 Hello, I am a new startup! I’m funded by venture capital and free to use. Please come and make me valuable by using me. Make my numbers go up! Once you do, I’ll have everything I need and I can do whatever I want with the time and effort you’ve put into making me successful. Not happy? Fuck you, I don’t need you anymore (network effects FTW, amirite?)… I’m laughing all the way to the bank. Goodbye! … Hello, I am a new startup… * * * When are we going to learn to say “no” at the start? 25 comments
If you want to understand how startups and venture capital work, go to 26:24 on the recording of my talk “Excuse Me, Your Unicorn Keeps Shitting In My Back Yard, Can He Please Not?” from 2016: https://ar.al/talks/#excuse-me-your-unicorn-keeps-shitting-in-my-back-yard-can-he-please-not #startups #ventureCapital #VC #SiliconValley #BigTech #enshittification #PeopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism #surveillanceCapitalism #video @petpet Thanks. And yes, it’s clear that nothing is going to change unless we make viable alternatives and people start using them. Not easy to do with zero funding but some of us are trying. Statistically speaking, though, we don’t exist. @petpet Yep. Institutional corruption – lobbying and revolving doors – make it nigh on impossible to regulate effectively. That, and the EU Commission’s “single market über alles” framing. I had a go at them a few years ago but it was just a drop in the bucket: https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/  @aral Great talk! I thoroughly agree with your take on startups, but I'm curious what is the alternative when someone comes from the working class with no capital and has an idea for an online service which has the potential to sustain them. What other structures can we use to fund some initiatives, because, speaking as someone who's been working on FOSS for the past year, donations don't cut it. @db0 I hear you. This is why must fund things for the common good from the commons. But we’re not. Not really. Not as we should be. (We’re in the same boat with Small Technology Foundation as we build the Small Web with zero EU funding.) This is what I told the EU parliament a few years ago. It hasn’t made a difference as far as I can tell: https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/ PS. Thank you for your kind words about the talk :) @aral OK effectively sadly no actual solutions yet outside of the startup play :( While criticism of the current system is important, I feel it's largely toothless if valid solutions outside it don't exist. I wonder if something like the startup play, but incubated by non-profit orgs would work. Basically what NLNet is doing but without being as task-oriented and more of a long-term incubation until profitability. (I've already read your post about your NLNet troubles btw) @aral This might be a bit of a weird take on this, but I think the most concrete thing most of us can do against this is use and encourage the use of ad-blockers. We can't compete at scale with this sort of money. Free services will always trump donation-based or paid services, because that's what we're used to as consumers. We *can* however try to make this industry totally not worth it for VCs to invest in. And this is where ad/tracking blockers at a massive scale come in. @imsnif Having made and maintained a tracker blocker for quite a few years, it’s a losing game. The surveillance capitalists control the browsers. You can only be as effective in policing them as they allow you to be (see what’s happening with Chrome, etc.) And it doesn’t even have to be free for this to apply. Venture-capital-funded is the core issue. Because with VC you’ve already sold your company,you’re just waiting for the sale to mature (the exit) – which it will do if you’re successful. @aral On the other hand though, "just say no" and consumer education are also historically failing ideas. In the infrastructure I build, I make sure that surveillance is just not a thing that would be possible (namely making sure you have to explicitly consent to user-content tracking you) - but this is just my small corner of the universe. @imsnif It’s not just the ads; it’s the tracking. Sure the ads are the visible symptom. Many ad blockers (e.g., adblock plus) are actually part of the advertising industry and they unblock folks like Google for money (that’s their business model – see “acceptable ads”). And they usually don’t block trackers, opting for a cosmetic approach. (Assuming you use uBlock Origin, which is good.) These folks don’t limit themselves to tracking you on the web either. They buy data from brokers, etc.  @Aram 🌈♾️ Isn't that the new business model of the VC/Silicon Valley people? They call it AI.
 @imsnif @aral yeah, the technological battle against tracking is a losing game. Try https://coveryourtracks.eff.org. The solution would be in social awareness, but they also influence the media. And regulation. @Walrus @imsnif You’re up against trillion-dollar budgets. The best approaches, in my opinion are: 1. Regulate them (hard, because institutional corruption – revolving doors, lobbying, etc.) 2. Create – decentralised, free and open, etc. – alternatives (see Small Tech: https://small-tech.org/about/#small-technology and Small Web: https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/)  Pity. I just made up Search as a name for the app to do it.  |
Gregory's Server
A startup cannot enshittify if you don’t allow it to start up.
Once it starts up, gains traction, and the network effects kick in, you lose the power to do anything about it.
The only time you can kill a venture-capital funded startup is at the very beginning.
The way you kill a startup is by not using its free services at the start.
The correct answer to a venture-capital funded startup is always “no, thank you!”
#startups #ventureCapital #VC #SiliconValley #BigTech