
Tell HN: Paul Graham on TC50 panel, streaming live - JayNeely
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-from-techcrunch50?ref=hn
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edw519
This is incredible! I have 800 cable channels and absolutely nothing like
this.

I didn't watch earlier because I don't watch video at work. But rest assured,
I'll be watching for the rest of the night. I guess dinner and Monday Night
Football will have to wait.

I've only been watching for a little while, but some first thoughts:

\- Public speaking lessons and practice may provide some value, but the best
public speaking will come from your absolute conviction about your product and
market.

\- I finally get Twitter. The sidebar is fascinating.

\- Hire a panel of experts (just like here) and do this privately. Several
times. Keep doing it until you have it nailed. By the time you do it publicly,
there should be no surprises.

\- Make your screens dead simple. The more you have, the longer it takes to
understand. The longer it takes to understand, the higher the risk you lose
your audience before your window closes.

\- Don't make fantastic claims. You'll just look silly. Let your product make
your claims. (I understand that this is a fine line between confidence and
silliness.)

\- Have a sense of humor. What is this, a funeral?

\- On one hand, the presenters are great. Lots of hard work and dedication
went into all of this. They should be proud of themselves.

\- On the other hand, the longer I watch, the more I think, "I can do that!"
Time to get off my ass and launch something.

~~~
rms
You seriously have 800 cable channels?

~~~
mahmud
My father has 900+ with Dish Network and he didn't ask for it. It's not
unusual for them to require you to buy extra packages if you want one small
fringe one. Try getting Arabic channels with Dish and see how much crap comes
with it.

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brandnewlow
PG hit the SeatGeek guys with a good question.

Q; "Surely you must know the average variation in ticket prices over a month."

A; stall stall stall... "we don't know."

~~~
JayNeely
I thought his question about why they weren't using their technology to make
money from buying underpriced tickets themselves was much more damaging.

The SeatGeek founder's answer to the question you're referring was actually
much more useful than it seemed when you look at it in context. He was able to
say that ticket prices for baseball games varied by 40%, on average, over a
month... _for sold out games_.

Although pg seemed dissatisfied with this response, and was looking for ticket
price variation for _all_ games, why should the SeatGeek guys know that? It's
not important to their business, because their service is only valuable when
there's an _active_ secondary-market for ticket sales, in other words, when
tickets for games are rare, which most of the time is because they're sold
out.

~~~
rms
I sell tickets on the secondary market, so I'll answer for them. They aren't
doing it because it's risky and the margins are small. Probably the least
risky thing they could do with ticket trading is monitoring ticket listings in
real time and buying ones that are listed below the prevailing market price,
for events that are expected to have an increase in prices over time. However,
85% of events decrease in price as it gets closer to the event, until the last
48 hours which are harder to predict. Of course, the most money is to be made
from buying from Ticketmaster at face value before events sell out.

Also, the secondary ticket market is very sensitive to momentum, so if
SeatsGeek did a lot of trading they could unintentionally move the market in
ways that cancelled out their profit.

They can make more reliable money from the affiliate fees on their sites. The
prices for sold out events may vary by 40%, but the sites like Stubhub and
Ticket Network take another 20% which makes it very difficult to flip tickets
for already sold out events.

Something that often works better is short selling tickets for events that
haven't gone on sale yet -- the price will crash down to the true market value
after the market has more than a few tickets available.

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antirez
Why this probably smart guys are talking like cars salesmen? There are a few
things I'll never understand about US.

~~~
tsally
Smart guys, but not the smartest. I think you'll find the smartest guys rarely
talk like cars salesmen.

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apsurd
Regarding Refmob:

I like the idea as a solid business to business model. But couldn't this
better be accomplished as a white label application? The focus on twitter and
facebook seems like a mistake to me. Not everyones' business has customers on
fb and twitter. Also as Tony pointed out, seems unnatural and quite spam-
tastic. Combine that with me having to go to refmobs not very attractive (imo)
participation site and I just don't see myself allowing my company to be
represented like that.

White label, fully brandable, in-site or standalone dead-simple referral
management system.

Track and manage referrers, refer-ees, campaigns and analytics.

Now you've got my attention.

~~~
doncampbell1
@apsurd - thanks for the mention. You are spot-on about the white labeling -
we do offer the ability for a company to host the referral page describing the
offer on their own site with their own branding (rather than RefMob's.)

Also, with respect to Facebook and Twitter - all we are trying to do is make
it easy for people to refer their favorite business to their friends (not
anonymous people) and share the referral bonus with them. They don't have to
use FB or Twitter - for example they could just share the link to the referral
page on their blog, or on a card, however they like. -Don

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thaumaturgy
I'm really surprised at the negative reception to TheSwop, given all the
traffic we see on here constantly with programmers looking for
marketing/business people, and vice-versa, and the recent "revelation" that
website developers probably aren't very good graphic or UI designers.

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johnohara
Curious. Why ustream and not justin. I thought justin.tv was a funding
recipient of YC. No?

~~~
jamiequint
Techcrunch 50 is Techcrunch's event not YCs

~~~
johnohara
Thanks. Watch the broadcast, ask a question, get modded down.

------
JayNeely
[Edit: pg's back on now.]

~~~
seiji
That's just creepy.

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profquail
Sweet...is there any way that we'll be able to go back and watch the broadcast
from the beginning of the day (it's already 6 hours in)?

~~~
JayNeely
If you look below the main video, you'll see thumbnails for several others...
these are each segments from earlier in the day.

Paul Graham's panel just started at around 6:00 PM EST, though. (15 minutes
ago, as I post this.)

~~~
profquail
I'll check them out, thanks.

