17 years old, 11 startups • Hacker News Board

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#81

Post by spitfire » Fri, Dec 31, 2010, 9:15 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #47

bluelu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give up too quickly, and don't focus and create too many applciations?

Come on, he's only 17. Why do he needs to focus? He was just doing this for fun. As he grow, he'll have more the sense of business and the will to make money/create a company and will focus on one product. Nevertheless, this will give him varied experience that will improve his choice and selection later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_aUxbbqWU

Written by 14 year olds. Several orders of magnitude more difficult than what mark has done. (A lot of asm, 3d code, matrix maths, fitting together pascal, c, asm in DOS, etc)

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#82

Post by EGreg » Fri, Dec 31, 2010, 11:16 PM UTC

mattdeboard wrote: post #74

EGreg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations man! I remember back to the days when you made the flash for this: http://seethewall.com :) :) You have come a long way. Now listen -- I know how much you hated high school, but college is the time when you make all the social connections that will last you for the next 10 years! (And some of them, well, a lifetime.) It is probably where you are going to meet the people who will help you meet your wif…

Did you just encourage this kid to go to college so he can get married? What?

that's an unexpected interpretation of what I wrote

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#83

Post by iag » Fri, Dec 31, 2010, 11:32 PM UTC

Not to hate on Mark because I think he is likely a brilliant person, but I fail to see why it is intriguing that someone young started 11 startups.

Let's be honest, starting a company is not hard, anyone with $300 could file a C-corp in delaware. But how many people have actually built just one business with a few million in revenue, how many sold for even more? Sure starting a company is glorious, but I expected people on this board to value building a successful business more. =\

Mark, if you're reading this, any plans to stick around in one company for a while and build the next Baidu/Taobao/Youku in the US?

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#84

Post by aik » Fri, Dec 31, 2010, 11:42 PM UTC

ilovecomputers wrote: post #44

aik wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad how often comments about higher education are expressed in a light like this. Contact me if you have ideas on how to fix it.

I'm not criticizing higher education. My tongue-in-cheek comment was a reference to the book The Man Who Knew Infinity where G H Hardy expressed fear that teaching Ramanujan the details of math might stump his genius by making him feel less confident in his abilities. I'm also expressing my frustration of not writing down my life goals when I first entered college...but even if I went back in time and asked my younge…

Oh I see - Interesting. Well I still very much see it as a very valid criticism. I don't believe the situation should exist (or at least be as prevalent) where you can unfairly become discouraged to the point of no return. In most cases it's completely unnecessary and is a result of a misunderstanding on both ends. In most cases I believe it's a result of having no life direction and following a path laid down by certain expectations of you, or just poorly rationalized by you in general, and so you easily become swayed by insignificant details. Fixing that should focused on before going full force into a passion/study and spending thousands in the process.

Put differently, all those details you talk about should be in support of your development towards a future passion, not distract you to a point of no return.

Sorry if that appears incoherent - I'm in a hurry. Anyway I see that as a major issue in people and something our school system should do a better job of handling.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#85

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 4:15 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #78

axod wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is fairly irrelevant to raising kids IMHO The key attributes are energy and time I think.

Can't money be used to create time, either by not needing to work, or by paying people to provide goods and perform services?

This is the correct answer. For example, when your stay at home wife is coming to the end of her rope, and you can decide on the spot to put your kid in a part time day home to give her some her-time, with no need to consider the cost, it makes life a lot easier. Ditto for so many other things in life.

Whether a person should have to do this is another discussion entirely. ;(

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#86

Post by mistermann » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 4:18 AM UTC

markbao wrote: post #17

Oh cool, I'm on here :D 18 now, and I've stopped calling them startups... a lot of them are just webapps :) (also no longer in high school, was going to update it two days ago until threewords.me came along, now at 1.8 million pageviews...) the new startup is http://supportbreeze.com ! Would like to note that my bhag (big hairy audacious goal) is to donate almost all my money into positive philanthropy (see below) an…

I really like some of your design work, especially supportbreeze, very clean and slick look.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#87

Post by pclark » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 2:28 PM UTC

sjtgraham wrote: post #13

plbth wrote: post #4

Seems like a pretty awful track record.

Sitting on your ass and playing games consoles would be a particularly bad track record from someone of Bao's age, yet many of his peers do it. He is one motivated kid, so don't knock him for it.

Sitting on your ass playing games consoles for someone Bao's age is perfectly fine! I understand your sentiment, but the startup world of "rush rush rush" really pains me. It does no harm to just bum about.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#88

Post by pclark » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 2:28 PM UTC

sjtgraham wrote: post #13

plbth wrote: post #4

Seems like a pretty awful track record.

Sitting on your ass and playing games consoles would be a particularly bad track record from someone of Bao's age, yet many of his peers do it. He is one motivated kid, so don't knock him for it.

Sitting on your ass playing games consoles for someone Bao's age is perfectly fine! I understand your sentiment, but the startup world of "rush rush rush" really pains me. It does no harm to just bum about.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#89

Post by stretchwithme » Sat, Jan 01, 2011, 10:17 PM UTC

markbao wrote: post #23

stretchwithme wrote: post #7

Awesome. One suggestion I have is to select either the first or third person and use the same voice for both the title and the article. I think its ok to write your own bio, but to show that you are writing and then appear to pretend that you are not is a bit annoying. I don't mean to imply any actual pretense, of course, because there is nothing wrong with using the third person. I just don't think it works here as…

Hey, thanks! I wrote that bio when I was 16 and just added on when I started something new, so it's basically like an exquisite corpse except by only one person (but just as much as a hodgepodge.) So it's a mess. But thank you for the suggestion. My new page is a lot better (though still very much in progress: http://cl.ly/2o0g3f3e2d1f022S3d2X )

and when I have a clue what I'm clicking on, I'll gladly check it out :-)

good luck.