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GitHub's fake star economy

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Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#191

Post by rhplus »

xnorswap wrote: post #133
mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

I don't follow American Football so I don't know how coaching contracts work for you guys, but how does someone go 1W 15L one season, survive as head coach to go 0W 16L the next season, and still start the next season after that as head coach? Over here the fans would be singing "You're getting sacked in the morning" halfway through that first season. I guess not having relegation makes things slightly less ruthless…

Yeah, exactly. The NFL is a closed system franchise. The same 32 teams play every season whether they win or lose. No team risks relegation to a lower revenue league. Every team gets a roughly equal share of the franchise revenue regardless of performance.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#193

Post by matt_kantor »

bsuvc wrote: post #143
whatisthiseven wrote: post #106

I don't think I have ever used stars in making a decision to use a library and I don't understand why anyone would. Here are the things I look at in order: * last commit date. Newer is better * age. old is best if still updating. New is not great but tolerable if commits aren't rapid * issues. Not the count, mind you, just looking at them. How are they handled, what kind of issues are lingering open. * some of the co…

> I don't think I have ever used stars in making a decision to use a library and I don't understand why anyone would I do it all the time, whenever there are competing libraries to choose among. It's a heuristic that saves me time. If one library has 1,000 stars and the other has 15, I'm going to default to the 1,000 stars. I also look at download count and release frequency. Basically I don't want to use some obscur…

> If one library has 1,000 stars and the other has 15, I'm going to default to the 1,000 stars.

Will you continue to do this after reading TFA?

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#194

Post by neom »

mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

As far as I recall it stared in 2014 or so, yes metrics could/were still gamed, but there was still a belief in VC that OSS projects could turn into Red Hats. First I heard of it was when a VC told me they were "looking for the next docker" and mentioned something about Rancher OS and how quickly it's stars/follows were growing. In VC you tend to have conviction builders, and conviction buyers. I suppose what happened was some conviction builders used growth of a project on gh as part of a leading indicator (valid or otherwise), and conviction buyers picked up on that as a method.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#195

Post by lukasgelbmann »

inanutshellus wrote: post #179
alternatetwo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's "The fucking article".

Yes and to be clear, one uses "TFA" to imply annoyance that TFA hasn't been read. e.g. "TFA covers this already."

That’s not something I wanted to imply. It can also stand for "the fine article". Is there a better shorthand for "the article linked at top of the page" / "the original article"?

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#196

Post by Aurornis »

mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

Social proof has always been a factor in investments. Not the only factor, but seeing signs of popularity has always been an input to investment decisions.

The entire game of startup investing is to identify breakout companies early. Social proof (when valid, not faked) of interest is one of the strongest signals of product market fit.

If a product has a lot of attention (users, headlines, stars, downloads, DAU) that’s a signal that it could also have a lot of customers some day. This is also why all of those metrics are targets for manipulation.

> This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have

Major sports team are about engaging fans. If a promising recruit had a huge social media presence then that could be a contributing factor toward trying to recruit that player.

This is actually easier to understand if you look at the inverse: Some times there are players with amazing stats but who have a cloud of controversy following them. Teams will skip over these problematic players despite their performance because having popular and engaging players is important for teams but having anti-popular players will drive away fans.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#197

Post by bix6 »

jordanb wrote: post #177
kibwen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Listening to All In is a real eye opening experience. Especially when they have guests on and they're exactly like the regulars.

I have zero respect for All In. It’s a shame people pay those guys any mind.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#198

Post by esseph »

mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

> Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points?

I have personally seen several company CEOs (that were billionaires!) do this in different ways. Sometimes hiring people because of it.

Re: GitHub's fake star economy

#199

Post by cmrdporcupine »

kibwen wrote: post #169
mauvehaus wrote: post #124

Can anyone explain why on earth VC's are making actual investment decisions based on imaginary internet points ? This would be like an NFL team drafting a quarterback based on how many instagram followers they have rather than a relevant metric like pass completion, or god forbid, doing some work and actually scouting candidates. Maybe the Cleveland Browns would do that[0], but it's not a way to mount a serious Super…

[flagged]

The answer isn't that they're morons. It's that they aren't people who "invest" in "good businesses" to make money, but instead on the whole a class of individuals classed with gambling on high risk ventures that will have absolutely massive returns and they don't care if 90% of them fail and 9% flounder because the 1% that succeed bring in absolutely apeshit amounts of $$ when they are acquired by someone else.

Using things like github stars is clearly stupid, but not in the way you're suggesting. They're using the GH stars as a proxy metric for "someone else will come along and give money bags to this person later, so I should get in early so I can take that money eventually."

They're operating on metric of success which is about influence and charisma and connectedness, not revenue or technical excellence.

Again, VCs don't care if you'll make a profitable business some day. They're just interested in if someone else will come along and pay out giant bags of cash for it later in a liquidity event. If they get even one of those successes, all the stupid GH star watching pays off.

Here's another way of framing it: any harms from the false positives around "He has a lot of GH stars" or "He went to Stanford" or "I know his father at the country club" are more than mitigated by the one exit in 1000 that makes a bunch of people filthy rich.

We shouldn't expect VCs to be something they're not. But we are missing something inbetween VCs and "self financing" and "bootstrapping"

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