It's nothing close to that video, but I use VLC's "playback speed" settings to watch TV at around 160%. It is definitely something you adapt to...I used to have trouble at 130%, and now that seems slow.
(If you do this, you also learn to appreciate good enunciation. Stephen Colbert is completely listen-to-able at 200%. His guests, not so much.)
Domains - have my portfolio at hackernames.com. It's a good way to exercise your hacker knowledge and you can always use them yourself if you aren't able to find a buyer.
Forgive my bluntness, but my impression of domain sitting is essentially the same as patent trolling. It's not contributing anything to the economy or society, it just seems like legalized extortion of companies who just want to do business.
This couldn't be further from the truth. Have you read Edward Bernay's book called "Propaganda"? Do check it out. Your impression of things is no doubt a result of a good spin job.
Domain investments are a proper alternative asset class and many people (some of whom have gone to the best schools in the world) are active players.
It seems like a bit of deflection to point me to a book written in 1928. My impression of domain sitting might be the result of spin, but domains didn't exist in 1928, so that book is not going to explain why what I said "couldn't be further from the truth."
I didn't say that domains aren't an asset; that has little to do with what I was talking about. I'm not saying they're not a good investment, I'm just saying my impression is that they're a kind of investment which does nothing to further society, like other sorts of investments do.
My comment was about the source of your "impression". I'm sure you'd agree that you weren't just say strolling along the banks of the Danube contemplating m-theory, when out of the blue - BAM! A thought came upon you - quite randomly - giving you the impression that you now contend you own.
So rather than post an emotional response, why not engage that no doubt massive neocortex of yours and investigate. I give it to you to decide. And of course I'm being snarky here, it's a shortcoming of mine ;)
I'm a bit flabbergasted by your comments, but a quick look at your comment history doesn't indicate that you're trollish, so I'll try to answer under the assumption you comment in good faith.
I started by stating that my opinion was an "impression". Obviously by using the word "impression," which by definition means "an opinion (esp.) formed on the basis of little evidence," I was allowing that my opinion was influenced by external and implicit sources. I then asked for more informed input on the possibility that I was lacking an understanding of the issue.
Your response started with "this couldn't be further from the truth," from which I assumed you would go on to challenge the content of what I had said. Instead of countering what I said, or even providing input (which I would value, since you present that you know about this subject) you resorted to challenging the source of my opinion...the very opinion I'm trying to become more informed about. This is a red herring, and I tried to say as much. If you considered my response "emotional" then I'm sorry, but you misread my tone.
But all that said, I have given this independent thought and have come to the same conclusion: that by all I've come to understand about domain sitting, the act of buying domains that you don't wish to develop in order to sell them at outrageous markup later does not provide value to society, and in fact has negative value as it raises the cost of doing business without compensating by contributing value elsewhere.
Perhaps you misunderstand what I mean by domain-name sitting, which would seem to be true given the completely irrelevant link you provided above. The Fairwinds Partners' FAQ talks about having a cohesive domain-name strategy as part of a greater branding and trademark initiative. I fail to see its relevance to domain-name sitting.
"the act of buying domains that you don't wish to develop in order to sell them at outrageous markup later does not provide value to society".
First of all friend (may I call you that?), please chilax. No need to be flabbergasted.
A couple of points I'd like to make. To begin with, in my belief system, as the owner of an asset, you (me or WHOMEVER), has the right to do with that asset whatever you wish.
If you buy something - for whatever intention - I have no right to project my beliefs about what is or isn't appropriate use for YOUR PRIVATE PROPERTY.
As an example, if you were to buy a plot of land (whatever your intention), does someone have the right to say, "you're not adding value to society" because you don't develop it?
I'm a firm believer that if a person doesn't know or appreciate the value of something, they are not the best owner of it.
But that's another issue.
Imagine this. You and I both have an equal amount of free time per week - say 20 extra hours to do what we so desire.
I decide to play online scrabble, write random HN posts and yell at the screen when people get answers wrong on Jeopardy.
You on the other hand, decide to use your time doing other things. You spend hours:
-reading through scientific journals (a good source of emerging technologies and future generic domain names that will be popular)
-analyzing data from keyword research tools
-charting data you found on DNSalesPrice.com
etc etc
After putting in the work, you find and invest in a small portfolio of domain names.
Now, one day I read The Lean Startup and decide I want to have a go at this thing called a "start up".
Doing whatever research I so decide, I think up a domain name.
Now, it turns out that the domain name has been registered.
By whom?
By none other than you.
So, I send an email and ask you to quote me a price.
When I get an email from you quoting a price that's in my mind at an "outrageous markup" - I start blasting you on forums.
Forget the fact that:
a) neither of us had some kind of unfair advantage.
