People are beating around the bush in their replies but it seems like you need a serious reality check. You can't ask money for the promise of some information about your project in a newsletter, that's absurd.
Your website has very little information about what it is, but that's not anywhere near the biggest problem.
Once you either have a product that people want to use, or at least a decent prototype to show to people for not guaranteed at all funding you might be able to get some money but until then you should be doing what everyone else does - work a regular job for someone else to keep you afloat while you work on your own stuff.
It looks like a lot of failed kickstarters. I.e. extremely ambitious, small team, too little funding, and unlikely to succeed. I think Kickstarter won't even let you make these anymore and apparently GoFundMe didn't want it either.
Crowdfunding doesn't really make sense for nascent projects with high risk. If the value to a consumer is $10, and there is a 10% chance of success, the EV is only $1. Honestly VC is better for that, but you have to actually sell ownership and upside instead of charging for probably-nothing. I don't really think a VC will touch this though.
The best bet is probably to reduce scope and get a day job.
I think the biggest faux pas here is telling people what to do with their money, who to support and to suggest that only human endeavors that are worth supporting are those fitting some kind of arbitrary spur-of-the-moment usability criterion.
This repost is to update my situation. My "imminent" homelessness has become "actual", as I am now living in a homeless shelter in Philadelphia, PA. I merely exist here, as it is difficult to get any useful computer work done. I feel as if I am slipping further, potentially soon reaching the point of no return. I hereby reiterate my above call for assistance, to get myself back to some semblance of normalcy, so that I might be able to make progress on GAGOOT.
To that end, I am offering to produce a detailed white paper, to be delivered in four weeks, to any investor (or group of investors) who is/are willing to make an upfront token payment of $5,000. After delivery, the paper will remain private, for a short while, maybe a week or two, to give the investor(s) a time advantage to decide whether they are interested in making a real investment. If not, then I will publish it, so I can use it as a basis for some other funding approach for GAGOOT.
I realize that this proposition is unusual, but I find myself in an unusual situation, and so I am brainstorming unusual solutions. Also, if you are in or near my city, I am willing to meet in person. Thank you for your consideration.
By the way, speaking of "brainstorming", I am reminded of 1983's "Brainstorm". Here is a fascinating article about the film.
Don't know much about your project, but it seems a long way off from producing income, if ever.
I see others have tried to help in the past with little luck, but I'll take a stab at it too, just in case: I'd focus on getting some income of any sort coming in, even of the informal employment variety. Also, go to your local social services office and apply for things like EBT. Once you have a few 100 dollars (which you might even be able to get by panhandling for a few days), go find a room for rent. If you're not picky, you can get one for $100/wk or probably even lower if you look around. Then look for more sustainable income sources. Once that's all sorted out, only then start thinking about your side project.
Yeah. It feels uncomfortable to give advice like this but:
Abandon this project immediately. Use whatever personal resource (time, energy, motivation) you’ve got left to find any sort of technical/intellectual work that leverages your most valuable skills before it’s too late.
> “I merely exist here, as it is difficult to get any useful computer work done.”
Eventually you will find it impossible to do anything with those most valuable skills.
I saw too many people come to Silicon Valley like would-be miners in the Gold Rush, didn't want to understand how to find gold, and all they had to do was get a designer, a software developer, put out a press release, or have beautiful ideas.
The people who made it listened, observed real problems, and crafted something obviously useful and better to fill a specific category of need, most often while working another job to pay the bills.
Survive, thrive, and then work on side-projects. Side projects are too risky to become an immediate living when you need water, food, and shelter.
Honestly, I avoided shelters because of the lack of safety and risk of diseases like TB, c. auris, meningitis, bed bugs, and such. Yuck. I'd rather find somewhere quiet hidden away.
Just checked and there's at least several on Craigslist at that price right now in his area. He could also move to a different area for even greater savings.
I have to echo the advice I’ve seen here, which is that you need a job — any job! — to get you back to a semi-stable living situation in the short term.
I’ve built a business on open source — it was very difficult, and the outcome far from immediate. There’s absolutely no way I could have done it while homeless and living in a shelter.
