I would imagine a condition of the funding would be to restructure and get the right people in place to continue the mission, ideally more responsibly.
Like, the entire article is saying "we fucked up in various ways" but there is no accountability piece to speak of. Just an ask for more money for a ground up rebuild.
> Just an ask for more money for a ground up rebuild
That seems to misunderstand what they're asking for. As far as I understand, they're asking for money to build version 5, by using everything they built so far. It's not a "ground up rebuild" by any measure, but funding for the next iteration seems to be missing.
I guess there are two things at play. What "ground up rebuild" really means, and a mismatch between what the video says and what the article says.
The video, at the 300s mark (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gTd36cQLzY&t=300s) mentions the current state, and where they are right now, and that they'd need funding to reach the last step. And that it would be a shame to lose the previous steps, when they're "so close" or whatever. So just doing that last step, while keeping the previous ones intact, wouldn't really be "rebuilding from the ground up", at least in my opinion.
But then yeah, the article says "rebuilding things from the ground up" but I'm not sure that's really "tear everything including the community down and start from scratch" but more about how to build "Version 5", about the machines and hardware itself.
But that's me trying to be charitable and understand something that isn't 100% clearly outlined, as you say.
I think the charitable middle ground no matter how you slice it is that whatever funding they receive should in part go towards bringing talent on board that can help them grow and avoid repeating past mistakes. Maybe nobody steps down but they invest in an experienced staff.
They specifically call out the sustainability of the organisation so if it keeps PP going and even just iterating on V4 or growing it such that they can innovate on V5, that's a good use of funding that could rebuild confidence in the team and keep the overall mission going.
If they plug it all into V5, which doesn't seem to be clearly defined, then at some level that might not be any different than giving away $100k to the community. It's a gamble from a donor's point of view, might as well crowd fund it on kickstarter.
There is a world beyond startup exits and stock options and it is a sustainable non profit public good entity. It blows my mind that HN doesn’t have this nuance but I guess the fog of war sets in outside of the Bay Area in California and nobody can see shit outside of the lingering mist of Silicon Valley.
Is it not better to be supported in your effort to do good by being able to volunteer for a stable non-profit over many years? That organisation would have a long term presence and huge influence. It could even lobby the local council or government.
In case you’re confused - the church does that and it is 100% dependent on volunteers who believe.
The difference is that startups are generally very motivated to spend their money well, and non-profits are... not.
It's the difference between the profit motive (simple and easy to understand) and just hoping that the nonprofit leadership is individually motivated (which is much more communicated and hard to verify).
When a startup blows up from overspending, a few investors are out their own money. When a nonprofit does, it tends to stiff the well-meaning public that trusted it with their cash.
The two are not the same. Nobody cares about the rich making a bad investment, but whenever a nonprofit blows up it gets so much harder for the remaining ones to raise money.
Your solution seems to include asking for a lot more money, to recruit outside leadership to work on what looks very much like an ambitious passion project right now, and coming up with a solution to turn it all around before funding runs dry while honoring the core idea behind the project (because that is what people will be donating/funding towards) — instead of betting on the current, apparently intrinsically motivated staff to maybe learn from their mistakes and do what they can to turn this around.
That strikes me, by far, as the more unrealistic solution.
My solution is actually to fuck off this mysterious version 5, that isn’t even defined, and to make PP a serious operation by growing v4 and putting a serious team around it.
Right now it’s not serious. It’s literally the gambler’s fallacy - “we failed but we’re so close”
They use that language, verbatim, in the post. Asking you to chase the loss with them. “We’re so close we just need your support!”
Like, the entire article is saying "we fucked up in various ways" but there is no accountability piece to speak of. Just an ask for more money for a ground up rebuild.