I made a donation, asked no questions, and thanked him for doing something different.
Good, bad, or indifferent I like the way Marc approached this given the amount of people clamoring to get access to him.
Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
31–40 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#32I find it interesting that you can write RMS, the leader of the Free Software movement, and he'll respond to you within the day for no charge because he think's that's a morally important thing to do. You can in contrast write Marc Andreessen, one of the figure heads of the propriatary software and privacy violating movement of every bigger information companies, and he'll charge you for the pleasure. Interesting dic…
Never tried personally, but read somewhere Steve Wozniak does the same
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#33I find it interesting that you can write RMS, the leader of the Free Software movement, and he'll respond to you within the day for no charge because he think's that's a morally important thing to do. You can in contrast write Marc Andreessen, one of the figure heads of the propriatary software and privacy violating movement of every bigger information companies, and he'll charge you for the pleasure. Interesting dic…
Not implying this is the case here but sometimes people charge like Google chrome store charges $5 for submitting a chrome extension. The small investment is like a filter for really in-demand people to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#34Yes. I paid $100 because I want to encourage volunteering. > To Marc Andreessen. From Joel Parker Henderson. Hi Marc, what are some of your favorite charity causes that could benefit from pro bono coding help? I work at [X] and we have many programmers who volunteer for social progressive causes; we love coding and we love to help. Thank you, Joel
Normally volunteers are not paid $100 / answer to question, just saying.
The proceeds go to charity.
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#35I find it interesting that you can write RMS, the leader of the Free Software movement, and he'll respond to you within the day for no charge because he think's that's a morally important thing to do. You can in contrast write Marc Andreessen, one of the figure heads of the propriatary software and privacy violating movement of every bigger information companies, and he'll charge you for the pleasure. Interesting dic…
Never tried personally, but read somewhere Steve Wozniak does the same
Well if someone ends up giving it a go after reading this comment please tell him that there's a college student on the East Coast willing to buy a sheet of $2 bills from him for the cost of the sheet and a free lunch.
Wozniak seems like your one friends dad who knows all the corniest jokes and has a past that took him into some of the funniest situatins alive. He also happens to be a great hardware guy which makes him infinitly cooler.
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#36I find it interesting that you can write RMS, the leader of the Free Software movement, and he'll respond to you within the day for no charge because he think's that's a morally important thing to do. You can in contrast write Marc Andreessen, one of the figure heads of the propriatary software and privacy violating movement of every bigger information companies, and he'll charge you for the pleasure. Interesting dic…
Not implying this is the case here but sometimes people charge like Google chrome store charges $5 for submitting a chrome extension. The small investment is like a filter for really in-demand people to separate the wheat from the chaff.
> sometimes people charge like Google chrome store charges $5 for submitting a chrome extension
Coincidentally I don't like using Google Chrome. I stopped using the browser after they removed that ad-confusion extension and switched to FireFox. I never used it but I think it's not right for google to do it. I mean, I expected it to happen but it broke the camals back.
If I had known that there was a $5 charge for chrome extensions I would have stopped using it sooner.
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#37I believe Quora and Facebook tried it in various forms though there you could reach out just about anybody. I assume 21.co will do same thing going forward.
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#38I find it interesting that you can write RMS, the leader of the Free Software movement, and he'll respond to you within the day for no charge because he think's that's a morally important thing to do. You can in contrast write Marc Andreessen, one of the figure heads of the propriatary software and privacy violating movement of every bigger information companies, and he'll charge you for the pleasure. Interesting dic…
The money's all being donated. It's a fundraiser.
You know what's funny... I heard a very similar thing said by a company making a device for medical purposes. They said that they needed to charge a high price because it was for the betterment of humanity. They were planning on donating some of the raised funds to charity and put the rest of the money back into R&D to make more life saving drugs.
That excuse was made by Martin Sshkreli on a news show if memory serves me right. He was talking about the price hikes on one of their medical products.
In my opinion "It's fine! We're going to develop life saving drugs with this!" is a very similar argument to "It's fine! We're going to give the money to charity!".
I know these are very different but I'd like to hear what others have to say about this.
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#39Yeah and here is my question - how much of your own money did you give to this meaningful cause?
How much did you? What are you doing to help?
Let me get this straight. Here is someone who makes it possible to a. get access to his knowledge and experience in a pretty easy way and b. lets charities benefit from an interest in this knowledge and suddenly HE is the greedy bastard? Wow.
Re: Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not implying this is the case here but sometimes people charge like Google chrome store charges $5 for submitting a chrome extension. The small investment is like a filter for really in-demand people to separate the wheat from the chaff.
> sometimes people charge like Google chrome store charges $5 for submitting a chrome extension Coincidentally I don't like using Google Chrome. I stopped using the browser after they removed that ad-confusion extension and switched to FireFox. I never used it but I think it's not right for google to do it. I mean, I expected it to happen but it broke the camals back. If I had known that there was a $5 charge for chr…
Which extension are you referring to?