That's so strange; I was thinking about posting a similar post just this second!
94 karma · joined October 6, 2007
It's like straight out of a movie where you find this old, eclectic store and it has all these buildable, multi-scale Gundam models, etc.
I try not to go becuase the first time I went it was like, "Dragon Ball Z - the Uncut, Unedited version" and it was like, "WTF? There's an edited and an unedited version"?
Basically everything they have makes me realize just how much I haven't seen ... by the time I got done with my wish list I had like $15,000 worth of anime I really, really wanted to see.
That's when i realized I lost control, walked out and never came back.
But if you want to chase the anime dragon, let me know - I"ll ask around for you.
But I don't take responsibility if you walk into the anime den never to see the light of day again ...
Whatever you do, please do NOT think of me as you're watching it if you wind up getting it on DVD.
And besides ... I just know I'm going to lose most of my points for this one ... I'm making a perfectly valid point.
Everybody talks about Wufoo here ... yet when I ask for honest, useful feedback, nobody responded for most of the day.
Yet if I were to put up a post like, "Do you think it's better to code in rooms painted blue, or rooms painted green" I'm pretty certain I'd quickly get over 50 responses ASAP.
Here we go ... here come the down mods ... sigh ... 52 points my all time high ... oh well it was nice while it lasted ...
Because if it is I got your email and will reply shortly; if not the email is "emailadrian|@|inbox.com" with "emailadrian" together as a term.
http://venturebeat.com/2008/02/11/thefunded-penalizes-ventur...
Where they nabbed vcs for trying to create multiple accounts and artificially up their own ratings on the system to make themselves seem to have a good rep ...
Who is mentioned prominently?
Check article.
So unbelievable.
I was shocked that their rating was so high ... almost too high ... and I though perhaps the guy had a serious spiritual soul-searching session after 9.11 or something and decided to play it square.
Instead he will now be forever branded, through nobody's fault but his own, as "the guy who tried to manipulate his own Funded rep in that Venture Beat article.
Unbelievable.
Karma worked, in this case at least - in this lifetime!
Unreal.
I feel ... sniff sniff ... sob ... vindicated ...
It's been a long journey.
I'd like to thank my manager, my hairstylist, my dance coach ... there's just to many people to keep track of so don't be offended if I miss you ...
That way you get to "play" while actually marketing, which is work.
Okay, so I took a quick look at the tuturial for "forms" and aside from I don't get a sense of how to place them visually and where I need to write the code to put them "here" vs. there on the website, when someone submits info it sends it to "another html page".
Where is that page - do I have to create it, does it create itself, do I have to be running a d-base to collect the info, how do I access that page to see the input, etc.
Any info would be appreciated, thanx.
Actually, though they'll never tell you, and often say the opposite on their websites, VCs view big time involvement in your day to day business as a sign of trouble - ideally they want to sit on their rear ends, visit you once a month and tell you to "optimize the radical paradigm shift" then go home and write a blog about their value added and entrepreneurs should be grateful they have VCs telling them how to do such things.
When they actually do have to get involved, they'll do so as the article suggests and "punish you" by shoving "their team" in your startup with a "see what you made me do? See what happens when you make me break a sweat?" attitude.
IN CONCLUSION: Just because you don't know it, doesn't mean you should assume that some smug, confident-looking guy sitting across the table from you (the VC) DOES know how to do it. For all you know he might be as clueless as you.
There was an awesome article on this subject from about 10 years ago called something like, "The pussification of silicon valley"
Perhaps I shouldn't tell you about "certain" well-developed import sites where you can get a copy of just about anything that comes out of Japan in any version you can dream of ...
And I'm sure you know of Anime Network, all anime, all the time.
Now, be strong! Don't google these things! You have work to do and can't be distracted!
Seriously, after you've bought the houses, the cars, the trophy wives, what else is there other than to get involved in the process?
Isn't that everybody's dream, the old, "Boy if I ever made it, I would do things SOOOOO differently!"
Otherwise, what's the point?
If I ever made it, the FIRST thing I would do (besides paying down my credit cards and finding a slightly larger apartment) is to try my hand at "doing things the way I wish they were done" ...
I think it would be a heck of a lot more fun putting yuppie ivy-league mbas out of business than spending money on fancy food and cars and designer suits ...
But then again I don't have a lot of money so what do I know? Maybe once you have the money and can actually afford those things you develop an inevitable, "the hell with everyone else" attitude ...
Let's not alienate anybody. For all you know there might be some guy who made a fortune in something mundane and may want to invest in promising young people and he's reading this and thinking, "Oh, I see, they only want money from "nerds" with engineering degrees ... guess my money's not good enough for them."
