
Gittip, Year Two - tshepang
https://medium.com/building-gittip/gittip-year-two-a220308d4ec9
======
SingAlong
I feel an emotional attachment towards Gittip. Here's my story:

This is my GitHub profile
[https://github.com/HashNuke](https://github.com/HashNuke) and this is my
Gittip profile
[https://www.gittip.com/HashNuke/](https://www.gittip.com/HashNuke/)

I've been writing opensource software full-time for the past few months. A few
weeks ago, I checked my Gittip profile out of curiosity. I found out someone
was anonymously giving me $0.5/wk, for the last 4 weeks. I had $2 as my
balance. I was in tears when I saw that. I felt that mattered. Someone cared
about my work.

I'm excited that in a few weeks it can pay for the domain name for my next
opensource project.

Thanks to Chad, the Gittip team and the community. I hope Gittip works out
well for them financially to sustain themselves and do more.

~~~
whit537
That is super awesome and encouraging to read. Thanks SingAlong/HashNuke! Keep
up the good work! :D

~~~
gedrap
And maybe a story for homepage? ;)

It's surely more engaging than a list of new users (which, honestly, I don't
care and don't think anyone cares outside 'getting on HN front page got him X
sign ups').

Although... I am quite curious how this post will affect your metrics e.g. a
month down the line ;)

And, yes, please, change your name. I found it misleading (I thought it's
something like dogecoin tips on reddit, just for github) and hard to remember
for people who don't know git.

Other that that, you're awesome! Keep it going :)

~~~
whit537
Thanks for the feedback! The reason we have leaderboards on the homepage in
the first place is to quickly answer the question, "Is anyone actually making
a living here?" I looked at Flattr and could not for the life of me answer
that question. Now that the matter is established, I agree that it's time to
change the homepage. I've added a +1 for you to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074).

Re: Stories, see [http://tomslee.net/2014/01/airbnb-
stories.html](http://tomslee.net/2014/01/airbnb-stories.html) for a
counterargument.

------
jballanc
It seems to me that Gittip is making the same mistake that Gnu/FSF have made:
the most effective change comes one step at a time. Ostensibly, the _primary_
goal of Gittip is to create an economy of Open Source work. But instead of
focusing on this goal, they are also (from the article):

* running a non-traditional "open" company

* shunning investors not willing to work with an "open" company

* only doing "open" interviews

Stallman deserves much credit for starting the FSF movement, but there's a
reason that Linux has succeeded where Hurd has barely even shown its face.
Linus has always been a pragmatist. In the end, we have a world where software
development is much more "Open" today than it was 30 years ago, but who
deserves more of the credit? Stallman the zealot? or Linus the pragmatist?

I love Gittip's _primary_ mission, but I hate that they'd rather see this
primary mission fail than compromise on any of a list of additional
_secondary_ goals. Regardless, I think that 5-10 years from making a decent
living doing open source work will be far more feasible than it is today, but
who will make that happen? Gittip? or
Kickstarter/IndieGoGo/Crowdtilt/Patreon/Bountysource?

~~~
MateuszMucha
The thing is that it's crucial for us to have people like RMS. Even if their
main projects aren't as successful as their pragmatic "competition", the
society as a whole benefits from them being a hard-core idealists. They're the
ones who keep reminding us about the values we otherwise would have forgotten
(or at least we wouldn't have thought about them as much).

I've had a similar discussion with my wife just last night. She's a landscape
architect and deals a lot with people who's purpose in life is to save
existing trees and plant new ones. She complained that they're so over the top
in their actions that they're often doing more harm than good (to the cause).
It's similar in other niches - animal rights activists do some nasty things to
fur coat owners, etc.

I believe that these traits (a strong belief in something and overzealous
approach) are most often inseparable. We can either have these people care a
lot and spread the word by doing things the way we don't agree with or don't
have anybody who gives a shit.

I don't agree with Stallman on many issues and I'm eternally grateful to him
for what he's done. I don't agree with tree huggers because they make other
people laugh at the whole thing. But I'm grateful, because without them nobody
would care. Same with animal rights fighters, same with GitTip folks.

Thank you, Chad Whitacre, the World is a tiny bit better because of you.

~~~
whit537
:-)

You, too!

------
pessimizer
I have a few criticisms of Gittip, with the caveat that I'm largely
criticizing you for not being something else that I want, rather than for not
doing a good job at the thing that you're currently doing.

1) Is there some sort of legal reason that Gittip doesn't want to manage _all_
of my non-profit giving?

2) What's with the focus on programming? The programming community is tiny,
and will be better off piggybacking on the larger culture rather than trying
to create one of our own. Why not focus on supporting free culture writ large,
like musicians, writers, artists, and charities?

3) The reason my own donation is shitty is because I have to figure out who to
donate to and how to donate to them, and then I end up having to maintain as
many channels for cash as I have things to donate to. Can't you just offer me
curated funds where percentages of my monthly tithe go to a range of things
that are often supported together, and you guys just keep it updated?

4) The greatest sin that gittip commits in my opinion is not being donator
focused. It seems to be a platform for people to get money donated to them,
rather than a platform to manage my donations, as a person who has money.

OK: I hope this isn't too incoherent, because I'm a bit busy; my bottom line
is that I want to donate $10K - $20K a year, like many people I'm sure, and if
you can help me with that problem, that's where success lies. Right now, it
seems like you primarily help marginal people receive money instead of helping
me give it.

I want to give to 100 software projects that I know about, and 200 that I
don't. I want to give to 10 charities that I know about, and 20 that I don't.
I want to give to them whether or not they're aware of gittip. I don't want to
be Joan Kroc giving all of her money to NPR because she didn't know of the
myriad of other companies that make up public radio. I don't want to spend
more than an hour a year on it. Can you help me?

