Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On Starting a Startup

luigimontanez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: On Starting a Startup

#11

Post by swombat »

s_henry_paulson wrote: post #10
robinjfisher wrote: post #4

> Until I started at Upworthy, I didn’t appreciate how nearly everyone is on Facebook. Normal people. I wouldn't call it nearly everyone when there are 7 billion people in the world and only 1 billion of those are on Facebook.

That number seems a bit much. Aside from even teenagers with multiple accounts, pets, and such.. let's not forget spammers. They'll create accounts as fast as they can. Just google search for buying facebook accounts, and you'll find a simple paypal transaction will get you thousands of phone verified accounts. Even if facebook can claim 500 million active users, I would question how many of them are actual people.

Question all you want... I don't actually know any people IRL who don't have an active or semi-active Facebook account (except a handful of contrarian geeks, of course).

Nearly everyone is on Facebook.

Re: On Starting a Startup

#12

Post by tjic »

davidw wrote: post #6
tjic wrote: post #3

> they call themselves “domain investors” and believe that they’re a legitimate market force. But all they’re doing is stifling innovation You can't get the domain name you want for the price you want to pay. Boo-hoo. I can't get tons of things for the price I want to pay. That's life. You've got no moral claim on a domain name that someone else already owns. If you're use of that domain name is going to generate a t…

Without saying whether it's a good solution or not, in the real world "properties" (as some people have taken to calling web sites) get taxed. Amongst other things, this encourages the property owners to "shit or get off the pot" in terms of utilizing the property: if you are not making anything off of it, you will actually lose money because of the taxes, so you're encouraged to sell it, or dedicate some time and ef…

> this encourages the property owners to "shit or get off the pot" in terms of utilizing the property:

And why is that good?

Imagine that someone has good reason to believe that item X will be worth $1,000 in three years, which means that in a 3% interest rate regime it has a NPV (Net Present Value) of $915.

Right now he's got an offer on the table for $800, but if he accepts that and the resource gets used up, he (and society) lose out on $115 of value.

Slap a 10% annual tax on the asset, and he WILL sell it, right now.

...and, congratulations, you've destroyed value.

Re: On Starting a Startup

#13

Post by VuongN »

For what it's worth, I thought the name is quite clever. I'm more impressed with the name actually :)

I am, however, feeling cautious about the internet as well. There are so many curated/aggregated content sites these days; Each one claims to be the best at stringing popular content together. For instance: Reddit, HN, Digg, Slashdot etc. Obviously new sites further break this down into specific niches.

I hope there isn't less of an appetite for original content creating platform going forward (or else my officecheese site isn't going to be fun!)

-V.

Re: On Starting a Startup

#14

Post by RahCom »

I've always enjoyed seeing what other startups choose for their stack. With your thoughts on heroku, what do you think about the new Google Cloud aimed at competing with AWS?

Re: On Starting a Startup

#15

Post by crazygringo »

tjic wrote: post #3

> they call themselves “domain investors” and believe that they’re a legitimate market force. But all they’re doing is stifling innovation You can't get the domain name you want for the price you want to pay. Boo-hoo. I can't get tons of things for the price I want to pay. That's life. You've got no moral claim on a domain name that someone else already owns. If you're use of that domain name is going to generate a t…

No, it's broken because valuation isn't based on anything concrete, and people who moved early essentially made money for free. When you and I disagree about valuation by a factor of 10 or 100, people "unfairly" hold on to domain names because they think there's a chance they might get an offer 100x larger, and you (as a reasonable buyer) get screwed.

The other problem is that, unlike land, domains aren't really "reusable". You can't rent them for a year, then give them up. Your whole brand is tied to them.

I've encountered a number of people/companies who own good domain names, who don't actually use them at all. One is waiting for an unrealistic multi-million dollar purchase, and refuses to part with it for the market price, which is around $30K, and for which he's gotten a number of offers through the years. He's convinced his domain is his ticket to winning the lottery someday, when Microsoft or Apple decides they'll name their product exactly what his domain is and decide it's worth $3 million. It's ridiculous.

The other is a company which has nothing to do with technology, which owns a "domain name portfolio" of names completely unrelated to their business, with the explicit purpose of holding on to them and not selling them for any price, at least for a decade. It took me weeks of research to even get in contact with them, because they view it as a purely financial decision, and don't want pesky Internet people bothering them about their domains.

This kind of thing doesn't happen with stocks or product pricing. The domain market system is fundamentally broken.

Re: On Starting a Startup

#16

Post by crazygringo »

tjic wrote: post #12
davidw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without saying whether it's a good solution or not, in the real world "properties" (as some people have taken to calling web sites) get taxed. Amongst other things, this encourages the property owners to "shit or get off the pot" in terms of utilizing the property: if you are not making anything off of it, you will actually lose money because of the taxes, so you're encouraged to sell it, or dedicate some time and ef…

> this encourages the property owners to "shit or get off the pot" in terms of utilizing the property: And why is that good? Imagine that someone has good reason to believe that item X will be worth $1,000 in three years, which means that in a 3% interest rate regime it has a NPV (Net Present Value) of $915. Right now he's got an offer on the table for $800, but if he accepts that and the resource gets used up, he (a…

What about the value that someone else could created by using that property productively over those three years? And the likelihood that, three years from now, item X turns out not to be worth $1,000 at all?

Then that value has been destroyed in your scenario.

This is why property tax can be a good thing: set properly, it creates an incentive for conserving property for future productive uses when those seem likely enough, but also incentivizes people not to waste current possible productivity.

Re: On Starting a Startup

#17

Post by sedev »

tjic wrote: post #3

> they call themselves “domain investors” and believe that they’re a legitimate market force. But all they’re doing is stifling innovation You can't get the domain name you want for the price you want to pay. Boo-hoo. I can't get tons of things for the price I want to pay. That's life. You've got no moral claim on a domain name that someone else already owns. If you're use of that domain name is going to generate a t…

The market is not working properly: it's not, to use the term of art, clearing. Buyers look at what sellers (domain-squatters) are offering, say "well screw that for a game of toy soldiers!" and buy a substitute good (a green-field domain name). The sellers are at fault here: they're not willing to lower prices, and as a result, buyers don't go to them, but instead resort to substitute goods.

As other replies note, the market for domain names has some unique features - but I also think that it's important to note that you're wrong when you say that it's "working properly."

Re: On Starting a Startup

#18

Post by kirubakaran »

swombat wrote: post #11
s_henry_paulson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That number seems a bit much. Aside from even teenagers with multiple accounts, pets, and such.. let's not forget spammers. They'll create accounts as fast as they can. Just google search for buying facebook accounts, and you'll find a simple paypal transaction will get you thousands of phone verified accounts. Even if facebook can claim 500 million active users, I would question how many of them are actual people.

Question all you want... I don't actually know any people IRL who don't have an active or semi-active Facebook account (except a handful of contrarian geeks, of course). Nearly everyone is on Facebook.

So you've changed your mind about Facebook? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=251205
Post reply on HN