Dorion Mode

Success to Date

We started with 3 pilot clients September this year. Each took the study heavy option. Two are in a group pacing at two sessions a week and the other is once a week. None had substantial command line experience and after 20 sessions with the twice weekly group they've : grasped command line usage and system administration in a text only environment, compiled the entire system from source following the Gales build recipe, installed and configured the system, installed and configured the router we provisioned, generated test GPG keys, transferred data between online and offline machines via Data Diode, V pressed TRB and have their node syncing.

With FUCKGOATS usage and Coreboot build and BIOS flashing remaining, this proof of concept gives us confidence our program can turn potential into relatively robust resourcefulness in 25 sessions. With the knowledge, skills and reference notes they acquired, they have a high probability of reproducing the hardware and software environment provisioned independently. If not completely, we've saved them substantial time and they're much more informed as to what are the important questions to ask.

2020 Projections

I have a soft commitment from a financial adviser from my meat-WoT that he'll be starting in February 2020 and expects to refer 9-10 of his clients over the year. He may start in a group of 3 in February ; we're meeting face to face Nov 25th to game plan further.

We also have soft commitments locally, one of which preferred simply to not be our initial client ¹⁰. Despite lingering in the online shadows hindering our local relationship development to a degree, we have developed enough relationships locally such that 5-10 clients over next year is not a stretch. With that being said, January and February will likely tell us a lot about what the year holds in store. The more clients we close and on board earlier, the more likely we have referrals in the 2nd and 3rd quarters.

Taking the more conservative 5 referrals from the north and 5 local clients all at the $10k upfront payment option, that's $100k revenue. With Jacob primarily instructing and me selling, we've agreed to 30% going to the instructor, 30% going to sales and 40% to the company to replenish hardware stocks and retain capital for future expansion. When we're referred business ¹¹ the referral fee is paid from the 30% sales commission. At present, we've decided it's not advantageous to operate from an office and have been delivering sessions at either the office or home of the client. The $2,500 value we place on the hardware builds in a mark up on the cost of the parts and refurbishing when required.

Up until now, our marketing has mainly consisted of meeting and talking to people in person. We plan to work referrals as much as we can, but a broader strategy for lead acquisition needs to be planned and implemented.

Operating Considerations

With the curriculum now developed, we estimate 30 minutes of preparation per 90 minute session for the instructor to deliver quality to study heavy clients. Thus, 37.5 hrs + 12.5 hrs = 50 hrs of instructor time. At 20 clients all doing individual sessions, that's 1000 hours or 20 hours a week on a 50 week year. Practice rarely works out as clean as the numbers and this doesn't consider commute time, which will be dependent on the location of the sessions, but this shows at optimistic demand levels our capacity to deliver under this two man operation is far from being maxed out.

To support remote clients, we're most likely to carry out the initial 2-4 sessions ¹² in person to kick things off and will need to build out infrastructure and processes to deliver sessions when being face to face isn't feasible. Using a tmux shared session on a server combined with a phone or video call is looking like the best way to implement remote delivery at present, but we still need to test it to work out whatever kinks there are.

Beyond

While we think the service we're delivering is important, we don't want to necessarily be personally drilling ls and cd into the heads of beginners long term. We expect to reach a threshold of developing sufficiently resourceful clients such that new, more interesting and profitable opportunities emerge. That is, this initial phase will create a new market and bootstrap other ventures ¹³. What that threshold is ¹⁴ and what those opportunities may be will in large part depend on who the clients are. At the same time, we don't necessarily want to completely abandon a quality service we've poured substantial time and effort into. Thus, managing to build processes and people such that we can delegate the delivery of the basic training and administration and steer this business at a higher level will be an ongoing focus.

