i think the problem is it boosted miner's fees, hence miners had less incentive to voice up against it (i don't know what's the situation post halvening). That and people generally do not care, at least from the responses here :

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Cosy rainy morning, some bossa nova jazz, a cup of coffee and a very sleepy dog 🤍

looks like world war has officially started

Perhaps, let’s establish some common grounds first.

** On funding :

1. Grants are technically for development purposes to encourage the building part of the business. It is with hope that after you build, you find other funding means or you can take off the business independently.

2. Loans - there are two types - Business loans are what you take when your businesses are generating stable revenue. Personal loans are the riskiest as early stage business has high failure rates, you don’t have income and you gamble everything.

3. Equity - you are selling company stock for money, with the assumption that you can generate returns. You can sell your stock to anyone who believes this business has potential.

Traditionally, there’s angels as pre-seed / seed stage, VCs at seed/series A,B and PEs from Series B until IPO. Equity crowdfunding sometimes falls under pre-seed or seed stage depending on who is investing in you.

There are diff interest of investors - those who want to expand the business quick and fast and those who prefer slow and steady, with profit sharing revenue,

** On selection at early stages :

Typically stuff like EBITDA / DCF / CCF / PTA can be thrown out of the window for early stages. The Early-stage evaluations are normally based on :

1. Founders - industry expertise, creativity, ability to think out of the box, integrity.

2. Business potentials - market size and opportunity, business model, competitive landscape.

3. Traction - based on how you are able to acquire customers.

** On startup stages

1. Pre-seed - brings an idea to life. You might do rapid or native prototyping to test the receptiveness of the market on your innovation. Often, you might do several iterations to find a fit.

Most devs are at this stage now, and build something with the assumption that it is awesome, do not test the market, and get frustrated when it doesn't pick up.

2. Seed stage - this is when you create something more solid like an MVP after a little test on the market. Good time to apply for grants as you will need some time creating a better product and testing market more in depth. This is when you officially launch it.

3. Series A onwards is exploring market deeply and penetrating other markets

** Now that we have established that, you need to ask yourself a few questions :

1. Does your product work ? Not functionally but in the market i.e - How many people have you used it on to bring into Nostr ? 1000? 10,0000? How long did it take you to engage them ? Who are there and where are they from ?

2. If your product can be monetised in order to generate revenue, then you can attract equity investors.

3. Alternatively you can create a revenue sharing model where you don’t need investors but you can attract people to generate and earn income - the more people participate, it becomes an attraction factor to get more people in. And serves your end goal of bringing people into Nostr.

4. Are you building something out of goodwill /non profit /no touch of capitalism that purely benefits the people? then you need to get funds out of goodwill from opensats or people like Jack who don’t expect you to repay.

5. Can your product be easily leveraged as a simple app / interface by clients? This will determine your product value. It doesn’t matter if it's open source or not, the purpose of your product and traction is what makes a difference.

6. How can you grow your product ? This question is really important. Can you partner up with clients that attracts specific communities for example like Coracle who works closely with Christian community + local business community or other clients that serves diff purposes / market? Can you expand it into local meet-ups based on interest ? a dating platform ? nostr nest hangout sessions ?

You won't find the answers to these questions overnight or in a week. You will have to test the market, find ways for your product to reach people wherever they are, and go through many iterations.

On a diff note, I wrote more on equity crowdfunding here and have brief example of cap table, income statement if you want to read more.

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Hope this helps. All the best. Keep going!

you have a lovely family ❤️. What an amazing shot of the volcano!

Some suggestions of expanding the funding ecosystem of Nostr. (This is not for OpenSats or Odell, but for all).

1. Explore equity crowdfunding that enable users to own equity of the company. This will speed up early stages and users can help devs grow the business

2. OpenSats to expand individual funding into modular system. Like how designers are funded to assist many devs, also fund PR and comms, marketing etc to assist multiple devs. This are diff modules of a startup to make the outcome more complete.

