The cog can be an outcome that is almost as bad the slog. You are overestimating the amount and range of learning that is possible under the vc path outside of the slog (eg the cog).
Indeed, you may feel like you are learning quite a bit. But that will generally be lessons that the vc investors want you to learn.
Your statements imply that there are lessons to be learned that can only be facilitated by the kind of money that vc investors offer. But your own company (Cloudflare) makes cloud technology more affordable and partially weakens the rationale for getting vc investments.
When you have a soft money bed to land on, you will be less incentivized to search for a broad range of knowledge. Arguably, you will be learning less as a result of this money safety net.
You will be operating under the vc cog thinking that you are learning significantly both quantitatively and qualitatively. As the vc cog wheel continues to churn, you have the illusion of epistemic progress.
What a depressingly nihilistic world view. Certainly if you believe you are beholden to some entity’s rules you must follow then all you can ever learn is what the entity you follow is willing to teach. We took a different path.
We talked to our investors generally four times a year at Board meetings. We had a rule that no sentence we said in those meetings could end with a question mark. We recognized that we were the experts in our business. We used those checkins as opportunities to confirm ourselves that we were making progress. We focused on building great products for our customers and chose the KPIs to report based on measuring that. And we leveraged our success to meet thousands of people we’d never have had access to and try and learn from them all.
One thing that I think is natural if you have professional investors but is important to find way to create even if you’re bootstrapped: the regularly scheduled check-in. The most valuable part of a Board meeting isn’t the meeting itself. It’s the preparation for that meeting which forces you to assess how things are going.
Our trick was to pick 5 KPIs that indicated the true health of the business and track them relentlessly. The first 12 pages of our Board meeting presentation was exactly the same every time other than the numbers being updated. We picked the the metrics. We didn’t ask for our VCs input. But then we relentlessly stuck with them, quarter after quarter. It made preparing for Board meetings easy: just update the stats and prepare to talk about whatever is anomalous (good or bad). And the consistency built confidence from our investors. I remember one saying: “Cloudflare Board meetings are great: I know exactly how things are going by slide 4 of the presentation.”
No VC taught us that. We learned it by being curious, talking to other entrepreneurs, and experimenting ourselves. You can do the same if you’re bootstrapped, you just have to be more self-directed to create some cadence to check in with your business and keep yourself honest.
PS - sadly, there’s no Illuminati running the world either. “Sadly” because it’d certainly be comforting to think someone was in control and it’s scary to meet the people who supposedly are and realize they’re just making it up as they go along too.
A sincere thanks for sharing your experience and insights. Curiosity and a flexible mindset with a fast learning rate and a willingness to challenge even closely held assumptions can result in innovative knowledge under any context, including a vc investment one.
But curiosity is not limitless. It is a function of time. And it would be disingenuous to completely refute the fact that a vc frame of reference will affect curiosity - perhaps even in an adverse manner that can reduce innovation.
Let's get practical and technical with a Cloudflare example. Arguably, there would be no Cloudflare without the ability to change nameservers from domain registrars. You spotted some network slack with the ability of people to easily move to Cloudflare with a relatively simple nameserver change.
That was innovative and surely a result of your curiosity. That allowed you to then build upon that traction and offer a wider range of cloud services.
However, Cloudflare itself eventually became a domain registrar. In the terms of service, Cloudflare blocks all nameserver changes for domains registered with Cloudflare - the very option that allowed Cloudflare to emerge in the first place.
There is no justifiable technical reason for this. It is essentially a political decision borne out of a vc frame of reference. Perhaps the political justification is : Let's lock in people that registered domains with us on Cloudflare. So, they will will be forced to use Cloudflare services.
