# Take the Beeminder founders' money **URL:** \ **Category:** Akrasia\ **Created:** [May 18, 2015, 4:51am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799 "2015-05-18T04:51:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2015, 4:51am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/1 "2015-05-18T04:51:22Z")
Forum regulars are probably already quite familiar with our beeminding of User-Visible Improvements (UVIs) to Beeminder. We will average [one per day](http://www.beeminder.com/meta/uvi "Beeminder's Sine Qua Non") forever, or we’ll [pay one of you $1000](http://blog.beeminder.com/rails/ "Oh nostalgia"). For real. We’ve done it [before](http://blog.beeminder.com/bikes/ "HT Henrik Wist")! (That’s $1000 paid for 4 years and counting of inexorable forward progress. So cheap!) What’s been less well-known is that there are multiple _other_ goals where you can cash in on the Beeminder founders’ near-legendary akrasia! (We take the idea of bootstrapping to new extremes – Beeminder was built thanks to beeminding progress via gradually more sophisticated versions of Beeminder.) Anyway, but much of the motivational power of Beeminder is the sword-of-damocles feeling, which can be noticeably absent when the money is going to one’s own bootstrapped startup. So, for the meta goals listed below, we’re paying you when we go off track. (I wouldn’t mind this applying to all our personal goals as well, if it doesn’t get to be TMI.) Previously we’d been maintaining the list of goals on an old [blog post](http://blog.beeminder.com/blogdog "Dog Food Renewed"), but that got unwieldy and hard to find. (Y’all missed a $270 derailment recently! Eventually @chelsea claimed it, which is maybe not kosher but, well, you had your chance!) Anyway, that’s what made me realize we need more eyes on the prize here. ### Goals you should bee minding 1. [UVIs](http://www.beeminder.com/meta/uvi "User-Visible Improvements") ($1000 at stake; $1000 paid) 2. [Blog posts](http://beeminder.com/meta/blog "Also viewable in the sidebar of the blog itself") ($810 at stake; $405 paid) 3. [Infrahancements](http://www.beeminder.com/meta/infra "User-INvisible Improvements -- making the code better") ($270 at stake; $270 paid) 4. [Bee’s hours on Beeminder](http://www.beeminder.com/b/meta "Bee's meta graph") ($270 at stake; $405 paid) 5. [Danny’s hours on Beeminder](http://www.beeminder.com/d/meta-hours "Danny's meta graph") ($270 at stake; $405 paid) 6. [Bee’s support queue](http://www.beeminder.com/b/sptzero "Inbox zero for requests that need superpowers") ($30 at stake) 7. [Progress on open-sourcing Beeminder](http://beeminder.com/d/bos "Yes, we want Beeminder's source code to eventually be open source, which emphatically does not mean we'll be less involved or stop being a for-profit company or anything like that") ($270 at stake) 8. [Danny’s Beemail goal](http://beeminder.com/d/beemail "I derailed on this on the last day of the 2015 QS conference and assumed it was on the list and I owed one of you $270. Turns out it wasn't, but now it is!") ($270 at stake) 9. [Danny’s Hard Soon: Email and Meta-Email](http://beeminder.com/d/eme "Next most important thing: getting to inbox zero and creating a system to stay there. (Next up: Beebrain, analytics dashboard, road editor)") ($90 at stake) 10. [Bee’s MIT: Road editor sign in](https://www.beeminder.com/b/mit-roaded "Get road.glitch.me functioning for users to edit real roads")($0 at stake) We’ll add to this list (and perhaps subtract from it, subject to the akrasia horizon of course) so stay tuned! ### Completed or archived - [Autodata integrations](http://www.beeminder.com/b/autod "Bee committed to spend half her time on autodata integrations until we finished Skritter, which we eventually did!") ($270 at stake; $135 paid) - [Bee’s Half time on Reminders Revamp goal](https://www.beeminder.com/b/goals/remrev "Next most important thing: revamping the kind of horribly confusing reminders settings / reminding.") ($810 at stake; $405 paid) - [Beeminder third anniversary commitments](http://blog.beeminder.com/three "Better intro experience, better reminders, dynamic graphs -- currently 0/3...") ($810 paid) - [Bee’s Hard Soon: Weekends Off!](http://beeminder.com/b/mit-weekends "Next most important thing: weekends-off feature for premium people") ($10 at stake; $5 paid) - [Bee’s Hard Soon: Premium Revamp](http://beeminder.com/b/mit-premium "Next most important thing: premium revamp") ($90 at stake, $45 paid) - [Bee’s Hard Soon: S3 and Linode Maintenance](http://beeminder.com/b/mit-s3linode "Next most important thing: s3 storage and linode maintenance") ($90 at stake, $45 paid) - [Bee’s Hard Soon: Todoist integration](https://www.beeminder.com/b/mit-todoist "Next Most-Important thing: todoist integration") ($30 at stake, $15 paid) - [Chelsea explaining Beeminder](https://www.beeminder.com/chelsea/docsminder "Write extensive, useful FAQ/guides to beeminding") ($30 at stake) - [Bee’s Hard Soon: Paypal](https://www.beeminder.com/b/mit-paypal "Most-Important thing: paypal support") ($90 at stake; $45) ### Fine print 1. Only the timestamp of the original comment counts. Don’t make the claim by editing a previous comment. 