Years ago, I watched a Y Combinator startup school video. The presenter was talking about their standard company structure, registering the company in Delaware, standard vesting schedule (four years, one year cliff, 1/48 per month).
One of the audience members interrupted, his co-founders had discussed their vesting schedule alot and thought it was better, he started to explain.
The presenter interrupted, asking why are you wasting time, energy, and brain cells on discussing vesting, and not spending it on THE PRODUCT, product market fit, MVP, customers, schedule, and THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR company succeed. Vesting is binary, it either pays off, or more typically is worth zero. Don't waste the group's time and certainly don't waste VC's time on vesting. During your pitch, vesting should be exactly one sentence, the standard. Anything different makes you look clueless and not focusing on the PRODUCT.
There are a number of actual matchmaking services in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
If you’re focusing on the PRODUCT, why hire at all? If talent helps a company succeed and vesting helps acquire top talent, isn’t it worth considering?
Anecdotally, I know I consider expected value as part of TCO and vesting figures into that.
If you’re just looking to hire entry-level, generic, naïve talent (and this is YC, so perhaps that fits) then sure, do vanilla vesting. But you better hope you bring something else to the table, because talent isn’t going to be a competitive advantage.
18 years ago I put an ad on craig's list for someone to help me with dating sites. I was working on a startup and I said that the dating sites were taking up too much of my time. I was flooded with responses, mostly from women who wanted to set me up with someone, and others that were just curious about it. It ultimately went nowhere, but it was an interesting experiment. I expect the same thing to happen here.
In perhaps a similar fashion to how prediction markets commingle the entire spectrum of information from insider to random guesses, this would seem to be casting a net over a spectrum ranging from close friend to complete stranger.
Those on the former end are already somewhat incentivized without the bounty, while those toward the latter, for whom the monetary incentive is the greatest, are the least well-positioned to deliver. The higher the bounty, the greater the pool, but it only widens at the far end of familiarity, so premium bounties would seem to be a waste.
Perhaps the rationalist response to that would be that there must then be an equilibrium point for the bounty, but I’m not sure how one would even begin to empirically establish it.
There is a headshot in his github profile. He looks attractive. Unless he's a manlet or something like that I don't see why he needs to pay $100k to find someone. But what do I know...
is a diminutive suffix, meaning something smaller than a normal thing. e.g. piglet (a small pig), or ringlet (a small ring), or cigarette (a small cigar).
ergo, a manlet is a short / small man.
in context, the parent post is implying that the guys face isn't bad looking and that he probably wouldn't have a problem finding a date as long as he's not short.
Imagine a magical genie came to you and said, “if you pay me 50% of your net worth, within 6 months, you will meet the person who will matter more to you than any other you have ever met. You will fall in love, have children (if you want), and spend the rest of your lives together.” Would you take that offer?
I think a lot of people would consider doing that. But of course it’s not that simple. What happens when your partner finds out about the genie? Would you have met that person had you not paid the genie? Or maybe you would’ve met them in 24 months instead.
It seems very simple, more romantic than a dating app and would massively recoup my net worth because I’m sharing expenses, being motivated by my soulmate, and married people out-earn single people statistically especially over a longer time period. The 6 month ‘wait’ also implies i’m skipping any messy divorces. The only downside would be if they die soonish and i spend the rest of my life knowing no-one will compare, but that would still beat never meeting them (at least according to Alfred Tennyson).
You would need to ramp that percentage well up to triple figures before it became a problem.
I'd be concerned about dating anyone who has $100k on the outcome of our relationship. Like, whose to say I would be more inclined to marry someone than to lose $100k if push came to shove.
I think the 100k means he doesn't really take it seriously, despite being a "rationalist" - he thinks he can buy a life partner for a relatively small sum and no effort.
He could do lots of things to meet women, beyond (also lazy) online dating - sports, classes, find a job where he meets them, volunteer, whatever. But that would take effort. Instead he wants to throw a sum that isn't particularly material to him at the problem. You get out what you put in.
I don't think I understand your point. If it was a woman I'd think there was something wrong with her or she was even lazier, because everything being equal it's much easier for women to find interested men. Or has impossibly high standards. But all three could easily be true for the man. Other than the difference on the demand side I don't see why it would be different for a woman.