Arguably, this is a violation of ICANN guidelines that allowed you to obtain your domain registrar license. The block is essentially pointless. Most people interested in nameserver changes for Cloudflare registered domains just want to coordinate across multiple Cloudflare accounts. Multiple questions have been posted in Cloudflare community forums for years. Yet, nothing gets done about it.[1]
The fundamental point is that curiosity led you to use nameserver changes to get some traction. As the vc frame of reference gained more importance over the years, it blocked your curiosity by nudging you to block nameserver changes.
You are undoubtedly still curious. But that curiosity time is spent on board meeting formats and and how to optimise slide presentations - instead of realizing that some curiosity doors that allowed the existence of Cloudflare in the first place are getting closed. Ramifications of that attitude and mindset going forward are overlooked.
So yes, curiosity is good. But, there is no inherent primacy of curiosity under vc versus outside vc. Highly curious people tend to be self directed in any context. If anything, the direction provided by vc can limit curiosity and be ultimately self defeating.
We give domain registration away at cost. The only reason that makes sense for us is if some of the people who register use our services. Key to using our services is using our name servers. So someone who uses our registrar but not our name servers is a complete loss to us — we literally lose money on the payment processing and anticipated support fees. There are lots of other registrars and we make it easy to transfer away if you need to use other name servers for some reason. But if our registrar business weren’t lead generation for our other services then it wouldn’t make sense for us to have a registrar business at all.
The mission of Cloudflare is to build a better internet. In what ways does blocking nameserver changes help build a better internet?
It actually builds a worse internet. One that is closed to the exchange of information and services. One in which Cloudflare, an entity that allegedly helps build a better internet, would not even exist.
You know full well, that if all domain registrars had prevented nameserver changes to Cloudflare, that Cloudflare would not exist. In this context, you could forgive a skeptic for suggesting that "building a better internet" is just empty corporate speak.
Let's now consider the business case for domain registration. You mention that it is at cost as far as ICANN fees and registry fees are concerned. But you incur payment processing fees and customer support fees that would place an undue business burden that would generate a loss.
For payment processing fees, let's assume one to two percent. Cloudflare domain registration for the dot com registry including ICANN fee currently stands at $9.15.
One percent is $0.0915 or let's just say a dime. Two percent is $0.183 or let's just say a quarter. Registrants would surely not mind paying an extra dime or quarter to cover payment processing costs. Heck, you could just round it up to an even $10.
If your intention is indeed lead generation for your other services, it would actually make even more business sense to have this slightly higher price as a lead qualifier. Do you think a potential customer that is price sensitive for a few cents on domain registration is likely to purchase your other services?
As for customer support, if the user changes the nameservers to another provider, by definition, that user will have to get support for dns records and all other issues from that provider. In other words, there would not be much custom to support.
So, if payment processing and customer support are your key arguments against blocking nameserver changes, respectfully, they are tangential and inconsequential. If there are some more relevant and consequential arguments for blocking nameserver changes, out of curiosity, please share those with us. Thanks.
B.J. Fogg is not necessarily someone to look up to in this area either. He followed a very similar flip flop trajectory and is frequently quoted in the post author's first book on how to get users addicted.
Many of the students that were part of his lab went on to apply his behavior manipulation teachings [1] in leadership positions to engineer us into today's situation. Now, he is decrying the state of affairs he helped bring about. Pinches of salt recommended.
How do you get that impression? His 2003 work talks about his fascination of propaganda and how it might be unethical to persuade someone using technology for malicious purposes. He also has old lecture videos that give the same impression in a more academic-neutral light:
It's been well over 20 years since his work started was published. That's a full generation to see the effects of technology and mainstream adoption while comparing it to your life's work. I think it's fair to see someone decry the state of affairs when they were already on that side of the fence. It's quite unfair to attribute his involvement as something malicious though. Behavior science itself is already an ethical dilemma.
Maybe the 2007 book has something else in it, but I always got the opinion that famous founders simply attended the class and may/may not have used what they learned in it. Not that he was involved outside of it. But who knows who is in each other's pocket. I still like the guy as his message hasn't really changed.
