
How to proceed when you run out of cash, but you still believe? - aldamiz
https://medium.com/@aldamiz/how-to-proceed-when-you-run-out-of-cash-but-you-still-believe-76de86b839f2
======
AndrewKemendo
I empathize completely with this team because my company was in a very similar
situation in 2018. We had two very technical computer vision products, had
found traction and a growing enterprise user base but revenues didn't grow
fast enough and all of the major companies were entering the market.

We were lucky enough to find an acquisition off ramp last year but all of the
feels are the same.

The big takeaway I learned is, if your differentiating product/service could
be classified as a feature (which most ML or CV products are) inside a
platform or application, you'll be run over by the major platforms who rebuild
your product/services inside their platform.

Your only hope is that your team/data/IP is so far ahead and the acquiring
company can't build what you're doing in-house more cheaply than what you're
willing to sell for. Unfortunately it seems like there are fewer and fewer
cases where major players can't rebuild your work more cheaply.

Second, it's excruciatingly difficult to prove the value of your
product/service to a potential acquirer because you don't know their metrics,
and if you do, you don't know their acquisition strategy. We did an intensive
integration of our product with a Fortune 50 retailer, and based on their own
numbers showed (using their own A/B tests) that our service provided a
statistically significant lift in a core metric that they cared about, in this
case paid conversions. Their CEO even talked about it at a public summit.
However their acquisitions strategy didn't include small companies that aren't
major strategic partners (Only >$200M+ acquisitions).

The worst part here is that, the founders (like I was) are absolutely in love
with the technology and how amazing it is. The problem is, from a business
perspective, that basically doesn't matter. You could be doing the most
amazing work in NLP token inference, but if the product doesn't fit perfectly
as an acquisition and it's not so compelling as to build a huge platform
around, it's probably going to fail.

I wish it weren't the case, but it leaves me questioning what the value of
doing really hard technology is as a startup. It seems clear that the most
financially successful startups aren't solving fundamentally hard technology
problems until they get to scaling something with broad product market fit.

~~~
asah
Agreed but be cautious in the application and don't get jaded.

Microsoft DOS started as a feature of IBM PCs, and Google started as a feature
of Yahoo.

Like "tech in search of a problem" IMHO "feature vs product vs company" needs
to be applied case by case.

~~~
adventured
> and Google started as a feature of Yahoo.

The DOS point is correct in spirit. Google however did not in any regard start
as a feature of Yahoo, it was an entirely stand-alone search engine for nearly
two years prior to the Yahoo deal. Just one year after launching publicly it
was handling several million searches per day directly on their own site.
Google had already become very famous, with people going directly to Google's
site to use their search engine before Yahoo signed a deal to use them to
power their portal search. Just prior to the Yahoo deal, Google was routinely
handling 15+ million seaches per day - a large figure at the time.

Here is a Salon article from December 1998 noting Google's superiority and
promoting google.com specifically:

[https://www.salon.com/1998/12/21/straight_44/](https://www.salon.com/1998/12/21/straight_44/)

------
bumblebee4
Looking at your own brand homepage, my impression is that it is too technical.
I had expected to see many instagram-like pictures of people who demonstrate
that they have managed to dress better by using your product. Isn't your value
proposition that people can dress better?

Maybe I have overlooked it but I think you have the perfect software to run an
online shop. Pay influencers to use your product and viewers who like the
results will want to buy clothes from you. The profit margins of the sold
products should be higher than anything that can be made from selling an app.

~~~
aldamiz
Thanks bumblebee4 - fashiontasteapi.com is a the b2b side of the company and
the value prop is that we can help retailers automatically classify clothes
and understand/classify people. It is for technical and business people, not
the end consumer. This is a line of business we were just starting, and
hopefully will continue.

The consumer website is chicisimo.com :)

~~~
areoform
Hot take: You need a woman to design this website. None of it screams fashion.
When I think fashion, I think instagram influencer not "Omnichannel
Personalization."

Your killer app could be a simple FB quiz. People give you their FB/insta and
you spit out what looks that they'd think are wicked sick. Ideally culled from
Instagram.

This web page sounds like nerds talking about fashion rather than
fashionistas. I'm fairly sure that the Kardashians can't spell ontology.