~~~
whit537
Thanks for the great feedback! :-)

1) No.

2) Historical accident.

3) Sounds like a +1 for
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1493](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1493)?

4) I see Gittip as a marketplace that has to support both sides more or less
equally.

You are a generous person! I hope we can help you! :-)

~~~
pessimizer
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1493](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1493)
is exactly what I was talking about:)

edit: The Neo4j solution is really an ideal solution for automating some of
this stuff. I beg you not to dismiss it out of hand because of lack of
familiarity...

------
chroma
Let me preface this by saying: I want Gittip to succeed. I _really_ want them
to succeed. I would love to be able to spend my time getting paid by a
community to develop open source software. However... those growth curves look
linear, if not sigmoid. More importantly:

>The Gittip team receives $20,339 per year (averaging the past ten weeks).
There are 39 people splitting that money.

$500 per person per year? That's not within _two orders of magnitude_ of
sustainability.[1] In addition, even the greatest collector of revenue on
Gittip can't make a decent living from it. $40k per year is quite close to
minimum wage in California.

I truly wish it were otherwise, but this post makes me seriously worry about
the future of Gittip. Apparently, they did not make something people want.

1\. I realize that only a few people are full-time on Gittip, but that's still
a _huge_ red flag. Unless the author is being extremely generous with his
profit sharing, those numbers are inexcusable.

~~~
ronaldx
> $40k per year is quite close to minimum wage in California.

This didn't sound right, so I checked it for you:

Full-time minimum wage in California is officially about to increase to
_$14k_.

Based on a 30-hour work week (ref: wikipedia definition of full-time) at $9ph
(as of July 1, 2014).

~~~
whit537
Yeah, the U.S. median for singles is $30,880 (as I mention in the post). I
don't know what percentile $41,500 is, but it's well above minimum wage.

------
pekk
Gittip is a nice idea. But sadly, it has become a place for certain people to
receive hefty monthly paychecks from anonymous patrons in exchange for
incredibly aggressive and toxic trolling. Despite original intentions, this is
not making an ecosystem of love and gratitude. So if its creator isn't even
making money from it, it's probably better if it goes to sleep.

~~~
tshepang
Do you have examples of the trolling you talk of?

~~~
ta140604
I believe he was referring to the top two receivers, Shanley [1] and Ashe[2].

These two are a part of the group of very aggressive feminists; there's no
official 'group' to speak of (AFAIK), just a network of people supporting each
other.

Just to give a few names - Alex Gaynor (member of PSF board), Jacob Kaplan-
Moss (yep, Django ex-BDFL), Coda Hale (HN/codahale, see his last messages here
on HN [3], they're just about Shanley and Gittip), HN/steveklabnik, etc etc

A few highlights by Shanley:

"Men are rapists" [4]

HN's Sam Altman reaches out to women asking what he could do; Shanley reacts:
"i'm not insulting you, i'm fucking EDUCATING you. so shut the fuck up and/or
pay me, preferably both." [5], while refusing to do anything for HN, not even
meeting anyone in person [6]

They've been either involved or voiced (shouted, actually) their support to
whoever was involved in recent scandals with feminism - Adria Richards @ PyCon
(I believe Alex Gaynor helped to make this event as public as possible),
pronoun scandal (Alex Gaynor, again, was the author of RP that started the
whole thing), Paul Graham misquote (Jacob KM speaks out [7])... I could go on.

But, basically, a bunch of very aggressive people, who claim to work on
solving the problems women face, but actually (IMO) are just making the whole
thing worse.

And, back to the subject, seeing them on top of gittip definitely doesn't help
the project. Which is said, that's a great idea and I loved it when I saw it.

[1] [https://twitter.com/shanley](https://twitter.com/shanley) [2]
[https://twitter.com/ashedryden](https://twitter.com/ashedryden) [3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=codahale](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=codahale)
[4]
[https://twitter.com/shanley/status/451779905475186690](https://twitter.com/shanley/status/451779905475186690)
[5]
[https://twitter.com/shanley/status/446375139488186368](https://twitter.com/shanley/status/446375139488186368)
[6]
[https://twitter.com/shanley/status/446376327218622464](https://twitter.com/shanley/status/446376327218622464)
[7]
[https://twitter.com/jacobian/status/416719991963009024](https://twitter.com/jacobian/status/416719991963009024)

PS Oh, this just in. Shanley on how companies can increase diversity: "Hire me
to be your diversity consultant I will help you quickly close down your
business to make room for better ones"

[https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474013765252292609](https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474013765252292609)

~~~
rhizome
Pointing out problems is actually a very important part of any solution. You
don't lambaste QA people because they don't actually fix bugs.

~~~
ta140604
Agreed. The problem is, they exaggerate and twist the truth, spread hate,
unnecessarily antagonizing people, and actively push away those who try to
reach out to them trying to do something.

