

Grub with the partners of Sequoia Capital - eddylu
http://www.grubwith.us/restaurants/tres-agaves-san-francisco/meals/212

======
orijing
It's a great idea. However, unless I'm mistaken, I believe his auction
mechanism is not any of the standard "revenue maximizing" OR "social utility
maximizing" mechanisms. The "maximum amount you would pay for this meal"
suggests the meal's value to you.

However, for all K=# of seats, his Kth-price auction does not have the
property that inputting your truthful value is your dominant strategy. The
price should really be the bid of the K+1th person--otherwise, the Kth person
can lower his bid in any outcome to the K+1th price/value (in descending
order) and still obtain the seat. So it is not even a Nash Equilibrium to
submit your truthful value.

So let's see how we can make the auction consistent with the desire to get
everyone to bid their truthful value. If instead, the auction price was based
on the 9th highest bid (which we assume to be the value) OR the reserve price
(whichever one is higher), then it is everyone's dominant strategy to bid
their value.

I don't want to rehash examples taught in an introductory Auction Theory class
(which I greatly enjoyed), so if you're interested, take a look at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction>

It's basically a fancy name for what I described, plus a few modifications and
extensions.

~~~
klochner
It's actually the multi-unit analogue of the first-price sealed bid auction.

Note that in FPSB you also don't have an incentive to report your true value,
but it is revenue maximizing and efficient in expectation assuming risk-
neutral bidders [1].

The basic gist of the proof is that everyone has an incentive to shade their
bids down in proportion to the probability that their bid sets the price. The
amount you shade is monotone in your valuation, so you end up with the same
relative ordering of bids.

And the punchline is that you get the same winner and the same expected
revenue for the Vickrey vs. FPSB.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_equivalence_theorem#Rev...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_equivalence_theorem#Revenue_Equivalence)

~~~
orijing
Yeah, it might be what they were after, but their text (How much are you
willing to pay?) suggests that your dominant strategy is to input your true
value.

If that's what they're after, the text is misleading in my opinion...

------
aaronblohowiak
GrubWith.us removes your period as soon as you type it, so if you try to enter
(say) 100.00, it is actually a bid for 10,000 -- I consider this a VERY BAD
THING in this context.

~~~
snprbob86
Beyond that, it's bugged:

    
    
        $(".only_numbers").keydown(function(e) {
            var key = e.charCode || e.keyCode || 0;
            // allow backspace, tab, delete, arrows, numbers and keypad numbers ONLY
            return (
               key == 8 || 
               key == 9 ||
               key == 46 ||
               (key >= 37 && key <= 40) ||
               (key >= 48 && key <= 57) ||
               (key >= 96 && key <= 105));
        });
    

You're able to type ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) into .only_numbers boxes.

And you can't press cmd+a to select all, or ctrl+a to go to the beginning of
the line, and _argh_ all manner of awful.

------
wavesplash
Starving entrepreneurs outbidding each other to sit with two rich guys? It is
just me or does this seem backwards?

~~~
rewind
People seeking knowledge, experience, and advice outbidding each other to sit
down with people with knowledge, experience, and advice. For charity. Doesn't
seem so backwards to me.

~~~
felipe
Start-up knowledge, experience and advice comes from entrepreneurs, not VCs.
Read their bios, they are financial and marketing professionals. Nothing wrong
with that, but they are not the kind of people who started companies from
nothing and now are VCs (like PG for example).

It should be the other way around: They should be buying lunches for
entrepreneurs. Scouting deals is their job after all.

~~~
dwynings
You don't consider Alfred Lin an entrepreneur?

------
lowglow
I'd like to keep working on my own idea until they are bidding on having lunch
with me.

~~~
stc
I like that attitude, I'll buy you a market price beer.

~~~
lowglow
Deal. Are you in sf?

~~~
stc
NY right not but I will back in SF on the 11th. My email is in my profile hit
me up.

------
chrismanfrank
Is this a pivot for grubwith.us? I know the founders original idea was to
connect people via family-style restaurant meals. But I've signed up for 3
meals now, and all were because I wanted to meet someone specific (Harj, other
YC founders, Robert Scoble). It's a brilliant marketing idea, and a great
example of why YC backs founders, not ideas. I could see these mini-fundraiser
dinners being a huge market.

------
dotBen
Although it is presented as a sealed bid/blind bid auction - when you submit
your bid the following page seems to indicate the current minimum bid - which
at the moment is $56.

Nevertheless I think this charity bid model is a great use for the grubwith.us
system.

~~~
ldamman
I took that more as a "reserve" price to make sure Tres Agaves has their costs
covered. I didn't expect it to go up as the bidding commenced. I could be
wrong though.

~~~
daishin
yep -- this price will not change. it's a fixed min bid price. we will be
clearer next time. thanks!

------
kmfrk
Something something Color. There, I said it. Now we don't need to humour any
cheap jokes.

------
ldamman
GrubWithUs for charity. I like this idea. I once had breakfast with the entire
Detroit Red Wings team when I was a kid. What a fun charity event that was.

I'm also curious as to how much these particular plates will end up going for
considering all of the corporate cards out there held by CEOs who probably
wouldn't mind schmoozing with Sequoia.

------
rrhoover
I love this idea. This model could certainly expand to celebrities to capture
the interest of the mainstream. Celebrities were largely responsible for
Twitter's hockeystick growth.

Side note: I went to my first Grubwithus earlier this week and had a great
time. If you have the opportunity, I definitely recommend you give it a try.

------
sim0n
Damn, I wish this was in a few weeks time, I'm travelling to SF on April 22nd
and would've loved to have met both Alfred Lin and Mark Dempster!

------
rickyjoshi01
If you're going to pay to eat with VCs... Wonder what the final price will be,
for some reason I'm thinking 100.00 won't cut it!

------
hans
Isn't that a bootloader, that loads VCs on startup, and leverages equity
resources as the company shell starts up?

