Why is it “materialism” when it’s rappers but “capitalism” and “disruption” when done in Silicon Valley?
At least they are producing something at a profit unlike almost every VC backed company being subsidized waiting to be acquired or pawn their money losing business off to the public markets.
Your attempt to unnecessarily insult Silicon Valley in retort, badly falls flat.
VC is a model that works that way intentionally and you're holding that intentional behavior up as though it's incompetence or stupidity. It is in fact an ideal approach to what it attempts to accomplish: high rate of experimentation and very large outcomes.
There's nothing special about most businesses failing within eg five years: that's how it works everywhere, the majority of mainstreet businesses do not survive more than five years. The VC model seeks to dramatically increase the rate of early expansion, in pursuit of locking in market dominance, and trades a higher rate of failure vs the typical hotdog stand, convenience store or restaurant.
Everything from eBay to Google to Apple to PayPal to Facebook to Cisco to nVidia were backed in that wildly successful model. The reason the US has dominated tech globally for half a century now, is thanks to the VC model - a model everyone else has sought to copy, including Europe and China. For good reason: it works very well at what it attempts to accomplish. There is no other scenario where the US builds the enormous tech ecosystem that it has minus the VC approach.
VC is a model that works that way intentionally and you're holding that intentional behavior up as though it's incompetence or stupidity. It
No, I’m not saying that the VCs who backed Uber, Lyft, Dropbox, ElasticCo, Mongo and Tesla are “incompetent”. They did what they set out to do. They invested money, the companies went public and they made a killing. In the meantime, the investors who are buying these money losing companies on the public market are the ones getting duped. They didn’t have a chance to get in earlier on the pre IPO growth because they weren’t “accredited”.
ElasticCo and Mongo for instance were one AWS/GCP/Azure announcement from becoming cannon fodder.
Everything from eBay to Google to Apple to PayPal to Facebook to Cisco to nVidia were backed in that wildly successful model.
As are the companies I named above as well as WeWork....
Google, Apple, and Facebook were all profitable before they went public.
Let’s take an example that’s closer to home - YC. Only two YC companies have ever gone public - Dropbox and PagerDuty, neither is profitable, and Dropbox is being crushed by larger competitors like Microsoft and Google.
The reason the US has dominated tech globally for half a century now, is thanks to the VC model - a model everyone else has sought to copy, including Europe and China.
They also copied our financial system. How did that work out?
On the one hand I'm not entirely sure why you're getting downvoted. On the other hand I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make. If it's just casual racial stereotyping then I guess that accounts for the downvotes. But I thought you may have a broader point about the meaning of trust in ethnic/racial communities in there somewhere, it's unclear.
It was meant to seed the latter discussion you mention. I am not privy to square or venmo marketing practices, but clearly that or some oddity about specific terms each app has results in such a measurable divide.
EDIT: for example this divide doesn't exist afaik for uber/lyft
Why is it racial stereotyping that different communities would use different apps? As an external observer, it sometimes seems to me that one can't mention race in the US without inviting the allusion of racism.
I'm black and have the same observation, I currently live in Portland and everyone here seems to use Venmo, but when I was home during the fourth of July weekend back in Brooklyn everyone used Cash.
For the record, DMC were not sponsored or incentivized by adidas until well after the song was produced and distributed. Basically adidas jumped on an existing trend.
Let’s go with another example “freek a leek” a popular southern rap club song that never crossed over. He even admitted it. “Now I got to give a shout out to Seagrams Gin, cause I'm drinkin' it and they payin' me for it.”
Run-DMC were definitely not sellouts, they sang about Adidas because they genuinely loved them and grew up wearing them. They weren't paid until Adidas took the opportunity to promote them even further. They did reject Calvin Klein ("no friend of mine, don't want nobody's name on my behind")
Additionally, Run-DMC had tons of positive, supportive, pensive and wise lyrics about education ("I go to St. John's University / and since kindergarden I acquired the knowledge / and after 12th grade I went straight to college"), economics ("All day I have to work at my peak /
because I need that dollar every day of the week"), hard work ("He gets better cause he knows he hasta / in 84 he'll be a little faster / cause only practice makes a real Jam Master"), and just being a good person ("here's another point in life you should not miss / do not be a fool who's prejudiced")
IMHO Run-DMC was easily the most inspirational and positive rap group of all time. And the best damn rappers period. RIP JMJ.
Venmo are cunts, they banned me for life and refused to explain and basically treated me like a terrorist. All I did was send money to various people once in awhile to be nice to them. That was it. I hadn’t even used Venmo for 3 months when they banned me out of the blue with a menacing email about how my activity set off red flags. Like they really went out of their way to be dicks for no reason, it was astonishing. If anyone from Venmo is reading this, go fuck yourselves.
Well they are owned by PayPal so no surprise there.
Nothing like trying to buy something on eBay and getting the transaction blocked for potential fraud, calling support and literally being told that there is nothing they can do about it and there is no way to complete the transaction. Thank god there are other payment processors that aren’t complete trash
I am a descendant of an endangered high trust society lineage so I'm genetically programmed to get a dopamine surge when I randomly help others in need. Unfortunately. I'm also rich and I have no loved ones so there isn't much resistance to this wasteful tendency. I also have an occasional death wish so maybe it's the rich male version of a girl who cuts herself. There are also schizotypal motivations like I'll read Timothy 6:10 and get scared of having too much money despite not being religious. Sometimes I also think if I can relive the long lost anxiety of feeling like I'm not making enough money, then my urge to work hard on new projects will come back. The only way Venmo are not cunts is if they could tell I had unhealthy motivations for sending money and they wanted to protect me from myself. Since that obviously isn't what happened, Venmo are cunts.
