After this, I'll stop! JMR
Subject: Re: Welcome to Sealand. Now Bugger Off. From: Ryan Lackey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 01:21:33 +0000 Quoting R. A. Hettinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > I don't think we saw this here. In light of Ryan's discussion on > cypherpunks... > > http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven_pr.html That article was actually written primarily from a visit Simson and I had to Sealand in late March 2000; the first time I'd ever actually *been* to Sealand. (although I had a bunch of diagrams, photos, etc.) I still don't see how Simson got away with calling me short; I'm taller than he is (IIRC)! Maybe it's because I was sleeping the whole 8 hour trip) I'm kind of amazed at how accurately that predicted the future. 1) Exodus is chapter 11 :) (and I think shorting their stock may have funded HavenCo to some extent, indirectly) 2) No actual problems with the UK government; quiet tolerance it seems 3) Laws did, actually, get worse in the US/UK/etc. since starting; RIP, DMCA. This is always a safe bet. 4) Once things are up and working, it's pretty stable and boring. 5) Lots of media interest (continuing to this day; we still have 1-2 press crews/week on average, although more documentary or in-depth press and less news in the past 6 months or so) Unexpected: 1) Global economic collapse, war, etc. 2) [Prince] Michael and Alan (our security/operations manager) being so useful; originally we didn't expect much help from them, but it turns out they're both better at actually running businesses than anyone else in the company (aside from actual technical details); pirate radio is a good background, I suppose. Michael is our CEO, and it seems to work well. 3) Our customers actually use maybe 10-20 Kbps each, average, not >5 Mbps. We've focused on the lower-bandwidth high-value transactional clients, which works well. 4) We didn't start selling stuff until winter 2000; original goal was summer 2000. This was primarily due to various delays in technical implementation. 5) Once we started selling service we were cashflow-positive after 5 months, and profitable a few months later. 6) No serious technical challenges. 7) "Giving away service to charitable organizations" is not a very important thing, nor is "pleasing the cypherpunk community" the ultimate end of marketing; the people who actually pay for service are a lot more traditional than we'd expected. 8) Finding suitable sites for expansion is actually pretty difficult. 9) Investors actually contributing a lot more than just cash (pretty active participation, especially by Avi and Joichi) 10) Sales cycle for most customers is something like 3-6 *months*, not 3-6 days. 11) Random business details (accounting, etc.) are quite annoying. 12) Various outside services we would want to use folding commercially, and general lack of progress on a lot of things. I think all of our original vendors are now either chapter 11 or have refocused operations entirely. -- Ryan Lackey [RL7618 RL5931-RIPE] [EMAIL PROTECTED] CTO and Co-founder, HavenCo Ltd. +44 7970 633 277 the free world just milliseconds away http://www.havenco.com/ OpenPGP 4096: B8B8 3D95 F940 9760 C64B DE90 07AD BE07 D2E0 301F --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.e-gold.com/stats.html lets you observe the e-gold system's activity now!
