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by whack 3433 days ago
In the experiment you mentioned, the fine is small enough, that it doesn't produce any significant revenues. The goal is to minimize the number of people who show up late.

Imagine if the day-care made the "fine" high enough that they actually want people to show up late. Ie, think credit-card interest rates and late-payment fees. In that case, regardless of whether tardiness goes up-or-down, the daycare would win either way.

Let's compare this to Ben Horowitz' situation. Imagine if it takes him 5 minutes to read and send a cookie-cutter response. That works out to a hourly rate of $240/hour. Even for a VC, that's a pretty damn good hourly rate. If Ben stops getting spammed by people, I think he'd be perfectly happy with that. If he were to get flooded by spammers willing to pay him $500k/year to send cookie-cutter responses, I think he'd be ok with that as well. It's a win-win for him.
1 comments
bhouston 3433 days ago
> That works out to a hourly rate of $240/hour.

That is a horrible for a VC, especially for one as successful as Ben.

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adventured 3433 days ago
Ten times that wouldn't be worth it, if it distracts from a single other important task. Assume $2400 / hour, six hours per day of effort on it, five days per week, 52 weeks per year. $3.7 million. It's a lot to a charity, it's not a lot versus his net worth and what he can do with his time at A16Z, against the distraction of writing emails for that effort every 5 minutes (which is why he won't continue with this long-term; he'll make a splash with it, get the headlines, do a good deed with the donated funds, and be on to the next thing, which isn't writing emails for $5/$20/$50).
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notahacker 3433 days ago
Andreessen Horowitz put $25m into the B series for the company running this service, which puts a different complexion on the ROI he's hoping to get from answering a handful of emails in his free time...

tbh I wouldn't be that surprised if some of the companies willing to spend $20 to exchange emails with Ben Horowitz are actually worth his time replying to, especially if he has a PA he trusts to decide which emails are worth him having a look at.

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whack 3433 days ago
You got me. I don't know most startup celebrities, and had no idea that this guy was a billionaire. Boy do I feel silly now.
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