~~~
harrylyme
Exactly: people like @shanley and @ashedryden make money by polarizing and
then profiting from the resulting flames of their gender argument, and so
vigorously resist even talking to those that they accuse and condemn. It's the
type of narcissistic intolerance that is rarely seen in such pure form.

The logic here is rather straightforward: to a 'stage4' narcissist, their
opinions are the functional equivalent of absolute truths, and therefore it is
sacrilegious to even imply that they be 'open for debate'. So if anyone
persists in challenging one of their sermons,that person is either grossly
ignorant (solution => RTFM) OR is intentionally 'attacking' or 'harassing'
(because there is no gray area to debate for the histrionically 'self-deified'
\-- it's impossible to debate across parallel 'Absolutes' -"God does not play
dice";)

Heck, at this stage of ferment, she is all but accusing (the almost freakishly
fair minded) Chad of misogyny :D

And it's worse for those without a monetary connection:
[https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474265272660942848](https://twitter.com/shanley/status/474265272660942848)

P.S. SK: a bit of advice: don't look a gift horse in the mouth (good wine and
a menagerie of stuffed animals are not cheap in SF ;)

~~~
harrylyme
My advice to GitTip: 'if it's not broke, don't fix it'. You had a great year,
so proceed cautiously with any systemic changes, and error on the side of
transparency. Keep conversations as open as possible because the real solution
to 'Bad' Speech -- is more speech.

The only exception to that rule is personally threatening language, which
should not be tolerated at all. And only a coward would resort to that low
level of action.

But with that being said lets not construe honest disagreements that are
substantiated with reasons -- as a personal attack or a cause to feel
'threatened'.

And as far as funding goes: except for clear cases of fraud, let people decide
for themselves where they want their money to go -- and let transparency take
care of the rest :)

P.S. They are using flame throwers on twitter about this thread -- when they
should be replying here :D (twitter is a better place to polarize with out of
context 'headlines')

------
po
I would suggest one thing that may be controversial, and I hope you take it as
constructive criticism: Change the name of Gittip.

Maybe you've discussed this before somewhere but… The name suggests two things
that I think hinder the service:

\- This is a service for software developers only (git)

\- A tip is a small amount of money in exchange for quality service

There is no reason to tie yourself only to software developers. There are a
lot of other places where people may want to show appreciation for each other
in an open way.

There is also no reason to associate yourself with tipping culture. Tipping
causes many people anxiety and has power dynamics and cultural norms attached
to it. Tips are supposed to be small and in exchange for service.

I really think a more abstract name would allow people to connect with it
better.

Good luck with year three!

~~~
whit537
Thanks for the feedback! We actually had a loooong bikeshed on this a month
into Gittip. Here's the thread:

[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/138](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/138)

Maybe someday we'll rebrand, but that would be a fair bit of work at this
point and would distract us from more pressing concerns such as better
discoverability and usability.

~~~
po
I suspected that there was already a PR where what I'm suggesting was
discussed. :-)

Now you've learned more about the people who are interested and the
words/terms they use, you are more in a position to make that decision now.
So, in some sense it was good to wait.

However, I think that if your growth has been relatively flat and you have
evidence of other platforms clicking with consumers in a big way, then it may
actually be time to think bigger than incremental improvements on what you're
doing now.

One thing you could do is run a set of ads with 10-20 different names along
with a catchphrase like:

    
    
        Gittip
        An economy of gratitude, generosity, and love
    

\- or -

    
    
        NameIdea
        An economy of gratitude, generosity, and love
    
    

And then see how well you perform. It would be a fairly affordable way to
determine if you have a problem or not.

~~~
whit537
Good idea on testing names with ads. If/when we decide to rebrand I'll keep
that in mind.

Our growth has only slowed in the past few months. We doubled three times in
the 16 months before that.

------
ivanca
Ok, you guys need to make some changes, and I would recommend:

\- Allow monthly payments, instead of only weekly: most people receive money
monthly so their economy math is based on monthly periods.

\- The company giving the biggest amount of money is giving $1095... you
should try to involve Mozilla and other big non-profits to donate, basically
because giving monthly money to open-source (non-employees) devs is one of the
boldest statements they can make in favor of open-source.

\- Create spontaneous requests, for example if someone is giving 10 dollars to
some folk the app could pop up and ask if they want to give her/him a one-time
gift of $20, and ask again once the next month (just remember to also show a
checkbox to disable those notifications). The people is full of greed based on
impulsive behavior, why not let generosity also be impulsive?

~~~
PaulHoule
$1095 a week is over $50K a week, that's a substantial amount of money over a
year.

~~~
tshepang
"$50K a week" \--> "$50K a year"

------
iodfgj
I think gittip had the potential to become something great and yea, sure,
you've had a substantial increase in traffic since last year but an increase
in traffic does not mean an increase in quality.

I've been looking over at gittip for a while now and saw it was doing good
things for good open source developers but your homepage shows the problem.
The top 2 money recipients are 2 feminists which have never seen a line of
code in their lives (one of them doesn't even have a github account!). This
got me really confused as to what the objective of the website really is since
apparently anyone can signup and receive cash without working for it.

