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by gamblor956 1771 days ago
My apologies dang.

Within the LA startup and entertainment communities, we are less politic in our critiques; LA's funding system is quite different from SV's, and harsh truths are more valued here than polite nothings. A thick skin is required to survive in the film industry. (It is an aphorism here that a true friend is someone who will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.)

My intention was not to be mean but to be straightforward, but I currently work in-house in entertainment so my abrasiveness filter is much less refined than it used to be. The comments I made were the sanitized versions of the critiques from people in the Black film industry who were initially interested in possibly working with BlackOakTV.

Unfortunately, there are now concerns about the role of non-Black investors in what is ostensibly a Black platform. Due to the politicized nature of the ongoing discussion, I will not go into further details on HN as that is likely to trigger a flame war over non-technical issues.

2 comments

Thank you. I wasn't having any problem with the substance of your comments, just their abrasiveness. If you had posted your critique without that, it would have been great, and if you'd do that in the future, we'd greatly appreciate it.

From my perspective this isn't an LA or SV issue or anything to do with "funding systems", it's a (rather shallow) internet issue that has simply to do with the tendency of internet discussion to degenerate rapidly, which is what we're trying to avoid here. Comments that would make sense in a smaller, private context become completely different beasts on the public internet; the medium is the message, etc.

I appreciate that you meant to be helpful and there was interesting information in your comments, which I imagine everyone, including the founders, appreciated.

Whenever I see these kind of take downs on HN I always get reminded of the Coinbase and Dropbox take downs and countless others of eventual very successful companies. I actually think the poster makes some interesting points - if they could be framed as more of a question it might have been more helpful. I for one will be be signing up at some point - I circle through the various sites subscribing and unsubscribing regularly - disney, netflix, discovery, paramount, hulu, prime etc so this will get added to the list.

My key question is how are you going to bulk out the offering - I think there is value in a smaller set of curated content but to keep my subscription I'll need to be able to get several months of content?

Could you not just focus on originals and licence some old classics as well?