2. As soon as the countdown runs out it’s fair game to claim our money. (Refresh the page first to confirm.) 3. Claiming it before the official deadline locks you out for an hour. Like the Jeopardy buzzer rule. 4. If you do claim it right after the timer runs out it’s still possible for us to eke by where Beeminder processes the datapoint before processing the derailment. It’s kind of a confusing loophole that we’d like to close or minimize but in the meantime we’re so used to it that we’ll let it stand. We of course won’t tamper with anything behind the scenes, just using Beeminder the same way you all do. 5. Workerbees and anyone else with inside knowledge of a derailment can’t win our money until 6 hours after the derailment so there’s at least a window for normal users. 6. You can’t get 2 dogfood bounties in a row. 7. New high water marks (highest dollar amount a goal has derailed at) must be claimed by someone who hasn’t claimed a bounty in at least a year. ---
**Author:** ![drtall](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/drtall/32/1341_2.png) [@drtall](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/drtall)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 8:06pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/2 "2015-06-03T20:06:33Z")
So I’m trying to hook up IFTTT to your Beeminder but it keeps wanting to connect to my own account instead of these goals… 😛 ---
**Author:** ![aaronpk](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/aaronpk/32/146_2.png) [@aaronpk](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/aaronpk)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 8:58pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/3 "2015-06-03T20:58:12Z")
How are we supposed to claim the bounty now? Previously you said to comment on the blog post. Would a tweet work? ---
**Author:** ![larsivi](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/larsivi/32/153_2.png) [@larsivi](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/larsivi)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 9:05pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/4 "2015-06-03T21:05:35Z")
I suppose you now should reply to this thread? ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2015, 9:45pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/5 "2015-06-03T21:45:59Z")
Yeah, reply here. No tweets! You can tweet at yourself to comment here… (I presume you’re asking because it’s easier to automate a tweet than a comment here.) ---
**Author:** ![olimay](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/olimay/32/4839_2.png) [@olimay](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/olimay)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2015, 10:25pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/6 "2015-06-04T22:25:14Z")
I am totally okay with @chelsea claiming the recent prize… she has been very helpful recently with my data entry mishaps. σ(^\_^;) ---
**Author:** ![apolyton](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/apolyton/32/1965_2.png) [@apolyton](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/apolyton)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 7:37am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/7 "2015-06-05T07:37:54Z")
bookmarking this thread. maybe i should add a “check beeminder bounty” goal 😛 ---
**Author:** ![chelsea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a3d4f5/32.png) [@chelsea](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/chelsea)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 1:14pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/8 "2015-06-07T13:14:43Z")
i see sptzero has derailed… ---
**Author:** ![Tarn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Tarn](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/Tarn)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 5:13pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/10 "2015-06-07T17:13:13Z")
It seemed vaguely incestuous to me for us to claim these. Is that really kosher? ---
**Author:** ![chelsea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a3d4f5/32.png) [@chelsea](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/chelsea)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/11 "2015-06-07T18:45:35Z")
well since it derailed 16 hours before i posted, i figure everyone else had a fair shot… i don’t have super-strong feelings either way, but i’m not going to turn down a claim at a free $30 if it’s available 😉 ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 8:42pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/12 "2015-06-07T20:42:12Z")
@Tarn and @chelsea, I bequeath my blessing! I guess we could inject sportspersonliness to the extent that if you learn of the derailment through any insider means then wait 6 hours. Note that the support zero one is @bee’s goal for zeroing the support items that only she can do. (Actually any labeled messages in support count, including ones labeled “VIP”, for support requests from premium subscribers.) ---
