8 ms·
Ask HN: Did you pay Marc Andreessen for advice and was it worth it?
I see you can ask Marc Andreessen for advice at https://21.co/pmarca/ - It costs $100 if he answers... Has anyone here asked him for advice and received it, and if so, was it worth the $100? I saw this a day or so ago, and at the time it was $20. The price seems to be inflating fast!
- hashset 10y ago> "Was it worth it?" The proceeds go to programs promoting underrepresented genders and ethnicities in tech, I'd say that yes it is quite "worth it".
- pc86 10y agoI think the question was whether the advice was worth $100, not whether the $100 went toward a meaningful cause.
- kossae 10y agoIt also appears to be optional to donate the money earned through this service, as the payee may opt to keep the proceeds instead.
- wocg 10y agoThat's correct. Clearly the worth of the advice would be different for different people, depending upon how deep their pockets are. I was hoping to get some examples of just what kind of advice was offered.
- alvil 10y agoNumber of genders reminds me Unicode problems.
- imode 10y agoshouldn't this be marked with "Ask HN:"?
- wocg 10y agoMaybe, but I don't see anything in the FAQ which says you have to do that https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- bsvalley 10y agoYeah and here is my question - how much of your own money did you give to this meaningful cause?
- zingplex 10y agoWhat was his response?
- mosselman 10y agoHow much did you? What are you doing to help? Let me get this straight. Here is someone who makes it possible to a. get access to his knowledge and experience in a pretty easy way and b. lets charities benefit from an interest in this knowledge and suddenly HE is the greedy bastard? Wow.
- rgovind 10y agoI believe Quora and Facebook tried it in various forms though there you could reach out just about anybody. I assume 21.co will do same thing going forward.
- EternalData 10y agoI think it's just a really interesting way to gate a contact form and get people to think twice about sending off an email. Lots of people have thought about how to avoid spam: finding a way to have to pay to get into an inbox might just be the ticket.
- jonlucc 10y agoI suppose this is just a slightly more expensive version of the idea that we could do away with spam by charging a penny or a tenth of a penny per email sent.
- hrayr 10y agoHe's making a tradeoff here. This is an ingenious way to filter the 'massive' noise-to-signal ratio on his inbox, but at the same time it makes some of the random but legitimate questions go away.
- wocg 10y agoIt sounded to me like you only have to pay if your message gets a response. So I just assumed it would be a lottery as to whether he even ever saw my message. I figure he must devote only a very small amount of time to perusing his messages, and then he must devote an equally small amount of time composing an answer. So I figured I'd have to get pretty lucky to actually wind up spending the $100 (or $110) in the end. Even so, I'd hate to spend the $100 and find the response was disappointing.
- lorenzop 10y agowhatever you want to ask him: I'll answer it for $1
- scaradim 10y agoThe question here is: does your answer worth $1? anybody here can share experience on that? :)
- astrodust 10y agoYou have to pay $1 to find out.
- salesguy222 10y agowith an example answer like what was linked in an earlier comment [1], i will answer as many as i can for free, if you reply directly to this comment [1] "hey yeah, i don't really understand your product, but a few law firms you could google might be interested... also notice my lack of a warm intro for you... thanks"
- jplasmeier 10y agoSomeone should spend the money to ask him if he thinks the service is worth it, or if he would have used a similar service at any point in his career.
- gwern 10y agoThere's no need to ask that. Just see if he's still using it in a few months, or if the price has escalated drastically.
- sixQuarks 10y agoI like this service, but where can I see a full list of people I can pay to contact? I tried finding a link on the site, but couldn't.
- wocg 10y agoThat is interesting, I also couldn't find a way to search or a complete list. There's a sampling here: https://21.co/ https://21.co/
- saosebastiao 10y agoWhat are you asking his advice for? I'm not a VC industry insider, but I've spent enough time in the industry as a peon analyst to see the industry for what it is. I've written before about how nearly all VC partners are ridiculously conservative bandwagoners (they only invest if someone else invests), with the sole (to my knowledge) exception being Marc Andreessen. There might be other exceptions out there, but the thing I always admired about him is his ability to fully commit to a business without any social proof. And I believe that this attribute is what makes him successful. If you are taking his advice on whether to invest in something, it's probably worth the $100. Never worked with him personally, but I'm sure his business advice is gonna be pretty sound even if I don't know how it rates relative to other VCs. But I think the real point is that it is important to know what you're asking him about before anybody can tell you if it is a good idea. You wouldn't ask him about plumbing, right?
- mahyarm 10y agoIf everyone is a bandwagoner, how does the bandwagon start? Without pmarca, would VC grind to a halt?
