Re: Boxbe, was e-postage stamps

>I note that Esther Dyson continues to try drumming up support for e-postage.
>
>Probably because she invested in the notorious C/R spammer, Boxbe ;-)

Other way around.

Esther's spam problem is not like other people's spam problem.  She
has large numbers of random strangers pitching business plans to her,
asking her to speak at conferences, and such.  It's all from real
people sent only to her, but there's little of it she wants to read.
It has always seemed to me that a $25 or $100 reading fee would lead
to adverse selection, but we're unlikely ever to know.

I had a very pleasant lunch with Thede Loder, the head guy at Boxbe,
before it collapsed.  He was entirely aware that C/R sucks, and the
point of Boxbe was to appeal to people with Esther's problem, or the
much larger class of people who think they have Esther's problem.  (As
he noted, there is a significant overlap with venture capitalists,
which helped funding.)  Boxbe was just what she wanted.

Unfortunately for Thede, he tripped over some patents owned by another
spam filtering company, the lawsuits drained their cash and they went
out of business.

Thede is the same guy who invented refundable e-postage as attention
bonds about a decade ago.  He was surprised when I told him that they
were the same thing as Phil Raymond's Vanquish, and Phil already had a
patent on it.

R's,
John