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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Disappointing that HN of all places couldn't be a little more discerning when reviewing this. Because from what I've heard there was a legitimate business problem that Fyre was attempting to solve. (1) All of the middle men between talent and event organisers and (2) the lack of luxury concert events.

Are they completely inept at following through with this ? Yes. But the idea wasn't that bad. And they deserve credit for getting so many celebrities on board.

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Except that perhaps all those middle men in between talent and event organizers are what make an event successful?

Complaining about "middle men" is not dissimilar to complaining about "the Man" keeping you down. Is there a largess of utterly pointless people in a large bureaucratic organizations? Surely. Are all those "middle men" that take money in exchange for coordinating setting up and tearing down Cochella profit monsters? No, probably not. Lots of them are quite necessary, as Mr. McFarland and Mr. Rule just discovered.

If you want to pay some C-list "celebrity" to just show up at your party that doesn't take much in the way of middle men. So booking those appearances might be a viable niche business.

I think HN just has a low tolerance for willful incompetence, especially when charging gigantic fees to the consumer. As has been pointed out by other articles, despite many warning signs that this festival would be impossible to pull off as advertised, the organizers continued to crank the hype machines into turbo mode while slurping up cash from consumers till the last minute. It's a scam.

Well if you think about the fact that almost every startup that goes through YC raises probably $1M+ after demo day, and 9 out of 10 investments likely to lose, but hey move fast and break things as long as it's not a concert for rich people.

In fact your comment could just as well be about many "unicorns" in tech who seem far more than willfully incompetant (e.g. Theranos; Uber); or according to who you ask Etherium (for being hacked and/or forking); and from the sound of press maybe MagicLeap the billion dollar startup who cant seem To launch a product may end up fitting the mold.

Well, Theranos and Etherium are met with frequent criticism on this board with good reason, but the issue isn't about losing out on an investment - which is obviously a risk with any company and clearly not applicable in the case of Uber - but rather, negligent, reckless or fraudulent behavior dressed up in tons of marketing buzz and obfuscated by insane levels of hype that functions only to inflate the ego and perceived prestige of the founders while simultaneously fleecing consumers of their money. The bigger the hype to inevitable-reality gap, the bigger the schadenfreude payoff when the scammer house of cards finally collapses in on itself.

> negligent, reckless or fraudulent behavior dressed up in tons of marketing buzz and obfuscated by insane levels of hype

Sounds like Uber to me.

Yes people got rides and it's a good product, but they still took operations to cities/counties all over the world illegally. Drivers are the ones who are stuck holding the with damaged driving records, and in some cases criminal records, for nothing more that operating under Uber. For example in Miami alone there are still $3.5M worth of outstanding fines from drivers when they were illegally operating as rides for hire.

Multiple that by how many cities? Then extend that business model for to any other illegal activity: drugs, prostitution, murder for hire, etc... but you know hype ($50B unicorn) and marketing buzz (disrupting, sharing economy).

Uber had over 5 billion dollars in net revenue last year. Theranos had zero.

9 out of 10 investments likely to lose

That's true of startups in general but not true of startups that goes through YC. The success rate of YC startups is far higher than normal.

Gotta be honest if that's what Fyre was attempting to solve, they've made a great case for the middlemen.

I do agree that surely something must explain why all these high-profile celebrities went along with this. Did they actually think nobody would notice the end result somehow, or were they duped too?

I mean, shocker, but the music business works the same way every other business does - through relationships. It's not Craigslist. There aren't really that many middle men between bands and the festivals/clubs that book them, unless you count the booking agents and managers, which I assure you are still getting a cut regardless of how the gig gets booked.

I agree. All of this may appear incredibly douchy, but they had a viable business model. Now that they are most certainly finished, there should be plenty of opportunity for someone else to totally steal the idea. Hopefully not someone as incompetent and lazy.

> All of this may appear incredibly douchy, but they had a viable business model.

Where, exactly, did the viability of their business model get demonstrated?

'Find cheap land and exploit it' has a long if not exactly distinguished history.

In this case it is arguable whether it was actually cheap, after having the transport everything to a remote location.

How about by the fact that it the marketing plan worked, the hype was there, and the tickets sold out?

They're having to refund the whole thing. The profitability was temporary based on an unrealistic offering. It's only a viable business model if it's possible to actually set up and provide the amenities - gourmet food, luxurious stay, expensive musical acts - which certainly hasn't been demonstrated.

Couldn't you say the same thing about homeopathy?

Which is obviously a viable business model. I ludicrously dishonest and insane one, but it makes money.

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