Don't these tech heavyweights feel embarrassed that their time is so meaningless on this site? 2.75 per 10 minutes for reddit cofounder? Hell, Josh Greenberg was on there earleir today for 2.50 per 10 minutes.
I know it's not clear on the site, but Josh's profile can be found here: http://www.officehours.tv/senseis/josh-greenberg (the current price is not $2.50, it's $15 per 10 minutes). If this works anything like eBay, the bids will tend to increase as the time gets closer to expiring.
Anyway, the founders aren't in this for the money. The real goal here is to raise money for charities while giving people an opportunity to talk to experienced entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs want to give back to the community.
How useful is 10 minutes of time anyway
I've been to 3 office hours sessions in the past 2 weeks, and none of them have exceeded 15 minutes. All of them were enough time to get all of my questions in, and I found them tremendously helpful. If the user wants more time, they have the option to get it by buying additional timeslots (30 minutes max).
You know how they could help charities more? By charging what their time is actually worth and then donating that to charity.
edit: Auctions don't mean it 'automatically' goes up. It means it 'should' go up, so long as the site has enough bidders and sellers such that it generally resembles an 'efficient market'. You could argue that Ebay has an efficient market and that prices generally gravitate towards their 'real world value' (whatever that is) but I think that case is far from being made for this website and it's auctions.
That's why it's an auction system, the price automatically goes up to what it's actually worth.
EDIT in response to EDIT: I'm confused by what point you're trying to make here.
"It means it 'should' go up, so long as the site has enough bidders and sellers..."
So is that the point you're trying to make? Are you saying the site does not have enough bidders to bring it to market price? If that's the case, then charging 'market value' still wouldn't work, would it?
If it still wouldn't work, then can you elaborate on the point you were trying to make with your original comment? How would your proposed method help charities more?
"If that's the case, then charging 'market value' still wouldn't work, would it?"
That is not true. If a price is set at a certain point at the start, then it doesn't take hundreds or thousands of bids from users in order to reach the market value. I'm sure Alexis's time is worth north of 500 an hour - wouldn't it be interesting if he could charge that much and give to charity? instead of hoping that thousands of HN readers will bid some quarters and maybe muster a grand total of 50 dollars for a whopping hour of donated time for charity.
If all the losers bids were still collected, penny auction style, then maybe there is a way it can net more than the 'set value' method of pricing. Otherwise it seems like charities would be losing a lot of money, atleast for the time being while the markets are inefficient and you can hire tech gurus for $1 a minute.
But what about helping scrappy entrepreneurs? Why is donating $500 to charity better than say Alexis donating $500 worth of time to entrepreneurs and $50 to charity? I mean this service is mainly about connecting entrepreneurs, and not a necessarily about fundraising for charity, right?
Also, to reach $500, you would only need two people bidding on one time slot who are willing to pay that much and it will reach that value.
I know it's not clear on the site, but Josh's profile can be found here: http://www.officehours.tv/senseis/josh-greenberg (the current price is not $2.50, it's $15 per 10 minutes). If this works anything like eBay, the bids will tend to increase as the time gets closer to expiring.
Anyway, the founders aren't in this for the money. The real goal here is to raise money for charities while giving people an opportunity to talk to experienced entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs want to give back to the community.
How useful is 10 minutes of time anyway
I've been to 3 office hours sessions in the past 2 weeks, and none of them have exceeded 15 minutes. All of them were enough time to get all of my questions in, and I found them tremendously helpful. If the user wants more time, they have the option to get it by buying additional timeslots (30 minutes max).