Why don't you just figure out how much it's gonna cost you to implement, publish that, and ask for the money? I am 100% on your side but I'm not interested in a bunch of organizational doublespeak, just say you can't afford it and you need $600k or whatever to do this because (budget breakdown). Life's too short to waste time parsing business emo messaging.
How much money do you need? Publish your revenue model and stuff so people can help you with it .
This is honestly a terrible idea. It will get posted to HN, and the comments will be a flood of "why do you need that much to do this, I could do it for $5 using list of this week's vaporware buzzwords that won't survive to the end of the month".
Who cares? If the problem is money then the next question is how much. It doesn't require universal agreement.
Look what this boils down to is that Academia.edu is a private venture, people are investing in it in the hope of being able to make profit later. Here the firm says they want to bring as much information as possible to as wide an audience as possible, but need to raise additional money to add this (rather obvious) functionality. How much? That's a secret, because revealing it might reduce the profit the investors are hoping to get out of it.
I'm very much in favor of the stated goal of disrupting the existing academic publishing/cataloging oligopolies. but if that's really the priority, then stop being so secretive. And if profitability and becoming the new monopolistic incumbent is really the priority, then stop bullshitting me with feel-good mission statements and just cold-call more rich people until someone writes a check.
I know I'm pressing things very bluntly, but I don't think the habit of corporate doublespeak that has become the norm in society is actually doing anyone much good, including the people engaging in it. Nobody really wants to get up in the morning and spend their day bullshitting people with cliches, that doesn't create value for anyone.
Charities do that all the time. Some are well funded exactly for this reason. Most people understand good things cost money when thinking for long term.
It is when people want to launch things and get lots of buzz, then HN is great. But when people express criticism suddenly the user community is a bunch of angry peasants to be kept at arm's length.
I've gotta say I'm getting real tired of entrepreneurs that want to be everybody's friend when they're getting their exciting new venture off the ground but are too cool to discuss the nuances of business with anyone outside the VC bubble whenever they run into a PR problem.
That's a general statement, not directed at the academia.edu team. It's a sad reality that a lot of what passes for entrepreneurship today involves telling users, employees, and investors that they're each the most important group so as to make as many people as possible happy, right up to the point where a conflict of interest emerges and then trying to obscure the fact of its existence with platitudes.
How much money do you need? Publish your revenue model and stuff so people can help you with it .