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gratipay / inside.gratipay.com

Here lieth a pioneer in open source sustainability. RIP
https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981
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apply for Y Combinator W2017 #836

Closed chadwhitacre closed 7 years ago

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Working Drafts

screen shot 2016-09-28 at 5 14 36 pm

Next

Todo

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Due date is Oct 4 ... 6 days!

@kaguillera is tentatively willing to apply together, he and I, as co-founders. We're thinking in terms of a non-profit application.

Need a one-minute video. We'll have to do that tomorrow afternoon.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

We also need LOC for gratipay/gratipay.com. Anyone want to compute that? :-)

https://www.google.com/search?q=github+loc

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I reached out to the Teespring founders, after seeing their video as one of the examples. They are one of the few corporate givers extant on Gratipay 2.0.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

The founder bio forms are almost as extensive as the main application.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I drafted some answers on the YC form. I don't like them. Gonna sleep on it and see what happens tomorrow ...

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Google Docs for Gratipay, Chad, and Kwesi.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Heard back from Walker from Teespring and moved the conversation to private email. I will follow up when our application is ready for review.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

https://www.ycombinator.com/video/

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Gotta work on numbers. We need percentage growth, not absolute growth.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Video! Takes one through four:

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU5G1-5KTPQ
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDVb7zLyPbg
  3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys2wh_XFvAE
  4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TAZdt-9s8U
chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Planning to go with 4, the rest are kinda fun though. :)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay! We have first drafts of the application and our bios. Outta time for today. We're planning to go over those again tomorrow and get something to Walker, and then to cowork again on Monday so we can incorporate feedback and get something submitted.

techtonik commented 7 years ago

If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we've been waiting for.

  1. On-demand allocation. Because we're radically transparent, we can publish requirements for every person on the "payroll", which is living_cost + amortization + savings. We can start from living_cost. Then we can show it the minimal living_cost criteria is met and let people fix that by changing their allocation scheme.
  2. 100 GP. Every week, every person gets 100 GP. which are their 100% to distribute among their friends and other people. You allocate how much do you give out monthly and it gets distributed among people who are valuable to you. This way, if some open source folks are bought by some company, that company can compensate the loss by donating weekly funds over the person's distribution graph.
techtonik commented 7 years ago

Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered.

Lawyers can't give official advice in public even if client demands it.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Let's compute a team growth rate from the chart on stats:

screen shot 2016-09-30 at 5 06 30 pm

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

We want a monthly growth rate.

  211 - 144 = 67
/ 226 - 187 = 39
  --------------
               1.718 teams / wk
x              4.333 wks / mo
  --------------
               7.444 new teams / mo
/            211 teams
  --------------
               0.035

So call it 3.5% team growth right now.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

https://twitter.com/whit537/status/781969297132228608

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Hey @kaguillera, we have an appointment Monday at 11 with @dowski (video call) to go over our application together.

@dowski Are we gonna live-stream that? 😳 (Could go either way, up to you ...)

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

https://twitter.com/whit537/status/782049483207041025 💃

ctplxblviaal52e

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I love how it's leaping. "Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!" 😆

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc

$ npm install cloc
[...]
$ cloc --exclude-dir=env,node_modules,vendor .
     716 text files.
     643 unique files.                                          
     323 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70  T=4.21 s (94.0 files/s, 19233.7 lines/s)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                      files          blank        comment           code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HTML                            133           4206              5          25730
Python                          131           3617           3339          10894
YAML                             13              0              0          10549
JavaScript                       37           2385           2413          10314
SASS                             52            182             12           3175
SQL                               9            226            128            930
Markdown                          4            267              0            802
CSS                               6            190             39            754
Bourne Shell                      7             96             47            300
DOS Batch                         1             29              1            212
make                              2             38             11            120
Bourne Again Shell                1              3              1              7
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            396          11239           5996          63787
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$
chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago 
$ cloc --exclude-dir=tests/py/fixtures .
--exclude-dir 'tests/py/fixtures' :  cannot specify directory paths
Use '--fullpath --not-match-d=REGEX' instead
Died at ./node_modules/.bin/cloc line 640.
$

Blech.

$ cloc --exclude-dir=env,node_modules,vendor --exclude-lang=YAML .
     716 text files.
     643 unique files.                                          
     336 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70  T=4.63 s (82.8 files/s, 15226.3 lines/s)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                      files          blank        comment           code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HTML                            133           4206              5          25730
Python                          131           3617           3339          10894
JavaScript                       37           2385           2413          10314
SASS                             52            182             12           3175
SQL                               9            226            128            930
Markdown                          4            267              0            802
CSS                               6            190             39            754
Bourne Shell                      7             96             47            300
DOS Batch                         1             29              1            212
make                              2             38             11            120
Bourne Again Shell                1              3              1              7
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            383          11239           5996          53238
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$
chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay, call it 50,000+ LOC.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Are we gonna live-stream that? 😳 (Could go either way, up to you ...)

Per private email, we're not gonna live-stream.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

What if standard practice in the tech industry were to give 1% of profits to open source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_information_technology_companies

The top 13 largest sum to 1.3 trillion in revenue.

Let's estimate 2x for the long tail, so 2.6 trillion in revenue for the industry as a whole.

Apple's profit margin is 40% and Amazon's is less than 3%. Let's estimate a 10% average. Actually, let's go with 7%.

So that's $182 B in annual profit.

