[thinkcomp]

It's a good essay. The only problem is that it's Peter Thiel behind it.

The problem isn't just that "we got 140 characters." The problem is that Peter Thiel asked for it by investing in and therefore promulgating Mark Zuckerberg's vision of ubiquitous irrelevance. I think he's right that VC is destroying itself by investing in what I have often referred to as trivial nonsense, but he and his firm are part of the problem, not the solution. Just look at the portfolio companies: Winster? Quid? Slide? Path? GoWalla? And of course, Facebook? None of these companies improve my life or the lives of anyone I care about. Founders Fund has 22 consumer internet companies in its portfolio and one or two in the other categories listed on the web site.

Furthermore Thiel has stated that he wouldn't bother doing PayPal again if he knew what he knows about the payments industry today. This is of course the space that I'm working in. Bold words, Peter. If only there were more VCs willing to run and hide.

Frankly I'm sick of venture capital firms writing self-serving slogans, or in this case, entire essays. Actions speak louder than words. I'm doing serious work and my company has been rejected by sixty (that's six-zero) VC firms in the past five years. It's going to take more than a manifesto to convince me that any investor is serious about the future.

[thaumaturgy]

> I'm doing serious work and my company has been rejected by sixty (that's six-zero) VC firms in the past five years.

I just want to burn some HN points here to tell you that you're not alone, and that there are a lot of other people out there that are terribly frustrated by this.

Investors are primarily in it to make money. They're optimizing for returns. When you have a choice between a company that will spend relatively little capital and has a chance to make a lot of money, $5 at a time, from millions of people, in a short period of time, and then get sold to some other megacorporation at a valuation that's detached from reality, versus a company with higher capital needs and a 20-year roadmap to becoming an industry heavyweight ... well, you choose the first one.

The horde of "business consultants" (coaches, advisors, what-have-you) aren't much better. I went through a period of intense naivete that involved trying those people out. I would try anything that might have a chance at accelerating my business. I have never before been charged so much to receive so little truly useful advice, from so many people so hell-bent on violating the very first rule of problem solving ("understand the problem"), and so inclined to insult me or my goals. They're all just doing the same thing as the VCs, but at smaller, pitiable scales: they're focusing first-and-foremost on making a buck.

Sometimes the situation leaves me feeling bitter. As a hopeless idealist and an obsessive problem-solver, I can't help but to habitually look at the world around me and see in its place the potential for the future that so many people with resources claim to be interested in while being interested first and foremost in making a quick profit.

[fuelfive]

I've worked extensively with the FF guys as an entrepreneur, and from what I've seen they really live these values.

The consumer internet startups FF funded were often intended to become something more than they turned into. Slide was supposed to be about cross-site predictive analytics on a massive scale. Silly widgets were just the data capture vector. Frogmetrics (my FF-funded YC startup) had similar ambitions for the real world. Both companies fell way short of our secret ambitions, but not for lack of effort.

Also, many of FF's most interesting investments aren't on the site for secrecy reasons.

One more anecdote:

Last year, when I told some VC friends that I was working on strong AI as a startup, they laughed. When I told Luke and Brian at Founders Fund, they said they wanted to invest. It's obviously too early to say whether we'll meet the same fate as past AI companies, but we're off to a good start (http://vicariousinc.com/), and that's thanks to Founders Fund taking the kinds of risks they discuss in the article.

[ippisl]

But most people choose fun and money over taking a boring job that makes the world better. It's just human nature. Why should investors behave differently ?

[jeffool]

He isn't complaining about their choice, but instead that they made choice A, and are complaining they aren't getting the results from choice B.

It's like partying instead of studying for a test, and complaining you didn't pass. Of course you didn't; you chose "fun" over "boring".

[iamelgringo]

my company has been rejected by sixty (that's six-zero) VC firms in the past five years

Dude, you're just getting warmed up to pitching if you've only been rejected by 60 VC firms.

