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[Ed note: I debated whether or not to run this story. On the one hand, it rather thoroughly eviscerates a particular company, and I truly wish no harm to other's ventures. (Seeing what it takes to run this site, well, it's not as easy as it looks!.) On the other hand, it rather handily illustrates management issues I have seen before. On the gripping hand, I found the submission to be entertainingly written, and that tipped the scales for me: I decided to give it a try... and see what the community thinks. Have you ever worked at a company like this? How did that work out for you? Did the company successfully reinvent themselves? --martyb]
WhenHub - a startup in search of an idea
As near as I can recall, the initial idea of WhenHub was that you could create a Whencast, which is basically a slideshow with slides shown in chronological order. You were supposed to embed this Whencast on your website. Aside from the sheer triviality of the idea, the embedding meant that visitors had to allow 3rd party cookies, so it didn't work for anyone with sensible security settings on their browser.
So they moved on: Next, they had an app that would let you share your location data with friends. For example, if you were heading to a meeting, and someone hadn't arrived yet, you could see that they were stuck in traffic (or maybe at the beach). Not a bad idea, but again trivial, and really better implemented by the mapping applications. Which they have done.
Somewhere along the way, they also talked about calendar sharing, but I never looked into the details. Anyway, you can share calendars just fine, from all sorts of different services, so...
So you have this startup, only none of your ideas are actually marketable, and money is running out. Whatever do you do? Ah, but now! Now they have a totally different idea. They will let you hire people, with contracts. But this isn't like any of the zillion freelancer sites around, no! WhenHub is different: They have sprinkled "magic blockchain dust" on their company.
They'd really like to do an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), but the regulators look like they are going to crack down on that. So they're offering a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens). Really important: this is totally not an investment, because that might be subject to regulation, even though they keep talking about "investment", but anyway it isn't, because you don't get any equity in the company, or in Scott's apartment, or even a walk-on in a Dilbert strip.
Instead, you give them your money, and you get a non-transferable "SAFT", which maybe they will someday exchange for "WHEN tokens", which might someday be redeemable for, well, something, if the regulators don't outlaw it. And remember, it's totally not an investment, so...um... Why was it they expect people to send them money?
---
I know, this is cynical as hell, but WTF? Is this the culture of startups, to throw ideas at the wall, hoping and praying that something - anything - turns out to be vaguely marketable? Then seeing Scott Adams, who otherwise seems like a decent enough fellow, hawking this SAFT on his blog. Whatever the truth, it sure looks like he's trying to bail out his bad investment by finding a bunch of suckers. That's just sad...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @10:43AM (45 children)
Spoken precisely like someone who hasn't the slightest clue how those on top got there. Pro-tip: it ain't luck.
You really want to know why SN isn't taking off and making gerzillions of dollars? Because we as a community aren't interested in it doing so. That's not why SN was created. We exist because the green site repeatedly shot itself in the foot and the more discerning commenters desired a place to be that wasn't run by hipster coders and beancounters. Which is exactly what got created.
We don't buy or sell ads, we don't put any effort into hawking merchandise, we've done exactly fuck all in the way of SEO, and we don't even bother with spread the word campaigns. In short, we exist for us and couldn't give less of a damn about growth or profit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday November 01 2017, @11:14AM (31 children)
You're vastly oversimplifying things.
- The guy behind flappy wings was also not interested in it taking off and making gerzillions of dollars. He also didn't put in the effort to reach that bar. Yet he reached it.
- Plenty of endeavors are interested in taking off and making gerzillions of dollars. They put enormous effort into it, yet completely fail to achieve success. (e.g. CD-I.)
It's definitely a matter of luck. The most annoying thing is that sometimes, success seems like a matter of other factors as well, until you see someone waltzing by, running on pure, 100% unadulterated luck. Luck'll get you to the top every single time. None of the other factors have that success rate.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @11:28AM (9 children)
Nope. It's still not luck. Even those knuckleheads who manage unexpected viral success do it by the same means as everyone else who succeeds. They just didn't know they were doing so. That's not luck, that's just a stopped clock being right twice a day.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:24PM (8 children)
You reckon that being persistently wrong is a success recipe? Like 'every dog has its day, it just need to live long enough'?
In other words, are you denying one can be objectively wrong forever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:55PM (3 children)
How in the jumped up monkey could you possibly read that into what I said? That's so far out of left field it's not even a strawman.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:06PM (2 children)
Sorry, forgot to grin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:16AM (1 child)
Oooh, you bastard. You did that knowing full well that there are chuckleheads on here who would have said that in total seriousness.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:33AM
Once again, my humble apologies... for triggering you (grin - next time maybe I'll try it on purpose)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 01 2017, @02:08PM (3 children)
Absolutely! The truly lucky manage to consistently be wrong and get promoted every single time they screw up.