If 1% went to open source, that'd be $1.82 billion in revenue for open source, or about the size of Red Hat.

We want to build the next Red Hat, but decentralized.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay!

!m @dowski 🌻 💃

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

We spent 20 minutes on a video call together. @dowski grilled us for most of it, a little interview role-playing. The interviews themselves are only 10 minutes long, clearly not enough time to get everything across. I guess mostly it's a chance to demonstrate that we're competent, that we understand what problem we're trying to solve and how we intend to solve it, that we're the experts on this problem.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Which we are.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

It's a purse! We fill it with heart coins! 🌻 💃

https://www.etsy.com/listing/65838226/crochet-pattern-bugs-purse-cockroach-bee

il_570xn 207885991

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Alright, last call. Getting ready to submit ...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O7PPVnnaK2ML6eNVgUwYiTbaNiqn92Gb3CZMufY1VqY/edit?usp=sharing

mattbk commented 7 years ago

I think this section could be clearer. If I don't click that link and read even more, I have no idea what this hack is and how it solves this problem.

The new thing on the payin side is the hack that John Resig came up with for decentralizing Khan Academy's giving back in the day, which solves the problem of allocating a corporate budget across a heterogeneous technology stack: http://ejohn.org/blog/gittip-at-khan-academy/.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Reviewing http://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/ ...

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@mattbk How about if we add some tl;drs?

tl;dr The developers inside the company each allocate a portion of the budget.

tl;dr The members of an open-source project each set their own salary.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Pinged Walker one last time.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Read https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

The best way to do that is simply to be concise. You don’t have to sell us on you. We’ll sell ourselves, if we can just understand you. But every unnecessary word in your application subtracts from the effect of the necessary ones. So before submitting your application, print it out and take a red pen and cross out every word you don’t need. And in what’s left be as specific and as matter-of-fact as you can.

http://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Our app is more concise than Dropbox's. Too concise?

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Who are all of the YC partners? Does it make sense to reach out to any of them on Twitter?

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

http://www.ycombinator.com/people/

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Meh, I guess let's not spam all of them. :-)

https://twitter.com/whit537/status/783063818427432961

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

I read http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

sama AMA re: applications:

What order do you look at an application -- is the video last?

Video first, then the questions about the founders, then the idea, then the traction/revenue, then everything else.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12593818

You no longer ask the question about what is a person's greatest achievement, which was previously said to be the most telling question on the app.

We do still ask that, and it's still one of the questions I read first. It's on the individual section (each person has to fill it out after the submitter enters their email address).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12593801

When interviewing, what key points are you looking for?

  • Determination
  • Effectiveness
  • Clarity of vision
  • Clarity of communication
  • Intelligence
  • Quality of the idea
  • Potential to be huge

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12593786

For non-profits, we're looking for large impacts on the world. A lot of the evaluation criteria--how good the founders are, how good the idea is--are the same.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12593842

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay, did another round of tinkering on the application. I think I'm done tinkering for tonight ...

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Early morning brainstorm: what is the room configuration? Chairs on opposite sides of a table? If so, here's how we make our entrance: wheel in the penny puncher and set the cockroach on top of it on a chair in front of the table, then take two chairs around to opposite sides of the table so we're sitting alongside the interviewers looking together at the cockroach.

The name of the cockroach is Gratipay. It's lovable. It's from Pittsburgh. Gratipay a marketplace, and it's been through a nuclear war called the Gratipocalypse. Now, the seller side is still intact, but the buyer side is rough. Is it worth trying to revive the buyer side?

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Did some more tinkerooniatin'.

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

@kaguillera Can you review the application one more time today before we pull the trigger?

kaguillera commented 7 years ago

You need to remember that we only have 10mins and all that action would take time. Additionally the interviewer have a hectic day so we don't want to frustrate them. I agree we need something to make them remember us but we still need time to give them answers to questions they will have about our company.

On Oct 4, 2016 10:08 AM, "Chad Whitacre" notifications@github.com wrote:

@kaguillera https://github.com/kaguillera Can you review the application one more time today before we pull the trigger?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/836#issuecomment-251398253, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABNTSUN89qa9re3_dj6LNlyXvNt29V7Wks5qwl3AgaJpZM4KJVJj .

kaguillera commented 7 years ago

Oh and this is not my review just happened on this email while making breakfast

On Oct 4, 2016 10:17 AM, "Kwesi Aguillera" kaguillera@gmail.com wrote:

You need to remember that we only have 10mins and all that action would take time. Additionally the interviewer have a hectic day so we don't want to frustrate them. I agree we need something to make them remember us but we still need time to give them answers to questions they will have about our company.

On Oct 4, 2016 10:08 AM, "Chad Whitacre" notifications@github.com wrote:

@kaguillera https://github.com/kaguillera Can you review the application one more time today before we pull the trigger?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/836#issuecomment-251398253, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABNTSUN89qa9re3_dj6LNlyXvNt29V7Wks5qwl3AgaJpZM4KJVJj .

chadwhitacre commented 7 years ago

Okay, let's start planning and practicing our entrance next week.

kaguillera commented 7 years ago

Sound like a plan

On Oct 4, 2016 10:21 AM, "Chad Whitacre" notifications@github.com wrote:

Okay, let's start planning and practicing our entrance next week.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/gratipay/inside.gratipay.com/issues/836#issuecomment-251402188, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABNTSYnN_9l5qZXWCCGn76a_vmMepzCaks5qwmDUgaJpZM4KJVJj .