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I'm surprised to see so much trivializing of the product and flaming of the entrepreneur. Investors don't just give away $117M "because he's famous", and I ser

I'm surprised to see so much trivializing of the product and flaming of the entrepreneur. Investors don't just give away $117M "because he's famous", and I seriously doubt their enterprise customers care that he's a singer. More likely he and the team have been making steady progress for years and are delivering real value. Kudos to them.

dvt 9y ago
It's one thing when you read a modest "Show HN" where some guy like me (or you) builds something and we're sharing it with the world, hoping it brings us fame and fortune; it's something totally different when a very wealthy individual (will.i.am) raises a ridiculous amount of money ($117M) and builds a completely trivial product. And for what it's worth, even Beats was completely trivial. I know 2 engineers and 1 product person that worked there and they all agree that their acquisition by Apple was solely based on the brand and the names behind the brand, not the product. (In audiophile circles, it was well known that Beats by Dr. Dre were awful bang for your buck.)
- xwvvvvwx 9y ago
  Do you genuinely believe that building a brand with that kind of power is "trivial"?
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    The brand is not the product.
    - xwvvvvwx 9y ago
      Emotion shapes perception. How a customer feels about a brand will have a very real impact on their experience with a product.
    - Justin_K 9y ago
      You should work on your branding.
  - dvt 9y ago
    Becoming a multi-platinum-selling musician/rapper is sure as hell not trivial, but I don't think that's what you're asking.
    - xwvvvvwx 9y ago
      Was asking about beats more than Will.i.am.
      - dvt 9y ago
        Ah, I was referring Dr. Dre -- Beats' eponymous primary investor (but I think it probably applies to will.i.am too).
dna_polymerase 9y ago
> Investors don't just give away $117M "because he's famous" Investors gave Theranos several >$600M in funding. Today we know about the lack of due diligence. It was all about investing with that young female wunderkind because everyone else did. So that's no argument. Regarding the founder: Looking at that cringe worthy Apple TV shark tank copy and how he forced one founder to list him as co-Founder I am pretty sure Will.I.Am just sits around talking BS and others doing the work for him. Last but no least: Yes, $117M is actually a pretty damn lot for a company that does chatbots. This type of NLP isn't even resource heavy (like shitloads of GPUs heavy) so there is no need to put so much money into that. That said, of course the Germans are clients. They are always late to the party and most of the time get ripped off.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  female I used to feel similarly -- that being a girl sometimes gives you special privileges -- but then I concluded it's probably not true, and voicing those feelings is an old tradition, best left in the past. How would you feel if you got a job somewhere and all your coworkers suspected you didn't deserve it? Same thing. It gets tricky when there's a grain of truth to the feeling, since it's confusing trying to figure out whether you're censoring your own thoughts to the exclusion of reality just to conform to social norms, or whether you're actually being regressive. But FWIW all evidence thus far in my own life seems to point to "being a girl may have mattered once, but if anything it tends to work against them rather than in their favor." E.g. you have to worry about shit like an investor coming onto you: if you say no, what will happen? Or if I dress a certain way, will it affect how I'm treated at work? We take it for granted that we don't even have to think about any of that, ever, but those are real concerns. This is a sensitive topic, so we should try to keep the conversation neutral and substantive. But I did want to open the door for talking about some of this. (Traditionally, the two options are to ignore the "female" putdown, or ask you to stop. Any time anyone even tries to ask "Why do you feel that way?" the conversation immediately devolves into a catastrophe. I'm trying to see if there's a productive third option, which is to frame the conversation in a certain way where people are inclined to learn and relate experiences, rather than to be combative or dig in their heels. I'm going out on a limb here, so please don't make me regret doing this.) The truth is probably closer to "she was a rich kid with connections that we could only dream of." This has been on my mind, so I may as well talk: When we see things like female-only conferences or events, it's really tempting to feel jealous, and to feel like girls do get special treatment. Or even if it's not really special treatment, it's still "special" because no one goes out of their way to try and recruit you to some event just because you happen to be a dude. I think this is a symptom of feeling isolated in general. Church attendance is declining, and -- setting aside the question of religion -- church was the primary social activity for a long time. It was a weekly thing, and you'd feel special and included. When you're not religious, you lack this facet of your life, and it manifests itself even though we'd really like to believe otherwise. You can go out and attend React meetups or whatever, but it's different than (a) you're expected to attend, because (b) you're [a girl, religious, a harvard grad, etc]. When you have nothing like that in your own life, it's extremely tempting to feel like the world is against you and you've had to work for every single thing you've ever had, so this special treatment is unfair. But here's a concrete example. A female webdev friend of mine works at a startup, and they made it to YC's interview stage last week. She was employee #1. The moment they received that email, the founder started treating her differently. She and I were both mystified about why. Why would the prospect of transitioning to YC's pipeline possibly matter? She was an effective employee, and built their whole stack. Her work was identical to any male. Then we had a very uncomfortable realization: one of the founders joked that if they got into YC, they'd all have to bunk together like it was college. You tend to live in the same apartment at first. She asked me "do you think if I was a boy, I'd be invited to the boys club?" and it was heartbreaking to realize that it was very possible that this employee #1 may have had to worry about not being invited along to California solely because she was a girl. We still don't know. (They didn't get accepted, so it was a moot concern.) This is an extremely complicated topic, but I wanted to share some of that in case it's a positive thing.
lobotryas 9y ago
I think you overestimate investors and how they think. Case in point: Juicero raised boat-loads of money because investors got hooked on their business model of selling over-priced juice packs to consumers. Too bad investors only learned too late that these packs could be squeezed by hand just as well as with a $400 machine.
nunez 9y ago
He’s been making stuff successfully for years, well after music made him and the BEP famous.