You decided to put in the work it takes to find and acquire these assets - I on the other hand decided to enjoy my leisure time
b) Another party comes along who sees the value in your "outrageous markup" and happily pays you. Not only that, they turn the investment they made into the asset they bought from you into a 25+% ROI (or more....far better than the stock market, wouldn't you agree?)
c) They also substantially lower their customer acquisition costs via their media buys with the right strategic domain investment (content on this relationship here - http://www.ozdomainer.com/domain-names-podcast-episode-19-wi... 15:30 difference between good domain and a bad one is [approx] 4 to 1)
One could go on, but I'll stop here.
I find it shocking when people blame other people for "extortion" for making smart business decisions that, had they had either the foresight or the work ethic, they could also have done.
It's one thing if one fraudulently stole someone's domain then demanded they pay you for its return. Bu when one party takes on the inherent risk involved in ANY kind of investment - then have others lambast them for doing so?
That I can't understand. Having said that, I'll end with a favorite quote of mine (paraphrased Emerson) - "I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it".
Renting quality generics is a good way to go these days as well. Frank Schilling's portfolio collectively pulls more traffic per month than Twitter but he's still managed to largely stay under the radar screen....
How does domain renting work? My first thought would be as soon as the party paying the rent achieved some measure of success, the party receiving the rent could essentially extort them.
Not extortion, usually just a lease to own contract. Say you have a $150,000 domain and a startup wants it, they can lease for $4k/month and pay off the rest when they've raised their next round.
Sales - depends on how many domains you own and how good they are. I make 5-10x returns on every sale though. For the exchange, I usually transfer within registry and only after receiving payment. I've used escrow.com twice for high value domains.
Can you elaborate more on how you make money from them? I have some interesting domains I've had for years -- selling or otherwise trying to monetize them seems interesting.
I sell through domain marketplaces like sedo/afternic/flippa/dnforum. I also reach out to startups directly that correlate to domains I own, it's a very effective way to sell domains. You can also develop them into SEO/amazon referral sites for product-related domains. I know a lot of people that make thousands per month off of pure referral sites, mostly auto-generated.
It's not my primary income, it's something I do on the side. Once you've bought a domain, you don't need to do much work after the initial parking setup, which takes about 5 minutes.
Great points, your article was spot on. No, definitely that's not the main issue, although it is one. You can't keep reinforcing why the user is signing up throughout the process the same way you can on the web. All mobile sign-up screens pretty much look the same and I see a lot of users look at it and just delete the app, or delay until later at which point they forget why they downloaded it. And even when they get past it, if they see something else they perceive as a "this is going to take a while" moment, they are going to leave and delete your app. On the web, the time to signup and get use from your app is faster and perceived as faster so I think given a choice between the two, more users would do it on the web.
Most landing pages on the web look the same too. The best signup flows I've seen or created don't need to continually re-enforce why the user is signing up, they just need to lead the user down a logical path towards fulfilling the original value proposition, the reason they typed their password into the App Store and took the time to download your app in the first place.
If the user is bouncing because they think "this is going to take a while" then you either don't have a strong enough value proposition or you're making the user think too hard. Most things can be reduced to simple, one-decision steps, and when you do that things will generally convert better for you.
Even if that wasn't true, which it is (there are still billions of people without internet access), I've spent the majority of my time on the internet and I think I can tell the difference between ads and content.
That's fair. I do have something data about that, however. We tried making our app paid and found that we were now trading 100 free downloads for 2 at $0.99. So now we have 5% of 2 people instead of 100. Regular people are really price sensitive and the problem is they can find something that does something similar to what your app does for free. Like I said, they will not value their own privacy when making that decision, hence they will always choose the free version on mobile. I think in that future that will change, at least that's what we're betting on.
I think you need mobile. Leaving it out is a mistake because you need to be where your customers are (to me - of course it depends on your app). I just think that mobile is the wrong place to start right now.
Sorry for the word overdose. I have a degree in philosophy and computer science; just the right combination to produce overly lengthy and verbose blog posts.
1. Hope you didn't keep your response short merely on account of my comment...i was only jesting.
2. A huge fraction (imo) of the apps available in the app-stores did not need to go native mobile.
Mobile app-stores have mountains of apps that really have nothing mobile specific about them. This astounds me. Yet developers spent serious time/effort building these native apps. Why? I suspect it is the web-noise that continually dangles stats about gazzillion smartphone app downloads that triggers a greed hormone in philosophers and scientists alike, which begins to make them see mobile everywhere.
I am not suggesting that there's no need to address the form-factor issue. Only that "native mobile" of the app-store variety is frequently not a good strategy. Certainly not, as you point out, as a first-option.
Aside: You state "you need to be where your customers are". Yes, but if you define customers as those that play a role in generating revenue (either by paying directly for services rendered, or by permitting you to arbitrage someway), is mobile the place to be? This is obviously only a rhetorical question...you address this in your original article. I am just a bit outraged that the ios store has a million deluded worker bees building apps for it when they won't see a penny. Instead, they could've leveraged their work by owning the entire stack.
