231–240 of 447 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The defense is of course that some people can do that - Musk did it, so why not? If you think that Musk did his endeavors in order to become rich, you are likely mistaken.
What drives him then? Power?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, the fundamental problem is what Paul Graham pointed out here: https://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few goo…
I dunno, going back to the article, at some point customers are getting exactly what they're asking for: "their kitchens are custom-built, so they need ovens with specific dimensions. Oh, and a rotating base like the one they already have." “My oven at home connects to the fireplace. Does yours?” “I make a lot of wedding cakes, what have you got for me?” “Do you have a Ramadan mode?” Those are all problems. But are t…
They're not problems people need solved. They're problems people think they want solved. need != want.
the high street bakers needed reliability with improved efficiency at an affordable price (cost of risk). they didn't need improved efficiency, less reliability and still really expensive.
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 wron…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, the fundamental problem is what Paul Graham pointed out here: https://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few goo…
> Finding a problem _you have yourself_ also increases the chance that you understand the problem space. If most founders are wealthy, or even reasonably comfortable, it's possible they're too out of touch to identify a problem shared by enough people.
The founder gets angry. He promised the VCs 10% of Spain’s oven market. The entire market. “We can’t sacrifice any of them.”
It’s not just greed. The 5 million was raised with the entire market on the slide. The founder isn’t choosing between right and wrong: he’s choosing which promise to break.
I wonder what the author had in mind when he wrote "which promise to break". Is the founder thinking about his promises to the VCs? Or thinking between the VC and customers?
I think this is the most human moment of the entire story. Everything else is pretty standard tropes (and just like everyone in this chain, these tropes ring very very true). They're almost systemic issues.
But this is a moment where the one person who is supposed to actually have agency (the founder!) actually has a choice. I don't want to nitpick the technicalities of the choice (it seems pretty straightforward to me that getting to 10% of total market would more than justify multiple product lines), but the psychology here.
Why is the founder uncomfortable breaking promises to investors, but more comfortable selling a garbage product? Is he just hopeful?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, the fundamental problem is what Paul Graham pointed out here: https://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few goo…
I dunno, going back to the article, at some point customers are getting exactly what they're asking for: "their kitchens are custom-built, so they need ovens with specific dimensions. Oh, and a rotating base like the one they already have." “My oven at home connects to the fireplace. Does yours?” “I make a lot of wedding cakes, what have you got for me?” “Do you have a Ramadan mode?” Those are all problems. But are t…
It seems like most customers are returning the oven, which would normally be an extremely strong signal that there is a quality problem. In the SaaS world, the equivalent would be churn, but it's not always as straightforward since if users quit before they sign up (e.g. by reading a review or using a free trial), then they don't show up in that metric.
I found the part about the engineer's motivation interesting: > The founder offers [the engineer] 20% of the company and total freedom to build the perfect oven. The salary isn’t great, but there’s the promise: [...] And something more important than money: he’ll finally get to build the oven of his dreams. That turned out to be a complete lie. Not necessarily a deliberate one - I think it's quite possible both the e…
It's some variant of chesterton's fence, where you believe all of these huge, established companies in a space are just stupid and refuse to release a product thats 10x better
Netflix, Google, Airbnb, Uber, Slack, the iPhone, Github, Stripe, Dropbox. Big players at the time could have built their products, but didn't.
Oh, I'm glad I don't work in the oven business. We're just starting a stealth startup that's revolutionizing dishwashers, and the prototypes are amazing. They use less water, less detergent, and this weekend we're hoping to solve the last remaining issue: occasionally, they break glasses.
It sounds like you're joking, but I've long dreamed of a different type of dishwasher. One that washes instantly. I don't need it to fit more than a single plate at one time. Just put something in from one end, and out comes clean and dry plate on the other end. Like a car wash. I am quite certain these exist already large kitchens and I seem to remember one from a school diner from maybe 35 years ago, but I've alway…
I've used these while working as a volunteer in a camp kitchen during work weekends, where we had maybe 20-40 guests eating a meal. You put dishes/silverware/pots/pans/whatever in a square tray, push it into one side of the Hobart, and pull down a lever to close the doors and start the cycle. They take a number of minutes that you can count on one hand... I seem to remember 90-120 seconds but I'm not sure. Stuff comes out clean and hot on the other side, and you want to pipeline this so it's one person with dirty hands feeding stuff in, and one person with clean hands (and thick gloves) pulling the square trays out, letting them cool, and putting the clean dishes/etc. away.
They release a huge amount of steam and they're wonderful for this kind of volume (20-40 people at a meal + all the cooking implements to support this). Larger than home use, though --- unless of course you had a mansion with servants. And I get the sense that maintenance and operating costs would be a lot higher than a regular plain dishwasher.