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Contact Ben Horowitz for $20
- paulplug 10y agoNeat idea. It does seem like a bit of a publicity stunt - I don't think Ben Horowitz really needs the 20 bucks, but this is a cool use case for bitcoin.
- huac 10y ago"Proceeds will be donated to Black Girls Code"
- paulplug 10y agoI missed that. Well still, I don't see this as something he will keep up. I still think it's mostly a temporary publicity stunt.
- wfzimmerman 10y agoAndreessen Horowitz is a major investor in 21.co.
- fluxic 10y agoArguably better deal: contact me for $2.00 (cbswishes@gmail.com). All proceeds will be used towards buying a new pair of pyjamas
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoHmm. Tell ya what. Contact me for $1.50 and I'll give a portion* of the proceeds to a charity of your choice. *portion not to exceed 0% of allotted funds
- gargarplex 10y agoI would've gladly sent you $1.50 and asked you to think about growing it via Zidisha if I could find an email address anywhere
- gargarplex 10y agoPayment sent via PayPal. It's a privilege to support our community, so thank you.
- AznHisoka 10y agoX 2
- CptJamesCook 10y agoI will pay $25 if someone can get me unbanned from Paypal. My mom and I were banned back in 2003.
- CamelCaseName 10y agoBut how will you send the $25? Check out aspen forums if you can't just make a new PayPal. If you're just using it to send money and not receive it really should be no trouble to make a new one.
- fluxic 10y agoMight have to start a slipper fund. Thank you!!!
- fluxic 10y agoI love you
- JadeNB 10y ago> All proceeds will be used towards buying a new pair of pyjamas (Emphasis mine.) It's going to be hard to stick by the terms of that if you get a lot of contacts. :-)
- fluxic 10y agoHAHA! I'm going to get the world's softest, silkiest $4 pyjamas ;)
- sealthedeal 10y ago...
- sanswork 10y ago21 raises $120 million. Releases a raspberry pi and a bad fiverr clone.
- ctvo 10y agoIt was 5 dollars when he announced it on Twitter. I guess he adjusted it after seeing the response.
- bhouston 10y agoIt may could encourage people to contact him more by giving them a form of permission: > To come to our surprising conclusion, Uri ran an experiment: Out of 10 daycare centers across Haifa, they randomly chose six and introduced a small fine for parents who showed up more than 10 minutes late in each of them. In day cares where the fine was introduced, parents immediately started showing up late, with tardiness levels eventually leveling out at about twice the pre-fine level. That is, introducing a fine caused twice as many parents to show up late. What about the remaining four day care centers that remained fine-free? Tardiness didn’t change at all Source: http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what-they-do/ http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what...
- huac 10y agoParents can always show up late, not everyone has Ben Horowitz's email. This isn't a question of motivation but rather a question of access. To the 4 downvotes: what's his email? What's the relevance of the comment I replied to?
- fossuser 10y agoI think the worst part was that even when the fine was removed the levels did not revert to what they were previously. Once a monetary penalty takes the place of a social one it is hard to get the social one back.
- treebeard901 10y agoIncentives for behavior modification is always a fascinating area. In this case, the daycare was incentivized to track people being late more closely since they had a financial interest in doing so. I suspect the outcome was somewhere in the middle of more accurate record keeping and introducing the ability for the parents to pay off their guilt.
- Swizec 10y agoIt also made the behavior socially acceptable. "So many people are late that we introduced a fine" "Oh phew, it's not just me. Everyone's doing it"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tonydiv 10y agoAre any popular Bitcoin apps using their APIs? I don't really see how an API marketplace paid via Bitcoin is better than a credit card bill at the end of the month based on API usage.
- joecool1029 10y agoHere's the right person to ask about that: https://21.co/magicaltux/ https://21.co/magicaltux/ :D
- bnjms 10y agoI don't see how it is not better. Credit Cards require use of credit providers and all the overhead that entails; minimum payments included. Most of the time this does not bite us and it Just Works except for when we try to step outside of the expected transaction model as we do with say Paypal which has known and necessary pros and cons. A proper bitcoin API has the potential to allow for the transactional web everyone was hoping would come to pass back in the day and since it is NOT owned by a single company, the way companies were clamoring to be the mico-payment provider of the web, it just might happen. If we are going to make an HTTP level API it really needs to be based on a technology any new company can start up a service for rather than centralizing it. Not to mention CC somewhat imply a lower bound of $0.01 which is too costly for some transactions. It would be amazing if I could pay for access to the Wall Street Journal or New Yorker articles without locking in a full sub. There must be thousands of people who would pay a premium price or $0.15 for individual articles but would not go for a full membership. Then journalists could actually charge for content. We HNers would likely pay for longform but not the dreck we collectively complain about. Weakening the cultural pull of clickbait news.
- wfzimmerman 10y agotry Blendle.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ryao 10y agoAm I the only one who read this as Ben Horowitz giving $20 to each person who contacts him?
- jacobsenscott 10y agoThat's what I thought.
