Golden raises $14.5M Series A led by a16z and Marc Andreessen joins board

> our vision to build an extensive database and graph of knowledge for humanity, including practical commercial tools and community features to aid discovery and decisions.

So you, and your, what? half dozen phds? want to produce a graph of human knowledge. Okay fine. That's a lofty goal, let's set you up like Harry Seldon and check in on you in a thousand years. Oh! You're going to do the almost impossible and have practical commercial tools in our life time. Ok.

Look, I'm not saying that Golden is going to be unsuccessful, it's probably going to be very succesful, they've got those guys that backed that misogynistic online frat house behind them, so there's a certain level of assured successs. I just question why blatantly lying about your goals is a pre-requisit for funding in silicon valley.

I agree about the corrupting influence of VC. The following isn't a super popular opinion on HN lately, but this is exactly why I've been a believer in Medium since they launched their subscription service. It's the rare startup where I could see their financial incentives and also think those incentives would be good for me as a reader. They made the knowledge the product and removed the incentive to use the knowledge as a sales pitch for some other product, i.e. content marketing. And they have to constantly push for articles that qualify as subscription worthy. That means focus on quality. I don't think they've tipped over yet, but what I've seen so far is that the more subscribers Medium gets the more they spend to get better and better articles. And as the payouts to authors get better, better authors come on board.

Today, yes, but not necessarily in the future. Facebook started on elite college campuses, built its network, and expanded.