Uber made nearly $500M from a 'safe rides fee' – money went to company - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-safe-rides-fee-500-million-profit-super-pumped-book-2019-8 <comment><USER2> Just in case the Wayback Machine has archived the actual Uber post:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140420053019/http://support.ub...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140420053019/http://support.uber.com/hc/en- us/articles/201950566)

>What is the Safe Rides Fee?

>From the beginning, we've always been committed to connecting you with the safest rides on the road. Our new Safe Rides Fee is a $1 fee added to uberX fares in United States cities with uberX ridesharing. This Safe Rides Fee supports our continued efforts to ensure the safest possible platform for Uber riders and drivers, including an industry-leading background check process, regular motor vehicle checks, driver safety education, development of safety features in the app, and insurance. For complete pricing transparency, you'll see this as a separate line item on every uberX receipt.

It seems clear enough that it is an added fee (or price increase) by any other name.

Next time - say - a Big Mac will go from 3.99 to 4.99, "for complete pricing transparency" McDonalds may add a "Hygiene and Environmental fee" to support their continued efforts to clean the premises and dispose of the plastics, etc.

<comment><USER3> This happens at restaurants in cities which increase minimum wage, too. "We've added a cost of living fee to your meal of 8%, don't forget to tip your waiter!"

<comment><USER4> That's good.

A restaurant, which does this winds up instantly on my shit list.

Such passive aggressive behavior is a sure sign that they treat their staff like crap and I prefer not to give my business to such places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The company was facing rising costs on insurance and background checks for > drivers.

I would count this as as part of safety, so if they realised that's where there costs were and added a fee to offset it, this doesn't seem inherently unethical.

In Cape Town, South Africa I've taken a lot of Ubers + Bolts (previously Taxify), and although Bolt is usually cheaper, the difference in how they do background and quality checks on both drivers and cars is very apparent.

</comment><comment><USER6> "There was just one problem: that fee didn't actually go anywhere except straight to the company's coiffures"

Coiffures: elaborate hairatyles

Coffers: financial accounts

<comment><USER7> > Coiffures: elaborate hairatyles

Hairatyles: an example of Muphry's law in action

Hairstyles: a particular way in which a person's hair is cut or arranged

<comment><USER8> Murphy's law: "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong"

Muphry's law: "anything that can be mispelled, will be mispelled"

<comment><USER9> Misspelled: spelled a word incorrectly

Mispelled: an example of Muphry's law in action

<comment><USER10> "Misspelled: spelled a word incorrectly": and example of a dodgy grammar.

"Misspelled: a word spelled incorrectly.": better.

<comment><USER11> Grammar Nazi: One who uses refined vocabulary, correct grammar, constantly finds themselves correcting grammar and spelling (in forums, chatrooms, tumblr, YouTube, etc.)

Language change denier: As above, sans "Nazi" reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While perhaps slightly misleading (hence the lawsuit they settled), nothing says it _has_ to be specifically earmarked for anything... at the end of the day it was in the company's bank account either way and could end up being used for anything, even if they had actually claimed it was specifically for one particular thing ahead of time.

And maybe, just maybe, they had plans and did eventually use it for all the things they said, but didn't have a particular program in place yet? I really just feel like this is trying too hard to look for something clearly nefarious when it's just not there.

<comment><USER13> > nothing says it has to be specifically earmarked for anything

Lawsuits in the US about deceptive fees like [1] come to mind.

[1] [https://blog.ticketmaster.com/schlesinger-v- ticketmaster/](https://blog.ticketmaster.com/schlesinger-v-ticketmaster/)

<comment><USER12> Sure, but as I said they already settled a lawsuit over the deceptiveness. So arguably that complaint is already out the window...

<comment><USER13> True, and it seems as though to avoid this kind of litigation Ticketmaster simply had to disclose more information about the purpose and intent of the fees in the fine print. I also remember them changing the name "processing fee" to "convenience charge" maybe 10 years ago as result of (maybe this) lawsuit, but I can't find anything about that now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This Business Insider link is a reblog of [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/business/how-uber-got- los...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/business/how-uber-got-lost.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It would be pretty amusing to see other transportation providers such as airlines and train services follow suit and institute a "safe ride fee". I'm sure some consultant somewhere is dreaming up such an idea right now, totally unaware that most consumers assume that the ticket price includes some kind of assurance that they'll get to their destination unharmed.

<comment><USER12> Have you flown recently? I just went to book a flight with American from Phoenix to LA. $248.30 (which they rounded to $249 for reasons unknown).

Of that $217 is actually the ticket, the rest are taxes and fees, including:

US SECURITY FEE (UNITED STATES) $5.60 USD

<comment><USER15> This fee goes to TSA, not the carrier.

"The Passenger Fee, also known as the September 11 Security Fee, is collected by air carriers from passengers at the time air transportation is purchased. Air carriers then remit the fees to TSA. The fee is currently $5.60 per one- way trip in air transportation that originates at an airport in the U.S., except that the fee imposed per round trip shall not exceed $11.20."

<comment><USER12> That's fine, not what he was suggesting. There already is a security fee, so consultants don't need to dream up how to apply one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> These kinds of fees should really be considered deceptive advertising.

Unless a fee is specifically required to be levied by the government or it represents something that the consumer can opt-out of, then it is part of the price and should be listed as such.

Hotels, airlines, and cable companies are the worst offenders, but it's only going to get worse unless we put a regulatory stop to it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Since there is no profit, the money certainly isn't going to shareholders. And I wouldn't be surprised if Uber actually does spend 500m/year on trust and safety.

</comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone else been scammed by the Uber pass? I spent $25 on it, and saved a grand total of $1.27. It's misleading that it would save you money, unless you do hundreds of rides a month just to break even.

<comment><USER19> how is it a scam? they told you what it did

<comment><USER18> It claimed you can save up to $3-4 on the first ride, then gave me a 10 cent discount. I understand it says up-to, but it knew then and there exactly how much I can save on that ride.</comment></comment></comment>


Perceptions of musical octaves are learned, not wired in the brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/perceptions-of-musical-octaves-are-learned-not-wired-in-the-brain-20191030/ <comment><USER2> I was skeptical of his prior dissonance study. I feel there is a bit of accommodation by the participants to maximize the surprise of the researcher. Getting goods for singing funny.

The paradigm I would have liked to see is where two tones are held constant and the participant moves a third tone to the location that sounds the best or the worst.

It is remarkable work. But I don't believe it. Octaves are just too basic a phenomena to be viewed as a cultural invention.

<comment><USER3> > Octaves are just too basic a phenomena to be viewed as a cultural invention.

Octaves are consonant or dissonant depending on the timbre of the sound. For sounds produced by harmonic instruments, like a vibrating string or air vibrating inside a long tube, the sound is a superposition of waves whose frequencies are integer multiples of a fundamental frequency. Then, playing two sounds an octave apart will match exactly all these frequencies and it will sound nice. But there are other instruments (not privileged in the western music tradition) whose timbre is not composed of integer multiples of a fundamental frequency; and in these instruments octaves sound very dissonant.

You can argue that the octave is a "basic phenomenon" inasmuch a vibrating string is basic. Yet, from the point of view of a person who uses a synthesizer, the octave has nothing special with respect to other intervals.

<comment><USER4> What are these instruments? I guess their behavior has to be described by some interesting partial derivatives equations that give rise to non-integer multiplies harmonics.

So, what are they? I'd like to know.

<comment><USER5> Bells, gongs, drums, and other instruments that can be a modelled with a 2D surface that vibrates in an assortment of simultaneous modes are semi- harmonic.

Pipes and strings are better modelled by a 1D resonator, which is more likely to allow integer overtones - although they can still have inharmonic elements due to stiffness and - in the case of orchestral strings - rotation caused by the scraping bow.

None of which changes the fact that octaves are primary in any instrument which produces a range of pitches with a clear and reasonably sustained fundamental.