Personally I'd take money from anybody who made it any way other than as a result of hurting someone in the process and could care less about their "pedigree" or "nerd-factor" ... the fact that they may have made it without the advantages of a masters from MIT just tells me they have THAT MUCH MORE streetsmarts to compensate ...
I'd toss money aside if I could just find some actual programmers who can help put together and launch a semi-scalable demo (I may be able to put together a professional "A" series through some contacts if I have something to show). At the very least I'd love to talk to someone knowledgeable who can at least help me figure out cost scenarios, most of which are technical, so I can present a credible b-plan.
Where I live (NYC) just a bunch of entrepreneur-wannabe poseurs who attend lots of Meetups and presentations but are too scared to actually "do it" ... and of course the "professional" development houses who will gladly talk to me ... AFTER I raise the capital, which, of course, is completely useless as a value added.
Any thoughts on the subject, feel free to email me @: emailadrian "at" inbox "dot" com.
Oh and this article is wrong. The guy involved in this also has a U.S. version of this under a holding company; I know this because I tried to get Lily Allen tix from a venue in NYC and even though I got there like literally 10 minutes after tickets went on sale, I was told that they all "sold out".
"Impossible!" I claimed. Then I was told about this company - basically all they do is hire a bunch of low-lifes (read: college students who want quick pot-cash) to just hang around for hours before the tickets go on sale and they then just buy up all the tickets and resell them for 5-10X original cost.
Seriously who sees a future in a company that gets people aggravated by design and ads zero value to the process?
Are VCs that dumb, or just that desperate?
BUT ask for follow through with different behavior, ie, "action", and all of a sudden it's the rolling of the eyes, and "yeh, well, you know, the thing is .." and lots of cricket-chirp cricket-chirp cricket-chirp
I mean this in all honesty when I say I hope it never happens to you guys like that, but something tells me if it did you'd be writing an article proclaiming something to the effect of, "That's Bulls@#$!!! People should respect other people's hard work!"
In conclusion all I'm really saying is "proceed, but with caution" since in the end there are a lot of VCs who'll more than readily copy your idea and give it to a friend or two they'll fund to "execute" your startup on their terms and not care twice about the bad reputations they develop as long as they make enough $$$.
And apparently by one of the most recent postings on this board, ie, "An Engineers View of VCs" or something to that effect, I'm not alone in this impression:
This article just struck a nerve and I wanted to add my 2 cents ...
That's why I get miffed whenever I hear talk of "ideas are nothing, it's all in the execution" because I couldn't help but think that those two EIRs weren't executing jack-sh@# before I told them the idea and HOW to execute better than anybody else could, what to do when you had duplicators, etc.
Never mind me, I'm just a rampbling, bitter old man in a young man's body ...
On the other hand I've formed some friendships with a few high placed people in a large company here and there, and they assure me that pretensions aside, VCs usually spend most of their time calling contacts in the corporate world begging for deal flow.
Most VC is just bluff.
Tried another startup a year later and got sued by the EIR who claimed at first that our ideas were very similar ... then so similar that in fact he thought I "stole" what he saw as "his" idea.
I couldn't believe the nerve, and yet there they were, grown men twice my age who made million screwing me over without a second thought about all the crap they pay lip service to on their websites (ie, "Our reputations mean everything to us" and "Our honesty is the basis of our credibility") and all sorts of other mumbo jumo.
IN CONCLUSION: By all means keep at it, but be very, very careful - if they screw up they're still VC partners or EIRs, but you're done for at least that idea.
B.) I have OCD so I tend to get baited on flame wars; you on the other hand seem to just have waaaaay to much time on your hands.
Here - I know how to satisfy you: You're 100% right, I'm 100% wrong, you're the greatest, enjoy the free Ferrari that comes with being right on the internet over things that don't really matter too much to me but obviously are life and death issues to you.
I don't know what email you're reading but the one I'm reading just has him and one other guy signing off indicating they're members of a group; nowhere does it say they're the only members, or the most important members, or the members who did most of the work, or anything other than 2 people looking for feed back.
Let's say you got an email from "Sue" from Apple requesting feedback on your recent iPhone purchase. Does that imply that since sue works for Apple and she signed off on the email, Sue is the most important person at Apple, responsible for most the important parts of their more successful projects?
No, of course not.
Second, one email signed by two students doesn't mean anything. He never says anything in the email you cited other than he and another person are looking for feedback. For all you know his professor could have given him and that other guy that task as an asignment. Nowhere in the email does it say anything to the effect of, "Oh and BTW, I'm the guy who wrote all the code for this."
Third, for all you know there could have been plenty of responses to the effect that you said. One out of context email doesn't "prove" anything, especially if it was written by the guy in question. Not to mention if he had the balls to run off with his professor's work, I'm sure he was smart enough to leave a paper trail, or in this case, an email trail. Give me your personal email - I'll send you a pre-dated email "proving" that I invented YouTube.. There you go - I just sent you an email, nobody on the internet is contesting my email, so according to your logic, this is "proof" that I invented YouTube.
