aral, to ai
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

You mistake ruthless for smart and this is what you get.

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Hello, I am a new startup!

I’m funded by venture capital and free to use.

Please come and make me valuable by using me. Make my numbers go up!

Once you do, I’ll have everything I need and I can do whatever I want with the time and effort you’ve put into making me successful.

Not happy? Fuck you, I don’t need you anymore (network effects FTW, amirite?)… I’m laughing all the way to the bank.

Goodbye!

Hello, I am a new startup…


When are we going to learn to say “no” at the start?

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

A startup cannot enshittify if you don’t allow it to start up.

Once it starts up, gains traction, and the network effects kick in, you lose the power to do anything about it.

The only time you can kill a venture-capital funded startup is at the very beginning.

The way you kill a startup is by not using its free services at the start.

The correct answer to a venture-capital funded startup is always “no, thank you!”

#startups #ventureCapital #VC #SiliconValley #BigTech

aral,
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

If you want to understand how startups and venture capital work, go to 26:24 on the recording of my talk “Excuse Me, Your Unicorn Keeps Shitting In My Back Yard, Can He Please Not?” from 2016:

https://ar.al/talks/#excuse-me-your-unicorn-keeps-shitting-in-my-back-yard-can-he-please-not

obeto, to random
@obeto@mas.to avatar

is now the team that "Failed To Launch".

? Failure to launch.
? Failure to launch.
-25B? Failure to launch.
New ? Failure to launch.
"Judas"*, the E-4B Nightwatch replacement? Failure to launch.

*I call the plane the "Judas", because if we ever have a need to use it, humanity must have betrayed ourselves before God and man. Just like Judas Iscariot.
https://newatlas.com/space/boeing-starliner-launch-fail/

parismarx, to tech
@parismarx@mastodon.online avatar

“There is something very, very wrong with us, that our society affords so much power to people like this.”

Rick Perlstein met Marc Andreessen in 2017. He said he was glad OxyContin was ripping through rural communities, which he despised.

https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-24-my-dinner-with-andreessen/

GhostOnTheHalfShell, to tech
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai avatar

Ok, it’s hard to tell if this isn’t self satire or pure satire.

https://fixupx.com/enhanced_games/status/1752648761719848975?t=urslsSapxpKvVITh1EkDbg&s=33

J12t, to random
@J12t@social.coop avatar

An entrepreneur -- who doesn't yet want to be publicly identified -- ran a session here at #IIW why he's pivoting his company out of the #SSI Self-sovereign Identity / #VC Verifiable Credential space after years of trying to make a business there.

It was extremely interesting and I hope he will publish his lessons learned both for the #identity community and any new technology market really that has similar challenges.

P.S. Much resonated with my reasons why I never got deep into SSI myself.

BadHombreNPS, to BadInternetBills
@BadHombreNPS@mastodon.online avatar

Has anyone come across a Google doc/list of all the firms that are buying single family homes in the US and ruining the current and future market for literally everyone? Asking for a friend...

Nonilex, to internet
@Nonilex@masto.ai avatar

’s company went public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency from a managed by a -American businessman under scrutiny in a federal & investigation.

Trump stands to gain billions… from the merger between TrumpMedia & Tech & the blank-check co [] , which took the parent company of public.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/03/trump-media-es-family-trust-2022-loans

Nonilex,
@Nonilex@masto.ai avatar

In total, the doc showed that the trust transferred $4.8m to ’s acct….

The reason for the ’s creation remains unknown. Aside from the that went to , the trust’s statements show the trust has directly invested money w/only two other companies: $10.8m to Eleven Ventures LLC, a firm, & $1m to Wedbush Securities, a management firm.

aral, to programming
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Me: Hmm, maybe I should look into Bun again and see how its Node.js compatibility is coming along.

Also me: I wonder who makes Bun…

Me, yet again: Ah, it’s a venture-capital funded startup called Oven (see what they did there?)

Finally, me: rm -rf ~/.bun

(Remember, kids: Venture capital is the fart that precedes enshittification. It’s best not to linger once you’ve caught a whiff of it.)

amoroso, to linux
@amoroso@fosstodon.org avatar
aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Sam Bankman-Fried will grow old in jail. But don’t forget those who basked in his orbit

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/28/sam-bankman-fried-jail-ftx-money

Via @leonp

Anoncheg, to emacs
@Anoncheg@emacs.ch avatar


I answered 15 tricky questions for job at topics of DS, ML,
DL. I used ChatGPT to help me. 😈 All answers should be
correct, I will public my calculations after two week if I
wouldn't get offer. ◕‿◕

I learned VC (Version Control) package for Emacs. ⛏ VC isn't a
mode it is permanently available functionality ⚠, can be used
from file-visiting buffer, Dired buffer, VC Directory buffer.

