This is a really compelling idea – but I'm having a little trouble making the leap from the high level description to what it would mean for my projects in more concrete terms. Would it be possible to show off some example tests that the model generated and maybe even a story about how the generated tests caught a bug before the code made it to production?
Readit NewsJohnFriel commented on Show HN: Checksum – generate and maintain end-to-end tests using AI · Posted by u/Bootstrapper909
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
Short enough to copy and paste. Here it is, from http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html
# The Artix Phase
We should have expected this. It's very common for a group of founders to go through one lame idea before realizing that a startup has to make something people will pay for. In fact, we ourselves did.
Viaweb wasn't the first startup Robert Morris and I started. In January 1995, we and a couple friends started a company called Artix. The plan was to put art galleries on the Web. In retrospect, I wonder how we could have wasted our time on anything so stupid. Galleries are not especially excited about being on the Web even now, ten years later. They don't want to have their stock visible to any random visitor, like an antique store. [2]
Besides which, art dealers are the most technophobic people on earth. They didn't become art dealers after a difficult choice between that and a career in the hard sciences. Most of them had never seen the Web before we came to tell them why they should be on it. Some didn't even have computers. It doesn't do justice to the situation to describe it as a hard sell; we soon sank to building sites for free, and it was hard to convince galleries even to do that.
Gradually it dawned on us that instead of trying to make Web sites for people who didn't want them, we could make sites for people who did. In fact, software that would let people who wanted sites make their own. So we ditched Artix and started a new company, Viaweb, to make software for building online stores. That one succeeded.
We're in good company here. Microsoft was not the first company Paul Allen and Bill Gates started either. The first was called Traf-o-data. It does not seem to have done as well as Micro-soft.
In Robert's defense, he was skeptical about Artix. I dragged him into it. [3] But there were moments when he was optimistic. And if we, who were 29 and 30 at the time, could get excited about such a thoroughly boneheaded idea, we should not be surprised that hackers aged 21 or 22 are pitching us ideas with little hope of making money.
Wow, this blew my mind! I read all the pg essays when I first started programming so I must have read this at some point!
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
I love this idea and I'm sure you'll figure out the pricing stuff eventually. I have to admit the whole focus on price kind of throws me off a bit. Whenever I go looking for pretty things, be it art or furniture or decorative objects I rarely start by looking at the price – I look at the thing itself and if it strikes a nerve then I figure out things like "can I afford this?"
To that end, I'd like a view where the focus is the art itself. Not who made it, not what it costs, not even the name of the piece. Let me discover that as I go, show me full screen pictures I can swipe through on my screen, and tap or click to learn more about the piece. Make the art the focus and put everything else in the background, Not even showing it till I'm interested in learning more. That's what I love about going to galleries – the art takes center stage and if you want to learn more there's a tiny sign next to it, and if you want more still you talk to whoever works there but the art comes first. I feel like your site is trying a bit too hard to make a sale. I absolutely agree that artists should be paid for their art, and I'm happy to pay for art that I care for, but ultimately I just want pretty things. Show me the pretty things first, then let's talk business when I find something I like. I'm sorry if this comes off as too callous!
Also – and this is probably a really difficult problem to solve – I don't really know what I'm looking for in art. I just know some things I like, but probably not all. I love Monet and other impressionist painters, but I also love old Japanese woodblock prints like the great wave. I'm also a huge fan of cubism and I can't get enough of art nouveau. I'm not a huge fan of abstract art, but I like some. I love evocative photography, especially in black and white. I feel like maybe my taste profile fits a multi-spoke radar chart, where each data point is a relative preference rather than a binary I like this or that type tick box filter. I'm not exactly sure what I mean by all this, just that your search does nothing to help me, and I'm probably not gonna spend too much time looking at page after page of stuff that may or may not be interesting to me. I would 100% subscribe to a feed that fits my profile though, and especially so if it's smart enough to also understand other types of art I don't know about, but perhaps might fit my profile anyway. I guess what I'm saying is, if your site could be my personalized art dealer, there's a good chance I'll spend more money then I probably should.
> To that end, I'd like a view where the focus is the art itself.
This is something we've been trying to figure out! If you have an account, you can view this: https://artinres.com/recommendations -- you're randomly shown one work at a time and you can like, dislike or skip. We use the data to recommend you additional artworks, and soon we're going to roll out a digest / news feed of new recommendations for users.
> I don't really know what I'm looking for in art. I just know some things I like, but probably not all. I love Monet and other impressionist painters, but I also love old Japanese woodblock prints like the great wave. I'm also a huge fan of cubism and I can't get enough of art nouveau. I'm not a huge fan of abstract art, but I like some. I love evocative photography, especially in black and white. I feel like maybe my taste profile fits a multi-spoke radar chart, where each data point is a relative preference rather than a binary I like this or that type tick box filter.
I'm very much with you on this. In my experience, taste has less to do with discrete, obviously-nameable qualities like a certain color or subject matter, and much more to do with the way the parts fit together to make a cohesive yet surprising whole. That said, we had to start somewhere -- and the filters have been pretty useful to a portion of our users.
Like you mentioned, as more people use the site, we're building up the ability to recommend art to people and we anticipate that being a rewarding way to discover new art.
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
John, this is an industry with a huge graveyard of failed startups doing the same thing. And the only ones left - Artsy, just went through a huge firing and recapping and I wouldnt give them long. Leaf group is trying to get rid of Saatchi in a fire sale and ArtFinder is barely break even with a team less than a dozen and making money from charging artists.
