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The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

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Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#81

Post by danielweber »

mrchess wrote: post #75
biscarch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to have fallen into a version of this trap. MongoDB has made me a nice chunk of change as a consultant. These days when I mention MongoDB people don't even hide the crazy looks. The interview/meeting might as well be over then and there. Since mentioning mongo sets the conversation back, I've instead choosing to focus my energies delving deeper into ecosystems like Riak-Core/Erlang which many developers still…

Is MongoDB certainly declared "bad" now or something? I still thought Mongo is a viable option? Why would they give you crazy looks?

"There is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion." -- Paul Graham

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#82

Post by nswanberg »

tptacek wrote: post #3

You 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;…

Bringing up photo sharing apps was perhaps only a setup for bagging on over-excited storage technology enthusiasts, and I think I agree with your larger point of ignoring the somewhat arbitrary values of in groups, but with that said...

Only in the last five or so years have large groups of people been carrying around high-quality usable digital cameras with permanent internet connectivity, and even in those years the picture quality, usability, and connectivity have been getting better, and the number of devices out their keeps growing.

World wide web search has been thought to have been solved several times until Google came along, and even now, fortunately, folks have not given up on solving the problem of people searching for things.

So in five years how can a bunch of male 20-something storage fetishists in SV have solved all of the problems of photo sharing for everyone? Surely there are problems to solve remaining for them, or for anyone else who do not share their particular needs and want to take a crack.

And there are quite a few more problems to be solved in people sharing pictures of things.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#83

Post by lancewiggs »

RyanZAG wrote: post #40
Redoubtable wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cus…

I'm in the industry so I get what you're saying here - but I'm pretty sure most VCs and your customers are going to be mighty confused. You should try and simplify a 'what we do' message that is easier to understand. The first 30 seconds of introduction to your concept is the most important - make sure people can understand it!

Without looking at the site, here are three potential what we do messages:

"We help businesses make compelling games using their own customer's data"

"We help businesses make personalised games for their customers"

"Personalised games for your customers"

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#84

Post by knieveltech »

Lost it at "Liked by the kind of men that determine who is or is not “one of us” in tech.". Silicon valley culture is almost, but not quite, entirely irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of "techs". The number of people active in that scene represent a rounding error compared to the rest of the people working in industry in technical roles outside of the valley. Get out of the echo chamber.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#86

Post by OGinparadise »

rdouble wrote: post #33
Redoubtable wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cus…

The text on playapi.com says "PLAYAPI IS A PLATFORM FOR CREATING SOCIAL GAMES AND APPLICATIONS." in a big font.

Maybe it was decided in Zynga's better days. Now they may want to revisit that, games aren't happening

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#87

Post by snowwrestler »

balloot wrote: post #76
Redoubtable wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cus…

I read this and still have no clue what this business is. You may want to consider the possibility that Silicon Valley isn't massively broken and you simply don't have a good elevator pitch.

I understood but only because I work very near the world of PR, which is the language in which the parent post was written.

The background is that big companies like Coke or Nike need creative content to post on Facebook and Twitter. They pay PR agencies huge dollars to come up with that content.

My plain English translation would be something like: this company helps PR agencies make custom online games for their clients. The agencies will look good because lots of people will play the games. (Maybe the games also collect consumer preference data--not clear.) Agencies with developers on staff can self-service; agencies without developers can pay extra to get help.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#88

Post by jakejake »

nswanberg wrote: post #82
tptacek wrote: post #3

You 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;…

Bringing up photo sharing apps was perhaps only a setup for bagging on over-excited storage technology enthusiasts, and I think I agree with your larger point of ignoring the somewhat arbitrary values of in groups, but with that said... Only in the last five or so years have large groups of people been carrying around high-quality usable digital cameras with permanent internet connectivity, and even in those years th…

I think you are right, but it probably won't be a company that's essentially copying whatever every current "cool" startup is doing but putting an "r" on the end of their company name. It'll be people who truly innovate.

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#89

Post by biscarch »

mrchess wrote: post #75
biscarch wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to have fallen into a version of this trap. MongoDB has made me a nice chunk of change as a consultant. These days when I mention MongoDB people don't even hide the crazy looks. The interview/meeting might as well be over then and there. Since mentioning mongo sets the conversation back, I've instead choosing to focus my energies delving deeper into ecosystems like Riak-Core/Erlang which many developers still…

Is MongoDB certainly declared "bad" now or something? I still thought Mongo is a viable option? Why would they give you crazy looks?

danielweber is probably right. It's fashionable to hate on MongoDB now. There have been many, many articles detailing people having issues with it. Anything from losing data due to not keeping the set in RAM to "unsafe" defaults.

Typically the hate comes from people being unprepared and not researching their database options enough before making choices. IMO the fact that it's so easy to get up and running with Mongo actually works against it because it seems like the database "just works" until you start needing something from it.

Ex[1]: Foursquare took their Mongo instances to bare metal recently, keeping everything else on EC2. Most people starting with Mongo aren't thinking "at some point I'll migrate my database servers to our new datacenter to run on bare metal".

That said, the recent MongoSV didn't instill much confidence in the platform. You could overhear the frustration of 10Gen's event sponsors all day. Personally, I'm trying to move to distributed, masterless systems so Riak fits in very nicely. Yokozuna is also promising as a riak-solr type deal[2] and Riak Core can be used as a framework for creating distributed systems.

[1] http://www.10gen.com/presentations/mongodb-foursquare-cloud-...

[2] https://github.com/rzezeski/yokozuna

Re: The “It” Crowd Doesn’t Like Me and I Finally Don’t Care

#90

Post by ahoyhere »

pud wrote: post #24

Generally, 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…

If it's totally a fantasy, it can be anything they want. The moment reality barges in, suddenly there's cold hard math to be done.
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