With all due respect, how will this help others in the same situation?
How will you establish a multiplier effect for donations?
How will a donation continue serving the cause in perpetuity?
How would a donation help me, if I got into a similar situation?
Even if the insurance company loses, they aren't going to suddenly come to the realization that they've been wrong all along, and start paying out more frequently.
I guess I don't see what this crowdfunding campaign is selling which would serve the greater good. Funding the EFF means that you're contributing to the greater good of privacy, etc. Funding the ACLU means that you're contributing to the greater good of civil rights, etc. Funding this campaign means that a single person can't or won't find a lawyer under any payment arrangement, contingency or otherwise.
Foremost, I think that this will create an example. Wronged people will learn that they have another avenue to lean on; crowd funding. Insurance companies will learn that they cannot use the tactic of delaying and denial to exhaust a person's resources, without risking much more public disgust at how they've handled the situation.
Beyond that, what we hope is that this example will inspire a new form of insurance. In previous eras, insurance was managed by a local community. With modern social networking and crowdfunding systems, there is an opportunity for an Insurance 2.0; reliant on genuine social fabric to help people recover after loss. And instead of an experience consistent of abandonment and confrontation, the story will be one of the community rallying together, and everyone getting closer with each other because of it, developing real connections.
This crowdfunding campaign is just the first step -- a trial -- but if there is a really good response I think it will meaningfully show that people are fed up with the injustice of the current system and willing to help with their money to fight it. Insurance needs to be reformed, and this could be incite the movement to do it. There is the opportunity for a great startup to be formed -- honest insurance is something that people want.
So you're going to use the money to sue the insurance company. People sue them all the time, and it doesn't change their business practices. Those people could use more money, too. So what makes you and your case different from them and theirs?
Insurance 2.0, crowdfunded payouts... You talk about a lot of things that you think will happen, or hope will happen. Now tell me how you're going to MAKE it happen.
You're going to start an insurance 2.0 company. You're going to start a crowd funding nonprofit foundation for people spurned by their insurance. Tell me how this is a donation, rather than a handout.
Mr. Hoffman, you are right to desire specifics, but you are dragging them out of me. Insurance 2.0 is a problem we want to solve, but we are not in a position to pitch a business plan today!
We both run companies which require our attention. We have this lawsuit. To make insurance 2.0 work it will require scale, capitalization, and attention.
I take commitments seriously. Here is what we can commit to, today.
- in my capacity as a mentor of entrepreneurs independently and with the Thiel Fellowship and more recently YCombinator, and with my connections to major investors, I will do my best to advise, connect, and promote people working on this problem or struggling with it.
- as a first step to insurance 2.0, we will put ourselves in the shoes of others that have experienced this and offer to help them directly and manually launch their crowd funding campaigns.
- when it is possible to launch an insurance 2.0 company, given our other commitments, I will (unless someone already has definitely cracked this problem). I cannot make commitments as to the model because we have not yet thought it through or tested it adequately, but it is a huge problem in a legally mandated industry, and we must do better.
I don't want someone to win American Idol, I want American Idol to pick the best singer, whether or not said singer is a judge.
As an investor in a venture capital firm, though, you would expect the firm to award funding to the best, not to the insiders.
As a politician interested in fostering a successful startup environment in your district, you would expect the firm to award funding to the best, not to the insiders.
As a fledgling startup yourself, you would expect the firm to award funding to the best, not to the insiders.
As Simon Cowell, you would want to pick yourself. Therein lies the issue. Only Simon Cowell wants Simon Cowell to win over other, more qualified startups.
But the thing is, being an insider is usually a good indication of future success.
If you already have those connections, that means you have a huge leg up on the competition. You can raise more money at better valuations (meaning you can make longer term bets, build a better team), you have access to better talent, and you have access via your network to other executives that can make deals happen.
We are upset because it isn't fair, but that isn't really the point. They want to make a ton of money. Yes, they also want to change the world, but tenacity and people skills (required in the VC word) are huge indicators of executing on whatever vision you have.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can be genuinely interested in what somebody has to say, and still plan to use them later.
Don't kid yourself into thinking they wouldn't do the same for you -- instead, think of it as a mutual agreement to provide services to each other when needed.
More like a mutual agreement to request services from each other when they are required.
E.g. to ask you if you want a particular contract (when it needs to be fulfilled regardless). Not to 'come up' with a contract because your 'bro' is out of work.
The article goes into a lot of good detail about how much easier it is to get a visa & temporary residence. Let's assume that there was no uncertainty there, and you could instead get permanent residence and/or citizenship... After going through all that, what have you gained?
Why go there in the first place? It didn't look like the government was offering any sort of funding or tax relief for somebody who decides to start their business in Spain instead of anywhere else.
If the key to this company is the material, and the material was developed by (and probably licensed out by) a university, then what gives this company a sustainable competitive advantage?
It really is an interesting question, and made me think over the implications:
On one hand, I exchanged $X,000 for the knowledge I would potentially gain from the class. It seems like I'm within my rights to intentionally NOT learn, and thus waste my money.
On the other hand, other people also paid $X,000, possibly with the expectation that they would get engaging discussions with the whole class, rather than just the professor.
So which is it? When you pay good money for a class, do you expect, in return, that the whole class participates? It seems like everyone would get better results that way, but then again, the whole class isn't getting compensated by you, so why should you expect anything from then in return?
It is indeed a tragedy of the commons.
The elephant (ha!) in the room is the fact that lectures are as good at passing on facts as any other method, but very bad for softer teaching goals, including debate and inspiration.
I'd guess Shirky's classes are more about promoting debate and asking questions than plain 'learn this' science/math/engineering lectures. So the lecture format - even with discussion - probably isn't very efficient for teaching anyway.
Whether people are distracted by devices seems secondary.
Perhaps it would be more useful to students to (say) work out a way to dramatise the effects of device addiction or some other Internet experience, so they can discover it for themselves and make their own decisions about distractions and cognitive loading.
Banning devices might have some of that effect by accident. But I'd guess teaching a class on internet sociology while taking notes on paper is going to be kind of weird.
(Full disclosure: I always used to hate writing paper notes. It's not unusual to lag behind the content, and it certainly never helped me understand what I was supposed to be learning.)
The competent responses would be:
"We DO have evidence that X DID NOT happen", or
"We DO have evidence that X DID happen".
A bag of rocks also has "no evidence that Wes or anybody else accessed any user data". Would you trust a bag of rocks with your computer security?