It's pretty easy to get "liked" by the "it crowd" in silicon valley - you just hire a better PR agent.
Or just explicitly bribe people with free cash, free services, etc.
That's part of what the PR agent is supposed to be doing.
The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
21–30 of 113 posts
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#22You can curse us all you want. I curse things at random all the time. But then get back to work. The challenge you've briefly engaged with isn't a problem; it's a market opportunity. While the "it" crowd is repeatedly failing to achieve any lasting success with their completely pointless photo-sharing applications running on their 4th successive new storage backend (was mysql, then mongo, then homebrew, now postgres;…
Could not agree with you more. Part of the reason I wrote this was so I could mentally reset myself to get back to work. Frankly I'm embarrassed I got caught in the trap and spent valuable emotional energy on it caring about it in the first place. - Julie
Try travelling and telling people what you do - you'll blow their minds. I take my laptop anywhere from New Zealand to Dubai to Argentina, and working On The Internet is still a novelty that you'll gain hearts and minds from the wonder of it all. Get some perpective on how awesome your life and work is!
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#23What is this mysterious drivel? Who is brianvan5155 and why hasn't he made any comments? How has this made it to the front page? What can it all mean?
I'm a web producer and developer. I'm an early commenter from Slashdot, Ars Technica, and Gawker. I've been using online communities for 22 years, longer than some people around here have been alive. I've read quite a few threads on HN and respect this as a news source, and I haven't felt fit to contribute until now. I've been talking with Julie about her experiences as a like-minded professional and I also remain ba…
remain baffled why her extremely sensible business plan continues to go unfunded despite an aggressive half-year VC campaign while the most harebrained ideas in the world
Maybe cuz it's an API for social games. No Silicon Valley VC will fund anything that has to do with games these days. Untried harebrained ideas at least don't have dismal track records yet.
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#24Generally, being profitable precludes a company from getting "silly [high] valuations" & buzz in Silicon Valley. Unless they're really, really profitable.
Big valuations usually stem from not knowing how much a company will make once they start charging for stuff. So the "it" crowd works itself into a frenzy and VCs take a big gamble.
But once you make a dollar, all the mystery is gone. You're judged & valued pretty much on your revenue alone. Which is usually low (startups are hard) and unsexy (so not a ton of buzz).
Not saying a agree with it. But that's how it is.
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#25Nice post. I'll take revenue and profitability over media hype and "it" status any day of the week. It's kind of shocking how many early stage companies have absolutely no plan for revenue/profit, and point to outliers like Facebook and Twitter as their playbook for success. There are meaningless debates about 10 millions users being the new 1 million ( http://www.businessinsider.com/10-million-users-is-not-the-n...…
"I'll take revenue and profitability over media hype and "it" status any day of the week."
All that is fine of course and true. But there are side benefits to "it" status. For one thing it can help you attract talent and get the type of attention that can lead to success.
Let me give you an example. I've helped both high profile people and people who are nobodies with advice. In general the nobodies are much more thankful for the advice (and have even sent me gifts as thank you's). The high profile people say "thank you".
"Name dropping". But the fact that I do the work for high profile people, well, I use that in my marketing to attract paid customers that actually put money in my pocket. And it works.
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#26What is this mysterious drivel? Who is brianvan5155 and why hasn't he made any comments? How has this made it to the front page? What can it all mean?
Who are these women and brown people interrupting the sanctity of our hacker space!?
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#27You can curse us all you want. I curse things at random all the time. But then get back to work. The challenge you've briefly engaged with isn't a problem; it's a market opportunity. While the "it" crowd is repeatedly failing to achieve any lasting success with their completely pointless photo-sharing applications running on their 4th successive new storage backend (was mysql, then mongo, then homebrew, now postgres;…
Could not agree with you more. Part of the reason I wrote this was so I could mentally reset myself to get back to work. Frankly I'm embarrassed I got caught in the trap and spent valuable emotional energy on it caring about it in the first place. - Julie
"I got caught in the trap and spent valuable emotional energy"
Of course as a result of hitting that tipping point many more people know who you are now which isn't a bad thing and could have some future benefits.
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#28I've been thinking a lot about this as well. Once you start meeting people and seeing the reality behind the media, you realize that "great" outcomes in startups are rarely perfect (acquihire forced by investors, over-dilution, etc.) and that things aren't always going as well as people say.
In reality, being happy seems to be the hardest thing to achieve, but I'm starting to think that is what success really is.
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#29>>>Being cool has never been about begging to be liked.
>>>It turns out I’ve got a startup that happens to be a business. You know what that means? We make money.
That second part. That is what is cool.
Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a web producer and developer. I'm an early commenter from Slashdot, Ars Technica, and Gawker. I've been using online communities for 22 years, longer than some people around here have been alive. I've read quite a few threads on HN and respect this as a news source, and I haven't felt fit to contribute until now. I've been talking with Julie about her experiences as a like-minded professional and I also remain ba…
remain baffled why her extremely sensible business plan continues to go unfunded despite an aggressive half-year VC campaign while the most harebrained ideas in the world Maybe cuz it's an API for social games. No Silicon Valley VC will fund anything that has to do with games these days. Untried harebrained ideas at least don't have dismal track records yet.
Heh I'm stoked someone called us an API for social games. Usually people call us wildly less accurate things. YAY!
We are technically a suite of tools (which you know depending on your executional ability is an API, or a set of SDKs, or us hand holding you through using them) for brand managers and marketers to build applications and games with their own data. Layer up content + actions and out pops your very own custom THING.
We have found that there is a huge demand for brand creative, as digital marketing requires more marketing, not less, with newer storylines & media format being demanded w/ever more frequent turns.The advertising agencies are struggling to deliver quality, timely results, and brand managers struggle to afford the associated cost of traditional, all original (or custom) marketing.
We believe that if brands could rapidly create compelling new campaign media by leveraging a standing (and hopefully ever improving) body of component elements with their own brand data and concepts this is a powerful
Obviously this approach is well accepted today in software creation and the good news in we have worked with host of brands to try this theory out in practice- aka in client paid efforts.
Essentially what we're seeing, is if the tools allow quality brand marketing results, that reflect the brand’s story telling objective, then the brand manager is satisfied.
If the creative cost & delivery are both materially lower, this is a winning path—and the birth of a potentially formidable new cloud based SaaS business