dvt 9y ago

It's one thing when you read a modest "Show HN" where some guy like me (or you) builds something and we're sharing it with the world, hoping it brings us fame and fortune; it's something totally different when a very wealthy individual (will.i.am) raises a ridiculous amount of money ($117M) and builds a completely trivial product. And for what it's worth, even Beats was completely trivial. I know 2 engineers and 1 product person that worked there and they all agree that their acquisition by Apple was solely based on the brand and the names behind the brand, not the product. (In audiophile circles, it was well known that Beats by Dr. Dre were awful bang for your buck.)

xwvvvvwx 9y ago
Do you genuinely believe that building a brand with that kind of power is "trivial"?
- Avshalom 9y ago
  The brand is not the product.
  - xwvvvvwx 9y ago
    Emotion shapes perception. How a customer feels about a brand will have a very real impact on their experience with a product.
  - Justin_K 9y ago
    You should work on your branding.
- dvt 9y ago
  Becoming a multi-platinum-selling musician/rapper is sure as hell not trivial, but I don't think that's what you're asking.
  - xwvvvvwx 9y ago
    Was asking about beats more than Will.i.am.
    - dvt 9y ago
      Ah, I was referring Dr. Dre -- Beats' eponymous primary investor (but I think it probably applies to will.i.am too).

dna_polymerase 9y ago

> Investors don't just give away $117M "because he's famous" Investors gave Theranos several >$600M in funding. Today we know about the lack of due diligence. It was all about investing with that young female wunderkind because everyone else did. So that's no argument. Regarding the founder: Looking at that cringe worthy Apple TV shark tank copy and how he forced one founder to list him as co-Founder I am pretty sure Will.I.Am just sits around talking BS and others doing the work for him. Last but no least: Yes, $117M is actually a pretty damn lot for a company that does chatbots. This type of NLP isn't even resource heavy (like shitloads of GPUs heavy) so there is no need to put so much money into that. That said, of course the Germans are clients. They are always late to the party and most of the time get ripped off.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
female I used to feel similarly -- that being a girl sometimes gives you special privileges -- but then I concluded it's probably not true, and voicing those feelings is an old tradition, best left in the past. How would you feel if you got a job somewhere and all your coworkers suspected you didn't deserve it? Same thing. It gets tricky when there's a grain of truth to the feeling, since it's confusing trying to figure out whether you're censoring your own thoughts to the exclusion of reality just to conform to social norms, or whether you're actually being regressive. But FWIW all evidence thus far in my own life seems to point to "being a girl may have mattered once, but if anything it tends to work against them rather than in their favor." E.g. you have to worry about shit like an investor coming onto you: if you say no, what will happen? Or if I dress a certain way, will it affect how I'm treated at work? We take it for granted that we don't even have to think about any of that, ever, but those are real concerns. This is a sensitive topic, so we should try to keep the conversation neutral and substantive. But I did want to open the door for talking about some of this. (Traditionally, the two options are to ignore the "female" putdown, or ask you to stop. Any time anyone even tries to ask "Why do you feel that way?" the conversation immediately devolves into a catastrophe. I'm trying to see if there's a productive third option, which is to frame the conversation in a certain way where people are inclined to learn and relate experiences, rather than to be combative or dig in their heels. I'm going out on a limb here, so please don't make me regret doing this.) The truth is probably closer to "she was a rich kid with connections that we could only dream of." This has been on my mind, so I may as well talk: When we see things like female-only conferences or events, it's really tempting to feel jealous, and to feel like girls do get special treatment. Or even if it's not really special treatment, it's still "special" because no one goes out of their way to try and recruit you to some event just because you happen to be a dude. I think this is a symptom of feeling isolated in general. Church attendance is declining, and -- setting aside the question of religion -- church was the primary social activity for a long time. It was a weekly thing, and you'd feel special and included. When you're not religious, you lack this facet of your life, and it manifests itself even though we'd really like to believe otherwise. You can go out and attend React meetups or whatever, but it's different than (a) you're expected to attend, because (b) you're [a girl, religious, a harvard grad, etc]. When you have nothing like that in your own life, it's extremely tempting to feel like the world is against you and you've had to work for every single thing you've ever had, so this special treatment is unfair. But here's a concrete example. A female webdev friend of mine works at a startup, and they made it to YC's interview stage last week. She was employee #1. The moment they received that email, the founder started treating her differently. She and I were both mystified about why. Why would the prospect of transitioning to YC's pipeline possibly matter? She was an effective employee, and built their whole stack. Her work was identical to any male. Then we had a very uncomfortable realization: one of the founders joked that if they got into YC, they'd all have to bunk together like it was college. You tend to live in the same apartment at first. She asked me "do you think if I was a boy, I'd be invited to the boys club?" and it was heartbreaking to realize that it was very possible that this employee #1 may have had to worry about not being invited along to California solely because she was a girl. We still don't know. (They didn't get accepted, so it was a moot concern.) This is an extremely complicated topic, but I wanted to share some of that in case it's a positive thing.

lobotryas 9y ago

I think you overestimate investors and how they think. Case in point: Juicero raised boat-loads of money because investors got hooked on their business model of selling over-priced juice packs to consumers. Too bad investors only learned too late that these packs could be squeezed by hand just as well as with a $400 machine.

nunez 9y ago

He’s been making stuff successfully for years, well after music made him and the BEP famous.