MaknMoreGtnLess

Ticketmaster is largely a manual operation at this point and has a pretty high overhead. They are hemorrhaging their tech staff and currently profitable because of their position in the market, collusion with scalpers and the high priced tickets they can sell (so they are still profitable post high overhead).

To displace them, you copy them but automate operations to reduce costs and pass the savings to the customer as the market and product risks have already been addressed by them.

The meatspace risk is getting access/contracts to the tickets they can sell.

> If it's a public company

True. I was responding to the OP who left an impression they were talking about a private early stage company

> You mean like Glassdoor?

No. Glassdoor are posts by (ex)employees and you have to fill out their existing template, which leaves out a lot of perks/benefits/options/RSUs at companies. If you looked at Glassdoor, you would think people at FAANG make no more than $120k/yr because the rest of the perks/benefits/options/RSUs match or often exceed (eg: 2021) the cash component.

I literally meant an Airtable spreadsheet that you and I fill out after speaking to the recruiter from NewCo, even if we dont interview nor ever work there.

> Anyone, CEO included, that thinks they have a secret tier of comp... we know

No you don't. You have no clue what benefits and comp the CEO gets. Not even the CFO, CTO, COO, CxO knows benefits and comp the CEO (or each other) gets unless they share with each other.

majority of companies oppose transparency.

Also, transparency is not a technical issue. The people here can easily setup an Airtable spreadsheet where everyone writes the offers they are getting.

There's no such Airtable spreadsheet currently because this is a people issue - we want to know what the companies budget are but want to hold the information to ourselves without sharing that information with anyone else interviewing.

The root cause is us

The Founding Engineer (aka First Engineer?) needs to be removed. Speak with the CEO and CTO, surface your concern.

Having been in the CXO shoes before, I would have let the Founding Engineer go. Awesome if they give us a few weeks (fully paid of course) to KT to you.

At a startup, esp. of this size, team cohesion is critical and this person is a no go.

If you don't want to do this, you should still inform them after you resign because they have to sketch a plan for replacement of this Founding Engineer anyways.

> Is there any deep research on this topic and an advanced tool to work with semantic types?

Uhm, there's a process called Domain Driven Design that requires you to think of your types semantically.

IMHO semantics are always a higher level abstraction built on top of primitive types (integers/strings/floats and so on)

That said, unless there's already a well defined ontology in place, the semantic types are usually very adhoc and can even change from one module to another in the same ecosystem.

The sense of entitlement in the OP is nauseatingly overwhelming.

Unless there's an existing, explicit contract, only assumed, implicit contracts apply - and it's unlikely "I, the author, will spend a lot of time creating a concise summary to prove my writing is worth your time", is one of them.

> On the web, we can't flip (unless it's a PDF, which may even be worse).

I am struggling here. A webpage is the easiest document to search through, in multiple senses of search.

> Well written, summary-first content can tell you this quickly and potentially save you hours each week.

Agreed, but creating high quality summaries are extremely expensive. It's very very hard to be concise. Unless there's already an existing, explicit contract in place to compensate the author for making this effort, why would any smart person do it?

> I'd argue that university degrees don't even sufficiently prepare students to work for someone else

Well, it does filter out those who consistently fail to respect a process and deadlines.

A smart businessman can buildout a proven, reproducible process and then employ people with a proven track record of following processes even if those employees are without any experience.

It doesn't make a lot of sense learning vocational training at a university.

Getting a certificate in entrepreneurship without having started your own company from scratch is as useful as having a certificate in painting without having raised a brush.

OTOH, if you do raise a brush, you can just go ahead, paint as much as you want, make mistakes, learn from it. Eventually you will discover a style you like that you can then audit a few university art courses about.

Most teachers/profs/entrepreneurs will even help you for free because although they are in it for the money, they also enjoy it.

Unless your objective was to be an art historian and gain a wide exposure to all and everything art or you want credentials to gain entry to an art studio etc.

> In a previous post you said that you are using surveys. How long are them? I have very little patience and I'd answer only 2 or 3 questions

I don't like using surveys for initial user research at all, preferring actual 1:1 user interviews instead, which is why I ask you these:

1. What is your biggest business pain point now - something that frustrates you and you're struggling to solve well/with low overhead?

2. If I were to solve this, would you still have very little patience or would you be excited to meet 1:1 with me and explain this pain point?

> My question goes out to anyone familiar with this situation: how do you change your product strategy to be successful despite an 800-lb gorilla in your market?

Happy to discuss more in details but if that 800-lb gorilla is VC funded, depending on the details, it's extremely likely they will fail and you will enjoy the rush of customers who are left hanging

I thank you for this reply. You think deeply and your use of lofty as augmentation is very well placed.