In fact researchers rely on the concept of pitch chroma/pitch class to distinguish between absolute frequency. Humans reliably hear the octave/not octave distinction, as do some animals. Obviously the animals aren't musically trained.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479468/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479468/)

But it's not enough to say that "octave perceptions are learned." In this experiment it's more likely that octave _use_ is learned in musical contexts.

There's a huge difference between saying that someone can't hear octave relationships at all, and that they can hear them perfectly clearly, they just don't find them culturally relevant - perhaps because their music theory is built on a grid of absolute pitches, and not on a repeating pattern of pitches.

<comment><USER2> Also worthwhile to point out that brainwave coupling is based on "octaves" (i.e., roughly speaking -- gamma is double frequency of beta, which is double alpha, which is double theta, which is double delta....)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This study does not show what the title claims.

Alternate title: Tsimané people do not perceive melodic harmonies.

This is also the case for some non-Tsimané people (google Amusia). There could just be a genetic basis here.

For comparison, you'd need a Tsimané child raised in Western culture, or reverse.

<comment><AUTHOR> They could reproduce the intervals without problem, they just transposed them by something else than a multiple of octaves. You make an interesting point in the last sentence though.

<comment><USER6> My horse in this race is that I know somebody who was raised on western music and has the same problem. I don't know if it's amusia per se or some related pathology, but I definitely think it's not just acculturation.

We spent several hours arguing whether music theory was a valid field of study or complete bunk until we noticed he didn't perceive melodic harmony at all. It was fun, if exhausting. That person also nailed an amusia test, which makes me suspect there's a separate condition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >The researchers acknowledged in the study that the results might reflect differences in how people sing, and not in how people perceive pitch. But they argued that the totality of collected data, including some more direct measures of octave perception, put the weight of evidence on the side of a perceptual explanation. [..] Moreover, if the Tsimané's performance in the tests has more to do with singing ability than their perceptual experience, then it would mean that all people have absolute pitch

Since I only have access to the abstract: How did they argue this in detail? Because that is something that immediately sprung at me. In the process of learning to sing, reproduction of relative intervals is far easier (and much earlier) learned than correct absolute positioning °) which actually takes some effort to train.

And the reasoning in the second paragraph eludes me completely. If I haven't completely misunderstood something, this has nothing to do with absolute pitch, and everything with tonal memory, which - again - won't work if it isn't trained: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_memory)

°) EDIT: Apology, the choice of words is actually incorrect. It's still relative, but with reference to the notes heard before, in contrast to the reproduction of intervals where you have your own previous sung note as (control) reference. Simply put: it's _much_ harder to learn to hit the first note (and thus the general pitch) of the sequence correctly than the intervals _in_ the sequence.

</comment><comment><USER8> Quite a bold title. My understanding (while limited) is that the human ear senses sound by means of tiny hairs in the inner ear that vibrate in resonance with incoming sound waves. I've always believed that the reason certain intervals are more harmonious to us than others was because there would be some overlap in hairs that resonated for the different harmonious pitches. The same way guitar strings will resonate with other strings that are tuned an octave, or perfect fifth, or fourth higher, these ear-hairs ought to behave by the same physical laws and principles.

As such, I'm a bit skeptical of the method and conclusion of this research. It seems like physics to me, not psychology. Ability to reproduce pitches and intervals does not strike me as entirely related to what they were trying to find out.

How about instead playing different soundbites, of consonant and dissonant pitches, and asking for their opinion in some way? Maybe even allowing the participant to find a relationship by some sliding instrument themself? That would seem more aimed at studying the Tsimané's ability at "perceiving octaves."

Maybe my interpretation of the header and conclusion is wrong. Perhaps the idea is that _some training_ is needed in order to perceive octaves, the same way _some training_ is needed in order to learn how to walk. That I might be able to wrap my head around.

</comment><comment> im3w1l-alt Music is definitely an acquired taste. My family was not very good at nor into music. I didn't understand the point of instrumental music until my mid teens. Before that I only listened for the lyrics.

On a different note, people often think of the octave as the most fundamental interval, but the most fundamental is the very same tone twice. Even here people like a little dissonance. Two tones at nearly but not exactly the same pitch will produce a pleasantly shimmering chorus effect.

Anyway music is subjective and there's is no sound that is better than everything else in all respects and contexts.

<comment><USER9> I have never heard "out of tune unison" described as an interval, except in a joke about viola players. Sure, there's a difference between 440 and 442 but that's not considered an interval in western music theory.

<comment><USER10> > Sure, there's a difference between 440 and 442 but that's not considered an > interval in western music theory.

Well that's just your 2 cents... I mean, 7.85 cents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if this is more a problem with the article than the study. I haven't read the study. It feels oddly described. Like, are they saying that when a Tsimané sings a song (solo, without instruments) on Tuesday, and then later sings the song on Friday, it's guaranteed to always start on the same pitch, without hearing some sort of reference note from an instrument? If so, that's basically perfect pitch.

We all have comfortable vocal ranges, and I know generally where to start the Star Spangled Banner to hit both the high notes and the low notes, but since I have relative pitch and not perfect pitch, my starting point is still always going to vary within a minor third or so.

Incidentally, I noticed in my college ear training courses that I (I have excellent relative pitch) would routinely score higher than the folks with perfect pitch. There's something about perfect pitch that can be really distracting to musicians for certain exercises, as it's not quite as flexible as relative pitch. So maybe that's related to the Tsimané.

Also, there are _aspects_ of different notes that very much are noticeable in physical reality and don't need to be culturally learned. In an old singing group of mine, we would have fun with a game where we would stand really close to each other, face to face, and sing unison, and then one of us would start to go slightly sharp or flat while the other would try to stay steady. There's an ugly "beating" sensation when this happens that goes away when you come back to unison. It's not just theory, you hear/feel it. That's present to a lesser extent with octaves, and then fifths, through the harmonic sequence.

Those subtleties are of course covered up when you're using separate instruments or timbres, but using different timbres doesn't disprove the underlying presence.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like you were generating a beat frequency, pretty neat :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_\(acoustics\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find this hard to believe from a mathematical point of view - octaves are as far as you can get from arbitrary which is I guess what gives the headline it's shock value.

<comment><USER14> What is the reason for there being eight notes (or seven? I don't really understand it) in an octave?

<comment><USER15> That's far more arbitrary, and there are plenty of other scales that don't conform to this.

<comment><USER14> I don't understand - so they are arbitrary? And so arbitrary that people don't even agree on it?

<comment><USER16> The harmonic series (of which the first three intervals are octaves, fifths, fourths in pythagorean tuning) is not arbitrary.

How you construct a more useful set of notes from the harmonic series is arbitrary. The 1.5^12 ~= 2^7 coincidence I note above allows you to construct a scale using octaves and fifths. You can just as easily do it with other similar coincidences, use fifths and fourths instead, etc etc.

Check the smoothness/roughness functions in my blog link - the reason you think e.g. a 3rd sounds as 'right' as a 7th is likely purely cultural. Other cultures have other scales. One of the Indian ragas has over 100 notes.

(I'm aware OP claims it's ALL learned, including the octave, but even if true I don't think that means it's all cultural).

<comment><USER17> To elaborate, intervals in the harmonic series are not arbitrary because the frequencies of the two notes forms a ratio:

      2:1 octave [1]
      3:2 perfect fifth [2]
      4:3 perfect fourth [3]

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fifth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fifth)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fourth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fourth)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > The acoustic structure of octaves is always the same: The frequency of a > note in one octave is half the frequency of the same note in the octave > above

This is not a great definition; our understanding of frequencies came well after we were using the concept. The idea of a "string of half the length with the same tension" is much more natural, and is the easiest mechanical analogy. The discovery of this is very natural because you get sympathetic vibrations -- you can feel the other string moving when you get consonance across octaves. It shows up (along with fifths) in most other instruments -- blowing twice as hard in a flute or halving the tube size, or compressing the embouchure in brass instruments.

