
The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud - adulau
http://static.pinboard.in/prosperity_cloud.htm
======
tptacek
I would like to take this moment to announce PICPC-VC, which is an automatic
follow-on investment, structured as uncapped convertible notes, of $50
available to any founder accepted into the PICPC program.

~~~
pmarca
Andreessen Horowitz will match your $50 with another $50.

~~~
bravura
Does that mean that recipients can legitimately tell the press and other
investors that a16z is one of their investors?

Assuming that the recipient can keep a straight face?

EDIT: Perhaps having a16z as the only VC in your seed is a very bad idea.
Chris Dixon (now a partner at a16z) cautions enterpreneurs against the risks
of having a sole VC in your seed round:

[http://cdixon.org/2012/04/02/revisited-big-vcs-investing-
in-...](http://cdixon.org/2012/04/02/revisited-big-vcs-investing-in-seed-
rounds/)

"I can think of about 15 founders I’ve spoken to recently who tried or are
trying to raise Series As but are seriously hampered by the fact that a big VC
invested in the seed round but isn’t participating in the Series A."

~~~
pmarca
If our $50 participation hampers your A round, we will bridge you with another
$15.

~~~
bravura
pmarca: I think you're onto something here.

A large micro-investment portfolio.

Anything in this portfolio is sort of a tip of the hat from a16z, a micro-
endorsement that messages: "we've got our eyes on this company."

~~~
pmarca
Due to the reduced size of the round, the announcement can only cite
investment from a1z.

~~~
davemc500hats
oh, the LULZ! ;)

------
zdgman
Thinking of applying as a single non-technical founder. All I have is an idea
but I am sure with the $37 dollars I could hire an awesome programmer to put
it together for me!

EDIT: Seeking technical co-founder to help build out idea. Must be prepared to
sign NDA before equity can be discussed.

~~~
zdgman
EDIT 2: Funny/telling this is my highest rated comment on HN.

------
kanamekun
Just a note on word choices... the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"
was the name of the colonial empire that Japan built through conquests and
occupation starting in 1940.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-
Prosperity...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-
Prosperity_Sphere)

Not sure if this is part of a joke or not, but Japan's history of war-time
brutality during World War 2 is pretty extreme.

~~~
jonathanyc
Noticed this as well... "Co-Prosperity _____" should sound hauntingly familiar
to anyone with any amount of knowledge about WWII.

It seems like the "Co-Prosperity Cloud" is a joke, but even if it is, it's a
joke in poor taste considering the atrocities committed by Japan, and not even
an especially clever one (annexation and abuse for profit is not really the
same idea - I hope - that Pinboard is expressing).

~~~
jessaustin
Considering that > 90% of the people who witnessed said atrocities are no
longer with us (and 100% don't read HN), the time for jokes has come at last.
Actually there have been numerous humorous takes on WWII for decades now.

In "jokes", people often state propositions that seem opposed to what we would
hope they believe.

~~~
kanamekun
Regarding atrocities, you clearly have no idea how deeply the wartime
atrocities impacted many Asian families. Many Korean families I know refuse to
buy Japanese cars or products (my mom is Japanese, so I've been told this many
many times). My Korean father-in-law was an orphan because of the Japanese
occupation.

In any case, the above fails the first rule of jokes... they're supposed to be
funny. I thought the post was funny enough. But the reference to a co-
prosperity system didn't add much (any?) humor to it. Just pointing that out
to the OP...

~~~
gojomo
That's not the 1st rule of jokes! The 1st rule of jokes is that there are no
rules. The 2nd rule of jokes is that everyone finds different things funny.
The 3rd rule is to break all the rules.

Repurposing the stilted propaganda of long-ago times, or of clumsy tyrants,
for subtly absurdist/ironic humor value, does not in any way lessen the
original horrors. It celebrates the distance we've achieved, while also
offering a teaching moment by contrast/reference.

See also: "we will bury you", "let a thousand flowers bloom", "we had to
destroy the village in order to save it", "i have in my hands a list of
hundreds of known Communists", "the war to end all wars", "the mother of all
battles", "this blogger has been harmonized", etc.

------
mrkurt
It seems like that might be too much money. You're in danger of having people
coast along with no real hunger.

------
il
"The project aims to draw attention to the fact that if you have access to
technical labor, the startup and operating costs for an online project in 2013
are negligible. The biggest obstacle to creating something useful is finding
the time to build it and attracting an initial pool of paying customers."

Good thing that in the brave new future world of 2013 labor and marketing are
completely free of all costs, opportunity and otherwise.

