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105 sats \ 4 replies \ @abetusk 24 Sep 2021
I have absolutely no experience pitching to VC, so I will take no offense at all for ignoring my comments or if I'm completely off base, but here are my suggestions:
- First slide should be what it is, not what it's like. What it's like should be a by-line underneath the header of what it's like. For example: "Stacker News: A place for people who are passionate about Bitcoin to talk about Bitcoin, using Bitcoin" with, in smaller text underneath it "It's like Reddit but we pay you Bitcoin". Maybe there's a way to be more descriptive by saying it's a news aggregator but with comments and upvotes that translate into Bitcoin payments.
- Overall, the slides should not be paragraphs, in my opinion. They should be bullet points with easily digested information with the idea that the main narrative and story comes from you presenting, with the highlights of your narrative in the slide
- Where possible, include pictures, graphs, etc. to break up the walls of text. Graphics provide relief and easily digestible information
- I would take out the origin story. I think this slide is really meant as a proxy for "why stacker.news" but I would answer that question more directly ("A place to talk about Bitcoin with people who are passionate about Bitcoin, using Bitcoin").
- "Online Bitcoin Communities" - again, I would try to break this wall of text and address each point. If it were me, I would say something like "Twitter is great! but ...". You might even consider taking out this slide and folding into the next, because the "Problems with online communities" addresses the problem more directly. Maybe have an asterisk in the "Problems..." slide to give examples of Twitter and Reddit
- "In person communities" is this needed? You're trying to say that people behave better when something is at stake but it's not clear that Bitcoin incentives are staking reputation so much as staking money. Case in point, reputation isn't as valuable as one might think. There are plenty of people on Twitter and Facebook who have their reputation on the line and say some pretty crappy stuff.
- In the "Vision"
- don't use Sybil, use sockpuppet with an asterisk and text at the bottom saying that it's the technical term is "Sybil"
- I wouldn't use "play-to-earn" and use something that sounds less like "pay-to-play". I would use something more akin to "Real money for upvotes" or something similar.
- "Select praise" - again, wall of text. Try to put twitter handle pictures next to the quote to humanize. Try to put more pictures next to the people quoting
- "How we'll get more users":
- I would absolutely not do the "exclusive = value" proposition. I'm very much in the camp that you should be allowing people to send 'invites' to their friends with some small number of sats (20-100) so they can get started. In my opinion, lowering the friction to join is what you want and exploiting social effects of having friends share this nerdy/weird thing they're passionate about is a better path to success. I would be wary of someone who has so few users, so little growth and/or money claiming that they'll make it because they're "exclusive".
In general, I would try to keep the slides short, easily digestible and have lots of graphics, if possible. If you have the slides on in the background when you're talking/pitching, all the more reason to have the highlights that easily complement your narrative. You don't want people's attention divided between listening to you and reading the wall of text in the background.
Something you haven't really touched on is moderation. If SN ever gets bigger, I think moderation is inevitable. The good news is that you can actually pay your moderators, or have people tip them, etc. etc. through the site. Moderator burnout is a problem on Reddit, I believe, so this is one way to mitigate against that.
Here's some example pitch decks I just found randomly.
And thanks for posting. This level of transparency is really appreciated.
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3 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 24 Sep 2021
This is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I've gotten similar feedback about too much text. My main concern is I'll be sending the deck over email and not presenting it in all cases so I kind of need to "inline" explanations. I might record a youtube video or something though instead in which case I'll definitely back off the text. I should break it up in bullets at least though - I just tend to feel bullets are a drag and wanted to tell it more like a story, but after feedback this is probably misguided.
Useful feedback all around that I'll try to integrate before escalating to the "intended" audience.
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23 sats \ 0 replies \ @BryanMillstein 25 Sep 2021 freebie
This is a good opportunity to record a Loom video. It basically records your screen while overlaying a small circular frame that captures your face. So you can click through your deck while speaking. The result is a video you can share that shows your pitch deck and you talking through it. Best of both worlds.
You can look at an example I recorded of a product demo I did. It’s on the bottom of this page usetypo.com (only shows on desktop).
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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 25 Sep 2021
Wanted to circle back here.
I'm not trying to draw a through-line between reputation and money as much as I am comparing a game theory matrix. Staking money is better than nothing for encouraging good behavior. More below.
Reputation is valuable in person, wouldn't you agree? There's a reason we save our obscenity shouting for online communities. There's a disconnect between real world and online reputation, especially anonymous communities. Online reputation matters less, a bad online reputation "costs" less, than in person reputation. I think money can make it cost at least as much as the staking costs in person. There are differences between money and reputation though obviously and the value of each is subjective.
How do you think about this in the context of Clubhouse? I believe their exclusive invite system was at least half of the reason they grew so fast. Invites became scarce and valuable so people were eager to send them and to beg for them. It's counter-intuitive but the effects of closing something off can make it grow faster.
I like this idea too.
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @abetusk 25 Sep 2021
I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. I believe Facebook and Twitter are better than other communities (4chan, say) because they have reputation tied to the profile. That is, the requirement of Facebook and Twitter to associate your real world identity with your online profile does dis-incentivize bad behavior. Yet, even with FB and especially with Twitter, people do behave very badly online.
I'm saying, associating your real world identity with your online profile isn't enough to disincentivize bad behavior. My belief is that the online identity, even when it's associated with your real world one, is still anonymous enough to embolden people to behave badly.