Edit: Also why isn't this app hooking into the hauling subculture? This would
totes perfect for folks and YTers planning hauls.

~~~
fphhotchips
I would say they need someone with real marketing experience. Someone who can
define a target market and write for that person.

I could be the target market here. I have a desire to look good for work and
casual situations but absolutely no fashion sense. I hang out on HN. ML
powered fashion sounds great! But then I go on their website and it looks like
it's for 13 year olds who can read at a college professor level.

~~~
areoform
Yup! I'm their target audience too, and they lost me at the headline.

------
jakobmi
FIRST build a successful business, THEN try to sell it. You try so sell
something that's essentially worthless, and even worse: you have zero
negotiating power. So at best, you would accept an offer of ~10'000 USD. This
is the cold hard truth in this case, and I don't mean it in any bad way.

------
sofiaqt
This is a brave post. It takes a lot to share this with the world. I truly
hope the right partner comes along and makes the best use of all the hard work
you put into this. Respect

~~~
aldamiz
thanks sofia :)

------
Etheryte
Looking at the technical bits, I can't help but feel that you've failed to
communicate it well. Case in point, the caption for the edge detection image
of the girl:

> “…providing interactive access over a worldwide computer network to the
> plural fashion images, together with access to the fashion data for the
> fashion items in each of the plural fashion images and the information
> linking to the vendors of the fashion items…”

This sentence (with ellipsis!) does not appear anywhere else in the article,
so right off the bat it's hard to understand what you're trying to convey.
Secondly, it's insanely verbose, the whole sentence can be boiled down to
"hosting fashion images with relevant metadata". If it's an excerpt from one
of your patents, then without context it only muddles the situation — it makes
it seem like you either don't know how to communicate your tech or you're
trying to mislead.

~~~
aldamiz
Yes you are right, it is an excerpt from one of our patents. I completely
agree that it is very confusing as a caption, and I've taken it out. Doing it
in a hurry didn't help. Thanks for the heads up.

------
TekMol
What strikes me as odd is how unstylish everything in that post and on the
fashion taste api website is.

Is that intentional? Because I would think with $3.5M in funding, you can hire
professional photographers, models and stylists to make the photos and the
videos. And a webdesigner to make the site.

The appstore pages look better. And you have good ratings from thousands of
users. So why do you want to close it down? How many users do you have and
what are your running costs?

~~~
aldamiz
:)

You are right, the fashion taste api website does not intend to be stylish. It
tries to convey a message to business and tech teams, and we know it could
have a better design. Take a look at the consumer product
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMMmdCB1-Wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMMmdCB1-Wg)
hopefully you like the design better :)

~~~
magic_beans
> and we know it could have a better design

You've REALLY underestimated the power of design.

------
1_over_n
There are other ways to proceed when your running low - in my experience it
depends heavily on how hungry a bulldog you have built (i think paul graham
said this) which is often a function of when you raised cash. If you have to
make payroll and can't proceed without all those people sat in their we-work
seats with computers you need to buy them thats a difficult spot. We have
tried to stay lean for as long as possible and avoided taking cash because we
work in medtech and don't want investors that do not understand our roadmap
and milestones. We have found partnerships with academia, government, and
research institutions have helped drive our project forward without needing to
play the VC game. We advance our product and havent given equity away.

~~~
tomrod
Are you comfortable sharing what you've built? I'm in the non-profit side of
medtech and love seeing well-built products.

~~~
1_over_n
Happy to talk about it offline / privately as we are quietly working towards
releasing something. Not sure how is best to reach you?

------
weiming
Cool idea but, from watching the demo videos:

(a) That's a messy, unappealing closet.

(b) The Alexa interaction felt awkward. Probably a touch interface would've
worked better.

(c) Ugh, (used?) boots on the TV stand.

(d) Many of the clothing items we own are Asian items without barcodes. Wonder
how the import would work on those.

(e) The website (chicisimo) could use a lot, and I mean a lot of copywriting
love. So many walls of text. Some fashion photos should be front and center.
It is hard to understand what is going on in the animated iOS screen.

------
TallGuyShort
>> We are a team of 8. We are 2 full-stack, 1 iOS, 1 Android and 4 product
people

What were the 4 product people doing day to day?

~~~
sdnlafkjh34rw
They shared a link with the bios of the whole team:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r0IIViwp5MuNcWXZqNI2C60P...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r0IIViwp5MuNcWXZqNI2C60PKh_uDGHBzSah-i22AtY/edit)

The non-engineers are the: CEO Head of Ontology Head of Product Design & User
Research User Research

~~~
aldamiz
Yes. I wouldn say our "Product people" are not very traditional product
people, you have our bios and focus in the team link in the post and below.
Hope that clarifies the doubts. I've also clarified it in the text, and it now
reflects the reality better.