~~~
samstokes
"Dear angel investor, I need to raise $500k to cover my opportunity costs
while I work on this startup."

~~~
rdl
Fortunately opportunity costs can be paid in equity. Rent, car insurance, and
groceries can't.

~~~
jarek
You just need a more risk-seeking landlord and grocer.

~~~
praptak
I call them Mum & Dad.

~~~
shrikant
I think I can safely say this is HN's Retort Of The Year.

------
aiurtourist
This is wrong for a variety of reasons.

First, you should never accept angel investment from non-accredited investors
(i.e., individuals with a net worth of at least one million cents).

Second, the real value of the investors is their network. In this case, Maciej
Cegłowski's network is a collection of links featured in an indexed, polished,
simple-to-use product. Why accept money from him when his network is already
available for free?

Third, seeking outside investment prior to building a prototype has been
heralded as a path to madness. You should at least have some sort of
Bootstrap-based splash page on a .io domain before you accept his sizable
investment.

------
pc
Stripe will happily waive the first $37 in fees.

~~~
akavi
PagerDuty will similarly offer a $37 credit towards an account with us.

~~~
marcamillion
5KMVP will offer $37 off the building of your MVP.

~~~
solutionhn
The value in accepting $37 from pinboard or a16z is in getting a lot of
exposure and not the money.

Are you serious or joking when you made this offer? Either you guys missed the
point or you want to put your name on the meme of the day. Can you give me a
compelling reason for me to accept the $37 from you?

~~~
marcamillion
Well....just like with pinboard, it is partly tongue-in-cheek.

Although, in the spirit of low friction, I would gladly honor any such
requests for a discount.

------
rtfeldman
My application: "I'd use the $37 to buy $20 worth of stamps and envelopes,
then $17 for a disposable camera and photo development costs. I'd photograph
myself putting the stamps on the envelopes and get the photos developed. Then
I'd put the photos in the envelopes and mail them to you."

~~~
toomuchtodo
Instagram Clone: check

~~~
jfb
"It's Instagram for paper."

~~~
toomuchtodo
Pretty certain I'm going to drink too much Angry Orchard tonight and try to do
this with the Camera app and Picplum on Android.

------
danso
Before I joined it sometime this year or last, I thought Pinboard seemed like
the silliest, most likely-to-peter-out trifle of a service. But now it stands
alone from all the other pinning services I used to use, including Instapaper.

In other words, I trust this guy with knowing how to execute (and to the
point, probably recognize) successful minimally-viable products.

------
danielpal
It does seem like cost are negligible today, but on deeper analysis theres a
lot of costs beyond simply hosting.

Just from memory for my startup (Authy.com), initial costs were:

Domain: $1000+

Design: $3000

Video: $3000

Hosting: $400

Depending on your skills this initial costs will vary. An although I agree you
don't need external investment to cover them, you should at least plan to
invest $10,000US to cover your initial costs.

~~~
notJim
A lot of the things that you seem to think of as mandatory are not.

Domain: or get something longer for $9. E.g., authyapp.com or getauthy.com

Design: <http://themeforest.net/> $15-$25, or DIY (depends on how much design
matters for your niche--for Pinboard it clearly doesn't)

Video: You don't need no stinkin' video

Hosting: Maciej is recommending <http://prgmr.com/xen/> for $32 (but can you
actually run a modern app stack on just 128 MB of RAM?) Anyway, even if you
need a gig, that's $100.

~~~
codewright
>(but can you actually run a modern app stack on just 128 MB of RAM?)

C/Golang/Lua/Vala/SBCL/Ada/Pascal and an embedded datastore like bdb!

Why in my day we used to write little apps with C and bdb that used less than
5mb of memory! (Sqlite didn't exist yo.)

Heck these days you get (ENTERPRISE) choices like LevelDB and BangDB.

Edit: Who wants to have a datastore-backed c10k contest on prgmr machines? :D

~~~
notJim
Ha, I'm aware that if you're careful, you can do it, but I was more thinking
of a python or ruby stack with MySQL (or whatever) that most people would use
:).

~~~
codewright
MySQL and Ruby could be made to work. (on 128mb of ram)...concurrency would be
awful though.

I was trying to be lean.

Ruby users are quiche eaters anyway. Real programmers write their code in
Fortran and persist to a hierarchical database on a mainframe.

~~~
bcbroom
_Real_ programmers use a magnetic needle and a steady hand.

~~~
eropple
Haha. That's funny.

You think real programmers need needles.

Or hands.

~~~
lubujackson
I still feed the punchcards into the mainframe with my mouth.

