A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants • Hacker News Board

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#71

Post by PhasmaFelis » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 8:07 PM UTC

lmitchell wrote: post #3

windlep wrote: post #2

It will be interesting to see if this one takes off more than a similar one that launched about a decade ago now... http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/15/social-networking-platform-... CrowdVine also let people setup custom white-label social networks, though I suppose its founder didn't have as neat of a background story as a Ning founder. It's probably a nice business model, but not a "startup" by PG's standards, since…

I love Hacker News, but my least favourite thing about it all is how we glorify 'startups'. It's honestly just a really weird business model, that seems like it's bound to inspire things like the recent Zenefits scandal, Uber and Airbnb's disregard for regulation, etc. etc. etc. I dunno... like this story implies, it just seems totally ass-backwards to focus on growth before you're profitable, and pretty unhealthy to…

Agreed. Hacker News has pretty interesting content and discussion, but the price seems to be a fetishistic focus on all things startup-related. I wish there was a site like this that didn't mainly exist as an adjunct to an incubator.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#72

Post by greendata » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 8:56 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #62

jerf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm young and have a mortgage and car payment." Your mortgage costs more because interest rates are low, making lending easy, making it easy to take out loans, meaning all the buyers can get bigger loans, meaning you have to bid more to win. Second order effects. Interests rates are not low in a vacuum. It is likely that because there's nowhere else to make good returns, there's a lot of money sloshing into stupid n…

> "Second order effects. Interests rates are not low in a vacuum." Uh, no. My mortgage is inarguably cheaper due to low rates. So is my car payment. Is it possible that the price of the asset I'm borrowing against is higher because low rates are inflating asset prices? Possibly. It depends where I live and when I bought my house. If I just re-fi'd at lower rates, it's cheaper, period. Besides that, the inflated price…

The interest rates have a substantial effect on the price of houses. It's the same with the price of education.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#73

Post by mikekchar » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 6:22 AM UTC

vonklaus wrote: post #25

TuringTest wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that way of thinking exactly what led to the dotcom bubble?

It isn't clear what the above comment actually means by"customers". If they are talking about perceived value to a customer who is the advertiser, and they are selling them your value, I sort of follow the point. In whatever case, you are correct if you are insinuating that the perceived v. Actual value delta is dubious in that it usually doesn't taper off. Once things get way out of whack the correction can be over…

I haven't really had the chance to go back and look at this thread. I found the responses really interesting because of exactly what you said here. Each person seems to have a definition of "customer" and "value" and it's different :-)

What I originally meant by customer was the person who paid for the service/good being developed. I don't personally consider investors to be customers. They are partners in my eyes.

Also, interestingly, I don't necessarily consider users to be customers. For example Facebook users are not customers since they don't pay anything for the service. The customers are the people buying ads. The most interesting thing is that Facebook probably does not provide much value at all. If people would have to pay $15 a month for it, I suspect it would fail quickly. But the gathering of all those faces is worth something to the advertisers. So Facebook (and Google, etc) are caught in a fairly tight squeeze of diminishing returns on adding value to the users. They need to spend enough to bring enough faces to get advertising, but more money/facility is not useful.

In almost every job I've worked in, my users are not my customers. In a few jobs I've had no customers -- just speculating investors. It becomes a race to the bottom where we try to make the lease expensive thing that will attract faces (or in the case of speculating investors, create a disruption).

Can you imagine having a business plan where you go to an investor and say, "I want to make something that is worth $1000 a year to a user"? If I can find 1000 users, that's a million dollars a year -- enough to fund a decent development team. I know. It's ludicrous. Why would we try to make something that someone values as much as their daily cappuccino?

I don't expect my short rant to change anyone's mind. But maybe after people discover that the "fractions of a penny per face with billions of faces" market is not so large as they thought, we'll have more CEOs trying to think about how to make a product that users want to pay for.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#74

Post by crdoconnor » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 10:06 AM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #39

crdoconnor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wish companies would concentrate on providing value to their customers. Wish for interest rates to be higher then. That the government policy that's driving this.