Google got rejected by 55. Pandora by close to 300. Adam Rifkin's first startup was doing AJAX in 2000, and he got rejected by 176 before raising $8M from Kleiner Perkins.

HR's job is to screen through job applicants and throw away resumes so they only show a precious few to hiring managers. A VC's job is to say "no" and to come forward with 2 or 3 proposals to their partners. Only rarely do they say, "Yes".

But, remember there's roughly 400 VC firms in Silicon Valley. There's still a ton more for you to pitch. You're just getting started.

Raising money is the process of pitching your idea to 150 investors, maybe 10 of them will say, "yes".

And, I agree you are doing serious work with FaceCash. I'm a fan. I like the product, and I think it has legs. Selling VC's on the idea is going to be the first of many hard sells that you're going to have going forward. Hang in there, Dude. You'll make it.

[thinkcomp]

I definitely appreciate your support and you make good points about Pandora, Google and companies like them. However, from what I've read, it took Google five months to rack up those rejections, and I've spent five years.

That doesn't make it impossible, but for a number of reasons, it shouldn't take that long. Aside from the given entrepreneur, it harms industry and ultimately the country when it does.

[iamelgringo]

but for a number of reasons, it shouldn't take that long.

I totally hear you. It _shouldn't_, but it does.

I know we've talked about this before, Aaron, but I think you have to work like hell for the next 6 months to get people using _some part of your system. You've had uptake in libraries... try to get your system in as many libraries as possible. Get some press for that uptake and traction. You do this really well. Then, pitch 100 VC's in 3 months: 3 a day for 93 days, and raise money on that basis. If you can't raise money then, build traction like hell for another 6 months, mail monthly updates to those 100 VCs and then talk to the most interested 30 VCs again.

Your pitch: take on credit cards and beat them is _huge. I genuinely believe that you can do it. But, to do it all at once would probably take $100M up front as a series A round, and then a couple of follow rounds of $500M in series B and C.

Most VC's aren't going to believe that you'll be able to do it, and certainly won't give you $100M in a series A.

I suspect you need to show them that you can perform really well on one, small aspect of your system, and they'll probably be willing to give you money to expand.

I have no doubt you'll be able to do this. You've been doggedly working at this for 5 years. You have a very cool working product. At some point, I have no doubt you'll raise the money that you need. And, you can have your revenge in 10 years when you IPO. :)

The stories of people having money thrown at them by VC's for a business plan make for great TechCrunch reading, and it hits the main stream press, "The Bubble is popping! The Bubble is inflating! The Bubble is about to pop!". But, I talk with around a hundreds early entrepreneurs every month at Hackers & Founders, and _no _one is having money thrown at them. For every Color, or AirBnB, there are 3000 founders that pitch 60 times before they're able to raise.

[thinkcomp]

Unfortunately, domestic money transmission is illegal is California as of July 1st without a license. The only way around that is money, and I'm not willing to do jailtime for traction.

http://www.facecash.com/legal/ca.html

[mahyarm]

Get out of California then. Go to Nevada, Texas, Washington, anywhere that will be friendly at the moment to your idea. Seriously. Do what ever it takes to climb that mountain.

[thinkcomp]

That's not how the law works. It's a California law that applies nationwide. (Read the link.)

[VladRussian]

man, i viewed your demo video. You're trying to take on plastic. Plastic is "just swipe". If you make it simpler than that - you'll win big. So far, your thing is more complex. It has a bunch of nice advantages/features that stand on its own ( and that if marketed on its own to VC would possibly make it), yet not when presented as direct competitor to plastic.

[thinkcomp]

Barcode payments seem to be working okay for Starbucks.

[csomar]

I see you are hiring a handful of workers, so are you funding the start-up yourself?

[irahul]

Facebook sure has improved the communication for me, and my circle. If it doesn't improve your life or anyone you care about, there are people who feel it does.

Frankly, your subjective, continuous attacks on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook makes it hard to see the objective side of your argument.