Third of all, I'm not "changing my story" - since I doubt you've ever been in an academic environment where somebody took your stuff and ran with it, I was trying to cite something that was more likely in terms of people taking credit for other people's work - something I thought you could better relate to.
"Also, please cite a source" - if you bothered to check my other posting I cited 2, and if you google "Lawsuit", "Netscape", "University of Illinoise" you can find plenty of evidence to this effect. I just did and plenty of stuff comes up relating to this. If you're too lazy to find any info on this yourself, well I'm not going to sit here and argue with you.
They got sued, the lawsuit involved theft of intellectual property, copywrite infringement and license violations, which would suggest that it was not 100% open-source - it was available conditional to the license, which Netscape clearly violated when they decided to release it for free over the net without compensating U. of Ill. with royalties. They settled out of court for millions, which is similar to saying, "We're wrong, we just don't want any legal judgements against use for being wrong, so here's a bunch of money to go away."
Seriously have you never been in a work situation where your boss took credit for your work and claimed he was the most "prominent developer" of something YOU did? I can't be the only one who appreciates Dilbert ...
"Netscape has buzz but also faces perils. The University of Illinois is alleging that Clark and Andreessen have stolen the intellectual property for the browser and the Mosaic name, and is threatening to sue."
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/...
and
Copyrighted by the University of Illinois, Mosaic could be downloaded for free by individuals and by companies wishing to use the Internet for internal communications.
However, the NCSA did not want to become a help desk for commercial applications, so in August 1994, the University of Illinois assigned future commercial rights for licensing NCSA Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., a local company created by NCSA alumni to commercialize NCSA technology. The goal was for university researchers to continue developing longer-term technology and standards to be incorporated into browsers, while Spyglass would help license the technology to companies addressing immediate customer needs such as support, speed, and security. Spyglass began widely licensing Mosaic to computer companies including IBM, DEC, AT&T, NEC, and Firefox Inc., who was working to integrate Mosaic standards into Novell networking software for the personal computer.[8]
Watching Mosaic from the Bay Area, Silicon Graphics CEO Jim Clark, a veteran of the UNIX standards wars, understood how much money could be won if a company could take control of the standards of this new Internet tool. So Clark left his company and set out to destroy Mosaic and replace its government-backed standards. He met with Marc Andreesen, a member of the Mosaic team who had been hired at a Bay Area Internet security firm called Enterprise Integration Technologies. Out of that meeting in April 1994 was born Mosaic Communications Corporation (later to be called Netscape). With Clark putting up the capital, Andreesen recruited five other Mosaic team members from NCSA to design what they called in-house Mozilla, the Mosaic-Killer. In six months, Clark's team had created a powerful browser, which the team called Netscape. It had easy-to-navigate features and loaded graphic images faster than NCSA's Mosaic. But Netscape did something else--it included the ability to display text formatting that did not even exist in the HTML standards embedded in the NCSA Mosaic browser. This meant that Web pages designed to work with Netscape would not be readable by all the other Mosaic-based browsers. This would encourage people to use Netscape browsers and, as Netscape developed them, would encourage Web designers to pay Netscape for the server software that developed Web pages using their modified standards. It was in this later market of selling Web design tools costing from $1,500 to $50,000 where Netscape intended to make their money.[9]
And then Clark and Andreesen compounded their fracturing of the NCSA standard by giving their version away over the Internet. The University of Illinois had demanded that Clark's company pay for a license before selling their version. Clark later said that he refused because the university was demanding an ongoing per-copy royalty: "I didn't tell them, but we had intended to allow people to download it, and they were going to charge me. The amount varied, but nothing is innocuous when you're talking tens of millions of people."[10] The point of the licenses by Illinois had been, along with collecting a little revenue, to control the standards and make sure that the only free version available was the official NCSA standard.
http://www.netaction.org/opensrc/future/breakdown.html
Oh and btw, it's not an "accusation" if it's been well documented through legal channels. Tell me, are you one of those people who believe that Bill Gates is a super-mega genius just because his company spend who knows how many millions in PR trying to convince you of this notion?
Anyway, I'm not getting paid to win this debate and since I could care less whether or not I can convince anybody on this board of a historical, well-documented event, feel free to post as many post-comments as you'd like. Far as I'm concerned this is done.
Anyway these points are off-track; in conclusion startups are secretive because while execution may be crucial, so is being realistic enough to realize you're not in the best position to execute properly and that it's best to keep your mouth shut until you are, lest someone who is in a better position to execute than you are run off with "your thing." And there are plenty of people who can/would run off with your thing, take the credit for it and not think twice about what happens to you as a result of their behavior.