Wow. Pratt's obsession with Kickstarter "ripping off" Fundable is especially silly considering that both are essentially variants of Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer Protocol, published in 1998 [1]. (That paper is not even the first instance of the basic idea, just one of the most well-known.)
Edited to add: I'd be really interested to see one of these sites implement the Rational Street Performer Protocol [2], which essentially means that each donor pledges matching funds ("I'll donate $X for every $Y that anyone else pledges, up to a maximum of $Z"). This gives individuals a stronger incentive to pledge more; the hard part is coming up with a simple explanation that first-time users will understand.
Is there a list of websites that provide services based on the street performer protocol (or something similar)? I like the whole escrow release idea, kind of how Blender was made open source.
Yeah, the basic idea is clever, but hardly novel. Back in 2004 my friend and I entered our college's business plan competition with a plan for a music site based on this kind of funding model. We originally got the idea from an article on corante.com.
If any site could claim credit for making the broader notion of crowd funding mainstream it's kiva. There are now a whole range of sites, including many niche sites, that are variations on the same theme. Claiming ownership of the idea of crowd funding and singling out kickstarter is incredibly myopic.
Yeah, that's really where it takes a turn for the surreal. "How not to promote," indeed - and the scary thing is how you can sympathize with his bitterness and sort of see how there, but for the grace of God, go you.
The part where he calls the founder of the list a troll is also choice.
I cannot tell you how painful it is to watch 5 assholes take your idea and run with it and not even give you credit. I hate all 5 of them for that. If I see them, I may punch each one of them in the face. If you have never started your own company and then had someone else steal the credit for what you worked hard to develop, you don't understand.
yikes, sounds like entrepreneurship really doesn't suit John.
All it took was 5 super-connected people at Kickstarter (especially Andy Baio) to take a concept we worked hard to refine, tweak it with Amazon Payments, and then take credit. You could say that that's capitalism, but I still think you should acknowledge people that you take inspiration from.
The thing is being well connected does matter. And I wouldn't say that's just calling it capitalism. Further, getting an idea off the ground is hard regardless of how well you are connected and how good the idea is. The fact that Facebook is "the" social networking site shows that one idea can become successful while earlier attempts fall by the wayside. It happens everyday. Perhaps Kickstarter will be wildly successful, or perhaps not, but the connectedness of the founders is only one part of Kickstarter's rise.
To the issue of giving credit where credit is due. If Kickstarter did not use the author's code or his/her own works, then the author deserves no explicit named credit. Just as Google deserved no explicit named credit from Microsoft when it released Bing. Not to mention the other possible legal ramifications if Kickstarter came forward and publicly acknowledged their idea was based on Fundable's.
Pledgebank has been doing this since 04 at least. I run petitionspot so I have been watching sites like this and they just didnt do a good job. Just look at thepoint.com ( now groupon ) - They tore it up because they did a good job. They were in chicago, not the valley.
If you're a "scanner" rather than a by-the-word reader, some advice here.. make sure you don't quit before you get about 7 paragraphs in. That's where it starts getting funny/sad.
Let me rephrase my comment this way: The photo is unprofessional and coupled with the related drama reinforces the impression that the guy is full of it.
I'm generally all in favor of calling people out when they act like internet tough guys, but I'm puzzled that one use of the word douchebag qualifies with you. To each his own.
> By nature, most engineers try to tear projects down and explain why things won't work or are "too much work." It's often a consequence of how most of them can interpret minor hangups as major, nearly-insolvable problems. That's why you have to find those rare engineers, like Google engineers or Apple engineers, who have a respect for the arts and humanities. Those are the engineers who create breakthroughs and push the limits of existing technologies. NeXT, a computer company from the 1990's, was a very good example of this and its innovations are still being felt today. Its technologies underly the iPod, Mac OS X, and the iPhone. Its hardware manufacturing advances were far ahead of its time.
> If you are saying that this project is not feasible, you are simply incorrect. Non-specialist observers can see that the technology to accomplish this is available. We may not yet know how it's going to work specifically, but we'll find engineers and programmers who want to make it work.
It appears the author has the wrong idea that a good idea demands exclusive success...if that were the case, I would imagine most of us would be millionaires.
You can't complain about something being hard to execute on and then bitch because others executed the idea better than you could. That's just the nature of the game.
That was my (probably engineer-biased) take as well. Pratt seems to think that their awesome idea even with shitty execution (by his own admission) should have won the day.
For those of you who insist on thinking that the truth always lies in between two accounts of a situation, I urge you to drop that misguided notion, especially for this situation.
Customers are encouraged to use Kickstarter as a replacement for Fundable.com and seek legal action against Louis Helm personally should he fail to resolve your payment issues promptly.
I would have liked the article to go into more depth about
his rejections and if he used the rejection feedback to change
his marketing strategy. My guess is when things start heading downhill it all turns into personal problems so I would ignore that stuff in the analysis.