So given this idea does not seem different than the many before (and far from the 10x YC talks about when the needed improvement of a product to win a space), what am I missing?
Is there an underlying technology, unique community angle, or do you believe the timing wasnt before from the time of Artix to 2019 but 2020 is the year.
I love artists and design, and am shocked this has not happened yet, so Im rooting for you.
> I love artists and design, and am shocked this has not happened yet, so Im rooting for you.
I really appreciate it! And I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your questions.
One aspect is that we're not business people looking at this problem in a cold, analytic light: we care about the wellbeing of artists and the joy that people get from having art in their homes. I know from my experience as an artist that most artists are suspicious of new businesses – but we've found a way to work with artists where they really trust us. We do more for our artists than just provide a self-service tool for them to list commodities and get some sales – we coach them on selling; we help them build community with other artists; we're building new features to fit their workflows; and we'll even hop on the phone with them and let them vent to us about life as an artist, haha.
Artsy seems like a great platform, but we're mostly targeting a different type of buyer than they seem to be. We're also working with artists directly, rather than through their galleries. So, despite both being online art marketplaces, I think it's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison between us and them.
Regarding the rest of the startup graveyard, when we talk to our users on the buyer side of our marketplace, they haven't heard of things like Saatchi, or even Artsy, in many cases. So I think that, to a significant degree, the mental category of "place to buy art online" is still open, at least for people who aren't already experienced art collectors.
So I think in our case the answer is timing + obsessive attention to our users.
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
Probably a noob question - but how do I know that I'm not being overcharged? As a matter of fact, how do I even know what's the right price for a piece of artwork?
May be a long term thing, but I also think you should focus on expanding and growing your market size. Create blog posts, and videos on art, artists, art appreciation and advertize them. Educate audiance and get more people interested in it. That might percolate to making your business bigger.
Not a noob question! It's a deep and interesting question. :)
Pricing art is harder than pricing most other things since artworks are, by definition, non-fungible / unique. This makes it hard for there to be a "correct" price. For the most part, we address this by letting our artists set their own prices (they have more information than we do.) Other factors that play in are the cost of materials and labor (often hundreds of dollars per painting) and the potential for the artwork to go up in price some day, like a stock.
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
In addition to being NSFW, it's also a print, and I would be annoyed if I got it and didn't realize that. I think it's very easy to skip the line that says "limited edition print" especially given the material description being the original materials.
This is a great catch! Thank you for pointing that out.
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
- I don't really care much about the Covid-19 relief. If you are donating then good for you and for helping the community. But I do actually avoid websites/services that try to advertise donations as a selling point. I can donate myself if I want to.
- Also, do not penalize artists who do not want to donate to Covid-19. That's their business. They might be giving more, through other ways, to the community. They might be tight with money. Whatever. But the way the website is presenting it is that these guys are the generous guys.
- I don't know how New York is but this photo is NSFW and probably not so for families: https://artinres.com/artworks/marika-wagle-day-13-2020 You might want to have a filter for that.
> - I don't really care much about the Covid-19 relief. If you are donating then good for you and for helping the community. But I do actually avoid websites/services that try to advertise donations as a selling point. I can donate myself if I want to.
> - Also, do not penalize artists who do not want to donate to Covid-19. That's their business. They might be giving more, through other ways, to the community. They might be tight with money. Whatever. But the way the website is presenting it is that these guys are the generous guys.
More than anything else, we rolled out the 'COVID-19 support' features because of what our artists were telling us. We got flooded by artists telling us that they wanted to use their art sales to raise money for COVID-19 relief. But we also knew that many artists are tight on cash, so we said "instead of sacrificing your cut, let us give our cut, and you can keep yours during this insane time." The last thing we wanted was to penalize anyone.
> - I don't know how New York is but this photo is NSFW and probably not so for families: https://artinres.com/artworks/marika-wagle-day-13-2020 You might want to have a filter for that.
You're right! It's time for us to implement filtering based on sensitive content.
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
The cut is too high for the platform. I guess you take this number from Google/Apple store's commission.
The difference is software on Google's store has infinite leverage and takes almost 0 to scale sales. Every piece of art takes lots of work and cannot scale in the same way. Art works do not scale like software.
With this cut, I feel your platform is taking advantage of artists (they do not know where to sell) rather than helping them.
Even auction commission is only between 12 & 25%.
Early on, when Art in Res was just an idea, we played with a model where we took zero commission and monetized other ways. But, when we talked to our artists about it, they were skeptical and would ask "but how will you make money?"
I hear you that, when looked at in a certain light, it might seems high – but we work closely with our artists and they seem to all like that our incentives are aligned. Plus, we do our best to use that 30% in ways that benefit them, e.g. by guaranteeing that they get paid if someone absconds with their work without paying it all the way off.
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
What happens if a customer stops making monthly payments?
Does the financing model work by offloading all risk to the artist?
Are there some protections?
We take on the risk (it's one of the main reasons for our commission). If someone stops paying, either they send their artwork back to the artist or, in the worst case scenario, we pay the artist their full cut at a loss to us.
JohnFriel commented on Launch HN: Art in Res (YC W20) – Buy art directly from artists · Posted by u/JohnFriel
My main qualm is the hijacking of the browser back button. I despise when sites do this, and I know I'm not alone.
Other than that the design is excellent. I like that you list SKUs on the main page and that there isn't a lot of cruft or excessive negative space.
Totally with you on this. It's super annoying! We're working on a fix.