**Author:** ![mary](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/mary/32/317_2.png) [@mary](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/mary)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 11:00pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/13 "2015-06-07T23:00:01Z")
(Sorry to do this to you guys, but if it’s going to go to someone _anyway_, well… I’d like to be first…) Derailment; I can haz? [https://www.beeminder.com/meta/goals/infra](https://www.beeminder.com/meta/goals/infra) ---
**Author:** ![mary](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/mary/32/317_2.png) [@mary](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/mary)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2015, 11:09pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/14 "2015-06-07T23:09:49Z")
(Oops, maybe I jumped the gun?) ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 6:04am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/15 "2015-06-08T06:04:27Z")
$270 to @mary! (who deleted her post here thinking she jumped the gun but it was legit! the moment the timer runs out it’s fair game, even if we eke in before Beeminder processes the derailment, which is an embarrassing loophole that it’s really better to not know about, especially as we expect it to go away without warning as we improve back-end infrastructure and/or switch to client-side graphs) Thank you for keeping us honest! ---
**Author:** ![insti](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/insti/32/545_2.png) [@insti](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/insti)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 6:50am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/16 "2015-06-08T06:50:35Z")
It’s difficult to see when goals have derailed. Particularly since the javascript countdown will give erroneous information about goals derailing when they have not if you’ve not refreshed the page since the datapoint was added. Check out the infra one for example: [https://www.beeminder.com/meta/goals/infra](https://www.beeminder.com/meta/goals/infra) How can you tell that it derailed? ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 6:59am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/17 "2015-06-08T06:59:59Z")
We need to fix the countdown so it’s always reliable without refreshing the page. In the meantime if you refresh the page and it still says “queued for derailment” then it derailed (even if we eked in – see previous convoluted parenthetical). Normally you’ll see the “RECOMMITTED” datapoint which reveals the derailment and you can claim the bounty after the fact based on that. As the competition heats up though you’ll want to catch it right when the countdown runs out. ---
**Author:** ![insti](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/insti/32/545_2.png) [@insti](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/insti)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 7:08am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/18 "2015-06-08T07:08:27Z")
> [@dreev](#): > > Normally you’ll see the “RECOMMITTED” datapoint which reveals the derailment I cannot see ‘recent data’ on many of the graphs. ---
**Author:** ![dreev](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dreev/32/4311_2.png) [@dreev](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dreev)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 7:41am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/19 "2015-06-08T07:41:47Z")
> [@insti](#): > > I cannot see ‘recent data’ on many of the graphs. Oops, we needed to check “public data” in the goal settings on all of those. Done now. (I wish that were the default but I realize we can’t just change that on people now.) ---
**Author:** ![mary](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/mary/32/317_2.png) [@mary](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/mary)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/20 "2015-06-08T15:29:11Z")
Well, that depends. If it just looked like a derailment cause it was done but the data wasn’t entered, then I don’t think that would be a fair claim on my part. (And if we’re allowed to exploit a loophole, you should be too, whether or not we choose to. That’s the whole thing about dogfood. You’re playing by your own _actual_ rules; you shouldn’t have to layer more rules on top of them, I don’t think. I just made the claim right away, b/c with the forum so active that day, I was sure someone was going to.) ---
**Author:** ![drtall](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/drtall/32/1341_2.png) [@drtall](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/drtall)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2015, 4:05pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799/21 "2015-06-08T16:05:37Z")
> [@mary](#): > > And if we’re allowed to exploit a loophole, you should be too If the point of this whole setup is to have a fair competition then I agree with you. But if the point is to ruthlessly improve Beeminder then an asymmetry in the rules might be preferred, especially if the founders can remove that asymmetry by fixing bugs / improving performance. 😄 [Next page](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/take-the-beeminder-founders-money/799.md?page=2)