I am unsure if most people there behave so, I can hope it is.

> Thirdly, I don't need permission from anyone the sell my shares

I believe you do and that's lofty. I don't believe you can transact outside and independent of lofty - i.e., if you built a replica of lofty tomorrow that transacted using the underlying blockchain, you couldn't.

> We (the other owners of the LLC and myself) don't have to rely on a gatekeeper (lofty in this case) to transact business with each other

Untrue - there's significant external process that relies on U.S. contract and property law that lofty handles that's undocumented and will need to be re-implemented from scratch if lofty were to close doors.

That said, again, I thank you for this reply and you have given me thoughts to consider.

> I see you all over this thread accusing Marc Andressen of engaging in massive fraud, so I don't feel like you are debating in good faith.

If:

i. We know that consumer electronics depreciate rapidly over time eventually to become obsolete

ii. I were you tell you that "Assets gain value over time so I will sell you this CD player from Walmart today for $10 that you will be able to sell for $100 in the future" and you said "No, it's untrue that a CD player is an asset likely to gain value over time, so you wont even get $10 leave alone $100 in the future", than you arn't debating in bad faith.

What you are doing is using the system and logic and inferences. High school stuff

> https://www.lofty.ai/

Do you have any stake in this venture (or exclusively a fee paying user)?

Here are 3 red flags about https://www.lofty.ai/ right off their homepage:

> Investing in real estate is now easier than buying stocks

> Become a direct owner of A.I. vetted real estate in 5 minutes and sell anytime.

> Invest in tokenized real estate for only $50

This company will make a lot of people loose money. I am glad to see you're making 9% in a market that's currently averaging ~15+% Net IRR.

Using deep neural networks in real estate? Wasn't Zillow's iBuying massacre enough educational experience?

You have been around a long time to form an quality opinion: you think this is a good solution to a hyperlocalized, human scale problem?

No actual RE investor in the real world gives a hoot about $10 avocado toasts and Tesla charging stations as prominently shown on the website. It's all about cashflow, tenant rolls and contracts.

Anyways, I wish you and the current users there, luck. We need even more ~speculation~ investors in RE in the U.S.

> Of course not, I specifically said that they represent ownership in an LLC, which participates in the normal real estate market in the normal way.

So instead of NFTs, you could have used a shared, versioned, auditable Excel spreadsheet/AirTable to get the exact same effect without losing any functionality?

What additional gain does NFTs bring over this AirTable solution (and I am aware of the DropBox comment)?

What am I missing?

> Part 4 is only necessary because there isn't good infrastructure for working directly in crypto

> Overall it's been a positive experience so far, and I'm making good returns (about 9% annual return on my cash).

Just to be sure - both of these that you said are concurrently true?

I am planning to rebut all your 4 points one by one but first:

i. Are you actually using NFTs at this very moment the way you write here without a parallel system of property title management that's independent of NFTs?

ii. Please show me where I can access and view these NFTs then because I will (attempt) a transaction into this ownership today. If I am not allowed to do that right now, explain to me why not?

> This inability of advocates to clearly and concisely explain the pros and cons of their own technology is what constantly sets off my bullshit detector when people talk about blockchain.

I don't think you will be disappointed in your approach. I have mentioned some real problems that I think needs to be addressed in this very unpopular comment of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349821

> Which bad actors

actors on the blockchain

> That’s a large part of the value-add of professional VCs, be it in blockchain/web3 or any other domain, that they have the expertise to discern legit teams from scam ones.

That's a tiny part of it and as useful to society as hiring away nuclear physicists to work on ad prediction and tiktok recommendation algorithms.

Explain to me why banks would need blockchains over federated databases. All these federated databases have strict audit trails and controls.

Banks have been using these for nearly 50 years and the systems are very well understood. Event Sourcing as a concept and WORM drives as an implementation are mathematically proven to work already and don't need the complexity and overhead of a blockchain in a regulated, audited environment.

Look forward to what I'm missing.

> Hard problem is who should pay for what work which a blockchain is not solving

Yes, this is one of the many hard problems.

I would be 100% behind MA if he used his influence, wealth and power to fund solving these hard problems.

Unfortunately, his and most of current funds are building Managed Blockchains that's just needless complexity where federated databases would have sufficed and been far more efficient (perf., cost, complexity)

That said, Decentralization is the future and will happen with or without him. Unfortunately he's going down in history as one of those who slowed down progress to make monetary gains.