> Wish for interest rates to be higher then. Why? There are people on both sides of the interest-rate trade, so any change in rates creates winners and losers. Higher rates aren't inherently "better" than lower rates. Personally, I want LOW rates. I'm young and have a mortgage and car payment. I want cheap money, so that I can put it to use investing in my future. Why should I pay more to subsidize the Baby Boomer's…

>Why? There are people on both sides of the interest-rate trade, so any change in rates creates winners and losers. Higher rates aren't inherently "better" than lower rates.

I didn't say they were inherently better. I said that it was the policy that led to all of these stupid investments being funded.

When debt is cheap (and right now it is absurdly cheap) it leads to yield chasing behavior by investors. That leads them to funnel money into often ridiculous investments, triggering bubbles where people get funded ridiculous amounts to mail pet food or open a social networking site for cats.

Hence : bubbles everywhere.

>I'm young and have a mortgage and car payment.

I save up for things before buying them.

Oh, the main reason I can't afford to do that and buy a house is because of low interest rates.

>Why should I pay more to subsidize the Baby Boomer's retirement funds?

It's really depressing how easy it was for elite propagandists to get millenials to blame their own grandmas for the sins of the 0.1%.

It wouldn't even be as bad if they weren't open about their intentions to divide and conquer these voting blocs.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#75

Post by crdoconnor » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 10:25 AM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #62

jerf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm young and have a mortgage and car payment." Your mortgage costs more because interest rates are low, making lending easy, making it easy to take out loans, meaning all the buyers can get bigger loans, meaning you have to bid more to win. Second order effects. Interests rates are not low in a vacuum. It is likely that because there's nowhere else to make good returns, there's a lot of money sloshing into stupid n…

> "Second order effects. Interests rates are not low in a vacuum." Uh, no. My mortgage is inarguably cheaper due to low rates. So is my car payment. Is it possible that the price of the asset I'm borrowing against is higher because low rates are inflating asset prices? Possibly. It depends where I live and when I bought my house. If I just re-fi'd at lower rates, it's cheaper, period. Besides that, the inflated price…

"Is it possible that the price of the asset I'm borrowing against is higher because low rates are inflating asset prices? Possibly."

Is it possible that 1 + 1 = 2? Possibly. Does a bear shit in the woods? Possibly. Is the pope a catholic? Maybe. Do low interest rates spur inflating asset values? Absofuckingloutely.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#76

Post by crdoconnor » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 10:47 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #63

forgetsusername wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Second order effects. Interests rates are not low in a vacuum." Uh, no. My mortgage is inarguably cheaper due to low rates. So is my car payment. Is it possible that the price of the asset I'm borrowing against is higher because low rates are inflating asset prices? Possibly. It depends where I live and when I bought my house. If I just re-fi'd at lower rates, it's cheaper, period. Besides that, the inflated price…

"Besides that, the inflated price shows up as an asset on my personal balance sheet." Until interest rates go up and it deflates again. That's not a reliable asset. With all due respect, you really don't know what you're talking about here. Your model of economics is too linear and static.

>Until interest rates go up

Yeah, 24 years later and Japan putting up interest rates is just around the corner.

When policies last for entire generations treating them as a temporary aberration is a mistake.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#77

Post by vmateixeira » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 11:04 AM UTC

anexprogrammer wrote: post #44

vmateixeira wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice comment, you seem to address few of my thoughts on bad products, longevity and customer support. I am a bit concerned though companies don't care about the customer and customer support any more... I wonder if they are counting on peoples laziness on searching and moving to an alternative product/service or is it as simple as there are no alternatives with different policies?