3. Setup incubation / accelerator : Devs here are not entrepreneurs (yet) and don’t fully understand market penetration, financial plans and growth, user engagements etc (yet). This is common for any tech person who starts a startup. They need different help

4. Fund receivers to provide ROI from time to time based on funding - this will help everyone understand how the funds were maximised. This opens up transparency for both funders like OpenSats and HRF and for fund receivers. And will be an attractive factor for users, angels who want to invest large amount onto devs.

5. There are many types of funding models - anyone can create create this and implement this. To keep yelling at OpenSats is not going to make much diff only because the devs here are plenty and the market is wanting a wider funding ecosystem. Whatever is happening here is natural growth and a good thing.

On a side note :

1. It’s good to expand funding ecosystem. There are no disbenefits.

2. Bootstrap means using profit to reinvest into r&d and at early stages there are little / no profit so it’s a slow slow process. Having funds expedites the build.

3. Break even won’t happen tmr or this year or next year (in case anyone is wondering).

4. Market penetration is important. Nostr has only teased the market and not gone head in.

5. A lot complain why users don’t want to pay for what they build. This is likely because users don’t know what you built or don’t see a value to it.

I once read somewhere that entrepreneurs jump off a cliff and builds a plane on their way down. This is true.

Good luck all !

its ok, took much eq is boring =) the burn out, the jadedness, the mental stress etc is real. the financial stress sucks the living hell out of you. But you are super smart, don't forget that. You can and you will find many better ways, and pave the way for others.

let's save that role for better qualified people. I'll go with the title "some random crazy girl with random crazy ideas" =)

There’s a story in the book emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman. This couple was fighting and out of rage, she broke a painting they had. Many years later, she didn’t regret the breakup, but she missed the painting. That momentary spur and rage may not be the best indicator of life directions.

My boss gave me this book in my first engineering job and I told him it was a great book to put me to sleep. He didn't give up, he told me, ‘Pam IQ got you here, EQ will take you all the way’. I told him, ‘I am my own person and if people can’t handle it that’s their problem’. In another conversation, I told him I am emotional and sensitive and he said, that’s a great thing because you can understand how people feel and react accordingly. I realised then, that I never saw things that way. I read the book - and understood it wasn’t about changing who I was, but about self awareness. When I left the company, it wasn't the awards that I remember but the people who came to my farewell, beyond engineers and managers, were the cleaners, the security guards, the factory workers. It may not be much to someone else, but to me, that was my success story.

I genuinely want to see you succeed. Everyone here wants to see you succeed. You have a lot of potential Will. But you have to overcome this self limitation and learned helplessness. And you can. Take a break, go for a walk, read the book, take a nap, feel better and start over.

Now, on the actual 99% content of the previous note, having users as your partners and investors might be a great way to help you move forward, and you can build this solution for many other open source entrepreneurs. If you don’t like this idea, you can brainstorm many other ideas. The goal of the note is to encourage creative solutions.

I don’t know much, I don't have much, but I hope anything that I have provided here will help you move forward. Good luck, Will.

Hey Will,

An alternative option is to look at equity funding, by selling your shares to your users, instead of a VC.

This is called equity crowdfunding. Say you need to raise $1M in exchange for 20% . Reach out to 100 users who can put in $10k each for a fraction of your company. You will create a new company for this.

* Company A remains as Damus - funded by grants.

Damus is a people attracting magnet. 100% open source. No Ads. No VCs.

* Company B - Here, you can create a separate entity purely for the business/productivity suite or a valuable “other stuff” that the market needs. Single/dual class share. This will have equity investors, starting with the 100 angels for seed investment.

**Under company B**

1. Open source at least 50% , until you can build the branding and market penetration. It will eventually become 100% open source

2. Outsource marketing and design as separate cluster entities (like how design is independent - this could work the same for PR, for marketing).

Its a modular technique - what it does is, it removes a lot of operating expenses esp at early stages and your gross will be closer to net profit - this is a massive investor attraction.

3. Work with your 100 investors - for every person your investor brings into your productivity suite, investors earn sales commission on top of the investment returns.

Early investors who are your users and fans of Damus will be very interested in making this business profitable. Imagine having 100 sales arms if you get 100 investors.

