
Contact Ben Horowitz for $20 - aaawow
https://21.co/bhorowitz/
======
bhouston
It may could encourage people to contact him more by giving them a form of
permission:

> To come to our surprising conclusion, Uri ran an experiment: Out of 10
> daycare centers across Haifa, they randomly chose six and introduced a small
> fine for parents who showed up more than 10 minutes late in each of them. In
> day cares where the fine was introduced, parents immediately started showing
> up late, with tardiness levels eventually leveling out at about twice the
> pre-fine level. That is, introducing a fine caused twice as many parents to
> show up late. What about the remaining four day care centers that remained
> fine-free? Tardiness didn’t change at all

Source: [http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-
what...](http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what-they-
do/)

~~~
mindingdata
We've seen this come up a lot recently with Tesla's move to fine drivers who
"park" at charging stations. Many see this as actually worsening the problem
as people are happier to pay the (relatively small) fine.

~~~
the_watcher
If the problem is people leaving their car there for hours, is a $24/hr fine
really that small? Yea, it might increase the number of people who leave their
car there for 10 extra minutes, but it seems highly likely to address the real
problem, which is low turnover at the Superchargers.

Even then, Tesla can very easily just increase the fine (or do something like
a steadily increasing fine) to address this concern. They could also charge
additional fees to anyone who leaves their car at a supercharger for too long
serially (and my guess is that these are the real problem).

~~~
jrowley
Maybe they should setup an overage amount - e.g. 1 hour / month that you're
allowed to park for free. After that every hour that you charge results in
warning letters etc. eventually you aren't allowed to charge at any of the
stations. Probably a little extreme but might work.

~~~
the_watcher
Yea, if, as seems to be the crux of one criticism of the policy, is that it
allows bad actors to simply pay for the privilege of their bad actions,
penalties that scale to extreme quickly is probably the best method. It's
unfortunate, since the (very large majority) of good actors are also at risk
of punishment.

------
fluxic
Arguably better deal: contact me for $2.00 (cbswishes@gmail.com). All proceeds
will be used towards buying a new pair of pyjamas

~~~
gargarplex
Payment sent via PayPal. It's a privilege to support our community, so thank
you.

~~~
AznHisoka
X 2

~~~
CptJamesCook
I will pay $25 if someone can get me unbanned from Paypal. My mom and I were
banned back in 2003.

~~~
CamelCaseName
But how will you send the $25?

Check out aspen forums if you can't just make a new PayPal. If you're just
using it to send money and not receive it really should be no trouble to make
a new one.

------
sanswork
21 raises $120 million. Releases a raspberry pi and a bad fiverr clone.

------
ryao
Am I the only one who read this as Ben Horowitz giving $20 to each person who
contacts him?

~~~
jacobsenscott
That's what I thought.

------
skrebbel
Ben Horowitz invested tens of millions into this company [0]. This looks like
a pivot away from all the bitcoin hardware and using Ben's relative celebrity
status to give it some attention.

Half this thread is about what Ben needs the money for or whether he ought to
be donating more to charity, but that's not what this is about. This is just
PR for a recent pivot of one of Ben's companies.

All that said, I like the concept.

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/what-is-21-co-really-
doing...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/18/what-is-21-co-really-doing-an-
excerpt-from-digital-gold/)

Almost offtopic: How do people do this? (and by "this" i mean [0]) Raise
millions and millions from established VCs with entirely unproven ideas, no
traction, no nothing? Every once in a while we hit an article about a company
like that and meanwhile us normal founders are struggling to close a very
modest seed round. Is it just a network thing?

~~~
dpweb
Guessing, but - in convincing someone in a position of power over you, it is
very hard for them to reasonably deny you when you have REAL demonstrated
experience.

If you don't, its the easiest and sensible thing to deny you. The founder with
past experience (startup payoffs) is in an entirely different light.

------
ctvo
It was 5 dollars when he announced it on Twitter. I guess he adjusted it after
seeing the response.

------
giarc
37Signals has been doing something similar (with the charity portion). I heard
about it while listening to the new podcast by Noah Kagan. For $500, you can
go visit 37Signals for a day and see how they work. Price has been rising
every year.

[http://okdork.com/2017/01/19/jason-fried-robots-watches-
and-...](http://okdork.com/2017/01/19/jason-fried-robots-watches-and-not-
sweating/)

------
paulplug
Neat idea. It does seem like a bit of a publicity stunt - I don't think Ben
Horowitz really needs the 20 bucks, but this is a cool use case for bitcoin.

~~~
huac
"Proceeds will be donated to Black Girls Code"

~~~
paulplug
I missed that. Well still, I don't see this as something he will keep up. I
still think it's mostly a temporary publicity stunt.

