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I pulled an all-nighter "constructing" this presentation for @MaxAWebster's LPs (the investor's investors) following a weekend retreat he hosted for his portfolio companies. The whole weekend was awesome and every founder and person I met in Max's circle were awesome. I waited until the last minute (super out of character for me) to construct the talk because I didn't fully understand the context and wanted to gather as much intel as possible.
The intel I gathered from Max and the LPs at the retreat was:
  1. LPs might be aware of the company but not super familiar with the details
  2. Likewise with bitcoin
  3. LPs are more focused on big picture stuff like growth and vision
Also, the talk was only scheduled for 10 minutes so my conclusion was that I shouldn't obsessively qualify things and mostly focus on optimism and entertainment. In the end I'd guess my talk was only 3-5 minutes, which imo is a sign that I spent an appropriate amount of time preparing. I opened the talk with:
I'd like to thank Max for arranging this TedX talk ... I'd like to thank Max for hosting this event. I'm biased, but Max is the best VC in bitcoin, and I've met most of them, or know founders that have met the ones I haven't met.
I'd also like to thank Max's LPs for being rich. Being rich is awesome. I hope to be rich some day.
The rest was me presenting the slides. Shout out to @kepford's advice last year to go very light on text.
Looking at these slides, I wonder if there would be a future for private territories.
Say I want to onboard my colleagues and use the Stacker News platform to have scientific interactions with them, I would not want outside people to join that territory. Maybe something that would work on invitation by the territory owner.
Of course, the other option would be to fork off stacker news and make my own myGroupName.news platform which is kept private from the rest of the world. But this would require maintenance and hosting efforts.
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100 sats \ 3 replies \ @OT 31 Oct
Would they pay for posts? Why?
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At a small scale: I could imagine a framework where I, as their PI, would reward proper work with small incentives. Or them, paying each other small amounts for daily tasks they help each other with. Some carry more burden in the group due to being native speakers, while others are not. The former need to do more admin stuff for the latter. It's kinda on a forced voluntary basis, so this could alleviate this without formalizing it. Also, not necessarily for the v2v aspect, stepping away from the Telegram communications within our group would make it easier to keep track of certain interactions between group members by having it like a forum here available for posterity when turn over happens in the group.
At a large scale: I could imagine larger private territories for all people working in a certain field. It would be like a stack exchange environment where value is rewarded. There might be reasons to consider these as private, such as less requirement for moderation due to outside spam, competition with other groups, IP conflicts when things require patents before being broadcasted, avoiding conflicts between pro and antivaxx people,...
My reference point is to have things always in the public, but I'm sure people will find reasons to require E2EE cases if the SN model reaches a certain critical point.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 31 Oct
I mean, why not a signal or simplex group?
The only difference I can think of is that the received zaps will be visible to the private group. In signal or simplex you'd need to get their LNURL/bolt12/npub address for payments.
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I probably haven't thought this true very carefully.
Another reason is that, as I am in academia, lots of colleagues are quite liberal (whatever that means) and have strong negative opinions on Bitcoin. Bringing them into SN directly where they'd have to face anti-science people (again, whatever that means) might not be the best first experience. Still, I would like them to experience the V2V model and this could be a stepping stone for it.
But you're right, lots of things I enumerated could be done in a telegram group with LNURL addresses. I probably have been spending too much time inside this little SN bubble recently.
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609 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 30 Oct
E2EE private territories are planned
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I presume this means end to end encrypted. Cool!
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 30 Oct
Yes!
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It was an excellent presentation! I love the way that @k00b thinks about Stacker News reaching net energy and becoming alive. This is one of the best models for what a startup (or any entity/life form) is actually trying to achieve.
And thank you for the kind words. I too think that Keyan is one of our era's great builders - not only in Bitcoin, but on all of the web. I'm always honored and excited to be part of the Stacker News journey.
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Spoil him with billions of Bitcoin until net energy is achieved ;)
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Great slides. The thick yellow border has a calming effect. I like the choice of language - economic flywheels, unforgeable information, fusion reactors. The only suggestion I will make is to add connections in your slide that has the phrase “Web of Trust”. I think connections ie such a mainstream word that using it will help people understand very quickly what SN is all about
My two says’ worth
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Hmmm, you're right "connecting people" tends be a common phrase among social media companies.
