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30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

truffles.me.uk

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Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#91

Post by ivansavz »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #27
pnathan wrote: post #21

Someone called Humourisok posted this, but it is dead for some reason. I thought it was a good idea, so repost: ---- Humourisok 20 minutes ago | link [dead] from the tech point of view you have an open platform to share and annotate scanned docs. Sort of "web 2.0 Sharepoint". The niche that I see for such a service is legal. Lawyers can receive, annotate and remark on clients drafts for proposals, contracts etc. So i…

Maybe he deleted it because he decided to run with it...

"you have an open platform to share and annotate scanned docs." I'd run with that!

Is anyone else running with that?

I mean sure you can annotate in acrobat reader (since Acrobat Reader 9), and sure you can use Flash paper + FLEX like Adobe connect and cozimo.com. But if just received a PDF as an email and I want to send back some comments/ suggest corrections what would I use? Is there a web app for that?

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#92

Post by stilist »

speckledjim wrote: post #52
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #23

Great article. I don't think we can repeat this enough: Hard work != value. Clever code != value. Writing something hackers think is cool != value. Sometimes I think the hardest part of startups is re-aligning our value system from what we've learned in school and society into something that's actually useful for startups.

I'd add "writing it in a new popular language" != value. The amount of time reinventing the wheel in hip new languages is truly staggering.

On the other hand, if nobody reinvents the wheel your language isn’t going to travel very far.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#93

Post by speckledjim »

stilist wrote: post #92
speckledjim wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add "writing it in a new popular language" != value. The amount of time reinventing the wheel in hip new languages is truly staggering.

On the other hand, if nobody reinvents the wheel your language isn’t going to travel very far.

Creating new languages doesn't create any value. It's not solving a problem. It's just solving the same problem that has already been solved countless times before.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#94

Post by dorkitude »

speckledjim wrote: post #52
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #23

Great article. I don't think we can repeat this enough: Hard work != value. Clever code != value. Writing something hackers think is cool != value. Sometimes I think the hardest part of startups is re-aligning our value system from what we've learned in school and society into something that's actually useful for startups.

I'd add "writing it in a new popular language" != value. The amount of time reinventing the wheel in hip new languages is truly staggering.

While it can of course get annoying, hipness should not be discarded so easily.

I'd argue that the hipness of a language/tech stack is actually an important business consideration today, if only due to the short supply of good startup dev talent. Good developers have their pick of jobs right now. For instance, most of the PHP badasses I know are regularly turning down PHP work in favor of working with something newer.

After all, the smartest people like to learn more than anything else.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#95

Post by speckledjim »

dorkitude wrote: post #94
speckledjim wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add "writing it in a new popular language" != value. The amount of time reinventing the wheel in hip new languages is truly staggering.

While it can of course get annoying, hipness should not be discarded so easily. I'd argue that the hipness of a language/tech stack is actually an important business consideration today, if only due to the short supply of good startup dev talent. Good developers have their pick of jobs right now. For instance, most of the PHP badasses I know are regularly turning down PHP work in favor of working with something newer…

Sure, although I'd still maintain there's a large amount of people who masturbate over the hippest new language features, without actually creating anything of worth.

The smartest people get things done. Even if it's using some arcane rubbished old technology.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#96

Post by lg_ »

speckledjim wrote: post #93
stilist wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if nobody reinvents the wheel your language isn’t going to travel very far.

Creating new languages doesn't create any value. It's not solving a problem. It's just solving the same problem that has already been solved countless times before.

You clearly don't know much about programming languages.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#97

Post by Vivtek »

fedd wrote: post #62
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #23

Great article. I don't think we can repeat this enough: Hard work != value. Clever code != value. Writing something hackers think is cool != value. Sometimes I think the hardest part of startups is re-aligning our value system from what we've learned in school and society into something that's actually useful for startups.

> Writing something hackers think is cool != value unless your customers would be hackers (i am telling this to myself, to reassure myself)

No, this is absolutely true. Reputation among your customers is of incredible importance. Just don't forget to make them customers...

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#98

Post by Vivtek »

pigbucket wrote: post #66

Completely missing from your postmortem (from which I learned a lot and for which I am very grateful) is the fact that the service you offer, to judge from the demo alone, is frankly not very good. Perhaps your analytics show that few visitors bothered to look at the demo, so maybe the point is moot, but I think the demo is awful, and if I wanted to take over this business, I would completely redo it, or remove it al…

Another problem with the demo is that it's hard to find. This sounds dumb, because there's a big star-flash thing saying "Look at the demo here" - but I tend to ignore star-flash graphics as marketing fluff, and it appears to be the only link to the demo.

Then, when I got to the demo, it loaded slowly because the images on the page were large. It was difficult to understand immediately just what I was seeing. After a while, I managed to get a mindset that could interpret what I was seeing and I ended up loving the technical flair - but as a customer, not a Hacker News post-mortem fan, I think I would long since have been lost.

Probably, instead of a demo, a cartoon of some sort would have presented the idea better, like (1) snap a picture of your essay with your camera, (2) upload it with our easy interface, (3) see comments by our staff of starving PhDs, standing by. Something fun and non-threatening. That could sell.

There's a great deal of techie myopia in this site, and I speak from a similarly myopic standpoint. All credit to you, Tim: the actual site is really quite nice from a technical standpoint, and it really can't be seen as wasted effort, because this is definitely going to be a point in your favor with any venture you do later.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#99

Post by SoftwareMaven »

ams6110 wrote: post #57
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #24

There are a lot of times that it doesn't make sense to write any code before selling the product, but there are also times it does. The whole decision comes down to "Can I convince somebody this will work?" The less likely your product is to be implementable, the more likely you will need code up front: 140 character mini blogs? Sure, fake it with photoshop. Real, Turing complete AI? You better have a prototype becau…

I think it's not all or nothing. Write just enough code to be able to make a credible pitch. In some cases this might be little more than HTML/Photoshop. Or you might need a bit of a backend but it can be mostly mocked up or support only a few contrived scenarios that you'll be using in your pitch.

Absolutely! Way to put it better and more succinctly than I did.

Re: 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release)

#100

Post by socillion »

econgeeker wrote: post #87
socillion wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be HN's version of hellbanning. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2619641 (and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2620156 particularly) discusses it. well phrased description from that article: "A hellbanned user is invisible to all other users, but crucially, not himself. From their perspective, they are participating normally in the community but nobody ever responds to them. They can no longer disrup…

I was hellbanned in the past and i was not trolling. I had over 1,000 karma earned in 6 months. My average karma per post was well over 6. I was not trolling. My posts were not getting voted down, despite often taking unpopular positions. I was, however, taking a position that one of the moderators of this site disagreed with, and (without realizing it) wrote a response making an argument in response to a post from o…

Could you share your prior username? I'm hesitant to believe you because every [dead] comment I've seen so far has been by a user with a net negative karma.
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