TLDR: I am upset that my customers are so stupid that they pay for something which was never meant to be a real product, while almost entirely ignoring the real product, which just happens to be a true labor of love. Therefore, I shall discontinue the thing that's bringing in more money, while also publicly talking about how little I think of my customers. I am smarter than them, and I like to rub this fact in their foolish faces.
I understand that there might be deep, philosophical implications here, with regard to the psychology of social gaming and whatnot, but throughout history, way before Facebook and the Internet, artists would frequently create "popular" art, even though they despised it, so that they could have the money to privately create the "real" art that they loved. It is not only rude, but a sign of poor character, for the artist to also despise the people who gladly pay him for what they perceive to have value. I don't know anything more about this guy than what I read in the above article, but HNers, given their tendency towards startups, should stand with his disappointed customers, and not with his lofty attitude. If someone paid me for the privilege of being able to click on the image of a cow more often than those who do not pay, I would try to figure out how to improve the experience for them, and/or how to charge them even more, all the while pocketing the money for some project that was important to me on an idealistic level. Making fun of your customers' intelligence, especially because they've simply made the choice to pay for your product, is never a good thing.
Well, how about the fact that you the value of said creation is determined by the customer, not the creator?
If that's they way you want to look at it. I don't do business with that kind of person, since they usually try to sell me on the idea that something is worth far more than it actually is.
I'm curious as to why you're so emotional about the whole thing. It's really not worth such a long discussion.
I'd prefer to not see more SEO/MLM/MakeMoneyOnline posts on Hacker News, so I stated my disagrement with your comment.
Yea, tbh this is 100% my read on this situation. Wouldn't go near the dude or his work after this. Spent way too long at Facebook where no one ever has to sell a product and now doesn't understand at all how money works.
Fair enough, and perhaps I am being a bit too harsh. :-) I would point out that I haven't wished anything but the best for this guy, and have congratulated him several times in my comments. I also like seeing a Second City showing in downtown Chicago as much as the next guy :-). I can't say I have any specific criticisms with regard to entertainment. What bothers me is when things of little value are assigned a very high value.
I will say this: entrepreneurs are people with particularly powerful talent; with that power comes a responsibility. Imagine the choice between developing a Facebook application that lets friends buy digital icons of drinks for their friends (why not just real drinks :-p) versus an Facebook application for FreeRice [1]. A responsible entrepreneur would develop the FreeRice application, even though profit might be smaller. A more concrete example can be seen in Google. They own the most valuable piece of real estate on the internet (their homepage), yet they don't monetize it. Their restrictions on content on AdSense are stricter than they are required to be by law. The list could go on.
As tdavis pointed out, there will always be people looking for a quick buck. Let them monetize the things that don't really matter. Instead, skilled entrepreneurs should tackle the more difficult problems and monetize things that create value and have real impact on lives.
I may be stretching your analogy, but I would compare Google search to the works of Claude Monet and most Facebook/AppStore applications to paint by number. If the media keeps sensationalizing paint by number, eventually people will believe in it.
lmao imagine being threatened by some dude's hobby project that he's not monetizing - how weak is your business and especially ego if that is the case.
You seem to be upset that they're charging money for something, and then you separately seem to be upset that they're trying to do the actual work needed to fulfill the promises made via the sales. Is Luke Iseman supposed to just sit down and stop having a job, or does he merely need your signoff before he starts a new project? What, in the end, is your point?
I'm not sure I'm ready to join you in outrage that someone started a business for the purpose of earning money.
If the AdSense was something, as he says on his site, that made him feel uncomfortable about his own website and his self-image, then that suggestion is dumb.
It's a bit like telling someone who's trying to stop being a prostitute: "Keep whoring, donate the proceeds to charity."
I agree. While I can have empathy for OP's feelings, when he says he's changing the world with upverter, you can't help but think he's being delusional. It's just a site that shares your mechanical drawings.. let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
Your own happiness comes first, not some imaginary customers who want to use your product to make themselves more money, or inject themselves with more dopamine... they don't care about your well-being at all.
I sympathize with your last sentence entirely, and with your "sort of" reaction to the article as well. Out of curiosity, how do you feel about talking to users? That's one thing I don't feel ambivalent about. If someone is using what I've made, I really want to talk to that person and find out what would make them happy; if they're happy I want to find out what would delight them. I'm kind of hoping this will make up for the lack of some of what the WSJ considers "entrepreneurial" qualities.
The more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed by that article. The way it begins - "Make sure you're cut out for it first" - seems self-refuting to me. The inner drive that causes someone to do creative or bold things doesn't sit down to ponder 10-point lists crafted by pseudo-experts before deciding whether it's "cut out for it". Every time I listen to this kind of thing I later wish I had ignored it.
p.s. I've done consulting and freelancing too. You're never working on something that is your own. After a while, you realize your soul is starving. Meanwhile you've become a crack addict, where the crack is your hourly rate.
pp.s. That doesn't mean it isn't better than being an employee, which is a form of serfdom.
