4 ms·

This is approximately what I figured. Whenever I do deeper due diligence, this sort of scam comes up. Literally "whenever." For the record, Nebula is primarily

by blagie 2y ago

This is approximately what I figured. Whenever I do deeper due diligence, this sort of scam comes up. Literally "whenever." For the record, Nebula is primarily owned and operated by creators. Those creators are: * Dave Wiskus * Brian McManus (Real Engineering) * Alex (LowSpecGamer) * Devin Stone (Legal Eagle) * Thomas Frank * Sam Denby (Wendover Productions) The other creators are getting scammed. This is not an uncommon model. This is almost identical to how edX was structured and the marketing literature is nearly identical too. It was owned and run by universities. Just not the universities who made up the "consortium." If there were no scam, there would absolutely no reason for the non-public non-answers. If Nebula weren't scamming, they would disclose the "financial and legal wizardry." None of this prevented me from giving Nebula money. As I said, this kind of issues comes up literally every time I do due diligence. I am disappointed in specifically Brian McManus for being involved in a scam, but this kind of scam is omnipresent with quite literally every organization I've done due diligence on, and usually much worse.

staunton 2y ago
I don't understand what the scam is. The structure is opaque which indicates there might be some scam but how would one know what it is?
- jszymborski 2y ago
  The accusations of it being a scam are speculative for sure, but they come from a relatable place: the inability to understand why creators would agree to take on "shadow equity" while a small handful of creators get actual real equity. It sounds like a few creators can sell the equity that is built by many creators at any time, but that all the other creators can only realize their equity if and when the company exits. If someone bought tickets to a steam ship that stipulated that in the event of an imminent iceberg collision, they can only get on the life-boats after a small group of people ransacked the ship and left on the first life-boat, I might assume that they'd been scammed to. But perhaps they were just desperate or didn't think icebergs were a risk. Regardless, I just know I wouldn't buy that ticket.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    I can't really figure out how the stakes of your analogy are supposed to map to the Nebula situation. Nebula is a source of income. If it implodes, everyone still goes home. And who would be buying shares if the company is sinking so badly? How does the ransacking work in the analogy, and does it even make a difference? The part that sounds scary is that they're on the "first" life boat and everyone has to wait until "after" they're done ransacking, and that part doesn't sound like it maps to the real world at all. But backing up to the more general sense, shadow equity is a reasonable way to do the profit sharing but you have to have real equity somewhere. Accepting that there are two tiers makes sense to me. And the reason it's a "small handful" with the realer equity is because those people either built the company or paid lots of money to the people that built the company, that's pretty fair.
    - blagie 2y ago
      It'd be pretty fair without the false advertising. With the false advertising, it's pretty darned unfair.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        I don't think the specific detail I called fair is very relevant to outsiders.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    >a few creators can sell the equity that is built by many creators at any time, but that all the other creators can only realize their equity if and when the company exits. That's misleading because an exit (i.e., a sale or an IPO) is usually the only way that owners of real equity in a startup can cash out.
- blagie 2y ago
  Nebula advertises itself: "Nebula is creator-owned and operated" (implying the creators who publish). A lot of people subscribe in order to support creators, as a sort of alternative to Patreon. This is not the case. It is owned and operated by the founders and some investors. If someone donates believing they're supporting Extra Credits, Practical Engineering, or a similar channel, they're likely being misled about how much they're contributing to it. Indeed, they may believe they're supporting a creators' co-op, which they're clearly not. If Nebula sinks, the support is what they expected. If it swims, it's going to be a lot less. I consider this to be tantamount of fraud. That's as much a statement about myself as about Nebula. My standards for what constitutes fraud are much lower than e.g. the FTC's. However, I (again, personally) believe that if the FTC shared my standards, the economy would be more efficient and the world would be a better place. That is a personal opinion, but researched, and based on the work of David Landes (a well-regarded economist at Harvard, who had nice work about the role of social capital in economic growth).
xd1936 2y ago
You used the word "scam" six times in your comment. That is a bit exaggerative of the actual company structure. Creators are getting paid to put various forms of exclusives on the platform. Just because the company uses a disingenuous term to market itself doesn't mean that said creators are all victims here.
- blagie 2y ago
  I don't know whether creators are victims (although I suspect they are), but I do know people who pay for altruistic reasons are victims. It's not billing itself as Disney Plus but specifically as a way to support creators and support a service for-creators/by-creators. That, it's not. As a footnote, this also explains why channels like Wendover are promoted so strongly by Nebula over, quite frankly, better content.
kragen 2y ago
i'm disappointed in brian mcmanus every time i watch a 'real engineering' video and find out that it's full of factual inaccuracies, like all the previous 'real engineering' videos i watched. you'd think i'd learn, but i keep confusing him with 'practical engineering', which is actually real
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  Was going to say… I love the practical engineering channel but that channel doesn’t really dive deep enough into any one topic to encounter any factual inaccuracies.
  - kragen 2y ago
    admittedly, it does fall far short of being practical; if your preparation for building a railroad is watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqmOSMAtadc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqmOSMAtadc and your preparation for building a landfill is watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx_dZawN44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx_dZawN44, your trains will derail and your garbage will leach into your groundwater but that's not really a difference between the two channels; real engineering manages to pack plenty of misstatements into videos that are equally superficial
- blagie 2y ago
  I find Real Engineering to be pretty good for aerospace, and horrible for everything else. There are errors, but no more so than any other resources I've seen on aerospace. The problem I have is that it's trying to do electronic engineering, fusion, and now history. The worst is interviews / human interest / travel / behind-the-scenes, etc. My question is always: Why? Why do you think you're at all qualified to do a better job than the people who specialize in this? If I had a choice, the Nebula-exclusive content would go more into math or deeper engineering: How does a jet engine work? That kind of thing. But yes, Practical Engineering is very, very good.
  - gverrilla 2y ago
    > and now history I told him not to that unless he has actual knowledge, and he got very angry at me. On the occasion he made a very poor analysis of political and social situation of an African country (that's all I remember).