How do I pay for a $50 newsletter subscription? Only way to send money I can see on https://gagoot.com/ is a Monero address. Is there any source code or diagrams associated with this project?
I would suggest temporarily moving to a cheap country until funding or steady income is secured.
This will also give you the opportunity to teach kids English, as native English speakers are demanded all over the world. An easy and lucrative job, you will be spending time talking with the kids of the upper-middle class. There are also apps like Cambly which let you do that online, so you can start making money from your native English right away.
A 1000 for the plane ticket and a 1000 a month(which you should be able to get by teaching English part time) should be enough for a comfortable life.
Also, don’t forget that your most valuable asset is your health and you should not let your health deteriorate in this temporary situation.
more details would be helpful. which countries pay well and are easy to get into? china for example is no longer on that list. finding a school online that is trustworthy is not easy. there are a lot of scams out there trying to exploit people looking for a job like this. you pretty much have to go there first to look at the place before you commit to a contract. this is not the kind of thing to do when you are already under pressure.
also, moving is expensive. living as an expat in a foreign country is not that cheap (you'll spend more than the locals). i believe there are areas in the US where you can live cheaply too. finding one that is cheap but yet has decent internet may be a challenge though. (my gut suggests to look for places with community ran internet service)
I have a friend who left his Phd and went to Myanmar to start a new life and starting a new life when you are paid 3K all expenses covered when teaching high school classes in private schools is a good deal but really depends on how formal you like to do your business. Those countries tend to have lax law enforcement and an elite class that can do whatever they like, so striking an informal deal and getting paid in cash when on tourist visa is also not a problem. Living as expat is expensive until you learn you way around and stop insisting to live like you are in the USA and adopt local ways of life.
Some time ago China was the go-to destination for that kind of work but I hear it's no longer the case. Here in Turkey there are quite few expats doing that kind of jobs and living very well but there there are almost 200 countries out there and all should be evaluated individually. The general rule works though: However poor the county is, there's always a class of rich people who want their kids learn English and they are prepared to pay for it handsomely.
Being a native English speaker is a marketable skill all over outside the Anglosphere, the demand is there.
Homelessness isn't the end of the world. I did it for 9 years. You can too. It's not that difficult. The cold and honest truth is you're demanding people give you something for nothing for merely existing. That's not going to get you very far. You have to have something of value. If not, you're asking for charity in an age of intense self-absorption, paranoia, division, and hopelessness. Tech people especially never fill barrels for charity donation food drives. Pre-sell something you can deliver soon that people need.
The white paper is something that I could deliver soon, and it will have the value of containing my unique ideas for the issues and topics covered by GAGOOT.
For most people who aren't independently wealthy, it takes steady income to keep a life going. So how would ideas about a side project help you do that? What makes you think ideas are worth money? Is there anyone else you know who has sold similar ideas in this manner? Are you a famous physicist or politician? I'm asking hard questions not out of meanness but out of genuine concern to get to a more stable track forward.
If one has under-treated conditions like OCD or manic depression, I've seen people with unhealthy fixations on ideas be their own worst enemies and sabotage their life situations. People who lived in vans but failed to get medication and floated in the in-between and on the margins. I've been there. There's no reward for misery and it's difficult to climb out of it. Wash windows, sell t-shirt, mow lawns.. all things that can be done with minimum of resources for immediate cash. Go on craigslist and offer technical services for an hourly rate.
It's not enough to want. One has to sustain themselves, be relentlessly resourceful, do and build something people need, and collect money in one stable way before changing to another. Stability first. It's like an investment portfolio: you wouldn't throw your parent's life savings into a random NFT. Maybe $5 as a test, but that's it.
Ideas are worth money. For example, corporations buy patents for things that don't yet exist (or may never exist) simply to shore up their IP portfolios. What I'm attempting here is a different business model, one which does not have to become accepted practice for every startup.
As I remark above... ideas aren't worth money, only results are.
Sell those domain names if you can... be aware that they're probably not worth much because their value is also tied to your idea... which doesn't have value until it's made real.
I'm being brutally honest here in an attempt to help. Bite the bullet and get a day job, pursue your project weekends and evenings even if that seems a painful way forward. All you have to do is produce working results and then you can sell the idea, quit your job, and go full time. If you're good enough to create your idea, you're good enough to sleep walk your way through a boring job that pays your bills and quickly put together working proof of your idea that you can use to obtain financing.
