8 ms·
$200,000 from Kickstarter = 1 year of runway for Diaspora
- citricsquid 15y agois it a coincidence that this coincides with their announcement about continuing the project? I got an email an hour ago, http://pastie.org/private/5xrgn6cmuyrylbwngvv5a http://pastie.org/private/5xrgn6cmuyrylbwngvv5a on the topic of that email, taking credit for changing things? ha ha ha.
- byoung2 15y agoNow, what would they have done had they only gotten the $10,000 they asked for?
- lallysingh 15y agoProbably go around & ask for funding. The $10k is a reasonable display of consumer interest.
- byoung2 15y agoThat brings up an interesting hypothetical. In an alternate universe, maybe the Diaspora founders applied to YC and got $20,000 (4 founders), which is double what they asked for on Diaspora. With 3 months, seed money, a lot of mentorship and advice about solving a problem and finding a market, and exposure to other startups going through the same process, where would they be now?
- lallysingh 15y agoProbably better off. The thing is, it's a lot easier to set up a Kickstarter post than apply to YC -- at least, imho, in emotional risk.
- jonnathanson 15y ago"... it's a lot easier to set up a Kickstarter post than apply to YC..." Perhaps. But let's not shortchange what an achievement having a blockbuster Kickstarter round really is. To get to $200,000 on Kickstarter, you have to work for it. You have to promote the hell out of yourself. You have to guerilla-market like a pro. The most successful Kickstarter projects -- the ones with the giant rounds of funding, well beyond their own targets -- have been the ones who got out there and drummed up interest, then brought the interest back to Kickstarter. (In contrast to the folks who simply sat back and expected interest to generate on Kickstarter). It is a total myth that you can "set it and forget it" on Kickstarter, and that having a cool premise will rake in the donations on its own accord. It takes legitimate hustle.
- lallysingh 15y agoI don't think we disagree. The partial failure mode of Kickstarter, say $5800 of the $10k you wanted; which is easier to accept than a flat "no" from YC. Let's remember that these are pretty young kids. It's pretty easy to be intimidated.
- jonnathanson 15y ago"The partial failure mode of Kickstarter, say $5800 of the $10k you wanted; which is easier to accept than a flat "no" from YC." True, although we should keep in mind that partial failure on Kickstarter = total failure. You don't receive any money from the round if you don't meet your target. If I set $10,000 as my bar, and I raise anything south of $10,000 (even $9,999), I don't see a penny. I agree with you that this is probably not as emotionally devastating as being told "no" by some of the preeminent experts in the field of startups. (And I agree with you by and large, btw; I'm just spelling this out for others reading the thread who might not know how KS works).
- jdp23 15y agoDO you think the YC guys would have funded something where all the software being developed for the first release would be GPL'ed and there were no revenue plans?
- byoung2 15y agoDiaspora's revenue model involved offering turnkey hosting for seeds, though it is unclear who would pay for such a service (individuals? Small groups?). I think business models based on open source products take a long time before you gain enough traction to start charging for services based on it
- kennywinker 15y agoNot pay themselves.
- alexro 15y agoSo, with no money left and no business model in sight and (most important) no enthusiasm about Facebook killer and with G+ in the wild, is that the end of Diaspora?
- heynk 15y agoApparently Zuckerberg donated to Diaspora, so they must not be quite out of money yet. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/zuckerberg-interview/
- wavephorm 15y agoI assume his donation is included in the kickstarter fund.
- quinndupont 15y agoNo word yet, but sadly, it can't be long now...
- acangiano 15y agoMy initial reaction was to feel bad about these kids. Then I remembered about Theodore Roosevelt's speech about the man in the arena, and I congratulate them for giving it their best shot. Whether they continue or not, it was worth trying and they've had an amazing experience in the process. "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
- wavephorm 15y agoThese guys are young, and got a taste of the limelight. But the sooner they realize they're not going to kill Facebook and move on, the better.
- mcantelon 15y ago>My initial reaction was to feel bad about these kids. Definitely not. They got funding to spend a year working on a dream project and they build a project that is now the 7th most watched on Github. They're doing quite alright.
- jay_kyburz 15y agoTheodore Roosevelt (for those of us who had to look it up)
- acangiano 15y ago"Then I remembered about Theodore Roosevelt's speech" kind of gave it away. :-)
- roel_v 15y ago
- Birejji 15y agoI could have done a lot better with that $200k :(
- mey 15y agoDon't armchair, go do. Start a project, get funded/self fund, and prove you can do better.
- sliverstorm 15y agoIronically, the fact that he is armchair quarterbacking is exactly why he hasn't $200k to prove he can do better with.
- Birejji 15y agoI've started lots of projects... no one wants to fund and I'm a college student without funds to self-fund
- robryan 15y agoThese guys were in the same position...