While I don't think it's intrinsic in the human brain, it is intrinsic in most musical instruments, and it's kind of intrinsic in the way sound works, so it would be very surprising if it didn't feature in the music made by a culture, and thus work its way into the appreciation of music in general. The tests described here are interesting but might just point to the fact that there is less instrumental music (produced or listened to) in this culture than in others.

</comment><comment> seph-reed I made a website that describes natural harmonic (just) tuning systems:

[http://just-tunings.info/learn](http://just-tunings.info/learn)

I do need to add a section on cultural consonance/dissonance but..

Octaves are _not_ cultural. Resonance is not just an aspect of music or even animals, but literally everything in nature that makes sound. Dropping a rock in water will create sound, and frequencies that resonate with each-other will stick around longer than those that fight, teaching us that these sounds _belong together_.

An octave is the simplest possible relationship between two frequencies, and it can be heard in almost every natural sound imaginable. We learn they belong together from almost every sound we hear.

As an aside, western tonality uses the twelfth root of 2 because if you just start hammering randomly on those tones, they'll get along extremely well regardless of whatever the biggest bassist vibration is. The big bassy frequency being the one that every other frequency needs to get along with (harder than it sounds). It's sort of a fudgy form of relativity that allows things to vibe together mostly, but not perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel looking for musical scores in peoples brains is a great place to start decoding. We clearly load data into a conscious signal somehow like CAN-bus but it must also be stored maybe on actin filaments in the dendritic spines as loops we load in? Also mentally we can change the music and add any number of instruments over the top change the tune and deviate the course of the melody, add vocal harmonies from crowds of people and violins etc. so where does that part happen?, in the signal?. can it be 'heard'? . and is the music 'composer' happening in the same part of the brain as the language generating part or is it just similar capabilities in a different part of the brain?. Decoding must be possible. I feel if they had like millions of brains all wired up to computers that were using AI to find match patterns . i.e. audio patterns from songs in brains data. they could brute force it? Is getting people to sing stuff and making assumptions weak science?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit skeptical of this

The concept of Octaves (as a lot of concepts in music) comes from physics. Because one of the most basic instruments you can have is a string under tension.

Pluck the string: note

Pluck the same string pinched in the middle: same note one octave higher

Not to mention Note + Note(octave higher) will have the harmonics overlapping, so it will sound better since there won't be any beating.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but the idea of half == same is very specific to music. In no other domain do we do this.

<comment><USER15> Half != same, and harmonics exist in plenty of other domains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It reminds me of how tuning can depend on the era. Sometimes even on the composer. When you're used to hearing something in a particular way, the slightest change can be jarring.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyQaSFgnVI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyQaSFgnVI8)

</comment><comment><USER23> Musical octaves are wired into physics. If a note is at frequency X Hz, then the note one octave above it is 2X Hz. Of course due to the harmonics of the string, a string vibrating at X is also vibrating at 2X, so when you play a note at X Hz, then you are also hearing the note one octave above at the same time.

So... it doesn't need to be learned... When you hear a middle A, you're also hearing the A above for sure. And when you hear the A above by itself, you're hearing one part of the A below.

Of course, understanding that what you're hearing is a called an octave is almost certainly learned. But in my experience, any one who is not tone deaf will naturally lower or raise their voice by an octave if you ask them to sing a song 'lower'.

</comment><comment><USER24> I never understood octaves. Two sounds of different pitch that are supposed to sound "the same" somehow? Obviously if you shift a melody by multiplying every note by 2 will keep it sounding the same melodically, even though it's immediately obvious it's higher pitched. Beyond that, I have never been able to perceive the "sameness" between equivalent notes on different octaves. When I was younger and played adventure games, sometimes there would be a puzzle involving listening to a short melody and playing it back on some instrument. Literally the only way I could solve those was by analysing the original melody with a spectrometer, then analysing the instrument, and figuring what sequence of keys to press that way.

<comment><USER25> I read this yesterday and it really stayed with me, enough to find this comment again. Do two notes an octave apart not sound harmonious in a particular identifiable way to you?

From another view, it may help to think about it like this: Tones have a certain relationship with each other, and we split that into octaves in Western music to keep track of them. Just like the number 9 precedes 10, and 19 precedes 20, 10 and 20 are "the same number" in base 10 since that's where the pattern repeates. We could count in another number system, but the underlying physical truth of the numbers would be the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> mmmm I'm skeptical of a singular study in which a certain tribe of people are asked to modulate a sound to an octave within their singing range disproving octave equivalence being hardwired.

Wanna know why? Our aural circuits have frequency binning, much like an FFT, and they "ring" at certain frequencies, and an octave is either 1/2 or 2x a given frequency/"note". Closer examination of this system under stimulus is what I would consider a gold standard in this field of research. The form of research undertaken in this study suggests many things, and the researchers have chosen a particular conclusion and it's not necessarily indicated by even their own data.

[https://www.britannica.com/science/ear/Analysis-of-sound- by-...](https://www.britannica.com/science/ear/Analysis-of-sound-by-the- auditory-nervous-system)

Given the current propensity for thinking that frequency detection is pre- cortex (lower level than speech decoding) and available rather early on in the evolutionary chain, I'm going to be interested in physical studies, not social science.

</comment><comment><USER27> Perhaps it depends on the environmental noise you are exposed. In nature, most noise is percussion-like, non-rational harmonics, so octaves don't make much sens. OTOH listening to electric motors and combustion engines since the day you are born, makes you 'like' octaves, fifths and thirds, since these rotational machines generate these intervals while doing noise.

<comment><USER28> This wouldn't explain the prevalence of the usage of these musical patterns before electric motors and combustion engines were created

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope that's true because I still don't have a clue what an octave is (or a melody or harmony or any other music related word).

<comment><USER30> Notes separated by octaves are like higher and lower versions of the same note.

If a deep-voiced person and a high-voiced person sing the same tune together (without either straining), then they are singing one (or more) octaves apart.

Assuming they are singing in tune with each other, otherwise it will sound more like Chick Corea demonstrates here: [https://youtu.be/yfoxdFHG7Cw?t=371](https://youtu.be/yfoxdFHG7Cw?t=371)

<comment><USER31> > Notes separated by octaves are like higher and lower versions of the same > note.

I don't know if this is an in-born ability or a cultural one, but I can say that I (for one) don't have any perceptual sense of "sameness" in an octave. To me, two keys with the same letter-name on a piano make two different notes, just like any other interval (though I'm not saying that the different intervals don't sound different). This may be a form of amusia, but I enjoy music, sing to myself, recognize melodies, and find the dissonant Happy Birthday in your link unpleasant (all of which contrasts strongly with the forms of amusia I've read about); on the other hand a lot of the things that people _say_ about music don't mean much to me, except that in some cases I have a mathematical understanding which I can't really connect to a perception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It was a surprise to me to learn that octaves have a physical. mathematical basis. I discovered this as a teen reading about how to make music on a computer, where the relationship of notes to frequency was explained. To my ear moving up an octave had always sounded like an arbitrary increase in pitch.

</comment><comment><USER33> Did they try to sing along to the original notes? Perfect pitch needs to be practiced, but it should be immediately apparent when you sing out of tune if you're even slightly musically inclined.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm a little frustrated with the lack of discussion of frequencies in this article, which seems like a key bit of background to understanding this work. An "octave" is two sounds where one of them has exactly double the frequency of the other. I think it makes sense that octaves aren't hardwired, however it is fundamentally a mathematical property of frequencies.

I'm not sure how I feel about the thesis; can children tell if something is twice the size of another or do you need the concept of "two?" I think like other people I initially found this a little unlikely because octaves are innate physical and mathematical properties, but there are tons of physical/mathematical properties that require a lot of study to understand intuitively.

