earbitscom

Let me clarify what happened here for anybody who couldn't read between the lines of Fictive Kin's ridiculously biased representation of this situation.

Cameron Koczon hits up Jeff on Twitter asking to talk about Punchfork. Jeff has just sold Punchfork and most likely has legal obligations prohibiting him from talking about too much, plus he's busy transitioning the company into a new parent organization, along with whatever else he has going on in his life. They don't provide context, or email him with more information. They tell Jeff to DM them if he wants to talk, as if this now puts the ball in Jeff's court.

Jeff politely responds: "I'm sorry I can't right now." Nothing hostile here.

Then, OP posts a page about Hugspoon. They intend to scrape and replicate Punchfork's data, in particular its user data. Keep in mind, Jeff's site generated traffic for the sites he scraped, much like Google does. By not showing full recipes, Jeff has become a discovery tool for those sites, not a competitor. Hugspoon will not be providing value to Punchfork, the site it scrapes, or Pinterest, the site that now owns it. Hugspoon competes with Punchfork by stealing its data and giving no value in return. OP's claim that they're doing it for the users doesn't really matter. They are stealing this data and it is not an apples to apples comparison to say that Punchfork also scraped data, because it provided significant value to the companies whose data it shared. Ask any of those sites if they minded.

Jeff asks the OP if they are cloning his site and scraping all of the data. He says it's extremely uncool if so. So far, not hostile. He has turned down a context-less request to chat with someone, and has now very level-headedly responded to a blatant attempt to clone his site and steal his data, competing with his new parent company and him for the same users.

Cameron Koczon does not answer the question. He evades it and says, "not trying to do anything uncool. Still super eager to talk more. Happy to do so anytime."

Let me translate this last part for you. "We have stated publicly we plan to scrape your data. We'll say we're not doing anything uncool, but that's because we think "liberating" your site's data is cool. The ball is in your court to contact us, because you owe us that. Just so you know, we can't wait to chat with you!"

Jeff responds. "Please do not scrape any data from PF for your product. I'm asking you unequivocally and in public. OK?"

Yet again, I see absolutely nothing hostile on Jeff's part so far. In fact, if someone insisted I contact them in order to find out more about what they want to talk to me about, and then posted a note saying they intend to pull all of my data, I'd say asking for clarification and a confirmation that they are not going to do that is pretty fucking cordial.

Then Cameron says he will email Jeff in the AM. Four days later, Jeff has to ask if he's going to get an email about this clone site that the OP has publicly announced. Cameron responds that he "ran out of steam" and was away for the weekend. Apparently, him being busy is a perfectly good excuse to leave a big issue out in the open un-addressed, but Jeff being busy isn't enough of a reason to send the guy more context about your plans in an email before announcing publicly your bullshit intentions to rip his site off.

And now there is the article on Fictive Kin, which could not be more ironically headed with the tagline "Work Hard. Be Nice." by people who are going to scrape all of the data they want from a single site, while bullying the site's owner into dealing with them in the way that they expect him to. The post criticizes Jeff's acquisition announcement as callous, an opinion of theirs that I didn't share when I got the same notification. I use Punchfork all of the time. They criticize the "ominous shutdown banner", which I imagine was intended to alert users about the site's imminent closing. Had he not posted such a banner, they would have said he didn't take enough action to alert users to the site's future. Then, they take their arrogant opinion of the situation and paraphrase Jeff, saying: “We’re excited to share the news that we’re gonna be rich! To celebrate, we’re shutting down the site and taking all your data down with it. So long, suckers!”

And as for Archive Team. I assume you're talking about the guys that announced their own intentions by saying "Injecting terabytes of Punchfork user/recipe data into http://archive.org . Relive the assholery of this goodbye: http://punchfork.com/pinterest ....

Now that we've clarified all of that. Explain to me the part where Jeff is the hostile one. Explain to me how these aren't a bunch of bitter dicks that saw a site get acquired, didn't like another company getting bought and absorbed, and decided to steal all of its data and compete with it, pausing only briefly to insist that the owner of that site give them a call because they would like to tell him to his face about their arrogance. Explain to me why Jeff's request to "Please don't copy any Punchfork data" is a hostile response to being called an asshole.

