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Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

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Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#161

Post by bootload »

blhack wrote: post #155
tptacek wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is very, very short. Given the choice between building yet another Craigslist-killer that nobody will use and anything that people will use , choose the latter. You will never get the most productive years of your life back. Knowing SEO, web dev, and a lot about classified ads is cold comfort. At the end of each failed company, you are going to feel like "well, at least I learned a lot". I know, because that's h…

How many of these bad ideas are simply nerds looking at facebook saying "you're going down"? I doubt twitter was, and I doubt that whatever eventually topples facebook will be. My point is that this sort of philosophy helps nobody . People who are already successful already know this stuff. At least to me, this sort of list feels like it's being aimed at people who haven't "made it" yet and are still trying to figure…

"... He told me that I had to just go ride the thing in circles until it felt natural, and that if he saw me sitting on the bench again, I wasn't invited to the skatepark anymore. I rode my skateboard around all afternoon, probably fell on my face a few times, but didn't get laughed at even once. A stupid story, probably. ..."

Great analogy & why I keep reading the comments before the story.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#163

Post by blhack »

tptacek wrote: post #160
blhack wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my point is that it is sortof self-validating. If you need somebody to tell you not to build this stuff, then you probably aren't yet at a point where building one of them wouldn't be a learning experience for you, even if that learning experience is just "stop building twitter clones".

You see how your cheerleading has actually become toxic for the people you want to be helping? "If they need someone to tell them this"... then they should be penalized by being led to waste up to a year of their life? How about you lead them somewhere productive instead of into the tar pits?

I'm sorry, but no. Absolutely not. This is not "toxic" for anybody. "Waste up to a year of their life?"

When I was 16, my friends and I thought we were going to take over the world by starting a "tech company". We knew we were all nerds, and we knew we wanted to own a "tech company". We got together, thought up a cool name, made a cool website, and got some cool business cards.

Was this a stupid idea? Yes.

Did I learn a lot from it? Yes.

Do you consider 4 years spent in business school a waste of time? Toxic? Do you consider time spent going to school for computer science, learning to program a "waste"?

How many times have computer science students written "cash register" programs in java? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Was this time all wasted?

I would say no.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#164

Post by tptacek »

blhack wrote: post #163
tptacek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see how your cheerleading has actually become toxic for the people you want to be helping? "If they need someone to tell them this"... then they should be penalized by being led to waste up to a year of their life? How about you lead them somewhere productive instead of into the tar pits?

I'm sorry, but no. Absolutely not. This is not "toxic" for anybody. "Waste up to a year of their life?" When I was 16, my friends and I thought we were going to take over the world by starting a "tech company". We knew we were all nerds, and we knew we wanted to own a "tech company". We got together, thought up a cool name, made a cool website, and got some cool business cards. Was this a stupid idea? Yes. Did I lear…

Yes, business school is a waste.

Yes, Java cash register programs are a waste.

Yes, doomed Craigslist competitors are a waste.

People too young to go to business school have cashed out of YC companies. Aspire to that, not to rationalizing very expensive learning experiences.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#165

Post by blhack »

tptacek wrote: post #164
blhack wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but no. Absolutely not. This is not "toxic" for anybody. "Waste up to a year of their life?" When I was 16, my friends and I thought we were going to take over the world by starting a "tech company". We knew we were all nerds, and we knew we wanted to own a "tech company". We got together, thought up a cool name, made a cool website, and got some cool business cards. Was this a stupid idea? Yes. Did I lear…

Yes, business school is a waste. Yes, Java cash register programs are a waste. Yes, doomed Craigslist competitors are a waste. People too young to go to business school have cashed out of YC companies. Aspire to that, not to rationalizing very expensive learning experiences.

>People too young to go to business school have cashed out of YC companies.

Did these people crawl out of the womb with a keyboard in one hand and an apache server in the other?

How do you suppose they learned how to program?