Part of how they do it is convincing idiots that their failures are actually successes. For instance, I worked in a company where there was a fairly high-level manager who:
1. Convinced the company to buy out a firm for $20 million.
2. Ran that firm into the ground. It was sold off for pennies on the dollar.
3. Convinced the company that the problem was that they had bought out the wrong thing (never mind that the business had been profitable before she'd taken it over), and convinced them to buy out another firm for $50 million.
4. Ran that firm into the ground. It was sold off for pennies on the dollar.
5. Was shortly thereafter promoted to run the $250 million division. She had apparently turned running 2 businesses into the ground into a "bold transformative vision that the market wasn't yet ready for, and she could help them get ahead of the curve".
6. I'm sure you can guess what happened next. You're right: She ran the division into the ground. Not really surprising, because she had started off by firing all the competent managers who were potential rivals.
These kinds of stories are so common that there's a term for it: "failing upwards". These kind of people get away with it because the people above them are often even more clueless than they are, and like her they see competent people as threats rather than assets.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:55PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
She couldn't have been that dumb if she was able to recognize competent rivals. :)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:40PM
Her method of recognizing competent rivals was asking the question "Are they completely loyal to me and never call me out for my mistakes?" If not, fire 'em.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:38PM (20 children)
Notice in particular, that if you had consistently applied your logic to luck and hard work, you would have reached the conclusion that they contribute or not in the same way to success. Yet luck is treated preferentially to hard work, for no reason at all.
Except we already know that luck doesn't contribute to success most of the time because of all the failures. What makes hard work matter more than luck here is that one can try multiple times for that bit of luck. But that's a lot of work. Meanwhile just because you got lucky doesn't mean that you stay lucky. What came easily can go just as easily.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:09PM (19 children)
Two important details you missed:
Hard work can typically only get you incremental gains - making large leaps forward is pretty much always due primarily to luck. Though hard work will certainly help you take advantage of that luck, and maintain the gains you got from it.
>What came easily can go just as easily.
Is pretty much entirely false - once you have gained an advantage, regardless of the amount of effort it required to get, you now have additional assets to leverage in order to maintain and advance your position.
Granted, a lot of that is due to our capitalist culture - when the rules of society are set up to reward wealth substantially more generously more than hard work, skill, etc., then luck becomes a far more powerful driving force.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:38PM (13 children)
That does make for an appealing narrative, doesn't it? I could, just like the guy who discovered [wikipedia.org] benzene's ring structure, nap on the couch and dream up novel chemical structures, earning me millions. But what's this fly in the ointment? The guy had a doctorate in chemistry and spent ten years studying carbon bonds before he made his big discovery? That's starting to sound like hard work.
Well, what about this dude who made Flappy Bird [wikipedia.org]? Something like three days of work and instant millionaire? Well, he had to grow his company for two years first (apparently, botting the hell [bluecloudsolutions.com] out of reviews and such) in order to get the lofty revenue which was supposedly due to luck. So he had to have a viable game (at least three such as it turns out, according to the link), a winning marketing strategy, and work on the latter for a couple of years to finally get that level of success. There's that nasty "hard work" showing up again.
Here's the thing. Hard work makes luck happen. The hard worker who also is keeping an open mind to opportunity is going to be luckier and be able to take advantage of their luck better than someone on the couch waiting for wealth lightning to strike.
Well, there had to be a reason for the narrative. Nobody gets obsessed over the power of luck, unless they're trying to make excuses.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday November 01 2017, @10:28PM (8 children)
TMB:
khallow:
So, let me get this straight: TMB and khallow, both noted billionaires of tech, tells us that rich people get that way by hard work, not by luck. Except that some other people work hard and never get rich, because, I guess, they were not lucky? So rich people are wealthy as a matter of luck? Truly these are astounding intellects, to have reasoned in such a circuitous manner! But if they are so smart, why aren't they rich? Must be the luck.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @10:44PM (5 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday November 01 2017, @11:03PM (4 children)
Two people with the same opinion, and the rest of us with the correct one? More kind of a ménage à trois.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @11:11PM
Maybe your replacement alt will troll better.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:18AM (2 children)
It's obviously not the correct one if I can make the amount of money I desire at will and you lot can't.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Touché) by aristarchus on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:25AM (1 child)
You are obviously not correct if you do not know that I make far more money than I need or even want, which means I've got you beat by millennia. C'mon, TMB, you have a Roomie because why?
