5 ms·

Let me preface this by saying: I want Gittip to succeed. I really want them to succeed. I would love to be able to spend my time getting paid by a community to

by chroma 12y ago

Let me preface this by saying: I want Gittip to succeed. I really want them to succeed. I would love to be able to spend my time getting paid by a community to develop open source software. However... those growth curves look linear, if not sigmoid. More importantly: >The Gittip team receives $20,339 per year (averaging the past ten weeks). There are 39 people splitting that money. $500 per person per year? That's not within two orders of magnitude of sustainability.[1] In addition, even the greatest collector of revenue on Gittip can't make a decent living from it. $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California. I truly wish it were otherwise, but this post makes me seriously worry about the future of Gittip. Apparently, they did not make something people want. 1. I realize that only a few people are full-time on Gittip, but that's still a huge red flag. Unless the author is being extremely generous with his profit sharing, those numbers are inexcusable.

whit537 12y ago
Our curve was exponential throughout 2013 and into 2014. We doubled three times, about every four or five months. We started to flatten out the past few months as we try to gather a full-time team. Because here's the thing: any other company that doubled three times in a year would go withdraw $2M from the angel network ATM and just flat-out hire a team. We've got a company structure and culture that most angels aren't ready for. E.g.: https://twitter.com/Jason/status/468570235390271489 https://twitter.com/Jason/status/468570235390271489 I call this "double-bootstrapping" in the post.
ronaldx 12y ago
> $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California. This didn't sound right, so I checked it for you: Full-time minimum wage in California is officially about to increase to $14k. Based on a 30-hour work week (ref: wikipedia definition of full-time) at $9ph (as of July 1, 2014).
- whit537 12y ago
  Yeah, the U.S. median for singles is $30,880 (as I mention in the post). I don't know what percentile $41,500 is, but it's well above minimum wage.
sspiff 12y ago
> $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California. Exactly. In California. If you want to live off of what is basically donations for community work, you might want to relocate to a much cheaper place. Eastern Europe or South-East Asia are nice places to live on a tighter budget. I donate a small amount every week myself, though I find it hard to make a bigger commitment to it.
- chroma 12y ago
  Living in cheap places is fun when you're young, but eventually you take on more responsibilities and your body fails you. Are eastern europe and southeast asia known for their health care? Are dentists cheap there? Most importantly, are they good places to raise a family? I can totally get behind you when it comes to arbitraging cost of living, but not everyone can do that. At best, one could live in an inexpensive part of the US. Still, when it comes to children, school systems and health care are a concern. The problem with Gittip is that anyone who wants to contribute to open source projects has to sacrifice dearly. If you're good enough to collect $40k/year off Gittip, you're probably good enough to collect 10x as much from Google[1]. If you want to provide for your family, the choice is a no-brainer. 1. After stock options, bonuses, etc. Edit: I have no idea why this is at -2. Is there some disconnect between my line of thought and everyone else's?
  - 6cxs2hd6 12y ago
    As just one example, you could live in Rochester MN. Nice 4 BR house <= $150,000 [1]. Medical care: The Mayo Clinic. Schools: AFAIK very good. And more culture and more liberal than you probably imagine. There a dozens of places like this between the two insanely expensive coastal zones of the US. Places where things like housing cost nearly an order of magnitude less. [1]: http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Rochester-MN/26791_rid/44.410731,-91.975479,43.720994,-92.946396_rect/9_zm/1_fr/ http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Rochester-MN/26791_rid/...
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      Are there any black people or sidewalks there? I've been wanting a random change lately and trying to figure out a place to move to get away from Chicago.
peterjancelis 12y ago
Here's how the team splits the money: https://www.gittip.com/Gittip/members/ https://www.gittip.com/Gittip/members/
yungchin 12y ago
Curves can also look like that if we look at them at the wrong scale, so maybe it's too soon to jump to conclusions. There are more questions to ask: how many people have heard about gittip? If they're not donating yet, would they reconsider if they read this post ("social confirmation")? How about if you served them other specific calls to action? How many more haven't heard of gittip yet? Are those two orders of magnitude in there?
PaulHoule 12y ago
A lot of adjunct faculty do the same kind of stuff Ashe Dryden does and they get paid about the same with less security and awful working condition so I think she is doing OK

by chroma 12y ago

whit537 12y ago

Our curve was exponential throughout 2013 and into 2014. We doubled three times, about every four or five months. We started to flatten out the past few months as we try to gather a full-time team. Because here's the thing: any other company that doubled three times in a year would go withdraw $2M from the angel network ATM and just flat-out hire a team. We've got a company structure and culture that most angels aren't ready for. E.g.: https://twitter.com/Jason/status/468570235390271489 https://twitter.com/Jason/status/468570235390271489 I call this "double-bootstrapping" in the post.

ronaldx 12y ago

> $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California. This didn't sound right, so I checked it for you: Full-time minimum wage in California is officially about to increase to $14k. Based on a 30-hour work week (ref: wikipedia definition of full-time) at $9ph (as of July 1, 2014).

whit537 12y ago
Yeah, the U.S. median for singles is $30,880 (as I mention in the post). I don't know what percentile $41,500 is, but it's well above minimum wage.

sspiff 12y ago

> $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California. Exactly. In California. If you want to live off of what is basically donations for community work, you might want to relocate to a much cheaper place. Eastern Europe or South-East Asia are nice places to live on a tighter budget. I donate a small amount every week myself, though I find it hard to make a bigger commitment to it.

chroma 12y ago
Living in cheap places is fun when you're young, but eventually you take on more responsibilities and your body fails you. Are eastern europe and southeast asia known for their health care? Are dentists cheap there? Most importantly, are they good places to raise a family? I can totally get behind you when it comes to arbitraging cost of living, but not everyone can do that. At best, one could live in an inexpensive part of the US. Still, when it comes to children, school systems and health care are a concern. The problem with Gittip is that anyone who wants to contribute to open source projects has to sacrifice dearly. If you're good enough to collect $40k/year off Gittip, you're probably good enough to collect 10x as much from Google[1]. If you want to provide for your family, the choice is a no-brainer. 1. After stock options, bonuses, etc. Edit: I have no idea why this is at -2. Is there some disconnect between my line of thought and everyone else's?
- 6cxs2hd6 12y ago
  As just one example, you could live in Rochester MN. Nice 4 BR house <= $150,000 [1]. Medical care: The Mayo Clinic. Schools: AFAIK very good. And more culture and more liberal than you probably imagine. There a dozens of places like this between the two insanely expensive coastal zones of the US. Places where things like housing cost nearly an order of magnitude less. [1]: http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Rochester-MN/26791_rid/44.410731,-91.975479,43.720994,-92.946396_rect/9_zm/1_fr/ http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Rochester-MN/26791_rid/...
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    Are there any black people or sidewalks there? I've been wanting a random change lately and trying to figure out a place to move to get away from Chicago.

peterjancelis 12y ago

Here's how the team splits the money: https://www.gittip.com/Gittip/members/ https://www.gittip.com/Gittip/members/

yungchin 12y ago

Curves can also look like that if we look at them at the wrong scale, so maybe it's too soon to jump to conclusions. There are more questions to ask: how many people have heard about gittip? If they're not donating yet, would they reconsider if they read this post ("social confirmation")? How about if you served them other specific calls to action? How many more haven't heard of gittip yet? Are those two orders of magnitude in there?

PaulHoule 12y ago

A lot of adjunct faculty do the same kind of stuff Ashe Dryden does and they get paid about the same with less security and awful working condition so I think she is doing OK