Hate to be the guy to say it, but when I first heard about Cohost I turned to my wife and said, "They gotta have an Omelas kid, or they're fucked." If thirty years of high-stakes tech entrepreneurship taught me anything, it's this: you have to cause unlimited suffering in order to make a viable website. And for the record, no, I don't like it either, but you can't just ignore how the world works and coast on hopes and dreams, can you?
Most of my startup consults these days, they show me a plan for technology, staffing, roadmap or whatever, but I don't see an Omelas plan. Some of them don't even know what that is, which is crazy, hello, it's 2024... so I go over the basics with them:
- WHO will be your Omelas kid?
- HOW much will they suffer?
- WHAT will you do about the ones who walk away from your platform/service? And DON'T say write a story about them, that's not good enough.
