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bradley13 [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 trivialness 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 calendards 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 [dilbert.com]. 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. [whenhub.com]

They'd really like to do an ICO, but the regulators look like they are going to crack down on that. So they're offering a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) [whenhub.com]. Really important: this is totally not an investment [dilbert.com], 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?

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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...

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