
South Korean 'Mock Funerals' Seek to Ease Life's Stresses - camurban
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korean-mock-funerals-seek-to-ease-lifes-stresses/
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guard-of-terra
"a sign that the country, once one of the world's poorest..., has grown
affluent enough"

In case you didn't note that for the last few decades South Korea was a rich
country (especially by PPP).

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ZenoArrow
In case anyone would prefer a video, here's a Vice documentary about the same
thing:

[http://youtu.be/ejEaJUEOhjs](http://youtu.be/ejEaJUEOhjs)

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simonh
Bizarre connection, but this reminded me of what Steve a Jobs said to the
founders of Dropbox when he offered to buy them out. "What you have there is a
feature, not a platform".

I'm not saying he was right or wrong in that case, that's a separate issue,
but in the article at hand it seems like mock funerals aren't a service that
can support a business on its own. It makes more sense as an adjunct to a main
business 'platform' such as actual funerals, but maybe also e.g. Health
resorts, religious retreats and such. Maybe that's a useful lens through which
to look at any new business idea.

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hitekker
I'm interested if Steve Jobs said that because he wanted to get Dropbox on the
cheap, or because he really believed it.

Perhaps both: the only way to know would be to compare Dropbox's valuation at
the time with the offer present; if said offer was ever extended.

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w1ntermute
I think we'll see in the years/months ahead that Dropbox is indeed FNAC. It's
only survived this long because the unit economics aren't _that_ bad - the
hardware costs are not anywhere near what O2O companies like Postmates or
Instacart burn. But in the end, if they don't have any lock-in capabilities
(such as collaboration features), the service won't be sticky in the face of
price increases - the tech for seamless syncing across platforms is now table
stakes.

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ArekDymalski
>they don't have any lock-in capabilities (such as collaboration features)

paper.dropbox.com aims to be such a feature.

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w1ntermute
Yes, but so far I haven't seen how it's sufficiently differentiated from
Google Docs. There's a well-funded startup, Quip, in this space as well.

