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VC Pitches in a Year or Two

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Re: VC Pitches in a Year or Two

#21

Post by keerthiko »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #16

Not the point of the article, but is anyone else annoyed by these "entrepreneur-sounding" ideas? I'm so sick of low-tech, solve-first-world-problem ideas and conflating that with entrepreneurship. If I were the VC, I'd tell them to get the fuck out, and it'd have nothing to do with Telcos.

That's probably the biggest difference between you and VCs in the biz today. These ideas actually sound so legitimately like they could be funded today, and make mad bank while at it too. And that's all "normal" VCs care about, so there you have it.

Re: VC Pitches in a Year or Two

#23

Post by virmundi »

TTPrograms wrote: post #12

The author is missing the point that the ruling was about the specific language of the FCC regulations. See: http://gigaom.com/2014/01/14/breaking-court-strikes-down-fcc... "That said, even though the Commission has general authority to regulate in this arena, it may not impose requirements that contravene express statutory mandates. Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner tha…

Perhaps you're right when you say, "Everyone knows that net neutrality is important". My gut says otherwise.

There is a strong contingent on the hill to allow companies to do what they want. They want to make money like this. The government will allow them to do so. Heck the head of the FCC is one of the companies that want this. So I doubt she'll be running off to change phrasing anytime soon.

Re: VC Pitches in a Year or Two

#24

Post by josefresco »

Forget net neutrality, doesn't this reality already exist when you factor in data caps? Most of these startup ideas use a fair amount of data which is now being capped more often than it has in the past.

I may be alone in my worry that as we move to capped data plans, and the pay-per-bit model that many new ideas and concepts (say for example always connected appliances) won't be financially feasible for consumers.

Re: VC Pitches in a Year or Two

#25

Post by josefresco »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #16

Not the point of the article, but is anyone else annoyed by these "entrepreneur-sounding" ideas? I'm so sick of low-tech, solve-first-world-problem ideas and conflating that with entrepreneurship. If I were the VC, I'd tell them to get the fuck out, and it'd have nothing to do with Telcos.

You missed the point. The author was choosing startup ideas that compete with entrenched entities that are also potentially data-intensive. I don't think the ideas themselves were supposed to be judged, just that they fit a loose model of ideas that would be almost impossible to fund/execute without net neutrality.

Re: VC Pitches in a Year or Two

#26

Post by delinka »

So someone should plan to launch a VPN service that will pay telcos so its traffic doesn't use any of its customers' data plans. Configure the mobile device to route all data via the VPN, encrypted. It'll charge its customers for access to unlimited apps, sites and streams without incurring a data plan hit.

Re: VC Pitches in a Year or Two

#27

Post by talkingquickly »

delinka wrote: post #26

So someone should plan to launch a VPN service that will pay telcos so its traffic doesn't use any of its customers' data plans. Configure the mobile device to route all data via the VPN, encrypted. It'll charge its customers for access to unlimited apps, sites and streams without incurring a data plan hit.

Myself and some guys with a telecoms background spoke to various telcos about that ~2 years ago. Feedback was that they were already so over stretched with data usage they weren't going to embark on any projects likely to increase it until there had been a lot of network upgrades. May have changed since then though.

Re: VC Pitches in a Year or Two

#28

Post by dredmorbius »

This is the best possible thing that could happen.

Perhaps we'd see startups aimed at building out solar capacity, grid-scale storage solutions, electricity-to-fuels solutions, solar-powered airships, high-efficiency wind-steam hybrid shipping, high-efficiency retrofits to existing building stock, and management or treatment for TDR-TB, rather than an endless stream of privacy-invading "social" surveilices, games, and new forms of intrusive and annoying advertising.

Though building out an alternet that bypasses the telco's "authorized" channels wouldn't hurt either. Mesh and darknets.

Get cracking, HN!

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