Nerdlife

This post on Hacker News got me thinking about the costs Dispora‘s going to have receiving all of their money and fulfilling their promises, so I did a little digging. The numbers below are estimates, but they should be fairly close to actual costs for these services (assuming no huge burst in donations over the next 6 days):

$ 5510 = $190k * 2.9% Amazon fees[1]
  1800 = 6k donations * $0.30 Amazon fees
  9500 = $190k * 5% for Kickstarter
  4150 = 5000 cds with jewel cases * $0.83 (random googling, I assume the "note from our team" will be on the jewel case insert)
  1380 = 400 sheets of stickers * $3.45 (zazzle, 20 sheet of stickers, 2 stickers per person)
 10200 = 3000 shirts * $3.40 (customink, Gildan 50/50 1 color on white front only)
  9000 = 3000 postage & packaging for shirts + stickers * $3
  2000 = 2000 postage & packaging for just stickers * $1
  1200 = "Turnkey hosting" for 600 people[2]
  2800 = 4 new computers*$700
======
$47540

[1] I’m not sure if Kickstarter gets a bulk discount here, or if it’s Dispora’s account history, so a volume discount may apply. I also assume all transactions are billed at the $10+ rate (2.9%) rather than the < $10 rate (5%) for simplicity.
[2] Turnkey hosting and phone support are hard to estimate...it may be more if they need to pay for phone support, but I think this is a reasonable number. I'm also including project hosting costs. I know they say plenty of hosting companies have offered their services, but you can't guarantee that will be there.

Keep in mind that this misses three big points:

1. Declined credit cards & canceled/fraudulent donations – I have no clue what the expected amount of these is
2. People who requested a gift for donating who never give their contact info
3. The huge overhead for packing/sending all of these items, though I imagine a day of pizza and soda for volunteers can get all of them packed (the con I used to help run had similar “mailing parties” that were fairly effective)

With that in mind you’re looking at about 25% of the funding going toward transaction fees and fulfilling the rewards. This leaves around $142,000 left for them, which is still plenty of money. Though I don’t want to think about what an accountant would say about this money and how much he would charge to make it legitimate.

Don’t get me wrong: I think Diaspora is a great idea and I’d love to see it succeed, but I wonder if the founders considered the logistical overhead to this whole thing. Granted, this would have been smaller had they only raised $10k, but it’s still a big task to undertake. I hope they’re ready for it and they don’t let us down.

As promised here’s the example code from the meetup I gave last Monday. It’s fairly small, so I only describe what it does briefly in the top comment. Feel free to use it how you wish (though if you make a lot of money off of it you owe me a t-shirt):

Read more…

Alternative title: OMGWTF I just quit my job!
Alternative alternative title: A better way to resign from a company

That’s right. I just gave notice that I’m leaving a great job with awesome coworkers and interesting problems. I’m trading all of that for the privilege of moving across the country, not taking a salary, and working 80 hours a week. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to continue doing this for a long time, rather than finding another job that pays actual money.

Shorter explanation: I’m moving to Silicon Valley to start a business.

Not too much to say right now about the startup. I got a funding offer I couldn’t turn down for an idea I really believe in. Expect more posts in the future, since they valley always does inspire more blogging in me. For now I don’t want to say too much about the idea itself, since we’re still fleshing a lot of things out, but I promise there will be some awesome posts about it in the future.

However, there is something to say about my current employer, TripAdvisor. Shortly put, they’ve been amazing. I got to work on awesome features (like mobile flight search, which just launched today…tripadvisor.com from a mobile phone). And not just work on them but have a major say in their direction. My coworkers were a lot of fun, and my boss was flexible and understanding.

I knew before I graduated that I would eventually leave my first employer to start a business (though I didn’t think it would be so soon). TripAdvisor made that an incredibly hard thing to do, which I commend them for. Hopefully I’ll be hiring soon, but until I open a Boston office, definitely apply for a position with them. If you’d like a contact within the company (not necessary, the engineering HR manager is a solid guy and will get your resume to the right place), just ask.

I’ll be out in Mountain View in early June. See you on TechCrunch .