MikeCrotch posted:

At least you can buy drugs from Juggalos, a DE fucker will just try and sell you Urbit licences or something

Sundae posted:

I could go on forever on this topic. Going to keep it short because otherwise, three hours will pass and fifty pages of effortpost will appear. Primary sources here are my own experiences and the experiences of the writing community, plus articles and observations over the past few years.

For the supplier manipulation, check that article someone posted above me about Wal-Mart's practices. It's pretty accurate. Same thing with Amazon once you get to any degree of scale, and doubly so if you don't have a B&M backup presence. The more you rely on Amazon, the more money you make them, and the more money you stand to lose from not playing ball, the more likely that they'll gently caress with you.

On the e-book front, Amazon is constantly at war with both traditional publishers and self-publishers, trying to cut their share of the sales price as much as possible. They have everyone by the balls now that book stores are basically a thing of the past and every other ebook vendor decided they didn't like money. For most intents and purposes, self-publishers (who make up a huge portion of Amazon's book revenue now) don't actually have say in how much money they get in the end. Amazon's KU program pays them by pages read rather than cover price. Amazon has demonstrated, to anyone paying attention, that they will manipulate the payouts however they damned well please. They have also removed access to a lot of the information that used to be available to self-publishers so that they can't effectively be audited on any of their numbers. You can still sell through the default platform (where you set your price and get a fixed percentage royalty), but they manipulate your visibility in the store based on your participation in other programs.

Meanwhile, on the trad-pub front: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/12/amazon-hachette-ebook-publishing

This plays out over and over again. Anyone pushes back on Amazon during annual contract renegotiations, and suddenly their books can't be purchased anymore. Buy buttons just disappear, new releases have 2-4 week lead times, etc. As the only game in town these days, Amazon has trad-pubs by the balls as well. To add another issue (one source: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-war-against-publishers-like-hachette-2014-5), Amazon also charges trad-pub a "market development" fee of 5-7% on top of all the royalty splits, and often additional charges similar to the old co-op model from the very same bookstores they put out of business. (Want your book in the store? $. Want us to recommend it? $$. Want it to be up front and center where people see the cover clearly? $$$.)



Long story short, the less competition Amazon has with customers, the more awful they get to their suppliers, authors, publishers, etc. It's really not pretty right now how much they'll dick with you if they think they can and if they think you matter enough to dick with you.

Sundae posted:

Non Serviam posted:

What you wrote, as well as the sources you used, was very interesting. Thank you very much!

EDIT: Theranos withdrew the request for emergency clearance of their Zika test.
http://fortune.com/2016/08/31/theranos-zika-test-application/

quote:

While WrkRiot is not widely known, the start-up’s collapse has gripped Silicon Valley. Mr. Choi’s situation may be extreme, but the company’s implosion has a familiar ring to many who came west to be the next Mark Zuckerberg — but ended up instead at the next WrkRiot. Silicon Valley is always eager to celebrate its success stories, but the reality is that numerous tiny start-ups that few ever hear about form the tech industry’s dysfunctional underbelly.

“With the exception of the alleged fraud, almost anyone who has worked at a start-up has experienced most everything that went wrong at WrkRiot,” said Semil Shah, a start-up investor based in Menlo Park, Calif. “People don’t realize the word start-up is a broad concept that includes everything from a proven entrepreneur raising $15 million to a guy with money from friends and family.” To an outsider, he said, “they’re both the same.”

On Hacker News, an online forum for techies, WrkRiot’s tale has exploded into one of the most popular threads, attracting more than 500 comments, including one from a poster who said that the start-up’s experience “is pretty much a rite of passage here.” Tech blogs have also seized the tale; one called it “one of the ugliest start-up stories we’ve ever heard.”
...
Along with the start-up, Mr. Choi’s personal credibility is on the line. As he built WrkRiot, the entrepreneur said that he graduated from the Stern School of Business at New York University and that he worked at J. P. Morgan for nearly four years as an analyst. N.Y.U. and J. P. Morgan both said they had no record of Mr. Choi. At least one company listed on his LinkedIn profile also could not be found.

quote:

I took the initial phone screen in Los Angeles where I happened to be, and he asked me to fly out the next day to meet in Santa Clara. The responsibility of the less-than-24-hours flight wasn’t addressed, so I asked who would be covering it. When the CTO asked me to book it and told me it would be reimbursed later, I was hesitant and skeptical but followed through with blind faith. There’s no way a startup I found on Angel.co is going to screw me over, I thought.
...
My first paycheck was late. Jessica, Tom (our new project manager who started in June), and I were the only ones that received cashier’s checks on July 20th. My sign on bonus was not included. I asked about it and was told it was coming in the next check. The other employees received nothing and I’m not sure why. I can’t recall a time in my life where I was paid my wages in a cashier’s check so I requested a pay stub. Charlie told me that they wouldn’t be able to help with payroll until we moved over to Gusto, a new accounting system. He and Michael would get back to me on this. I didn’t like this answer. Considering this was my first payroll experience, I abruptly halted my apartment search and paid for a temporary Airbnb covering the first half of August. The boxes of what was left of my life remained in the back seat of my car. Something was up and I started feeling uncomfortable.

Around this time, Bruce and I were sharing personal concerns and he confided in me that he had let Michael borrow $50,000 from his personal savings. Did you read that? A startup employee gave his life savings to our CEO. He wasn’t the only one. Another biz dev team bro who was crashing on the CEO’s couch, Bobby, apparently lent Michael five figures too. In disbelief, I asked why he needed money when he has $2M already committed in the company. Bruce said that Michael had his offshore money tied up with the IRS because of unpaid taxes and essentially his assets were frozen until he went to court. These people are not related by blood or lifelong ties so why would they trust Michael enough to do this after only knowing him a few months? Again, I chalked it up to bro culture and secretly hoped they would get their money back.

MickeyFinn posted:

This isn't aimed at you specifically, but isn't market 'efficiency' great?

quote:

Around this time, Bruce and I were sharing personal concerns and he confided in me that he had let Michael borrow $50,000 from his personal savings

Gail Wynand posted:

People really should not work at these places if they do not have some sort of non technical business experience that lets them detect bullshitters and red flags.

Gail Wynand posted:

I work at an early stage startup and if my CEO ever asked me for a loan my rear end would be out the door.

People really should not work at these places if they do not have some sort of non technical business experience that lets them detect bullshitters and red flags.

I got to review our entire financial model and business plan upfront and anyone not willing to offer that transparency to a prospective senior exec is highly suspect.

Popular Thug Drink posted:

yeah 2.5 weeks later i had a new job. but jobs are hard enough to come by especially if you're first starting out that people are willing to put up with this crap. the only way to learn not to get burned is to get burned

Non Serviam posted:

EDIT: Theranos withdrew the request for emergency clearance of their Zika test.
http://fortune.com/2016/08/31/theranos-zika-test-application/

CommieGIR posted:

I thought Theranos was basically done for?

The Groper posted:

Ford and GM are going to crush Uber in the transition to self-driving cars if their current plans pan out, there's no way Uber can compete with a service that builds, maintains, and dispatches it's own fleet via ecosystem apps that work for both owner and non-owner users.

Gail Wynand posted:

I work at an early stage startup and if my CEO ever asked me for a loan my rear end would be out the door.

People really should not work at these places if they do not have some sort of non technical business experience that lets them detect bullshitters and red flags.

I got to review our entire financial model and business plan upfront and anyone not willing to offer that transparency to a prospective senior exec is highly suspect.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

They aren't dead until they've formally filed for Chapter 7.

peter banana posted:

My friend did this for way too long for some specious "marketing" company in Toronto. She'd always be telling me, "Oh, yeah I haven't got paid in like, 2 months." Yikes. You really can't be giving anyone more than maybe a week to get a proper cheque to you.

CommieGIR posted:

I thought Theranos was basically done for?

Solkanar512 posted:

Sorry that this is a few pages old, but assuming the cars actually work, wouldn't the manufacturers have to divest their business? It feels really close to Boeing running their own airline. Am I missing something there?

That being said, I think you're right - even the spun off companies would have a huge advantage over Uber.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Another day, another startup, WrkRiot (!) crashes in fraud.

nm posted:

Are you familar with a small airline known as United?
Not that Boeing refused to sell aircraft to other, but Boeing did found and own it until a manufacturer owning an airline was banned in 1934.

Non Serviam posted:

They're fighting that status.

They had a big conference with scientists, where they were going to put all doubts to rest.


... Then they didn't answer any question about their bullshit tech, and used their conference to shill their NEW AND IMPROVED tests for, among others, zika virus.