- Birejji 15y agoAlso, a couple of my projects have been ramen profitable which can be expanded but again... no one wants to fund
- rhygar 15y agoThe Duke Nukem Forever of social networks?
- ElliotH 15y agoCloser to the Hurd of social networks I'd say.
- wickedchicken 15y agoApplicable on so many levels
- damncabbage 15y agoOnly if Hurd had giant security holes.
- uriel 15y agoIt probably does, but doubt anyone has bothered to check.
- malbs 15y agoJust goes to show how much pushing a real idea out the door can actually cost - there are plenty of people out there burning this kind of cash and going broke, and never even getting the sort of media coverage these guys got. edit: and I'm not saying they should have/could have done any better with the money they received. I donated to their kickstarter, and I don't feel like it was wasted.
- kennywinker 15y agoSuper interesting. The take-home of this seems to me to be that the most expensive part is paying yourself. 100k for salaries for four people is the bulk of the expenses.
- marcamillion 15y agoI love the nerdiness of their salaries: >Salaries (Four FTE @ $28.8k annually) That's pretty awesome. Never thought about expressing it like that.
- emiranda 15y agoWhat is FTE?
- wmf 15y agoFull-time engineer. (er, equivalent; vailripper is probably right)
- vailripper 15y agoFull Time Equivalent actually.
- fezzl 15y agoFull-time executive.
- mdda 15y agoFull Time Employee.
- Luyt 15y agoEither 'Full Time Equivalent' or 'Full Time Employee'. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-time_equivalent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-time_equivalent and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-time
- marcamillion 15y agoI believe Full Time Equivalent, but I was referring to the modem rating (i.e. 14.4k, 28.8k, 36.6k, 56k, etc.).
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- BrettRad 15y agoLuxr Training?? Really? 28k on rewards/fulfillment??! $6.4k Rackspace cloud hosting and there isn't even an alpha version out- WTF! Come on -you've got to get creative and work deals. Bootstrap!!
- randomwalker 15y agoWikipedia lists close to 40(!) distributed social networks. [1] None have achieved a meaningful amount of adoption. About a year ago I became interested in why this is the case. I'm an academic computer scientist with a strong interest in the startup/web tech scene (see profile for info). My colleagues and I have been studying not just decentralized social networks, but the more general concept of decentralized architectures for personal data. This includes "personal data store" efforts which are popping up all over the place, with similarly dismal adoption, "infomediaries" which were the rage in the late 90s (before the dot com bust ate them up), etc. Overall, we've looked at around 80 companies, projects, and proposals. If the amount of reinvention in this space is surprising, the almost wanton refusal to learn from others' past mistakes is shocking. These projects seem to do the same things wrong and fail for very similar reasons, chief among them building more technology when it's not really technology that's holding things back. There is the widespread — but often unstated and always unexamined — belief among the participants that moving to a decentralized setting is a magic cure-all for the problems that ail today's status quo, such as privacy and interoperability. Sadly, this belief is simply wrong. I certainly sympathize with the urge to pat these guys on the back for trying, but is it really courage or foolhardiness? If 10,000 amateurs have tried to solve P =? NP and failed, do we encourage the 10,001th guy to give it a shot as well, or do we tell him to learn some math and CS first, and gain an appreciation for why the problem is hard and probably not worth taking on unless you really really know what you're doing? [Our study is not out yet, but feel free to contact me if you're interested in discussing this.] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network
- mcantelon 15y ago>There is the widespread — but often unstated and always unexamined — belief among the participants that moving to a decentralized setting is a magic cure-all for the problems that ail today's status quo, such as privacy and interoperability. It's an improvement over data sitting in a central silo waiting to be mined and monitored. How would you suggest tackling the problem?
- wmf 15y ago
- dendory 15y agoAm I the only one that laughed at tge $26k spent on t-shirts and stickers?
- xentronium 15y agoIt was part of their kickstart deal.
- rationalbeats 15y agoSerious question Are there any people who code on this website that would work for under $30,000 a year?
- benologist 15y agoThey're founders, and I bet there are no shortage of founders around here who've worked for under $30k on their startups.
- ArcticCelt 15y agoFor someone else? No. For my own project? Anytime.
- nikcub 15y agobeen doing it for $0 salary for years now
- craigmc 15y agoHave you ever started your own biz (that wasn't just a freelance / small consultancy / lifestyle gig)? If so, serious question: what did you pay yourself in the first year of your first biz?
- forgottenpaswrd 15y agoYeah, not all in life is money, some of us love to create things. I had been EXPENDING my own money for my own projects so that is minus $10,000 a year. Oh, I almost forget, not everybody lives in NY or Silicon Valley, there are cheaper places to live around the globe where $30,000 is a lot of money.
