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Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

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Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#41

Post by mistermann »

telesilla wrote: post #16
usaphp wrote: post #2

> "Tress – A social community for black women’s hairstyles" I wonder what would black women say if there was an app "Social community for white women's hairstyles", would not it be considered racist?

I'm a white female who grew up where there were no (at the time) African or other-similar-haired women. Not Paris, New York or London safe to say. It was only after spending time in the U.S. that I was introduced to things such as weaves, nappy hair, extensions, wigs.. it goes on. A huge industry and it's completely different from how I and my fellow-caucasian friends approach hair, which is essentially shampoo, cond…

The documentary Good Hair (comedian Chris Rock stars) was excellent imho if you haven't seen it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-4qxz08So

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#42

Post by ryandamm »

telesilla wrote: post #16
usaphp wrote: post #2

> "Tress – A social community for black women’s hairstyles" I wonder what would black women say if there was an app "Social community for white women's hairstyles", would not it be considered racist?

I'm a white female who grew up where there were no (at the time) African or other-similar-haired women. Not Paris, New York or London safe to say. It was only after spending time in the U.S. that I was introduced to things such as weaves, nappy hair, extensions, wigs.. it goes on. A huge industry and it's completely different from how I and my fellow-caucasian friends approach hair, which is essentially shampoo, cond…

Thanks for the reality check; specifics matter a lot.

(My only question: how is it possibly a $500 bn/year market? The world economy is something like $60 tn; I have a hard time imagining black women's hair care is 1/120th of global GDP. I can't imagine hair care en toto is anything like ~0.8% of global GDP, either. I mean, if you're going to make up numbers... they should be plausible.)

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#43

Post by huancle »

anilgulecha wrote: post #32

Peer5 - This is malware on your browser, and they are abusing the webrtc protocol for their business usecase. Until they provide a clear opt-in usage behavior, this opinion will not change. Clearly if their proposition is about better streaming service/quality, this is trivially testable by how many users opt-in to their network when viewing videos. Their endpoints should be added to easylist. This is very big concer…

At Peer5, our customers are the broadcasters who operate streaming services throughout the world. The users are theirs, not ours, and it is up to the broadcasters to decide how they want to message / roll-out p2p services. Some choose to opt people in by default and allow them to opt out. Others choose the opposite approach. Our job is to give our customers the tools they need to create and enforce whatever business rules they feel are appropriate. This includes looking at ASN numbers to identify ISPs that operate metered services and turning off upstream sharing for such users. No one is forced to participate in a Peer5 mesh network. And the value proposition is most definitely better streaming, especially for the biggest / most popular streams as these benefit the most from a p2p solution. We have plenty of data from users all over the world to support this.

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#44

Post by sillysaurus3 »

usaphp wrote: post #35
dang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that some of the answers were surprisingly fine, but credit for that goes to the answerers. Trollish questions typically lead to useless spats.

Trolling? It was a genuine questions and I really liked the answers...

On controversial topics, it's best to frame the question very carefully. In this case, I'd recommend "I was hoping to know more about this topic. Why are black women the target market?"

It's important because even with the best of intentions, the exact wording can lead to a catastrophe of a thread (or avert one).

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#45

Post by [deleted] »

huancle wrote: post #43
anilgulecha wrote: post #32

Peer5 - This is malware on your browser, and they are abusing the webrtc protocol for their business usecase. Until they provide a clear opt-in usage behavior, this opinion will not change. Clearly if their proposition is about better streaming service/quality, this is trivially testable by how many users opt-in to their network when viewing videos. Their endpoints should be added to easylist. This is very big concer…

At Peer5, our customers are the broadcasters who operate streaming services throughout the world. The users are theirs, not ours, and it is up to the broadcasters to decide how they want to message / roll-out p2p services. Some choose to opt people in by default and allow them to opt out. Others choose the opposite approach. Our job is to give our customers the tools they need to create and enforce whatever business…

[deleted]

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#48

Post by anilgulecha »

huancle wrote: post #43
anilgulecha wrote: post #32

Peer5 - This is malware on your browser, and they are abusing the webrtc protocol for their business usecase. Until they provide a clear opt-in usage behavior, this opinion will not change. Clearly if their proposition is about better streaming service/quality, this is trivially testable by how many users opt-in to their network when viewing videos. Their endpoints should be added to easylist. This is very big concer…

At Peer5, our customers are the broadcasters who operate streaming services throughout the world. The users are theirs, not ours, and it is up to the broadcasters to decide how they want to message / roll-out p2p services. Some choose to opt people in by default and allow them to opt out. Others choose the opposite approach. Our job is to give our customers the tools they need to create and enforce whatever business…

Sure, and ad-networks asked sites to use their solutions appropriately on the users browsers.

You're giving your customers tools to abuse the internet commons. You should be called out for it. Afterall your revenue is an exact function of user's bandwidth. Quoting from your pricing page:

> "Only data delivered via P2P counts against your plan."

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#49

Post by anilgulecha »

joshfraser wrote: post #37
anilgulecha wrote: post #32

Peer5 - This is malware on your browser, and they are abusing the webrtc protocol for their business usecase. Until they provide a clear opt-in usage behavior, this opinion will not change. Clearly if their proposition is about better streaming service/quality, this is trivially testable by how many users opt-in to their network when viewing videos. Their endpoints should be added to easylist. This is very big concer…

WebRTC allows you to connect directly to the IP addresses of other people viewing the same video as you (no fixed list), but their JavaScript could easily be detected & blocked. The value prop isn't a better streaming experience. It's that their customers don't have to pay hardly anything to serve their content and it's distributed so it's far more resilient to network outages. It shouldn't be tough to tell if someon…

I understand their value-prop well enough (saving broadcasters CDN $$). I just find it shitty that their bottom-line is based off of the end-user's bandwidth without their opt-in consent.

The only way to tackle this is public denunciation of their model, hand in hand with browser based blocks -- either easylist/uBlock, or Chrome/Firefox/et-al modifying the browser protocols/UX to disallow this leeching without the user's knowledge.

Re: Startups that debuted at Y Combinator W17 Demo Day 2

#50

Post by sillysaurus3 »

huancle wrote: post #43
anilgulecha wrote: post #32

Peer5 - This is malware on your browser, and they are abusing the webrtc protocol for their business usecase. Until they provide a clear opt-in usage behavior, this opinion will not change. Clearly if their proposition is about better streaming service/quality, this is trivially testable by how many users opt-in to their network when viewing videos. Their endpoints should be added to easylist. This is very big concer…

At Peer5, our customers are the broadcasters who operate streaming services throughout the world. The users are theirs, not ours, and it is up to the broadcasters to decide how they want to message / roll-out p2p services. Some choose to opt people in by default and allow them to opt out. Others choose the opposite approach. Our job is to give our customers the tools they need to create and enforce whatever business…

Consider these scenarios:

1. A user visits a website, sees a video player, and watches a video.

2. A user visits a website, sees an article, and reads it.

There may be some confusion about whether your technology will still force Scenario #2's user into your P2P network, and use their bandwidth. I'd argue that Scenario #1 is legit for your purposes, but not #2.

Are there any steps that can be taken to prevent sneaky behavior?

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