I see the where confusion is coming from. We do in fact deliver the food. I stated that in the above comment. It's also in our AngelList profile and I alluded to it in my first response ("let the good food come"). You don't seem stupid to me. But perhaps you are reading too quickly?
The image of people printing out emails and eating them is pretty amusing, though. :)
If you agree with the underlying premise that a good high concept pitch is essential to a startup, then those seem like pretty good reasons to adopt this sort of meme, at least if the comparison holds.
Anyway, I'm surprised you don't see how this particular comparison holds. Pandora auto-suggests and delivers musical content over the course of a few hours or so. Forkable auto-suggests and delivers "nutritional content" over the course of a week or so. Does that make sense to you?
The streaming radio service. You sign up, tell us about your diet, and every week we email you a calendar of lunches from awesome local restaurants. Easily modify the suggestions with our online interface, or just sit back and let the good food come.
The brain is an organ, and medical terminolgy is very clear that something like major depressive disorder is a disease that adversely affects that organ.
This is medical science. Its really not up for debate. If you are really questioning the entire field of medical science and the vast corpus of research on mental illness, the only people who will take you seriously are lay-persons.
And thats precisely the problem. While I trust you mean well, attitudes like yours are extremely dangerous because they increase stigma and disuade people from seeking medical help for treatable illnesses.
Pardon the off-topic reply, but I'd like to connect with you. In the breadbox article the other day, you mentioned there's an opportunity to compete with GrubHub on price. Check out forkable.com. You can reach me at joe at forkable dot com.
This gave me a chance to collect my thoughts. I sent the following email to my representatives. Thanks, Sina, for your role in organizing this.
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I think I understand what is going on. The folks at the top look at all the huge centralized information stores like Facebook, Google, Verizon, etc., and I guess they think, "well, it's gonna get collected anyway, so we may as well have access to it." President Obama actually hinted at this line of thinking when initially caught off-guard by the Snowden revelations. Instead of responding directly, he deflected, suggesting that what we really needed was a larger conversation about mass collection of data, i.e. not just the collection by governments.
The trouble with mass data collection, either by governments or private entities, is that it gives the possessors of such information extreme amounts of power. Left unchecked, it will almost certainly lead to severe economic and political corruption. The free market is compromised when a small group of people can spy on the private communications of executives and other business people, for example by stealing trade secrets or conducting insider trading. Meanwhile, democracy is compromised when politically active people, including politicians and activists, are made subject to intense scrutiny. Since virtually no one is totally free from legal or moral wrongdoing, the possibilities for politically motivated blackmail and retaliation are massive. And of course the data collection has serious chilling effects on free speech and freedom of the press.
If no course correction is made, the U.S. will become more and more oligarchic, more and more like China and Russia. This is unfortunate not just for its implications vis-a-vis individual freedom, but also from a larger perspective. This century we are faced with a diverse array of extremely difficult problems: economic, political, social, and environmental. Non-democratic governments have a historical tendency to fight with one another rather than cooperate, so it is hard to imagine how we will effectively confront these problems in the absence of strong democratic institutions.
What worries me is that some of the people in positions of power may actually believe that this massive data collection is somehow necessary to protect Americans from terrorism. But it is patently obvious that terrorism is not, and never has been, a serious threat to the personal safety of most Americans. Over the past two decades, something on the order of 800,000 men, women and children have died in car crashes, while around 3,000 have died as a result of terrorism. If this were a matter of saving lives, we'd be much better off fighting a "War on Car Crashes" than a "War on Terrorism." If this is purportedly an economic issue, i.e. the fear that a dirty bomb will go off in Manhattan and upset commerce, well, the fact is much worse things have happened (i.e. Hiroshima) and economies have recovered. This perspective may sound cynical, but in truth it is idealistic. I am not dismissing the tragedy of the death of perhaps thousands of people, but rather saying that, for the sake of a free and democratic society, such sacrifice is worthwhile.
The idea that "collection is going to happen anyway, so we may as well have access" is not unreasonable, but it is ultimately self-defeating. What we need is real leadership on this problem. Not only is there no strong voice against mass data collection, but the overwhelming thrust of the government is to reach its tentacles as deeply into the data gathering machine as possible. Instead of working to lessen the danger, the government is acting to accentuate it, amassing and centralizing even more data, and meanwhile using its media access to legitimize such activities to the public.
Again, what is needed is strong leadership. We need a group of people at the highest levels of federal power to put up a fight in congress and explain clearly to the American people why, in fact, we are on a very dangerous road. If not corrected for, this road will lead to the end of the democratic experiment, and a very uncertain future for our children. I hope that you, as my elected representative, will seriously consider taking a stand on this issue.
Thanks! In fact there is a filter (the far left tab), but perhaps that needs to be made more obvious, or there should be a better introduction in the app.
That's me. And actually, it's ok. I never expected this revenue stream would last forever, and it's the core business --- the app recommendations --- that's crucial. That's going well. We've got tons of happy users, a few great engineers, some cash in the bank, and several interested investors. In the long, in fact, this move by Apple will only accentuate the need for a good app discovery engine to help find everything outside of the top-50.
I found that user retention only went up marginally when the rewards were added. The main advantages are that is provides a good hook and a near-term business model.
And to answer your question: Yes, very much so. And growing.
I'm just about to go on a hike, but let me respond quickly. I do appreciate tough criticism, but I think there are some rash judgments and misconceptions here.
1) just because the recommendations aren't suited to you doesn't mean they're bad in general. Hacker news is very special, sophisticated demographic. The recs are currently optimized for a more main stream audience. We get lots of feedback from users attesting to this. Certainly there is lots of room for improvement tho and that's why I want to hire so badly. We care a great deal about the product.
2) There's no bait and switch or anything underhanded going on with the gift cards. We get a certain amount when a user downloads an app, and we credit the user a certain percentage to work their way toward a reward. We need to expire point of inactive users to prevent an accounting nightmare. Many users are getting the cards every day.
Hope that clears things up. I certainly understand the skepticism, and again I welcome tough criticism.
Those CPI networks are actually our biggest partners. We're AB testing a couple right now. And it's a good thing there's more than one. Then, to win your business, they do nice things like give you access to their API or call you in for a meeting with the CEO.
I see you used to be at Flurry. It was your former CEO, Simon, who asked me to come in.