Good gravy this is sad-not to mention embarrassing for other Oregonian entrepeneurs like myself.
Connected people (usually) aren't born connected. It's simply a byproduct of past success. They work hard, network, execute, iterate, succeed and get people's attention.
If you can't figure that after 4 years, too bad for you.
He doesn't strike me as the sort that's going to be able to make Portland work with him. Collaboration needs some cooperation; which, well, not his strong suit obviously.
I wish being connected was such an innocent and purely merit based thing. I don't know anything about this particular case, but in general that's wishful thinking.
Yeah, trying to defuse expert criticism by accusing experts of being narrow-minded really sets off my crackpot alarm. (History is full of cases where expert consensus was wrong, but I think these cases are notable precisely because they are exceptional.)
I was happy when I heard of Fundable in 2005, not because it was a cool new idea but because it was an old idea overdue for someone to do it right. (In fact, in 2001 I owned the domains 'payzi.com' and 'tipzi.com' -- as possible homes for some sort of audience-sourced creative-project funding system to complement the Bitzi metadata service.)
Fundable didn't quite do it right, for whatever reasons. Now I'm happy the concept is getting another try from another team.
"I cannot tell you how painful it is to watch 5 assholes take your idea and run with it and not even give you credit. I hate all 5 of them for that. If I see them, I may punch each one of them in the face." ... "I am not very bitter because I realize how much I learned and how much I got to experience"
yeah, the comments make me think that we got a little carried away with the schadenfreude aspect. but i'd argue that this type of posting does serve a real purpose. now i know not to have anything to do with pdxcell, for example.
It's a set of reminders on how you can go wrong. Every time any of us hears ourselves say something similar to what he said, we're going to back off real quick.
And frankly, Michael Pusateri's response at the end was pretty wonderful.
I feel somewhat obligated to reply because I originally tweeted this (and with a title similar to the above).
I didn't do this to kick the guy while he's down. It's that on Twitter I knew enough people working in various roles in startups and even just most companies that I thought this would be a good warning to all of them of what never to do. You don't ever publicly accuse your competitor of outright ripping off your idea (if that really was the case, take them to court, but it's clearly not appropriate here). You don't publicly attack your co-founder because it didn't work out for whatever reason. You especially don't do either one in an email to a group of pretty tech-savvy and possibly well-connected people and then go on to attack said group when they don't respond favorably because oh noes, they're being unfair to you. All because you wanted to tell them about your new startup.
Pratt seems to want to get more connections and more interested eyes looking at his new project for funding and development and more, and he's not helping his case by acting the way he does. All this bad press could have been prevented if he had edited out most of his original email. It should have been something like "Hey, remember me, we might have met before at a previous BarCampLA...I was one of the guys behind Fundable. I'm now working on a new startup called PDXCell, and I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out!". Not this burning-all-bridges tactic. I tend not to talk much at BarCampLA events, but I've still met people there looking to fund startups, talented developers/engineers/hackers, marketing types, and more. That's a lot of potentially useful connections that will now remember this guy as someone never to work with.
So while some of the comments here might really be kicking the guy while he is down, I saw this link as an educational moment, especially to HNers that might someday (if not already) find themselves tempted to do the same. I'd hope Pratt realizes what he's doing wrong eventually..
If you comment on tech blogs like this, you're probably a loser. People who accomplish things don't have time to leave comments in tech blogs unless there are stories written about them.
That means if you are reading this, you are probably a loser.
Hey, HNers! Keep baiting him! The weather satellites show a spike in temperature over his location. At the rate he's steaming up, he'll explode into a fine red mist in a couple of hours!
("Fags"? Really? This from a grown-up? Utterly bizarre. Is this a fake account or something? It's done well, if so.)
Yeah. I can't believe anybody would really use the "f" word in a forum like this (or ideally anywhere, but especially in an otherwise civil, focused forum like this). Probably (hopefully?) a fake account.
I was referring to the follow up comments made on BarCampLA using the same gmail account as his original post there. Those comments have the same tone as the ones made here.
82 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 87.1 ms ] threadEdited to add: I'd be really interested to see one of these sites implement the Rational Street Performer Protocol [2], which essentially means that each donor pledges matching funds ("I'll donate $X for every $Y that anyone else pledges, up to a maximum of $Z"). This gives individuals a stronger incentive to pledge more; the hard part is coming up with a simple explanation that first-time users will understand.
[1]: http://www.schneier.com/paper-street-performer.html
[2]: http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh/rspp
The part where he calls the founder of the list a troll is also choice.
yikes, sounds like entrepreneurship really doesn't suit John.
All it took was 5 super-connected people at Kickstarter (especially Andy Baio) to take a concept we worked hard to refine, tweak it with Amazon Payments, and then take credit. You could say that that's capitalism, but I still think you should acknowledge people that you take inspiration from.
