Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

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My ex-business partner inherited $2 million, then burned through all of it on various startup ideas, and when he was almost bankrupt, he dealt with the stress by smoking more and more marijuana. He also promoted himself as a visionary, someone who could put into words how the future would answer the bright hopes of humanity. As part of his effort to sell himself as a visionary, he got himself invited to give a talk to the local TEDx chapter. You can see him here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8znQZ1RUckg

He gave that talk during 2015, the same year that Bill Gates gave the talk about the possibility of a global pandemic. As the article above suggests, Ted Talks were at their peak in 2015, but also TEDx was ruining the brand.

If anyone is curious about my ex-business partner, I talk about him, and my time working with him, in the introduction of How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps:

https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...

Once I got over his… interesting… affect, I found this to be a pretty enjoyable watch. Certainly there’s not much technical merit to the ideas, and I definitely wouldn’t want to start a company with him or invest in him as a leader, but it was entertaining and at least a little thought-provoking about the future of media technology. I have a relatively high tolerance for bullshit though, so I can see how this could be unwatchable for many.

So, this is a great example of the ideas discussed in the article. Entertaining, a little woo-woo, preying on optimism, and ultimately, probably entirely inconsequential.

Your book looks interesting, too. I’ll check it out.

That's just it though, he can be interesting. I worked with him for 6 years. I wouldn't have stayed that long if he lacked all merit. He has an obvious natural intelligence, and some creative ideas. Especially in the early days, he had a charisma that allowed us to raise more money. We did some really interesting work. However, it was more important to him to be seen as a visionary than a successful entrepreneur, which is part of why our projects never seemed to take off. Which is why I eventually left.

Being interesting for a conversation is kinda the bar to cross for TEDx.

It's not an entirely uninteresting idea that he is presenting in that TEDx talk, although I can't see how it would be the basis of a business. It's very similar to the premise of the TV show "Devs" on Hulu.

I wonder how your ex-partner feels about the fact that this book exists documenting his missteps and misfortunes. Ironically, with your book, you have created a durable artifact of the type that he described in his talk, giving people a chance to replay a portion of his lived experience.

Well, hopefully I'm fair to him, and note his strengths as well as his weaknesses. And as I point out at the end of the book, my version of events is not the only version of events that could be told. If he also wrote a book, a fuller picture of events would emerge, though still not the 100% pure truth.

As I said elsewhere in the thread, I worked with him for 6 years. I wouldn't have stayed that long if he lacked all merit. He has an obvious natural intelligence, and some creative ideas. Especially in the early days, he had a charisma that allowed us to raise more money. We did some really interesting work.

What a strange and salty message

And yet, surprisingly perhaps, it promotes the content of the 'salty' ex's ex rather than being whitewashed out, or being 'cancelled' that you might expect from true saltiness. Like TED therefore, its a clever trick to spice up the banal and offer it for consumption.

That is part of the strange

Looks like they got a book deal out of it and that saltiness is heavily refined and packaged for public consumption.

Ted talk was fun though

Funny when I read that idea of natural language, SQL and 2 million I thought: "that will fail" "what a weird idea".

Don't be too salty, the idea was shitty from the beginning :-)

Hey, I read that book! A good one honestly. I enjoyed it a good story about how crazy the work world can be.

This may be the best post I have ever read on HN. It encompasses so much of Silicon Valley.

To be fair, it was his to burn, wasn't it?

Not exactly. We began as a 50/50 partnership. I had spent 3 years developing some CMs software, and, to create the partnership, I was donating the software, and he was putting up some money. As time went on, his money certainly gave him an advantage, regarding our long-term direction, but there was the sense that I had given up something important on the assumption that we were going to work hard to build a successful business. So there was a sense that his impulsiveness undercut our original understanding. The same is true of the investors who eventually put up about $2 million. They took small slices of the company on the understanding that my ex-business partner had already invested a lot of his own money, but then, that investor money was put up with the understanding that it would be transformed into a successful business, so, again, his emphasis on aesthetics rather than substance did disappoint the hopes of those investors.

Right. Here is something that I've noticed some time ago and which applies to your history, but which of course isn't very useful to you now because it all has already happened, but partnerships are best formed between parties that are at the same level of commitment and with aligned goals.

If not it is a fairly surefire recipe for disaster, there are some exceptions but the majority of the cases that I am familiar with the party with the money ended up either taking advantage of the other(s), ended up with a disproportionate share of the loot or was able to take more risk. This skews the outcome in their favor more often than not.

It is a pocket edition of why when you're born wealthy you are likely to end up even more wealthy.

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