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems like most of the disagreement in the comments here are due to people having different notions of the word octave. This should be no surprise as there are numerous interpretations of the word according to Merriam-Webster:

1: an 8-day period of observances beginning with a festival day

2a: a stanza of eight lines : OTTAVA RIMA

b: the first eight lines of an Italian sonnet

3a: a musical interval embracing eight diatonic degrees

b: a tone or note at this interval

c: the harmonic combination of two tones an octave apart

d: the whole series of notes, tones, or digitals comprised within this interval and forming the unit of the modern scale

e: an organ stop giving tones an octave above those corresponding to the keys

4: the interval between two frequencies (as in an electromagnetic spectrum) having a ratio of 2 to 1

5: a group of eight

So maybe everyone's right.

</comment><comment><USER36> The Tsimane man could probably identify the distinction between octaves of bird calls in his habitat. The experimenter would be in the opposite chair hearing only a handful of notes.

</comment><comment><USER37> As a music teacher and music therapist, I have observed this behavior for three decades. It's especially true with people that have zero musical background.

<comment><USER24> If you don't mind me asking, what is a "music therapist"? You help people to play music, or you help people using music?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm not too surprised by this. I've had awful relative pitch all my life, and just recently started ear training. I've also for fun read a bit about how absolute pitch develops in young children.[1]

Bit by bit, I'm realising how much of what's taken for granted by practitioners of Western music is in fact learned.

As a concrete example: ever since I was a child, I've heard people speak of major and minor triads as sounding happy or sad. That seems like something that's just obvious to a lot of people. It's never been obvious to me, and it lead me to think I was (at least partially) tone deaf; if I can't even hear something that is (evidently) that obvious to so many people, how can I ever get better at truly listening to music?

Now that I've started ear training, I'm beginning to mentally associate particular sounds with these chord qualities[2] to the point of actually being able to identify them better than a flipped coin would. (Which is a huge milestone for me!)

But it's taken a lot of practise. And I still don't hear them as "happy" and "sad". If I try to listen for "happy" and "sad" chords, I go back to mischaracterising these chord qualities just as much as before. I've simply never learned that association, for whatever reason.

\----

It goes on and on: I played a lot of piano (from sheet music) when I was young, and practised the C major scale up and down and up and down, resulting in the interval from the tonic to the major second being etched into my brain very strongly. And I suspect this is what has made it surprisingly hard for me to internally hear a half-step from the tonic. To my brain (before I started ear training), the minimal possible step from the tonic was to the major second. There just weren't any sounds my brain could produce in between.

Learned. With plenty of ear training, I'm now in addition learning to be able to reproduce a minor second too.

Even more speculatively, I've noticed there are some specific half-step intervals I hear as whole steps. These are from E to F, and from B to C. These are half steps, but they are outliers in how often I attempt to classify them as whole steps. I suspect this is because of said C major scale practise: somewhere in the back of my mind, I might associate these tones (in the absolute pitch sense) with steps of the C major scale and therefore think of them as whole steps. I don't have absolute pitch in any useful sense, but it wouldn't surprise me if my brain, somewhere in a back compartment somewhere, has retained the sound of these tones and associated them with adjacent steps in the scale I practised so much.

\----

Circling back to octaves: Yes, there are physical bases for considering octaves as a special case of some sort, namely that if you strip out the base resonance frequency of one tone on a string or wind instrument, what you're left with are its overtones, which also makes up its octave's frequencies.

But the fact that this relationship is something that makes these tones sound "the same" might very well be learned. The fact that this level of consonance is even desirable might very well be learned. I can picture cultures in which that level of consonance is considered uninteresting, hollow, and weak. Why would one deliberately care to seek something like that?

\----

[1]: By listening a lot to music that extensively and unpredictably uses the 12 tones of Western music in A440 equal temperament tuning, children can learn to recognise these specific 12 tones in that tuning – but it won't help with any other frequencies!

[2]: I now hear major triads as a combination of hollow and triumphant, and minor triads as fuller and more epic. Some parts of it make sense, others do not.

<comment><USER22> I wonder if the "humour" in switching the scale of well know songs will make sense to you : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYVzAFzmjW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYVzAFzmjW8)

<comment><USER38> Well, there's a lot more to those performances than just switching the scale, so I'm not sure it's a fair comparison. But no, without being told they were switched from major to minor, I'm not sure I would have picked that out.</comment></comment></comment>


How much to charge a big business? - <AUTHOR>

My partner and I are having trouble determining pricing models for big businesses.  We've gotten in touch with businesses that have expressed early interest and have annual revenues of ~10+ billion.
Does anyone on HN have big business customers or have any valuable experience behind dealing with them?  We  don't know how much to charge or how often to charge (monthly, annually, etc) we just have a good product that they have expressed slight interest in.
What are reasonable prices to charge these large entities? I know it depends on what service is being provided, but what is a good ballpark number for these large customers?
Edit: What we do in a nutshell: we are enabling businesses to better connect with their customers. <comment><USER2> Pricing Strategies: 1\. Cost plus: What it cost you plus profit margin. Bad idea in software

2\. Multiple of annual demonstrated savings for client: How many people save how many hours per year? How much do they get paid? If you connect customers to the client what does this mean to the bottom-line of your client? Repeat purchases? You need to be able to justify the price with an ROI calculation.

3\. Delight: Hard to measure. Are customers so excited by the new connection that they talk about it? Does it become a part of marketing?

From your terse description it looks like you are doing something that is 'marketing.' Marketing is very hard to measure and while people may be willing to test new things out, to get repeat customers you will need to be able to demonstrate measurable value.

Other factors: 1\. If this is your first client don't sweat optimizing the price. You can charges others more later. A reasonable price will allow you to get the deal done quicker and get a satisfied customer who will recommend you to others 2\. Remember to ensure that the contract stipulates that the price cannot be disclosed to others

best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Find out what the signing authority of the interested executive is. If you're charging $1 mil +, in many companies that needs CEO/CFO level approval. That's hard to get, especially with a new technology product that the executive may not have time to understand.

If you're selling to a marketing director or someone of that nature, think around $100K.

Signing Authority is life in the complex sale.

<comment><USER4> More importantly at this stage: is the interested executive thinking it'll be a neat solution to a little problem of theirs, or is it someone with ties to senior decision makers considering it to be something that could make a big difference across multiple divisions of the business? If it's the former then you're quite possibly looking at more like $1-10k. If it's the latter then set your sights higher but expect it to take a long time.

The bad news is that just because a company makes $10bn in revenue doesn't mean your product is necessarily worth any more to them than it is to a company generating <£1 million, especially if it's only loosely linked to revenue or closely substituted for by alternatives. Where big companies do pay more it's usually because the scale of the solution being offered is much bigger.

Are there logical units/brackets related to your product offering (per licensed user, per store, per product, per client, per purchase, per click, % revenue generated)? If so, what sort of bracket or average number of users does a smaller client use, and how much do you charge them for it? If it's easy to charge directly per unit, do that. If it isn't, you'll have to gauge expected usage (by asking the client) and give yourself scope to renegotiate at the end of the billing period (preferably six months to a year) if they underestimate. They'll also expect a volume discount compared with smaller companies in lower brackets, but how much they get really ought to depend on two things: (i) marginal costs to you - how much does each additional user/product etc cost to you in terms of support time, computer resources, transaction fees etc. (ii) marginal benefit to them - will they get the additional value from having it for every salesperson/customer/product or is it something where the benefit is automatically companywide and most extra licenses/options are just a nice-to-have

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is no 'ballpark' price, it's mostly dependent on how valuable your product is to them. How much time or money does it save them? What are the alternatives (in terms of other software or non-action, etc.)

On top of that, what are YOUR costs to host and support the software? And, if you haven't considered that larger businesses often require significant hand- holding in terms of support and training, you need to factor that in also.

