
that's superficially 1.5-2 per
thousand but i suspect might be as high as 10% given
that obviously, not everyone actually pays any attention
to
them.
mircea_popescu: the other, and
this is
the lulzy part, is a "boost", where you pay
them a buck or
two and
they "show your profile"
to VERY MANY ppl!!1
mircea_popescu: but anyway. i imagine it's making a decent penny for
them, being exactly
the fuctarded "sit by lakeside and carefully dip
toe in"
thing
that
today's women of both sexes obsess over.
mircea_popescu: in unrelated news : okcupid makes money in
two ways
that i can see. one is
to sell you "A list" status, which brings no obvious benefits other
than "browse invisibly".
they advertise
the shit out of it
too, "you are browsing visibly". what
the fuck sort of deranged ustardian would actually make an account of a site specifically dedicated
to finding people and
then wanting stealth!
mircea_popescu: i do, actually.
this line-at-a-time business is almost perfect.
nubbins`: if you like
to read, you'll love irc
mircea_popescu: jurov quite. i recall reading
that
thing years ago,
too. understood as nothing of it
then as now, obviously.
jurov: mircea_popescu: map is not
the
territory
mircea_popescu: <nubbins`> jurov seems you're making some progress << ironically,
the operator= nonsense was JUST linked in a basic piece about how c++ sucks
that we've all read and yet it made nobody else click.
jurov: and
the code i ended up with is rather invasive :(
☟︎ jurov: but if it helps with maintaining mempool remains
to be seen
jurov: putting outside of heap all permanent block-related data
that won't ever get deallocated, looks like an improvement and do improve
the baseline
jurov: hard
to say. my style of work is more like
throwing shit
to wall
than some systematic progress
jurov: asciilifeform: igprof shown several megabytes of LIVE_MEM for BN_copy called from operator= despite it's almost always used only
temporary
nubbins`: for
those of you who have never, it's enjoyable
nubbins`: time
to smoke a jazz cigarette while
taking a shower