Have you viewed the alumni of the B.J. Fogg Behavior Boot Camp? [1] Have you considered why people fork over a hefty sum to attend those bootcamps? What do you think their behavior design goals were?
Simply echoing the OP comment for B.J. Fogg as well. Nothing more.
His book Tiny Habits is a decent read actually. That does not however lend support to your initial unrepresentative statement about his work in persuasive technology.
His sense of research ethics is beyond the scope of this thread. But since you brought up that dimension in your reply, you might want to consider the fact that he worked as an assistant [2] for Philip Zimbardo [3] who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment [4].
Depends. Is the burglar still being primarily financed by fences when giving you advice on home security? Is the burglar still teaching at a school for aspiring burglars? Why is the burglar giving you advice about home security now? Is it to secure a reduced sentence plea deal?
A better solution could be hacking the supply side by flooding the market with fake ivory indistinguishable from real ivory. The price of ivory should go down. There will be less financial incentive for the poaching and bribing. Some biologists are working on this angle [1].
This. But also putting a bounty on poachers that exceeds the value of ivory, make killing poachers so profitable that for every poacher, there are 20 bounty hunters. Also, education. Also, counter intelligence (ingrain societies that value ivory with rumors that touching ivory causes flaccidity and ruins libido, which is highly contagious, etc.)
Also, why don't we just take all the elephants and rhinos from them, establish them in the American west? We can deal with the ecological issues.
"No, no, poaching elephants is actually really safe."
"But, but the bounty? Poacher heads go for ten times what ivory goes for."
"That, look, scary stories that the government has to tell to make the voters think that they're doing something to help those poor defenseless elephants. Scare tactics. Think about it, if they really were going to do anything about the poachers, then they wouldn't be putting up some bounty against poaching. It's an admission that they can't and they won't do anything to stop us. Besides, factory has been shut down for three weeks and isn't opening any time soon. You want to put food on the table or not?"
<LATER>
A rifle shot rings out across the early morning plains. An elephant collapses to the ground and breathes its last breath.
"Change of plans Fred, we've got video evidence that you just poached an elephant. I hear poacher heads go for ten times what ivory does."
"You said the bounty was nothing but propaganda!"
"Yeah, good thing there's no bounty on liars."
A second rifle shot rings out across the early morning plains. "Now, sure would be a shame if all that ivory goes to waste."
Unfortunately this is accurate, much like the bounties put on certain people within Afghanistan where it sure seems like it was abused by certain local tribes to take out some rival and profit from the US Government in the process. In areas where you'd want to put a bounty on people, there's bound to be enough corruption and misaligned incentives to make it not work the way you hoped.
"Oh, we call him the poacher punisher. Poachers killed his family, or at least that's the story. He's killed hundreds of poachers, maybe even thousands. In fact, he once killed an entire village of poachers. Men, women, children, dogs, poachers all of them. At least according to the poacher punisher. He brought back the ivory he said he found on them. It's how he made his first million."
A man kills an elephant with a rifle and then shoots the rifle with another rifle. He brings in the first rifle and gets a reward. Then he sells the ivory and gets a second reward. I'm not convinced that this situation is any improved (and certainly not a 50% success) if instead of this farce he instead tricks someone who wasn't going to shoot any elephants into shooting an elephant.
13,000 years ago, very elephant-like creatures roamed N. America.[1] So the ecological issues are not going to be a big problem. Besides, elephants stampeding through Salt Lake City is not an example of an ecological issue. Call Animal Control.
I'm not sure if you are joking / being sarcastic or genuine, but I do Voice Dialogue, which is in fact talking to your voices, for a living and it is a big deal. This post is a beautiful, personal account of dialoging internally using writing. Post does not provide _content_ of any of such dialogues of the author, which, in my opinion, is elegant, yet it is written in such a way, that may be encouraging to some. YMMV.
I am definitely not being sarcastic. Sorry to hear that was even a consideration.
