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Half-Baked Product

weli.dev

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Re: Half-Baked Product

#171

Post by DANmode »

Sheeny96 wrote: post #99
askvictor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long dreamed of a dishwasher that can detect when you remove the (cleaned) dishes from it, and presents a display saying 'load dishes' or something like that. And after finishing a cycle, says 'unload dishes'. Should be pretty easy to achieve with some load cells in the feet, but haven't seen any like that.

We had this at my old work, except it wasn't a display, it was a circular piece of paper with "clean" on one side and "dirty" on the other. When it was done, you rotate the paper so it was clean side up. Should we have gone for series A? It was a pretty great MVP after all, albeit manual, but automation of the paper flipping would of course come on the second iteration

Bezos has magnet versions.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#172

Post by weli »

dzink wrote: post #165

Here is another story: A baker who bakes for her kids every day makes an oven. She spends years perfecting it by herself with details only someone who uses this product would notice. The nuance of gold baked details in just the right places on the bread, the infusion of essences for the cakes. The precise charring on the pizzas. She goes to young founder events to meet likeminded makers and they talk about space oven…

But slow organic growth is not a hyperscaling unicorn. Who wants to invest money for a mere 50% return? We need to x100 or x1000 it for it to even be worth to invest.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#173

Post by ranyume »

brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

Your solution is to fire CEOs, shareholders and only make employee-owned businesses? I mean I'm on board.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#175

Post by weitendorf »

clan wrote: post #10

This was such a funny and refreshing read. Especially to find on this VC fuelled forum. There was so much truth in this on a Dilbertesque level. If you can learn from this you are winning. I am not saying "VC bad". I am saying it is a sharp-edged tool which you need to wield with great care. This humorous piece really points out the pitfalls. Worth the read - do not just lurk here in the comment section (as I usually…

I had the opposite reaction, this felt like a story that was literally purpose-built for pandering the hn audience without saying anything interesting.

Good fiction teaches you something you hadn't seen before, or challenges your perspective, or articulates a point of view or personality that you had never before considered. If it's just "some guy went to work and it sucked and he was right and everyone else was wrong and the Green People did classic Green People bullshit", and there's nothing else complicated or humanizing it, and no real-world lesson or stranger-than-fiction details to it, then what value does it have?

Like, what would happen if you asked a redditor with 10 years of experience reading about startups, but no real exposure to that culture/experience beyond the comment section, to write a story summarizing the consensus opinion on reddit of how startups typically work? Of course, because it's made up it's not wrong, but it exists entirely within the socially-contingent reality of the Internet Consensus.

In the real world there's politics, inter-personal relationships, personalities and personality flaws, and too much detail for "startup flails around" to be something you can reduce to "the startup flailed around". Of course it did, but why and how? A story that says "you know how it goes in all the other stories? yeah, that" or "there was a guy like you and he was good, and all the other guys were idiots and they were bad" has no point

Re: Half-Baked Product

#176

Post by DANmode »

move-on-by wrote: post #94

I remember sitting in on a sales meeting early in my career. I kept quiet, but afterwards I complained to my manager that they were selling features that didn’t exist and conflicted with core concepts of the product. My manager told me that was how sales were made. I left the company not long after, I was already disgruntled prior to that discussion. I’ve seen the same thing everywhere I go. I don’t have the disposit…

> There seems to be no downside.

If you don’t see the value of your own word, I can’t give it back to you.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#177

Post by hilariously »

swiftcoder wrote: post #137
Skwid wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those I've used in the UK aren't so bad, they're cold fill only with a heating element in the sump. It takes maybe 15 minutes to fill and get up to temperature at the start of a shift, after that each cycle is ~2 minutes. The hot water is recirculated during the wash, the rinse uses fresh water from the tap with the excess going out an overflow. A little sump water gets replaced every cycle, but enough stays that it'…

They also have the clever system of standardised, removable baskets. Need to increase dishwashing throughput? yank the clean basket, line them up on the counter to dry, and run a new basket through This is probably the one trick consumer dishwashers should emulate

The problem in basically any consumer kitchen is storage - having racks and racks of stuff under your big stainless steel commercial countertops is no problem.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#179

Post by singpolyma3 »

ranyume wrote: post #173
brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

Your solution is to fire CEOs, shareholders and only make employee-owned businesses? I mean I'm on board.

CEOs are employees...

Re: Half-Baked Product

#180

Post by phtrivier »

This article could have been written 20 years ago (source : I was there), probably 50 years ago, and will probably be written for ever. (Although future éditions will have fun about AI.)

What I would love is to read more of the story from the perspective of the salesperson (we're all too sympathetic to the engineers, and potentially ceo - but I suspect their part of the story goes beyond "I'll just say yes to everything and cash my variable share of the deal". Otherwise, pour rational next move would be to all become salesperson and build oven on the side for fun.)

Also, I would love to read the perspective from the customer side ? ("What do you mean they sell oven that don't rotate ? We clearly specified that we needed an ISO-98765 compliant oven !!! OF COURSE it has to rotate !! why did the boss just went with the cheapest supplier again ?")

Or even the perspective from BigOven ("guys ! I read on linked in that this little startup has built a candle button, why don't we have that already ?")

More seriously - do you know of startups that got away with salespersons saying "no, sorry, we can't make rotating ovens, you should see our competition, or come back in three years." Aren't those dead as dodos, by virtue of not having any customer to pay the bill ?

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