South Korean 'Mock Funerals' Seek to Ease Life's Stresses | Hacker News Reader

South Korean 'Mock Funerals' Seek to Ease Life's Stresses

cbsnews.com

16 pointscamurban9 comments

"a sign that the country, once one of the world's poorest..., has grown affluent enough"

In case you didn't note that for the last few decades South Korea was a rich country (especially by PPP).

In case anyone would prefer a video, here's a Vice documentary about the same thing:

Bizarre connection, but this reminded me of what Steve a Jobs said to the founders of Dropbox when he offered to buy them out. "What you have there is a feature, not a platform".

I'm not saying he was right or wrong in that case, that's a separate issue, but in the article at hand it seems like mock funerals aren't a service that can support a business on its own. It makes more sense as an adjunct to a main business 'platform' such as actual funerals, but maybe also e.g. Health resorts, religious retreats and such. Maybe that's a useful lens through which to look at any new business idea.

I'm interested if Steve Jobs said that because he wanted to get Dropbox on the cheap, or because he really believed it.

Perhaps both: the only way to know would be to compare Dropbox's valuation at the time with the offer present; if said offer was ever extended.

I think we'll see in the years/months ahead that Dropbox is indeed FNAC. It's only survived this long because the unit economics aren't that bad - the hardware costs are not anywhere near what O2O companies like Postmates or Instacart burn. But in the end, if they don't have any lock-in capabilities (such as collaboration features), the service won't be sticky in the face of price increases - the tech for seamless syncing across platforms is now table stakes.

>they don't have any lock-in capabilities (such as collaboration features)

paper.dropbox.com aims to be such a feature.

Yes, but so far I haven't seen how it's sufficiently differentiated from Google Docs. There's a well-funded startup, Quip, in this space as well.

What is FNAC, other than a French department store?

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/08/22/fnac-feature-n...

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