The only thing I can really say is that getting large businesses to pay can be a PITA, especially at first. You might want to understand how/when they pay new vendors (I've dealt with some large Corp that process new vendors once per quarter. Come in on the 2nd week of the quarter and its going to be a while before you get paid at first).

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe you could charge them something reasonable (not much different from small business charges), and reap the benefits of increased word-of- mouth/client-roster, but offer them the option of an exclusive (N-year) licence for an outlandish guaranteed amount. You could discern a lot by how they try to negotiate the exclusive position. Although I suppose that whole exclusivity thing is more relevant to wholesaler-retailer type relationships.

</comment><comment><USER7> Warning!

Before you figure out (yet) how much to charge. Patent your business first!

Before you sell _anything_ to a big corporation, you should hava a patent ready for your product.

Why? because without a patent your product is a commodity and will be treated as such by the procurement dept. at the big corporation.

In my country (Spain) we don't have software patents, and this is what happens:

\- The first year you sell the product to the big corporation. You're happy and rejoice.

\- The next year, before you're about to renew the licensing agreement, the procurement departament asks several competing companies (mostly big contractors) for a "similar" product (where "similar" means, cheaper, with more or less the same functionality). Nobody has it, so you get the contract.

\- The third year, one (or two) big contractors bid against you with a competing product and you have to lower your price to keep the contract.

\- The fourth year, you cannot compete in price against the big contractors because they sell the "competing" product as a turnkey project... at the low per-hour rates big companies pay.

Hope this helps. Cheers

</comment><comment><USER8> Are you taking out their garbage every night, or are you enabling them to be a better business?

<comment><AUTHOR> Enabling them to become a better and more effective business. It has to do with better connecting them with their customers.

<comment><USER8> do you feel that you need time to work out the kinks for a large customer or are you ready to deploy? I think if you have kinks use the first 10B business as a chance to iron out your product to make getting the next (100) 10B businesses easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If there are similar products to yours out there, base your pricing around them to begin with. Even if your product does things better than product X be sure to charge around the same price. If your sales take off review the pricing model around every year or so but be sure to include your customers in the decision process!

</comment><comment><USER10> Would it make sense to try selling to some medium-sized businesses first to work the kinks out of your process? There are a lot more $100M businesses than $10G businesses.

</comment><comment><USER11> Try to model your pricing strategy based on the financial value of your software for each firm. Make a case that can be sold to c-level execs.</comment>


AWS error exposed GoDaddy business secrets - sahin-boydas https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-error-exposed-godaddy-server-secrets/?ref <comment><AUTHOR>
      "The bucket in question was created by an AWS salesperson
       to store prospective AWS pricing scenarios while working
       with a customer," an AWS spokesperson told Engadget.

It's bad when even AWS employees misconfigure security on buckets...

<comment><USER2> I guess it's really bad when sales has to store sales material in self- configured buckets. That feels like about three layers too low.

<comment><AUTHOR>
       That feels like about three layers too low.

Pretty much my entire feeling on AWS's UX every time I want to do something simple

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can the link be changed to [https://www.upguard.com/breaches/public-domain- how-configura...](https://www.upguard.com/breaches/public-domain-how- configuration-information-for-the-worlds-largest-domain-name-registrar-was- exposed-online)? The original link is essentially blogspam.

</comment><comment><USER4> 10-15 years ago, if you asked me what would get your SAAS shop owned up, I'd have said an overlooked SQL injection vulnerability.

5-10 years ago, I'd have said credential stuffing in your accidentally-exposed admin app.

Today, without question: it's AWS misconfiguration or credential leaking.

<comment><USER5> If the admin app were not exposed, wouldn't credential stuffing work just as well on the VPN interface?

<comment><USER4> No, because the people whose credentials tend to get stuffed in these examples tend not to be the people who use the VPN. Like, it happens, but "tier 2 support" is the victim I'm usually thinking about here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "After all, without trade secrets and IP, a business has nothing to stand out from the crowd."

I'm not sure if that's meant to be sarcastic or serious.

<comment><USER7> I thought that was a bizarre statement too. There are plenty of businesses that are successful without unique IP. GoDaddy is probably one of the best examples of that -- it's web hosting and domains, it's mostly a commodity at this point. Domain registration is absolutely a commodity.

I also question how bad it really would have been if the entirety of the information was leaked to the public. This is more embarrassing for AWS than GoDaddy.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this is a rare case where the company can actually 100% blame the vendor. It's usually a case of a company not properly following the vendor's documentation or otherwise misconfiguring something.

<comment><USER6> The article is a bit sensationalist from the title through to most of the "what ifs" and speculations in the body.

Hidden right at the end Godaddy even downplays the sensitivity of the information that was available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >"After all, without trade secrets and IP, a business has nothing to stand out from the crowd."

Except that GoDaddy has a massive, massive brand with millions invested in marketing over years of business. Its success is hardly down to trade secrets or juicy AWS discounts...

</comment><comment><USER10> Title should read "AWS bucket configuration error by Amazon employee...".

Title makes it seem like AWS system flaw, it's not.

<comment><USER11> AWS, as a system, allowed this. AWS, its employees, made such a mistake. Pretending processes somehow don't involve people blindsides us to obvious problems in real implementations.

Possible lessons: Why is it so easy/tempting/overlookable to misconfigure a bucket that an AWS employee could do it? What lessons can we learn from, for instance, Google Apps, where you don't usually misconfigure your file share? Upguard's conclusions are what you should be taking away, not "AWS buckets are fine from a tech standpoint".

<comment><USER12> The Internet as a system allowed this deliberately public configuration, so the Internet is at fault.

The World Wide Web as a system allowed this deliberately public configuration, so the web is at fault.

AWS S3 as a system allowed this deliberately public configuration. So AWS S3 is at fault.

None of those seem quite right.

To me, seems more like AWS S3 isn't designed for the higher level use case of sending a "shared secret" folder link by email to a collaborator, combined with a drinking the kool-aid tic where all employees try solving all use cases with the in-house hammer at hand.

At the same time, I think AWS _has_ made a mistake — putting a Web Console on top of an API driven infrastructure, and investing so much recently in trying to make the web UI more "usable".

AWS is not your father's webmin VPS, but by now the console is so friendly, today's sales guy can be forgiven for thinking S3 config and Dropbox config are the same thing.

<comment><USER13> Looks like a case for FTP. Does AWS provides FTP hosting? I think not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _human_ error exposed GoDaddy business secrets. AWS did exactly what it was told to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Except an AWS employee configured it, granted that employee was human, but was a member of the blamed organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a public link to the disclosed details of the information?

</comment><comment><USER16> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17741281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17741281)

<comment><USER17> This post has more points. Additionally the other post has no comments.

<comment><USER18> Since the comment you're responding to is the oldest one, it would seem this thread had no comments yet either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Without attempting to make a joke, wouldn't a better place to store a doc like this be and of the following: Google Docs, O365, Dropbox, Box.com, Zoho, or basically ANY syste designed for file sharing with specific external customers? AWS isn't really meant to function on it's own as a file sharing service, though there are services that could have been made on AWS for this purpose.</comment>


The Nation indulges in fear mongering about cell phones and cancer - <AUTHOR> https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-nation-indulges-in-some-particularly-egregious-fear-mongering-about-cell-phones-and-cancer/ <comment><USER2> Truly we most certainly would all be dead from cancer with the amount of mobile phones out there and carried around by everyone.</comment>


Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Consciousness. Contact. and the Human Future - sahin-boydas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c7cCZQn-Uo <comment> sahin-boydas Another documentary from Dr. Steven Greer</comment>


UK government admits rabies poster gaffe - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-44911209 <comment><USER2> Oh this is delightful. Scarfolk Council is one of the best parody sites I've ever seen, their dystopian recreations of 70s public information posters, books and toys are perfect with just the right fonts, colours and layouts. Too perfect apparently!