Now they back pedaled on that. It's beautiful

CommieGIR posted:

I guess the real question is how many actual Scientists and Engineers they can actually keep now? I doubt many are not spit shining their resumes and getting interviews.

withak posted:

I like how you can read the entire article and still not be sure exactly what WrkRiot (!) did. The author drops only the tiniest of hints in the middle.

nm posted:

Are you familar with a small airline known as United?
Not that Boeing refused to sell aircraft to other, but Boeing did found and own it until a manufacturer owning an airline was banned in 1934.

Sundae posted:

It's also not like trad-pubs treated the majority of authors any better, in the old days, than Amazon does now.

IndustrialApe posted:

Man, I got to watch them (the trad publishers) bully the public libraries when Amazon/Bertelsmann ate their lunch, not a pretty sight.

IndustrialApe posted:

Man, I got to watch them (the trad publishers) bully the public libraries when Amazon/Bertelsmann ate their lunch, not a pretty sight.

quote:

Books should just be free and nobody should get paid for them.

quote:

It was just a dumb thing. Then we put a chip in it. Now it's a smart thing.

Sundae posted:

Sadly, even as lovely as these things are, at least some of them represent real (useless) products, which is still more than 99% of the current SV startups will ever accomplish.

sarehu posted:

Books should just be free and nobody should get paid for them.

peter banana posted:

My friend did this for way too long for some specious "marketing" company in Toronto. She'd always be telling me, "Oh, yeah I haven't got paid in like, 2 months." Yikes. You really can't be giving anyone more than maybe a week to get a proper cheque to you.

Hillary Clintons Thong posted:

slow the gently caress down. Ebook wear and tear?

https://www.boston.com/news/technology/2014/06/27/why-its-difficult-for-your-library-to-lend-ebooks posted:

Publishers put restrictions not just on which ebooks libraries can offer, but how they can offer them. Some publishers only allow for an ebook to be borrowed 26 times before the library has to purchase the license again. Others opt for the license to expire after a year. And still others instead charge libraries significantly more than they do consumers for ebooks. For example, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s best-selling “Lean In,’’ released last year by Random House, was available as an ebook to consumers at $12.99, but cost libraries $74.85 to purchase. Librarians generally find this system perplexing, considering the overhead costs for creating an ebook—without physical production—are much lower than print books.

It would plainly violate copyright law for publishers to put such restrictions on libraries for paperback or hardcover books. That is covered by the “first-sale’’ doctrine of copyright law, which says once somebody buys something, they’re free to do what they like with it—donate it, resell it, or in the case of libraries, lend it out.

The thing about ebooks, though, is that libraries and consumers don’tbuy them, instead paying for the aforementioned license—which isn’t covered by first-sale doctrine. And that affords publishers the ability to set different prices for different customers. Their justification for library pricing: Since libraries can lend ebooks out to what otherwise might be customers, they should pay more to compensate for those perceived losses.

The licensing argument doesn’t just hold true for ebooks. It’s also the terminology used for digital copies of music, movies, and more. What they reflect, more than anything, is that U.S. copyright law is still waiting for a makeover that would put it better in line with the realities of the digital age, says Mitch Stoltz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Sundae posted:

Long story short, in order to counteract the fact that library books wear out / get damaged / whatever (thus requiring a library to buy new copies of the book) while e-books clearly don't, some major publishers built clauses into their e-book library licensing agreements that require the license to be renewed and paid for again after the e-book has been borrowed 26 times. This was put into place based on it taking approximately, by the publisher's estimation, 26 borrows before a paperback library book was damaged enough to warrant a replacement. It's a 'wear and tear' clause for e-books in order to avoid losing extra revenue due to digital book format.

Oh, and then they also charge the libraries approximately six times the going rate for an e-book license.

Sundae posted:

Long story short, in order to counteract the fact that library books wear out / get damaged / whatever (thus requiring a library to buy new copies of the book) while e-books clearly don't, some major publishers built clauses into their e-book library licensing agreements that require the license to be renewed and paid for again after the e-book has been borrowed 26 times. This was put into place based on it taking approximately, by the publisher's estimation, 26 borrows before a paperback library book was damaged enough to warrant a replacement. It's a 'wear and tear' clause for e-books in order to avoid losing extra revenue due to digital book format.

Oh, and then they also charge the libraries approximately six times the going rate for an e-book license.
In fairness, I believe these clauses have been dying (not the pricing differences, but the wear and tear clauses) because they are so patently ridiculous and make for such terrible optics once they're in the public eye.

CommieGIR posted:

I guess the real question is how many actual Scientists and Engineers they can actually keep now? I doubt many are not spit shining their resumes and getting interviews.