1y ago

You’ve just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription | Once upon a time there was a company called Miku who wasn’t making quite enough money...

www.theregister.com $400 baby monitor vendor demands monthly subscription

Once upon a time there was a company called Miku who wasn't making quite enough money...

You’ve just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription | Once upon a time there was a company called Miku who wasn’t making quite enough money...::Once upon a time there was a company called Miku who wasn't making quite enough money...

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I forget the name of it, but a number of years ago, there was a startup that wanted to make communication devices for hikers. They could transmit short messages to each other. Anyway VCs came in and asked, where’s the MRR? We’re not investing unless there’s monthly revenue.
It’s all just greed. You can’t just have a device and be good. Investors are constantly chasing the quarterly growth.
It’s disgusting.
- It's modern capitalism.
  Making 10 million a month for 10 years isn't as good as going from 1 million a month up to 10 over five years.
  The important part isn't the total profit, it's the increase in stock price.
  This leads to a churn of companies as they're pushed past the breaking point because by then investors have sold and moved on to the next.
  The only companies that survive are huge corporations that buy up smaller ones to do the same process.
  
  American society decided that the GE model was not only working, but needed to be generalized.
- A lot of people don't understand that GPS requires no cell service to function, so it's no surprise that many accept that they have to pay monthly for a "service* that has no ongoing support costs to the seller.
  
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but GPS doesn't allow for communication. Not sure I understand what you're saying.
  
  I wasn't meaning to refer to hiking situation directly, just giving an example of how people don't always understand enough about a service to know if they should need to pay for it.
  Sorry for the confusion.
  
  That makes sense!
- Aprs already exists and is optimal for hikers. A relatively lightweight base station at good height can get you hundreds of miles pretty reliably or tens of thousands of miles if you really really try and get lucky.
- And even when you do make such a product, there's overwhelming marketing spend against you to make sure no one knows about your product.
  It's massively frustrating to just want to make good products but knowing that the wider business context demands that you get recurring revenue or otherwise it is imperative that you fail. Your success would fundamentally undermine rent seeking, and that's a bigger existential threat than any other mere competitor.

76 comments