by blagie 2y ago

staunton 2y ago

I don't understand what the scam is. The structure is opaque which indicates there might be some scam but how would one know what it is?

jszymborski 2y ago
The accusations of it being a scam are speculative for sure, but they come from a relatable place: the inability to understand why creators would agree to take on "shadow equity" while a small handful of creators get actual real equity. It sounds like a few creators can sell the equity that is built by many creators at any time, but that all the other creators can only realize their equity if and when the company exits. If someone bought tickets to a steam ship that stipulated that in the event of an imminent iceberg collision, they can only get on the life-boats after a small group of people ransacked the ship and left on the first life-boat, I might assume that they'd been scammed to. But perhaps they were just desperate or didn't think icebergs were a risk. Regardless, I just know I wouldn't buy that ticket.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  I can't really figure out how the stakes of your analogy are supposed to map to the Nebula situation. Nebula is a source of income. If it implodes, everyone still goes home. And who would be buying shares if the company is sinking so badly? How does the ransacking work in the analogy, and does it even make a difference? The part that sounds scary is that they're on the "first" life boat and everyone has to wait until "after" they're done ransacking, and that part doesn't sound like it maps to the real world at all. But backing up to the more general sense, shadow equity is a reasonable way to do the profit sharing but you have to have real equity somewhere. Accepting that there are two tiers makes sense to me. And the reason it's a "small handful" with the realer equity is because those people either built the company or paid lots of money to the people that built the company, that's pretty fair.
  - blagie 2y ago
    It'd be pretty fair without the false advertising. With the false advertising, it's pretty darned unfair.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      I don't think the specific detail I called fair is very relevant to outsiders.
- hollerith 2y ago
  >a few creators can sell the equity that is built by many creators at any time, but that all the other creators can only realize their equity if and when the company exits. That's misleading because an exit (i.e., a sale or an IPO) is usually the only way that owners of real equity in a startup can cash out.
blagie 2y ago
Nebula advertises itself: "Nebula is creator-owned and operated" (implying the creators who publish). A lot of people subscribe in order to support creators, as a sort of alternative to Patreon. This is not the case. It is owned and operated by the founders and some investors. If someone donates believing they're supporting Extra Credits, Practical Engineering, or a similar channel, they're likely being misled about how much they're contributing to it. Indeed, they may believe they're supporting a creators' co-op, which they're clearly not. If Nebula sinks, the support is what they expected. If it swims, it's going to be a lot less. I consider this to be tantamount of fraud. That's as much a statement about myself as about Nebula. My standards for what constitutes fraud are much lower than e.g. the FTC's. However, I (again, personally) believe that if the FTC shared my standards, the economy would be more efficient and the world would be a better place. That is a personal opinion, but researched, and based on the work of David Landes (a well-regarded economist at Harvard, who had nice work about the role of social capital in economic growth).

xd1936 2y ago

You used the word "scam" six times in your comment. That is a bit exaggerative of the actual company structure. Creators are getting paid to put various forms of exclusives on the platform. Just because the company uses a disingenuous term to market itself doesn't mean that said creators are all victims here.

blagie 2y ago
I don't know whether creators are victims (although I suspect they are), but I do know people who pay for altruistic reasons are victims. It's not billing itself as Disney Plus but specifically as a way to support creators and support a service for-creators/by-creators. That, it's not. As a footnote, this also explains why channels like Wendover are promoted so strongly by Nebula over, quite frankly, better content.

kragen 2y ago

i'm disappointed in brian mcmanus every time i watch a 'real engineering' video and find out that it's full of factual inaccuracies, like all the previous 'real engineering' videos i watched. you'd think i'd learn, but i keep confusing him with 'practical engineering', which is actually real

cruffle_duffle 2y ago
Was going to say… I love the practical engineering channel but that channel doesn’t really dive deep enough into any one topic to encounter any factual inaccuracies.
- kragen 2y ago
  admittedly, it does fall far short of being practical; if your preparation for building a railroad is watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqmOSMAtadc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqmOSMAtadc and your preparation for building a landfill is watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx_dZawN44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx_dZawN44, your trains will derail and your garbage will leach into your groundwater but that's not really a difference between the two channels; real engineering manages to pack plenty of misstatements into videos that are equally superficial
blagie 2y ago
I find Real Engineering to be pretty good for aerospace, and horrible for everything else. There are errors, but no more so than any other resources I've seen on aerospace. The problem I have is that it's trying to do electronic engineering, fusion, and now history. The worst is interviews / human interest / travel / behind-the-scenes, etc. My question is always: Why? Why do you think you're at all qualified to do a better job than the people who specialize in this? If I had a choice, the Nebula-exclusive content would go more into math or deeper engineering: How does a jet engine work? That kind of thing. But yes, Practical Engineering is very, very good.
- gverrilla 2y ago
  > and now history I told him not to that unless he has actual knowledge, and he got very angry at me. On the occasion he made a very poor analysis of political and social situation of an African country (that's all I remember).