3 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b OP 16 Nov 2021 \ on: [RFC] Stacker News Pitch Deck Draft #2 bitcoin
I'm going to be sending off my second draft to some investors shortly so I wanted to share it and see if anyone had advice. You can comment on the slides themselves or on here.
Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on my first draft. Specifically: @jp, @thillerx_, @abetusk, and @nout. I haven't integrated all your advice yet but I'll iterate into more of it with time.
This second draft is mostly a positioning/messaging update and making everything more concise.
This revision does look a lot more concise. I think it gives a good overview that stands on its own but can also serve as a good backup if you were to do a verbal presentation with it.
It kind of hits all the points:
- A concise description of what stacker.news is
- Problems with current solutions and how stacker.news solves them
- User/community testimonials
- Addressable market
- User growth
- Business strategy
- Personal credentials
- The ask along with why and what it'll be used for
I have some conceptual issues, which I'll discuss below. The only real suggestion is a very minor one in that you might want to turn the saturation down on the lightning bolt in the background of each of the slides so it doesn't clash with the text so much.
Here are some conceptual issues that I see:
- It's not clear that you won't need moderation, in some form (even if you don't call it moderation). Figuring out more of the specifics of which economic policy would specifically help prevent the need for moderation might be good to think about
- It's not clear to me how to get a decentralized stacker.news. Is there some sort of sharing of stacker.news content between different nodes (an API?)? Does stacker.news publish content on the blockchain somewhere?
- Maintaining discourse at scale (pg 8) is more than being Sybil resistant. I don't claim to have any deep insight but I think it's a balance between being accessible to a wider audience but still having enough specificity to have engaging discussions. I've linked them before but I'll link to Clay Shirky's "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" and kuro5hin's article "Attack From Within"
- I still disagree with "exclusivity -> more desirable". Lowering barrier to entry and making it more accessible to people is more in the spirit of why I joined this community and in line with what I associate with a "Bitcoin ethos"
- Referral rewards can be abused. So long as you're on top of it, it's not a big deal as you're essentially trying to promote user onboarding, but that can blow up if you're not careful.
- What's this "native ads" business with boosting posts? (pg 7)
All of the above points are really about a vision of what stacker.news is and where it's going, so I hesitate to call these problems as we might just have a difference of opinion. Even if there were more to say about each subject, in terms of a specific roadmap to implement them or experiment with them in this space, it might not even be appropriate to put in the pitch deck.
I would suggest at least having a rough idea of how to solve these problems that's has a bit more specificity. For example, if an economic policy is going to solve the moderation problem, figuring out which economic policy, even in broad strokes, would probably be beneficial. Figuring out a roadmap for P2P stacker.news. Figuring out how to keep quality discourse at scale (which might overlap with moderation or lack thereof). would probably be good. Etc.
As always, thanks for being so transparent, it's really nice to get more insight into how these things operate. And please let us know how it goes!
Good luck!
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Update on the moderation point. I've been discussing with some folks in Pleb Lab, and it might be that we make substack moderation opt-in upon creation, ie some subs will be moderated and other won't. Users will decide. I think this is The Way.
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This always runs the risk of diverting your attention too much by implementing too many features but, if done, can offer a good avenue of experimentation. This is kind of the best of both worlds.
If the unmoderated subs become a cesspool, we know moderation is needed. If they flourish, we know moderation isn't. This also gives a testing ground for other "economic policies" to iterate through features that will mitigate problems that come up.
Thanks for the update!
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It's not clear that you won't need moderation, in some form (even if you don't call it moderation). Figuring out more of the specifics of which economic policy would specifically help prevent the need for moderation might be good to think about
True, it's not clear yet. I've discussed some of this in the substackers post - higher configurable cost to post and comment, and staking (like you see on Sphinx Chat) are the basic parts of what I'm considering on this. I plan to begin working on these features before the end of the year so hopefully we'll both get some clarity there.
It's not clear to me how to get a decentralized stacker.news.
I've commented about this on other threads but the gist of how I'm thinking about this is: it's a relay network like bitcoin's mempool (I call it a newspool). To relay a message (e.g. a post or comment) on the network, users prove they've paid one of SN's wallets. Users can configure their newspool policy: which subs they want to subscribe to and relay, their dust limit (ie their personal Sybil tolerance), etc. It's more of a protocol than an API. Nothing on the blockchain although I might use block height for a rough time estimate. Users can then connect to their personal SN node with a client. There are details I'm omitting and details that still need to be fleshed out obviously (like what data availability looks like in such a system) but you're mostly up to speed with me.
I still disagree with "exclusivity -> more desirable". Lowering barrier to entry and making it more accessible to people is more in the spirit of why I joined this community and in line with what I associate with a "Bitcoin ethos"
This remains to be seen too. I take your point seriously. Other users like @calle don't want this either. I haven't implemented it for a reason. One point I'd like to add is the scarcity around invites would be artificial - more of psychological hack than an actual barrier. Hidden speakeasys are oversubscribed for a reason - the secrecy drives people to talk about them.
Also thanks for resharing those links (Shirkly and kuro5hin). They're super relevant and I'm still yet to read them fully.
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