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As both a startup programmer and having worked in the financial industry, it's really hard to know how companies like these will be viewed by history. The tech

As both a startup programmer and having worked in the financial industry, it's really hard to know how companies like these will be viewed by history. The technologist argument is: we are enduring losses, even large ones, in the short term so that we can bring inevitable future tools forward in time (i.e. "Of course everyone can get anything delivered on-demand in the future, so why not now!?") The value-based investor argument: This is a gross subsidy to "tech" companies that is distorting/subsidizing markets and creating huge opportunity costs where all these billions could have been invested in better, even more fundamental technologies. There is a third argument which is what's really giving these companies legs: they do genuinely have a lot of users who love the services. Who wouldn't want a VC-subsidized meal brought to your door?

ForHackernews 8y ago
> they do genuinely have a lot of users who love the services. Turns out selling $10 bills for $5 is extremely popular. MoviePass did in fact get people go to the movies.
- dman 8y ago
  The counter example is Amazon with Prime.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 8y ago
    Probably contrarian, but I refuse to sign up for Prime out of principle. The quicker and easier I make it to buy things, the more money I'm going to spend, which is orthogonal to my savings/investment goals. I'm not going to pay extra to have the privilege of making spending my money any easier.
    - dman 8y ago
      I am with you on that, I am "this close" to cancelling Prime. Dont order on it anymore, strangely enough only reason I have it around is that I use the free photo storage as a second backup for photos (After Google photos)
- mjevans 8y ago
  That's not quite genuine. I feel MoviePass showed that of course //more// demand is accessible if the price of the product is lowered. We already knew this from basic economic theory, but MoviePass also showed us a different set details. 1) Which movies were so bad they were not worth the time to watch. 2) A proxy for the average price someone would pay for movies that they would watch (since the service is a self-selecting sample of those that would go to many movies if the prices were lowered). The idea is very stupid as a for-profit business model; it doesn't even have a likely chance for probably being successful. The idea is pretty great if put in to another context, such as one where there's a lottery for the option to buy such a membership and using the collected data as described above.
- JMTQp8lwXL 8y ago
  It would've been different had MoviePass been under a large chain --yet able to draw the mass appeal, unlike, say, AMC Stubs-- to wrestle pricing control back from the entertainment industry. Profit margins are quite thin on tickets these days.
deleted 8y ago
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ForHackernews 8y ago

> they do genuinely have a lot of users who love the services. Turns out selling $10 bills for $5 is extremely popular. MoviePass did in fact get people go to the movies.

dman 8y ago
The counter example is Amazon with Prime.
- JMTQp8lwXL 8y ago
  Probably contrarian, but I refuse to sign up for Prime out of principle. The quicker and easier I make it to buy things, the more money I'm going to spend, which is orthogonal to my savings/investment goals. I'm not going to pay extra to have the privilege of making spending my money any easier.
  - dman 8y ago
    I am with you on that, I am "this close" to cancelling Prime. Dont order on it anymore, strangely enough only reason I have it around is that I use the free photo storage as a second backup for photos (After Google photos)
mjevans 8y ago
That's not quite genuine. I feel MoviePass showed that of course //more// demand is accessible if the price of the product is lowered. We already knew this from basic economic theory, but MoviePass also showed us a different set details. 1) Which movies were so bad they were not worth the time to watch. 2) A proxy for the average price someone would pay for movies that they would watch (since the service is a self-selecting sample of those that would go to many movies if the prices were lowered). The idea is very stupid as a for-profit business model; it doesn't even have a likely chance for probably being successful. The idea is pretty great if put in to another context, such as one where there's a lottery for the option to buy such a membership and using the collected data as described above.
JMTQp8lwXL 8y ago
It would've been different had MoviePass been under a large chain --yet able to draw the mass appeal, unlike, say, AMC Stubs-- to wrestle pricing control back from the entertainment industry. Profit margins are quite thin on tickets these days.

deleted 8y ago

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