- iamleppert 10y agoIt's easier (and he's in far less demand) if you contact him via Tinder...
- emodendroket 10y agoI think I'll hold on to my twenty bucks.
- josh_carterPDX 10y agoThis is such an incredible way to raise money for a great cause. If you have people trying to access you, why not put something like this together? I love that this is benefiting someone other than Ben. Kudos to him for doing this. Hopefully more follow his example.
- metaphorm 10y agoare you serious? if Horowitz was really committed to the cause he would just personally donate a large amount of money (he has plenty) and not bother engaging in any of the public virtue signaling behaviors. it seems pretty obvious that he put the "donated to charity" sticker on the form to deflect accusations that he was profiteering from his fame. seems to me more like he was getting too much shit mail and wanted to try an experiment with gating it behind cash so people would put up or shut up.
- tptacek 10y agoYes. This. Ben Horowitz is petrified that we will perceive the immense revenues he's going to get from $20 Q&A sessions as profiteering, especially considering the paucity of his other business interests. Virtue signaling, indeed!
- metaphorm 10y agono, Ben Horowitz does not want to be perceived as engaging in personal nuisance abatement so he makes it look more socially acceptable. in other words, he wants to be able to take questions by email, because there is some upside for him in that (discovering new prospects for investment probably), but there is huge downside in the risk of getting spammed by shit emails. he implements a $20 cash gate on that to mitigate the downside, but then realizes he has introduced a new downside, of appearing greedy or craven in some way, therefore he donates it to a virtue signaling charity. it will be a very small amount of money either way. my point is that the charitable donation aspect is NOT what is driving Horowitz' behavior here. I was responding to a post which suggested it was that.
- nolepointer 10y agoWhy does it have to be only black girls? In fact, why does it have to be only girls?
- j2kun 10y agoNobody said or implied that, just as an organization hoping to cure polio doesn't think that's the only illness worth curing.
- dnautics 10y agothat's a bad example, because the organization that cured polio moved on to 'other things' and is now one of the 'go to' examples of charity drift and nonprofit mismanagement.
- j2kun 10y agoThat's interesting, and I didn't know it before (reference?), so thank you! But my point was to use an apolitical example to illustrate the flaw in logic. Whether or not the same organization was mismanaged is irrelevant to that point. In fact, that they "moved on" to other things is evidence to my point that you cannot infer a polio-cure organization actively excludes other illnesses in a general "what are important problems to solve" sense.
- draugadrotten 10y agospend the 20 bucks on sending that question to Ben himself, perhaps you'll learn something
- DavidAdams 10y agoYou can make your own charity and support whoever you want. Why does the National Rifle Association only support gun issues? Why not preserving historical buildings? Well, because there are other organizations to preserve historical buildings.
- beatpanda 10y agoPerhaps because black girls are underrepresented among the population of kids learning to code?
- shadykiller 10y agoWhat's so great about Ben Horowitz to spend 20$ ?
- guelo 10y agoHe has a giant pile of money to dole out to startups.
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoMethinks it's the other way around, but whatever.
- the_watcher 10y agoWait, are you saying that startups have huge piles of money to give to Ben Horowitz? It's arguable that the bulk of his wealth has come from the returns from startup investing, but by the time they generate any kind of return for him, they're no longer startups.
- giarc 10y ago37Signals has been doing something similar (with the charity portion). I heard about it while listening to the new podcast by Noah Kagan. For $500, you can go visit 37Signals for a day and see how they work. Price has been rising every year. http://okdork.com/2017/01/19/jason-fried-robots-watches-and-not-sweating/ http://okdork.com/2017/01/19/jason-fried-robots-watches-and-...
- justinhensley 10y agoMy question is, are you guaranteed a response? I viewed this on mobile and that wasn't immediately clear.
- chrisper 10y agoNo, of course not. It's like a vending machine. You hit the buttons, insert the money, and hope that something comes out of it.
- Nexxxeh 10y agoIt's like a GOOD vending machine so it doesn't cost you anything if you don't get the goods. You only pay if you get a response!
- SatvikBeri 10y agoYou don't pay if you don't get a response.
- CamelCaseName 10y agoHow does 21 measure the value of a response? I could send Horowitz an essay of an email and he could reply with "k", or some plagarized response. Would I still have to pay $100?
- aaawow 10y agohere is how his response looks like http://take.ms/UTHnJ http://take.ms/UTHnJ
- CamelCaseName 10y agoThanks! What are your thoughts on the response? Did you follow up asking for an introduction or explaining better? Might make more sense to do so in a week or two when his inbox is less stuffed (and the price drops from $100)
- antirez 10y agoWhatever you do with the $20 I still find unreasonable to make you contactable via a paywall: moreover if you have no time, you have no time even if each communication will donate $20 for a good cause. For a person of the wealth of B.H. it's simpler to just give directly money and avoid to receive unwanted communications.