[https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1r0IIViwp5MuNcWXZqNI2...](https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1r0IIViwp5MuNcWXZqNI2C60PKh_uDGHBzSah-i22AtY/edit)

------
klinskyc
It seems like telling the world you are dead in the water gives the upper hand
to an acquirer here right?

~~~
aldamiz
I hope you can read the post and be more positive. Thanks!

~~~
JoshTko
GP is trying to subtly let you know that you've significantly reduced
negotiation leverage with any potentially interested party. There no benefit
to you to publicly state your cash position.

~~~
CrazyStat
Any interested party will get access to the books and have that information
anyway.

~~~
TallGuyShort
The buyer, yes. But now they can't even spin this as strategic or synergetic.
It's obvious and public that it hasn't been a commercial success yet. Granted,
that's usually overstated and I don't think it makes much of a difference to
most people. But it's something.

But hey - we all got an interesting read out of it.

~~~
CrazyStat
That's a reasonable point, but it's not the argument that was being made (and
that I was responding too).

------
HenriNext
> "We are a team of 8. We are 2 full-stack, 1 iOS, 1 Android and 4 product
> people."

And that leaves 0 for business + marketing + sales.

Maybe you didn't find the right business model during 5.5 years because you
had nobody working on finding the right business model?

~~~
paxys
"Product people" is a very generic term, which likely includes some of what
you mentioned.

~~~
HenriNext
Fair point. But if after 2 years you haven't found a business model, it might
be better to fire couple of the product people and get dedicated biz people,
as opposed to waiting 5.5 years and then go belly up.

~~~
alexpetralia
Out of curiosity, do you have direct experience with entrepreneurship? This is
extremely easy to say from a distance, and so naturally everyone does, only to
bite their tongue once they've gone through it.

~~~
edoceo
I've built a few companies. I think it's super valuable to have some on the
team who doesn't give shit at all about the tech and only cares about a) is
this the right problem and b) who cares (read: pays).

This person helps you focus, forces (if given authority) the tram to focus on
"things that move the needle". Devs and designers simply lack that customer-
development focus.

I think every team would benefit from a qualitative analysis role like this -
regardless of title. I have one now. We argue every day, but the balance of
perspective is key.

~~~
jiofih
Autocomplete just gave away your European origin.

> Devs and designers simply lack that customer-development focus

That’s an unfair generalization. They will have that focus if imbued on them
by the company, and the right motivated hires are made.

~~~
edoceo
Alameda, CA now in Seattle.

Me generalization is made from 20ish years as a dev who's now a CEO and was
doing a bunch of hiring along the way.

You said my generalization was unfair, and carved out a narrow exception where
it would be great. Maybe proving my point.

Query...does your dev team talk about tooling and stack more than customer
feelings?

Is it "ohh react native on k8s" or fix the accounting reports and that one UI
bug that tricks users into click the wrong button because some eng forgot to
use the UI green constant?

~~~
jiofih
The latter for sure. The platform is a nuisance and not a source of fun, and
priorities come from product. But I’ve never worked in the US, things might be
different. What I was trying to say is that people will adjust to the
culture/goals of the workplace. It might be true that an engineer left to its
own devices would not care, if it doesn’t affect his performance; but if it
the company is clearly focused on the customer everyone will follow.

My comment was regarding “tram” ;)

~~~
edoceo
Yes, 100% at my Co now, we are (not just lip service) customer focused. After
some bumps we got a new dev, was unhappy at the old places, specifically about
that empowerment. Now the customer to dev feedback loop it tight and they are
enjoying it - and it shows from the contribution.

------
dwrodri
As someone who is interested in one day starting my own business, I have
nothing but respect for someone who has the guts to follow through with that
and pursue their vision.

That being said... why did you (or if anyone else can chip in) decide to chase
funding when you didn't have a business model? Maybe I'm being naïve here, but
isn't it kind of crazy to raise 3.5M in funds for a business that has no plan
but to be acquired by someone else?

I'm torn, because I believe that people should absolutely pursue passion
projects, and that a passion project should absolutely be monetized... if you
have developed a respectable business model and a potential product-market
fit.

My first thought is that you could get some funding and use this as a platform
for fashion retailers to exchange consumer profiles at the B2B level, or as
part of the internals of the recommendation system.

