Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS

Was going to start a free beer list but the thought of it changing into a sucking cock list put me off

In for both.

Thought this was interesting re: the YCombinator process and how insanely competitive it is:

http://swaggadocio.com/post/37188318276/how-i-got-a-yc-interview-as-a-single-founder-and-blew

It's even harder this year.

To date they've taken in 5% of applicants, and then 3% of applicants... but this year they've taken in only 1% of applicants.

or you could just trust people to do the right thing and hit them with a bloody big ban hammer if they don't

I am toying with the concept of votekick from Quake... wherein if a number of people online within a microcosm want to temporarily (and eventually permanently) kick someone from that space, they could do.

Sounds like a quick way to kill a forum to me - where a clique decide to derail and takeover.

The problem with the Quake votekick is that as soon as the person has been kicked they can join again if they know the match number. I wonder if a time restriction could be added to this so that you can't join within 30 or 60min.

Sounds like a quick way to kill a forum to me - where a clique decide to derail and takeover.

Possibly, but I was rather thinking that some things are simply irreconcilable.

Better for the pro-choice group to votekick the pro-lifer, and the pro-lifer establish another microcosm that inevitably a pro-choicer would troll and be kicked from... then to try and force utterly irreconcilable views to co-exist on highly emotive topics.

As the ability to set up new microcosms will exist, I rather hope that the minority abusing votekick by overusing it would kill their own microcosm, as experience shows that only forums that are open and accessible are able to sustain long-term growth.

The problem with the Quake votekick is that as soon as the person has been kicked they can join again if they know the match number. I wonder if a time restriction could be added to this so that you can't join within 30 or 60min.

It's somewhat easier to do when you're a webapp with user sessions and permission layers.

Yes, that was what I understood of your motives, and it's true enough, except that the new microcosm will have lost all of the history of the old one and it will be easy enough for the trolls to simply register and kill that one too. My understanding of forums (and that is vastly inferior to yours) is that they are dominated by a relatively small group of heavy posters. I understood your revenue model to be driven in part by the much larger number of other users and guests following affiliate links out and I can't see how this would work in a series of stunted microcosms on the same subject.

I figure that microcosms have owners, and that the microcosm owners could set the tone and leadership for a microcosm.

Determining who is a troll can be highly subjective in all but the worst cases. In the rare case that a number of people choose to votekick, I expect the person to return. Should it happen repeatedly then I'd imagine escalating it to the microcosm leader(s) to determine if a permaban should be enacted.

I actually think this is a better system overall.

What I'm proposing is to allow the community themselves to police themselves, by banning from sub-sections (microcosms) either temporarily (when someone is on one of those early hours troll sprees) or permanently from a single microcosm.

It's a damage limitation strategy, and it seeks to do the least harm to a user who might actually be contributing valuable insights elsewhere.

By and large I can't see this being used frequently, but if it were I could always look into removing the privilege of votekick from those who are abusing it.

It's just an idea, not a done deal.

I'd just much rather put the control of a community into the hands of the community. And that shouldn't mean having to have an overarching admin do things... not all admins are benevolent, and so I mean to investigate how to keep them on the straight and narrow by sharing some responsibilities with the people in the community.

I think community control is on the whole the best method. Sometimes though there can be individuals and groups of individuals whose only aim is destruction of the forum. Actually when you get to the stage of wanting a new test microcosm I have in mind a group who are looking for a new home as their existing forum is closing. Their first attempt lasted mere days before they were reported to the hosting company and closed down because their content breached the TOS.

Sounds like I'd welcome them.

So long as nothing illegal occurred on the forum, I would tolerate everything else.

What if everyone flounces...to Facebook?

And there was me thinking that people cared about privacy just enough to not want to mix their hobbies and pastimes with everyone they ever met.

Introverts perhaps care more about privacy?

One of the investors I met at the Seedrs thing suggested we'd cheated by bringing in our own investors rather than relying on the ones that Seedrs provided. I wouldn't regard it as cheating, I'd rather have investors that know me already and are aware of the product idea and track record.