Ideas are worth money. For example, corporations buy patents for things that don't yet exist (or may never exist) simply to shore up their IP portfolios. What I'm attempting here is a different business model, one which does not have to become accepted practice for every startup.
In a way, this post gives me the same feeling I had when I read the story of Terry Davis, author of Temple OS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Davis), and his gradual slide into homelessness.
OP: I've been homeless before, I don't really care if post is truth or a lie, a scam or a sincere cry for help. Desperation takes many forms and I'd like to help either way.
A $5,000 pledge would unfortunately be a terrible financial decision at a time where I'm saving for a house, but I won't hurt purchasing the yearly newsletter subscription for $50. It's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, especially if it helps you get on your feet. Send a payment link to shane at my username dot com.
This seems similar... a developer with no track record who can't find work, asking for funding for a speculative project instead of asking for employment, suggests a mental misalignment.
The main difference seems to be that Davis built something interesting and functional (if not profitable or practical), whereas gagoot.com seem more like Time Cube rambling.
Terry Davis had a fine resume and the intelligence to land any job. Unfortunately, his schizophrenia made working at typical jobs untenable. I don't believe society should have made him suffer for this, and we failed him.
Terry was kicked out after ongoing difficulties living with his family. He did however turn down some help here and there, presumably because of contingencies.
From what I can see, his project so far consists of ideas with a vast scope that may or may not pan out and a strong belief in himself.
>GAGOOT is a domain-less, server-to-server meshnet which offers a reimagined, members-only, ad-free, tracker-free, fingerprint-free, captcha-free, cookie-free, bloat-free, DDoS-proof, no-censorship approach to implementing a number of disparate functions, including search, social media, archiving, messaging, cloud computing, and distributed computing, each designed to provide anonymity, privacy, and freedom as first-class concerns rather than as mere afterthoughts.
To me, this sounds suspiciously like someone with enough knowledge about how things work on the Internet to be confident that they can do better, but hasn't learned enough to understand how little he knows... it's the Dunning-Kruger effect in the wild.
The problem (or feature) of knowledge is that there's always more knowledge and nuance behind what you think you know, and the details are what makes things work. All the services and functions he describes as parts of his system above were developed over decades by thousands of the brightest people in the world. Replacing all that with one good idea only one person has worked on is possible, but incredibly unlikely.
Most importantly, all those things were developed by people who not only had good ideas but who did all the hard work to make them real. Ideas aren't worth money, results are.
OP needs to stop counting on their project idea as a gateway to self sufficiency and realize that (sadly) they have to go back to work in the boring real world, even though working for an hour on their project would eventually produce more value than working a week at a day job.
That sucks hard, but the truth is that without a track record or a working prototype to show off no one is going to pay OP for their project, period. That's just how the world works.
I'm saying all this as another 50+ year old IT person who understands that it's getting harder to find new jobs and who is burned out on working as a cog in the machine.
I've been building similar building blocks to this, and it's VERY hard and long and tedious work to make it actually happen. And yes, doing this kind of thing while employed full time is frustrating to no end, because everything takes 5x longer.
After 5 years, I have Dogma [1] (a metalanguage for building text and binary grammars) finished, and Concise Encoding [2] (an ad-hoc hierarchical data format) almost finished (it's been slowed by the fact that I needed to develop Dogma to describe it [3], and also from switching to Antlr for the text parsing). I expect that the bidirectional, multi-stream encrypted communications protocol that uses these technologies will be even more pain once I dig into it beyond the 6 months I've given it so far. And only THEN will I be able to make interesting things with it (such as a re-imagined file API alternative to POSIX).
Building this kind of stuff is a marathon with no end, and you absolutely can't do it unless you either are already independently wealthy, or you're leveraging your daytime job to that end.
Your website has very little information about what it is, but that's not anywhere near the biggest problem.
Once you either have a product that people want to use, or at least a decent prototype to show to people for not guaranteed at all funding you might be able to get some money but until then you should be doing what everyone else does - work a regular job for someone else to keep you afloat while you work on your own stuff.