~~~
AchieveLife
"Maybe I'm being naïve here, but isn't it kind of crazy to raise 3.5M in funds
for a business that has no plan but to be acquired by someone else?"

That's a sane question. IMO it's the current financial environment that
encourages such "leap without looking" strategies.

Fear of missing out is huge right now.

I know of a startup that received a multi-million valuation and many more
million in funding. They don't even have a prototype!

~~~
bobloblaw45
I know this might sound stupid but if you can get that much for something that
wow's people, can you get like 100k for a "meh" idea?

Like if you wanted to open a dry cleaners.

~~~
Analemma_
No, because the mania for throwing money at tech startups is specifically
because of tech's unique promise of both worldwide scale and zero marginal
costs after the initial Big Spend on capex, and hence potentially gigantic
returns for investors.

Now, how well the current crop of startups is _delivering_ on that promise is
an exercise left to the reader, but it's there in theory. A dry cleaner has
marginal costs and no economy of scale, and so can't attract unicorn
valuations.

~~~
__jal
> tech startups is specifically because of tech's unique promise of both
> worldwide scale and zero marginal costs

This theory fails to adequately explain WeWork.

I mean, I think you _should_ be right, but in principle I do not see why
WeDryClean should not work while WeWork does.

~~~
zaphod12
much like wework - all you gotta do is convince 1 person who controls vast
sums of money that it will work. I'm very convinced by your WeDryClean idea!
(Sadly no vast sums of money, though)

------
proxybop
That’s an interesting article. To me, that company _should_ have been really
valuable and done really well especially in the retail clothing industry. I
wonder if it’s more luck and connections than anything that has to do with
product when forming a company

~~~
solumos
The name of the successful version of this company is "Stitch Fix"($2.39B
market cap).

> we haven’t found a relevant business model

> We are a team of 8. We are 2 full-stack, 1 iOS, 1 Android and 4 product
> people.

It's a bad sign if your company is 50% product people and you can't establish
product-market fit, especially with a "whale" for a competitor.

I guess it wouldn't be unheard of for a conglomerate like LVMH to acquire, but
I'm not sure there's enough traction to justify a scenario like that.

~~~
alehul
> I guess it wouldn't be unheard of for a conglomerate like LVMH to acquire,
> but I'm not sure there's enough traction to justify a scenario like that.

+1. Worked on a fashion startup a while back, and being early-stage we still
did end up in a meeting with a C-level at LVMH.

They're open to hearing a lot of ideas, but the conversations quickly fell
apart at realizing quite how early-stage we were— they generally want
validation in the form of success in integrating your product with other
fashion companies.

From what we learned, fashion is notoriously behind in tech, and it's a slow
climb up the chain if you're B2B.

------
excalibur
> One of our processes.

This process needs some work. It replaced the girl with an entirely different
girl, and swapped her Metallica tee for H&M, effectively removing her taste.

~~~
williamstein
Indeed -- I found it difficult to read the post after studying the first
mangled diagram.

------
Animats
_" An In-Bedroom Fashion Stylist that understands the user and her taste and
knows what clothes she has in her closet."_ That's from _Clueless_.[1]

Is there anybody who really wants that? People with too much money and no
fashion sense? Is that a market?

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNDubWJU0aU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNDubWJU0aU)

------
devit
Assuming this can recommend clothes that someone is going to immediately love
based on previous purchases, this seems incredibly valuable for all the
fashion e-commerce sites starting from Amazon, and could in fact turn any
large site with this technology into a monopoly at least until someone
replicates it.

Of course it needs to actually work though, which is not clear from the
article (categories like "comfy" aren't going to cut it, you probably need a
sophisticated deep learning approach on product images plus brand identity
data and maybe Instagram posts with a lot of training data).

Obviously you can also run a store or an affiliate-based site yourself with
it, but the problem is that you are going to be missing data on customer's
taste; maybe you could exclusively cater to people who love posting their
photos on Instagram, connect to their Instagram account and understand their
fashion taste from their posted photos - or you could even support imitating
someone else fashion's taste by looking at their Instagram profile.

