Hacker News Reader

Comment by miked85 | Hacker News Reader

Postmates invented subscriptions?

They had the first food delivery subscription service among the food delivery services, such as Uber Eats, DoorDash etc, is what I believe they mean to say, not that they literally invented subscriptions.

Aside, the sibling comments are quite uncharitable, I don't see why anyone would reasonably believe that the founder invented subscriptions. If one thinks for even a second, they know this isn't true, so why not think for another second about what they really mean? I don't see the need to complain and hem and haw about how the "world's gone crazy."

I have observed over the years the IT/Tech tends to attract a lot of incredibly literal, grumpy people who do not like it when people take liberties with language.

It is also a difference in culture, americans tends to praise themselfs for every small things as a big achievement. In other countries one would not even consider this as an achievement, just a standard iteration to explore.

For me as well the first content is strange, that "I've invented subscription". It is basically just applying an existing pattern from not-so-much-different other field?

indeed amazon prime is the same, gym subscription is the same etc etc. Not sure what justifies the "no one ever done it"

It is an easy, lazy response that doesn't require much thought, and gets internet points anyway. I'm just glad HN offers a way to collapse threads because so many comments result in massive flame wars about trivial matters like syntax and word choice.

Luckily it’s easy to spot people who intentionally take the least charitable interpretation of a statement.

They hide behind “precision”, which is the other person’s fault when really they lack communication (griper’s fault).

It might be because software lives and dies on the precision of language.

It also stems from a laziness to consider where a person is coming from, other than literal reading of text. Brains become callused, or worse slightly autistic, where only precision matters.

You just have to ask yourself who is responsible when lack of precision leads to bad outcomes. If it isn't you, then meeting the other person halfway by increasing your level of precision helps.

The emotional labor of having to be fully responsible for precision is under-appreciated. That burden is where the grumpiness comes from.

It also makes for excruciatingly tedious conversation.

I found the same thing to be true back when I invented the car. It’s incredibly annoying and takes away from the conversation.

It's pretty clear from the original thread and the reply that the implication is that Postmates was the first to offer subscriptions through iOS without going through IAP, therefore bypassing Apple's 30% cut, not that they "invented subscriptions."

"no one has ever done it" - it definitely sounded to me like they implied to transform something that used to be a "pay per consumption" into a "service". Which is definitely untrue, Creative Cloud preceded them by half a decade, Amazon Prime was before that, and arguably Netflix inspired everyone.

I might be out of touch but that doesn't seem as impressive as this thread implies.

What's impressive is that they were a small company that did something everyone thought was crazy, then all the big companies copied them.

Postmates invented applying the subscription model to a pay-per-use 'gig economy' service business.

When you're a CEO and only hear "yes you're a genius sir!" that happens to you

Reply on news.ycombinator.com