111–120 of 125 posts
> in fact I had decided against attending many previous such events due to the cost ( in both time and money ) of travelling down to the San Francisco bay area It may not be my place to say, but...Is anyone else here....irked that a singular genius like Colin, with as impressive a product as Tarsnap still has to worry about money? Especially considering that said worry could easily be ameliorated by yielding to even…
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I don't like "outing" people, in case they didn't want their presence at an event to be widely known I understand where you're coming from, but in the present context this is consideration bordering on madness. Trevor is one of the founding Y Combinator partners . How on Earth could it be "outing" him to note that he was at Startup School?
I never assumed that every YC partner would be at every YC event. As far as I'm aware Trevor wasn't organizing Startup School, merely attending it; and PG (for example) didn't seem to be there at all beyond his appearance on stage. I wouldn't say that Trevor was trying to go incognito, but he certainly didn't seem to be trying to make his presence obvious either.
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Leaving aside the semantics, I'd always begrudge any control I gave away after being 100% in charge for so long.
I don't understand either why many are suggesting you get a cofounder . You just need another person who can work on UI, branding, PR, etc. Don't give them any equity, don't give them any control over the innards of tarsnap, just pay them a handsome wage (for the handsome job that they'll do). p.s.: in my ideal world, you are every founder (doesn't partake in shitty, ethically-questionable growth-hacking techniques),…
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I really just want him to pick better fonts.
What on earth is wrong with the fonts?
I rather like your fonts.
The thing that is hardest about tarsnap is that it is not possible to predict my costs, as potio11 noted some time ago. I am OK with the picodollars, personally.
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Trevor: Thank you for replying. I hope you (and Jessica, and everybody else involved with Startup School) don't take what I've written personally -- I nearly didn't post it for exactly that reason, but decided in the end that you're all grown-ups who won't be offended by honest criticism. ;-) And thank you for your comments when we met -- talking to you was the highlight of the weekend for me (I didn't mention it in…
I feel there's something inconsistent to be reconciled here. On one hand single-founder startups don't get as big, which is a bad thing. On the other, writing code for 8 years as a single founder is right about the definition of doing things that don't scale, which is a good thing. So you can't say Colin running Tarsnap as a single founder for 8 years was bad for Tarsnap. But it also sounds like unexplored terrain. T…
Doing things that don't scale isn't good in and of itself - it's just a means to figuring out what product people want, and offering an early version of it without investing in the ability to scale. Once you've done that, I think the point is to figure out how to scale the previously un-scalable activity, and then you have a business.
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I am curious; how do you come to the conclusion that staying small is better than growing the product/business and taking over as some suggest?
I said that Tarsnap's goal wasn't to grow, not that Tarsnap's goal was to not grow. What it comes down to is that Tarsnap is large enough now to be easily self-sustaining (it pays me more than I would expect to earn anywhere else), and my goal from the start was "build the service I want to use", not "become rich".
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I don't understand either why many are suggesting you get a cofounder . You just need another person who can work on UI, branding, PR, etc. Don't give them any equity, don't give them any control over the innards of tarsnap, just pay them a handsome wage (for the handsome job that they'll do). p.s.: in my ideal world, you are every founder (doesn't partake in shitty, ethically-questionable growth-hacking techniques),…
I think you're underestimating how hard all those non-coding skills are. When you laundry list "UI, branding, PR, etc" I can almost see you doing a hand-wavy motion. The reality is, anyone that's truly awesome at non-technical things deserves some equity for the 10X-100X growth they will help bring to the business. The truth is you can be 8 years in, but only 10% of the way there.
> The truth is you can be 8 years in, but only 10% of the way there.
I don't think this is true for tarsnap. tarsnap at this moment is a finished application people can get right now. The technology component of the company is completely solid, not in need of any repair or improvement, it's only the UI and other things that have to be improved. Colin's gotten it more than 80% there.
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I feel there's something inconsistent to be reconciled here. On one hand single-founder startups don't get as big, which is a bad thing. On the other, writing code for 8 years as a single founder is right about the definition of doing things that don't scale, which is a good thing. So you can't say Colin running Tarsnap as a single founder for 8 years was bad for Tarsnap. But it also sounds like unexplored terrain. T…
"Single-founder startups don't get as big, which is a bad thing" Setting aside the question of whether this is true, why is it bad to have a smaller business? I can think of several advantages, not the least of which is the luxury of remaining the sole developer. It's weird that you spend the comment telling Colin what he's doing wrong, and then ask him at the end what he wants.
It also isn't as weird that I wrote that comment considering I alarmingly find myself falling into Colin's shoes as a single founder. If there's a trap laying ahead that I could avoid, I'd rather know about it sooner than later. It's not to disparage Colin that I wrote the comment. It's to learn from him. I like Tarsnap and I'm a Tarsnap customer.
If there's a way forward that is unexplored terrain, I at least would like to learn more about it.
I wonder how far YC pondered over this question actually. What do you do with the cpercivas?
This gutsy, uncompromising quality is a trait of successful founders. I'm curious to see what will happen.
Colin: I'm sorry we didn't deliver what you needed. YC's goal in selecting Startup School participants is to get a mix of deeply technical people and popularizers. The combination of those two skill sets makes a great startup. When I saw you at Startup School I was like, "Hey, it's cperciva! Maybe he'll find a co-founder who can sell and together they can make Tarsnap take over the backup business!" That would be a g…
Y Combinator has many characteristics of a cult; a Dear Leader (who appoints his successor himself!); a devout following of young people who are ready to make great sacrifices just to be part of it; mega-churches and mass events such as Startup School; dubious characters as spokesmen (Andrew Mason, Travis Kalanick); apologists who contemplated a career as priest (patio11). They prefer young people because bullshit is…
You know, it's frightening this sentence is still true if you replace "bullshit" with "dreams" and "swallow" with "believe." It's frightening because ignoring your dreams is the most common regret of the dying.
So age might only on the surface be a filter. The true filter might be optimism.
I sincerely hope you don't ignore your dreams.
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I said that Tarsnap's goal wasn't to grow, not that Tarsnap's goal was to not grow. What it comes down to is that Tarsnap is large enough now to be easily self-sustaining (it pays me more than I would expect to earn anywhere else), and my goal from the start was "build the service I want to use", not "become rich".
That's how I run my game project as well. Except that I haven't gotten to a point where it can sustain working on it full time. Have you written about the history of Tarsnap like how you started it, how long before you were able to use it as a living, etc...?