Cash is still lacking a calculator feature, and I've had some problems sending money to people where it just errors out with no explanation. I wouldn't call it flawless. You can mostly ignore Venmo's public feed if you want to.
This piece sounds like an advertorial, and these artists are almost definitely being paid to mention Cash App.
Seems to be a bit of a non-issue. They're marketing their material to a younger audience so it is why Snapchat, Instagram, etc. get mentions because that is what the audience is into. What would probably make it a more interesting case is if the rappers mentioning Cash App are backers of it (or receive some kind of incentive from the company) I guess.
Jay-Z (and I would imagine others) has been doing this kind of thing for years: giving a hat tip to whatever ventures they're somehow involved in so that the rap advertises (advertisements that people actually go for) some other revenue stream for them.
Rappers (particularly Jay-Z) are famous for getting involved in Alcohol brands. Make a song/music video featuring the brand heavily and watch sales skyrocket.
This article made my morning the other day for these lovely excerpts:
> “I just wanna know your name and your Cash App / It ain’t trick-trick-trickin’, you can have that,” Mr. Bentley soliloquizes on his track, referring to a more efficient way to tip an exotic dancer for her services.
and
> Rapper Brandon [...] called it out in a recent mixtape. The name of the song mentioning Cash App, “Shake It Move It,” can be printed in The Wall Street Journal. The lyrics cannot.
27 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 30.0 ms ] threadAt least they are producing something at a profit unlike almost every VC backed company being subsidized waiting to be acquired or pawn their money losing business off to the public markets.
It's all bad. Pretty sure my downvotes are from precisely those "capitalism" and "disruption" types. Obsession with money is fucking stupid.
VC is a model that works that way intentionally and you're holding that intentional behavior up as though it's incompetence or stupidity. It is in fact an ideal approach to what it attempts to accomplish: high rate of experimentation and very large outcomes.
There's nothing special about most businesses failing within eg five years: that's how it works everywhere, the majority of mainstreet businesses do not survive more than five years. The VC model seeks to dramatically increase the rate of early expansion, in pursuit of locking in market dominance, and trades a higher rate of failure vs the typical hotdog stand, convenience store or restaurant.
Everything from eBay to Google to Apple to PayPal to Facebook to Cisco to nVidia were backed in that wildly successful model. The reason the US has dominated tech globally for half a century now, is thanks to the VC model - a model everyone else has sought to copy, including Europe and China. For good reason: it works very well at what it attempts to accomplish. There is no other scenario where the US builds the enormous tech ecosystem that it has minus the VC approach.
No, I’m not saying that the VCs who backed Uber, Lyft, Dropbox, ElasticCo, Mongo and Tesla are “incompetent”. They did what they set out to do. They invested money, the companies went public and they made a killing. In the meantime, the investors who are buying these money losing companies on the public market are the ones getting duped. They didn’t have a chance to get in earlier on the pre IPO growth because they weren’t “accredited”.
ElasticCo and Mongo for instance were one AWS/GCP/Azure announcement from becoming cannon fodder.
Everything from eBay to Google to Apple to PayPal to Facebook to Cisco to nVidia were backed in that wildly successful model.
As are the companies I named above as well as WeWork....
Google, Apple, and Facebook were all profitable before they went public.
Let’s take an example that’s closer to home - YC. Only two YC companies have ever gone public - Dropbox and PagerDuty, neither is profitable, and Dropbox is being crushed by larger competitors like Microsoft and Google.
The reason the US has dominated tech globally for half a century now, is thanks to the VC model - a model everyone else has sought to copy, including Europe and China.
They also copied our financial system. How did that work out?
This article holds up to my observation that black people use cash app and white people use venmo.
EDIT: for example this divide doesn't exist afaik for uber/lyft
Nelly was rapping about his “Air Force Ones” in the 90s and how he “needs two pair”.
This has been going on forever in hip hop.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jul/11/mondaymediasec...
Additionally, Run-DMC had tons of positive, supportive, pensive and wise lyrics about education ("I go to St. John's University / and since kindergarden I acquired the knowledge / and after 12th grade I went straight to college"), economics ("All day I have to work at my peak / because I need that dollar every day of the week"), hard work ("He gets better cause he knows he hasta / in 84 he'll be a little faster / cause only practice makes a real Jam Master"), and just being a good person ("here's another point in life you should not miss / do not be a fool who's prejudiced")
IMHO Run-DMC was easily the most inspirational and positive rap group of all time. And the best damn rappers period. RIP JMJ.
This piece sounds like an advertorial, and these artists are almost definitely being paid to mention Cash App.
Jay-Z (and I would imagine others) has been doing this kind of thing for years: giving a hat tip to whatever ventures they're somehow involved in so that the rap advertises (advertisements that people actually go for) some other revenue stream for them.
Smart moves, really.
https://theboombox.com/15-rappers-that-dominated-alcohol-ind...
> “I just wanna know your name and your Cash App / It ain’t trick-trick-trickin’, you can have that,” Mr. Bentley soliloquizes on his track, referring to a more efficient way to tip an exotic dancer for her services.
and
> Rapper Brandon [...] called it out in a recent mixtape. The name of the song mentioning Cash App, “Shake It Move It,” can be printed in The Wall Street Journal. The lyrics cannot.