I invested in Ikaria and feel like someone should speak up here.
I was early investor with Chrys Bader previously on his startup Secret. He was a YC batchmate of mine from 2008. I watched him build an initial prototype that had the chance to be a real social network that had very high long term retention, but in the end the company didn't invest deeply enough into moderation and the long term retention cohorts went down steeply past 6 months of use.
Chrys is a great designer and product manager who caught lightning in a bottle previously, and lost it. Founders often catch lightning in a bottle and then fail to keep it because scaling operations like moderation, or sometimes even just keeping the servers online, through hyper scale, is hard.
Many founders never find lightning in a bottle even once. Even in my experience I felt like we caught lightning in a bottle with Posterous and failed to properly bring it to the scale I wish we could have.
I realize I am going out on a limb to defend him here, but founders going back into the arena deserve at least a little bit of defense because it's hard enough to take the chance to make anything ever.
You'll hear more about how Ikaria really works, and I realize the post is light on details, but don't write this startup off before you actually try the software itself.
Given that Badger and his cofounder Byttow famously pocketed almost 20% of the total investment in Secret ($3M each on $35M) shortly before shutting it down[0], what assurances do you have that he’s just not going to pocket the investment again instead of using it to improve the company?
Beneath all the feel-good marketing, this app seems like it's going to be a marketplace for self-help professionals.
I'm not making any kind of value judgement here, this could certainly be a good thing and I will take your advice and wait to see the app for myself.
If I'm not wrong about this, can you comment on what you know about the process for vetting the quality and/or credentials of the professionals who will be featured/promoted on the platform?
There are already tons of self-help scammers out there who are just looking to take money from desperate people.. How does this platform avoid becoming an enabler for quick-fix scams, while supporting credible programs?
I'm curious about whether the most successful products to solve loneliness will be ones that help people connect virtually, versus connect in person. Maybe a healthy balance of both?
Try to get out of your bubble. To anyone who isn't entirely immersed in that bubble this is absolutely insane talk. It sounds sociopathic and out-of-touch.
Maybe, just maybe, this isn't a problem you can "solve" by engineering. And maybe, just maybe, the solution (if it exists) isn't a "product".
> Maybe, just maybe, this isn't a problem you can "solve" by engineering. And maybe, just maybe, the solution (if it exists) isn't a "product".
Or maybe it is. In all your comments in the various threads here you fail to give a reasoning for your position which is not "it is my opinion". Instead you have now started attacking others. "sociopathic talk"? Really?
For some percentage of people with that problem maybe this app will indeed solve it. Loneliness across a population not being something that can be solved with a silver bullet, but lots of lead bullets instead.
Do you think that catching lightning in a bottle still matters as much as it did in 2004 - 2013ish, or do you think there's an argument to be made that we're now in a post-lightning-in-a-bottle era?
Not the poster, but I keep getting snail mail advertisements by banks and VCs that want to invest in my next company, despite me not having done a single exit yet.
My impression is that nowadays, there are more VCs than founders, so they will invest in pretty much anything.
Nearly every comment made by this user in this thread, at this time, is at odds with HN community standards, particularly as they related to tone and substance.
Gary is clearly investing in the person, Chrys Bader, and his mission. Not the idea. It's an early stage app that isn't even publicly launched. They can make changes to it or pivot at any time. These are always fragile and look stupid until they don't, there's an essay about that here.
I was early investor with Chrys Bader previously on his startup Secret. He was a YC batchmate of mine from 2008. I watched him build an initial prototype that had the chance to be a real social network that had very high long term retention, but in the end the company didn't invest deeply enough into moderation and the long term retention cohorts went down steeply past 6 months of use.
Chrys is a great designer and product manager who caught lightning in a bottle previously, and lost it. Founders often catch lightning in a bottle and then fail to keep it because scaling operations like moderation, or sometimes even just keeping the servers online, through hyper scale, is hard.
Many founders never find lightning in a bottle even once. Even in my experience I felt like we caught lightning in a bottle with Posterous and failed to properly bring it to the scale I wish we could have.
I realize I am going out on a limb to defend him here, but founders going back into the arena deserve at least a little bit of defense because it's hard enough to take the chance to make anything ever.
You'll hear more about how Ikaria really works, and I realize the post is light on details, but don't write this startup off before you actually try the software itself.