So that's why I don't use the website to receive or to give. I think its kind
of insulting for the developers that actually do something for the community.

~~~
whit537
Gittip is a site for multiple communities, not one single community, so I take
it as a sign of strength that we do in fact have multiple communities using
Gittip now. Think along the lines of PayPal or Twitter: they are a big tent.

I've added a +1 for you to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074),
because you're right that the homepage currently conflates the different
communities that are using Gittip.

~~~
lucisferre
Don't feed the trolls.

------
jacquesm
These are the hardest. See, when a company or project is dead on arrival there
is not much to do, you bury it, do a post-mortem and move on.

If a company is successful then you ride the wave as far and as long as your
stamina will let you and then you hopefully pocket a nice chunk of cash.

But when you're in the middle, too big to die, too small to succeed it gets
very hard. Killing it off feels completely wrong, pushing it feels like you
are adding to the opportunity cost with a relatively small chance chance of
eventual success. It's a very practical illustration of the sunk-cost fallacy
in all its gruesome glory.

Personally I hope that gittip will continue to grow and that the team will
stick with it. They serve a very important role, pioneers in uncharted
territory. And even if a lot of those pioneers ended up dead in creeks with
arrows in their backs they pointed the way, showed what works and what does
not. And they still have a sufficiently large shot at success if they stick
with it. But if they'd pull the plug I would not fault them.

Let's hope there will be a 3rd instalment of this article, where gittip grew
steadily for the 3rd year in a row and it became profitable. That would be the
best way to see this go.

~~~
whit537
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGFXGwHsD_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGFXGwHsD_A)
:D

------
KJasper
I've never heard of Gittip nor Patreon before reading this article. Looking at
both websites the website for Patreon is much more engaging and less
cluttered. Gittip looks intimidating with all those small pictures and numbers
going around. A good redesign for the index would propel the business more
than all those commits. Love both ideas though :)

~~~
yitchelle
I kinda agree with you here. I have not heard of Gittip either before this
post came on HN. So I visited it, and upon seeing the front page, I
immediately thought that this is like a competition where the rankings of the
highest givers and highers receivers were showcased.

I think that the site should show something that tipping the projects is a
good idea. (Shooting from my hip here) maybe they should pick out a couple of
projects and show how the tipping has benefitted the project?

~~~
KJasper
I agree with you about the competition bit. I immediately thought: "Oh how
surprising the cute girl is in second position" (I dont have a clue who
shanley is). So focusing more on how they make a difference instead of a silly
selfie would be a good first step indeed.

~~~
rescripting
A bit OT, but "Oh how surprising the cute girl is in second position" is
casual sexism and really dismissive. Read her statement on gettip for some
extra irony.

------
untilHellbanned
Kinda shocked by all the negativity here. Gittip seems pretty successful to
me. Have those telling Chad to quit really challenged themselves in their own
lives like this? I highly doubt it.

------
primigenus
I love Gittip. I don't love the homepage.

When I visit the homepage, I see "Sustainable crowdfunding: inspiring
generosity", followed by a call to action input asking me to enter someone's
username, and finally three groups of lists of people. None of these things
mean anything to me if I'm new to Gittip.

The headline at the top describes your company mission statement, not what the
product does. Instead of telling me the abstract of what Gittip is about, it
should tell me the benefit of using your product. For instance, "Support your
favourite people by automatically donating to them weekly." Skip the
generosity, sustainability, and crowdfunding mentions for now. Put them behind
the About link, which I might click if I'm interested in learning more about
how and why you're doing this (I'm probably not).

The call to action input doesn't help me much. It's asking me to enter
someone's name off the top of my head, and it's using a very vague label ("who
inspires you?") to do so. I would scrap this approach and instead provide a
way to sign up to Gittip with a call to action that ties back in to the
headline. So you want to donate to people you like? Step 1: sign up for an
account. Step 2: add people from your Twitter, Github, Facebook, etc. Step 3:
Look through the list of people (Gittip should use some magic to prioritise
the people by likelihood of my wanting to support them, such as looking at how
close they are to me on Facebook, or how many followers/stars they have on
Github and how many of their projects I've starred) and select up to 3 that I
like. Done! Step 4: Decide to give someone something minimal (say, $0.25) per
week by entering my credit card details. If I choose not to do that, at leat I
made a profile on the site, got familiar with how it works, taught you a bit
about who I am and where I came from, and you can maybe email me later and
remind me if someone I have in my friends list did something interesting (like
published a new project, blog post, insightful tweet, etc)

The list of people at the bottom of the homepage is boring. It's not
contextual to the goals of the homepage, which are converting users to
understanding Gittip and wanting to join in. Right now you show me static
lists of new users, top givers, and top receivers. I don't really care about
new users other than as proof that this site isn't dead, so you can reduce
their importance right off the bat. Top givers and receivers aren't relevant
to me unless you tell me what they're giving or receiving. So I would reformat
these lists: andyet gives x per week to a, b, c, and more. ashedryden receives
x per week from a, b, c and more. I need to understand that Gittip is about
creating a direct personal relationship between people giving money and
receiving money. Right now, these lists don't imply any kind of relationship.