If you were around in the 70s and 80s you should visit. [https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/](https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/)</comment>


Progress on JMAP, better standard for synchronising mail, calendars and contacts - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fastmail.com/2015/12/23/the-jmap-momentum-builds/ <comment><USER2> This is great to hear. I'm glad the project is progressing.

For those not in the know, JMAP is a protocol for mail that, unlike IMAP, has threads and labels built-in at its core. In other words, Gmail without Gmail.

And it's about time somebody came along and built something sane for this.

There have been a lot of valiant attempts at this. Thunderbird has a few buggy extensions that attempt it. Notmuch is a very well written library and command line MUA with a very fast on-disk storage format (with ncurses, emacs, and vim interfaces, as well as neat FUSE file system toys), but it is not a protocol, and therefore does not scale well beyond the limited set of MUAs for it that mostly need a shell or a flimsy web app. Mailpile is an attempt at making a Web 2.0 style Gmail clone, but it's only an MUA and the on-disk format is flimsy at best.

JMAP defines the protocol first. Then, multiple people can take a stab at the most sane implementation. I like this approach quite a bit.

<comment><USER3> Why not extend IMAP? It is by definition highly extensible, and unlike JMAP, it's not wedged into complex poorly suited protocols like HTTP.

Clients leave IMAP ports open indefinately; IMAP IDLE provides push e-mail over this mechanism.

Reading about JMAP, this just seems like adding unnecessary web overhead and complexity to an already complex problem space.

<comment><USER4> FastMail's "why" is better explained in a post from last year, "JMAP -- A better way to email" [0].

[0]: [https://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/23/jmap-a-better-way-to- em...](https://blog.fastmail.com/2014/12/23/jmap-a-better-way-to-email/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This might be a naive question, but I don't know any better: Why can't your mailbox be represented on a server as a directory, perhaps like Maildir format, and then synchronised to your device using a directory sync tool, such as rsync?

Changes, or online access, could be done using any standard remote file access method, such as sftp.

Are there downsides to this approach?

<comment><USER6> You still need an index of your mail for searches and extra metadata for tags, threading, unread status etc. So you need a protocol for requesting this search and a format what how the client can use the result of that search to access the matching emails.

You need to be able to push email status changes out to connected devices, I don't want an alert for an email on phone if I've already read it on my laptop.

You need decisions around how attachments are stored. Most of the time you'll want to store the attachments separately from the text content of the email so clients don't have to download the attachments to access the text, so you'll need to decide on how this location would be communicated to a client.

Plain files are rather bad for multi-user access, if you have multiple users/devices all accessing the same email they're going to need some protocol for synchronization so you don't get data corruption or lost changes.

<comment><USER7> > You need to be able to push email status changes out to connected devices, I > don't want an alert for an email on phone if I've already read it on my > laptop.

This. This sucks so much. Even gmail can't automatically dismiss a notification when I read a mail on the desktop!

<comment><USER8> What mobile client are you using? I've found that Gmail on Android is pretty good about dismissing notifications for messages that have been marked as read elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm pretty excited about JMAP. We've been planning an overhaul of Usermin, our web-based mail client, and now that we have a UI developer, we'll be embarking on more ambitious features, like threading, off-line abilities, etc. Having threading handled automatically is already reason enough to use this, as it's a much harder problem than it seems at first glance to solve in a consistent way across many clients and servers.

The fact that it also handles calendars and contacts is icing on the cake.

</comment><comment><USER10> Reading about JMAP last year during their holiday series of blog posts persuaded me to jump on-board for their mail service and to support the evolution of JMAP. No regrets!

</comment><comment><USER11> JMAP homepage: [http://jmap.io/](http://jmap.io/)

</comment><comment><USER12> What clients/apps currently speak JMAP?

</comment><comment><USER13> It's great to see a company building technology and open protocols without walled gardens and lockin.

</comment><comment><USER14> Any news on whether the big mail providers have an interest (Microsoft, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)?

</comment><comment><USER15> There seems to be a lot of interest in sync related protocols in this thread and dismissal of JMAP as a result. This is bad, because the current state if synchronization protocols still kinda sucks - full disclosure, I work on [http://GitHub.com/amark/gun](http://GitHub.com/amark/gun) which is a JavaScript based syncing database. Getting synch right in p2p or federated systems (email) entails more detail than centralized ones. So any work on synchronization should be seen as favorable compared to how bad other protocols are for sync.

</comment><comment><USER16> What somehow bothers me is that the new protocol is all-in-one. Instead of building on / integrating with CalDAV / CardDAV and being modular, they are rolling everything in the same protocol. This is possibly convenient for a protocol controlled by one commercial entity, but why not just use Outlook's then?

Piggybacking it over HTTP also looks a bit strange, but probably helps corporate firewall penetration.

</comment><comment><USER17> My favorite part about this is that one can implement and start using it at their discretion (i.e. it doesn't require the other server to also speak JMAP). That way I can have a mobile app that speaks JMAP and an IMAP-to-JMAP bridge that syncs my Gmail to it.

Does anyone know of such a bridge? I would love to run one for myself.

<comment><USER18> [https://proxy.jmap.io/](https://proxy.jmap.io/) \- it contains links to the source code if you'd like to run it yourself. It's just a few thousand lines of perl, and I wrote it in two groups of about 2 weeks each time (about 6 months apart) - and each time very much part time amongst other things. It's actually not that hard if you already have IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV client libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you want to make this a standard I recommend making a RFC for JAMP. (Then again they have docs, this would just make it seem more official.)

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. I use Radicalie for Cal/CardDav. Maybe if I get some bandwidth, I could look at potentially contribution a JMAP extension.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sadly, I don't see a lot of uptake on a new protocol unless Microsoft supports it in Outlook or someone develops a plug-in. Also, the mobile situation is going to be a tough haul.</comment>


Show HN: Drbble – organise pickup soccer (football) games - <AUTHOR> http://drbble.com <comment><AUTHOR> Built it with a couple of mates as we have quite a few lunchtime games happening at work. While it has had a good run with people we play with, it isn't spreading much and it seems we will be shutting it down.

Regardless, first share here on HN. Appreciate your opinions.</comment>


Wanelo: The First Million Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/500startups/eric-koger-cofounder-ceo-modcloth <comment><USER3> I am Sarvjeet Ahuja, on which this whole thread started. Want to clarify the following:

\- Me and Deena are known to each other for many years \- I did the initial coding without being the co-founder and executed it as a services business \- I built the product with Java(Struts2, Hibernate, MySQL) and worked on it single handedly for few years. \- Lately, when we started getting some traction, we decided to persue it together full time, by taking equity and to work as a co-founder and CTO of the company \- We got the first terms sheet when I was the co-founder of the company. Someone has given the link to TMT investments, which is correct. \- Due to some difference on how to grow the company (particularly some investors were against me being in India), we decided to separate. The entire discussion was initiated by me and I am the one responsible for split. \- Deena is a wonderful entrepreneur and I have very high regards for her. And I am proud of what Wanelo has become. Entire credit goes to her. \- Constantin is an awesome Engineer and the current team of Wanelo is killer. They have done a phenomenal job and much better than I could have done it. \- I am currently working as a general partner with The Morpheus, kind of YC of India. \- I still hold a fraction of percent in the company.

Hope that clarifies everything. Please stop making un-necessary comments against her and stop digging the past.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, why did VC firms not like you in India? What were their _real_ objections?

Thanks for the good post and clearing things up.

<comment><USER3> Probably there were different reasons for different VC Firms. Let it go, let us not talk about them anymore :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey guys, I'm the CEO and Founder of Wanelo, so I'll jump in here.

In 2007-2008, I actively searched for a technical cofounder, but I couldn't find one. I did have a false start of working with two great engineers, who in the end weren't interested in taking this on full time.