- saosebastiao 10y agoIt's really slow. Someone gets interested, their interest piques someone else's interest. This goes on practically forever until some point where there are 2 or more VCs in a room together and then it becomes "I'll do it if you do it". They've co-opted a word for this process: syndication. If you ask them what it means, they'll have some flowery language[0] for you. In reality all it means is that they're too chickenshit to invest on merits alone, and really want to know what other people think. This process drives up pre-money valuations and thereby reduces returns. By opting out of the process, Andreessen has outsized returns. It's a bigger risk (he has abnormally large potential downsides), but he's good enough of a judge of merit to make it work out phenomenally for him. [0] http://www.startable.com/2008/10/27/venture-capital-deal-syndication-why-it-ought-to-take-two-to-tango/ http://www.startable.com/2008/10/27/venture-capital-deal-syn...
- wocg 10y ago
- jph 10y agoYes. I paid $100 because I want to encourage volunteering. > To Marc Andreessen. From Joel Parker Henderson. Hi Marc, what are some of your favorite charity causes that could benefit from pro bono coding help? I work at [X] and we have many programmers who volunteer for social progressive causes; we love coding and we love to help. Thank you, Joel
- awinder 10y agoNormally volunteers are not paid $100 / answer to question, just saying.
- moftz 10y agoThe proceeds go to charity.
- bykovich 10y agowhy didn't you just talk to your favorite charities instead of deferring that judgement to Andreessen
- idiot_stick 10y ago>why didn't you just talk to your favorite charities instead of deferring that judgement to Andreessen No doubt. Paid $100 to ask Andreeesen what his favourite charities are? The SV hero worship is so intense.
- jph 10y agoI talk with many charities. I also like to ask people about charities where pro bono programming may be especially helpful. If you have ideas, that's great. A successful example is Benetech.org, a SF Bay Area technology charity that is doing wonderful work in tech and social good; I learned about Benetech because of direct personal advice. Here are some of my favorite charities in case you're interested in learning more and/or donating. Thank you! For tech: Apache Software Foundation (ASF), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Free Software Foundation (FSF), Linux Foundation, Open Source Initiative (OSI), Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). For social causes: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, Benetech for Global Literacy, Center for Environmental Health (CEH), Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch (HRW).
- anton_tarasenko 10y agoPrevious thread (featuring Ben Horowitz on 21.co): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13485488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13485488 Two takeaways: 1. A response looks like this: https://monosnap.com/file/CbRNrj7TUUhaLolVTLYJhrPxUdsYOK https://monosnap.com/file/CbRNrj7TUUhaLolVTLYJhrPxUdsYOK 2. A16Z invested in 21.co when it still was a Bitcoin mining hardware startup: 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...
- tyingq 10y ago>1. A response looks like this: https://monosnap.com/file/CbRNrj7TUUhaLolVTLYJhrPxUdsYOK https://monosnap.com/file/CbRNrj7TUUhaLolVTLYJhrPxUdsYOK That seems reasonable for $20, but I'd be disappointed in that for $100. Basically, it's Q: "We have some tech that works in the law field, who should we talk to?" A: "Talk to some big law firms" Of course, the question itself invited that answer. Would love to see answers from other questions.
- wirddin 10y ago> 1. A response looks like this: https://monosnap.com/file/CbRNrj7TUUhaLolVTLYJhrPxUdsYOK https://monosnap.com/file/CbRNrj7TUUhaLolVTLYJhrPxUdsYOK That's quite expensive for $100. Also, doesn't sound like an advice, more like a judge for an elevator pitch.
- gravypod 10y agoI find it interesting that you can write RMS, the leader of the Free Software movement, and he'll respond to you within the day for no charge because he think's that's a morally important thing to do. You can in contrast write Marc Andreessen, one of the figure heads of the propriatary software and privacy violating movement of every bigger information companies, and he'll charge you for the pleasure. Interesting dichotomy, at least to me.
- sjs7007 10y agoInteresting. Have you ever written to RMS?
- gravypod 10y agoTwo or three times. Once about emacs, and I think the others were either questions about the morality of specific program distrobution methods. His responces were long winded and tailored to my situation although they did include his talking points. It's listed at https://stallman.org/ https://stallman.org/ under "Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org." He'll happily explain or debate any points he has with you although there is a standard 24hr return time for every email because of the way he processes all of his emails he gets. He's got a post about how he does it efficiently somewhere.
- sjs7007 10y agoOh man I went down the RMS rabbit hole and found this : https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/533096562.html?lang=en&cc=us https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/533096562.html?lan....
- jdminhbg 10y agoThe money's all being donated. It's a fundraiser.
- gravypod 10y agoYou know what's funny... I heard a very similar thing said by a company making a device for medical purposes. They said that they needed to charge a high price because it was for the betterment of humanity. They were planning on donating some of the raised funds to charity and put the rest of the money back into R&D to make more life saving drugs. That excuse was made by Martin Sshkreli on a news show if memory serves me right. He was talking about the price hikes on one of their medical products. In my opinion "It's fine! We're going to develop life saving drugs with this!" is a very similar argument to "It's fine! We're going to give the money to charity!". I know these are very different but I'd like to hear what others have to say about this.