I also think you need to revise the name. I know you've decided that "Gittip"
is just a new word and shouldn't be understood as a portmanteau of git and
tip, but it's a terrible, hard to remember, hard to spell word. "Giddip? So
with a D?" "No, with two T's" "The heck does that mean?" "I dunno, it's just
some weird word" \-- you're missing the opportunity to give the product a
memorable, clear, unique name that either represents your product as it stands
apart from competition, or is memorable and quirky enough that it just sticks.
Patreon got it right: it evokes "patron" but it's slightly different, so you
can intuitively guess what it's about and still remember the brand itself.

I recommend reading the book Seductive Interaction Design by Stephen Anderson:
[http://www.amazon.com/Seductive-Interaction-Design-
Effective...](http://www.amazon.com/Seductive-Interaction-Design-Effective-
Experiences/dp/0321725522) \- it will help you combine your existing ability
to reason about the product with some basic psychology and mental modeling
that will allow you to word things in such a way that the benefit is more
clearly communicated and you're speaking to the user instead of rambling about
the company vision to nobody in particular.

Good luck with Gittip in year 3. I'll be watching - and giving :)

~~~
whit537
Thanks! Awesome feedback, especially on the homepage! I've added your comments
with a +1 to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074).

Re: the name, that's mentioned a couple other places on this thread. Do you
think it's important enough to focus on in the next year? Do you think it's
the crucial missing link to making Gittip itself sustainable? Or is that
something we tackle once we've demonstrated that we can actually keep the
lights on indefinitely?

Thanks for the book recommendation. I've ordered it.

> Good luck with Gittip in year 3. I'll be watching - and giving :)

Thank you! :D

~~~
ckluis
@whit537 - marketing guy's opinion

I would have the front page tell a story. Something like. OpenSSL Heartbleed
bug affected millions of users because millions of software developers use
this free software. The team behind it only received $2,000 a year in
donations prior to the bug being found. There are 10,000s of software projects
that you use every day building your tech stack. You should be investing in
the development of those tools by helping to sponsor those projects and
"tipping" the developers directly for their work.

I might then put a table that lists server projects, language based projects,
database projects - that dives people into the next layer. For instance Lua ->
Lua page with some of the big Lua projects listed.

Tell a story. You don't have to pay "enterprise licenses" for free software,
but the tools you use need constant development. Anything you give helps those
tools get better.

~~~
whit537
Thanks! Want to join our marketing team? :-)

One way or another, I've added your comments with a +1 to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074).

------
webwright
Inspiring service (once I figured out what the heck the post was talking about
and managed to make sense of the home page). This post and the site's homepage
scream for the attention of a person who has a head for marketing.

I think Patreon is winning because the people leading the charge care most
about solving the problem (connecting patrons to creators). Gittip, while they
are also clearly passionate about solving the problem, seems to have a big
chunk of their passion/attention aimed at HOW they solve the problem (the
whole site/process seems to be open-sourced:
[http://building.gittip.com/](http://building.gittip.com/)).

What they're creating is really a consumer-facing product/service. Are there
any/many examples of consumer-facing OSS stuff that's better than the standard
path of "find/hire amazing devs/designers/marketeers who love what you're
building and pay them to kick ass?"

~~~
whit537
Yes! Wanna help with marketing? :-)

You're right that it's not just "what we do" but "how we do it" that matters
for Gittip. For me they're actually related, though I guess I haven't
convinced everyone of that. Basically I just don't feel grateful and generous
when I'm spending most of my time working for a paycheck. I want to give my
labor away for free! I want open work!

I wrote a post about "open products" for The Changelog a while ago that talks
about the question of consumer-facing products that also happen to be OSS:
[http://thechangelog.com/open-products/](http://thechangelog.com/open-
products/).

~~~
webwright
You should read: [http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/10/startups-
miracles.html](http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/10/startups-miracles.html)

I think you're shooting for two miracles here - the core idea PLUS the idea
that open work is the best way to create a consumer/facing service when all of
the evidence seems to point that it's not.

~~~
whit537
Thanks, I read it.

> Many people delude themselves on whether they are a one-miracle, or multi-
> miracle startup. They way to tell is to ask yourself what your product or
> business end goal is. Is your approach directly focused on achieving that
> end goal? If not, you may have a multi-miracle plan without realizing it.

Gittip's end goal is to enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love.

So you tell me: is our approach directly focused on achieving that end goal?

~~~
webwright
Nope.

If that's your goal (which is a good, but again could use a marketing brain),
it's pretty easy to make a list of what needs to exist/happen for that goal to
succeed. To me, it's hard to argue that "try a radically different way of
developing the product/company" should be ANYWHERE on that list, any more than
"run a kickstarter campaign for every new feature" should be on Kickstarter's
list or "we should outsource all of our product development" should be on
oDesk's list. To me, it looks like adding a ton of unnecessary risk, though it
certainly does tell a nice "we're eating our own dogfood" story. But, heck--
I've been wrong plenty before.

------
morgante
Maybe I'm confused about the mission of Gittip, but I always thought it was
(based on the name) supposed to support valuable open source work. Given this,
it seems sad that the leaderboard prominently features people whose
contributions are definitely not made in the form of git commits.

------
jve
Took me some looking around to find a link on bottom of the (gittip.com) page
to actually find out what gittip does.

First thought was - is it a way to get paid by submitting patches through
GitHub? No, actually thats a site where you give/receive donations to people
on Twitter/GitHub/Bitbucket

~~~
User9812
Same thing here, I had no idea about this site, so I click their mission from
the article.

