This is like if David Heinemeier Hansson took drugs and gave a speech.
I like DHH, and his and his cofounder’s opinionated approach to, well, everything. Ruby on Rails was opinionated. Their company stood for building products you charge for and never taking VC. (I think Atlassian and JetBrains toom that even further.)
Until today, we never took VC. The way I live my personal life I have never attracted gold-diggers and I guess the same thing applied here… both my largest companies are a open source platforms, each builds an alternative to Big Tech, and I even extol the virtues of Utility Tokens and Web3 smart contracts in the face of massive opposition here on HN which has mostly ever seen Shareholder Capitalism. They haven’t really understood how taking VC or going public creates a parasitic class — equity investors — who every earnings call expect profits and rents to be extracted from all sides of the market. I think a word got pioneered recently by Cory Doctorow — enshittification — to describe what happens in Shareholder Capitalism, whether a company ends up being run by a benevolent dictator (Zuck, who isolated himself from ever being removed, or Elon, who straight up bought Twitter together with a group of friendly sovereign wealth funds) or bought out (FogBugz, Reddit) or acqui-hired and turned into a money-making machine (WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus) while its founders leave in disgust after their golden handcuffs are off.
I recommend everyone TRY to start a project funded by sales of a utility tokens, similar to FileCoin or Ether. Even better if your project already works (IPFS, Ethereum, BitTorrent) by the time you introduce the utility coin.
The reason I prefer this is the same reason funding DisneyWorld through Disney Dollars are better than Disney Inc. shares. It’s “stakeholder capitalism.” The people using the network own the network. The incentives are aligned and there is no parasitic class.
Well — here is an important caveat. Do this only if you are building a PLATFORM, like The Web, because it can benefit the world more by being permissionless and open (and not fake-open like OpenAI).
I like DHH, and his and his cofounder’s opinionated approach to, well, everything. Ruby on Rails was opinionated. Their company stood for building products you charge for and never taking VC. (I think Atlassian and JetBrains toom that even further.)
Until today, we never took VC. The way I live my personal life I have never attracted gold-diggers and I guess the same thing applied here… both my largest companies are a open source platforms, each builds an alternative to Big Tech, and I even extol the virtues of Utility Tokens and Web3 smart contracts in the face of massive opposition here on HN which has mostly ever seen Shareholder Capitalism. They haven’t really understood how taking VC or going public creates a parasitic class — equity investors — who every earnings call expect profits and rents to be extracted from all sides of the market. I think a word got pioneered recently by Cory Doctorow — enshittification — to describe what happens in Shareholder Capitalism, whether a company ends up being run by a benevolent dictator (Zuck, who isolated himself from ever being removed, or Elon, who straight up bought Twitter together with a group of friendly sovereign wealth funds) or bought out (FogBugz, Reddit) or acqui-hired and turned into a money-making machine (WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus) while its founders leave in disgust after their golden handcuffs are off.
I recommend everyone TRY to start a project funded by sales of a utility tokens, similar to FileCoin or Ether. Even better if your project already works (IPFS, Ethereum, BitTorrent) by the time you introduce the utility coin.
The reason I prefer this is the same reason funding DisneyWorld through Disney Dollars are better than Disney Inc. shares. It’s “stakeholder capitalism.” The people using the network own the network. The incentives are aligned and there is no parasitic class.
Well — here is an important caveat. Do this only if you are building a PLATFORM, like The Web, because it can benefit the world more by being permissionless and open (and not fake-open like OpenAI).
Tim Berners-Lee on why the Web stayed open and permissionless: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QXmEcku6Udk