An Archive of the SOS Email Lists.
This begins with a tale of one of our readers who had customer support problems with three different platforms:
A payments platform – wrong bank account#, contact email, plus phone# attached to a different account.
A hosting service – the reader had a new phone and was setting up the email account.
We recall back in the day when Facebook hit the zeitgeist in a huge way, it was suggested that the company charge a nominal fee for the service, and we believe it was a dollar a month. Easily affordable in most countries, and why not to bring family and friends closer. Of course, there are countries where a dollar a month is quite steep, and the company opted for eyeballs uber payment and they’d make their money via tracking you and offering up adverts.
As a note to self and a cautionary tale to founders: best to bake in the revenue model/premium services early in the game, as did, say, LinkedIn, who, when they hit a tipping point long ago – a year or two after funding – the company did maintain a free version, but also introduced a premium model and people were willing to ante up. It seems to have worked. We do believe that the company is still around. And with multiple revenue spokes. Also a good idea.
Re Facebook. Well, times change, as has Apple’s advertising policies: the company’s anti-tracking protections cost Facebook, now Meta, some $10B in ad revenue last year.
Every two weeks, we host an online breakfast with a single investor, and a small, self-selecting group of entrepreneurs. Other investors – angels and VCs – sometimes attend as well. We keep them small to make sure everyone has a chance to participate, ask questions, and learn. You’d be amazed at how many founders have found investment – just by showing up and participating.
And hearing first-hand, precisely what investors are looking for – and we don’t simply mean the verticals in which they invest – but what they look for in a pitch deck, and how they read it.
We know you’ve heard it all before. As we’ve said over and over, in our opinion, the #1 reason why startups fail is that founders don’t listen.
For some time now, the members of the tech synod have been considered to be the smartest guys in the room. They seem to just know what’s best for the world on all fronts and never mind that there is a difference between science and computer science.
For example, a Mexico-based startup will next week launch sulfur particles into the stratosphere in a “rogue” move to create a “mini-volcano” effect it says could help cool the planet…But experts in geoengineering say the launches set a dangerous precedent for private companies or governments to interfere with the planet’s atmosphere,” MSN reported (Climate change activist goes rogue releasing ‘mini volcanoes’ to cool atmosphere (msn.com)).
Well, consider volcanoes. Massive volcanic eruptions spew billowing clouds of chemicals into the atmosphere and block out the sun, as these ‘scientists’ are attempting to do – which tends to lead to failing crops and starvation.
Despite all of the discussion about Web 3, it has been eclipsed of late by Generative AIs such as ChatGPT, which, according to many an article we’ve seen, is going to make a lot of white-collar workers redundant, as the Brits say. Artificial Intelligence Passes MBA Exam (given by a Wharton professor, FYI) and New ‘Robot’ Lawyer to Represent Defendant in US Court. ChatGPT even passed the US Medical Licensing exam. As we know, it’s also being used to write news articles, tweets and who know what else in startup land, giving new meaning to the term, ‘fake it till you make it.’
When we first got wind of the Generative AI, knowing that it was scraping the internet and well aware of the rampant censorship that has been and is being practiced by the social networks, all of whom have had a stranglehold on the conversation for quite some time, including the pre-Musk Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, we knew this would be a problem. And lest we forget, the programs tend to be written by programmers who have a certain bias, or whose C-Level has a certain bias, and in case you missed it: The damage done to the credibility of AI by ChatGPT engineers building in political bias is irreparable. The AIs will always have human biases, because it’s humans who are creating it.
Generative AI isn’t the only thing that’s faking it. Getting more sophisticated and no doubt soon to hit that same tipping point are the Deepfakes, both visual and audio. For how many years has Big Tech been capturing your face and voice? “With no barriers to creating AI-synthesized text, audio and video, the potential for misuse in identity theft, financial fraud and tarnish reputations has sparked global alarm,” the Japan Times reported.
We’ve been postponing covering ChatGPT as it is still relatively early days, although elements of it – re AI – have been there for quite some time. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a definite disruptor, even more than Facebook was in its day, when it heralded the Age of Social, but this time, sans Mark Zuckerberg’s ego and/or iron-fisted control. Yet, or as far as we know. But when was the last time we stopped and considered the dystopian side of the shiny new thing before we realized that, say, our privacy and personal data would be gone, perhaps forever, or worse, thanks to, say, a communications assist?
As a writer, we will tell you that, while AI may correct our typos, since we key so quickly, great. As for its grammatical suggestions or recommendations for completing a sentence or thought? AI is clearly not an original thinker and is wrong 90+% of the time – without exaggeration.
We’re not a big fan of best of/worst of lists. Nor are we big on New Year’s resolutions, but not always easy to buck every trend that comes down the pike, so without further ado, nine resolutions founders might want to consider. We didn’t go for 10 as we do understand that even nine is pushing it…
And a very happy and productive 2023 to one and all, as we go onward and forward.
Said Merriam-Webster, “In this age of misinformation—of “fake news,” conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes—gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time.
“…gaslighting is “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” 2022 saw a 1740% increase in lookups for gaslighting, with high interest throughout the year…Its origins are colorful: the term comes from the title of a 1938 play and the movie based on that play, the plot of which involves a man attempting to make his wife believe that she is going insane. His mysterious activities in the attic cause the house’s gas lights to dim, but he insists to his wife that the lights are not dimming and that she can’t trust her own perceptions.”
In the earlier days of tech and home computing, Apple was the underdog and Microsoft the Evil Empire, and note those were the days of MSFT with founder Bill Gates at the helm. Google took over the ‘evil’ designation, with Apple fanboys still blindly committed to their tech god. Now it seems that Apple Is Tracking You Even When Its Own Privacy Settings Say It’s Not, New Research Says, Gizmodo reported.
Web 3 is not about to take over any time soon, especially given the damage that FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried have done to reinforced the public’s view that crypto (an element of Web 3) is rife with fraud and no, we have idea why Bankman-Freed isn’t in prison (‘Why aren’t you in jail already?’ Internet erupts after Sam Bankman-Fried confirms participating in New York Times’ DealBook). Yet according to MSN, We’re Witnessing the End of Social Media, and while the Age of Social was supposedly about ‘connecting,’ it has mostly been responsible for the disconnections that have been going on between people and groups.
So, we seem to be in a strange tech stasis: a no man’s land between the last and the next phase of tech.
Now it’s MAMAA – Meta Platforms FB, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple – although we propose MAMMAA, and although not stock related, Musk definitely belongs in the cabal mix and make no mistake about it: The Web 2 cabal is still alive and kicking – and not about to surrender their lead positions to the so-called next iteration of tech and yet a new crop of tech wunderkinds any time soon.