[http://building.gittip.com/big-
picture/mission](http://building.gittip.com/big-picture/mission)

Well, that made it more confusing, so I click process at the bottom of the
above page.

Now it sounds like it's a giant pool of money, anyone can volunteer for
anything, and take some of that money. So, I can say I want to keep the
elderly company and go play scrabble with them in the evenings, and take
$10/hr from Gittip for my time? So, I visit the site directly to see if this
is accurate...

[https://www.gittip.com](https://www.gittip.com)

Apparently not. Ok, now I'm suppose to enter a Twitter username? This is to
donate money to Twitter users? Still confused, so I click a random profile of
someone receiving money. It starts to make more sense, so these are just
people marketing themselves, and asking for weekly donations. The about page
confirms this...

[https://www.gittip.com/about/](https://www.gittip.com/about/)

Far too much work to figure out what's happening here. I still have no idea
what I can donate money towards. I mean, how do I browse causes? If I want to
support musicians, or people cleaning up garbage on their beaches, where do I
go? I can't find any type of listings, or categories here. Is this just for
programmers? I need to know their Twitter/Github username, or randomly click
profiles on the site?

I give up, I've spent 20 minutes reading, and browsing this site, and my only
conclusion is that it's a place to sponsor your favorite programmers, by
giving them a weekly donation. I've been programming and freelancing for over
a decade, and I can't think of anyone by name that I'd donate towards. This
site gives me zero help in finding people to donate towards, aside from
aimlessly browsing hundreds of profiles, hoping for someone to catch my
attention. I don't have that kind of time.

This entire thing is too frustrating. I don't have a Twitter, GitHub,
Bitbucket, or OSM account, so they won't even let me sign-up anyway. However,
they say, 'Gittip's audience is everyone; it's intended to be a mass-market
consumer product.'

[http://building.gittip.com](http://building.gittip.com)

Browsing the above, it looks like they spent way too much effort on over-
analyzing everything. They have widgets, an API, browser extensions, but
they're missing the most important thing, I working business model. It seems
like the result of too many engineers and programmers in a room, while no one
is spending a minute thinking about marketing, sales, or the user experience.

~~~
kmfrk
At least some of the pages are open source; I'm sure they wouldn't mind a pull
request for some changes in language:
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/tree/ee8ebf663e74fb...](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/tree/ee8ebf663e74fbc80291e64189d1b268cc9270a1/www/about).

~~~
sokoloff
Open source doesn't fix this issue.

The GP doesn't understand what gittip is for, what the overall direction is
supposed to be or could be, and so can't reasonably submit a pull request to
fix that confusion.

------
sgdesign
I've always associated Gittip with GitHub, and contributing small amounts to
cool open-source projects. But from the article, it seems like its mission is
much more ambitious than that.

In that case, if the service wants to shed its tech-only image, maybe a
rebranding is in order?

------
alexandros
I guess the issue being raised here by many is this: You need to justify why
the non-standard moves you've made are necessary for you to achieve your
mission. If there is a story, it's not coming out. If they're not necessary,
then your mission doesn't align with your actions. Perhaps your true mission
is 'make all our dreams come true at the same time' but you have to be
conscious of the fact that the conditional probability of everything working
just right at the same time is orders of magnitude smaller than something like
gittip being executed with better understood tools and structures.

~~~
whit537
> you have to be conscious of the fact that the conditional probability of
> everything working just right at the same time is orders of magnitude
> smaller than something like gittip being executed with better understood
> tools and structures.

Sure, that's why I'm encouraged that Gittip has grown as well as it has! We
paid out $41,000 our first year. We paid out $300,000 our second year. The
best justification I can offer will be a strong year three. ;-)

------
infruset
I was really surprised to see they don't accept Bitcoin. I feel like it is the
perfect use case and would probably help them gather some more enthusiasm from
the community.

However, one could also contend that Bitcoin might very well kill them..

~~~
eswat
We can do payouts in Bitcoin currently, but it’s a manual process.

We have an Issue on GitHub to remedy this to make it automated while making
sure we do it right. Any help would be appreciated:
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1960](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1960)

~~~
infruset
I was thinking more along the lines of having two different kinds of gifts,
dollars and bitcoins, and when someone gives bitcoins to someone else, the
receiver has to accept is as bitcoins by providing an address if they want to
cash it out.

------
huehue
Funny thing is most top earners don't even seem to code.

~~~
buttscicles
Not that funny. Gittip shifted its focus solely from programmers pretty early
on.

~~~
iodfgj
so its just a website for technologically capable street beggars?

------
xur17
I think someone else mentioned this idea, but I can't find it anymore. I wish
there was some way to donate to a group of people that was automatically
managed by you guys (or crowd-sourced if you can make that work).

I wouldn't mind giving a little bit each month, but I don't really feel like
searching for specific users that do work I want to support, and then checking
back every few months to make sure they still are.

Also, it would be a lot more meaningful to see a list of groups on the
homepage rather than people that I have mostly never heard of.

~~~
whit537
Thanks for the feedback! Did you open
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/2455](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/2455)?
It sounds similar. :-)

I've added your homepage comment with a +1 to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074),
and your other comments to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1493](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1493).

