[A close friend of mine sent this to me via email.—whit537]
Here is the evaluation as promised/threatened:
What is gittip? How is gittip not just you? (Paying people out of pocket, pushing a personal goal of $2,000, writing essays about your inspirations.) How do other people resonate with gittip, beyond wanting free money from their posse?
The answer represents what gittip will become. It is your market / dedicated userbase, who will represent the drift of gittip, if indeed you want gittip to be run by them. (This is the same conversation we had about your lecture school project.)
I see dowski, thiloplans, and lyndsysimon on the forum... are you going after those people? Do you deal with them directly, outside of their services? Or are they just watching you run gittip & chiming in on your thought processes?
I think of you as being slowed down by these questions... but I wonder how a sui generis business like gittip -- built on trust, run on the absolute lowest bottom line -- is to survive without them.
Blog. Attached: table overview of all gittip blog posts. There is a running theme: in blue process, you're providing useful, clear insight into your open company; in yellow process, you're sort of stroking your dick under the pretense of explaining gittip.
You're asking "What is an open company?" "Is personal funding a viable model?" "What is the purpose of gittip?" and deliberately giving casual, poorly-assembled answers. You owe it to gittip to do your homework, build a case and make your conclusions clear: the answers to these questions are the speaking points of your success.
Also, why can't one comment on this blog? Alternately, why isn't every blog post that openly addresses an issue/asks a question immediately made into a ticket? Being denied a direct response seems to go against the spirit of the enterprise.
To do a passable service your blog must both INFORM and PROVOKE. Each post should end with either a nagging QUESTION or a direct CALL TO ACTION. I only make this obvious Communications 101 note because the problem posts seem singularly self-satisfied, quenching discussion where they could encourage it.
Users. Attached: marketing divisions gloss
This is just a gloss on how you could approach reaching the gittip baton out to the people who would run with it. You or someone else should be spending 1-3 hours a day on sales: emailing, chatting, calling. It would result directly in growth.
Not enough money. You are trying to start a Wikipedia with no capital. It has never worked.
You need a Bomis. Who with means has endorsed you without proviso? Someone should be paying for your hosting, your development. Someone should be tipping you significantly every week. Find this person.
Not enough money II. Wracking my brain to understand your "vaulted" money scenario. Are the donations in your bank account? gittip's? Why is this information hard to find?
(If it's not already happening, I would at least want to localize all donations, to make each gittip event completely fluid, and easier to document.)
Every "run Gittip" issue simultaneously tells me, the user, too much and too little. My money is both too small to be moved, and too small to document a process.
If, through your string of transaction failures and hiccups, you frame the message, "2012 isn't ready for gittip," people say, "Alright then." Simplify your process, even if in documentation alone.
Not enough money III. "I need 50 freelance hours, I have this eccentric opinion, I need more users." Your poverty aesthetic may be a pointed display of your "full transparency," or be personally gratifying but, as you are the driving personality of this thing, it's narrowing your base by making you seem erratic and fly-by-night -- poor attributes for manager of a company whose basic function is to move money.
Additionally, you don't have equity in your own company. Even at the most basic level, you must give yourself at least $350 a week more than you're currently making. Bottom line: if you, the lord and creator, are at the top of the leader board with $165/week, gittip isn't viable.
Hit me back and I will elucidate or enlarge upon any of these concepts.