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A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

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Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#141

Post by xv102z »

xc1020we wrote: post #90
mattmanser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a load of nonsense. C#'s a great language and their dev tool, Visual Studio, is second to none.

I had a different experience with Visual Studio. The IDE is slow with visible lag when typing, the menus are completely unintuitive for a person coming from Linux. Creating a "solution" (who came up with that word?) is absolutely horrible compared to just opening a file in vi/emacs. There does not appear to be a command line debugger -- while the debugger is good, graphical debuggers are a pain to use.

And ... MSFT discovered this subthread. A couple of years ago one could still post such things freely here (ironically at the time pg was still here).

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#142

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #84
RyanShook wrote: post #11

“The mistake you will most likely make as a startup founder is coming up with your own vision of what your product should be instead of getting feedback from actual users.”

But what is the point of operating your own company if not to accomplish your goals of what the company should be? I mean, I get it, you have to make customers happy in order to have a business. But this seems like something different. It seems like saying your goal should be to make money a priori and that defining vision based on feedback is a good way to do that. But what if that’s not your goal? What if your goal…

what is the point of operating your own company if not to accomplish your goals of what the company should be?

Yes that's exactly why I've become jaded about business in general. It was excessively clear that, except in extremely rare cases and almost only with Apple, being successful means that you're letting other people ("customers") dictate your product to you. From what I can tell it absolutely is the correct path to financial/commercial success.

If "do whatever people want" is what it takes to be successful then that's the exact opposite of what I got into this for.

What if your goal is to create a company that embodies a specific mission

From what I can tell, then you're a non-profit or a B-Corp or something else. A for profit company C-Corp that looks like a "startup" has generating profit for the business as it's core mission. Not just revenue, profit. And ideally super high-margin profit. Maybe that looks like an acquisition, or maybe it looks like a dividend or liquid stock eventually. In one form or another, your core mission is to turn money and work into more money. Anything else is a side project or goal.

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#143

Post by [deleted] »

kapad wrote: post #89

Was Geoff adequately prepared to host? I watched a few minutes and his introduction was pathetic. As was his setting of the agenda(which he didn't do any of). Were his discussion points later on good? If they were, I'll go back and watch the rest of this. Otherwise half of the video time (when Geoff is speaking) seems a waste to me. ;)

[deleted]

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#144

Post by kapad »

lsh wrote: post #138
kapad wrote: post #89

Was Geoff adequately prepared to host? I watched a few minutes and his introduction was pathetic. As was his setting of the agenda(which he didn't do any of). Were his discussion points later on good? If they were, I'll go back and watch the rest of this. Otherwise half of the video time (when Geoff is speaking) seems a waste to me. ;)

ikr? even at 1.5x speed his dithering was rather lengthy. I have newfound respect for interviewers where their flow with the interviewee seems natural.

i thought this as well.. i only saw the introduction, but it didn't seem there was, well, flow, if that's what you call it, between PG and Geoff

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#145

Post by goatherders »

Razengan wrote: post #17
RyanShook wrote: post #11

“The mistake you will most likely make as a startup founder is coming up with your own vision of what your product should be instead of getting feedback from actual users.”

You have to be a user of your own product to really make it good. Look at Apple. Most of how they got where they are is by Jobs, Ive et al. making what they wanted to see, and nitpicking at everything until they were satisfied. Also: "people don't know what they want until you show it to them." Of course you have to address customers' frustrations, but relying on just "data" and marketing feedback all the time often…

No. "Most of how 5uwy got where they are"...come on.

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#146

Post by aliakhtar »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #110

https://youtu.be/4WO5kJChg3w?t=745 --- And we got him an earring. There are photographs on the Internet of Robert Morris with an earring. --- I could not find such photographs ... https://www.google.com/search?q=%22robert+morris%22+viaweb+e...

http://paulgraham.com/pierced.html

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#147

Post by gnicholas »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #122
mayankkaizen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the issue with me. I am more like 'laptop' guy who is rather good in researching. I am also keen on observing things. But sales stuffs, cold calling give me chills. How do I overcome it?

“Resistance is Useless - the art of business persuasion” by Geoff Burch from England is a great and approachable introduction on how to start doing sales

This seems to have only one review (a one-star review) on Amazon [1]. Is it a well-known book? What did you like about it?

https://www.amazon.com/Resistance-Useless-Art-Business-Persu...

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#149

Post by dziungles »

kapad wrote: post #89

Was Geoff adequately prepared to host? I watched a few minutes and his introduction was pathetic. As was his setting of the agenda(which he didn't do any of). Were his discussion points later on good? If they were, I'll go back and watch the rest of this. Otherwise half of the video time (when Geoff is speaking) seems a waste to me. ;)

It was even worse later on. He couldn't even formulate the questions and was constantly interrupting.

Re: A Conversation with Paul Graham [video]

#150

Post by golemotron »

slededit wrote: post #95
golemotron wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In context, the Windows Paul was talking about used C, a horrific low level SDK, and a technology called COM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model .NET did not appear until much later.

.NET integrates well with COM. You are using it all the time under the hood. COM was difficult because it was an OO framework that had to deal with: - C++ ABIs that changed on every compiler update but still had to work. -Support for C and Assembly which had no OO support at all. -Liteweight enough to run on a computer with 8MB of RAM total. Given these constraints it's unlikely you would do any better.

Why do you think I didn't respect the technology?
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