~~~
josephjrobison
I agree with you, the product looks pretty cool and promising, and seems it
could be a good fit within Amazon or something with a vast array of clothes.

~~~
saalweachter
There's kind of three problems you run into with that sort of thinking.

1\. Is there a difference between great recommendations and random
recommendations?

Maybe purchases are bottlenecked on money rather than desire, so your
customers can already find as much stuff as they can afford to buy. Maybe your
customers want to browse and look at literally every product on your website
and will find it on page 1 or 100. Maybe your customers need to see a lot of
options to realize how much they like the perfect recommendations, so showing
them what they'll end up purchasing first doesn't really make a difference.
Maybe your customers are lazy and will buy the first shirt you show them
regardless of how good it is.

2\. Can you get by being dumb if you have enough data?

A company like Amazon has soooo much data on shopping preferences based on
past purchases. They can construct extremely naive models from their 20 years
of logs and expect them to perform very well given your ten years of personal
shopping data with them.

3\. Does your superior algorithm create a moat?

For any interesting problem, you can get like 80-90% of the quality while
spending 1% of the programmer-hours as the best of class. So if you're best of
class, does your extra quality buy you anything, or is 80% as good as you good
enough for most customers? Eg, can your potential acquirers just halfass
something and get all the value you provide for a fraction of the cost, or do
they need your extra years of experience to compete?

------
zuhayeer
We need an inverse of this too "How to proceed when you're flush with cash,
but don't believe"

~~~
sombremesa
Put the money in a CD. Probably better than anything else you can do when
you're about to flush someone else's money down the toilet.

------
dazhbog
Haha, that is exactly what is going on with us now. We just launched our first
Kickstarter[1] and its not going well.

We will go ahead, eat ramen, and pursuit this, and its a HW product. Wish us
luck.

[1]: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pycno/pulse-building-
sm...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pycno/pulse-building-smart-
devices-the-simple-way?ref=pyc&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=h.getpycno.com)

~~~
koverda
Just a heads up, there's another IoT product called pulse: getpulse.co

------
krn
> We finally found the right path 36 months ago, but we haven’t found a
> relevant business model.

The best use case for such technology is a B2C fashion app targeting 16-36
women with an extremely well-designed UX, that doesn't force to signup or
enter any payment details.

Look at the Fashion Finder[1] by Daily Mail, and how it was successfully
monetized via affiliate networks[2].

I could easily see such an app being acquired by one of the latest unicorn
fashion startups, such as TheRealReal[3], Poshmark[4], thredUP[5], or
Vinted[6].

[1]
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/fashionfinder/index.html](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/fashionfinder/index.html)

[2] [https://skimlinks.com/resources/case-studies/case-study-
the-...](https://skimlinks.com/resources/case-studies/case-study-the-meghan-
markle-effect-on-daily-mail-fashion-finder/)

[3] [https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/23/luxury-consignment-e-
taile...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/23/luxury-consignment-e-tailer-the-
realreal-to-enter-the-unicorn-club-with-new-funding/)

[4] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2018/12/14/next-
billi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2018/12/14/next-billion-
dollar-startups-how-a-serial-social-shopping-entrepreneur-built-poshmark-from-
used-clothes-into-a-625m-retail-empire/)

[5]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/glendatoma/2019/08/21/thredup-r...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/glendatoma/2019/08/21/thredup-
resale-175-million-funding/)

[6] [https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/27/vinted-the-second-hand-
clo...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/27/vinted-the-second-hand-clothes-
marketplace-raises-141m-at-a-1b-valuation/)

------
j45
If there is a smaller part of your business that can generate $, it can be a
good way to help you stick around/simmer until the timing is right for the
demand to increase.

Products are about as much as deciding what part of your solution you're
building that lines up with what the market is ready to actually do and
growing from there incrementally.

A neat example of this I read about was how the iPad was designed for many
years before the iPhone came out, but the iPhone in a way was a
starter/training device for a larger touch computing experience.

------
paulie_a
Move on. It's a bitter pill to swallow but that's the reality. It's game over.
You might be able to scrape some cash together and you will be in the same
place 6 months later.

------
thepratt
For the patent section, I don't understand how any of the 3 are worthy of a
patent or were able to be patented. I'm not sure of timelines, but for the
3rd[1], isn't that what Instagram integrated ages ago with circles linked
directly to a checkout - prior art?

[1] system to automatically match an item in an image, against its equivalent
in a database with ecommerce links to purchase that same product.

~~~
dboreham
I haven't read these claims, but I have been involved with patents here and
there and: aren't almost all granted software and business model patent claims
bogus in one way or another, usually either obviousness or prior art?

