I remember how this guy came to a forum and asked whether starting a dating site would be a good idea. Everybody said "no".

Isn't this a red hot signal that it's a great idea? If everyone is saying no and you see the world differently, you have open space to play.

Basically Peter Thiel's contrarian perspective.

"Is selling refrigerators to Eskimos a good idea?"

You're begging the question. It's only a signal that it's a great idea if everyone says no given that it is a great idea.

Usually, if all your feedback is negative, it's a red hot signal that you should be doing something else.

It's an interesting example you use because I think it still serves the previous point. Peter Drucker wrote, “To sell the Eskimos a refrigerator to keep food cold, is finding a new market; to sell a refrigerator to keep food from getting too cold is actually creating a new product”. (The Practice of Management) This was apparently inspired by a true tale of a Westinghouse salesman who sold deep freezes and fridges to arctic-dwellers. Meat left outside was rock hard and took too long to thaw, and you can't quickly drink frozen water/juice/beer.

My point is, lazy conventional group wisdom is often wrong because it's invested in "the way things are." Mature industries are most vulnerable in my experience (personally, I have experience in the large and old-thinking parking and payment industries). Acceptance of "because that's not how things are done" blinds people to opportunities. The lazy majority are too quick to repeat that dismissal. This adds "weight" to a rejection, but little critical analysis. I have found it productive and profitable to often disagree and swim upstream. I recognize not all industries or product spaces are like this.

At most, people's opinion is uncorrelated with the result. To say that people's opinion is strongly inversely correlated means that people saying "oh my god take my money right now" means you should never follow that idea.

Simply put, you can't have it both ways. You can't both have people saying "no" and people saying "yes" mean that it's a good idea.

> Isn't this a red hot signal that it's a great idea?

Unfortunately both the great ideas and the awful ideas look awful.

Not necessarily. You might be the only person that sees (or can be convinced to see) the world that way.

Benchmark Capital had the policy that if every partner said "yes" to a deal, they did not fund it - if everyone thinks it's a great idea, there's not enough risk or upside.

I dont doubt you, but source?

Damn, I can't find the thread. His handle is MarcusPOF but the thread was started on another account (obviously). The forum was wickedfire. There are other regulars lurking on HN. Somebody else might chime in.

The forum is dead now and has been for many years. But it had its day. The guy who made and sold Indeed was a regular too as well as other pretty successful people, but it had a ... let's call it a certain vibe.

Still some gems lingering around: https://www.google.com/search?aqs=chrome..69i57.1782j0j7&sou...

From what I briefly gathered, WickedFire is similar to today's WarriorForum.

Today's wickedfire is similar to WarriorForum. Used to be a lot different though.

I was a regular there. IIRC he didn't ask "is starting a dating site a good idea." He already had the dating site. But he launched its ad network on WF. [0] (That's MarcusPOF... pretty sure BenPOF is the founder)

Fun fact: Wickedfire was also around for the launch of "2girls1cup" (if you aren't familiar with this, do not google it) [1] and Riff Raff (now a top-100 artist, somehow... wtf) [2]

[0] http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/74544-plentyof...

[1] http://www.wickedfire.com/misc-products-software-services/16...

[2] http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-the-shit/163812-my-first-...

No, Ben is an employee. Marcus Frind is the founder of POF and he did make a thread before he was MarkusPOF. It was very early on, not 2009. A couple of years before that perhaps. God it has been so long since then!

The thread wasn't full of people mocking him (wf wasn't like that back then) but people were telling him it's generally not a good idea and he should go niche instead. I've completely lost touch with all of my contacts from back then and I can't find the thread unfortunately, so you have to take it on my word, I guess.

The forum is definitely dead these days, but the marketplace is still "somewhat" active, and there are a few skype groups with active daily participation. It seems like no forum has really risen to take its place. More like the SEO guys went one way (BHW, Skype groups), the PPC guys another (private forums, other skype groups).

A lot of the big players are still active and still making money. If you want an invite to a Skype group shoot me an email.

lol, that's amazing if true.

Doesn't it seem like kind of a dick move to give no equity to any of the 75 employees?

> Doesn't it seem like kind of a dick move to give no equity to any of the 75 employees?

It's more of dick move to hang worthless equity as a carrot in front of people who don't know any better. Salaries have no vesting periods, no dilution[1], and are presented in cash.

[1]: Outside of inflation :)

Definitely a good salary is more important than equity, but there's nothing stopping you from having both. :)

It's true, and it happens, not just in Big Companies.

They joined the company knowing that they weren't getting any equity. Also, it sounds like most of the value of the company existed before he hired his first employee.

To corroborate this, I joined one fintech startup when it had 7 people, with no equity, based on salary. The founder's rationale for paying higher salaries and not offering equity was that equity is worth substantially more to founders/investors than employees, due to factors like risk preferences and the fact that they could diversify, so it made more sense for him to just raise more money and pay purely in cash. This made sense to me and I actually wonder why it isn't more common.

I think there are some strong arguments in favour of equity grants:

1. Startups face high frictional costs when selling their equity; providing equity grants along with lower salaries may help to avoid cash-flow problems arising from the inefficiency in the market.

2. In a early-stage startup with inexperienced employees, providing equity grants can remove much of the valuation risk from employees' wages; if they do exceptionally good work, they'll automatically be compensated more by virtue of the increased value of their equity. (This also provides an argument for vesting cliffs: If an employee does exceptionally poor work, they can be fired before the cliff and their compensation is effectively reduced to match the quality of the work they performed.)

3. Psychological biases result in people working irrationally hard for companies which they feel that they "own", even if their ownership share is extremely small.

4. In some cases there may be income tax arbitrage advantages.

> They joined the company knowing that they weren't getting any equity.

Lots of people join companies on bad terms either because they don't realize the terms are bad or because they're desperate for any kind of income. That doesn't absolve the company of any blame for mistreating its workers. (I'm not necessarily suggesting that PoF was actually giving bad terms, it's possible they were paying amazing salaries)

What a strange bubble we reside in, where not getting equity in the company you're employed by is considered 'mistreatment'...

This assumes he had a clear exit strategy. If you read his interviews, it doesn't sound like he was gunning for a major exit -- it just sort of happened.

I'd say giving equity to employees when you have no clear interest in exiting, is a dick move.