[sahillavingia]

I actually disagree. Facebook has improved my life by a ton.

[scott_s]

The internet-cynical, tech-savvy thing to say is how much of a waste of time Facebook is, but I think it changes communication in the same way that every house having a telephone did. Yes, email and IM existed before Facebook, but Facebook is a different model of communication.

[discreteevent]

Facebook Vs (email + IM) = Telephone Vs (post + telegraph). Really? You think that these two jumps in technology are equivalent in the difference they have made to peoples lives? I don't use facebook but I would not be able to work without telephone and the internet.

[temphn]

Yes, probably so. Facebook means that you can keep up with people (who's getting married, who moved, who had children) without emailing them.

If you have 500 friends, each with a feed with 50 posts, you are talking about 25000 possible emails. Those emails would never be sent, because they are usually individually way below the importance threshold for an email.

So, by this calculation at least, it's at least a 1-2 order of magnitude reduction in the work required to maintain contact with old friends. That's valuable.

[ericd]

That's assuming that knowing the minutiae of the lives of people who you don't talk to frequently is important. I'd say that that's actually a huge waste of time, and distracts from actual socializing by making you feel like you're keeping up with people without actually doing so.

[jamesteow]

Hear hear.

When G+ came out I dropped my Facebook account.

Due to the low activity on G+, I resorted to... doing stuff with other people in real life, such as volunteering and going to meetups.com meetups. And my real friends not near me kept in touch via e-mail and IM.

[scott_s]

I many people that just didn't use email or IM much, but have integrated Facebook into their lives. It's their main way of maintaining communication with many people.

[clobber]

Facebook is a glorified vBulletin and IM client. It's a time waster that most people use to e-stalk or share meaningless information. I think the sooner we drop the mantra that it's "engrained in our lives," the sooner we move on to real innovation. Here's a typical day on Facebook: http://i.imgur.com/ub51D.jpg

[xist]

Has it improved it enough to the point that you would pay for it? For me, definitely not. At best it's a convenience.

[sahillavingia]

Yes, definitely. I could see myself paying for Facebook just as much as I pay for Netflix, and potentially as much as my phone plan.

[rokhayakebe]

How?

[btcoal]

Facebook has improved my life as well.

I went to high school in one city, college in one 1,000 miles away. Have since worked in cities all over the world. I don't know how I would manage to keep even a tenuous grasp on all the connections I have with people in these different places without Facebook. Admittedly, these are not and never will be deep social bonds I am maintaing, but that is hardly the point. There is value in maintaining a large web of shallow social connections. Facebook helps me do this.

Moreover, whether or not Facebook has improved the life of me or anyone I care about is irrelevant to an objective evaluation of the site's value. I could make the same case for anti-malaria drugs.

[Wilduck]

I have been in a similar situation, with my College and Hometown very far away. Now, with all my friends spread out from all over the world, Facebook makes seeing these people again a fun (and fairly easy) occurrence, rather than an onerous task.

That is, the connections may be shallow while we're far away, but when locations change again, its nice to be able to re-develop those shallow connections into meaningful ones.

[clobber]

Stop. There is no value in maintaining shallow social connections. Work on making your actual friendships stronger instead of having 1000 acquaintances on Facebook. Your life has not been improved by Facebook beyond regular old email.

[koko775]

Shallow social connections have earned me two jobs and a number of deep social connections by leapfrogging off of shallow social connections.

If you think there's no value in maintaining shallow social connections, then I think you too need to put some energy into adding meaning to your social connections.

[pbreit]

Since you brought it up, I'm gonna say it: Facecash is a bad idea, poorly executed. None of the 4+ apps that you are offering are compelling. The basic POS thing is never going to work. It's not obviously better but involves set up by both the buyer and seller. And it's kinds of weird ("Sign with your face"??). But then there's a loyalty scheme layered on top. But without any traction on either side, that's not going to work. With money transfers, you should at least copy PayPal to address the chicken and egg problem: let people transfer to an email address or phone number so that the service only requires the sender to be signed up and enabled. Splitting checks is either a small or just bad idea. That's just not a big problem for most people and not one that most would pay to "solve".

