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Cthulhu Ventures
- kresten 7y agoI expected The Team to include Yog Sothoth.
- zaarn 7y agoFinally a venture capitalist I can trust.
- 6nf 7y agoCthulhu 2020. Why choose the lesser evil?
- palad1n 7y agoI believe it's more precisely: Cthulhu for President. Why settle for the lesser evil?
- zaarn 7y agoNyarlatothep 2020: The Dark Pharao for President! Hastur 2020: Who but that which is already the yellow king?
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago> Nyarlatothep 2020: The Dark Pharao for President! He's standing for Prime Minister of the UK, but in his views, that doesn't disqualify him from running for president too. No "dirty laundry", so to speak.
- arethuza 7y agoI take it you are a fan of the Laundry Files then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y agoYou might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment.
- arethuza 7y agoOr your head catches fire?
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoNo more years! No more years!
- IceCreamGondola 7y agoSorry but I would not trust a company that brands itself using a mythical monster to give me funding. If I'm putting the future of my company in the hands of some venture-capitalists I'd want to know they're the real deal and a company that uses: "Our goal, as Cthulhu, is to support initiatives designed to rise from the dark depths of R’lyeh (metaphorically speaking!) and end up destroying or at least disrupting, some market paradigm." As its opening line does not exude professionalism.
- Apocryphon 7y agohttps://www.mithril.com https://www.mithril.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valar_Ventures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valar_Ventures
- kijin 7y agoYou forgot Palantir. As soon as you see a Tolkien reference in a company's name, you know Peter Thiel is involved.
- Apocryphon 7y agoYeah, I just wanted to mention the ones that were specifically for investment, as the ancestral post talked about VC firms. Tech companies are known to follow more- whimsical branding schemes.
- happy_path 7y agoTangencial question: aren't those names copyright by the Tolkien Estate? I remember TSR had an issue using hobbit in their D&D game.
- IceCreamGondola 7y agoThese I don’t really see a problem with. The name is inspired by fiction that’s fine. When I go onto a firms website and see images of a mythical monster plastered everywhere that’s when it gets a bit ridiculous.
- sansnomme 7y agoI hate to ask this but is this satire?
- dmix 7y agoNope looks real after digging deeper. Based on the portfolio it looks to be based on Australia or NZ.
- BLKNSLVR 7y agoThe website footer Contact section: Cthulhu Ventures llc 100 Shoreline Hwy • Suite B280 Mill Valley, CA 94941 Tel: 415-444-9602 • Fax: 415-444-9602 info at cthulhuventures.com
- fancyfish 7y agoThey're real, unless all of their portfolio companies[1] and Bloomberg profiles[2] are also part of the satire. Hey, you never know, it's 2019. [1] https://collaborativeaggregates.com/about-collaborative-aggregates/ https://collaborativeaggregates.com/about-collaborative-aggr... https://colmeddev.com/about/ https://colmeddev.com/about/ [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/20346101 https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/20346101
- vvllmprz 7y agoPortfolio looks interesting, Life360 is big. Unfortunately, this website is poorly designed to put it lightly. I get that one of the founders really likes Lovecraft, but spend some money and do the website right instead of finding cthulu pictures off of google images and pasting them into a template.
- jimbo1qaz 7y agohttps://www.wired.com/story/life360-location-tracking-families/ https://www.wired.com/story/life360-location-tracking-famili... >Parents can use Life360 to track their teen’s location in real time. The company can use that data to sell car insurance. I think apps which allow parents to monitor their kids and invade their privacy are bad for humanity.
- feintruled 7y agoYou think? It seems like about the one valid use case for tracking. I bought phones for my kids on the proviso they would be primarily for safety purposes. Though it will start to get a bit grey as they get older.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- weare138 7y agoPh'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu Ventures R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
- skocznymroczny 7y agoNice try, mortal
- skrebbel 7y ago(I'm assuming that this is not satire - it looks a bit too real) I really love it when people carry jokes into serious business and take it all the way to the end. There's a lot of guts in that. I envy that level of self-confidence and hope to one day get there myself. That said, somehow I love it even more when such jokes get featured on HN and, invariably, shares of dry humorless grumpy people complain that they can't possibly take people who make jokes seriously. I always wonder what brings someone to distrust ballsy humor, I can't really wrap my head around it. Personally, if someone has the guts to not only make a silly joke with friends over a beer, but actually turn it into a real thing (in this case, a venture fund), then that's the kind of person I want to do business with. That sort of guts shows elsewhere too (Elon Musk is a nice example).
- Haga 7y agoIf you can't laugh and experiment, your childhood has ended and one will never innovate agae.
- TomMckenny 7y agoSmart also because if no one else has done it this way, it may attract extra attention. And they can always fall back on traditional marketing to attract boring people if need be.
- Stratoscope 7y agoAs another example, the popular Flask web framework for Python (which I'm using at this very moment) started as an April Fool's joke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flask_(web_framework) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flask_(web_framework) http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2010/4/3/april-1st-post-mortem/ http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2010/4/3/april-1st-post-mortem/
- ticktockten 7y agoI had no idea! Thanks for sharing. Having spent so much time with flask, it's a joke that I took seriously enough :)
- chrisseaton 7y ago
- SandersAK 7y ago"Our goal, as Cthulhu, is to support initiatives designed to rise from the dark depths of R’lyeh (metaphorically speaking!) and end up destroying or at least disrupting, some market paradigm." Happy to maintain social paradigms though - only one woman on then entire team...
