
Go Fucking Do It - pieterhg
https://levels.io/go-fucking-do-it/
======
ZenPro
I have seen this a number of times but the money goes to a charitable cause
instead.

Oprah Winfrey also pioneered it via television.

Not totally sure why a random stranger would forward you money for
procrastinating but that does not mean they won't.

In Europe anyone accepting transactions online is bound by Distance Selling
Regulations which means they can demand their money back within 7 days, no
questions.

I would factor that little admin nightmare into your business/legal plan.

~~~
keesj
The 'Distance Selling Regulations' does not apply for "contracts for services
where you agreed to the service starting before the seven working days has
expired"[1]

[1] [http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-
rights/regulation/distance-s...](http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-
rights/regulation/distance-selling-regulations)

------
oneeyedpigeon
It's unclear whether, on gofuckingdoit.com, the penalty fine gets paid to the
friend acting as a referee, or the owners of the site.

~~~
fnbr
Agreed. I would sign up if the money went to my friend (with a reasonable cut
to the owner), but not if the money goes to the owners.

~~~
riggins
I hope the developer lets us know how this goes.

I'm kinda dying to know if people actually sign up to send some random website
money. As it is, I'm almost wondering if its satire.

~~~
pieterhg
In the back of my head was letting the user pick a charity and/or indeed
letting the user specify a third friend to send it to (and maybe take a cut
from there).

I'll keep reading what everyone here thinks and implement that once there's
some consensus.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Having it go to the first friend encourages an obvious bias, although that
just depends on how much you trust that friend. Having it all go to you, the
site owner, seems a bit unfair (a massive reward/effort ratio!) and nominating
a charity would be an excellent way of mitigating that. I've heard of a
similar incentive-based scheme in which you pay money to an entity you dislike
(e.g. democrat donating to republican party) if you fail.

~~~
fnbr
I think that would be brilliant. It would provide a strong incentive to Go
Fucking Do It.

------
jjin082693
What I don't quite understand is: what kind of person would rather pay 25USD
to some -- for all intents and purposes -- unknown organization over a good
friend whom they know will hold them accountable. Plus it'll be a whole lot
harder to lie to a friend; with this, it's as simple as clicking the other
button.

~~~
dajohnson89
If the money went to the friend, it would be easier to recruit them. Although
in that case, they will have a perverse incentive to hinder your progress.
Perhaps it's better to have the money go to a non-profit org of your choice.

~~~
jjin082693
Ha. In that case I guess it'd be up to the user to choose their friend wisely.

An option to choose where the money goes definitely seems in order.

------
throwawayLSKDNF
Awesome! I just added some short-term 100-dollar TODOs.

(1) The product needs a basic F.A.Q. (What, exactly, happens to my card
information? You don't put a hold on the funds, right? Do you know your shit
with respect to securing your servers?)

(2) Take my email. Send me a confirmation. Remind me the day before. And then
email me the conclusion.

------
ryanseys
So a few buttons and a credit card field is all it takes to be a "startup"? I
think I'll write myself a startup tomorrow.

Edit: Or today even, you know, in the true nature of the post.

~~~
ZenPro
What do you think a startup requires?

The idea scales, it is not spec work. According to YCom criteria it is a
startup. _shrug_

------
johnwalker
12 startups in 12 months? That's just strange.

~~~
gkya
That's actually utterly idiotic; as in “12 songs in 12 months” or “52
paintings in 52 weeks”. One does not routinely come up with good ideas or get
inspired.

~~~
ZenPro
This is so wrong I don't know where to begin. Your comment is also blatantly
ignorant of the high output of artistic work that was produced "on spec"
during the renaissance and other artistic periods.

52 paintings in a year was not uncommon for painters that are now revered as
old masters.

Good ideas and inspiration are, despite your opinion, largely a product of
routine.

The routine of capturing thoughts and directions followed by the routine of
planning, implementation and possibly review.

The idea of a tortured artist throwing a smattering of paint at a canvas in
frustration because his "spark" is gone is largely a figment of the modern
imagination.

Art has been made to order on demand for most of history.

