Chris Dixon

A weird thing that happened and a note to the future

At around 5pm today two women who looked like professional models showed up at the Hunch office.  They had a delivery and said “we don’t know who this is from but it’s someone who likes the Taste Graph.”  Presumably this is an allusion to the taste graph we’ve built at Hunch and that I’ve talked about in various talks about graphs.

They hurried away without saying anything more.  In the box was a left worn Prada shoe:

A right shoe from Nike:

A USB drive containing the Dave Matthew’s song “you might die trying”:

Three books that were shut with magnets that made them almost impossible to open and mostly destroyed them once we did.  The books were Guns, Germs and Steel;  All The Money in The World; and The Grand Design:

Finally, there was an invitation to a fancy restaurant with the inviting people being two stars from Terminator 2:

Notice who it is from!  I tried calling the restaurant but no one answered.

Reminder that John Connor in T2 is the future leader of human rebels:

And Miles Dyson is a computer scientist who sacrifices himself to save humanity:

Now I see at least three possible explanations for this very strange delivery today:

1) it’s some company trying to pull a gig to raise money since they know I am a small-time investor

2) it’s some kind of weird practical joke

3) Although Hunch’s technology is only semi-sophisticated today, it will become so sophisticated in the future that people in, say, 2050 will feel compelled to go back in time and reward/punish us.

At any rate, I hereby proclaim today the day for time travelers to bring it on. If this blog post gets picked up by bigger blogs or even newspapers then I hope in the future they will remember to read those and know that April 4, 2011 was the day to make it happen.

I’m talking to you future robot motherf—ers who send weird deliveries.

  • http://twitter.com/BukolaE Bukola Ekundayo

    I think we’re all dying to know if you’ll be attending the dinner.

    • http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

      I’m thinking of sending Jasper the Intern in his Liquid Metal Alloy outfit.

      • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

        no red shirt for Jasper?

    • Anonymous

      if Mr Dixon says he will, imagine how much old shoes, clothes and other junk he and every other investor will get every week

  • http://twitter.com/Alex_Galasso Alexander Galasso

    Funny story… do keep us posted with what the true meaning of the delivery was.

  • http://gundy.org Gabriel Gunderson

    BEST. POST. EVER.

  • http://about.me/eak4 eak4

    Same size shoes?

    • http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

      Didn’t seem like it and seemed small for me.

      • http://about.me/eak4 eak4

        What’s in the fine print?

        • http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

          it was generic boilerplate about the restaurant. we tried calling the number. also tried looking on USB for clues as to who it was but couldn’t find anything. i’m actually not joking at all this is totally bizarre.

  • http://twitter.com/wooswiff Jeff Cleary

    In the interest of solving this Time Mystery, can you look in your hunch data and see who has had this exact set of things recommended to them?

    • http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

      already queued that query to run 1 year from now which should be sufficient
      for 2050 robots

  • http://jasoncrawford.org jasoncrawford

    Reminds me of “Paycheck” (movie with Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman, based on short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick), where the guy leaves himself a weird set of random items.

  • http://twitter.com/ravi_naras Ravi Narasimhan

    Funny! My instinct is that there are a couple of red herrings thrown in. Just cant figure out which they are. Let us know what you find out. And maybe start a pool on which option turns out right. My money is on #1 – someone looking to raise money.

  • http://reecepacheco.com reecepacheco

    hahah… this is brilliant. please keep us posted on the results.

    • http://thesistown.com/ phd thesis writing

      i would like to join to your wirds))) really weird) and funny, if that happened to me i dont know what would i do but definitely i wouldnt create a post from that event))) bt thanks to the author) looking forward to know how everything ended)

  • http://profiles.google.com/fieldy878 Adam Feldman

    i have an idea what this might be for…

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    I’m more than curious. I’m going with door number 4, a crazy stalker.

  • Anonymous

    Awesome story, thanks for sharing! I vote for three (oh, not a poll!?)

    I always felt disappointed as a child, because I figured if people invented affordable time travel during my lifetime, I’d make sure to come back and let my young self know. Since that never happened, I figure it wasn’t within my lifetime.

  • http://docsheldon.com Doc Sheldon

    Chris, I assume (and hope) you intend to go to the restaurant and see what’s up. Surely curiosity is eating at you. Have you scanned through the books, looking for any highlighted passages/words? Maybe there’s a clue there. A dress shoe and a running shoe… perhaps another clue? The magnets are confusing, but must have some significance. I think I’d make it a point to take all the items with me to dinner that night. Hopefully, you’ll see someone in a matching pair of shoes, or reading the fourth book that meshes with those three.
    Or at least, someone with a magnetic personality. ;-) Do let us know, though, eh?

  • Anonymous

    This is…. awesome

  • eyesparky

    Classic.

  • Anonymous

    delivered by models…? I would look at that angle a bit.. Also was today supposed to be the delivery date or was it last Friday?

  • http://twitter.com/andyidsinga andyidsinga

    some geek in the future is cursing his/her time machine – “i said april 1st, 2011 gawddamit! now they’re gonna be all reading shit into that”

  • http://twitter.com/dmcdougall Dave McDougall

    Hunch, the precursor to Skynet?

  • http://www.spotsift.com Peter Chang

    Most likely one. Great story. Post an update if you go.

  • Anonymous

    Come with me if you want to live.

  • http://twitter.com/AlisaQ Alisa Richter

    This is…amazing.

  • http://profiles.google.com/ryan.anthony Ryan Anthony

    Don’t know what this is all about, but I think you just invited a lot of NYC locals to come to dinner with you.

  • http://www.giantrobotlasers.com Ivan Kirigin

    Miles Dyson sacrifices himself only after indirectly causing the death of billions of people. Just sayin

  • http://kevinelliott.net/ Kevin Elliott

    I have a strong feeling that you could track the person down by identifying them by their taste profile. These items are unique enough that only like 3 people in the world would like all of them.

  • http://lmframework.com David Semeria

    Don’t want a party-pooper, but Occam’s razor would pretty much exclude the robots from the future hypothesis.

  • Anonymous

    A startup working on some combo of the taste graph and time.

  • http://www.facebook.com/bullfighters Mike Kijewski

    You definitely have to go to this dinner. Sounds like a great way for someone to get face time with an angel without an HBS MBA.

  • http://twitter.com/AdrianMeli Adrian Meli

    So, are you going?

  • http://twitter.com/chrisyeh Chris Yeh

    Well, now that the date is past, what happened?

  • http://briandelaney.me Brian Delaney

    The lack of update is telling. I’m surprised this post still exists.

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  • BuyGiftsItems

    I would consider that the angle a bit ‘.. Also, today was to be the date of delivery or when it was last Friday

     http://cdixon.org/2010/09/26/the-segmentation-of-the-venture-industry/