------
jere
_How I hacked the Pinboard Co-Prosperity Cloud_

~~~
jacques_chester
_What I Learned From Being Upvoted on Hacker News After Hacking the Pinboard
Co-Prosperity Cloud_

~~~
rmoriz
_14 steps to get accepted by Pinboard Co-Prosperity Cloud_

~~~
jacques_chester
_How Redis, Node.js and Backbone.js Saved My Application to PCPC_

~~~
collypops
What I learned from being rejected by PICPC

~~~
lubujackson
Bravo Presents "Co-Prosperity Valley"

~~~
krobertson
Aaron Sorkin is jotting down ideas. Watch for something in theaters in 2014.

------
chmike
I don't understand people ridiculing him. This funding is for entrepreneurs
and business projects with a particular profile. A project like Pinboard.

When Y combinator started the amount of money was also ridicule.

What you get with his funding is visibility and this is rapidly growing in
value because everybody will now look with high curiosity what are the 6
selected projects.

It looks like he is attempting to undercut Y combinator and might succeed.
Look how he targets a niche market that is discarded by Y combinator : single
founder projet. He applies all the advises given by PG himself.

I'm looking forward to see how he will execute, but this is already a very
good start.

If I had a close to finished project and no traction because of no visibility
I would apply. Because the visibility will be much bigger than with an article
in techcruch.

------
programminggeek
Ok, I'm in. I have an idea that will cost precisely $37 dollars to start. This
is such perfect timing.

------
lucisferre
> How is this different from other incubators?

> Participants receive almost no money, and are expected to do everything
> themselves.

So not really all that different than many (most?) incubators.

------
nthitz
> Is this a joke?

It is not a joke.

> I have no understanding of the concept of humor...

So it is a joke.. Or at the very least tongue in cheek. (With some
exceptions,) I doubt hosting is what most VC funding is spent on.

Edit: as he said, "The biggest obstacle to creating something useful is
finding the time to build it and attracting an initial pool of paying
customers." If you have access to those you probably have $37. I get that he
is trying to say technical costs can be negligible for startups. I fail to see
how Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud helps anyone in anyway. And thus, I think
it's a joke (even if the funding is real).

~~~
jfb
"I doubt hosting is what most VC funding is spent on."

You might be surprised.

~~~
munger
Consider something like the start of instagram - no revenue and huge data
transfer costs after getting tons of users. Although I realize OP is
suggesting building something with revenue that is sustainable.

------
justhw
If you get rejected, shoot us an email pinboard@funnelpanel.com for a forever
free funnel analytics platform.

~~~
itslogic
I will apply twice and get one rejected on purpose. Funnel for free FTW!

~~~
justhw
Btw this is a play on mixpanel offering for YC rejects, no real site exists.

------
troymc
I would use the money to buy signals. Since they're a buck, I could buy 37
signals.

------
evv
I'll wait for the blog post inviting hardware startups too, followed by a post
about how $37 gives founders too much runway, and half as much ought to do it.

------
cwiz
I'm announcing microcrowdfunding flush-investment platfrom Flushstart. We all
have pockets full of change by the end of the day. To participate in
Flushstart you you just flush all the change down the toilet and Flushstart
employees collect your investments in the sewers. You automatically get equity
in all projects listed in Flushstart. I just started the platform by flushing
10 cents.

------
rdl
Will you be offering $1.12 in expense reimbursement for the interviews? Will
you do checks or cash?

($1.12 won't even cover the minimum BART or Muni or VTA fares now, I think,
unless you're a child or senior or disabled or something)

------
rdl
I'd like to take this opportunity to offer PICPCReject membership to anyone
rejected by the horrible elitists at PICPC.

We don't have any funding yet, so we can't make any specific promises, but I
hear the dumpsters behind Denny's have a wide variety of semi-rotten food
available for "Tuesday dinners".

~~~
rmoriz
My company will offer $38 to every PICPC reject (1) as a bold signal to the
industry to not undervalue the vibrant entrepreneurial spirit our community is
made of!

(1) requires additional investment criteria to be fulfilled, left to our
descretion

~~~
rdl
Someone needs to do PICPC-T next. That was one of the oddest things of the
past 18 months.

------
bobfunk
Great idea :)

From Webpop we'll offer a free project and a startup template
(<http://app.webpop.com/themes/startup>) for anybody accepted into the
program.

For some people this might be enough to completely skip the Linode and buy one
more beer.

~~~
brackin
I actually quite like this but what scares me is I see no mention of an
export. A startup could never use this if there is no simple way to leave at
some point in the future.