------
z3t4
The most important factor of product success is probably _timing_. If you have
had a problem for years, you are not likely to adapt a solution. But if you've
only had the problem for a short time, like from one day up to a month, then
you are much more likely to adapt the solution. So you basically have to be
lucky, or go to market fast (within one month).

------
theicfire
Wow, thank you for this. I admire your team's dedication and bravery. I found
the details of all the assets of your company fascinating, since I myself know
very little about classification or fashion. This is a bit of a business
review type article, and I hope you write more about this and things go well
for you all.

~~~
aldamiz
thanks theicfire :) maybe in the future!

------
jbduler
We were in the same situation 4 years ago for our computer vision company,
same team size. We targeted the wrong industry (beauty) and that was a
mistake. Lessons to be learned and plenty of contacts for you as we went
through the process of an acquisition. PM me, I am easy to find.

------
alexis_fr
“Blogger” started like this, according to the interview in “Founders at Work”,
an interesting book.

The guy of blogger had to fire pretty much everyone, and it was on bay still
running, and everyone angry at the former employer. A few months pass and
Blogger took off.

------
zarriak
The product seems good but I can't help but think it would have been a much
better strategy to try and look for an acquisition as soon as the patents were
filed.

Also would have preferred a browser extension and website for the reverse
image searching.

------
nikanj
Society tends to tell stories about survivors. Just believe, believe even
harder, sacrifice all, and you'll succeed.

We don't share stories of people who believed so hard, and then ended homeless
and broke.

xkcd touches on the subject too (
[https://xkcd.com/1827/](https://xkcd.com/1827/) ), as they tend to do
regardless of the topic.

------
luckydata
reading the blog post I learned everything I needed to know to understand why
they haven't been successful commercially. I wish them good luck but their
business skills seem to be awfully lacking.

------
shamino
I have some criticism of the idea, actually. As someone who doesn't think they
have good taste in clothes, I would not use this. I would want to upgrade my
wardrobe and improve my style.

~~~
Pyxl101
It seems like this idea could also achieve that by providing some kind of
union of two taste-graphs. I'll input my wardrobe, then select from a set of
pre-uploaded designers, and the algorithms can recommend clothes for me to
purchase that are inspired by both my taste and the designer's.

What would be neat is if this system could automatically mine the taste graph
from historical photographs pulled from social networks and the like, without
effort on the user's part. (For example, everything you've uploaded to common
social networks, or everything in your phone - if you choose to provide them)

------
Aeolun
If you run out of cash, maybe you shouldn’t still believe.

I don’t mean to tear it down, but the idea as it stands apparently isn’t a
business.

You must change the product if you still want to achieve market fit somehow.

------
ydnaclementine
seems like tech that boutiques would say they’re interested in, but don’t
bother because ‘what we’re doing now seems to work, so why change’. the one
shop/brand who does understand and utilize the tech will take off

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gerdesj
"If you read all the way until the end, I appreciate it. In return, I want you
to discover a song in a language you’ve probably never heard before: Basque."

I've heard of Basque, off of Northern Spain. Also isn't there a bit of France
involved?

Good luck for the future.

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thysultan
Start minting believe coins.

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goatherders
So they built some tech with no business model? Ooph

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sergesalager
Eskerrik asko! ;-)

~~~
aldamiz
:)

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grogenaut
Dangit I was hoping medium had decided to call it quits. Wish hn would
highlight the blog name not the domain.

~~~
dang
It's on our list.

~~~
kirubakaran
For at least 12 years :-p

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60806)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=pg%20subdomain&sort=byPopularity&type=comment)

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czxtm
Good luck!

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look_lookatme
According to Genius you sue google.

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idorube
I'm reading about your product and can only think one thing: "But, why?...."

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choward
Those arguments for acquiring patents are as weak as the patents themselves.
I'll admit that I only skimmed and read parts of them but nothing seems
patentable or particularly innovative to me. It just looks like standard
software engineering.

> as a startup we need to create value and this method has proven successful
> in the past

This means nothing to me. You did something I'm not a fan of in the past
(patenting software) so that makes it okay to do now?

> we’ve never thought of using patents against others

It doesn't matter that you've never "thought of using patents against others".
Things change. And the way that business is going it seems inevitable that
these patents are going to end up in the hands of patent trolls. Patent trolls
don't usually come up with their own patents. They buy companies that aren't
doing well just for the patents.

> And now, our number one driver for building IP: companies sometimes need
> leverage to negotiate or deal with the big tech players

I don't understand this one at all. What negotiations are you having where
patents help?

