4chan Founder ‘Moot’ Raises $625K For Stealth Startup Canvas Networks | Hacker News Reader

4chan Founder ‘Moot’ Raises $625K For Stealth Startup Canvas Networks

techcrunch.com

43 pointsanateus27 comments

People who've commented so far all don't understand 4chan. 4channers are not moot's followers any more than Boston residents are John Cotton's followers. Moot was simply the first who took the trouble to translate the software that runs 2chan (the most popular site in Japan) into English and put it up on a server. He inevitably became part of 4chan's vast culture, but so did the gentleman known as "cockmongler". You don't see him getting funding.

Maybe there is room for business in imageboard culture, but moot really is a sysadmin, whose previous attempts at being anything more (e.g. intrusive advertising) have all failed. There are many other nearly identical imageboards, with sizeable communities around them, and all it takes to switch is remembering a new URL.

I haven't been to 4chan in a long time, but I think most 4channers help moot's exposure in order to get lulz out of the investors and the public, just as the investors and the public are using moot to tame and monetize 4chan. Trolls trolling each other.

You confused Futaba Channel with 2ch which is orders of magnitude more popular and not an imageboard. 2ch is very popular in Japan, but it is only in the top 10-20 now behind mixi and ameblo (social networking) and youtube and nicovideo (video sites).

Thanks--it's been a while. IIRC, Futaba and 2ch are run by the same people, and moot copied both, though only the imageboard took off. Is that correct?

No one knows who runs Futaba. 2ch was owned by hiroyuki until he sold it a few years ago to some Singaporean company that no one knows about (probably because of all of the lawsuits that he faced and lost).

4chan does have text boards (like 2channel). dis.4chan.org runs on shiichan and is supposed to greatly resemble 2channel style, but it came later and as you say it is not that popular. There is also the tinychan imported text boards that are fairly recent and somewhat different.

Thanks!

Holy shit, mootles is going legit. 4chan is absolutely enormous, but completely unmonetisable. The question investors must be asking is whether he can translate his obvious aptitude for community building into an arena that isn't absolute anarchy.

On a personal level, I'm tremendously pleased for moot. He's been running 4chan on credit cards and goodwill for longer than any sane person would bear. Closing /b/ might have made 4chan profitable or it might have killed the community stone dead. I don't know why moot didn't chase anon out of town and turn 4chan into a halfway legit community, but I think the world is all the better for it. I might be being silly, but I think anon will be a far more important figure in the history of the internet than any of us realise.

I don't know why moot didn't chase anon out of town and turn 4chan into a halfway legit community

Some month ago he had a talk at TED on the importance of anonimity on the internet.

http://arstechnica.com/staff/palatine/2010/02/4chans-moot-ta...

I've heard stories of people really wanting to buy advertising on 4chan and 4chan management being entirely unresponsive, so it might be a bit on their side too.

I can't believe he still goes by christopher poole

Maybe he legally changed his name by now...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1011915

Because people usually put fake names on SEC filings?

Well that's not his real name, and unless he changed it, as suggested above, then it sure looks like it.

Christopher Poole was only used because of the CP meme reference

Alternatively, you could be wrong and it is his real name.

I wonder how 4chan factors into a VC's perception of moot.

It ought to show that he's got a great sense of how to build and run a community.

(I am an investor)

I would love to hear how you were introduced to this opportunity and what was exciting and what were your concerns as you considered it.

I suggested him as a speaker to TED. Later I introduced myself at the conference. Introduced him to some other folks and the ball started rolling.

I would think army of loyal followers would factor into it. If this guy makes something the people will come. Whether you can monetise this traffic though is another question.

Not sure how well 4chan users monetize, but if he ends up producing anything halfway interesting to the general public, I think just being "the 4chan guy" will get him enough mainstream press/visitors to do well. Even outside the tech press--- I could imagine CNN running a human-interest story on, "guy whose website led to those weird kids in masks protesting Scientology, now has business doing [whatever]".

There's no question that the fact that he created a site that ranks in the top 1000 on Alexa, before he was even 20, would positively factor into any investor's perception of moot and his business prospects. We wouldn't be hearing about him if not for 4chan, of course.

Certainly, but I think the mix of content and lack of censorship also helps get a significant amount of traffic.

No doubt, it's unsavory. There is censorship to a certain extent, though - clearly illegal content does get deleted, and people get banned all the time.

I'd have to say, though, it's a unique community and when things are going well, and you understand the millions of in-jokes, it can be hilarious. People on Reddit joke about how Digg is the front page of Reddit two days ago, but the joke memes on Reddit increasingly are what was funny on 4chan last week.

I think 4chan is probably a positive factor in regards to moot's perception by VC's. Considering that moot managed to build a well-known, high-traffic website before he was 20 is significant. The fact that it is sometimes controversial and has had run ins with the church of scientology and yet survived relatively unscathed is also somewhat in his favor, I think. Investors want to know whether you'll be committed to your vision, even through the hardships. Dealing with competitors who want nothing other than to see their success and your failure is probably a hell of a lot easier than dealing with scientology lawyers and fanatics trying to bring you down in any way possible.

He has a pretty proven track record with building/fostering a massive online community (and not an ordinary one at that). So I think he'd be a jockey worth betting on.

To me he smells more like a guy around whom a community just happened to form.

Well, the idea was to build a community about anime and /b/ hit the fan so you are right. At the same time, he had the vision to keep things running and let /b/ develop, something that very very few people would have done.

Good luck to him: hope it goes well

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