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Really good stuff imo. With my business hat on got very excited about the story you were building until the last slide. The stuff about fly wheels and reactors got my eyes flashing the proverbial dollar signs but the "decentralized" stuff at the end elicited a doubt that the genie could be captured in the bottle (i.e. where is my lock in? Are people just going to fork this awesome thing and cut me out?). Curious if you got any question / push back about that?
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767 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Oct
Understandable. I view SN as a service provider and if we can make it immortal, I suspect there’s a big business to be had providing services using our software (especially because we already do that). Wordpress is a common example of this working and making the business bigger and better and more profitable than it would’ve been.
Ultimately, I think about where the future is headed. If the biggest social media networks of the future won’t be centralized, what then?
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I see. Makes sense.
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Great! Love the slides! Wish I was there to watch live. I should save this slide deck and start the SN marketing team!
Overall I am thankful for the investors (Mr. Webster) and @k00b for making this site and allowing me blog in a place about topics I care about with an easy way to monetize the content I produce and to help kickstart the circular economy one sat at a time!
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Excellent presentation. It actually shows the essence of Stacker News based on Bitcoin. So it should follow the steps of Bitcoin in its essence and development.
Stacker News causes freedom, generates work and is a source of energy. But above all, just like Bitcoin it is only for some even though its founders wanted it to be for everyone. Humanity is not ready for PoW, that is why they look for easy solutions that turn them into slaves.
They use banks, ETFs, shitcoins and a trail of useless shit in order not to work.
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Very nice. I remember you posted your first one, and I thought that was comical. You have grown a lot.
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114 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Oct
The first one was meant to be comically truthful. This was a different audience and while I may be self-effacing, I won't make other people pay for it.
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The guy fawkes masks are a nice touch.
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Immortal Communities is a heck of an opener, yeah? I'd want to assist with the profitability of a territory before starting one myself. Very Cool!
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Nice work
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I'd like to thank Max for arranging this TedX talk.
In reality, I stumbled on this first line quite a bit. I hadn't sorted out an unambiguous wording beforehand so it didn't land, and my delivery is dry so I can't compensate with a winky voice.
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I've certainly stumbled over a scripted intro that I thought was clever, too, and had it not land at all. I'm glad you didn't let it derail you.
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Public speaking takes practice. Some things hit, other things dont. Just remember it for next time. It all depends on the crowd you are talking to. I remember being super nervous when I first started teaching. Then I figured out I know way more than anyone else about the subject. That in itself gives you confidence.
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16 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 30 Oct
When presenting topics like this it helped me a lot to record myself and listen to it (use whatever, your phone, your video call software...). I also like to write exactly what I'd like to say. I don't use this written text, but it really helps to see the talk written down. Especially when the talk is short, this is not that big of an time investment.
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If I didn’t want to try to get some sleep before the talk, i would've! (Possible based on your past advice.)
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Very nice. Plus I noticed @Undisciplined got an inadvertent shout-out by your choice of screenshot.
Not too thrilled that you used commie imagery to describe us Stackers though! (The Reddit vs. Stacker News slide.) What is this kumbayah nonsense!? We're cowboys not hippies.
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77 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 30 Oct
It’s the commies that are bad, but communities are good - right?
The yoga group was the highest contrast I could think of. The idea was zen - not communism.
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@Car will get your commie instincts straightened out eventually.
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@TonyGiorgio, scam detective, brought up how it looks like an MLM in that territory slide. Total oversight lol.
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Why?Would they pay for posts?
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 20 Nov
You just paid for that comment and have paid for posts.
People pay for things because they get value from them. People pay to post on SN to have other people see their posts and to make money.
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correction...to make sats.
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Great presentation! Everything is about incentives and tuning them correctly will play a major role in the success of SN.
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Your approach—keeping it optimistic, brief, and focused on big-picture vision rather than the nitty-gritty—was exactly what those LPs were likely looking for. :)
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35 sats \ 0 replies \ @mo 30 Oct
It's a bit of a shame you setup the business in this way, the fiat way... there are other ways to operate in the private, especially when Bitcoin is at the core #746325
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