I guess I'm making a subtle argument. You're saying Bitcoin brings online identity to the internet. I'm saying a) that's not what's going on, it's bringing personal economic incentives to the internet and b) regardless, online reputation isn't enough.
In my view, microtransactions, implemented by Bitcoin, say, provide a potentially much stronger forcing function for people to behave well. If behaving badly on the internet costs you money, people tend to be strongly dis-incentivized from behaving as such.
I don't claim to have a big understanding of the "exclusive = value" proposition goes, and I'm certainly don't know anything about Clubhouse, but I will point out there's a difference between "exclusivity" and "inclusive but intentional".
Studio 54 was exclusive. It was a status symbol to be able to get in. I imagine the value only increased once they were able to get higher status celebrities coming, further fueling the perception of value. Someone getting into Studio 54 might have the perception of their social standing or "class" raised because they were allowed into the same space as celebrities. In this context, the exclusivity signals a status symbol.
Contrast this with the Bitcoin community. It's "exclusive" in the sense it takes a lot of domain knowledge, time, effort and probably some thick skin, depending on which community you access. The exclusivity, at least in part, comes from the difficulty of learning and understanding, not something synthetic, in my opinion. I would categorize this more as "inclusive but intentional", in that the community is intentionally filtering for people who are interested in Bitcoin but otherwise actively encouraging people to participate.
My understanding of Clubhouse was that it was kind of the "GMail" model...offer something very nice to a few people, allow them to invite their friends but otherwise don't do a large marketing push. If I were to make a guess, I would say that Clubhouse offered a good service (Zoom but without the friction?) and used viral/grass roots/word of mouth to do their marketing, just like GMail, and that the exclusivity was mostly a non-factor.
My advice is to at least do some research so that you're not succumbing to some fundamental attribution error. You use Clubhouse as an example. Have you talked to the folks at Clubhouse to see what their intent with that strategy was and why they did it? Have you done research into other people who have done that model and have succeeded? Have you done research into other people who have done that model and failed? When does it work and why?
The reason I'm pushing back on this is because I've seen this reasoning and model fail many times. All my evidence is anecdotal, so I'm not in any position to say whether it works or not, in general, but I suspect the reasons why this "exclusive = value" tactic works is because the people pushing it already are celebrities, have a brand name or some other social clout that they're capitalizing on, or they draw in others who do.
Most of the time, for most people, you have to fight to promote an idea, even if it's really really good. History is littered with engineering and mathematics that were exceptional but forgotten because nobody listened to their creator, only to be picked up at some later time when someone figured out how to use it or market it well.
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24 sats \ 4 replies \ @nout 24 Sep 2021
On self-sustainability (not necessarily the top question, but important), so the target is 100k users where currently the page is "making" 75 sats per user, which means 0.07'500'000, so roughly $3500 per month. Is that roughly correct math when excluding future monetization approaches?
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 24 Sep 2021
I hadn't done the math per user yet.
We've currently made 30 sats per registered user (15,000/500) or ~75 sats per monthly lurker cumulatively over a 3-5 month period so let's roughly say 10-20 sats/user/month. So we're looking at more like $500-$1000/mo at current prices with 100k users (assuming the product freezes in terms of monetization or engagement/user).
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 25 Sep 2021
Been thinking about this more. This was something @lylepratt also recommended I compute. It's not intuitive for me to think in these terms tbh (and it betrays how green I am) but I think it's really helpful for reasoning about SN as a business. If it's going to be profitable this metric is really important.
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12 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 25 Sep 2021
The one question I would ask you - are you sure getting VC investment is the right thing for the product at this point? Getting money can hurt business more than not having enough money in the early stages. There is something immensely valuable in being forced to make the business work or else it dies.
I'm just bringing this up for you to consider, VC investment could indeed be the best step...
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 25 Sep 2021
Questions are the best answers IMO.
I’m definitely trying to weigh the risks of taking money. The problem is I’m running on fumes financially and if I’m forced to take on all the risk of the product myself that could similarly snuff out the product’s future - either because I can’t afford the time/servers or because I’ll have to make the site prohibitively expensive.
The other reason I’m asking for money is because it forces conversations like these. Regardless of whether I take money, people who understand business much better than I do are giving me feedback and feedback is worth more than money IMO.
Another reason to take money is to get more people to have skin in the game who have complementary expertise to my own.
It might not be the right thing to do ultimately, but it’s hard to tell without asking.
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3 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 24 Sep 2021
Very early draft of the pitch deck. I've never raised money before so forgive the noobness. But if anyone has any advice on how you might improve it, please let me know.
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 25 Sep 2021
What is the problem that Stacker News solves in the short term and what is the thing it solves in long term? "This is the problem" slide and "This is the solution" slides can be quite powerful. If you get the person you are presenting to understand that, they will be on your side.
To hint some, if you think about different platforms, like Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit, Mastodon... there's a lot of nuance, but they each solve their particular niche and they do it well.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 25 Sep 2021
Yes this is great idea.
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2 sats \ 2 replies \ @LibreLoya 25 Sep 2021
Using stacker.news as a lightning address could be an additional source of revenue (via lightning fees for using the site as a custodial wallet).
"Lightning tips to: libreloya@stacker.news"
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1 sat \ 1 reply \ @LibreLoya 25 Sep 2021
With the added benefit that people will begin posting this to their twitter bios. Increasing traffic to the site.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 25 Sep 2021
Definitely plan to do Lightning addresses in the next couple of weeks
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