I read a book about startup stuff at the request of the CEO of my old company. Some of it was at least superficially interesting, but one part stood out as haunting. It casually mentioned how a "founder" at Zoom was trying to get money, and the investors thought it was a stupid idea. It was a "solved problem" that already had big players in the space. But they were personally friends with the guy, so they gave him a few hundred million dollars.

That's not something to be proud of. Nepotism and bro-driven-investment isn't the ideal.

But these rich assholes pretend they're such visionaries. Gatekeepers of the future. Fuck them. Fuck them all. The climate is a disaster and they're pouring billions into "Cats in the metaverse"? Crimes against humanity.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 10 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Somewhere in there there's a step "come up with the most sociopathic business plan possible."

[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago

You know how you have to pay extra to have insurance to pay to take care of your mouth bones and your face balls? Well, what if we did that but with all the bones and stuff? Like, why are your foot bones included in the same insurance that pays for you to have knee bones or neck giblets? Why not do all the bones and stuff a la cart? And then maybe skin can be a premium add-on. We could charge separate for the red goo that's all on the inside everywhere, and then it's like a subscription model for having parts. We can sell it like "don't pay for the parts you don't have," and people will think that they are saving money because each part costs less than the whole, but paying for everything costs more.

-some Health Insurance board member somewhere, probably.

[–] dylanmorgan@sh.itjust.works 5 points 19 hours ago

“I was thinking about that phrase ‘free as the air’ and thought ‘what if it wasn’t?’”

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 4 points 20 hours ago

A classic from the dot-com boom era: Phase 1: Collect underpants