4. You need to work on branding, strategy and growth. After a while, maybe in a year, whether it is patented or open source will become irrelevant (99% of the time) once branding picks up. This is the same everywhere, all the time.

5. The $1M fund is your seed funds. Company B can eventually fund raise Series A through VCs if you want to, because you will have strong revenue. Your 100 investors can sell their shares at higher value or remain.

Most importantly, Damus is standalone - undisturbed - no center point of failure. Maybe Damus purple can have exclusive access to certain things that other people can’t have in company B etc

That's one possibility

There are many ways and many solutions, let your creativity go wild. You are a smart guy. You can even create some form of smart contract for these types of investment, gather investor input etc, it will be another new innovation for you.

The options are endless. Problems = solutions = opportunity.

** Some thoughts :

1. No matter what you build, make sure the market wants it. You can spend shit loads of effort building it and it will go nowhere if market doesn't want it.

2. Identify target market - where are you going to find the first 100 users for your new innovation ? First 1000 users?

3. Open source entrepreneurship is diff from traditional entrepreneurship.

If you can make open source entrepreneurship work successfully, then you would be a pioneer who has set up an open source entrepreneurship network.

** On a personal note,

1. Passive aggressiveness is a put off. Channel your good people energy in attracting people, not dividing them

2. nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m is the good guy. He welcomed you to his home, he funded the initiative, he has supported you from the get go, he has been here lifting everyone up. I hope you didn't burn the bridge entirely and can still make amends.

3. You can take the pisser on Miljan over his VC funding. Someone else can take a pisser on you on your first mover advantage. Negativity breeds negativity. OR - You can build solutions that can solve your problems and everyone else's problems

** On an additional note

I did a brief cap table for you . If you raise $1M for 20%, your company post valuation would be 5M, assuming 1.5 years is a good enough time to develop, sell, get user feedback, rinse and repeat until product is a bit stable.

And once you raise in 1.5 years at series A, your 100 investors could see a 9x return.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bsouYOU1quGIDxdi6TGX-rVPZfBIzbQTNKz0eaifIgk/edit

I hope this helps you move forward and on a positive path.

Good luck

Spoke to a bunch of entrepreneurs around the world yesterday for a research I am working on. I was very uplifted by their passion and determination. They come from rural and underserved areas and had a chance to sit in a workshop that taught them a bit of makers skillset and finding value of creation within the community (Makers skillset is both HW and SW).

Many failed their first startup but went on to establish different ideas, experiment market penetration, different countries and culture. The fear of failure both kept them grounded and freed them in exploring and learning what they didn’t know. The creations they are working on now are all pretty spectacular, all deep techs that they learnt on their own. I had back to back video calls, and that passion they had in their voice was truly uplifting.

If you are stuck in a zone of negativity, if you are struggling, go out there and talk to people who are building out of passion. The humble ones. The smart ones. The resilient ones. Absorb any positivity that you can, to keep moving forward.

For what its worth and from the little I have spoken with you, my initial observation was how laser focused you were on the build, growth and strategy. That is a powerful trait to have as a founder.

https://youtu.be/n6MRsGwyMuQ

interesting idea, would be great if it works

these are people struggling to survive day in day out. It is a problem when one tries to build for the world and don't understand the world enough or local cultures. I am not sure why you are so triggered or insecure - but if you think you can build solutions that can benefit the world by all means go ahead.

what is stopping them ? corrupt governments, extreme poverty and that's the beginning of the list

Fund more poor 3rd world country entrepreneurs - they will flip things around. They are not going to hurl abusive remarks, they will be grateful because day in and day out, their life is hell. And they would genuinely want to build their way out of hell.

i'm impressed, you seem well versed with chinese traditional medicine and chinese way of eating rice, how is that so? We grew up in a mix culture so we are exposed to it since young but i never liked the chopsticks and the rice in the bowl only because i could never get the composition right. But i struggle to eat noodles or dim sums without chopsticks

Happy Songkran!

omg - i am so sorry the guy died but this is hilarious