Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–78 of 78 posts

Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

#71

Post by hacker64 »

sanj wrote: post #66
nostrademons wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer web. People don't visit websites based on who developed them. They visit them because they want to. It's often difficult or impossible to figure out what consumers want, other than putting lots of ideas in front of them. Usually if you ask them, their responses will be wildly different from what they actually do. (I maintained that Reddit was a failure long after I started using it on a regular basis, and di…

I wasn't intending to imply that people care who developed a website. But I disagree that you the best approach is to throw things at the wall until you see if something sticks.

That's exactly how it works with consumer Internet projects. Consider that even Google didn't realized how valuable what they had was. They tried to sell their search technology in the early days, but only because nobody would buy it, they had to continue running the company on their own. The forumla seems to be:

1. Build a basic version of something you think people want.

2. Try it.

3. If people don't like it, modify and try again. Do that for a few times, and if it still doesn't work. Go back to step 1.

Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

#72

Post by yamada »

gwenhwyfaer wrote: post #10

You might want to check how many kids you actually have. Just in case you forget to, you know, feed one or two of them.

Good point. Parents often get confused as to how many kids they have. Why just the other day Homer forgot to count Maggie ... and if it happens on t.v., well then we know it happens everyday in real life. I mean, 1, 2, 3 ... so hard to keep track of them all.

Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

#75

Post by davidw »

nostrademons wrote: post #20
staunch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#9. Family to support http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

Though he did say "I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm saying that I don't want to take responsibility for advising it." PG is wrong when he says "You'll never found the next Google this way", though. IBM was founded by someone who had a wife and kid to support, and had just been convicted of antitrust violations, fired, and had a 1-year jail sentence hanging over his head (later reversed on appeal). You do need to b…

Tim O'Reilly also got his start with a wife and kid already present.

Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

#76

Post by portLAN »

pg wrote: post #69
portLAN wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're trolling, and its annoying. No. Objecting to platitudes isn't trolling. The statements most commonly described as "platitudes" are short proverbs and aphorisms which are intended to motivate or encourage another person, but which are in reality overly-simplistic or cliche; for example, "You will succeed if you try hard enough" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude > You asked a question that was impossible…

The problem is not what you say but how you say it. E.g. "raining on their fantasy parade."

Saying things the right way in dealing with people is an art. I'm mostly around computers... kind of like a lawyer who comes home and then deals with his family by continuing the cross-examinations! Thanks for pointing it out; I was thinking about it the other day -- multiple ways to phrase the same thing -- and it took me several iterations to get from "likely offensive" to "non-offensive and helpful". I don't have enough experience with humans to say things the right way right off the bat, so I may need to essentially run unit tests on everything beforehand until I develop my intuitive sense to a much greater degree.

With computers you tell them "here's exactly what's wrong with you." With humans you can actually rely on them to fill in the gaps and just state things a lot more diplomatically (not to mention, it's not about making people "wrong" anyway!). Something phrased very gently and ambiguously can get results, and is probably the only way to deal with people effectively in most circumstances. I appreciate the reminder!

Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

#77

Post by portLAN »

SwellJoe wrote: post #70
portLAN wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're trolling, and its annoying. No. Objecting to platitudes isn't trolling. The statements most commonly described as "platitudes" are short proverbs and aphorisms which are intended to motivate or encourage another person, but which are in reality overly-simplistic or cliche; for example, "You will succeed if you try hard enough" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platitude > You asked a question that was impossible…

"Wrong again -- funny, because he answered it above, describing what he actually did for years before YC." I only answered after clarification on just what you wanted me to say. Your first post was merely a "then why didn't you pass up the opportunity to get advice from YC if it's so easy?!" jab. I think it's clear that I think YC is a great opportunity for early stage startups--probably the best one going. We accept…

Thank you for the thoughtful replies. I gather I need to (1) practice the art of diplomacy; and then (2) relocate. Probably wouldn't do to meet investors and still be overly brash!

Re: OK, you've convinced me. I'm coming to join you.

#78

Post by SwellJoe »

portLAN wrote: post #57
SwellJoe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You haven't explained how your start-up succeeded without YC." Nobody asked. I'll take your response as somebody asking. In both cases, I made myself a recognized expert on an Open Source project that I liked a lot and that I liked the people involved (Squid in the first case, Webmin in the latter...though the first also included a huge amount of Webmin-related work and inspired the second). And then I founded compa…

> Nobody asked. Actually that's how this whole debate got started -- I asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613 > because nobody is doing deals in Boston So in your opinion would YC be better off doing both batches in Silicon Valley? My impression is people would be better served living there and flying to Boston for Demo Day 2 than vice-versa. > but he has a lot of good stuff to say about marketing, salesman…

"> Nobody asked.

Actually that's how this whole debate got started -- I asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=52613"

Yeah, I took that as smart ass sniping. If it was a sincere question, I'm glad I've now answered it.

"So in your opinion would YC be better off doing both batches in Silicon Valley? My impression is people would be better served living there and flying to Boston for Demo Day 2 than vice-versa."

Yes, and I've told pg as much (he asked everyone in YC their opinion on the issue a few months ago). But, I don't know as much about the startup business as pg, and I'm given to understand that pg likes living in Cambridge...he brings the money, he makes the rules.

"yada yada yada, Guy Kawasaki sucks, blah blah blah"

Who cares? Have you actually read his books, or watched him speak? If you're too stupid to know a good writer and an amazingly good speaker when you see one, I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you. At the very least perhaps you can learn how to speak to people in public without pissing them off.

Post reply on HN