I don't know a single level headed person who would look at this communication outside of the context of Fictive Kin's ridiculous blog post and not think that these are some of the biggest douchebags on the internet.

I long ago stopped replying to posts and comments that anger me for their negativity and bullshit, but none has made me as furious as this one.

Disclaimer: After reaching out to him cold, Jeff Miller was an informal advisor to me for over a year providing valuable insights and advice, not to mention moral support, as we built our company. He did this for no reason other than his dedication to helping a fellow entrepreneur. Over dozens of email exchanges and in-person get togethers, he proved hands down, to be one of the most helpful, friendly, altruistic people I've met in the valley. After a year building up this friendship and trust, he invested in our company, and he is consistently one of the first people I reach out to when I have real founder issues to discuss.

The OP has literally ZERO idea what reasons Jeff has for his decisions about the data on his site, not the least of which could be legal restrictions of the acquisition. They provided, what looks like, ZERO background on why they wanted to talk to someone who was incredibly busy transitioning a startup into the hands of a new parent company. Jeff was as polite as he needed to be when he responded to a completely context-less request for a call with, "I'm sorry I can't right now." The OP does not know, beyond building a startup worth acquiring, and transitioning it, what else someone might have on their plate that would prevent them from having time to chat with someone who failed to provide any reason for their request. Then, when Jeff asked point blank whether the OP was scraping data from his site, they responded with an ambiguous, "not trying to do anything uncool. Still super eager to talk more. Happy to do so anytime."

The OP apparently does not have to try to do something uncool. This entire situation is unbelievably uncool, from the beginning of the communication, to their actions in between, to this post. The only thing more shocking than the sense of entitlement displayed here, is that they, or anybody here, thinks this post documents anything other than a pure display of arrogance and entitlement by the OP. They approached this whole situation with such a stark lack of professionalism that it would be laughable if they hadn't also decided to smear one of the nicest people I know in the process.

This post reflects an attitude that is a shining example of so many things wrong in the startup community, from the sense of entitlement, to the lack of common courtesy, to the manipulation of a situation for personal gain at the expense of others. It is so unreal how easily people seek to tear down others, and worse, how quickly smart people jump on the bullshit bandwagon.

This post is a joke. Nobody owes you anything because they built a site you enjoyed. If anybody owes anybody anything, the OP owes Jeff Miller an apology for this time wasting bullshit.

I would be interested to see how TCs top startups from demo day have actually fared over time.

I absolutely get fewer of these. I would blame it on getting less press about our company, but they used to alert me when we posted new blog posts on our own company blog, and I never receive those anymore. I can confirm that Google Alerts we used to receive have stopped coming.

Hey Stefan,

Take it or leave it, but I started www.Earbits.com 3 years ago, when I was 32 years old. For all of my professional experience, so little of it has helped me prepare for the challenges of building Earbits. My co-founder is one year older than me and his professional experience before Earbits was almost exclusively music production and composition. Now, not only does he manage the music department of Earbits, but most of our sales, editorial content, accounting, and frankly, he is the yin to my yang that balances out Earbits in so many ways.

30 is a great age to start something new and significant. The first startup I worked for took 5 years to sell for $15M. You could be retired by 35. Get on it. If you want to chat, email me. -Joey

It's only for mobile usage. Web usage is uncapped.

This is a marketplace business. You can't expect explosive growth when dealing with a two-sided market. You have to grow solidly on both sides or you risk having too much supply or demand, and alienating your early customers.

This is an awesome idea. We're always kicking around shitty ideas for contests that probably won't deliver enough value to offset the cost, won't attract the right types of users or clients, and take too much effort. I don't know if this one meets all of those criteria, but it's such a cool concept for a young person interested in programming, gaming and startups, to bring them out to Palo Alto for their own game's launch party, etc. Anyway, kudos to the Make Games With Us guys. This is outstanding.

It still dwarfs all other formats and revenue streams for recorded music.