EDIT TO ADD: Downvoting without a response? Thanks for proving my point.

~~~
gkya
As you can prove to yourself by rereading the parent comment of mine, I have
stated not that “good ideas and inspiration are not a product of routine”, but
that “good ideas and inspiration do not come up routinely”. To further explain
my thoughts, let me add that one need not be inspired or have a good idea to
train themselves ( _training_ is what the kind of routine we're talking about
ultimately is), but need be wishing to train and have _some_ idea, which need
not be good.

It is a fine method of developing one's art/science/etc... skills to regularly
practise, but not a fine method when it comes to startups and founding
companies, think I; for such things happen to have _consumers_ , people who
may be favouring the product and incorporating it to their daily lives, which
will be disrupted when the founder loses their interest in that product and
proceeds to the next month's startup.

They may have had a goal of building 12 web sites in 12 months, or 12 blog
posts in 12 days, but this person chose to launch 12 startups each month, and
launch those to press. Launching companies regularly is dissimilar to painting
regularly. (TBH, I did not double check if this _serial founder_ is referring
to some ordinary web application as _startup_ )

~~~
ZenPro
Good ideas do come up routinely.

Well, according to
[http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)
you can literally go and find good ideas right now and every day thereafter.

It is also the basis of the Lean Startup Machine weekend (phenomenally
popular).

You can train yourself to have ideas. _Good_ is just an evaluation system.

People may indeed be incorporating a new product into their lives and the
Founder will need to manage customer expectations and fallout. A high
likelihood of discontinuance does not disqualify his attempts from being a
startup.

The truth is, from a validation perspective the OP may have stumbled onto a
supremely successful model of idea validation. Build it, tweak it, pump it for
11 months. The next project has 10 months. The next 9. Etc. Compare the
metrics after one year and choose the most successful.

However, the statement that good ideas do not come up routinely and is false.
They may just not be routine for _you_

~~~
gkya
_come up_ : (Of an issue, situation, or problem) occur or present itself,
especially unexpectedly [1]

 _inspiration_ : A sudden brilliant or timely idea [2]

If an entrepreneur trains via founding companies, then, should an architect
train via filling the city up with half-arsed buildings? Nowhere in the pg
article does occur something like “build random ideas into companies
routinely”. Also, in that write-up is writ:

> If you're not at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, you can
> get to one. For example, anyone reasonably smart can probably get to an edge
> of programming (e.g. building mobile apps) in a year. Since a successful
> startup will consume at least 3-5 years of your life, a year's preparation
> would be a reasonable investment. Especially if you're also looking for a
> cofounder.

[1] [http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/come-
up...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/come-up?q=come+up)

[2]
[http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/inspira...](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/inspiration?q=inspiration)

------
morgante
Love it. The idea has been tried before, but I've never seen an incarnation
this simple. I like that there's no requirement to create an account (for
either me or my friend) and the UI feels perfectly sized for the complexity of
the task.

Plus, it works. I'd been meaning to clean my desk for weeks, but after
assigning $50 to getting it done today I finally did it.

~~~
heurist
You could hire someone to clean an entire apartment for $50.

~~~
morgante
> You could hire someone to clean an entire apartment for $50.

Obviously the point is to _not_ lose my $50.

~~~
heurist
I get the point. I'm saying that if you're willing to potentially lose $50
over 5 minutes worth of self-discipline you might as well spend it on a
cleaning service and get a few hours worth of self-discipline instead.

------
rartichoke
The big problem I see is how do you pick the accountability partner?

It needs to be someone who you would trust with an arbitrary amount of money
because as soon as there's an ounce of distrust then the entire idea falls
apart.

I'm not going to put up $250 if I think there's even a 0.0000001% chance the
accountability partner will improperly log that I didn't do it.

~~~
eurleif
The money doesn't go to the accountability partner. So if they place any value
at all on your friendship, why would they do that? There's nothing to gain.

Also:

>I'm not going to put up $250 if I think there's even a 0.0000001% chance the
accountability partner will improperly log that I didn't do it.

Really? An expected loss of $0.00000025 bothers you?

~~~
rartichoke
It doesn't matter where the money goes to in the end, the only thing that
matters is the risk taker loses the money.

There's a very big difference between "internet friend I've known for 4 years
and I would consider him a decently close friend" and "I'm willing to hold
this guy accountable for $1,000".

I think you guys under estimate at how hard it will be to find an
accountability partner who is actually worthy. Your family members will have a
bias to not let you lose the money. Really close friends (the people you can
trust) might too but the questionably close friends aren't quite trustworthy
enough to let them decide on your $500, etc..

~~~
eurleif
>It doesn't matter where the money goes to in the end, the only thing that
matters is the risk taker loses the money.

Sure it does. It's the difference between expecting people to behave morally
and expecting them to behave in their own rational self-interest. The latter
isn't completely reliable, but it's a much, much safer bet than the former.