And you may want to think that my massive income is due to hard work, but I would say it is more luck. Some correct guessing, after losing everything in a shipping venture in 126 BC, having several caravans I was co-investor in being lost in sandstorms or bandit attacks on the Silk Road, total write-offs of real-estate in Alexandria (Egypt) when the Christians took over and drove prices into the basement, and philosophers had to leave. And then Wheat speculation, consulting gigs with various Barbarians, Germans, and Arian Christians, who remind me much of the FA start-up barbarians. Although they could always fall back on pillage.
When the Italians came up with the idea of a common stock corporation, an idea they stole from the Sicilians, who in turn had stolen it from the Chinese by way of Norman King Roger of Sicily and Marco Polo, I got in early. Lost my entire net worth repeatedly. Invested in the Tulip bubble, lost my arse. East India Company was not too bad, until my conscience could no longer stand it. And lost everything again in the Silver panic of 1893. Oh, the irony, or silvery, but more irony, since the money I lost was gained by investments in Carnegie Steel.
And then the NY stock market, back when black Friday was a bit more morbid that the way the term is currently used. We would go strolling down Wall Street, looking for financiers launching themselves out of high windows! Great fun, rather like watching a meteor storm, except that meteors give off more light and do not go "splat" at the end. Since then, investing has been a bit more of reliable way to make money, given the governmental regulations that all sane people agree are a necessary governor upon a capitalist economy.
But more than that, a good philosopher is never at a loss for gainful employment, or even the means to be able to continue the same. And his or her wealth is not measured so much in possessions, or media of exchange, but instead in the quality of colleagues and students. This reward, unlike filthy lucre, is not a product of luck.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:31AM
Because one day my best friend of twenty-some-odd years came up and asked me if I wanted to move to TN with him so he'd know someone besides his ex and kids in the state when he moved there to get his visitation back. I can get by just fine most anywhere, so I said sure.
Beg to differ [youtube.com].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:08AM (1 child)
I seem to remember one of the parties implicated railing on about how "Troll" should not be used for "disagree". And yet again, aristarchus, who people disagree with because he is correct, usually, is again modded "Troll" for this post. Hang your heads in shame, SoylentNews! Shame!
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:06AM
To be fair, he only gets modded Troll when he challenges the alt-wrong/far-stupid narrative which as we all know is the pinnacle of human philosophical perfection and our greatest achievement as a species to date.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:34PM (3 children)
I was thinking nothing so dramatic - for every researcher who's hunch leads them to make a brilliant discovery, thousands of others no less qualified worked just as hard but had their hunches lead to dead ends. For every investor whose stocks do well, there's many others no less diligent who lose money.
Hard work is important - but hard work alone only gets you incremental gains. Luck is what catapults you forward.
And of course luck alone is probably not going to give you lasting gains - ignorance and sloth can easily piss away the benefits of luck, but there's also an awful lot of people out their doing really well based on little more than being lucky enough to have come into a lot of money, and just smart enough to hire someone actually qualified to manage it for them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @02:35AM (2 children)
The odds are much better in each case. In order to get to the researcher stage, the researcher generally has already one or more discoveries to their name, maybe not brilliant ones, but they have to be moderately successful just to get to the point of being a researcher. And dead end research is not career-ending. There are many examples of researchers who moved on to more successful research when their original researcher petered out.
Sorry, conservative investing is a pretty easy game. You have to be terrible (which is IMHO a form of lack of diligence, because you're not bothering to learn from your investing mistakes) and/or taking big chances (which is too often a lazy investor trying to get rich fast) in order to not come out ahead over the course of a few decades.
I notice in both examples you gave an unspoken assumption that if you fail, then you can't succeed - "hunches lead to dead ends" and "who lose money" are separate from those who succeed. The problem with this assumption is that successful researchers and investors typically have a lot of dead ends and money losses. You can fail a lot and still gain in the end through your successes.
In each case, hard work makes those successes more likely. The researcher with a better understanding of the field is more likely to pick up on anomalies that lead to new discoveries, for example. The investor who studies their investments, their successes and failures, understands important concepts like diversification, thrashing, emotion, herd mentality, etc and when those concepts are applicable, and reevaluates their investments in light of the global trends (particularly of up and coming recessions and investment fads, if only to avoid them) is almost assured of a great deal of modest success.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 03 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
So long as success means "making modest gains" you are absolutely correct, in fact I said as much before. But we're talking about *major* gains. Very few will get lucky enough to manage that - hard work can't do it alone.
As for conservative investing being a hard game to lose - I quite agree. In fact that's part of the problem exacerbating wealth inequality: Half the US population has less than $1000 to their names - they can't afford to buy in.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:44PM
Success means what it means. There are multiple routes to success and multiple outcomes which happen to be successful. Among other things success via modest gains demonstrates a route by which those persistently without luck can still succeed.