------
AyKarsi
I ran a similar site a few years back (youtipit). The biggest challenge was
actually getting people to give money for things they can have for free.
Looking at Chads figures, I think there definitely has been a huge change in
the way people respect "free" work, and are now a lot more willing to pay for
it.

I hope for him (and all others in this market) that this trend continues and
that more people can start making a living from free work.

~~~
whit537
Thanks for the encouragement! :-)

I agree that the general cultural trends are pointing in the right direction
in a way they weren't a few years ago.

------
ianbicking
One thing that I think Gittip is going to require is that people actually
_ask_ to receive donations. I'm guessing that the people who are doing best
through Gittip do just that. It's a voluntary gift-oriented community, but
that shouldn't get in the way of asking.

Chad: one thing I will note is that, though you are very open in the article
about what you are making, and clearly you want more gifts to sustain yourself
and gittip, you don't actually ask. For gittip to succede you don't just need
a volume of people, you need a volume of people who are actively asking other
people to participate. And you should start with yourself!

For gittip that plea can take different forms. Well-funded groups can ask for
tips that they redistribute. People doing small projects on the side can still
calculate out their expenses (my expenses are just a few domain names, but
they aren't free) and can ask for exactly that modest goal.

In a sense you want to teach people how to ask, and you want to normalize
these pleas, which is best done through demonstration.

~~~
whit537
You may be right. Certainly, "asking" has been a success factor for people
using Gittip, which is fine. For myself, I like _not_ overtly asking for money
too much, because then the gifts I _do_ receive feel that much more genuine.
:-)

What if instead of normalizing asking (pull), we normalized generosity (push)?

~~~
ianbicking
I know asking is hard, and uncomfortable, but I feel like you are coming up
with excuses to avoid the hard and uncomfortable thing. But I also suspect you
know you have to do uncomfortable things to make this succeed. Asking/pulling
extends the network, pushing does not. Certainly you aren't the only one
reluctant to ask, but I think there's room to experiment with creative ways to
ask, ones that will feel more authentic to you.

Also I'm going to pull out the Lesson In Humility card.

------
Cthulhu_
The thing is, there's little money in open source; the users don't have that
much money to spend, the developers usually do it in their spare time or are
sponsored / paid for by their developers.

Paying open source developers would only become sustainable if said big
companies funneled a lot of money towards gittip; tens of dollars instead of
cent amounts, times dozens of companies.

------
teawithcarl
I love Gittip, and believe deeply in their philosophy goal.

I visited their hackathon Jan 2nd-4th, in Ambridge, PA.

Great team ... hard working, talented.

Chad is a superb full-stack engineer, and completely sincere in his honorable
goals. I believe he and the team will succeed. And when they do, since it's
bootstrapped, it will not be owned by investors.

Gittip is truly a new and deep way of thinking.

~~~
whit537
Thanks for the support, Carl! Loved having you here! :D

------
rdegges
I've been using Gittip since practically day 1.

I really love the system, and always feel happy knowing Chad is the one
leading it! If you haven't met Chad before -- you should. He's one of the
nicest, most genuine people I've had the pleasure of meeting!

Best of luck with Gittip moving forward! <3

~~~
whit537
Thanks rdegges! The feeling is mutual! :D

------
gw
I've been using Gittip for my free software projects, and while I am nowhere
near being sustainable, it's more than I expected to get. There is certainly
room for two players (see Kickstarter/Indiegogo), and I much prefer Gittip's
minimalism and lack of flare.

------
norswap
I wonder why Patreon took off and not Gittip. Personally I've heard more about
Gittip than Patreon, which I only encountered recently, being used by some
YouTube channel for sustenance. Maybe that's precisely the kind of market
which Gittip should focus on.

~~~
whit537
Patreon took off because a) they've got domain expertise w/ YouTube in one co-
founder, and b) they've got business expertise in the other co-founder.

Re: YouTube. When your friends are YouTube micro-celebs, who are good at
marketing themselves by definition, you're going to have an easier time
getting a network effect going around a platform that depends on marketing
oneself, than when your friends are open-source programmers, who as a rule are
_not_ good at marketing themselves.

Re: Business. They identified a market need and are executing by the book.
They built a prototype, with a standard skimming business model, raised some
money, hired a team, danced with the tech press, and here we are.

Here's where we tried approaching content creators:
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/737](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/737).
I actually did a call with Jack and others right when Patreon launched. Key
point he made is that content creators get pitches from companies all the
time, so already being in that scene is a huge advantage.

[http://blog.gittip.com/post/51236581424/open-call-with-
centu...](http://blog.gittip.com/post/51236581424/open-call-with-centup-
flattr-and-patreon)

------
freyfogle
There's been a push in the perl community to start using gittip, and I think
it's a great thing. So please do keep up the great work.

My company (Nestoria) just started a "module of the month". Each month the dev
team picks someone whose code we use and via gittip we'll donate $1/week for a
year to that person. That's not a fortune obviously, but our hope is that
others - individuals and companies - follow our lead, and in many cases it
will be obscure modules that don't otherwise get a lot of attention.

[http://devblog.nestoria.com/post/86216883403/module-of-
the-m...](http://devblog.nestoria.com/post/86216883403/module-of-the-month-
may-2014-test-more)

~~~
whit537
Awesome! Thanks for using Gittip! :D

~~~
freyfogle
Agree it is awesome (I had no part in coming up with the idea). Feel free to
use us as a case study.

