Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can sort a deck of cards by shuffling it if you have enough time.
Your not trying to sort though. You are trying to optimise.
For how long?
Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
41–50 of 86 posts
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#42The problem with articles and discussions like this is that the "markers of success" pointed out may all be true, but incidental. Take Slack as an example. Yes, it was a simple idea with low product surface area and easily protypeable etc etc. But other people had built Slack-like products before that met the all those same criteria and were not successful. The critical factors for Slack were the connections the foun…
Step one: climb mountain
Step two: build a little snowball
Step three: give your little snowball a little push
Step four: fret about which direction your growing snowball is going
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#43The problem with articles and discussions like this is that the "markers of success" pointed out may all be true, but incidental. Take Slack as an example. Yes, it was a simple idea with low product surface area and easily protypeable etc etc. But other people had built Slack-like products before that met the all those same criteria and were not successful. The critical factors for Slack were the connections the foun…
Slack also has an amazing UX, I haven't used a competing product that was as enjoyable to use. Yes I know this is subjective, but of the people I know that like Slack actually love it. Whereas I've never met somebody that loves HipChat.
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haven't heard "goat" used in that context before. In my circles, goat/GOAT would be read as "Greatest Of All Time".
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-fro4.htm
"Before the final twist, Mack, who led all scorers with 30 points, looked as if he’d go from hero to goat in that split second when he fouled Brown, who led Pitt with 24 points. He admitted he was guilty of the infraction."
Odd that the first example appears to be from a basketball write-up, which is exactly where I very frequently hear the term goat/GOAT used in the sense I described.
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#45I have this magical formula for building a startup that is 100% guaranteed to work, but no-one discusses. - Do something illegal, then lobby for your rights! - DDOS your competition - Be evil - Ignore regulations designed to protect your workforce (often referred to as 'partners', hah!) - Tell everyone you have a special insight in making successful startups - something to do with 'hustle' and 'product market fit' -…
It all sounds uberish too until you mentioned musk
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#46This is somewhat interesting, but relies on the all too common tautological device of "hustle," a quasi-magical activity whose details are usually elided over. Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company. What makes a successful company? "Hustle." What is "hustle"? Why, it just means "working hard at doing all the things that make a company successf…
OP here. That is an excellent point and now you have essentially named the title one of one of my new blog posts: "What is Hustle?" It especially rings true because something we've tried hard to do over the years on TechZing is unpack miracle functions exactly like this.
Sounds good! I look forward to it.
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#47This is somewhat interesting, but relies on the all too common tautological device of "hustle," a quasi-magical activity whose details are usually elided over. Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company. What makes a successful company? "Hustle." What is "hustle"? Why, it just means "working hard at doing all the things that make a company successf…
> Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company. And, also, survivor bias. Lots of companies hustled and hustled and died. Elon Musk is a really good example. At one point he couldn't meet cashflow--and then the government contract for SpaceX finally came in. 3 months of delay on that contract and Musk is a goat instead of a hero.
This one drives me crazy. Sure, you have to be good and smart and you have to hustle, but you also have to be lucky, and luck is a bigger factor than anyone likes to admit. People who make it big forget the luck aspect and start believing that because it worked, they did everything right. They then go around dispensing questionable advice on the basis of 'it worked for them' while knowing full well that they're a massive outlier.
It's like when old successful people give "life-affirming" advice like "quit your job, follow your dreams, take risks, LIVE!" Which is great advice if you're already financially secure and you know that doing so didn't result (in your case) in you ending up as some peon working in a fast food joint. Never mind the other 99% of people who did the exact same thing and it didn't work out, because who listens to a failure?
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-fro4.htm
"Before the final twist, Mack, who led all scorers with 30 points, looked as if he’d go from hero to goat in that split second when he fouled Brown, who led Pitt with 24 points. He admitted he was guilty of the infraction." Odd that the first example appears to be from a basketball write-up, which is exactly where I very frequently hear the term goat/GOAT used in the sense I described.
The cited first sage of "goat"-as-common-idiom-for-failure in that article is from 1912.
The acronym dates back to maybe 1992 or thereabouts: http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2016/07/goat.html
GOAT, the positive acronym, isn't even used in today's sportswriting about basketball (at least without an unpacking explanation). It's more of a slang / online forum term.
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#49This is somewhat interesting, but relies on the all too common tautological device of "hustle," a quasi-magical activity whose details are usually elided over. Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now you have a large, successful company. What makes a successful company? "Hustle." What is "hustle"? Why, it just means "working hard at doing all the things that make a company successf…
I don't know if hustle is enough for success, but I don't think people simply mean "working hard at doing all the things that make a company successful." when they use the word. Even though the precise definition is hard to pin down, you can easily spot it during its absence.
There are times when you wish to do something, and you avoid it because it just feels like you might be pushing it a bit. If you still did it anyway - what you did was hustle. In fact, I would say that if you reflect on your life and think of the times when you didn't take that invitation to an event, or that break to go on a vacation, or introduce yourself to a person who you liked, and then realized that the choice you made was too safe, and your choice (lack of hustle) didn't help you all that much long term anyway, you can see its absence quite plainly.
Having said that, I also agree with you on one front. Instead of using the word hustle, if these articles gave an example, and then maybe made a point about why that is hustle, it would read much better.
Re: Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball
#50Is the Google example oversimplified, or is my history wrong? It's reduced here to a "simple database search" but I thought some of Google's novel search technology was there from the get-go, so who cares how the index was persisted?
As I recall, in the days of a pretty clunky internet, their search results were fast, freeeeking fast.