- tptacek 15y agoNothing too crazy in here. Surprised by: * The 25k in what appears to be merch. Inclination: that's silly. Is this some crazy Kickstarter thing someone can explain? * The ~8k in fees to LUXr, a "1 day a week for 10 weeks design residency for early-state startups". "Radically cheap", eh. * The 1k trademark filing fee. * That they actually spent $6k in a year at Rackspace. How many uses did they have? And ~$100/mo at Sendgrid? On the other hand, these people paid themselves less than 1/3rd market salary, even after you account for the housing allowance. And what do I know? I've never tried to start a social network (there's a reason for that, but...). Maybe 25k in merch is what it takes.
- Timothee 15y agoAs far as the $25k for merch go, I believe that they had to spend quite a lot to fulfill their Kickstarter promises. Somebody had made the calculation that it would end up being fairly significant.
- ugh 15y agoT-shirts for 3.5k people. Stickers and CDs for 4.5k people. I’m estimating $15k for the T-Shirts, $1.5k for the stickers and $3.5k for the CDs. Maybe I underestimated one or several of those. $26k certainly doesn’t seem unrealistic for the merch and they had to ship it. It was part of the deal. That’s actually one of negative things about Kickstarter: It can’t be good that someone who should and most certainly is busy pushing out a product suddenly also has to be this expert in getting merch made and shipping it to people. I would assume becoming that expert is not easy and being good at dealing with merch doesn’t seem like a valuable skill the rest of the time – you know, when you are busy building a social network or doing whatever. All this merch crap sadly seems to have become a staple of Kickstarter projects. Maybe it’s necessary to get people to pay?
- shabble 15y agoSounds like an easy value-add for them or someone else to provide design/manufacture/drop-shipping for all the merch if you give them your logos and brief, or whatever. They save on effort, and you take a few percent yourself. Scale means you can make better arrangements with suppliers, and quite possibly everyone comes out ahead. Edit: to address the "is it even necessary?" question, I'd personally guess at 'yes'. Having some sort of tangible reward for your contribution, even if it's just a sticker, helps people justify the cost. Then they can wear your hat or t-shirt and get maximum indie "I funded them even before they were underground" credit. Also, free(ish) advertising for you.
- noarchy 15y agoI've noticed a sudden, sharp rise in Diaspora's outreach efforts in recent days, ranging from activity on Facebook, to direct emails. It looks like they're trying to get things moving again, from a PR perspective. Unfortunately, they've probably squandered a lot of that initial publicity. They had a lot of doubters from the very beginning, and now that the project has dragged on this long, I'm sure that many are dismissing the entire thing as vapourware.
- eavc 15y ago>Unfortunately, they've probably squandered a lot of that initial publicity. You know, I'm not sure if they have. People wanted to believe in this to the tune of $200k. Even two years from now, if they have arrived at something truly viable, it will be trivially easy to spin the PR wheel again. At this point, their main obstacle is demonstrating competency on the relevant technical problems and processes. If they learn to crack that nut over the course of, say, another year, then they'll be the come-back kid -- every bit as appealing an angle as their initial appeal as improbable underdogs with starry eyes.
- inkaudio 15y agoAlthough I agreed with most of Jason Fried thoughts on dispora, I thought the jury was still out. It turns out his prediction was right. ...That’s an impressive start if victory was measured in press coverage, cash, and cool. Here’s the problem: Diaspora has all the wrong things at the wrong time. Competition that kills isn’t pre-announced — it catches an unsuspecting incumbent by surprise.... love the underdog, but I fear for the product-less underdog that has all the wrong things at the wrong time. http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2330-diasporas-curse http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2330-diasporas-curse
- brackin 15y agoI'm not worried for them. If they're entrepreneurs they'll either work hard and make it work, pivot or if they want they'll get hired by someone. I think they should forget about fighting Facebook and be the Wordpress of Social Networking. Ning was trying to the Wordpress.com of the space. They could then offer the ability to create social networks like Ning did with premium features. But look at where Ning went wrong and iterate.
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- Dipen 15y agostrange that Pivotal labs help to diaspora [1] doesn't figure in this PL statement. Was it all free? [1] http://blog.joindiaspora.com/2010/07/01/one-month-in.html http://blog.joindiaspora.com/2010/07/01/one-month-in.html
- inmygarage 15y agoI believe it was just free desks at Pivotal SF, and the advice that comes along with sitting next to really smart people. My guess is that yeah it was likely free.
- motters 15y agoThe one thing which struck me is how expensive a year's worth of cloud hosting is. No wonder there has been such a kerfuffle about "the cloud". The other costs - including rewards - are pretty much to be expected. From my perspective decentralized social network systems seem to be succeeding, with people running them upgrading their servers to cope with the influx of Facebook and G+ exiles. However, I think that Diaspora made a few mistakes which meant that they didn't get as far as they could have in the first year. One was poor communication about what they were doing and their state of progress. Another was a poor initial choice of software which made it hard to install.