The thing is being well connected does matter. And I wouldn't say that's just calling it capitalism. Further, getting an idea off the ground is hard regardless of how well you are connected and how good the idea is. The fact that Facebook is "the" social networking site shows that one idea can become successful while earlier attempts fall by the wayside. It happens everyday. Perhaps Kickstarter will be wildly successful, or perhaps not, but the connectedness of the founders is only one part of Kickstarter's rise.
To the issue of giving credit where credit is due. If Kickstarter did not use the author's code or his/her own works, then the author deserves no explicit named credit. Just as Google deserved no explicit named credit from Microsoft when it released Bing. Not to mention the other possible legal ramifications if Kickstarter came forward and publicly acknowledged their idea was based on Fundable's.
Can't imagine why this Pratt guy is having difficulties with that.
Pledgebank has been doing this since 04 at least. I run petitionspot so I have been watching sites like this and they just didnt do a good job. Just look at thepoint.com ( now groupon ) - They tore it up because they did a good job. They were in chicago, not the valley.
I'm not particularly impressed by his antics but I don't think name-calling adds anything to this discussion.
I'm generally all in favor of calling people out when they act like internet tough guys, but I'm puzzled that one use of the word douchebag qualifies with you. To each his own.
> By nature, most engineers try to tear projects down and explain why things won't work or are "too much work." It's often a consequence of how most of them can interpret minor hangups as major, nearly-insolvable problems. That's why you have to find those rare engineers, like Google engineers or Apple engineers, who have a respect for the arts and humanities. Those are the engineers who create breakthroughs and push the limits of existing technologies. NeXT, a computer company from the 1990's, was a very good example of this and its innovations are still being felt today. Its technologies underly the iPod, Mac OS X, and the iPhone. Its hardware manufacturing advances were far ahead of its time.
> If you are saying that this project is not feasible, you are simply incorrect. Non-specialist observers can see that the technology to accomplish this is available. We may not yet know how it's going to work specifically, but we'll find engineers and programmers who want to make it work.
You can't complain about something being hard to execute on and then bitch because others executed the idea better than you could. That's just the nature of the game.
For those of you who insist on thinking that the truth always lies in between two accounts of a situation, I urge you to drop that misguided notion, especially for this situation.
Customers are encouraged to use Kickstarter as a replacement for Fundable.com and seek legal action against Louis Helm personally should he fail to resolve your payment issues promptly.
From the comments that pretty much sums up why he failed.
The quick synopsis: He gathered fundraiser money then just kept it and never returned it or dispersed it to the users. (Explains the police charges)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=856301
http://img18.yfrog.com/img18/2396/s8u.png
(image from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=858033 )
Connected people (usually) aren't born connected. It's simply a byproduct of past success. They work hard, network, execute, iterate, succeed and get people's attention.
If you can't figure that after 4 years, too bad for you.
I was happy when I heard of Fundable in 2005, not because it was a cool new idea but because it was an old idea overdue for someone to do it right. (In fact, in 2001 I owned the domains 'payzi.com' and 'tipzi.com' -- as possible homes for some sort of audience-sourced creative-project funding system to complement the Bitzi metadata service.)
Fundable didn't quite do it right, for whatever reasons. Now I'm happy the concept is getting another try from another team.
Good god.
And frankly, Michael Pusateri's response at the end was pretty wonderful.
I didn't do this to kick the guy while he's down. It's that on Twitter I knew enough people working in various roles in startups and even just most companies that I thought this would be a good warning to all of them of what never to do. You don't ever publicly accuse your competitor of outright ripping off your idea (if that really was the case, take them to court, but it's clearly not appropriate here). You don't publicly attack your co-founder because it didn't work out for whatever reason. You especially don't do either one in an email to a group of pretty tech-savvy and possibly well-connected people and then go on to attack said group when they don't respond favorably because oh noes, they're being unfair to you. All because you wanted to tell them about your new startup.
Pratt seems to want to get more connections and more interested eyes looking at his new project for funding and development and more, and he's not helping his case by acting the way he does. All this bad press could have been prevented if he had edited out most of his original email. It should have been something like "Hey, remember me, we might have met before at a previous BarCampLA...I was one of the guys behind Fundable. I'm now working on a new startup called PDXCell, and I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out!". Not this burning-all-bridges tactic. I tend not to talk much at BarCampLA events, but I've still met people there looking to fund startups, talented developers/engineers/hackers, marketing types, and more. That's a lot of potentially useful connections that will now remember this guy as someone never to work with.
So while some of the comments here might really be kicking the guy while he is down, I saw this link as an educational moment, especially to HNers that might someday (if not already) find themselves tempted to do the same. I'd hope Pratt realizes what he's doing wrong eventually..
That means if you are reading this, you are probably a loser.
Sorry, fags.
-John Pratt (yes, it's me)
("Fags"? Really? This from a grown-up? Utterly bizarre. Is this a fake account or something? It's done well, if so.)