We are the co-founders of STARBACKR - AMA \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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We are the co-founders of STARBACKR - AMA

10.2k sats \ 51 comments \ @RealStarBackr 8 Sep 2022 bitcoin

Hi there Stackers, We are Arun, Egge, and Joe, co-founders of STARBACKR, a platform for digital content monetization.

STARBACKR enables digital content creators to break free from the centralized legacy payment system, leveraging all of the scale of the internet without the layers of friction and fees of traditional financial rails. Starbackr is built on the Bitcoin Lightning network from the ground up, letting you get paid more instantly. Bitcoin acts as our ‘bank’, enabling a platform free of moral censorship and clearing the deck of legacy systems that make online micropayments so challenging (e.g., price restrictions, payout thresholds, and slow withdrawals). All of this is a fancy way of saying we save creators a LOT of money. OnlyFans' creators have paid over 390.000.000 USD ONLY for payment processing in 2021, and we want to get that back in the hands of those making content, not running toll booths.

Having an easy-to-use UX is something we obsess about; creating a frictionless on-ramp for people to interact with Lighting and create gets us out of bed in the morning. STARBACKR comes with an integrated Lightning Wallet with your account, making getting up and running accessible to anyone, regardless of how far down the rabbit hole they already are.

We are early in this journey and growing fast, creators on STARBACKR stacked over 3.9 Million SATS last month, and we are on track to doubling that number this month.

We can’t wait to answer your questions. Ask us anything!

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220 sats \ 0 replies \ @ken 8 Sep 2022

@RealStarBackr will help you monetize Take your business to the skies Be anonymous, wear disguise We don't need to compromise

130 sats \ 2 replies \ @andyleroy 8 Sep 2022

Thanks for taking time for an AMA. I appreciate the push you all are making for LN integration and how that can remove any censorship and pressure in payments.

How do you all think about centralization factors with hosting your platform? Do you all have some sort of decentralized hosting plans in place to reduce reliance on cloud providers should any content you wouldn't want censored violate their TOS?

15 sats \ 1 reply \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

You are very welcome! Decentralizing hosting is something that we think about a lot. Balancing censorship resistance and accessibility is very difficult, especially when you don't own a data center.

Currently, we are focussing on building something that solves a problem for as many people as possible. That's one reason why hosting on Tor was never an option for us for example; we don't want to exclude non-technical users. We can solve a lot by providing permissionless payments to our users, because the biggest pain points for users have not been hosting providers, but payment providers.

There are some projects and providers on our "watch list", but saying that we have found a perfect alternative would not be genuine.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rijndael 10 Sep 2022

Solid. You all could go burn a lot of tiny building the wrong product in a super resilient way. Focusing on building the right thing for your customers first is the way to go

125 sats \ 4 replies \ @pi 8 Sep 2022

I hate to sound like I'm telling you how to run your business, but I find it problematic the mix of adult and “normal” content in the same product/app. I humbly suggest you separate both as two different products, else it could make it difficult for you to scale. Your app is great!

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

Thank you for your feedback and the kind words. We are already separating the content in SFW and NSFW. User will only see SFW content without opting in for NSFW.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @pi 9 Sep 2022

I respectfully disagree.

New SFW posts need to be approved by a human prior to be published, and this process takes several hours. This is precisely why mixing nsfw and sfw content in one product cannot scale and will not work. You'll have to make a decision sooner or later.

The guys at Odysee understood this and filtered out the adult content from lbry.tv

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @RealStarBackr OP 9 Sep 2022

Reddit separates NSFW and SFW very successfully and scales well while doing so. We let users set the NSFW/SFW state themselves and our content team checks posts (assisted by locally deployed software).

Nonetheless we thought about separating types even more. We will have to see which approaches work best.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pi 10 Sep 2022

Thank you.

200 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullama 9 Sep 2022

Hey there Starbackrs!

I think your platform is great, and is one of the most interesting content(images/videos) sites using lightning natively, great companion to Stacker News.

Now, I have to ask this because you say your platform is free of moral censorship. I guess it needs to have some kind of censorship, otherwise it would be hosting illegal images. Anyone in the world can post any type of images.

Who is liable in case someone posts an illegal image? Your company?, the person that posted it?

Also, which laws are applicable?, the laws of where the company is based, and/or where the company is offering its services?

I know this is still early days, but if you grow you will inevitably reach those questions, similar to how Google, Facebook, etc, have done already.

All the best, I think your company is great, and has a lot of potential for growth!

