interesting comments a few years ago, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9920121" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9920121</a>
I have come up against the same issue over the years. My company Qbix has been like a less monetarily successful BaseCamp (neé 37signals), with a different, more libertarian mantra: decentralize social networking and that will fix things!<p>I have persevered — for a decade through hard fought laying of runway and making payroll — through downvotes on HN lol... in bringing this vision to reality since 2011 because I believe it is needed:<p><a href="https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-change-the-world/" rel="nofollow">https://qbix.com/blog/2019/03/08/how-qbix-platform-can-chang...</a><p>Really. We have never taken VC. We were funded mostly on our own revenues. I reinvested $700,000 from our modest revenues and over the last 10 years built a sort of Wordpress for Web 2.0 for organizations to own their own data etc. And disintermediate the Web.<p>Not being VC funded, we don’t have a vision to build a tech monopoly. Instead, we are doing to Facebook and Google what the Web did to AOL. What Wordpress did to blogging. What Linux did to operating systems. we are doing that to Web 2.0 — building an ecosystem.<p>Except this time in addition we are using crypto to monetize open source and digital content (including journalism). The token part is optional but micropayments (who remembers xanadu?) are going to increasingly play a role in disrupting the centralized economics of the VC-funded hyper-capitalist Web.<p>Early thoughts:<p><a href="https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-contributions/" rel="nofollow">https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-contributi...</a><p>Now, the vision has crystallized — we are going from feudalism to a free market:<p><a href="https://qbix.com/token" rel="nofollow">https://qbix.com/token</a><p>(Read the last link without focusing on the token part. It is only to facilitate micropayments. The main goal is to foster collaboration instead of competition — like Wikipedia instead of Britannica.<p>EXPECT US!<p>Hehe. But seriously, would love feedback about the above. Who could we be partnering with? What have we missed? We have a big responsibility.<p>If you want to help us, or drop a line privately, it’s qbix.com/about<p>(In the past I have been downvoted for posting our vision but over the years it’s been less and less downvotes as we are able to actually deliver on it... I look forward to the day when Qbix is able to help rescue society from the centralized Web 2.0 and do what the Web 1.0 did after AOL - unleash trillions in value not owned by a single company).