Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 139 posts

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#81

Post by atlasunshrugged »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #66
nickkokonas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi -- I'm the co-owner of Alinea... the restaurant and group. While they are in different industries, I owned a derivatives trading group for years, run a tech startup (Tock), and am getting a bunch of emails from folks thinking I started this or am affiliated in some way. So... while I dislike conflict, I really don't like be associated with something I have no control over. There will be an incoming email shortly.

Amazing. FWIW to the Alinea (YC W21) folks, I felt your name, branding/colors, and logo felt completely off and strange. Good time to change it up? Edit: And fonts. Modern edgy logo font and the website complimentary font is a bit... Crayola. Not dogging on you all, I'm sure having this be a focus of your launch isn't fun for all your hard work. It's a really neat idea.

Ditto on using this opportunity for a design and brand change, the purple is overwhelming and even the name for a mass market brand is tough IMO. Do you pronounce it Ah-lean-ah? A-lin-euh? A-lien-ah? Not obvious and if you're thinking about leaning on WOM its a tough word because people might hear it and google 'alina' and miss you entirely

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#82

Post by hpvic03 »

dang wrote: post #78
hpvic03 wrote: post #16

Shouldn't "Show HN" rules also apply to "Launch HN"? "Off topic: ... sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html This looks like an awesome product, but kind of annoying to see a "Launch" but it's just a waitlist. Why not wait until Monday?

(I'm going to mark this subthread off topic to be fair to the founders, who haven't broken any rules.) It's a good question that has been on my mind too. I'm going to revisit the Launch HN process once the W21 stampede settles down. You guys have probably noticed that we've been stacking two Launch HNs per day for a while now. This is because of how big the W21 batch is. Demand for Launch HNs is growing as YC grows;…

Totally fair, I don't want this to be the top comment, I hate the middlebrow-dismissal and I've sort of committed that sin with this comment.

Thanks!

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#83

Post by Impossible »

philip1209 wrote: post #52

Alinea is also a three-Michelin star restaurant in Chicago. I don't think names need to be 100% unique, but in the case of targeting wealthy investors - I'd assume they're one of the most likely groups of people to already think of "Alinea" as a restaurant. Plus, Alinea is involved heavily involved in tech via Tock.

I thought this initially ("why is Alinea on HN?"). Name clashes are common in startups though (Robinhood Markets vs World Wide Robinhood Society and Clubhouse vs. Clubhouse Software), especially when it's a common word in an unrelated industry.

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#84

Post by hpvic03 »

0xferruccio wrote: post #63
hpvic03 wrote: post #16

Shouldn't "Show HN" rules also apply to "Launch HN"? "Off topic: ... sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html This looks like an awesome product, but kind of annoying to see a "Launch" but it's just a waitlist. Why not wait until Monday?

To be fair there are launch HN posts for hard tech companies too where you can't try the product yet!

Sure, but if it's software and it's about to be publicly accessible very soon, why not wait for that?

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#85

Post by dang »

hpvic03 wrote: post #82
dang wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm going to mark this subthread off topic to be fair to the founders, who haven't broken any rules.) It's a good question that has been on my mind too. I'm going to revisit the Launch HN process once the W21 stampede settles down. You guys have probably noticed that we've been stacking two Launch HNs per day for a while now. This is because of how big the W21 batch is. Demand for Launch HNs is growing as YC grows;…

Totally fair, I don't want this to be the top comment, I hate the middlebrow-dismissal and I've sort of committed that sin with this comment. Thanks!

That sin is a co-creation and the upvoters bear the greater part of it :)

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#87

Post by bfrink »

anamlakhani_ wrote: post #49
slumdev wrote: post #39

The name is going to have to change to avoid confusion with the restaurant. Also, you've mentioned "value based investing" in a comment reply here. Is this the same thing as "value investing"? Or is it something new that you're introducing?

Yes, value investing!

Value investing like Fama French HML? Value like the factor that's gotten trounced over the last decade?

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#88

Post by bgorman »

philip1209 wrote: post #52

Alinea is also a three-Michelin star restaurant in Chicago. I don't think names need to be 100% unique, but in the case of targeting wealthy investors - I'd assume they're one of the most likely groups of people to already think of "Alinea" as a restaurant. Plus, Alinea is involved heavily involved in tech via Tock.

It will be difficult to displace the restaurant in search results as well as popular culture, especially for a US-based startup.

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#89

Post by philip1209 »

bgorman wrote: post #88
philip1209 wrote: post #52

Alinea is also a three-Michelin star restaurant in Chicago. I don't think names need to be 100% unique, but in the case of targeting wealthy investors - I'd assume they're one of the most likely groups of people to already think of "Alinea" as a restaurant. Plus, Alinea is involved heavily involved in tech via Tock.

It will be difficult to displace the restaurant in search results as well as popular culture, especially for a US-based startup.

They even have a wikipedia page!

Re: Launch HN: Alinea (YC W21) – Invest in stocks you believe in

#90

Post by icedchai »

loceng wrote: post #34
anamlakhani_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Alinea means a new way of doing something,for us, it's a new way of investing!

I don't understand the downvotes you're getting or the negativity in the comments. I've never heard of Alinea - the restaurant before - and it's really strange that people are being anal about someone else using the name for a completely different industry - it won't be confusing to anyone.

Here's a simple test I always use when figuring out if a name is good and not confusing: Google it. If you search for "Alinea", what do you get?
Post reply on HN