I applaud this guy. Instead of berating his shortcomings in execution I think smart people should ponder the bigger question he posits, ie, why are smart people not capable of bypassing the eternal "ooh! ooh! pick me!" game of the HR folks? Seriously, HR reminds me of Morgana's forrest of the damned in Excalibur, ie, "No Knights shall pass this morass".
Here are 2 true stories from personal experience:
(1) Me and girlfriend are out to dinner with her friend when her friend's friend/associate/something phoned to say she was nearby and wanted to join us. She worked in HR. Fast forward past the wine and stuff to the end of the night where she was recounting a story about how she and her colleagues spent most of the time "printing out resumes for review" only to wind up throwing them all in the shredder because of the dauntingly massive volume and lack of coherent approach to dealing with it, deleting the responses to the original job postings and going to their supervisors and telling them they need they needed to "post more ads" and "call more recruiters" because they "couldn't find qualified candidates".
(2) Another HR person (I presumed) I overheard in a barnes and noble talking on the phone to somebody about how she found someone to "channel the job posting responses to a database" ... several moments later (I could only guess the other side of the cell conversation): "I don't know, I guess somebody somewhere looks at the resumes, whatever, they don't pay me enough to give a sh@#".
(3) Applicant side: A pretty damn talented guy I knew couldn't find work for about a year and a quarter. Social proof effects started kicking in until I realized that for all practical reasons he SHOULD be getting a job quite easily. A mutual friend suggested he try to "hire himself" from a HR standpoint to see if things looked different from the other side. After a very long attempt to figure out why, he hired a detective/consultant who found out the type of companies that he applied to in his area started using a particular firm for background checks, and that firm in turn used a service that searched for "probability" quotients that job applicant names were on various lists.
Not ACTUAL matches, mind you, but relative "probabilities" based on letters and letter combinations in name that his name would be on, say, federal databases of felons.
In his case, the match returned with a "moderate to high probability" that, in essence, names like his MAY be on federal lists of felons and people who had to register as sex offenders. And people who had restraining orders against them.
None of this applied to him, but his name "configuration" had, based on I don't know what criteria, a "probability" of being on such list.
Along with, I don't know, thousands of other people who had short, basic anglo-saxon names.
And, of course, there's that infamous YouTube video from 2007 with that law firm advising HR managers at some hotel conference about how to "setup a fax machine near a shredder" to comply with federal hiring laws and then complain to government that they couldn't find qualified candidates in order to score government handouts, tax-breaks and make the case for more temporary visas to take advantage of foreigners who don't realize just how expensive it can be to work in the U.S. and think $30-40k is like hitting the jackpot based on relative buying power back home.
I could tell you that I know a guy who used to be pretty close to the top of the currency trading group of a major international bank/ib and that he's in contact with traders/investors/programmers etc. that may have an interest in putting some cash in your project. But if you yourself work in the the industry, I don't see how that would make a difference for you since you would already come across such people in your day to day work.
Your problem is not the money. It's a mental problem. What motivates you? Money? Gorgeous women? If I told you that I guarantee you a billion dollars and a date with Heidi Klum if you got 100,000 subscribers in 9 months, would you tell me it's impossible? No. You'd find a way to do it.
So it's just mental. You've lost your muse. Go out for long walks. Refresh your brain. Stay away from your project. Reduce your work hours or ask your boss if you can trade your 2 weeks vacation for a few months of 3 day weekends. Recharge your batteries and your energy level will go up like the hero of your favorite game. The go at it again with the newly-gained wisdom of realizing that starting a business is not only not mostly sexy-publicity-fun-and-games, it's ALMOST NEVER sexy-publicity-fun-and-games except for a few darlings like, say, Facebook. But if it helps take a look at Steve Jobs at Apple. He's everywhere now because of the huge success but can you tell me what he was up to from 1998 to 2003 or so? Aside from launching the iMac, you can't tell me anything. Because he put it the hard work slowly but surely in relative quiet and isolation.
You have to do the same. Love of your business will make you want to get up and do it. It will fuel you to do things you "don't want to do." But if you're just doing it for the big IPO payoff day with sports cars and sexy playboy bunnies, that is not only too vague of a payoff but it's too out of your control and distant to help drive you through the tough times in your business's life.
Wow! Am I reading this correctly? 8.5 BILLION shares pre-IPO? Maybe I'm missing something but with that setup they're going to either wind up becoming an instant $100 billion market cap company ASAP or wind up a penny stock. I mean for a company that can only figure out how to make a billion revenue off of 500 million users, that just seems ridiculous. Even during the dot com craze something like that would have seemed odd.
Seems doubtful - if I don't want to keep paying for "x" service, what difference does it make if you give it to me for free for a month on the condition that afterwards I presumeably have to go back to the original condition - paying for something I'd rather not use. Then again if it did work, it may be a pretty good indication that your main problem is that your price range needs adjusting. Also, once a "hack" like this gets out how can you keep the person from spreading the word via their blog and getting a situation where all your users email you something like, "I've heard it's your policy to give me a month free if I quit; I'm not satisfied with your service and will be doing so; however, IF you're so kind as to give me a free month ..."
Here are 2 true stories from personal experience:
(1) Me and girlfriend are out to dinner with her friend when her friend's friend/associate/something phoned to say she was nearby and wanted to join us. She worked in HR. Fast forward past the wine and stuff to the end of the night where she was recounting a story about how she and her colleagues spent most of the time "printing out resumes for review" only to wind up throwing them all in the shredder because of the dauntingly massive volume and lack of coherent approach to dealing with it, deleting the responses to the original job postings and going to their supervisors and telling them they need they needed to "post more ads" and "call more recruiters" because they "couldn't find qualified candidates".
(2) Another HR person (I presumed) I overheard in a barnes and noble talking on the phone to somebody about how she found someone to "channel the job posting responses to a database" ... several moments later (I could only guess the other side of the cell conversation): "I don't know, I guess somebody somewhere looks at the resumes, whatever, they don't pay me enough to give a sh@#".
(3) Applicant side: A pretty damn talented guy I knew couldn't find work for about a year and a quarter. Social proof effects started kicking in until I realized that for all practical reasons he SHOULD be getting a job quite easily. A mutual friend suggested he try to "hire himself" from a HR standpoint to see if things looked different from the other side. After a very long attempt to figure out why, he hired a detective/consultant who found out the type of companies that he applied to in his area started using a particular firm for background checks, and that firm in turn used a service that searched for "probability" quotients that job applicant names were on various lists.
Not ACTUAL matches, mind you, but relative "probabilities" based on letters and letter combinations in name that his name would be on, say, federal databases of felons.
In his case, the match returned with a "moderate to high probability" that, in essence, names like his MAY be on federal lists of felons and people who had to register as sex offenders. And people who had restraining orders against them.
None of this applied to him, but his name "configuration" had, based on I don't know what criteria, a "probability" of being on such list.
Along with, I don't know, thousands of other people who had short, basic anglo-saxon names.
And, of course, there's that infamous YouTube video from 2007 with that law firm advising HR managers at some hotel conference about how to "setup a fax machine near a shredder" to comply with federal hiring laws and then complain to government that they couldn't find qualified candidates in order to score government handouts, tax-breaks and make the case for more temporary visas to take advantage of foreigners who don't realize just how expensive it can be to work in the U.S. and think $30-40k is like hitting the jackpot based on relative buying power back home.