Finally, we get it, the government sucks when it comes to making laws like those that make starting up a money transmitter company harder. But other entrepreneurs seem to have addressed it. There are a variety of ways to approach it. For one, use a partner for the transmission part and focus on what you think your added-value is. It would be quite easy to layer a face/barcode scheme on top of PayPal, for example. If you can prove it out, then you're in a better position to handle the money transmission yourself. And might be able to interest investors.

[thinkcomp]

Thanks for your feedback. It's pretty clear that despite your background you don't understand what we're doing.

[pbreit]

OK, I'll bite...what are you doing (that is not discernible from the web site)?

Pro tip: lose the fixation on legal matters and radically simplify your setup processes (10 clicks to approve the TOS!!??)(that's my background talking).

[rdl]

Most of their consumer Internet portfolio companies have paypal mafia founders, or are otherwise personally connected to founders fund.

[todayiamme]

This is a really honest question, what are you trying to do?

[dstein]

According to their last statement:

  So, we will continue to invest in very talented entrepreneurs 
  who are pursuing ambitious, challenging tasks. We will treat them
  with respect and hope for the best.

Basically they're looking for social-mobile-local marketing companies that target the robotics and biotech industries.

[todayiamme]

How can you make such an assumption with so little data? It might be that you've met people from this fund and you know something I don't, but until then your statement sounds a wee bit unqualified. It's hard to swallow that given they have invested in,

> SpaceX ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTFlFFrfEB0&feature=youtu... )

> Halcyon Molecular ( http://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/halcyon-molecular-develo... )

> Palantir

> Pathway Genomics ( http://www.crunchbase.com/company/pathway-genomics )

> Gene Security Network ( http://www.crunchbase.com/company/gene-security-network )

> CDD ( http://www.crunchbase.com/company/collaborative-drug-discove... )

> ImmunePath ( www.immunepath.com/ )

> RoboTex ( http://www.robotex.us/ )

> SmartDrive ( http://www.crunchbase.com/company/smartdrive-systems )

> Navia ( http://www.crunchbase.com/company/navia-systems )

That doesn't sound like a social-mobile-local marketing companies portfolio to me, and yes I've seen their investments in companies such as Yammer, RapLeaf, but clearly they aren't their entire portfolio and they have taken a series of really impressive long term bets.

[dstein]

It's merely my cynical conclusion that this VC fund is mouthing a lot of hogwash. Two-thirds of the companies they have funded are exactly the kinds of companies that this manifesto says are the problem. Their essay really doesn't really say what their goals are other than to invest in entrepreneurs "tackling challenging problems" which is what every single VC in Silicon Valleys says, yet all of them are still chasing the next social-mobile-local marketing company.

The entire essay is bullshit.

[todayiamme]

Maybe they just need to balance out their portfolio for short term as well as long term returns? And perhaps they feel that these bubbly companies are the best way to do so?

For some reason this just feels like the fundamental error of attribution to me. Yes, I accept that I might be wrong, but it still does. http://www.paulgraham.com/randomness.html

[mikecane]

>>>ubiquitous irrelevance

That's very cute, but the fact is most people don't say or do Important Things in their lives. And socialness on the Internet is a reflection of that.

And that cavalier dismissive attitude is what I would expect from Suits, not here.

[MrJagil]

The intro video on your website made Chrome warn me of an insecure script. Just thought you should know, since security warnings arn't the best thing to show on a payments website.

[zackattack]

Facebook has improved your life. You got to publish a book about it.

[thinkcomp]

I really hope you're kidding.

[zackattack]

In my narrative I construct my identity through my thoughts, emotions, intentions and conflicts; my desires. Other people judge me by my results.