There seems to be a fair amount cynicism around the business model (rather, the lack thereof) for these MOOC services. I personally believe that an interesting monetization model lies in examinations. EdX seems to be exploring proctored examinations with Pearson, but if someone can come up with a credible, non-game-able, non-proctored alternative, there's a lot of value to be created/captured.
Completing one of these courses along with the accompanying assignments only takes you so far. Grades in a rigorous examination, however, represent a credential, which in turn sets up much needed (by the candidates taking the course) signaling. Eventually, a lot of employers might end up becoming sensitive to this signaling. A crude example of this can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353543
If (and when) someone does crack this puzze and if employers in turn, react to this change, I see a lot of universities more than breaking a sweat. This latent potential is what, IMHO, most analysts / investors are really upbeat about.
I was involved in distance education at our local university for a number of years and we vetted remote proctors. In the rare case where getting a proctor to watch the student didn't pan out, I've seen webcam + screensharing used as an accepted alternative. Seems like this approach could be improved upon and scaled.
This is an intriguing idea, but I see two fundamental problems:
1) Isolation through cliques can be a bit of a double-edged sword. While the prospect of being able to battle spam (and a wave of unsolicited mentions) is probably immensely appealing to the 1%, altering the fundamental contract on which the protocol is based is almost always a bad idea.
2) Even if this accounts for a non-trivial fraction of overall revenue, they aren't going to stop pursuing advertising dollars. Which means that they still need to own the stream. And that the third party client massacre will, therefore, continue unabated.
I'm not going to prognosticate about whether or not this service will take off. I really hope it does - the raison d'être seems genuine, or at the very least, passionately backed.
But that seems to be the very problem with it. In trying not to bury his lead, I believe Dalton Caldwell has let it take over the pitch. 95% "why" and 5% "what". 10 minutes in, I was still scratching my head wondering what the service will look like. And the name App.net certainly doesn't do the cause any favours. The first decent explanation finds itself relegated to question 2 of the FAQs.
This is an audacious attempt, and I laud that. But the pitch, in my opinion, needs an overhaul. Diaspora was also about the "why", but they addressed the "what" really early in their Kickstarter pitch.
I believe this advice applies to specific businesses / opportunities (most of them likely B2B).
B2C apps, especially those that rely on network effects to grow (Instapaper, Gumroad, Buffer) would do well to shrug off any concerns about clones, and continue to do what they do best: iterate on product and get more visiblity.
And while Instapaper and Gumroad might not have shared a detailed analysis of their journey in the "How I made $X in Y days on platform Z" format, their ability to succeed is in some ways tied to their perception as a successful business. In Instapaper's case, as a user, I'm building a repository of articles, and I wouldn't invest any effort if I felt the service wouldn't be around in a few months. A similar argument might be made for Gumroad - as a "paywall for everything", it just can't afford to seem small-and-under-the-radar, something that could easily be misconstrued as fly-by-night.
1. Programmers often have an attitude of “I can code, you can’t, so I am defacto better than you.” This often comes out in Hacker News comments.
While this observation is somewhat anecdotal, I can sympathize with the sentiment. But the real reason that commenters on Hacker News might appear conceited or condescending is because they usually comment to disagree. If they do comment to express their agreement, they are encouraged to do so only when they have a non-trivial contribution to make. And this focus on a high signal-to-noise-ratio (even though it may consist of far more disagreement) on HN is not by happenstance, it is by design (achieved through guidelines, self-selection, and curation).
The comment thread on Google+ referred to by the OP, is largely an echo chamber of low-on-signal assent, with the odd nugget in the rough. And while this isn't a bad thing for a marketer trying to cultivate and engage a large audience, it would be toxic for Hacker News as a community.
While the most insightful commentary generally lies in a well reasoned, thoughtfully worded counterargument, it's always hard to deal with being judged or disagreed with; especially in public. This may be exacerbated when an argument is worded poorly (see http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html). Unfortunately, the odds of either happening on Hacker News, are far higher.
There's a superbly written piece by Xianhang Zhang on Quora, that talks about the same concept. It's titled "Disregard Ideas, Acquire Assets" and presents a really convincing case by citing examples of entrepreneurs that focused on building assets, until as he puts it "they couldn't not do a startup with them". (Leverage could qualify as one of the more important ones, or if you want to look at it another way, acquiring substantial assets equates to earning leverage).
This notion runs contrary to the standard approach that most early stage entrepreneurs adopt, namely the "build a laundry list of ideas and filter the top ones out using a combination of a heuristic, common sense and (eventually) customer validation and keep at it until you have traction with a concept that matters" approach.
I'm going to stick my neck out here, and recommend the approach that Zhang proposes - "focus relentlessly on acquiring interesting assets and then execute on the startups that naturally fall out of them". This means you might be pursuing something for the longest time that doesn't remotely resemble a startup. I'd qualify this with one caveat - make sure whatever it is, it's something you love doing.
And I think this is an interesting way to go about becoming an entrepreneur. Maybe you shouldn't dive in the deep end straight away (if you haven't built sufficient leverage / assets). Maybe that's another way deferring gratification, what with how cool just 'being an entrepreneur' has recently become.
simplistic can be pejorative, but in this case it doesn't seem to be, atleast from my perspective
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative
> A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts.
Well, I didn't downvote you, but I feel like I should reply...
Your comment was essentially of the form "Some Xs are Ys, Z is an X, therefore Z is a Y", which is of course wrong. "Simplistic" is not one of those words whose pejorativeness depends on context.
The don't-sweat-it-you'll-be-able-to-connect-the-dots-in-hindsight approach to life is both forgiving and encouraging in an almost avuncular way, especially when you're going through a period of intense personal turmoil that accompanies rejection. But then again, it suffers from a heady dose of survivorship bias.
And so the question begs, how do you know that you're on the periphery of a cul de sac, and all you need do is retrace your steps and begin with a clean slate? (This would definitely not have augured well for, say, an Airbnb. Then again, languishing in mediocrity or persisting in a stagnating job is like a slow death.)
It does feel a bit trite, but it lines up just fine with the classics:
Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards.
So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.
Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.
Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.
He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.
The demo appears to be buggy, but they seem to have something substantial in the works. From the website:
Please note that Observer was build during the Node Knock Out, a 48 hour coding competition. The commercial version currently in developement, this free service will stay online as long as there are resources to support it.
Could you describe was buggy about the demo? Did it load really slow or was it something else :)?
I'm currently working really hard on the commercial version of Observer which will be much more speedy less hacked up. So any feedback is still more than welcome at this point :D
This is such an incredible article on so many counts. I stumbled upon Ian Bogost when we were in the throes of the (then acerbic) "gamification" debate, and Foursquare was the undisputed toast of the interwebs. I've been following him since, and have found myself quite intrigued by the Cow Clicker story.
For me, the takeaway from the article isn't so ironic when you look at Game Development as any of the arts. And bear with the cliche, but save the odd exception, an artists' life is almost always a compromise between staying true to one's principles and courting mainstream appeal. Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, "perhaps the biggest rock band most people have never heard of", will certainly attest to this.
Completing one of these courses along with the accompanying assignments only takes you so far. Grades in a rigorous examination, however, represent a credential, which in turn sets up much needed (by the candidates taking the course) signaling. Eventually, a lot of employers might end up becoming sensitive to this signaling. A crude example of this can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353543
If (and when) someone does crack this puzze and if employers in turn, react to this change, I see a lot of universities more than breaking a sweat. This latent potential is what, IMHO, most analysts / investors are really upbeat about.