- jokowueu 7y agoExactly . They are different . They don't stick to norms
- chippy 7y ago"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming" They do not want him woke
- coleifer 7y agoUnderrated comment.
- pnako 7y agoWell, Lovecraft was not exactly a progressive either.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoWhat would you suggest they do to resolve this?
- lilyball 7y agoI appreciate their commitment to the bit. I wish their team included slightly more diversity however.
- Ancalagon 7y agoWas going to mention the low diversity as well...
- malux85 7y agoI'm assuming you mean racial, sexual, ethnic, which is rubbish. There's greater diversity WITHIN the groups than BETWEEN them. Categorizing diversity based on superficial traits is WRONG, bordering on racist. It's the fundamental racist idea. (Dont get hung up on the word racist, we are talking about quantifying diversity) Genuine diversity is done by selecting on competence across individuals, NOT BY SKIN COLOR, GENDER ETC Watch this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrmeW3W35r8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrmeW3W35r8
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- _emacsomancer_ 7y agoYes, but if you're called Cthulhu Ventures, I would expect at least one Shoggoth on the team.
- cthalupa 7y agoJordan Peterson is a favored voice of the alt-right and his views are not generally consistent with evidence based research. [1] [2] Recognizing that people have different life experiences based on their gender, race, etc. is not racist. The goal is not homogenizing everyone and everything. You cannot recreate that sort of diversity within a single group. That isn't to say there isn't diversity within that group - obviously there is. But the idea that you can have more diversity in a group made up of all white men than one that has a larger mix of genders, races, and ethnicities is, if I'm being totally honest, absurd in its basic premise. Understanding that there are differences between people isn't racist. I cannot respect cultural differences that I refuse to see because I'm "colorblind." I can't respect different life experiences and difficulties faced if I refuse to see them. I can't accept differing inputs that are fundamentally based on those different life experiences if I am unable to modulate my treatment of someone based on who they are. It's a common misconception that the way to beat racism, sexism, etc. is to be "colorblind" or "genderblind" - but it isn't. One size fits all approaches are fundamentally flawed, and ultimately result in the group in power attempting to force everyone else to conform to their mold. This isn't exclusive to white men - it's just generally the group in power wherever they are. You see the same behavior with different outcomes all over the world, so I'm not framing this as a "white men are bad". You have to treat people fairly - I should pay a black person as much as a white person - but if the topic of racial issues in America comes up, I should take the input of the black person over that of a white person. If I was in Japan and that came up vis a vis treatment of foreigners there, I should take the input of the white person over the Japanese person. Fair treatment means equal treatment in many ways, but not all of them. Some experiences and viewpoints are impossible to recreate if you are not part of that group. That diversity can never be recreated by a homogenous group. 1. https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter 2. http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/impact-gender-diversity-performance-business-teams-evidence-field-experiment http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/impact-gender-diversity-performan... (There's a very large body of research on this. Hundreds of studies. I have picked two based on them being high on my google results, but if you really want I can link dozens or hundreds more.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wimgz 7y agoWe invest in things that should not be
- robert_foss 7y ago> We also strive, in our weak moments, to generate some sort of meaningful “good” for humanity (whom we would like to see at least survive until the day that we, ourselves, rise from those same dark depths to act as the harbinger of mankind’s final doom). Chtulhu Ventures seems to be far more invested in the the good of mankind than the average SF VC.
- youdontknowtho 7y agoComedy comment in a standard post? Downvotes. Comedy name for a VC firm on a site where people hope they can get VC cash for their "it's the Uber of XYZ industry" start-up? "Epic lulz sir! Taking jokes into the business world is brave!"
- markus_zhang 7y agoChecked the Portofolio and seems to be... authentic? Cthulhu Fhtagn!
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoSlightly off-topic, but is "The Call of Cthulu" still worth reading? I haven't read it yet, so I'm curious if it's somewhat dated, or tame according to modern sensibilities.
- Lambdanaut 7y agoIt's very short. Go for it. Personally it's one of my least favorite short stories by Lovecraft and it's amusing to me that Cthulhu became so wrapped up in popular culture when there are many far more interesting beasties in his lore.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoThanks! Which of his stories would you most recommend?
- sdmike1 7y agoThe color out of Space[1] is pretty good! However the Dunwich Horror[2], The Shadow over Innsmouth[3], At the Mountains of Madness[4], and of course, the Call of Cthulhu[5] are all good. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXyda5iiGEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXyda5iiGEo [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKkya1pMhMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKkya1pMhMQ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gviofDcypzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gviofDcypzE [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2iSmE129uQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2iSmE129uQ [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9Z39D1yyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9Z39D1yyI
- sdmike1 7y agoI enjoyed it, however I have something of a weakness for "cosmic horror" and the whole "mysteries beyond our understanding" thing that Lovecraft does. It mostly holds up, but the proliferation of the themes explored by it and the memeification of Cthulu and the "Great Old Ones" does probably make it more tame than reading it without foreknowledge of the contents. You can find most of Lovecraft's works (and some of his ghostwriting) as audiobooks on youtube if you want to give them a try [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9Z39D1yyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9Z39D1yyI
- pixelrevision 7y agoThe percentage put into advertising is kinda low
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoCthulhu Mythos is the best example of open source in the genre we now know as Weird Fiction. All Hail, Cthulhu!