I didn’t do it for the money, I did it for “humanity” so I want to appease advertisers to make money and save humanity even though I hate advertising.
Oh, also there are more than 30% bots on the platform but I still bought this thing because I want the trial to end because I don’t want to answer any more questions and reveal things that would put me in legal jeopardy.
Does he really think people are that stupid? I agree he is super smart but the rest of us are not that stupid.
That's fair, and I did think of that for a second. The fact remains that he was providing a service while calling his users dumb fucks for using the service; Effectively, he was peddling something that he clearly believed was against the interests of his users.
When the person constantly trying to convince 7 billion people that sharing every aspect of their lives on his platform is a good idea, it seems entirely relevant that he has demonstrated in the past that he will gladly market you something that he believes is damaging or dangerous or whatever. This is part why people are more inclined to think of the guy as a snake than many other tech leaders: while it's obviously in their interest to sell you their product, you can make a much more plausible case that Bezos or Jobs or Page or Brin actually believe in their pitch too.
I couldn't agree more. I have a friend who's pushing fifty years old and he's been trying to make money with the same product for nearly thirty years now. I see his friends on Facebook constantly encouraging him, and telling him that he does great work.
He doesn't.
His product is atrocious.
They're just being nice and he should've thrown in the towel twenty-nine years ago. His income is literally less than $100 a year. (I believe he's on SSI disability now, which is how he gets by.)
As an alternative viewpoint, his thinking seems incredibly shortsighted. When it comes time to launch "InstaAlbum, share your family photos", he is going to have 1/3 the potential audience to draw customers. 3x the existing customers could make the difference between the top of the charts and the press recognition that goes with it.
Part of his rational is that some tiny percentage of the free customers complain, and write negative reviews. Marco should man up and simply accept he has a good product and is a talented developer. That way he doesn't have to give a damn about the haters. It is sad that the %.1 of the population that is inherently bitchy, is driving his business decisions.
This is another example of Seth's cookiecutter gurudom. I don't think it applies to startups at all, though.
Also, stop rehashing the same old, 'If you commercialize your art, it stops being satisfying' BS. We knew that forever ago. I think in the connected universe it is easy to to do something you love on the side AND make money from it AND be happy doing it. Like that guy who makes $2k/yr because he sold some photos to iStockphoto 10 years ago.
Not to bring ad hominem into this, but why has Seth become so un-original?
Even if the OP is overreacting and this has some substance behind it I can really relate to his disdain for the current trend of flashy landing pages with only a "subscribe to our mailing list" box, youtube videos with hipster guys extolling the virtues of a (nonexistent) product in "layman terms" and overall modus operandi of "collect emails of potential customers, raise funding and figure it out later".
So let me get this straight. This guy is fronting the money on his credit cards, can't do any of the work, and gets people to do things for him by "Being very fucking cool with" them?
Yeah. Keep your money. Fuck your business cards. You sound like sales guys scum trying to leverage the real makers in this project.
Thanks, I know what it is and I am up to my arse in people who believe this has value despite having actual _validated learning_ that overwhelmingly points to the opposite.
It turns out that when you fuck around with your customers and tell them that you have a product, only to have them find out that you have fuck-all and you are cobbling it together as they wait, your customers lose faith in you and think you are a douchebag.
And rightly so. Because pretending isn't doing.
Eric Ries has done untold damage to the tech and the business world. He is successful at one thing and one thing only: writing and marketing a book.
Generous people call his book a post-fact rationalization of success, but that would be overstating it grossly. Because he didn't have any success to rationalize post-fact.
It makes me angry that people think this horseshit has anything to do with creating value. Doing stuff and knowing how to do stuff has value. Yanking people around with smoke and mirrors does not. It mostly ends up wasting time and time is the one resource you can't get back.
I understand that there might be deep, philosophical implications here, with regard to the psychology of social gaming and whatnot, but throughout history, way before Facebook and the Internet, artists would frequently create "popular" art, even though they despised it, so that they could have the money to privately create the "real" art that they loved. It is not only rude, but a sign of poor character, for the artist to also despise the people who gladly pay him for what they perceive to have value. I don't know anything more about this guy than what I read in the above article, but HNers, given their tendency towards startups, should stand with his disappointed customers, and not with his lofty attitude. If someone paid me for the privilege of being able to click on the image of a cow more often than those who do not pay, I would try to figure out how to improve the experience for them, and/or how to charge them even more, all the while pocketing the money for some project that was important to me on an idealistic level. Making fun of your customers' intelligence, especially because they've simply made the choice to pay for your product, is never a good thing.
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