1. Jacob Welsh & Robinson Dorion. [↩]
2. from The Soul of an Individualist essay from For the New Intellectual [↩]
3. 
   dorion: I think the problem is they're aiming for the masses rather than elite. think bitcoin can/will/is for liberating poor. so they push fast-food technology.
   spyked: lulz @ "fast-food technology". I'm wondering how this translates to software in technical terms. is it just the inflation of code, or what?
   diana_coman: spyked: fast-food tech seems to me very aptly put, really; think of it: shiny and BIG, cheap and available in 1001 varieties of the same thing, "attractive" if you don't look much/haven't seen much else, shitty content and abismal quality that will screw you up in the end; what's there not to fit, really.
   diana_coman: spyked: + there is that important part "you don't have to do it yourself!!"
   diana_coman: make it out of whatever shit you find, pre-packaged solutions tech or food-wise.
   spyked: diana_coman, I can quite see the "one size fits all"/"pre-packaged silver bullet" angle. I'm only mildly curious what this says about the code itself, e.g. I looked at the google-android code at one point and it was grossly overengineered. and I suppose that's also the case with code that's otherwise proven to be working under extreme conditions, such as the linux kernel.
   spyked: imho useful to make the distinction between "complexity for fast consumption" and "complexity that gives a huge productivity boost"
   ossabot: (trilema) 2018-06-05 mircea_popescu: "thetarpit blog scaffolding is a few kLoC of CL, but lacks *any* editor-side interface" << understand something : i publish more than anyone, and by anyone we don't mean solo operators, we mean whole fucking outfits. there's a reason for this. the fact that trilema is comfortable to me provides those last edges of extra productivity and intellectual leverage that convert exceptional performance into mindblowing performance. t
   diana_coman: possibly; at the other extreme, the copy/paste/autogen horrors are anything *other* than overengineering, lol.
   diana_coman: spyked: heh, yes, the two types of complexity mirroring the two types of simplicity
   ossabot: (trilema) 2019-10-31 diana_coman: there's all sorts of simple and not all of it boring; that there though would be the boring-simple, more like the simple remains of a cut-out than the simple path to the core of an intricacy.
   diana_coman: but fast-food is not really about no-complexity at all, quite on the contrary it would seem to me that it's precisely a lot of complexity just of the wrong kind (it's industrial for a reason, after all)
   dorion: http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-11-01#1008384 << and building off diana_coman's comment, I see at least a couple angles. the first is who the technology is designed for. it seems since the '80s there has been a major push, primarily by aapl and msft, for computers for the masses, i.e. lowest common denominator, 'over 1 billion served'.
   ossabot: Logged on 2019-11-01 06:32:40 spyked: http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/ossasepia/2019-10-29#1008077 <-- lulz @ "fast-food technology". I'm wondering how this translates to software in technical terms. is it just the inflation of code, or what?
   dorion: this aim lead to 'point and click' (visual/spacial) rather than command prompt (verbal) usage modality. 'it should be so easy grandma can use it,' etc. further, the incorrect labeling of learned behaviour as 'intuitive', which really means luser ought never have to think, read manual or even error messages.
   ossabot: (trilema) 2016-09-14 asciilifeform: 'the only intuitive notation is the tit' or how did it go.
   dorion: To compensate for low quality user, all sorts of complexity needs to be built in, which is one part of the code inflation. another secondary part, described by naggum iirc (but don't have link handy) is demand for ever more 'programmers'. excess demand lowers quality on the creation side combined with sillycon valley, 'move fast and break things' so we can 'scale' (nevermind profitably) and sell
   dorion: to the suckers on the public markets.
   diana_coman: 'point and click' aka click-and-cluck
   ossabot: Logged on 2019-08-29 19:13:57 diana_coman: shrysr: different yes but not better; it's usually touch-screens that they throw at kids from nursery, yes; + "learning to program by click-and-cluck"
   diana_coman: and all of it coming from the core cause of too much money distributed to idiots; it makes for perverse incentives and the inevitable result of products made for them.
   dorion: lol at click-and-cluck
   dorion: more technically, "I'll import entire library rather than re-implement the one function I 'need'". and then the 'library' imports libraries.
   ossabot: (trilema) 2018-08-21 mircea_popescu: Mocky he has a point, "library" is oreilly-ism. before the free/open source struggle for power, it was rather a teaching tool.
   dorion: which leaves us in dark modern ages where can't buy professional computer -- everything is 'sysco' -- as well documented in http://loper-os.org , the logs, etc. [↩]
4. For the time being, we're going to market with the system we have and know. As Cuntoo/TMSR OS become further developed and better known to us, we'll decide at that juncture how we ought to change. [↩]
5. We give them a tour of the kitchen, show what it looks like to follow recipes, cut vegetables, marinate the meat, which knobs of the stove to turn and give them enough warning in a controlled environment so they don't set a grease fire and burn down the house. [↩]
6. Evaluate and reinforce retention of knowledge from prior sessions [↩]
7. The latter four are originally developed by Jacob Welsh. [↩]
8. Training Sessions are either once or twice per week. [↩]
9. Bitcoin, cash, check and ACH accepted in that order of preference. [↩]
10. "I like what you're doing, I see value in it for me and friends to refer come to mind. However, I don't want to pay you to develop your service, I want something developed and tested." [↩]
11. Our preference is for referral agents to first be clients so they know what they're referring. [↩]
12. For example, I'll likely spend a week in Vermont first week of February, then client(s) will travel with me to Panama the second week. [↩]
13. E.g. With 25 clients who run their own nodes, manage GPG and IRC and whose trust we've earned, one thought has been to use our centrality in the network to broker trades between them. [↩]
14. Could be 10, 25, 100 depending on the whos and what we do with them. [↩]