VC offer very powerful commands: ᕙ( •̀ _ •́ )ᕗ

  • vc-next-action - universal intellectual action ✭
  • vc-annotate - for each line, show the latest revision in which
    it was modified. ⋆
  • vc-region-history - Display the history of changes made in the
    region of file visited by the current buffer. ★

I learned project management for Emacs with EDE and projectile
and I found it useless. Because Dired + Bookmarks just do the
same.
😶

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar
happyborg, to reddit
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

Current daily activity includes:

  • a daily does of deleting every comment I've ever made. (I was a moderator for almost a decade).

I've already deleted all my posts, but my comments will take a while.

Not for you
Not for you parasitic 's
Not for you Reddit enshitifiers

erlend, to random
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

Have you noticed, practically the only thing VCs know how to talk about is scale?

They have very little to say about going from one person to two, from two to three and so on. Or any of the other "first spark" and "earliest days" stuff really. Not in any real depth.

All they know is how to scale up with growth, because that's all dumb money knows how to do.

Any VCs that haven't made scale their sole brand can rest assured that you're not the type of I'm talking about here.

aral, to ai
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Hey, have you donated to Mozilla recently? Congratulations, you helped them fund their AI startup with $30 million.

👏 👏 👏

https://mstdn.social/@dalfen/111943351660201503

vsaw, to OpenAI
@vsaw@mastodon.social avatar

5-7 Trillion Dollars in relative terms

  • 6.7% or so of the entire world's economic output for one year
  • roughly 1 - 1.5x the GDP of Germany (4.4 trillion Dollars)

Totally mind boggling 🤯🤯🤯

From: @ShadowJonathan
https://tech.lgbt/@ShadowJonathan/111911868110115468

18+ cloudguy, to random
@cloudguy@vivaldi.net avatar

Vivaldi as a browser is not ready, Firefox is going to die, Chrome sucks, Edge sucks more.

What a time to be alive

HistoPol,
@HistoPol@mastodon.social avatar

@GhostOnTheHalfShell

My point.

The bad thing is, I would actually agree with the systemic descriptions and the connotations of . If you factor in the dimension of and the et al, you even gave the medieval "beliefs" dimension. And no-one will argue that if you receive millions of dollars of seed capital, you owe your aka . And, yes they collect rent, and yes, they either inherited the "rights" or acquired them, charging rent.

vsaw, (edited ) to random
@vsaw@mastodon.social avatar

Congratulations @kepano for finding a revenue and growth model that fits your product, company and users.

Sadly that path does not work for everyone. Depending on what you’re trying to build, the development comes with significant upfront costs, where you need investments. As governments usually don’t support commercial developments much, all that’s left is . And as with any tool, it can be a great choice, if used correctly.

1/x

From: @kepano
https://mastodon.social/@kepano/111909950947086239

vsaw,
@vsaw@mastodon.social avatar

@kepano However as you say, many people chose it for the wrong reasons. Often as a way of “getting rich quickly”, not realizing all the consequences and implications and expectations that has. And this is where things get ugly and we often end up in situations where protecting shareholder value is prioritized over everything else.

But, if you know what you’re doing and have the right people on board, money can be one of the best things to help you be successful.

2/x

vsaw,
@vsaw@mastodon.social avatar

@kepano so I guess what I’m saying is, we need less bashing, more entrepreneurial education. Learning about both sides of the coin, the good and the bad so that founders can chose what is right for them, may that be bootstrapping or all the different forms of external funding.

3/3

aral, to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

Every now and then someone will ask me what VC stands for but I feel it’s easier to list what VC doesn’t stand for:

  • Human rights
  • Democracy
  • Sustainability

ai6yr, to venturacounty

VC Emergency:

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Emergency Services and numerous other agencies are monitoring the second in a series of storms expected to impact Ventura County. We will start seeing light rain as early as Saturday afternoon and will intensify throughout the night and morning (More...)

Sand Bag Locations:

Ventura County Fire has a list of locations https://vcfd.org/sandbag-stations
San Jon Maintenance Yard – 336 Sanjon Rd.
Camp Chaffee Rd. and Casitas Vista Rd.
Moorpark City Library – 699 Moorpark Ave.
College View Ave. – South of Campus Park Dr. in Moorpark

https://www.vcemergency.com/

vsaw, to startups
@vsaw@mastodon.social avatar

Awesome take! Here’s another one: The biggest mistake divorced people make is getting married.

Sounds stupid? It’s because it’s more complicated then that, same goes for startups and venture funding…

From: @Daojoan
https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/111839507235216848

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