~~~
rartichoke
Safe isn't immune, also people are really strange around money.

What if I set a goal for 2 years from now. Suddenly I'm forced into
maintaining a friendship with my accountability partner because if I don't
then I run the risk of being blackmailed.

------
primitivesuave
Awesome app and beautiful interface! I think I'll sign up for it tomorrow...

------
danellis
_yawn_

Enough with the "shock" titles. You're not impressing anyone. Grow up.

------
jabits
If I had the points, I would downvote this. Titles like this are rude and
meaningless. Will not bother reading.

~~~
mootle
The startup is just a simple webpage that takes your money if you don't make a
deadline you set; And the author is a self-procclaimed "entrepretraveler".

~~~
ZenPro
Quotation marks for startup as if you are trying to express disdain? You might
want to actually structure a coherent, credible response otherwise you are
simply lowering the quality of posts of HN.

Regardless of your opinion of the idea/execution it qualifies as a startup.

The same "startup" tags could be applied to Quora (I write content for free,
you make people log in to view it to profit) or any other number of
enterprises.

EDIT TO ADD: Poster has removed the tags around startup without adding in his
edit history to show it.

~~~
xtc
How in the hell is this a start-up? It's a website.

~~~
ZenPro
It fits the criteria of being a startup. It scales and it is not spec work.

Why do you think it is _not_ a startup?

~~~
xtc
Does every project someone spits out on a domain name automatically constitute
it as a start-up? Is he intentionally building a solid business around this
and actively trying to scale it? Is there anything to this other than a
preposterous personal goal and obtaining that sweet HN cred?

This is a personal project with no intended future other than the experience.
Calling it a start-up is going overboard.

~~~
ZenPro
Do you think you are the person that gets to be the final arbiter on whether
the OP is or is not forming a startup? Do you think HN front page is a good
start to scaling...?

Why do you think you are qualified to pass judgement or even question whether
his intention is to build a solid business? Can you even define a 'solid
business'?

Are startups solid in any definition? Surely once a business idea has
scaled/matured into something solid is no longer a startup?

Are personal projects and startups now mutually exclusive? That must be news
to Martha Stewart, the boys at innocent Smoothies (sold to Coca Cola) and the
entire forum of Mumsnet.

Not to mention these guys -
[http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224357](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224357)

You might not like his proposal but you don't get to label it a non-startup
when it actually fits every technical definition of the criteria.

Oh, and by the looks of this thread his potential customer base might be
polarised but the idea is pretty validated. People are putting down money and
defending the brand.

Sounds like he has a business to me...

~~~
xtc
No I am not, nor did I assume that grand position. Good for scaling? Possibly.
Good in general? It does not mean anything especially if you compare to the
garbage that winds up within the top 20 links each day.

I defend my position as a sentient being that can offer sane judgement. He's
doing 12 'start-ups' in 12 months. I should not have to say anything else to
justify why this is such an absurd idea. His reasoning is that he can do this
because someone else completed 180 projects in 180 days. The analogy alone
should tell you that he is not taking this as seriously as he should for each
to be considered a start-up (realistically). Practice is excellent but he's
doing this for the number not for the raw value of any particular experience.

Start-ups are solid in the definition that they should have a reasonable
business plan to expect anything of value (experience, cold hard cash, what
have you). There are objective manners in which to approach whether something
has merit as opposed to viewing business plans in a nebulous fashion believing
that 'everything is possible!'

Personal projects and start-ups are not mutually exclusive, nor did I state
this. I said that a project should not automatically become a start-up.

~~~
ZenPro
I see that you like to post and then once questioned you like to edit the post
to address the concerns as if you had written that way all along.

This is HN, not Reddit. When you criticise something you are expected to give
a credible reason for that criticism.

You failed in that respect and retrospective attempts are simply not going to
cut it.

His business seems to be generating cold hard cash right now. In what world
can you say that is not a startup?

~~~
xtc
When did I edit my post? Further justifying my belief you don't comprehend
what's in front of your face.

I'm really starting to believe this is no different than Reddit.

~~~
ZenPro
What?

>> _Justifying your belief that I don 't comprehend what is in front of my
face._

Seriously, what?

~~~
xtc
This is becoming farcical. Good bye.

