Thinking about quadratic mechanisms (voting, funding, attention) thanks to discussion this morning. Might have been mildly nerdsniped
Conversation
Anyone tried something like quadratic consulting billing?
1st hour in a month costs $100, 2nd hour costs $200 etc. You can buy my entire 40x4=160 hour inventory in a month for ~100x160^2/2 = $1.28m (anyone? Bill? Jeff? Elon?) or 160 individuals each get a $100 hour for $16k
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Intrigued enough I kinda want to experiment
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Or consider a salon style billing model a la gitcoin… the more people want a group session, the more the cost of the time gets subsidized by those who want 1:1 time
This could also be a way to subsidize shared rides on lyft/uber because you’re lowering carbon by sharing
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Or combine the two. Say I hold a weekly group consulting salon with 5 spots. 1st session costs $100, second $200 etc. I maximize my session max if same people show up every week. Clock resets every month so 1 meeting/month = $100 but 4/month = $1000/mo
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This creates interesting churn. If demand for 4 sessions/mo is only 2 people, 3 spots open up at lower prices periodically
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Or say $100+n for your nth hour for a non-resetting slow ratchet. After a year, your rate is $152.
If value is compounding, it will easily beat a linear ratchet (quadratic total)
If you stop/pause, maybe the integrator unwinds as we say in controls.
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Or a monthly auction where you bid for 1, 2, 3, or 4 hours, and I just fill the time with 4s, 3s, 2s, 1s in reverse order. An easy knapsack problem basically. You get invoiced just once, for $100, $300, $600, or $1000.
Scheduling is a wrinkle. Adds a spectrum auction element
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I think a Hollywood celebrity might have such a problem (basically a sibyl attack) but at ordinary scale the value is not worth the cost of coordinating the attack, and it might even be an open feature. Eg a company sends different people to sessions depending on topic
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Replying to @vgr
what will you do about the problem of collusion?
someone sending 5 people to ask the questions they want
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For eg, say I run a 4-topic monthly cycle devoted to consulting on technology, marketing, strategy, and finance, a company could send a different different middle manager rep to each for $400 but a wannabe-CEO trying to develop all 4 areas would pay $1000.
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This seems weirdly equitable 🤔
Specialized career dev support is cheap, general development costs you a premium since you’ll make more money if you become CEO
The underlying narrative is accessibility+affordability without pro-bono charity. As a consultant you learn a lot by serving a mix of clients at all stages. Contrary to vanity positioning of “prestige” consulting, you shouldn’t only work with F100 CEOs even if you could.
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I’ve never found a good solution to the problem of working with pre-funding startups or small biz at a price they can afford, is worthwhile for me, and has net positive expected value for them. I dislike both charity and the sense of taking easy money for support with low EV
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Actually, the other end is the same way. I’ve never consulted for F100 C-suite (SVP-level max). There’s a weird signaling economy at both ends — pro-bono charity for the poor, “prestige” billing for hobnobbing with F100 CEOs. In both, the real value exchange is swamped
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Many halo-effect consultant types do a barbell halo of $1000+/hr for CEOs and $0 for “deserving” young startups and pious nonprofits. They work hard on their image TED talks, airport bestsellers) to the point where the PR value of association with them is the main value they add.
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I really can’t do this. The theater gets to me. The market is either irrationally distorted at both ends, or simply a market for a different service pretending to be consulting, depending on how how you think of it.
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Anyhow… quadratic consulting might be yet another quadratic thing. Other ideas?
Quadratic rideshare
Quadratic CSA veggies
Quadratic cigarette/alcohol pricing/taxation
Quadratic rationing under scarcity (eg gasoline now)
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Gaming economies
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Replying to @vgr
hmm something that comes to mind is pricing inside games
i think rn there's commonly discount on big amounts of "tokens" but maybe it should be the opposite and it could help establish a base, disincentivizing too much whaling
F2P is too dominant but it could be an alternative
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