Good support is expensive and not terribly amenable to scripting, unless you want to do it badly (or not at all). It's certainly possible to differentiate by providing great support, it's just convenient (and very profitable in the short term) to not bother. Great support is hard! I think the public have got far too accepting of little or no support. Yes it's easy to switch, but most people don't unless it's a commod…

Woow, thanks for that! :)

I see your point. Now that you mention, it makes sense that the fear of the unknown may be preventing people from changing, even though they are not satisfied with they're current support.

Although, I think it can still be of a very high risk not to have a good support even when you want to be profitable in short term. I can see a few companies rushing into launching new/unfinished products, trying to get the market with their innovations before someone else. That can go really bad if they don't provide a good support for their new/unfinished/faulty product or service (maybe bad word spreading can haunt them?).

And yes, I can see the brand as a relevant part in this matter. The amount and quality of the support provided can definitely help defining a brand and what it stands for.

Great examples on Google products, Spotify and Uber! Regarding free products (search, G+, etc), I still think the free experience can lead to a product up-selling, cross-selling and perhaps in some cases to get customer's loyalty, so I think this kind of support, although non-profitable in short term, can still be relevant.

Startups, I don't have much of an input really.. it does look a bit overwhelming to me to set 20% growth a month goals.. so I don't really know what to expect.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#78

Post by crdoconnor » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 11:53 AM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #60

zhte415 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term, as a borrower, low rates are fantastic. But really, long term, they're the sign of a sick economy. The rate of return of investment across an economy is the interest rate. Think of it like a balance sheet - if the economy is able to expense liabilities at a really low rate, then assets are also expensed at a really low rate. Stable interest rates are great (across an economy, not individual rates - plus t…

> Low real interest rates are really, really, bad. You can repeat that as often as you want, but it simply isn't true. It's post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning: we see low rates in times of trouble, therefore low rates caused the trouble? > My liability is your asset Exactly. So whatever return you aren't earning on your capital, I'm saving on my use of that capital.

>You can repeat that as often as you want, but it simply isn't true. It's post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning: we see low rates in times of trouble, therefore low rates caused the trouble?

It simply is true, although not because of that reasoning.

It's a stupid/evil reaction to an over-leveraged economy that has come crashing down. The presumption built into the idea that lowering interest rates would help is twofold:

A) If you just started getting people into even more debt then the economic woes would fix themselves because people will start spending again. As if more debt were the solution to too much debt. Hence Japan is still terrified of raising rates 20 years later. Because ramping up debt is not a solution to too much debt.

B) If people's asset prices are now worth more (houses, etc.) then they'll feel richer and spend more. Except that only applies to a minority. The majority don't have much in the way of significant assets and are instead getting royally screwed by rentiers capitalizing on those higher asset prices.

Re: A Unicorn Is the Last Thing This Web 2.0 Survivor Wants

#79

Post by anexprogrammer » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 12:38 PM UTC

vmateixeira wrote: post #77

anexprogrammer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good support is expensive and not terribly amenable to scripting, unless you want to do it badly (or not at all). It's certainly possible to differentiate by providing great support, it's just convenient (and very profitable in the short term) to not bother. Great support is hard! I think the public have got far too accepting of little or no support. Yes it's easy to switch, but most people don't unless it's a commod…

Woow, thanks for that! :) I see your point. Now that you mention, it makes sense that the fear of the unknown may be preventing people from changing, even though they are not satisfied with they're current support. Although, I think it can still be of a very high risk not to have a good support even when you want to be profitable in short term. I can see a few companies rushing into launching new/unfinished products,…

You're welcome :)

Don't forget people don't usually switch because of support, more because something is not working or they've upset you. People can switch utilities or bank easy enough, yet they almost never do, unless they're really upset. Better the devil you know, I guess.

Good support can pay off for word of mouth referrals, especially if they've had a bad time elsewhere. I think it works best for techie things like web hosting, or a SaaS where you're integrating and likely need a little support. For an ISP you never phone support, until you hate them because it's broke, then they switch to the next cheapest, which will be just as bad. (I stuck with a small ISP who gives astonishing support, they cost only a little more) :)