Beautiful
Founding is a snowball
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: Founding is a snowball
#22The metaphor is broken. The snowball grows passively over time naturally, but being a founder requires you to actively create value in your startup. Snow doesn't choose to stick to your ball based on PMF, and the entire piece romanticizes grinding without once mentioning customers, revenue, or whether you're solving a real problem people will pay for. I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (…
Yeah, but its a metaphor of the creation process. It's perhaps a bit on the light side when it comes to obstacles, but it's not a bad metaphor of the business creation journey.
I would perhaps point out this is not a VC business journey, that snowball looks very different.
And sure, the business starts in a easy environment (lots of snow on the ground) but the idea of starting alone resonates.
And it leaves out the sun. That pesky sun which melts the snow causing 9 out of 10 snowballs to melt. The sun, which melts the snow around you even as you struggle to push. Your direction is meaningless if you insist on pushing away from the snow.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#23The metaphor is broken. The snowball grows passively over time naturally, but being a founder requires you to actively create value in your startup. Snow doesn't choose to stick to your ball based on PMF, and the entire piece romanticizes grinding without once mentioning customers, revenue, or whether you're solving a real problem people will pay for. I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (…
You’re entitled to your opinion, but I don’t think that’s what I wrote.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#24Hey hacker news! I wrote this and I’m glad it connected with folks. To answer a few of your comments: Writing is all mine but I had Claude proofread it, in addition to some close friends. Honestly it pointed out some great weaknesses in the original draft. The art is all nano-banana through a tool called flora ai. I’d love to work with a human illustrator for something like this. I can draw, but I can’t paint and the…
The end result is quite stunning. quite beautiful. Thanks for taking the time to create it.
Thank you for saying so. I’m glad it connected with you
Re: Founding is a snowball
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d love some thoughts here on the consistency. I thougt I actually did pretty well! But I can see how I might be blind to mind own work here. What ruined it for you?
You did do pretty well! I don't think the final result was ruined at all. Not many people will notice things like his pants only being brown in the first image, or their eyes only having whites in the third image, or his jacket sometimes having a hood and sometimes not. Compared to what we see on most blogs, even patio11's, this is capital-A Art.
I actually thought a lot about the eye whites! He didn’t look nervous enough without them
Re: Founding is a snowball
#26The metaphor is broken. The snowball grows passively over time naturally, but being a founder requires you to actively create value in your startup. Snow doesn't choose to stick to your ball based on PMF, and the entire piece romanticizes grinding without once mentioning customers, revenue, or whether you're solving a real problem people will pay for. I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (…
> The snowball grows passively over time naturally
Only if you push it down the mountain. Then it’s also susceptible to crashing and breaking down.
Normally what you do is you have to push the snowball manually. The bigger it gets, the more people you need to push it in a coordinated manner.
I think it’s excellent metaphor.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#27Seeing a borderline hustle culture article illustrated with AI slop in the style of Bill Watterson, who famously opposed commercial exploitation of his work, is deeply saddening.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#28If I were to add, "winter" is the best time to find snow, and there is enough snow for everyone.
In some large western cities, snow has a second meaning.
Taking that meaning and the VC money required for the inflationary marketing, is probably closer to reality.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#29Great story, thanks for sharing. Besides the part where it says "Other people will see its glory and join their smaller snowballs into it.", it sounds a bit like marriage too.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The images are AI-generated. This makes them automatically bad in some people's view, but I think they're reasonably fitting here. With a little bit of work (e.g. attention to consistency between frames, blending into the site background) they could even be good.
I’d love some thoughts here on the consistency. I thougt I actually did pretty well! But I can see how I might be blind to mind own work here. What ruined it for you?
The art’s aesthetic, which resembles Calvin and Hobbes, is disrespectful to its creator, Bill Watterson’s.
Bill spent a lot of energy fighting commercialization of his work, arguing that it would devalue his characters and their personalities. I don’t know what is cheaper than using an AI model to instantly generate similar art, for free.