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 9 Sep 2022

Thanks for the feedback and also your kind words! Yes, there has to be some legal censorship. We are based in the US and there are some laws that we have to comply to. But while other platforms put the line right at the beginning of any grey area, we can and will put it at the end of any grey area, giving users and creators as much freedom as possible.

When it comes to content that is illegal, it really differs from case to case. There is some due diligence to be done by us (especially for 18+ content), but in some cases the creator can be liable too. Currently US laws apply, but we have to keep an eye out for that, especially as soon as we actively market in other regions of the world. It is definitely not an easy task, even more so because we build on Bitcoin and have to be vigilant of regulations that could come in the future.

120 sats \ 1 reply \ @w3irdrobot 8 Sep 2022

Does Starbackr support or are there plans to support value-4-value so creators can get paid for partial videos watched and such?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

Currently, there is no “direct” V4V on Starbackr. You can make content available publicly and let users tip you. There certainly are plans for having V4V implemented in many different ways throughout the platform. A good example would be our live streams, which soon can be paid (or tipped) by the minute.

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @fiatjaf 8 Sep 2022

How many active users do you have?

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

In August there were about 1,600 active users on Starbackr, and creators created close to 500 posts.

110 sats \ 4 replies \ @manbytescamera 8 Sep 2022

Interesting project. Seems to me that the you needs to earn money as well. What percentage are you taking? How do we know that you are not incentivized to censor at some later point. Is the integrated lighting wallet noncustodial?

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

Yes, we do need to earn money as well. We are taking a 10% cut of a creators revenue, which is about half (or even less) of what other platforms take. Could you please elaborate a little bit on that censorship-question?

And no, the integrated Lightning wallet is custodial. However, all payment dialogues have an option to display a Bolt11 invoice which can be settled with any external wallet.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @manbytescamera 8 Sep 2022

Thanks for the response. You wrote, a platform free of moral censorship, how do you ensure this. It seems to me, the only way to ensure a platform free of censorship is if the platform were atop a protocol which is censorship resistant and platforms competed for customers who could migrate their content and viewers if censorship occurred. Not sure if that makes sense.

211 sats \ 1 reply \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

If you look into past incidents where platforms imposed moral standards on their creators, you will quickly finds that pretty much all of them were caused by pressure from payment processors. Just by fixing that we can eliminate the biggest risk. But you are absolutely right, a truely decentralised platform is desirable and we will be happy to go that route when A) there are protocols or tools that do not sacrifice accessibility or B) it becomes necessary to ensure freedom of moral censorship

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @manbytescamera 10 Sep 2022

Thanks, I look forward to trying out your platform.

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @And1 8 Sep 2022

Are you planning to implement lnurl-auth?

14 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

We are currently working on adding key-based authentication. It is one of our top priorities right now. LNURL-auth will be part of that, but we want to avoid a long, long list of different login buttons. Right now, we can only leave you with a "soon".

110 sats \ 4 replies \ @cactuscoins22 8 Sep 2022

If you could make a wild guess or really rough estimate, how long would you project it to be before sats are used for common purchases, such as a Big Mac or parking garage fee, in the US?

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @starbuilder 8 Sep 2022

Adding the response from US perspective. I always joke around saying the Whole foods next to my house will be the last one to adopt bitcoin/lightning.. b'cos as of now there is no incentive to change. But there is always 1 or 2 defining moment that will change the course and expecting that to happen in the next few years...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cactuscoins22 8 Sep 2022

Cool, thanks for this perspective. This makes sense.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

This is Egge writing, adding this because this answer is my personal perspective and experience.

I'd guess it will happen a LOT quicker than most people expect. Not far from my hometown a Subway recently started accepting Bitcoin. And I am from Germany, a country thats known to be more conservative and "slow" when it comes to digitilisation.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @cactuscoins22 8 Sep 2022

Wow, that good to hear and interesting for me to learn. Thank you for the response.

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @NetWt1oz 8 Sep 2022

Do you have a strategy to reach pre-coiners that aren't anti-bitcoin, but just don't understand it, or don;t know the benefits?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

Yes. Our strategy to attract pre-coiners is to keep it simple, use US$ for transaction value, have a credit card on-ramp to reduce friction when onboarding, and educate them on the benefits of using bitcoin on the fly. Also, while Starbackr offers some features that are meant for more advanced users, we always try to make the “default” as usable as possible (e.g. one-click payments using the on-platform wallet and having optional bolt11 invoices for users with external wallets)

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @_musallwah 9 Sep 2022

Which content creators are you targeting ( all content creators or a certain category/type)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 9 Sep 2022

