Disclosure, I’m an investor in Jamsocket, the company behind this… but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that every time Paul and Taylor launch something they have been working on, I end up saying “woah.” In particular, using ForeverVM with Clause is so fun.
May I ask how you got the opportunity to invest in this company? If you are a VC, makes sense, just wondering how normies can get access to invest in companies they believe in. Thanks
If you're an accredited investor (make sure you meet the financial criteria) you can cold email seed/pre-seed stage companies. These companies typically raise on SAFEs and may have low minimum investments (say $5k or $10k).
Many companies are likely happy to take your small check if you are a nice person and can be even minimally helpful to them. Note that for YC companies you'll probably have to swallow the pill of a $20M valuation or so.
I do indeed work in VC. But as another reply mentions, any accredited investor can write small checks into startups, and most preseed/seed founders are happy to take angel checks.
Strong disagreement. The acquisition happened in 2006. The last few great Pixar movies were in the pipeline already (Ratatouille - 2007, WALL-E - 2008, Up - 2009).
I disagree too from a animation/story-quality perspective, but from a business perspective, Pixar seems to be doing well enough to meet OPs criteria of not being ruined.
Lightyear was a letdown. My kids enjoyed it but I thought it could have been much better. I expected to see Buzz as at this exciting space ranger, but that wasn't what the movie was about. If I was Andy from Toy Story there would be no way I wanted a Buzz toy after seeing that movie.
Ah. Might have to watch it then. After a number of duds I gave up on watching new Pixar movies except for those made by Brad Bird, or especially recommended.
I'd argue the only real misses were the cash grab sequels (Cars 2, Cars 3, and I can only assume Lightyear is in that group but looking at RT it seems like both ratings are still "fresh"). The rest of the movies on the post-acquisition list were good, if not great. Critically, I think the worst one on the list is the Good Dinosaur and even that's still generally well liked.
Cars 2 was the only real stinker. I agree they're not 100% excellent, but most are at least okay. And from your list: Brave, Cars 3, Coco, Onward, Luca, and Turning Red I all consider great to excellent. I haven't seen Lightyear yet.
I'd argue that Marvel is another example, although a complex one. Marvel Comics has changed very little in terms of culture; Ike Perlmutter runs it very much the way he ran it when it was independent. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been great for Marvel but is no longer under Marvel Comics proper (it's part of the studio group now).
As long as we're doing Disney acquisitions, Lucasfilm is also still pretty independent and successful. Other Disney acquisitions have been less so.
I’d argue that LucasArts was effectively dead before the acquisition, despite having in theory a few games in development. That said, I’d also argue that LucasArts would have wound up shuttered even if it had been in great shape, so you’re probably right either way.
Definitely some exciting stuff like Redwood and Wasp working to solve these problems. I always loved what Meteor tried to do for this, though the JS ecosystem sort of evolved in a different direction.
I’m 100% convinced I would never have learned to code without Meteor… it made so many things simpler. You should check out wasp[0], which has a lot of philosophy in common. Disclosure: I am investor in the company behind the project.
I have read most of his stuff, including The Pale King. It is absolutely worth reading, but also recall that it was published in an unfinished state posthumously. It is not a particularly easy read but has some extremely compelling themes.
Early stage investor here. You’d be shocked. It’s extremely en vogue to start a company and have your value prop be “open source alternative to X,” without any regard for whether there is actually any logic to something being open source.
As an early stage investor do you outright reject "open source" projects or would you consider one that's already making some money? I've never considered putting it this way but I guess you could say the project I maintain is an `"open source" alternative to a specific Twillio product` and MRR is showing steady/strong growth. But being a solo maintainer is seeming to be a strike against me (ahem yc).
What are early stage investors' criteria for open source, in your opinion?
> Do you outright reject "open source" projects ... ?
No! I'm bullish on open source, I just think the current climate is weird. I have a small vc fund, currently 8 portfolio companies and almost half have at least some open source element to their product offering. I'd definitely look at something you're describing, and the fact that you're seeing steady MRR growth is a huge accomplishment, regardless of whether you ever choose to take vc money.
Happy to have a discussion on the topic if helpful, don't feel the need to be in sales mode. You can hit me up if interested: taylor at abstraction.vc
If you look at it from the input-output financial perspective, where the effort in open sourcing it produces X amount of money, I'd agree its not viable. But if you look at it from the advertising perspective, there are other advantages:
- Appeal to potential employees for their exposure boost
- External contributors to fix minor bugs and do testing, along with online presence
- Availability after the entities maintaining it goes defunct. With any luck if the project has gained some momentum other companies will also have programmers using/wanting to maintain the same thing
- Free to 'on board' or filter candidates even before hiring
So I'd view it as a kind of branding strategy, helping spread good optics for the business. This in turn makes a system where it increases the pool of potential employees and external user support.
I was thinking about this recently. Everyone wants to replicate the success of Mattermost.
I think the reason Mattermost works is because the customer is an IT department. When you get outside IT, the value prop completely vanishes. Regular people buying software don’t know what open source is.
Haha I mean nothing that was obviously ridiculous, like “Applebee’s, but open source” or something. It was more just really hand-wavy logic around why their product needed something open source, with no really compelling answer.
I think "because everything should be open source" is a fine answer to why something should be open source, even if it doesn't answer the different and more important question about how the company will make money.
If someone is saying it ONLY to make someone give him money it is not good enough answer. My take on this is that a lot of those people just slap "Open Source" on their product to catch people who can invest and care about open source.
If someone does not really care about open source but is just throwing statements around to look good and get money from people, that is not the right way.
Open source isn't just a label. If the label is a lie and the product is not actually open source, that's a separate issue.
Assuming the product is actually open source, the important question to answer is the same as if it's closed: How do you plan to make money? As to why it's open/closed source, any answer just leads back to "and how will you make money?" Neither licensing model is inherently going to make money.
But I have to agree, an answer like "because 'open source' attracts investors" is a red flag. Investors are the means to an end, not the end itself.
This seems a little myopic. Definitely earnings growth is a factor, but it can’t really explain what just happened with GameStop and WSB, nor most of Amazon’s rise over the past decades. Future expected cash flows, market size, interest rates (and therefore capital seeking yield via equity markets) are all factors. Alongside human tastes, cultural perception, and pockets of irrationality.
