Why Chatroulette is more than just penises | Hacker News Reader

Why Chatroulette is more than just penises

mashable.com

18 pointsswombat14 comments

If I owned Chatroulette and could sell it for $1M, I definitely would. Sure, there's a chance it could grow into a company worth a lot more, but there's also a good chance that once everyone stops talking about Chatroulette as this novel thing, his traffic will drop 90%, the penis rate will skyrocket because exhibitionists will be the only people still getting value out of it, and he'll have trouble selling it for even a small fraction of $1M.

$1M is a lot, even moreso in Russia. He could probably more-or-less live off of the interest, or he could use some of it to bootstrap a startup that's less likely to have its traffic vaporize in a month.

I don't know... Chatroulette is not my cup of tea, but the sub-chatroulette feature that the article mentions might make it more long-term useful. For example, wanna meet start-up people and no penises? http://startups.chatroulette.com - it's there, and there's no one there... yet.

not sure about that...what's stopping trolls from going to startups.chatroulette and doing that there?

So you would randomly be smack in a chat with another entrepreneur? I get the idea, but I for one would never use it - and I go to lots of networking events etc..

I wouldn't either - but then, I'm already the old guard, I guess. 30 years old almost... time to make way for the youngsters, eh?

eh, even if it does become primarily sexual, sex has been selling on the 'net longer than anything else has. I think it's probably worth a bit more than USD $1M

1) See 37Signals post about working on your best idea. Does the creator have a better idea to work on?

2) Extrapolate a little bit. Others have mentioned sub-Chatroulettes. What if Chatroulette added Flickr style tags? Twitter style hashtags? Digg style upvoting?

He is 17, so depending of is financial situation, using the million to get a top notch education could be his better idea.

A million for a top-notch education, with a ton left over at the end to invest in whatever he chooses.

Regarding #1, there are a lot more fish in the sea, and you can catch a lot of fish with $1M. It often makes sense to sell any property at the peak of its value. It's possible (perhaps likely) that Chatroulette is at its peak value right now.

That was my main point. He's almost certainly going to see traffic dip within a few months when he stops being in the NYT and such. He could innovate with stuff like these subroulettes and have it grow longterm, but now he's looking at real opportunity costs.

He's probably better off taking what basically amounts to a free $1M, then he can go to school if he so chooses, and then go start another venture.

And sure, maybe this is his best idea right now, but he'll probably have a better one within the next 10 or 20 years. (I think the same thing applies to DHH, but it's even more true when you're talking about a 17-year-old.)

I agree with the gist of your argument, but I think 1M is low, even in Russia. So low, that's worth not selling it and seeing what happens.

But before you comment on how much you think its worth, have you actually tried it? =)

It can also be vaginae if you get lucky.

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