- josh_carterPDX 10y agoI made a donation, asked no questions, and thanked him for doing something different. Good, bad, or indifferent I like the way Marc approached this given the amount of people clamoring to get access to him.
- amenod 10y agoIt seems to me this is just an advanced (and probably very efficient) quasi-captcha. Except it distinguishes those with a real need for his attention (that is, those who are willing and able to pay) from the others, instead of separating humans from bots.
- artur_makly 10y agomaybe they are just testing their latest ai bot?
- gwern 10y agoNo one's mentioned getting a response so far, but I'm intrigued enough to give it a try. I've sent in a question about genetic engineering. Some notes about the process: 1. 21.co's signup form mandates an image, but the tool they use for file uploads breaks on PNGs (!) silently without any visible warning to the user (!!), you can click on the 'save' button many times with nothing happening and without any kind of error or warning in the web console (!!!), in both Firefox and Chromium with Noscript & Adblock disabled. Apparently even using an entire specialized file upload service, the second-most common image format in existence is just too exotic and confusing to support. 2. you have to confirm by email before you can do anything, which adds on another 10-15m to the process (amusingly, they spam you on signup to set up a public paid inbox - and that email arrived first, but you can't do anything unconfirmed) 3. it's not $100, it's actually $110, because 21co tacks on a $10 'service fee' (even though it's for charity). It's unclear if I have to pay this $10 regardless of whether Andreessen ever responds. I hope not. In any case this strikes me as a huge fee for such a trivial service, and I really hope it's a 10% fee rather than a fixed $10 fee... 4. the site is surprisingly slow despite being so barebones 5. browsing the interface, despite the prominence of Bitcoin, I'm not clear whether I am even allowed to deposit Bitcoin and pay that way; in any case I opted to use a credit card because the profile image bug wasted so much of my time and I was losing my patience. The cash out page indicates that should I ever earn anything via 21.co, I would need to jump through even more hoops, presumably even if I only wanted Bitcoin and not bank deposits or anything. I thought briefly about setting up a paid inbox because it's a fun concept but between a 10% (or worse) fee and all this invasiveness, I'm not interested. 6. signup form doesn't work with Lastpass, which failed to capture the username/password; always annoying to manually copy over generated passwords. So, I'm not impressed but we'll see how it works out... On a side note, how do people regard the expectation of privacy with these public inbox emails? I see someone has screenshotted a Horowitz response; are these responses considered 'commissioned' in a sense, rather than private emails with an expectation of privacy/confidentiality, and so it's OK to copy-paste any response publicly on HN or elsewhere?
- gwern 10y agoTo update: My message idn't make it in the first time and 21co notified me it has been canceled: > Thanks for using 21 to contact Marc Andreessen and donate to Black Girls Code. Demand for Marc's time was extremely high and it was not feasible to respond to your message in 48 hours. As such, your credit card has not been charged. Marc still wants to hear from you though, so we encourage you to resubmit your message at 21.co/pmarca! The new estimated response time is one week given the high demand. We are working on adding code to dynamically update wait times in the presence of surges of demand, but in the interim we want to make sure you have a good experience. Thanks again for using 21 and supporting Black Girls Code! I decided to try submitting again (I'm still curious and at least the price didn't increase). I also mentioned my comments to 21.co. To summarize their response: 1. PNG: should be supported, they don't know why it didn't work 2. they'll check that the emails arrive in an actionable order 3. it's a flat 10%; it is to cover payment processing (so the user may be donating to charity but they're not) 4. performance is a known issue 5. you are not allowed to deposit Bitcoin, they have to be earned via the site; deposits may or may not be available in the future. Verification for withdrawals are required because of fear of abuse. 6. the responses are supposed to be private/confidential (I guess Horowitz simply doesn't mind or know about that one being passed around). So should I get an Andreessen response, I guess I will confine my comment to whether it was a good response or not and whether it might be worth the money. (I don't entirely agree with some of the reasons.)
- kapauldo 10y agoWhat advice could he have to offer? This is really stupid self aggrandizement. Get over yourself Marc.
- TomSherlock 10y agoHe answered my $20 question regarding whether he thought the SoLaTiDo wearable keyboard/controller would be accepted by the mobile enterprise AR community, or was too early to the market. His answer was that it was cool, and that he wanted one on his wrist. This means he barely considered it, since it clearly requires both hands and all fingers, to offer workstation level control. My follow-up question (at $100) told him of the mistaken assumption, and asked him what he thought deskless workers would do to gain workstation level control of AR devices. His 48 hours to reply has just expired, so maybe he's swamped.