In parallel, I started consulting as a UX designer to make money. I eventually took on more projects that led me to hire a small team of designers to support all the client work. The income generated from these projects made it possible for me bootstrap Wanelo on my own and hire an engineer in India and a couple people under him to start building Wanelo. This was a direct contracting situation (he got paid and there was no equity involved) which went on for a couple of years.

We built a bunch of features that nobody cared to use until, finally, at the end of 2010, we launched a version (mentioned in the presentation) which people started using for the first time. At that point, I closed down my agency, which ended my source of income. I then asked the main engineer (Sarvjeet) if he would come on board as a CTO/cofounder (since I could no longer pay him or anyone else) and he said yes. This didn't last for long. After a few months, it became clear very quickly that we were not a good fit for a cofounder relationship. We mutually agreed to end his involvement with the company (there was a 3 months transition period for which he got paid), and I went on solo to raise funding and build a new team, which took over the technical platform. Two months later, we fully rebuilt the website on an entirely new stack, leaving all the old code behind.

To elaborate on the "no team" comment, that comes directly from investors who refused to consider me and a remote engineer in India as a real team. This was the main challenge in raising money. Investors would literally call me a solo female non technical founder because it was just me with no engineering background and some remote contractors, and it took 40 rejections from investors to close my seed round.

<comment><USER6> Still somewhat amazed at how discussion around a successful example of product-market fit degenerated into such bile, but glad to see clarification from you and Sarvjeet.

Congrats on your hard work.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Still somewhat amazed at how discussion around a successful example of product-market fit degenerated into such bile"

The original title was the problem. Unfortunately the original title was created by the HN submitter (as far as I can tell) and it wasn't 100% accurate. If there's one thing people on HN do well it's pick holes in things that aren't 100% correct. It doesn't excuse some of the bile you're referring to but I think it reinforces the need not to create our own titles when submitting and to follow the HN guidelines around submissions.[1]

[1] [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER7> >and it wasn't 100% accurate.

The title came from slide 12 of the presentation. Based on the recent posts by the parties involved, it seems that it was accurate with respect to the hurdles encountered in getting funding, but the presentation slides didn't express the context of how this event fit into the history of the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an entirely bogus history. She had a tech co-founder and cut him out. I met him back in 2009. [https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=8860093](https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=8860093)

Why lie about it?

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure that she - the founder - is lying in this presentation (though she fails to mention her technical cofounder). I think it's more that the title of this submission, which was presumably not made by her, was inaccurate (and has since been changed to its current title which is more accurate).

Lots of companies screw their technical cofounders. I was the technical cofounder of a company that was later acquired, but never received the $12.8 million check I was supposed to and didn't have the resources to fight back against a maniacal cofounder flush with $60+ million in new cash from the acquisition. That doesn't mean that others can't learn from the company's story, even if only told selectively. It just means that the people that wound up in charge are perhaps not the kind of people you would want to do business with.

<comment><USER10> > I was the technical cofounder of a company that was later acquired, but > never received the $12.8 million check I was supposed to and didn't have the > resources to fight back against a maniacal cofounder flush with $60+ million > in new cash from the acquisition.

Not to derail, but let's hear that story. Seems like hiring a lawyer would be a no-brainer if you were due $12.8m.

<comment><USER9> It's a long story, but I am still in the process of pursuing it legally. When I first learned of the acquisition, I didn't have the resources to pursue it, and even today don't have millions sitting around to pay attorneys. I sent a letter to the acquiring company explaining the situation and demanding that I receive my cut, and they actually responded with an extortionate threat in writing. We are now pursuing a civil federal extortion case against both the acquirer and my cofounder.

But, as of this moment, despite my name being on the company's first and primary patent, having written all of its initial code, having envisioned the entire concept of the company myself, and even having named the company, I have seen exactly $0 from an acquisition I was supposed to receive 20% of. Even better, with $60 million in his pocket, my womanizing, alcoholic, conniving cofounder suddenly found Jesus and now fancies himself a televangelist of sorts. At last contact with him, he was "praying for me". Go figure.

So yeah, be careful when working with others. My cofounder would have been considered by anyone that looked at him to be beyond reproach. He was not.

<comment><USER11> Just a word of caution, if you're pursuing legal actions, you might consider not posting about any details publicly. Talk to your lawyer before you do anything...

<comment><USER9> I thought about that, but I've said nothing here that would hinder my case. They outright stole from me, and then when I called them on it, they responded with extortion. They aren't in a great legal position.

<comment><USER12> > I've said nothing here that would hinder my case

Any good lawyer will tell you the same piece of advice: "never say anything." It does absolutely zero positive good for your case and can only serve to hinder it later. It's very difficult sometimes to keep from providing what you consider to be valuable feedback for others, but you have your own interests to consider first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a really impressive story. I wish we got more background about the 2010 era, before she hired engineers in San Francisco? Was this site completely freelancer developed initially? How many users did she get before shipping out to cali?

BTW, this site is really taking off with young, social-media crazed teenagers, so keep an eye on it! Already at 8MM users, it's similar to pinterest with a business model that really makes sense.

<comment><USER5> Yes, completely freelancer developed. I closed the agency and moved to SF from LA when we got to 30k monthly uniques.

Overall, the two years prior to the inflection point and the first users were pretty inefficient. The vision was actually always the same (a universal social platform for all of shopping), but the execution changed dramatically. We literally just kept launching features around this concept, but they were pretty unfocused, until the minimalist redesign.

On the other hand, this 2 year period allowed me to make lots of product design mistakes and learn from them and to develop a personal philosophy and approach to product design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 6 years. That's my favourite part. Kudos for sticking at it throughout when I'm sure there were times it felt less than certain it would work out.

Been working on my own startup for (what feels like) too long, having to actually earn a living in the meantime, so appreciate seeing another business go from seed to growth in a similar time scale.

People always laud the internet for allowing ordinary people to do all sorts of exceptional things. This is an example of one of those things, and it shouldn't be taken away from its creator for any of the infinite trivial reasons that could be imagined.

<comment><USER15> One thing is to keep ongoing tech (servers etc) costs low so it can simmer. Shutting apps down just destroys value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Slide 8: no one cares. Slide 9: not interesting. Slide 10: 30k monthly uniques. What happened there? That is all I really care about.

<comment><USER5> :) What happened was that we removed the crap that was built before. Only 2 things could not be removed: products and people, so the homepage became a precursor to what it is today: a minimalist grid of products posted by users.

I then spent $20 a day on Facebook ads. The goal was simply to get a small stream of people to check out the website and to see if they would use it. I didn't think I could actually grow a community by spending on ads since I didn't have that much money to spend. To my shock, people actually started using it and were sticking around. The reason was that the website exposed them to surprising, unique products from stores they've never heard about.

It's also worth noting that I optimized the ad a lot, tweaking all the details (targeting, image used, copy, where the ad clicks to) until I had an ad that was performing really well, meaning that I was making that $20 count.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it. It is amazing that you got the growth you did by only spending 20 bucks a day on FB ads. People must really like the product! Great job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I saw Deena's presentation at 500's Commercism conference and it was really inspiring. An entrepreneur that doesn't fit the stereotypical valley entrepreneur has executed an idea that users really seem to use and love. Good for her.

</comment><comment><USER18> Slide 5, is not identifying Amazon there some kind of joke? I know they're not the same but I'm not sure how you say online shopping is completely without any answer without looking daft.

Anyway they seem to be doing well and they have amazing reviews and a great brand. I'd really like to know how they decided not to show pricing in their feed though on the mobile app. When I joined I followed lots of companies, those I shop at and those I'd like to shop at mainly - it got really old really fast clicking through to see pricing. Just my opinion though, like I said they get great reviews so maybe these people use it differently, only following stores they use or are less price sensitive. Also I'm male so I know I'm not really their target audience, but they do have a lot of men's stores on there.

<comment><USER5> Amazon is not a social platform.