------
joeyh
This reminds me that I have a small amount of tips on gittip. However, I can
only withdraw it by adding a bank account. Security concerns make this not
appealing, at least not at the current level of funds. The cost/benefit is not
there for me.

And so I've not yet really made money on gittip, which doesn't give me much
incentive to promote it. (Beyond thinking the open company idea is pretty
cool. But that also means I value their time, so I'm not seeing the
cost/benefit on emailing them for a manual bitcoin withdrawal, either..)

On the other hand, flattr at least lets me withdraw money using paypal.. Or
they have so far. They seem to be possibly moving to european bank account
only, which will kill it for me.

~~~
greatbigtable
Add Paypal withdraw support. People don't like having to spread their account
information all over the place. Leverage what they already have access to in
their lives; note the proliferation of Twitter and Facebook logins all over
the web.

~~~
canvia
Cryptocoin would be a nice option as well.

------
mholt
I ended up using my own badges from shields.io because the widgets generated
for me say "I receive $null from GitTip." And the buttons don't say anything
useful: People don't know what "Gittip" is by itself, and "3.00" (actually,
for me, they say "NaN") doesn't mean anything either. I made a badge on
shields that says "tips|accepted" because I 1) wouldn't want people to know
how much I'm making on Gittip and 2) don't care _how_ they donate, really. But
I like the idea of Gittip and hope it continues and grows.

I'd love to see actual stories of donors/receivers there, too.

~~~
whit537
Did you know that Gittip and Shields are in cahoots? :-)

[http://blog.gittip.com/post/59396458675/gittip-has-
acquired-...](http://blog.gittip.com/post/59396458675/gittip-has-acquired-
shields)

Re: stories, I've added a +1 for you to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1074).

------
rgbrgb
I just signed up. What's the easiest way for me to put a gittip badge in a
Readme.md on Github? I'd recommend putting that front and center unless I
missed it.

~~~
whit537
Awesome, thanks! :D

See [http://shields.io/](http://shields.io/) for README badge. I've added a +1
for you to
[https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1145](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/1145).

------
rb2k_
While the discussion is mostly about Gittip vs Patreon, I never quite
understood why they could grow despite flattr(.com) being around since 2010.

I like flattr's model of having 1 fixed monthly donation that gets split among
all of a user's flattr clicks from this month. It somehow removes a true
monetary value from a click and allows to spread them more freely. For
whatever reason, it's pretty big in the German podcasting community.

~~~
nbouscal
Gittip and Flattr have fundamentally different models and focuses. Perhaps
ironically, Flattr is more focused on tipping. It's about signaling one-time
appreciation for a specific piece of work (an article, a video, etc). Gittip,
on the other hand, is about providing a sustainable income for a person, hence
the subscription giving model.

Also worth mentioning that all of these companies (Gittip, Flattr, Patreon,
others) seem to be on exceptionally good terms with each other, which is
really nice to see.

------
cvburgess
For anyone wanting to donate to Gittip itself:
[https://www.gittip.com/Gittip/](https://www.gittip.com/Gittip/)

~~~
whit537
Thank you. :-)

------
jimmytidey
It's an incredibly admirable thing to be doing.

~~~
ronilan
It is. But it is also the wrong thing to be doing.

"Gittip’s mission is to enable an economy of gratitude, generosity, and love".
In order to affect such a thing one needs leverage. That is, one needs a lever
and a place to stand on. If two years in and after several times at the top of
HN, Chad still can't make a living - then he has neither. The mission will
fail. It is better to let go.

Just my own meandering experience.

~~~
whit537
Taking three to five years to reach profitability is normal. In the mean time,
we paid out $300,000 in no-strings-attached gifts this past year. That does
not feel to me like the wrong thing to be doing. :-)

~~~
ronilan
Chad, the passion and effort you've put into your project are clear. I hope it
will eventually become beneficial to you, if not directly, then down the road
through the doors it must have opened to you. That being said, I think I'm not
the only one who would have advised you to let go of something that is half
dead (edit: meaning "vegetative" by comparable standards). Also, wouldn't the
mission be better served as a project at github rather than a profit seeking
enterprise? Wouldn't Reddit gifts arrangement be the right model? After all
once you put a link at the place where people go magic is possible. Just
something to think about. Sunk cost is tricky but it is never too late to make
the right decision. Ok. Almost never....

~~~
whit537
We paid out $41,000 in our first year, and $300,000 in our second. How is
something that just grew 632% half-dead?

~~~
iodfgj
Read HN's welcome: "As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will
decline in quality." Your top 2 Receivers have never contributed anything of
value to the community (this is subjective, I know but the majority would
agree with me) and yet they receive an amount most others would dream of
receiving. Yes, a person has the privilege of doing whatever they want with
their money but your website is endorsing bad actions so I won't support it.
Just because the amount you payed out increased, it doesn't mean that
(community & value wise) it isn't half dead.

Sorry, this is my opinion.

------
verelo
Lets say i have a serious problem i need solved and i see gittip as a great
way to encourage someone to do. How do i go from this homepage to giving my
money to the person who will solve it? Or is this just for the case where
someone has already done great work, and i want them to continue it (literally
a tip)?

~~~
tshepang
More the latter than the former. There are more suitable tools for the former,
e.g. Paypal.