It was an interesting evening though. I spoke to another investor who was a farmer and was not equipped at all for determining which were the good companies and which were the bad.

I tried to explain it for him... these are your 5% high risk investments, everything else should be in stable and safe investments. But with the 5% you should either go with your heart and something you believe in, or attempt to seek out the black swan company ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory - the super massive company that is obvious in hindsight, such as Dropbox, Facebook, etc).

There are at least a few things that can help identify potential black swans by ruling out the ones that could never achieve it by asking a few simple questions:

• Are there constraints that limit the company growth? Such as headcount and space for a hair salon, physical land for a farmer, etc.
  
• Does the revenue grow in-line with growth of usage?
  
• Is the potential market measured in hundreds of millions?
  
  

If the answers are No, Yes, and Yes... then you might have a company that could potentially be a black swan event and go super-massive. But if a company is going for "We want to be the fine dining of meals on wheels in Cheshire", then avoid investing on an economic basis as you'll never get a great return on it.

I thought that asking people to invest from here meant that I'd exposed myself to many naive investors. But that isn't really the case, you're all very skilled at pooling your learning and discussing things. So you've by and large managed to educate yourselves rapidly. What I saw at the Seedrs event was a mix of extremely experienced investors (most of whom were kicking themselves for not getting a slice of Microcosm) and then a load of extremely inexperienced and naive investors (who I felt were going to lose their money if they weren't able to learn quickly).

I also felt at the Seedrs event that the entrepreneur mix was similar. A few good ones (in the minority) and a load of bad ones (who seemed to just like the idea of being an entrepreneur and perhaps picked their company idea out of a hat or by playing a game of exquisite corpse ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse ).

I did really like the Oyster card for desk space thing. His valuation was a bit nuts, but the idea is quite sound. I also did not like that they left the event early to have a celebration party for raising funds... I felt receiving investment was a responsibility and my best response was to knuckle down, not to drink it down. But it's a damn good idea, even if he just managed to get spare office space around the transport hubs solved for the "I've got a couple of hours to kill" crowd it would work quite well. But it all comes down to how well he can convince the landlords of empty offices to grant him the space on short leases, and who knows how his company survives an up-turn in which office space is less available and more expensive.

Anyhow... rambling now.
Interesting thoughts DK. I really enjoyed the link of Taleb's Black Swan theory to companies like Facebook and Dropbox. I never thought of it in the reverse. Something worth reviewing.

Hey... would you all like to vote for me?

http://crunchies2012.techcrunch.com/nominate?ODpNaWNyb2Nvc20=

I want to see if it's possible to get on the radar so much that people wonder who the hell we are and what the hell we're doing.

The category is "Best Bootstrapped Startup", and given that we're running on vapours I figure that regardless of the lack of availability of product, we're doing the bootstrapped thing damn impressively.

Just click the link above and hit submit.

best of luck

Done

Done

as well

Ditto

I've just finished a draft API spec and mock interface... I think it's time I created a sub-forum for Microcosm and determined who wants to have a look at dull things like REST interfaces.

If i had the faintest idea what that meant..

nods sagely

Last week of all the people i chatted to, no one had stumped up as an investor; either window shoppers or entrepreneurs. Wish I'd crashed the fancy dress party and poured 2g of speed into the punch ;-)

snap.

Hey... would you all like to vote for me?

http://crunchies2012.techcrunch.com/nominate?ODpNaWNyb2Nvc20=

I want to see if it's possible to get on the radar so much that people wonder who the hell we are and what the hell we're doing.

The category is "Best Bootstrapped Startup", and given that we're running on vapours I figure that regardless of the lack of availability of product, we're doing the bootstrapped thing damn impressively.

Just click the link above and hit submit.

Separate thread perhaps?

Can't imagine anyone here not supporting you, but only so many follow this thread I should imagine, now that funding Microcosm is complete.

Disclaimer:
Just a thought... What the fuck do I know?

I'll break this out into a forum in the early hours tomorrow and I can safely restart some machines.