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

The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

waxy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 264 posts

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#161

Post by steveklabnik »

singleshot_ wrote: post #140
steveklabnik wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This document only talks about PBCs, so it wouldn’t be in this document. I am using that phrase because that’s how people refer to fiduciary duty (and similar things) when speaking generally. Obviously there is a lot of complexity in the rules around corporate governance.

People do talk about the fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value when speaking generally. They are wrong. There are only two fiduciary duties in this context: the duty of loyalty and the duty of care. A director of a corporation owes no fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.

Sure. I find it easier to use the same words everyone else uses in informal contexts even though there is obvious complexity and is not fully accurate.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#162

Post by wideopenjake »

paulddraper wrote: post #133
wideopenjake wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was head of technology for another "make a better world" social network, and we approached fostering positivity as a practice of encouraging constructive interaction and discouraging _destructive_ interaction. In other words, being directly abusive toward others was obviously destructive and discouraged, but disagreement, even when quite strong, was great, as long as everyone involved maintained a level of basic re…

Advocating violence is straight up illegal (in the US). Slurs is a very specific behavior. --- So...that's a very permissive approach FWIW.

We did, early on, get flooded by people who migrated en masse from another social network who - for lack of a better phrase - equated 'freedom of speech' with a right to post 'shock-and-awe' content just to get a rise out of others. They'd been run out of the other one and decided to try to take over ours.

Those of us running the site had a _lot_ of long philosophical discussions about what to do, but we ultimately realized that posting disturbing content with intent only to provoke wasn't constructive, and we had the right to define what type of community we wanted to foster.

So we booted the shock-jockeys out, and then went to an application-only process that lasted from 10,000 until about 100,000 users (that's a lot of hand-reviewed applications!) - and you know... I could still sleep at night after that, because it wasn't about stopping any specific cause or idea or viewpoint. (Indeed, a few came back, reapplied, and rejoined as constructive members of the community after that)

IMHO, there's a place for provocation, but only if there's a point to it - a message to be communicated. Random photos of animal heads in a jar with no commentary or explanation? Not so much.

I guess I thought of us as rather selective due to the application process, but as I think back, the application process actually allowed us to accept a much broader array of viewpoints, because our goal was always aimed at intentionality and constructive interaction.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#163

Post by StreetChief »

skybrian wrote: post #136
StreetChief wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the quote I believe: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana

Yes, but I like the other one better.

Ah I assumed you were correcting me, apologies.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#164

Post by skybrian »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #144
skybrian wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founders themselves could also lose interest over the years if the website isn't as popular as they hoped, and it's still a slog.

> The founders themselves could also lose interest over the years if the website isn't as popular as they hoped, and it's still a slog. Rather: the founders are lying and deceiving if they talk about their great vision and its importance for mankind, if in reality they are just looking for popularity, and are eschewing the slog.

That's one scenario. There are others.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#166

Post by lacrimacida »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #160
Aeolun wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need to think about the killer article or feature. Well, no. I think the point is kind of that they don’t.

Then they will never get popular.

They avoid it getting so popular such that the audience does not grow faster than the ability to cater to the expectations from new users. Finding niches works out pretty well where they do and for longer periods of time with a lot less friction.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#168

Post by dghlsakjg »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #154
Aeolun wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> X.com is probably the only & last experiment on whether switching to subscription rev is achievable at scale. Looks pretty clear so far that it’s not. Twitter could. MuskX can not.

Twitter Blue was a total flop before Musk. I'd bet Twitter's subscription revenue has grown astronomically (although not nearly enough to make up for $1.3 billion in stupid debt payments and a $3 billion shortfall in advertising revenue)

Twitter blue was launched less than six months before Elon started his takeover bid. It’s hard to call a six month old niche product a flop. I’d bet that subscription revenue has grown astronomically because the business strategy pre Musk was advertising based instead of subscription based.

He destroyed the advertising business, and is trying to make subscriptions work.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#169

Post by indymike »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #6

This post is a long-ass “told you so” and honestly, I’m here for it. I too had an Ello account and thoroughly enjoyed its minimalist nature. VC money really seems like the beginning of the end.

> VC money really seems like the beginning of the end.

For a lot of businesses, raising VC money is a mistake because rapid growth just isn't the right strategy. VC is expensive - you give up a lot of equity every round and are betting that your ever shrinking slice will be bigger because the whole pie grew faster. That is a very tough target to hit.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#170

Post by bko »

sirspacey wrote: post #132

Excellent, balanced post. We’re at the end of a grand experiment of “you can take VC money and deliver a tech with new values, one that people want.” The only people still claiming you can just haven’t run out of their last funding round… yet. We have 20 years of evidence on what tech businesses can be built on the Internet that make money. It’s narrow and mostly can’t solve the problems that remain. The escape hatch…

Why can't you take VC money and run the business the way you want? They can't force you to do anything. Sure they can pressure you, but if you have ownership and they have a minority stake, you can do what you want. Ello could have stopped at any time. Why did they raise 5 million only 6 months after their first round and another 5 million 6 months after that? What were they spending their money on? I don't see how this would have worked if they hadn't taken money

> X.com is probably the only & last experiment on whether switching to subscription rev is achievable at scale. Looks pretty clear so far that it’s not.

I don't know. X showed that you can fire ~80% of your employees and the product could still exist. Not only exist but push product at a faster pace. In the last year you got editable comments, subscriptions, revenue sharing, blue checkmark for sale, alternative check marks for govts and org, culling of old accounts, API restrictions, forcing people to put parody identify themselves, longer videos, just to name a few off the top of my head. I noticed more large changes in the last year than the last 5. You don't need a lot of people to run a SaaS company and you can cut a lot of bullshit. And all tech companies are coming around to that conclusion.

Maybe if Ello had raised only a few million and kept around a dozen employees or so, it could have succeeded.

Post reply on HN