- netsharc 10y agoBill Gates' book The Road Ahead had the idea of a paywall to fight spam, someone who really wants to get your attention could attach a $20 "stamp" to their mail, and if it's a really important mail, say from a long-lost family member, you'd refund them. If it's just spam, you can keep the money.
- sanswork 10y agoThat sounds like a great idea at first but if you think about it for a bit you realise it would just increase the digital divide dramatically.
- bluetwo 10y agoI'm still waiting for someone to build an email system where only the header is sent along. The body of the message must be retrieved from the original server using a unique key included in the header. This would decrease spoofing of IPs and make black listing more accurate. Please someone steal this idea...
- danm07 10y agothis is hilarious... Ben's going to get spammed with emails
- btipling 10y agoI wrote a lengthy question and signed up but at the payment screen it required a credit card. I would have preferred a third party service like PayPal. I am not inclined to enter my credit card information into random websites. I would have been happy to donate the $20 otherwise.
- notahacker 10y agoIt's not that random, it's a startup which has raised over $100m, much of it from Andreessen Horowitz. That said, it's a Bitcoin startup so it's weird if credit card really is the only accepted payment method.
- hazelnut 10y ago"Proceeds will be donated to Black Girls Code" http://www.blackgirlscode.com/ http://www.blackgirlscode.com/
- 1dundundun 10y agoGets publicity and $$ over to a good cause. I'm loving it.
- the_watcher 10y agoIt isn't listed on the page, but the meta description claims that you'll only pay if you get a response.
- ddp 10y agoWho the hell is Ben Horowitz and why would I pay money to contact him?
- achompas 10y agoSurprised to see this q on HN of all places. He's a co-founder of arguably the most powerful VC in Silicon Valley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz
- GavinMcG 10y agoWhat value does expressing your surprise add, here?
- ljoshua 10y agoNot much, but the original question was a little severe in its tone as well. Let's all be happy folks! :)
- ddp 10y agoOkay, noted. I don't think much of VC's in general. Ours were a decidedly mixed bag that brought little to the table, in retrospect.
- vageli 10y agoDoes anyone know what the tax implications (if any) for accepting such a large number of public donations may be?
- 1337biz 10y agoI always wondered what I should write people like that - unless I am pitching them for a project. "So I herd on Hackernews you are a really, really cool. Wanna go for chili next week and troll around?"
- patmcguire 10y agoArticle says $100?
- subrat_rout 10y agoNow it is $100. May be due to unprecedented response.
- hr2751 10y agoI just messaged Kim Kardashian on this thing haha. She jumped on it fast https://21.co/kimkardashian/ https://21.co/kimkardashian/
- j2kun 10y ago21 Engineer here. We have some code to autodetect fake pages like this and we auto-killed the page. Nice try though!
- hr2751 10y agoI just messaged Kim Kardashian on this thing haha. She jumped on it fast https://21.co/kimkardashian/ https://21.co/kimkardashian/
- blueyes 10y agoWhen you click through to send the email, they jack up the price to $100. Feels scummy to me...
- spott 10y agoIt now says $100 on the front page. I think the price has recently been changed.
- CamelCaseName 10y agoDo you want to know why they did it? Send a message for $100.00 and find out!
- aaawow 10y agoHere is how $20 advice from Ben looks like http://take.ms/UTHnJ http://take.ms/UTHnJ It's $100 now :-0
- skrebbel 10y agoBen Horowitz invested tens of millions into this company [0]. This looks like a pivot away from all the bitcoin hardware and using Ben's relative celebrity status to give it some attention. Half this thread is about what Ben needs the money for or whether he ought to be donating more to charity, but that's not what this is about. This is just PR for a recent pivot of one of Ben's companies. All that said, I like the concept. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/what-is-21-co-really-doing-an-excerpt-from-digital-gold/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/what-is-21-co-really-doing... Almost offtopic: How do people do this? (and by "this" i mean [0]) Raise millions and millions from established VCs with entirely unproven ideas, no traction, no nothing? Every once in a while we hit an article about a company like that and meanwhile us normal founders are struggling to close a very modest seed round. Is it just a network thing?
- dpweb 10y agoGuessing, but - in convincing someone in a position of power over you, it is very hard for them to reasonably deny you when you have REAL demonstrated experience. If you don't, its the easiest and sensible thing to deny you. The founder with past experience (startup payoffs) is in an entirely different light.
- sanswork 10y agoThe CEO was/is(?) a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
- winslow 10y agoSo has anyone taken up the offer? If so do you mind sharing what you asked and what the response was?
- dpweb 10y agoSo this is like selling autographs? Seriously, an idea - actually modestly FUND someone who sends one of these emails. Then do this exercise again in the future, the response will be at least 2x!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kapauldo 10y agoMassive ego.
- RichardHeart 10y agoResponse I got: "Richard, Thanks for the note and this is BTC not paypal! Thank you so much for the donation! Best, Ben" He got down to the P.S. I included which said something to the effect of "I'm surprised you're not accepting paypal instead of BTC" I should have got in when the market was $20 hehe.
- mdrzn 10y agoIt's $100 now.