The article you posted has a lot more epistemic value. In contrast, the article in this thread is a very basic frustrated rant. It is just unfortunate that the seemingly more discussion worthy article did not receive more discussion.
I am intrigued by Voice Dialogue. Would you care to expand a bit on that? Pointing to any resources would be much appreciated.
Oh, apologies for reading your comment this way, my bad.
Voice Dialogue is amazing. Perspective that we have different, very much independent sub-parts to our personality is not new and it is gaining more and more popularity (both in professional context (different modes of psychotherapy, etc.) and in popular culture (more and more references which use this 'many parts' view)).
Voice Dialogue in core is _practice_ of talking to these parts of our personality (or rather consciousness) (edit: engaging with them in a conversation). This is where one person engages in a conversation with different parts of another person.
To give you an example, one could talk to Your Inner Child (in fact, one could talk with diffrent child-like energies in you), your Rational Mind, your Cautious One, your Joy, and so on...
If you do it well, a certain shift in consciousness accurs. You just realise that these are in fact 'voices' or 'parts' ('energies' is also a good term) in you and you are not them. I dont hesitate to call it an insight.
Even reading a book about it can make that shift happen for you. I am pretty sure of what I write here. :)
Have you considered a more simple setup such as a local text file that is encrypted? Of course, there is always a risk but reducing the attack surface can help.
I designed it to be local-first (local-only on Android, iOS didn't let me turn off internet permissions) and using an on-device encrypted database with required password to login. I think it was as secure as I could have made it, but I think I still have the worry of not being able to protect against state-sponsored attacks, or others that can get root access on the phone and install keyloggers, etc.
While I understand those are rare occurrences, I also didn't necessarily want to become a target like Signal. But maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion because Apple and Google have an incentive to make sure their phones aren't rooted, so maybe it would be a lot safer than I imagine.
I guess I also worry about law enforcement getting devices (legally or illegally) and having access to such deep info. What we say to ourselves in a journal often can be a LOT more honest than what we say to others in text messages, emails, etc.
> Life is a combinatorially explosive decision tree (borrowed from John Vervaeke), journaling helps you to better guess the best future path and keep you on it
I'm not sure how are you getting "look up to" vibe, Andy commented that[1] before vlang was released, solely based on feature lists from vlang's website.
I don’t have a real opinion in this particular topic area, but I am certain many people will find the Andrew Kelly reference to be not entirely accurate.
Neither do I. The word seems was used as a tentative qualifier rather than an assertion. Feel free to provide context that would indicate otherwise if you deem it salient.
Thanks for pointing this out. At the very least, there are conflicting attitudes. Comment will be edited to reflect that. Initial reply made a valid point.
You did nothing wrong in pointing out the difference in attitude. The change in views is arguably indicative to the extent that Vlang was perceived as a real threat, competition, or could become more successful.
Vlang has continually maintained its development pace and popularity (https://github.com/vlang/v/releases), so that pretending to dismiss it as if it was nothing or attempting to smear the author just does not work. It's not going away. Vlang is also not a one-man show, but has numerous other committed developers, new contributors, and loyal long time supporters.
Actually, what people can find is the author of Vlang has been shown to welcome constructive and helpful criticism versus outright trolling or blatant smearing. For example- "What don't you like about V / what would you like to be changed?" (https://github.com/vlang/v/discussions/7610).
It was rather a failure to deliver on the promises than perceived as a threat to Zig and the target audience for both differ enough that V doesn't have an effect on the success of Zig nor does Zig have an effect on the success of V. They are both reaching for success within their own domains with some but not much overlap.
I know you're very fond of V but misrepresenting criticism or a negative view of the project as "fear", "perceived threat", and so on is rather dishonest and a disservice to the project. The above is a comparison of before release and long after where there's been a chance to evaluate V for what it is rather than for what it advertised.
Could you please share any other examples of commands?
[1] https://ibb.co/GVG0Rdf