191–200 of 331 posts
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don't ignore the lack business acumen of some VCs.
Mostly because they just look at number of users and hope someone will buy the company at a users multiplier valuation and nothing else?
"the guys I invested in are killing it they just doubled the headcount" VC pitching LP's for new fund.
I have no idea how big BandCamp is, in terms of both users and developers.
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> It's the ground-zero meat space for their content corpus What do mean with this sentence and content corpus?? That burning man matches their DNA?
Are you being purposefully obtuse? He's saying that one could make the argument that meeting new people at the epicenter of your prospective user's culture would help growth ultimately. This is also referred to as "boots on the ground" marketing.
I assumed something in the direction what you wrote, btw way better articulated, but I wanted to get it confirmed.
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Best comment in the thread. It shows that one of SoundCloud's key problem is an oligopolostic industry they are dealing with.
I'm not so sure that's true. Their key problem is that they didn't understand how much value there is in up-and-coming, amateur, and underground music. The record labels only have power when it comes to their catalogue. SoundCloud could have truly disrupted the labels by providing an alternative way to promote, monetize, and discover music. But they somehow got off that track.
This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…
> Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? This reminds me of the current ICOs and the token economy. Early adopters try to push new currencies like crazy to cash out once popularity peaks. SoundCloud was never thought as a real business. Everybody involved in the music industry should have known that it's not possible to build a solid business based on the oligopoly of three music labels and with Spotify having a head…
This is why you should cash out when you have a decent return. Otherwise, you could become what is called a "bagholder".
"Jeff Toig's preferred PowerPoint style is size 10 Arial font with a black background. An earlier version of this story misstated the color." This is the funniest correction I've ever read :)
Yes, I thought that was amusing, the idea that Mr Toig's main complaint about his portrayal in the article was the mis-statement of his preferences for presentations gives you some idea of what it must have been like in the section of the business that he was responsible for (we don't know who provided the correction of course). A previous manager of mine insisted on all documents using 12pt Arial with 18pt line spac…
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Except that this usage of the word "optics" in popular lexicon predates the U.S. election by at least 4 years. See this "word detective" entry from 2012: http://www.word-detective.com/2012/01/optics/
It does not seem prudent to debate 2017 popular social vernacular with a publication from 2012. (Although your article goes on to support my argument of Optics being a term reserved for political discussion) Optics is a term largely reserved for the stage of political theatre, that is not my assertion, that is the zeitgeist of popular opinion.
>"Optics is a term largely reserved for the stage of political theatre"
Yes and much of what a CEO has to deal with is internal politics. You realize that "politics" in the general sense has a meaning and usage outside of just government right?
>"that is not my assertion, that is the zeitgeist of popular opinion."
It's quite amusing that you want to take someone to task for their usage of word simply because you have decided it is no longer "fashionable" and then you go on to use the word "zeitgeist" incorrectly. See:
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> For it to be a startup, you have to have a large target market. Making up your own definition of startup ? A start-up is just a newly established business.
Actually, I'm using http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html That's like calling a newly established barber shop a startup. It's not. The GP is working on a podcast hosting company. The market for people who want to host podcasts is miniscule. Large enough to sustain a company, sure. But that's not a startup.
Dictionary.com says "a new business venture, or a new commercial or industrial project".
Merriam-Webster says "a fledgling business enterprise".
I don't mean to be difficult but it's annoying that some folks on HN insist that PG's definition of "startup" is the only possible one. It's a useful definition, but people who use it the non-PG way are not wrong either.