I agree, and personally I would not blame him or her for that, the complexity of modern life is somehow driving such “nonordinary” requests. My point however, is most people will sympathize if it was a girl, I remember I read an article where a girl did similar thing by spending a lot of money on some dating services and ended up with no life partner, and most comments were blaming men and sympathized with her.
There's so much to say, that there's nothing to say.
Except that I've known so many lonely men, like myself, and that the only thing that helps me is to make others' real happiness the goal of my own life.
Offering this pile of money will attract creative fraudsters. It must be someone you trust that can help with your search, and chances are that someone won't need your money.
Totally worth it if you think of a family as a multi-million dollar investment over the course of your lifetime. $100k is actually nothing in comparison, and could mean the difference between having a family and not having one.
I think this is why Indian matchmaking is such a successful industry. My prediction is that matchmaking grows in the US and eventually becomes one of the main methods for looking for a serious partner online. It won't be called "arranged marriages" in the US due to some generational stigma around that term, but the base concept will be very similar. Could see this being common within 15 years.
Industrial matchmaking would run into the exact same issues that dating apps do, chiefly that the population of users is disproportionately less desirable partners (due to selection bias), but on top of that a matchmaking service wouldn't even be able to attract the "desirable and promiscuous" backbone of the dating app industry.
Matchmaking only "works" in places where women are denied autonomy, and it results in them being sold off like cattle. This is not a desirable state of affairs to anyone but the most loathsome, pathetic basement dwellers.
> Matchmaking only "works" in places where women are denied autonomy, and it results in them being sold off like cattle. This is not a desirable state of affairs to anyone but the most loathsome, pathetic basement dwellers.
This take sounds out of touch, and reveals a misunderstanding. There's no reason why matchmaking in America has to be one-sided, or treat women like "cattle". Women and men can both hire matchmakers to find their partner. That you can not see this is perhaps more of a projection of your own views on women.
Are you suggesting that all men who have arranged marriages in India are "loathsome, pathetic basement dwellers"? This viewpoint seems entirely indefensible.
In India, they might not be pathetic basement dwellers, because the normalization of the thing leads to less competition from people who find their partners without resorting to misogynistic institutions. I would stand by them being loathsome, though.
What problem with dating apps do you suggest matchmaking solves?
I mean, $100k is a lot of money. Why not go to a specialized dating agency when that much money is on the table? Is that more irrational? Did I miss something?
rationalist communities, and are quite aligned on our approaches towards life, growth, partnerships and relationships.
Of course, not all feedback was positive. The main concern that many people had, were that Mati and I were attempting to transactionalize a personal relationship. Of course, this was very far from our intension.
Our project’s goal is simply to create an incentive structure to help our friends (and their friends) link together 2 intelligent, empathetic, driven, and adventurous humans.
Dude you are transactionalizing, capitalistifying and consumerizing your 'planned partnership' to the effing eff. Claiming you don't is like claiming the Earth is flat.
These kind of offers are just a byproduct of industrial capitalism, where money is the core cog in this machine that basically moves anything. And I find it hilarious people are attacking this guy for making such an offer, and yet everywhere around you most people and especially women won’t date someone who is poor or without a good paying job, except this guy is being straight forward about it to save time.
I see it as less grim to consider it some weird trend than a true cry for help.
Otherwise, it's just plain stupid. You can definitely pay for an executive coach for a few years if you're that dead set on changing yourself, you lack the self will to do it yourself, and you have those level of funds. The kinds of people who help manage celebrities' health and fitness and much more.
Am I reading this wrong? That's the example that inspired the idea, but they actually have a 4 year vesting schedule paid monthly after the first year, it seems.
One of the audience members interrupted, his co-founders had discussed their vesting schedule alot and thought it was better, he started to explain.
The presenter interrupted, asking why are you wasting time, energy, and brain cells on discussing vesting, and not spending it on THE PRODUCT, product market fit, MVP, customers, schedule, and THINGS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR company succeed. Vesting is binary, it either pays off, or more typically is worth zero. Don't waste the group's time and certainly don't waste VC's time on vesting. During your pitch, vesting should be exactly one sentence, the standard. Anything different makes you look clueless and not focusing on the PRODUCT.
There are a number of actual matchmaking services in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.