I am making two points, the first that we are web-first, and the second that we are revenue-first. I'm not conflating them; that's the point of the article.
In any case, they are related in my mind. In order to justify why we are switching to a paid model, I bring up privacy because I think you are trading the loss of privacy for that of cash when you choose between ad-supported and a paid model on a consumer app. As for going web-first, I think I made the reason clear.
I agree with most of what you said. Sharing needs to be #1 to have viral growth. Large audiences are required for IAP and Advertising to make sense (I'd also add freemium to that list). An intrinsically leaky funnel needs even heavier viral growth to get to those large audiences. Heavy viral growth is probably going to be at odds with privacy.
But I think you need to pay attention to what others are saying. If you can't get users to complete a series of tasks to get to your value proposition, either the (expected) value you're offering is too low, or the expected probability of getting that value is too low.
In other words, with a high enough value proposition, you should theoretically be able to get someone to do something EXTREMELY difficult.
If you'd like, you can drop in the JS code at the bottom of the page and it will make your footnotes easier to read automatically. It's not the jumping that's as much the problem as losing the context upon jumping.
#FirstWorldProblem: Reading footnotes on PG's essays makes you lose your place, so if you're like me you never read them until you get to the bottom. Solution: Bookmarklet.
What's really amazing is that every now and again someone makes HN easier to read and use, and every time after about an hour, no one cares again. Simple text with simple styles just works, because the content is unbelievably good. Everything else is just bells and whistles.
Good job on the bookmarklet, though I am not sure if anyone will actually use it :) I think it's one of those things where you think it's a good idea, but really it's not quote as big of a problem as it seems.
What you're saying is true. It's a small problem and people will forget; they always do. My real intention was to make it easy enough that there was a chance (a very small one indeed) PG would stick it at the bottom of the page and never have to think about it again.
Actually, I thought it was interesting to know what the breakdown was amongst successful startups since I've never seen any data about it, only anecdotes. I did the research. It took several hours. I happen to have a place where I can share the research with people that might care and have something to add. Clearly, I am mistaken.
I guess I'm just cynical about a pattern that I see played out here on HN a lot.
Whenever controversial something hits the front page, there's always a spate of quick and easy responses that turn up in the next few days.
That being said, I think my list of problems still remains.
You say that you have a breakdown of how many founders different successful companies have.
Well, you are already ahead of Ryan Carson and Paul Graham in that you've risen above an exchange of anecdotes at 20 paces.
But I think you oversold it in the title.
"How many founders do successful tech companies have?" is not supported by the data.
First, it's based on a list of "fastest growing". Lots of companies grow fast and then abruptly stop growing. You just substituted one metric in for "success" and didn't say that's what you did.
Second, the list is based on self-submitted reports (scroll down to "Selection and Qualifying Criteria") -- "Deloitte has not audited the ranking ... Some companies that may be eligible to appear in the ranking are not included because they did not submit the required information or otherwise declined to participate".
Third, it doesn't deal with failures, which is more interesting because that is the default condition.
Fourth, it's restricted to North American companies only.
Fifth, how did you define "founder"? That seems to me to still be a slippery wildcard in this whole discussion.
Take Ryan Carson's case. He owns most of the equity. Is he the sole founder? If "founder" is based on legal control, yes. What about the day-to-day? He says he has an employee who is a de-facto co-leader. Are they a founder? Maybe not. What if they'd been there right from the start? And so on.
Good on you for doing the tedious slog of looking up a hundred companies, but ... well, I think you've oversold on the title.
And that's what my gut, knee-jerk, ex-Slashdot cynicism reacted to.
Ok, got you. I can answer these. Indeed, it is not representing all fast growing companies all around the world. However, it doesn't have to. Like I said in the post, there is no reason to believe that biases how many founders they have. Companies with two founders are not more likely to submit themselves to such a report. Anyway, almost all of them are businesses generating tons of revenue. A large percentage of them are public companies and many are 10-15 years old. Feel free to look them up.
A founder is someone listed as a co-founder either on the management page, Wikipedia, or in press mentions. It's not really slippery. It took so much time because I wanted to make sure I was doing it right.
In your position I'd have pointed out that the data set shows a clear departure from Benford's Law, suggesting that something about single founders is weird.
> Like I said in the post, there is no reason to believe that biases how many founders they have.
Different cultures have different ideas about individual risk and teamwork.
> tons of revenue ... 10-15 years old.
Gosh, you mean young companies have more scope for rapid growth and therefore wind up on a self-selected list of rapidly growing companies?
In no way could this sample be biased against failed young companies.
Also unanswered: are there fewer single founders because there are fewer single founders to begin with, or is it because they fail more often?
I was stunned by how fast the blind can "speed listen" in the linked video. Is this something anyone can learn?