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How Not To Promote Your New Startup

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Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#3
Wow. Pratt's obsession with Kickstarter "ripping off" Fundable is especially silly considering that both are essentially variants of Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer Protocol, published in 1998 [1]. (That paper is not even the first instance of the basic idea, just one of the most well-known.)

Edited to add: I'd be really interested to see one of these sites implement the Rational Street Performer Protocol [2], which essentially means that each donor pledges matching funds ("I'll donate $X for every $Y that anyone else pledges, up to a maximum of $Z"). This gives individuals a stronger incentive to pledge more; the hard part is coming up with a simple explanation that first-time users will understand.

[1]: http://www.schneier.com/paper-street-performer.html

[2]: http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/rspp

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#4
post #3

Wow. Pratt's obsession with Kickstarter "ripping off" Fundable is especially silly considering that both are essentially variants of Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer Protocol, published in 1998 [1]. (That paper is not even the first instance of the basic idea, just one of the most well-known.) Edited to add: I'd be really interested to see one of these sites implement the Rational Street Performer Protocol [2],…

Would you happen to know why the Austin police were after the company? Sounds like a messy soap opera, but I'm curious about what went so wrong.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#5
post #4
post #3

Wow. Pratt's obsession with Kickstarter "ripping off" Fundable is especially silly considering that both are essentially variants of Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer Protocol, published in 1998 [1]. (That paper is not even the first instance of the basic idea, just one of the most well-known.) Edited to add: I'd be really interested to see one of these sites implement the Rational Street Performer Protocol [2],…

Would you happen to know why the Austin police were after the company? Sounds like a messy soap opera, but I'm curious about what went so wrong.

Sounds like Pratt is framing it as his partner making it up as a scare tactic to try and acquire his portion of the company.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#7
post #3

Wow. Pratt's obsession with Kickstarter "ripping off" Fundable is especially silly considering that both are essentially variants of Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer Protocol, published in 1998 [1]. (That paper is not even the first instance of the basic idea, just one of the most well-known.) Edited to add: I'd be really interested to see one of these sites implement the Rational Street Performer Protocol [2],…

Is there a list of websites that provide services based on the street performer protocol (or something similar)? I like the whole escrow release idea, kind of how Blender was made open source.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#8
I cannot tell you how painful it is to watch 5 assholes take your idea and run with it and not even give you credit. I hate all 5 of them for that. If I see them, I may punch each one of them in the face. If you have never started your own company and then had someone else steal the credit for what you worked hard to develop, you don't understand.

yikes, sounds like entrepreneurship really doesn't suit John.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#9
From the article:

All it took was 5 super-connected people at Kickstarter (especially Andy Baio) to take a concept we worked hard to refine, tweak it with Amazon Payments, and then take credit. You could say that that's capitalism, but I still think you should acknowledge people that you take inspiration from.

The thing is being well connected does matter. And I wouldn't say that's just calling it capitalism. Further, getting an idea off the ground is hard regardless of how well you are connected and how good the idea is. The fact that Facebook is "the" social networking site shows that one idea can become successful while earlier attempts fall by the wayside. It happens everyday. Perhaps Kickstarter will be wildly successful, or perhaps not, but the connectedness of the founders is only one part of Kickstarter's rise.

To the issue of giving credit where credit is due. If Kickstarter did not use the author's code or his/her own works, then the author deserves no explicit named credit. Just as Google deserved no explicit named credit from Microsoft when it released Bing. Not to mention the other possible legal ramifications if Kickstarter came forward and publicly acknowledged their idea was based on Fundable's.

Re: How Not To Promote Your New Startup

#10
Lots of hate for kickstarter.

Pledgebank has been doing this since 04 at least. I run petitionspot so I have been watching sites like this and they just didnt do a good job. Just look at thepoint.com ( now groupon ) - They tore it up because they did a good job. They were in chicago, not the valley.

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