The Startup Dragon
wesleytansey.com
The Startup Dragon
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: The Startup Dragon
#2Fun article to write. I crowdsourced all those images on Mechanical Turk in about an hour. Best $2 I ever spent! :)
Re: The Startup Dragon
#3Fun article to write. I crowdsourced all those images on Mechanical Turk in about an hour. Best $2 I ever spent! :)
Nice one. And that's awesome. Do you have the mturk job writeup? Curious to see how the description matches the actuals.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#4Fun article to write. I crowdsourced all those images on Mechanical Turk in about an hour. Best $2 I ever spent! :)
Nice one. And that's awesome. Do you have the mturk job writeup? Curious to see how the description matches the actuals.
I didn't save them. They were something along the lines of:
"Draw a man in a cave being chased by a fire-breathing dragon. He is desperately trying to remove a bunch of stones that are blocking his path. A fairy and a forklift just appeared beside him."
I can only hope that I made the turkers laugh a little bit when they saw that. :)
Re: The Startup Dragon
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice one. And that's awesome. Do you have the mturk job writeup? Curious to see how the description matches the actuals.
I didn't save them. They were something along the lines of: "Draw a man in a cave being chased by a fire-breathing dragon. He is desperately trying to remove a bunch of stones that are blocking his path. A fairy and a forklift just appeared beside him." I can only hope that I made the turkers laugh a little bit when they saw that. :)
Cool. Yeah, my favorite part of turk is using it for more creative jobs like this, had to ask. You should make this a habit with your blog posts - I'd read every post, just to see how a turker interprets your startup experiences.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't save them. They were something along the lines of: "Draw a man in a cave being chased by a fire-breathing dragon. He is desperately trying to remove a bunch of stones that are blocking his path. A fairy and a forklift just appeared beside him." I can only hope that I made the turkers laugh a little bit when they saw that. :)
Cool. Yeah, my favorite part of turk is using it for more creative jobs like this, had to ask. You should make this a habit with your blog posts - I'd read every post, just to see how a turker interprets your startup experiences.
I actually am planning on doing that! I had an idea for one today that I'll probably post later next week.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#7Fun article to write. I crowdsourced all those images on Mechanical Turk in about an hour. Best $2 I ever spent! :)
I actually thought this was kind of boring and wasn't going to upvote, until I read that the images were from Mechanical Turk and your instructions.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#8While I agree with your sense of how valuable your time is, (really in any endeavor, not just startup life), I disagree with the implication that just doing more, quickly, will help you slay or avoid the startup dragon.
It is often the case in my own life that one or two days of solid, no-stress thought time can save many weeks, sometimes months of effort.
I think it can be particularly hard to take this time when you're cashflow negative, in the press, and the clock is ticking.. That is precisely when you most need to take that time, of course. :)
Re: The Startup Dragon
#9Personally, when ever my back is against a pile of rocks is when I decide to try out the forklift. When ever I have a pile of schlep that I've been doing manually (or when I see that I will have to do it manually) I usually opt for the forklift if I can see it will reduce that schlep and net me some time.
The payoff can't be a thin margin either. If doing it manually vs learning a tool will save me a few hours total, It's not worth it. However if writing a script will save me days on end in the long run I'll think about it.
Re: The Startup Dragon
#10This is where having lots of experience comes in play. It's possible to hire lots of people, someone to operate the forklift, a geologist to evaluate the stones, a physicist to plot flight paths for the stones, etc.... but each hire will slow your startup down. Work with someone who has done a startup before, or get mentoring from that person. This will teach you to use the right tools at the right time before you end up in such a pinch.