------
btipling
I wrote a lengthy question and signed up but at the payment screen it required
a credit card. I would have preferred a third party service like PayPal. I am
not inclined to enter my credit card information into random websites. I would
have been happy to donate the $20 otherwise.

~~~
notahacker
It's not that random, it's a startup which has raised over $100m, much of it
from Andreessen Horowitz.

That said, it's a Bitcoin startup so it's weird if credit card really is the
only accepted payment method.

------
hazelnut
"Proceeds will be donated to Black Girls Code"
[http://www.blackgirlscode.com/](http://www.blackgirlscode.com/)

------
subrat_rout
Now it is $100. May be due to unprecedented response.

------
the_watcher
It isn't listed on the page, but the meta description claims that you'll only
pay if you get a response.

------
RichardHeart
Response I got:

"Richard, Thanks for the note and this is BTC not paypal! Thank you so much
for the donation! Best, Ben"

He got down to the P.S. I included which said something to the effect of "I'm
surprised you're not accepting paypal instead of BTC"

I should have got in when the market was $20 hehe.

------
justinhensley
My question is, are you guaranteed a response? I viewed this on mobile and
that wasn't immediately clear.

~~~
SatvikBeri
You don't pay if you don't get a response.

~~~
CamelCaseName
How does 21 measure the value of a response? I could send Horowitz an essay of
an email and he could reply with "k", or some plagarized response. Would I
still have to pay $100?

~~~
aaawow
here is how his response looks like
[http://take.ms/UTHnJ](http://take.ms/UTHnJ)

~~~
CamelCaseName
Thanks! What are your thoughts on the response? Did you follow up asking for
an introduction or explaining better? Might make more sense to do so in a week
or two when his inbox is less stuffed (and the price drops from $100)

------
josh_carterPDX
This is such an incredible way to raise money for a great cause. If you have
people trying to access you, why not put something like this together? I love
that this is benefiting someone other than Ben. Kudos to him for doing this.
Hopefully more follow his example.

~~~
metaphorm
are you serious? if Horowitz was really committed to the cause he would just
personally donate a large amount of money (he has plenty) and not bother
engaging in any of the public virtue signaling behaviors.

it seems pretty obvious that he put the "donated to charity" sticker on the
form to deflect accusations that he was profiteering from his fame. seems to
me more like he was getting too much shit mail and wanted to try an experiment
with gating it behind cash so people would put up or shut up.

~~~
tptacek
Yes. This. Ben Horowitz is petrified that we will perceive the immense
revenues he's going to get from $20 Q&A sessions as profiteering, especially
considering the paucity of his other business interests. Virtue signaling,
indeed!

~~~
metaphorm
no, Ben Horowitz does not want to be perceived as engaging in personal
nuisance abatement so he makes it look more socially acceptable.

in other words, he wants to be able to take questions by email, because there
is some upside for him in that (discovering new prospects for investment
probably), but there is huge downside in the risk of getting spammed by shit
emails.

he implements a $20 cash gate on that to mitigate the downside, but then
realizes he has introduced a new downside, of appearing greedy or craven in
some way, therefore he donates it to a virtue signaling charity. it will be a
very small amount of money either way.

my point is that the charitable donation aspect is NOT what is driving
Horowitz' behavior here. I was responding to a post which suggested it was
that.

~~~
tptacek
Definitely a fantastic way to abate nuisance outreach is to allow people to
entitle themselves to your time for the price of a 12 pack of beer.

This will have the opposite effect of the one you propose. Virtually everybody
can afford $20; what he's doing is _giving people new permission to contact
him_ , and not only that but by attaching a price tag to it he's giving them
expectations about his attention.

~~~
metaphorm
yes, actually. compared to $0 cash gate, anyway. he wants some level of email
interaction, but only if you're above some threshold of seriousness. its not a
very high threshold, but is enough to prevent trolling and spamming in any
case.

~~~
tptacek
You really think that now that he's posted this offer, nobody's going to troll
or spam him without spending $20 first?

I'm not suggesting that this is the most impactful charity thing anyone's ever
done --- this is marginal stuff, to be sure --- but the trope where we try to
unwind any charitable impulse anyone has to some insidious subtextual personal
interest is always tiresome and virtually never very insightful.

It's particularly dumb in this case.

~~~
metaphorm
you ever been to a bar/stage where there's a cover charge at the door? you
know why the cover charge is such a tiny amount of money?

this is a cover charge. yes, I do expect it to keep out 99% of trolls and
spammers.

