Have coffee with Tim Cook – a charity auction | Hacker News Reader

Have coffee with Tim Cook – a charity auction

charitybuzz.com

32 pointsnapolux24 comments

"The minimum processing and handling charge for this item is $9.95."

I would definitely do it, if I had the dough. They probably would make more if they have Jony Ive for the bidding.

I agree.

Seems a shame that they're using the traditional auction format, meaning only the very rich will have this opportunity.

Would have been much better if they'd offered the lottery ticket style of prizeo.com, would have bought a few tickets with the off-chance of winning then.

Why is it a shame?

I don't mean to sound snarky, but the point is to raise money for charity, so the goal is going to be to get as much money as possible. I'm not familiar with Prizeo, but I'm willing to bet it'd be tough to raise $50k+ on a lottery basis.

I think you can definitely raise $50,000 via $5-$20 lottery tickets. Of course the legality of it may make it trickier.

I wasn't specific in my post, I meant with Tim Cook specifically. And maybe with $5-20 that would be more possible, I was thinking something closer to "$1 = 1 vote" or something like that.

Another cool auction format used is this:

The last person putting $10 in the pot wins the auction. Putting $10 in the pot will postpone the end of the auction for let's say 30 minutes.

This format has been used at some of the charity auctions I visited. It was very funny... Now that I am thinking about it: Maybe it only works in real live because the moderator of the evening was very funny and motivating.

Heh, I've seen this format on one of those "You can buy an iPad for £5" not-so-charity sites my dad tried. Very very clever business model, we often saw things going for much more than you could buy them elsewhere because people were already invested. You had to be the highest bidder for some fixed amount of time instead of the Ebay model of last second sniping, genius psychological trick.

Might be more difficult with someone with more limited appeal (to the mainstream) like Tim Cook, but I do believe they've raised considerably more than that with their other auctions.

To be clear, I don't actually know how much they've raised, which I think is a failure of the site so far; giving to charity should be transparent.

The bid history is interesting: https://www.charitybuzz.com/catalog_items/337478/bids

Looks like the current leader, rory.oneill3 has bid against himself a few times.

That is interesting. As did bidder 'ddorato' at the $6,000 - $7,000 bid.

I think that just means that he had an automatic bid that was higher than someone else's.

rory.oneill3 might be an executive at Blackberry: http://clrk.it/image/0N1G0G3o2B43

Question... Would you consider, as a startupper, to invest some money (quite a lot, we are now around 15k $) in the possibility to chat with Tim Cook?

Very much, no. I would never pay $15k so talk to anyone.

Having people you look up to is something. This would be senseless idolatry.

$23k right now

It's about the charity donation. That you get coffee with Tim Cook is just bait.

I've been at charity auctions where people bid rediculous sums for rediculous items. It wasn't about getting the item, it was an excuse for giving money.

I know, and, if I had the money, I'd do the charity donation. But the parent comment asked about paying in general a large sum to talk to Tim Cook in the context of being an entrepreneur. I understood the charity aspect of it wasn't to be considered.

I would like to put a bid in for Richard Stallman (Founder of GNU foundation), but I don't have the money to make that kind of minimum bid ($15,333)

If you want to donate to a good cause, go donate to a good cause, you don't need Tim Cook for that.

I guess this would count as an expense for someone's company account, so.. why not.

I'd rather donate to talk to Jonathan Blow, Tommy Refenes, Howard Schultz, Jony Ive.

Laurene Powell-Jobs would be worth more, even.....

Tim being the CEO of Apple doesn't make him valuable in this case, at least to me.

why the down vote to my comment? Others even agree Tim Cook is being used as bait and listed alternatives to whom they would rather have coffee with...

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