<comment><USER18> Fair enough if that's what she was going for, I didn't see the talk so I'm just going from the slides. Interestingly shopping is probably where the new players have made the biggest impact on the 90s players (where they existed) in that list though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Non-tech and the first site was made using what? Her mind power? Wordpress?

<comment><USER20> That's what I wanted to ask.

All that "single, female, non-tech" doesn't make much sense to me if a team of developers was hired to create this website.

<comment><USER15> And she takes credit for it personally.

Gotta promote the team members or it looks like they're replaceable cutouts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I enjoy seeing the holistic progress / story of a startup. It's comforting to see for others that things do take a long time.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wanelo has a great conversational tone in it's copywriting. Check out the iPhone app update descriptions: [http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/app/wanelo- shopping/](http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/app/wanelo-shopping/)

I believe I've read somewhere that Deena writes those descriptions herself. She doesn't talk about it, but I think this personality goes a long way with her audience.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can someone tell me why it could possibly be relevant to say that she is single?

<comment><USER13> Why is it relevant that she's female?

<comment><USER24> Specifying characteristics of exemplary people, can serve as an encouraging example for others with those characteristics. Maybe another potential future female founder will read about her example, and decide to pursue the same path. Not everyone needs that, but sometimes it helps.

<comment><USER25> Which is a great thing, due to the massive lack of female founders in the tech world.

Males and females look at things differently, too, so there must be huge markets for female founders, who really understands women much better than males does.

This was a perfect example, too, as shopping is something the female population really... Excels at. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Loved a particular slide about how they (she?) did it: "The right people: builders and get-shit-done-ers, pragmatic, non religious about tech, move fast, team over rockstars"

<comment><USER27> I saw a few projects where "developers" were not religious about tech.. they still using ftp for php files deployment, "BUT HEY! THE SHIT IS DONE!" :). I don't want be sarcastic, but i think every startup team should have at least one engineer who will know what to do, at every iteration of the project.

<comment><USER28> whats the "preferred" way nowadays? commit source using git to server and let it autodeploy?

<comment><USER27> If you can deploy: fast, atomically, without downtime and can revert your changes at any given moment, then it is not that important :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> About rebuilding from scratch: Most of the time this is a big NO in software. But I think a demo product is an exception.

A demo is just a demo. Quickly put together as a proof of concept. And I think going from demo to product is the one and only time when rebuilding from scratch makes sense.

So I think they made the right choice.

</comment><comment><USER30> Call me skeptical, but it reminds me of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts)

Like other commenters have said, how did she, being a non-technical founder with no team, could set up the (what appears to be custom-made) website? It's like going to a hackathon and claim that you build an app within 24 hours, but actually have implemented majority of it beforehand and making it a "library".

Anyway, looking at the positive side, had the slides contain more detail, I believe it can be inspiring for many people and not received with skepticisms.

<comment><USER17> at the presentation (not the doc, but the video) she is pretty clear that she didn't built the thing. she says this a couple of times at least

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very interesting, although someone claims the history to be bogus.

I currently have a website that gets over 500k Uniques per month and over 5m pageviews a month, so it's interesting to see what the future could hold!

<comment><USER32> I'm curious. What's the website? How'd you reach that audience? Short story?

<comment><USER31> A little luck and a little experience. Plus 4 years of community growth.

I prefer not to say the site if you understand.

<comment><USER32> Of course. Thanks for the response.

PS. How's the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "I am not tech, but i started with doing tech (website?) stuff". Am i missing something?

</comment><comment><USER33> Deena Varshavskaya (Wanelo) at Startup Grind 2014 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgtHV8DSrgI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgtHV8DSrgI)

Glimpse Conference SF 2013: Fireside Chat - <USER2> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1g4s4HmLIU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1g4s4HmLIU)

</comment><comment><USER15> Look up their stats on quantcast and compete, tells a different story.

<comment><USER34> "This publisher has not implemented Quantcast Measurement. Data is estimated and not verified by Quantcast"

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Churchill was right. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems like a cool tool for people who like to shop for visually appealing stuff, but I don't think it's really "fixed" any problems or truly modernized e-commerce.

It's basically a clever front for a ton of affiliate programs, which interests me because my startup does something similar. I just wouldn't go so far as to consider it the "YouTube of Shopping" (slide 5).

If anything, Amazon Prime belongs in that position on slide 5.

<comment><USER5> We're just getting started. Amazon Prime is not a social platform. Slide 5 is all about the web becoming social.

<comment><USER36> It's a nice assertion you make that "Amazon prime is not social".

I find the opposite to be true.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I wouldn't call it social in the 'growth hacking' sense... but it's certainly social in that it comes up in conversation nearly as often as Facebook or Twitter (in my non-tech circles).

<comment><USER36> It's been around since the 1990s, so it's not "sexy".

Even though Amazon has been an important part of my own business for actually selling stuff, Amazon Prime has revolutionised the ability for small sellers to move volume (and solved the logistics hurdles), and Amazon's cloud computing is critical for tons of other startups to run their infrastructure-- not to mention is being chosen by established players.

But, no, it's not "social".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What would be really cool is if I could use wanelo as a search engine for something I'd like to buy but I don't know where. Like I want to buy a pair of striped shoes with butterflies on for a kid. I put the description somewhere -and I get pictures of the products available. Is it something you are planning to add?

</comment><comment><USER38> Great deck. Congrats on your success. I briefly met your sister in a ruby class a couple of years ago and was impressed by the work ethic both of you displayed.

Could you talk more about how you got from "nobody cares" to the first funding that attracted your CTO? Was that the $20/day in FB ads?

</comment><comment><USER39> The video of this talk is available at [http://livestre.am/4OaXa](http://livestre.am/4OaXa)

Deena's talk starts at 31:00 mark.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's really inspiring to see an idea go from conception to 'success'! Thanks for sharing your timeline!

</comment><comment><USER41> Having to sign in to view a single product flies in the face of everything Ive read about successful ecom sites.

</comment><comment><USER42> Just tried signup and sign up is over http and https... ooops that does not sound good.

</comment><comment><USER43> $20 a day on FB ads for a few months. This.

<comment><USER36> There was a period in time when $500 or so in FB ads would result in a $5000 sale, so the math worked for me. FB ads work surprisingly well if you target them properly.

In my case, targeting males who were either married or not in a relationship, age 21-40, and then had a variety of interests really narrowed things down.

I gleaned the approach from looking at our 50 or so past customers who all fit that demographic.l

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Title changed now?

<comment><USER31> The original title was linkbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Lesson learned: Don't upload a fun, story-telling presentation online for fear that a third-party may submit it to HN where you will likely be ridiculed not only for not applying scientific-study-level-rigor to every bullet point and image you've placed on your slides, but also for events of your past that are constructed from nothing more than tenuous inference and speculation.

You guys are a lovely and welcoming bunch. I'm sure YC, successful startups, and potential founders really desire rockstars like you who've got this wondrous natural ability for unnecessary criticism.

<comment><USER46> More like Lesson learned: Don't upload a story board full of blatant lies, misrepresentation of facts and half truths and expect people to just fall down and worship the ground you walk on.

<comment><USER45> Big words for someone who just created an account to critique this submission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> So, she's non technical and somehow has a website that someone presumably set up, installed on a server and maintained etc? Or she's 'solo'? There's talk of a founder being cut out early on (cannot confirm or refute)... In short, there's parts to this story that are missing.

You can't just throw up your favourite flavour of CMS with a theme from themeforest and magically hit it off, there's technical considerations that need to be made.

3 Options really.

1\. She is technical and knows all about web development (no idea why she'd lie about that though)

2\. She did indeed have a founder she cut out.

3\. She wasn't solo on the project.

Something doesn't gel here.

<comment><USER47> She was running an agency before, it's possible she just just hired people to do work for her but they weren't a permanent part of the team.</comment></comment>