We are focussing on creators creating digital and visual content. We would love to support more types that just image/video/live, but building UI/UX that fits all types is difficult.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 8 Sep 2022

what metrics do you use to determine whether you’ve achieved product-market fit?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

We measure active users, post volume and value transacted (both in Sats and USD). Growth of those month-over-month is our KPI right now.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @BeardedSaintRef 8 Sep 2022

How are you different than the other players out there?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

As far as we know there isn’t really any other platform that combines our use-case with a easy to use and accessible LN/Bitcoin implementation. If you could name some, we would be able to go into more details about the differences

100 sats \ 3 replies \ @BlokchainB 8 Sep 2022

When iOS app? And why would a non creator use this? Without real influencers going to this platform it’s hard to see how it grows

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

This highly depends on two things, the dev-resources available and getting it into the app stores. But we are getting there. It’s on the roadmap for Q4 and we are doing our best to keep that promise.

You are right, it is the exclusive content that will make users stick. Starbackr and Bitcoin offers a lot of incentives for creators to migrate their user base though. We are also exploring adding more incentives for creators.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 8 Sep 2022

Hate to state facts but tits drive clicks. Once I see more porn people saying hey follow me on starbackr then I know y’all have made it!!

Or an up and coming music superstar. That’s how SoundCloud blew up!

101 sats \ 0 replies \ @shyfire 8 Sep 2022

Yeah I've always been surprised at the lack of adoption of btc in the adult entertainment industry. Seems like low hanging fruit.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @btcphoto 9 Sep 2022 freebie

You should give the option to send tips with SAT denomination too, not only with USD, as it is in Fountain for example. I should be able to send a tip to somebody with a preset amount of sats just by pressing the like button, just like in fountain.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 9 Sep 2022

We agree and we are currently testing different ways to implement this, without causing UI/UX issues. One approach we favour currently is to have a switch in a users account settings to set a "global" denominator that will affect all price UIs.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 8 Sep 2022

One of the things that seems to have worked for Zion was recruiting an influencer with a massive audience (JP) and apparently giving them equity in the company, real skin in the game. Have you considered doing this or other types of partnerships with creators?

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

Yes, we are definitely exploring how we can sweeten the deal for creators, but it’s to early to get specific. But so far our community has been absolutely amazing. With the current state of digital monetization, every creator has “skin in the game” already and Bitcoin offers a way out.

30 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 8 Sep 2022

As Bitcoiner's we know Starbackr has obvious advantages over fiat-based systems, particularly given that content and Bitcoin are both global.

What type of creator has been your most common creator to date?

How do you think about getting more creators on the platform?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

That really depends on the metric you are looking at. When it comes to traffic and volume the most common type is the casual user that wants to experiment with the platform and maybe dips the toes into the world of monetizing on Lightning. Value wise things look very different. Most of the top earners are more professional content creators; SFW (e.g., photographers) as well as NSFW (e.g., adult models).

Joining Starbackr comes with a lot of natural incentives, mostly unlocked by Lightning and Bitcoin. But of course we want to reach out to creators and their fanbases proactively too and give them new spaces and functions to interact with each other.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 8 Sep 2022

How do you find/reach out to existing creators?

What's your pitch to them and how do they typically respond?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

Our pitch to creators right now is reconnecting with well known creators on current platforms and trying to migrate them to STARBACKR. This will usually go to why should they switch or have another platform, what is bitcoin really, the price of bitcoin isn’t look as good as it used to but if we can get over those hurdles they’ll sign-up. Some of them have a very large catalog so the migration process on that is also a challenge.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 8 Sep 2022

What are some the things you wish Bitcoin and Lightning implementations did that they currently don't?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @RealStarBackr OP 8 Sep 2022

One of the biggest pain points for us is usability. It is really hard for a non-technical user to understand why there is Lightning Invoices and Bitcoin Addresses and why those two are not interoperable. Things would get a lot easier if at least custodial solutions would abstract that away from the user. Bitcoin Beach Wallet is a great example, because that wallet will actually understand what type of destination the user entered and choose the right "protocol" for them.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @steepdawn974 12 Sep 2022

When do we see Lnurl-auth "Login with Lightning"?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rijndael 10 Sep 2022

Hey guys! Really excited to see you working on this. I think you’ve got a great journey ahead of you.

Two questions:

Your current marketing is heavy on the “we let you get paid without moral censorship”. How many creators are looking for that specifically? Are you worried about putting yourself in too small a box? You might want to A/B test some other messaging along the way. Some other unfair advantages you have over competitors: creators can get paid faster, no payment thresholds, streaming payments, split payments, etc.
Whats the most surprising thing you’ve learned? Either technically or on the product side, in building on lightning?