That's moving the goalposts since success can be achieved without that. And in the great majority of these "major gains" examples, we see both hard work required both to create the opportunity for major gain and required to exploit the resulting opportunity.
So what? I can't help that half the US population is not doing its part to reduce wealth inequality. I think this comment also indicates why some of us are so insistent on downplaying the role of hard work. If half the US population is unable to find $1000 to rub together because of forces beyond their control, rather than because they're financially incompetent while the rest manage due to the same said forces, then it's a great rationalization for a typical robin hood strategy.
But sorry, $1000 is not that hard to save. If you can't even manage that, then you're most likely never going to succeed with those few who do end up successful rapidly losing that money completely within a few years.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @06:36PM (4 children)
Which doesn't matter if you don't have a clue [cleveland.com] how to do that.
Runs a little counter to the narrative, doesn't it? There's a reason for all these sayings about wealth and opportunity taking hard work. Human societies, whether capitalist or not, have always been very good at stripping wealth away from the people who have it with those closest to the one with the windfall taking the biggest pieces. It takes considerable work and expertise from the person or their advisors to minimize that.
This also goes a long way to explaining the alleged "sociopathy" of the wealthy. They need isolation from the rest of the world, because otherwise it's like being a piece of chum in a pool of frenzied sharks. Nobody sane puts themselves in that situation.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:04PM (3 children)
No, it really doesn't. What it takes is:
1. A working-class person with limited math skills and a penchant for thrill-seeking (i.e. somebody likely to play the lottery) doing something they've never done before, namely budgeting past the next paycheck.
2. Any advisors they hire or seek out not cheating them out of their money. There are laws that should prevent that sort of thing, but they mostly aren't enforced.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @01:45AM (2 children)
Takes more than budgeting.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday November 03 2017, @03:03AM (1 child)
If they are budgeting, they can say things like "My financial advisor tells me I only have $1000 for you. I know you're my mom, but that's all I can give you." It helps them say "no" to all the beggers and grifters that come their way.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @12:31PM
Now, at this point, we have to ask why do people claim that wealth takes only luck to acquire and takes so little skill to keep, despite considerable evidence to the contrary? My bet is some ideological brain worm has taken up residence between their ears. Reality doesn't matter when someone wants to redistribute wealth to those whom they've already rationalized as deserving it.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:19PM (5 children)
Oh, cooome ooon! I know you're vanitous, but relying of self-flattery for a confirmation is too much, bordering delusion.
Speaking for myself, I refuse to be accused of being "more discerning" as a reason for jumping ships to S/N. I simply did it for a 3digit ID instead of 7digit one there. I bet you did it for a chance of playing CowboyNeal.
(very large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:56PM
Fair nuff.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 01 2017, @02:50PM (3 children)
This isn't seriously a word, is it? The adjective form of "vanity" is "vain."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:36PM (2 children)
I'm so vein I like to use pumpous words like vanitous [merriam-webster.com] (see also the French vaniteux [larousse.fr])
(grinning at the English language [soylentnews.org])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday November 01 2017, @06:43PM (1 child)
You're so vain you probably thought this comment was about you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @10:30PM
Wot? Mick Jagger is on SoylentNews now? I am really impressed.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:49PM (6 children)
Have you actually read the submissions by some of the regular commenters on this site? "Discerning commenters", my ass. They are mostly really, really stupid jerks. They are racist, homophobic, bigots that got kicked off other sites and came here to spew their vile hate-speech at whoever will listen to it. They revel in their stupidity and are proud of their ignorance. It doesn't help that the submitted stories are click-bait meant to provoke these idiots into a frenzy of stupid. This site leave political discussion to the adults and stick to hard tech stories. That would be a start, at least.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:11PM
There are plenty of non-bigots here, but there IS a hardcore group of them that hang around 24/7. Can't forget the trolls either, they spew hateful shit just for lulz.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:41PM (1 child)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:13AM
I HATE you, khallow! I Hate YOU! You are an uncaring conservative ideologue, and I just wish I could just get quit of you!
Signed, your Brokeback Mountain Time Friend. p.s. When you coming home?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 01 2017, @08:44PM
On the other hand if you wanted to yell at bigots on the internet you'd be home already!
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:50AM (1 child)
SoylentNews is obviously doing a lot of things right when we get this caliber of involuntary irony taking place, a good troll could feed on this one for years if it wanted to :D
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:58AM
If it wanted to. The quality of goats is not in their bleating. Or so I have heard.