One issue with this analogy is that paper encyclopedias really are precise when used correctly. Wikipedia is not.
I do think it can be used in research but not without careful checking. In my own work I've found it most useful as a search aid and for brainstorming.
99% of the population finds this easier than setting up a user/pass. If you care about this, understand that you will not be the target user for most new apps. Incredible that this comes up on so many new Show HNs.
"social media feels unusual" bro what? I've both spent time at a VC fund and have successfully fundraised as a founder - every partner adds you on LinkedIn bare minimum after a call, twitter was pretty common too
Real talk: This VC probably has at least ~10 meetings like this per week and they do ~10 deals per year. Neither adding you on social nor presenting you at a Monday meeting means anything. If they proactively set up another call in the very near future with another partner, that may indicate positive momentum.
Also if you're actively fundraising, run a process - you should be going down a list of like 100-200 VCs, any one intro meeting like this should mean nothing to you. Don't get emotionally attached this early in the pipeline
IMO this all hinges on if the company has traction with the new direction and pivot. If there is traction, the message to investors becomes clearer and there is motivation to invest regardless of you being around especially if there is a clear story. Both because that investor became unenthused and because you want to leave, I'm guessing there is no traction. In that case, depends on your cofounder's relationship with investors + how much cash is left in the bank. Assuming you raised on SAFE notes, they can't actually force the company to return capital and it's a bad look for them to try. IMO don't worry too much about messaging and just leave, the investors will get over it if traction comes.
However, I would definitely not recommend raising while you're there on paper and leaving right after. This is a pretty material piece of news to leave off of a fundraise, and best case tanks your reputation going forward with investors, at worst is fraudulent and leaves the company (and perhaps you) open to legal action.
Not too familiar with CoralCDN, will check that out. Would say the comparison with IPFS is apt, BitTorrent though requires people to seed on a per file basis right? so versioning for the source of truth etc becomes tough and you need people to care about your data specifically.
IPFS is an alternate solution, but as addresses are not updatable someone somewhere needs to keep track of where the canonical source is. Further, there is no API built in - the data would live at some address, but someone still needs to construct a way to get it without just downloading the whole data dump at once. Perhaps you shard across different files but that has its own issues.
On chain with Ethereum, you can use a smart contract which allows CRUD operations on the data on a per item basis. The latest version of the smart contract data is clear. The API is basically set with the smart contract - infra to get that has already been built with libraries like ethers, and will continue to be maintained since there are other contracts/products out there that rely on the same infra.
Ok I know it's not in vogue right now but this is actually a good use for the blockchain. Like the database here could just be placed on-chain in a smart contract, and anyone could read it (for free, only writes would cost money) forever, as long as at least one person is operating a node on ethereum. No ongoing hosting or serving costs. Anyone could build an API that did like photo generation or whatever on top of it, and builders could always access the raw data directly.
What is the complex answer then? The parent's question is salient. Using your analogy as well, you could say humans see the world through the visual spectrum and reason about the world through that, although there is certainly much more to be observed beyond that spectrum - yet that is clearly sufficient for some subset of understanding.
I do think it can be used in research but not without careful checking. In my own work I've found it most useful as a search aid and for brainstorming.
^ this same comment 10 years ago