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#166

Post by ebiester »

smanek wrote: post #24
allwein wrote: post #6

In my day (I'm only 32), the startup ideas everyone always wanted to do were: 1. A better bug/issue tracking system 2. A custom CMS 3. A code library/platform for easily building Business CRUD apps. 4. A word processing app that has only the 20% features that 80% of Word users use. 5. A better classmates.com

It seems like someone did do them! Obvious examples include: 1. basecamp/fogbugz/jira 2. Confluence/Sharepoint 3. django/rails 4. Google Docs 5. Facebook

No. People still haven't done #3 right. Alpha five comes closest, but apparently nobody has heard of them.

It should be built on top of SQL server, or Oracle. People are using it already. It should have a subset of Crystal Reports, with an easy way to develop simple entry yet let you override the business logic if necessary.

Essentially, combine ext-js with django's administration, with a marketplace of addons for various verticals.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#167

Post by prewett »

jules wrote: post #142
prewett wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#3: National Instruments' LabVIEW is the best example of graphical programming I have run across. But after I used it for a while, it became clear that text-based programming is denser; I can see a lot more C++ code than LabVIEW code in one screen, and that makes me more productive in C++. LabVIEW is awesome for a quick app, but for something more successful, I don't think any form of graphical programming is going t…

I agree that text is probably going to conquer programming for quite some time to come. It is no accident that mathematics is done with text, even though connecting boxes and lines of paper is a lot easier than on a computer. However, like in mathematics, the occasional diagram or graphical notation is helpful.

I would argue that text will always be more effective that dragging icons around for similar reasons why C++/Java/etc are more effective than COBOL: C++/etc is closer to how computers think.

But don't get me wrong, LabVIEW really shines for its original purpose (Laboratory Visualization and Engineering Workbench, hence LabVIEW): quick data acquisition and visualization. But large programs just get tedious to read and debug. And I'm OCD about getting my wires looking nice :) which slows me down, obviously.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#168

Post by tptacek »

blhack wrote: post #165
tptacek wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, business school is a waste. Yes, Java cash register programs are a waste. Yes, doomed Craigslist competitors are a waste. People too young to go to business school have cashed out of YC companies. Aspire to that, not to rationalizing very expensive learning experiences.

>People too young to go to business school have cashed out of YC companies. Did these people crawl out of the womb with a keyboard in one hand and an apache server in the other? How do you suppose they learned how to program?

Presumably the same way I did. I have 1 semester of school, and I took liberal arts classes.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#169

Post by timr »

storborg wrote: post #103
alex_c wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is very, very short. Given the choice between not building anything at all and building a "Craigslist killer" that no one will use, I absolutely agree - go for it! Given the choice between building a cliche project and something a bit more off the beaten path - you may as well put a few extra days of thought into a project before you start, and come up with something unique (as long as you don't spend all your t…

The ideas are obvious because people want them. Lots of people want a Craigslist alternative that doesn't have the shittiest search interface this side of 2004. Lots of people want a dating site with a 'market' that doesn't heavily heavily favor women. Lots of people want to exercise/lose weight in a fun game-like way. Lots of people want the concept of TripAdvisor but don't feel like they identify at all with the ty…

"Lots of people want a dating site with a 'market' that doesn't heavily heavily favor women."

Yeah, they're called men. And given that history tells us that attracting men to dating sites isn't a business-limiting problem, it follows that building a (heterosexual) dating site that appeals to men is not a good business idea.

Re: Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)

#170

Post by zeemonkee »

dnsworks wrote: post #114

Geeks are so incredibly negative it's why I end up trying to convince friends to find a better career filled with happier people whenever they ask how to get into the tech field. There's nothing more pathetic then that guy who is the born skeptic and can't see beyond his own inability to find success, constantly putting down every idea his friends give him. I'm told that's what it's like trying to do a start-up in En…

That's a very good point; I'm very much that way myself, and more so every year.

Part of it is cynicism from being at the bottom of a pecking order that puts the braying salesman and architypal PHB at the top and consistently having advice and ideas ignored, while given impossible deadlines because people don't know how to manage a development process properly.

However there is also a very negative vibe among geeks in general, especially (but not exclusively) in the UK. No doubt American geeks suffer from the same idiots in charge, but say the hell with it, and go start their own companies. Here there is more of a resigned shrug of the shoulders.

It's not a univeral British trait; people in other walks of life seem to have a more positive attitude.

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