Ask HN: Am I crazy? • Hacker News Board

amohr wrote: post #34

anamax wrote: post #27

You need to be able to convince your interviewees to participate. What's in it for them? See http://scobleizer.com/ for someone else who has solved that problem. One problem is timing. It's not sufficient to turn the interviews into enough money, you have to make that happen at the right time. I think that your budget is a bit low, but that doesn't mean that this will be more doable later or that it's not doable now.

Yeah, this is the thing that's really bugging me. I don't want to bank on people just inherently wanting to share their story and calling in favors. I've got a couple weeks before I can realistically set out, and that will probably be haunting my thoughts the whole time. Hopefully, I could offer enough exposure to present an incentive, but this only really works for the less established.

then focus on the less established. there are plenty of really interesting businesses in the 'exchange goods and/or services for money' category that have zero chance (and sometimes less interest) of getting venture capital.

Even those that get seed capital are usually interested in talking with interesting people... and if you do this right you will end up with a lot of contacts, and thus be a very valuable person, even without publicity. There is a lot of value to be had in saying "oh, I talked to this other guy last week who was doing something that would complement your product or service."

Re: Ask HN: Am I crazy?

#45

Post by Eliezer » Wed, Sep 02, 2009, 11:56 PM UTC

If you haven't made money from writing before, don't count on being able to do it this time. Making money at writing is super bonus extra hard.

Re: Ask HN: Am I crazy?

#46

Post by jakewolf » Wed, Sep 02, 2009, 11:57 PM UTC

Come to NYC and I'll buy you beers while you interview me about my startup.

Re: Ask HN: Am I crazy?

#47

Post by prpon » Wed, Sep 02, 2009, 11:59 PM UTC

Do it. It's no crazier than this girl who set out to the end of the world back on a tractor collecting dreams of people.

A great interview on NPR at http://www.pri.org/theworld/?q=node/14897

and more information here: http://www.tractortractor.org/english/

Re: Ask HN: Am I crazy?

#48

Post by AndrewWarner » Thu, Sep 03, 2009, 12:00 AM UTC

amohr wrote: post #28

AndrewWarner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to help. I like this idea a lot.

uh oh - Mixergy's giving me a 500 error...

I know it's driving me nuts. Sorry.

Re: Ask HN: Am I crazy?

#49

Post by jmtulloss » Thu, Sep 03, 2009, 12:04 AM UTC

jmtame wrote: post #13

amohr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign My degree is in Political science with concentrations in computer science and economics. I also have about half a degree in physics and a whole lot of coursework (around the reqs for a minor) in math, english, and music.

cool, same here. are you on hndir.com? there is a collection of about 25 or so hackers for uiuc, many of them would be good to check out. shoot me an email and let us host you for a few nights in palo alto, no costs -- jared /at graffitigeo /dot com

Found a bug in hndir :). It doesn't recognize @uiuc.edu as an illinois address. Not all of us changed, you know!

Re: Ask HN: Am I crazy?

#50

Post by many » Thu, Sep 03, 2009, 12:05 AM UTC

You're smart enough to ask "am I crazy" - it seems like a suitable piece of bait. You just graduated college and you want to do something? Yeah, shout me out. I do http://grantvote.com - you see it's quite entrepreneurial. Call me for free, 620.388.1771 - I'm Jesse.