Here how you prove the fraud:

The hard problem that needs to be solved in a Decentralized blockchain is the risk and effect of bad actors. None of the current funds, including that of MA, addresses this risk.

Instead, all current plays are about building Managed Blockchains that's just needless complexity where federated databases would have sufficed and been far more efficient (perf., cost, complexity)

There's a fine line between vision and orchestrated fraud. It's always been easier to commit fraud and once you're managing billions of other people's money, it's extremely hard to not take the easy path.

Bottomline: This is a pump and dump speculation play. HN is too smart to fall for it.

There's a fine line between vision and orchestrated fraud.

It's always been easier to commit fraud and once you're managing billions of other people's money, it's extremely hard to not take the easy path.

The hard problem that needs to be solved in a Decentralized blockchain is the risk and effect of bad actors. None of the current funds, including that of MA, addresses this risk.

Bottomline: This is a pump and dump speculation play. HN is too smart to fall for it.

So painful because it's true.

That said, I don't fault AWS for jumping on the bandwagon and making money.

I actually hope Amazon Managed Blockchain picks up so that the truth (and the hoax) emerges faster and we can put all this BS behind us.

The very reason a blockchain needs to exist alongwith PoW, consensus is to tackle the inherent risk of Decentralization and bad actors. Amazon Managed Blockchain is just needless complexity where federated databases would have sufficed and been far more efficient (perf., cost, complexity)

> He's borderline lying saying that web3 is decentralized

The "web3" he is funding is only decentralized in his mind a decade into the future. So either he doesn't understand decentralization or is knowingly lying for monetary gain.

What Marc Andreessen said:

> The enormous payoff from decentralization and permissionless innovation. I cannot believe more people don't understand this. It's so obvious.

What Marc Andreessen meant:

> The enormous payoff for a16z from centralization of our platform and fees from both innovators and users to run on on our platform. I cannot believe more people don't fall for this. It's so frustrating.

I am all for reducing hype and buzzwords. This post doesn't make the best case against them.

> Would it be accurate to call modern cars "engineless"?

No.

Uber/Lyft/Taxi perhaps would be closer to "engineless".

The point of "serverless" is to allow you to run your functions without (in an ideal world) worrying about the foundation that needs to exist for your function to run

> All this might seem as nitpicking but I don't think it is. I think the terms are intentionally misleading. What is your sentiment?

My sentiment is to not get bothered by hype and buzzwords.

The reason why we have so much high quality OSS in 2022 is because a lot of people with money but little understanding of technology get excited by hype and buzzwords and put in billions of their dollars as investments.

It is these investments that subsidize the high quality OSS we all depend on.

Once you realize this, you start to fall in love with hype and buzzwords as a way to extract maximum money from the clueless. As long as you try your actual best to deliver something, it's all good.

PS: WEB3, AI/ML, Blockchain, Crypto, NFT, Decentralized. The people putting in actual money into these have no clue what any of these mean and that's ok - their money gets us hired to work on these things.

> I will recommend the book The truth about addiction and recovery if you want to better understand what happened. It suggests that giving people meaningful work and a means to succeed is a viable means of treatment for addiction.

I really appreciate you sharing this. As you can guess, I stumbled into this.

> I will note that I know a fair amount about homelessness and I think the angle that "homeless people are all junkies and crazies" is way over hyped.

Would you be able to share the geographic location for the homeless you studied?

What was the segment and proportion of actual junkies to crazies to on-bad-luck-but-can-be-helped you noticed?

What I have noticed in SF and NYC is a certain number of them are indeed mentally unstable. The reason why I am yet to expand beyond a second person is because I was stabbed by a schizophrenic who was convinced I was the Jonah who had been tormenting him in his sleep for years. The police have asked me to work thorough certain agencies and NGOs since then. Unfortunately it's impossible to make any progress through them as far as having them work on my farm is concerned. They only want donations and cannot work with my farm idea.

You need to know what you need to improve on and your manager can share that with you.

You need to be honest with him/her/them, tell him you know about the promotion and that you need him to tell you where you can improve on. It's perfectly ok if he doesn't think he will ever promote you - you just need honest feedback.

The other way is to try and interview elsewhere and hope they can tell you what you need to improve on.

Another option is to look for career coaches. I often interview candidates who are preparing to interview at FAANG through a network but it's in the U.S.

In the U.S. you can parse through the Open Datasets from CMS at https://www.cms.gov

> I don't feel like I have a good grasp on the process of developing a sound business strategy for a startup

Business strategies are specific to the kind of business model/market/product/channel you have.

1. Do you know the basics of market/product/channel risks?

2. What's your background and why are you interested in learning about business strategies