------
ddp
Who the hell is Ben Horowitz and why would I pay money to contact him?

~~~
achompas
Surprised to see this q on HN of all places. He's a co-founder of arguably the
most powerful VC in Silicon Valley.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Horowitz)

~~~
GavinMcG
What value does expressing your surprise add, here?

~~~
ljoshua
Not much, but the original question was a little severe in its tone as well.
Let's all be happy folks! :)

------
tonydiv
Are any popular Bitcoin apps using their APIs? I don't really see how an API
marketplace paid via Bitcoin is better than a credit card bill at the end of
the month based on API usage.

~~~
bnjms
I don't see how it is not better. Credit Cards require use of credit providers
and all the overhead that entails; minimum payments included. Most of the time
this does not bite us and it Just Works except for when we try to step outside
of the expected transaction model as we do with say Paypal which has known and
necessary pros and cons. A proper bitcoin API has the potential to allow for
the transactional web everyone was hoping would come to pass back in the day
and since it is NOT owned by a single company, the way companies were
clamoring to be _the_ mico-payment provider of the web, it just might happen.
If we are going to make an HTTP level API it really needs to be based on a
technology any new company can start up a service for rather than centralizing
it. Not to mention CC somewhat imply a lower bound of $0.01 which is too
costly for some transactions.

It would be _amazing_ if I could pay for access to the Wall Street Journal or
New Yorker articles without locking in a full sub. There must be thousands of
people who would pay a premium price or $0.15 for individual articles but
would not go for a full membership. Then journalists could actually charge for
content. We HNers would likely pay for longform but not the dreck we
collectively complain about. Weakening the cultural pull of clickbait news.

~~~
wfzimmerman
try Blendle.

------
dpweb
So this is like selling autographs?

Seriously, an idea - actually modestly FUND someone who sends one of these
emails. Then do this exercise again in the future, the response will be at
least 2x!

------
aaawow
Here is how $20 advice from Ben looks like
[http://take.ms/UTHnJ](http://take.ms/UTHnJ)

It's $100 now :-0

------
shadykiller
What's so great about Ben Horowitz to spend 20$ ?

~~~
guelo
He has a giant pile of money to dole out to startups.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Methinks it's the other way around, but whatever.

~~~
the_watcher
Wait, are you saying that startups have huge piles of money to give to Ben
Horowitz? It's arguable that the bulk of his wealth has come from the returns
from startup investing, but by the time they generate any kind of return for
him, they're no longer startups.

------
emodendroket
I think I'll hold on to my twenty bucks.

------
winslow
So has anyone taken up the offer? If so do you mind sharing what you asked and
what the response was?

------
blueyes
When you click through to send the email, they jack up the price to $100.
Feels scummy to me...

~~~
spott
It now says $100 on the front page. I think the price has recently been
changed.

------
1dundundun
Gets publicity and $$ over to a good cause. I'm loving it.

------
1337biz
I always wondered what I should write people like that - unless I am pitching
them for a project. "So I herd on Hackernews you are a really, really cool.
Wanna go for chili next week and troll around?"

------
patmcguire
Article says $100?

~~~
yarou
It's relatively easy to flood his email. Imagine how much fun an Eastern
European kid can have with this. All he needs is a database of cards to cycle
through.

------
mdrzn
It's $100 now.

------
vageli
Does anyone know what the tax implications (if any) for accepting such a large
number of public donations may be?

------
kapauldo
Massive ego.

------
danm07
this is hilarious... Ben's going to get spammed with emails

------
antirez
Whatever you do with the $20 I still find unreasonable to make you contactable
via a paywall: moreover if you have no time, you have no time even if each
communication will donate $20 for a good cause. For a person of the wealth of
B.H. it's simpler to just give directly money and avoid to receive unwanted
communications.

~~~
netsharc
Bill Gates' book The Road Ahead had the idea of a paywall to fight spam,
someone who really wants to get your attention could attach a $20 "stamp" to
their mail, and if it's a really important mail, say from a long-lost family
member, you'd refund them. If it's just spam, you can keep the money.

~~~
bluetwo
I'm still waiting for someone to build an email system where only the header
is sent along. The body of the message must be retrieved from the original
server using a unique key included in the header. This would decrease spoofing
of IPs and make black listing more accurate.

Please someone steal this idea...

~~~
ramses0
Everything old is new again:
[https://cr.yp.to/im2000.html](https://cr.yp.to/im2000.html)

~~~
bluetwo
Ha! That's great. Did anyone build it?

