Vooza Mobile App

[Silhouette]

I'm sorry to put an honest start-up down, but we do actually have a patent pending within the US on using a combination of mobile, geotagging and social media mining to steal your data (and everything else you own), which we filed to protect investors in our new start-up, Robbrrr (formerly burgle.me, formerly @MyHouse).

We too ran into a spot of legal trouble with our initial concept, but lawyers have assured us that if we pay them enough money, they can insert wording into our terms and conditions that means we can steal anything we want from anyone and be completely immune to consequences such as negative press, criminal prosecution, or not sleeping at night after finally accepting the ruthlessly exploitative and completely unethical nature of our business model.

We think we've built a great service and have complete confidence in our future revenue generation potential, but as luck would have it, we've just closed an acquisition deal with a totally above-board company called PatentULike, Inc anyway. They have given us written assurances that they are experts on collecting patents like the one we are about to receive and, despite not producing any tangible product or service so far, they have a sustainable business model that will allow them to exploit those patents fully in due course.

We feel this is the most socially acceptable exit under our current circumstances, leaving the fruits of our hard work in safe hands, providing a solid return for our early investors, and coincidentally also making us richer than Donald Trump's hairdresser.

But we'll have to ask these Vooza people to stop stealing data from mobiles, please.

[oacgnol]

I think this calls for a public shaming. Be sure to blog about it and post it to HN.

[dclowd9901]

I'm a bit confused. I feel like this is an extremely old joke at this point. Aren't we all pretty keenly aware of the memes and absurdities that crowd the startup industry? Am I missing some unique or new observation being made that hasn't been made 50 times already by pretty much everyone?

[rauljara]

> Aren't we all pretty keenly aware of the memes and absurdities that crowd the startup industry?

Or, another way of putting it, 'Hasn't everyone on Hacker news been exposed to the same articles/knowledge/humor I have been exposed to?'

If something seems old and tired to you, yet is still getting upvotes, the answer is probably 'no'.

[sharkweek]

Taking it even a step further -- I'm jaded enough to believe they're actually going to piggyback off the promotion of this joke with a real product

[dmix]

The first video satirizing the Apple-style "design process" promotional videos was great.

The second video making fun of buzz words (cloud, social, local), acronyms (RSS, API) and startups being oblivious to making money is a really tired and overdone joke.

[pxlpshr]

It's not about the joke, it's about the execution.

I laughed, a lot. Win!

[vooza]

What is old news to you may be new news to others. Or as Bob Dylan sang, I was so much more 2.0 than, I'm more beta now. Or was that The Beatles? Hmm.

[irollboozers]

If the hacker community ever loses the ability to laugh at itself, I would be worried. Taking yourself too seriously is not good for one's health.

[richardv]

Start/Stoppable video so you can replay scenes http://vimeo.com/44424340

"We believe in the power of iteration, we originally started out as StumbleMonkey, which was like AirBnb but for online-dating, so when you left town you could rent out your spouse or partner. Great idea, but then we found out it was illegal, so we had to pivot.. So we changed our name to Googoprrrrrr. That's 6 r's. And that app was like Spotify, meets Grindr, but for rental cars, but ran as if it were for a hotel. "

[jiggy2011]

The sad thing is it took me a few minutes to realize that this was a parody.

[danielweber]

I'm pretty used to seeing Hacker News posts about something and having absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

Based on the way headlines are edited, this seems to be on purpose.

[ivarv]

Vooza is cool, but I feel for other startups like http://zombo.com that have been working that niche for much longer. Hopefully, there's enough investment capital for everyone.

[oddthink]

Anything is possible.

[scilro]

CollegeHumor did a better parody over a year ago. http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-sta...

[zerostar07]

This is like Lorem Ipsum for startup pitches. They should make the site title changeable via the URL, so you could use it to pitch any lame ass startup and get them VC monies.

[tonez]

Businessweek's Mad Libs startup pitch template could help: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-26/mad-libs-sta...

[jgrahamc]

Brilliant. I'm sure that Brad Bradstone will be one of the first to sign up: http://doublestealth.blogspot.com/

[peeters]

Everything that is wrong with tech startups in one video.

[KirinDave]

If you still think Rails's concurrency model is sufficient, you're so f*cking behind. So I think I'm even with DHH.

[hsuresh]

They forgot one item in the list of things they make fun of: "Create a landing page and collect emails without telling why/what they are signing up for, because it will be awesome".

[vooza]

It's true! But really, it will be awesome.

[dave1619]

Very entertaining. Hey, can the Vooza guys tell me how you guys did your video? What equipment did you use? How did you get the black background with lighting done well?

[hokua]

Thanks for the laugh

[51Cards]

It's inspirational in that whole, take failure and make nothing of it sort of way. I need a Kleenex. And Vooza.

[vooza]

Vooza comes with Kleenex. It's your lucky day!

[samstave]

I can't seem to find Vooza's jobs page? Anyone know if their hiring?

[gamzer]

If their hiring is what?

[vooza]

Thanks all for the feedback! There is indeed more coming from Vooza soon. Sign up for the email list at the site to get notified of what we've got in store next.

[marcelfahle]

Ha, something like that wouldn't surprise me these days. Of course I signed up for the mailing list, looking forward to more exciting 'product announcements'.

[KenCochrane]

Doesn't load for me, care to fill me in?

[ehutch79]

I can't tell if this is a joke or not...

[psykotic]

The "we steal your data" tagline in the video didn't give it away?

[vooza]

"A joke is like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder." -Steve Ballmer

[burke]

It's like a corollary to Poe's Law. I love it.

[cschep]

It's like Portlandia.. for startups?