~~~
jarek
You can check out anytime you like

------
tibbon
Someone should start a similar fund, but instead of just throwing large
amounts of money at the companies like PICPC, they should help introduce them
to their vast network of highly engaged people... perhaps on Twitter.

------
gregpilling
I have emailed and offered support of $20 per startup, plus use of my
manufacturing facility. I think this is a great idea, and since I started my
company with a credit card I can relate to the unfunded startup.

------
paul
This seems perfect for my recipe site. I hope my application gets accepted.

------
andrewcross
To take this to the next level, I vote for crowd-funding at the end of it all.
I'd put $20 behind my favourite startup from the class and cheer them on.
Almost like fantasy sports, but for startups.

~~~
arsey
Would that as applicant idea be too meta?

------
mmelin
Watch out for the PICPC Mafia.

------
jeswin
Applied! :)

Wrote a poem about it on the Collaborative Poetry app that I just launched.
<http://poe3.com/38>

------
justhw
Is there a get-together day to meet fellow applicants? Perhaps a dinner?

~~~
jarek
A hang-out on IRC

~~~
itslogic
That's $37 on Internet fees.

------
cdcarter
This is flawless. I have a little script that I've been working on that has
helped my life immensely and I know it could help others too. I've been too
lazy to make it into anything more, though. This is giving me just enough to
actually write down what it is and why it's helpful, and if I get it will
totally make me go further.

------
ececconi
Is $37 an ode to 37 signals?

~~~
troymc
See <http://www.thirty-seven.org/>

~~~
notatoad
most important bit from that link: "37 gets used a lot because it somehow
feels random"

~~~
waterlesscloud
There's a bit in James P Hogan's novel Code Of The Lifemaker about a charlatan
mentalist, asking a crowd to pick a number under certain circumstances.
Because of the way he structured it most people picked 37. See here for
excerpt- <http://jm.home.xs4all.nl/37/cotl.html>

I got excited when I read that book the first time since I'd decided at about
age 15 or so that 37 was "the most random number" and used it everywhere I
could as some sort of odd prank.

------
khet
We're in a bubble.

------
harichinnan
Perhaps you could all use the money/freebies to fund this.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4924650>

------
dudurocha
Do you accept startups from Brazil? I would love to apply!

------
geargrinder
This is $1 less than it takes to sponsor a child for one month through
Compassion International (an organization that supports 1.2 million children
in the most poverty-stricken areas of the world). Would the money be better
spent sponsoring a child or sponsoring a startup?

~~~
shantanubala
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others/)

------
itslogic
I don't understand all this angel investment speak but the thing I am curios
the most is simple.

I apply I make it "big"

Does pin board owns any of my company because they invested $37 a month and
provided exposure?

I really don't understand who doesn't have $37 a month to be self-funded but
I'm interested on exposure.

~~~
rm445
I believe it is a one-time $37 investment, not monthly.

If I understood the discussion elsewhere in this thread, he states that the
investment is a form that gets converted to $37 worth of shares at the next
fundraising valuation.

So if you raised venture capital at a million dollars valuation, he would own
$37 worth of shares, which later if the company was sold for a billion would
give the investor a cool $37,000.

Basically he is trying to make a point rather than make big profits.

------
scheff
Maciej Ceglowski is the Flounder of Pinboard.in -
<http://idlewords.com/resume.htm>

We all flounder sometimes, but it's good to admit upfront that it's your full
time (pre)occupation.

------
brackin
Why doesn't PICPC-VC have a Dropbox or Airbnb in their alumni yet?

------
toddynho
Wait, I'm confused - I'd at least expect you to mention something about us
getting into the PR circle jerk as part of the program? Is that not part of
it?

------
obilgic
I just sent my idea, let's see he agrees with me to spend my entire winter
break just working on this idea... Mostly, because of motivational purposes

------
shail
I am building a bookmarking site. Can I apply?

------
jfb
I like the name. Too, I love the service.

------
debacle
The PR speak bit was golden. I'm thankful to have not read enough start-up
news to write something similar.

------
GPBenoit
This article is a waste of time.

------
davemc500hats
this could have been so much more fun at $42 instead of $37 or $50...
#justsayin

~~~
quadlock
I would like to see it at $1337

------
wilfra
I applied. Anybody have tips for the interview??? Can any alumni put in a word
for me??? What if I use my product to deliver a 6-pack to one of the pinboard
founders, will that improve my chances??? Please help!!!

~~~
tptacek
I recommend sending him oyster mushrooms instead of canned beer.

~~~
aeden
Would canned oyster mushrooms work?