That's what you get for thinking Barry Manilow should be a gag gift. Barry is the Man....ilow.

Actually, it's more like a guy who just conned your family out of their life savings is hanging by a rope, which is breaking. You don't feel inclined to save them, but unfortunately, they're hanging over a crowd of innocent bystanders. You agree to save them, mostly so that the others are not injured. While you do, you make them agree to give back all of the money they stole under shitty terms. They do so by screwing over the guys who helped them pull the con job, who are now coming to you asking for their share of the money they stole from your family.

Realistically the number of people who would like to learn an instrument is astronomically high. Most people try, get frustrated, and quit. If Chromatik makes learning far more enjoyable and simple, they could easily grow the size of this market.

Jeff is the man. Punchfork is one of the vegan/veg-friendliest recipe tools I've used, and it's a gorgeous application. Excited to see what Jeff can make of it with Pinterest's firepower behind him. Congrats!

...I don't think they exist.

Sounds about as good an idea as using gene manipulation to create unnatural species of animals for reasons as shallow as being hungry and preferring salmon to vegetables.

Animals of unnatural size also deal with heart problems and other complications. Just because you make them bigger doesn't mean you make their bodies capable of handling their larger size perfectly.

It was an opinion. The authority is my moral compass.

No, I do not feel the need to differentiate between the varying consciousness of animals in a discussion such as this. I feel they are owed the basic right to life, freedom from suffering, and an equal right to that which they have an interest in, such as raising their young. For every qualification you could find to rationalize treating animals poorly, aside from the species label we have applied to them, the same qualifications can be found in certain people. That's why it gets fuzzy and icky to start calculating "smart trades" that compromise the rights of some for the good of others.

You should check out Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. I'm not saying I agree with everything he supports, but he makes a bullet proof argument supporting the fact that speciesism is just like any other discrimination, and relies on the same logic as racism, sexism and so on.

"Semi-sentient"? "Smart trade"?

This attitude toward animals is just sad. We're talking about other beings with emotions and desires. I wish scientists could GMO humans into not being so arrogant toward other species. That's a genetic experiment I could get behind.

Example: Chicken. Very succinct.

If it's GMO: GMO-Chicken. Seems succinct as well.

Non-GMO Chicken. Least succinct of the 3.

It makes zero sense for companies to be required to list what is NOT in their food. Yeah, let's scrap listing ingredients and instead list everything that isn't in an item. ;)

And since when have men ever invested money into finding ways to relieve animal suffering in our food raising processes? They can't even be bothered to use dirt cheap pain killers during some of the most horrendous practices.

Christianity takes an opposing view to logic as well.

Other animals bred to have fast-growing qualities typically suffer incredibly painful problems supporting their unnatural weight. When are people going to realize that:

A) just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

B) animals are not playthings put on Earth for us to do whatever we want with.

I think you're overestimating how much the average person really pays to design. Having worked in online advertising for a long time, I have seen some seriously hideous sites convert far better than well manicured ones. For an example of one of the ugliest, highly successful sites on the internet, one need look no further than GoDaddy. That site looks like it was made in the dark. People don't really care.

Los Angeles is leading the charge on this. West Hollywood banned the sale of pets two years ago. Los Angeles city is doing so now.

http://www.examiner.com/article/los-angeles-poised-to-ban-sa...

Also, the primary point seems to be that we need increased caloric intake to support the larger brain's greater function. While it may have required meat consumption at the dawn of our species, I think we can all agree that you don't need meat now in order to have high caloric intake. I'm vegan and I guarantee I eat a lot more calories every day than my body or brain need.

This would all but put a nail in the coffin of those who are "lagging" behind. The first question an investor will ask is whether you received the additional $70k. No investor wants to institutionalize that 30% of their companies will receive bad signaling by default.

They tend to classify whole albums, which would be an average of 10 songs. So, 100,000 albums. Of that, there are going to be some artists with multiple albums. You can probably estimate about 70k-80k.

Technically it's non-interactive streaming, hence no on demand play, restrictions on how many times an artist is played and the skipping restrictions.