[tptacek]

Yes. This. Ben Horowitz is petrified that we will perceive the immense revenues he's going to get from $20 Q&A sessions as profiteering, especially considering the paucity of his other business interests. Virtue signaling, indeed!

[gist]

Personally, I think it's cliche to always invoke charity as a way to lessen some perceived negative or appear to not be profiteering. After all the VC firm is clearly not a charity (his business in other words) so why is it necessary to walk on eggshells and always donate money to charity. To me this is just a typical pc correct way of doing things.

[emodendroket]

The fact that it's paltry strengthens, rather than weakening, the parent post's argument.

[metaphorm]

no, Ben Horowitz does not want to be perceived as engaging in personal nuisance abatement so he makes it look more socially acceptable.

in other words, he wants to be able to take questions by email, because there is some upside for him in that (discovering new prospects for investment probably), but there is huge downside in the risk of getting spammed by shit emails.

he implements a $20 cash gate on that to mitigate the downside, but then realizes he has introduced a new downside, of appearing greedy or craven in some way, therefore he donates it to a virtue signaling charity. it will be a very small amount of money either way.

my point is that the charitable donation aspect is NOT what is driving Horowitz' behavior here. I was responding to a post which suggested it was that.

[tptacek]

Definitely a fantastic way to abate nuisance outreach is to allow people to entitle themselves to your time for the price of a 12 pack of beer.

This will have the opposite effect of the one you propose. Virtually everybody can afford $20; what he's doing is giving people new permission to contact him, and not only that but by attaching a price tag to it he's giving them expectations about his attention.

[metaphorm]

yes, actually. compared to $0 cash gate, anyway. he wants some level of email interaction, but only if you're above some threshold of seriousness. its not a very high threshold, but is enough to prevent trolling and spamming in any case.

[tptacek]

You really think that now that he's posted this offer, nobody's going to troll or spam him without spending $20 first?

I'm not suggesting that this is the most impactful charity thing anyone's ever done --- this is marginal stuff, to be sure --- but the trope where we try to unwind any charitable impulse anyone has to some insidious subtextual personal interest is always tiresome and virtually never very insightful.

It's particularly dumb in this case.

[metaphorm]

you ever been to a bar/stage where there's a cover charge at the door? you know why the cover charge is such a tiny amount of money?

this is a cover charge. yes, I do expect it to keep out 99% of trolls and spammers.