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Founding is a snowball

blog.bawolf.com

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Re: Founding is a snowball

#11

Post by bryantwolf »

FreakLegion wrote: post #9
MoltenMan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this post reads as AI at all. It has none of the tell-tale signs either (em dashes, common constructions like 'not just ____ but ____, bullet points, headers, etc.)

The images are AI-generated. This makes them automatically bad in some people's view, but I think they're reasonably fitting here. With a little bit of work (e.g. attention to consistency between frames, blending into the site background) they could even be good.

I’d love some thoughts here on the consistency. I thougt I actually did pretty well! But I can see how I might be blind to mind own work here.

What ruined it for you?

Re: Founding is a snowball

#12

Post by bryantwolf »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #2

Seems to stretch an one analogy in too many different directions. I guess the point of losing control is the most true.

What parts felt too stretched? Or just as a composition would you have preferred I narrow it down? I thought it was fun that it goes a little overboard. To me it felt like doing so captured just how much these journeys can change over time.

I tried to focus on 3 main bits:

Early exploration, problems between people, and then how much is ultimately in or out of your control

Re: Founding is a snowball

#13

Post by bryantwolf »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #6
outlier99 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pangram says fully human written https://www.pangram.com/history/02d6eff5-f782-4978-9e60-bb02...

So the art isn't AI generated either? Idk why people trust these "AI checker" sites when they have been shown time and again to be inaccurate at best, often defamatory at worst.

I too am skeptical we’ll really be able to catch everyone. By making public tools we just create evals to beat the tools etc.

Still, right now I think we can tell, so I focused on making sure they were my words, but I let an llm help edit and I think it honestly made it much more readable

Re: Founding is a snowball

#14

Post by FreakLegion »

bryantwolf wrote: post #11
FreakLegion wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The images are AI-generated. This makes them automatically bad in some people's view, but I think they're reasonably fitting here. With a little bit of work (e.g. attention to consistency between frames, blending into the site background) they could even be good.

I’d love some thoughts here on the consistency. I thougt I actually did pretty well! But I can see how I might be blind to mind own work here. What ruined it for you?

You did do pretty well! I don't think the final result was ruined at all. Not many people will notice things like his pants only being brown in the first image, or their eyes only having whites in the third image, or his jacket sometimes having a hood and sometimes not.

Compared to what we see on most blogs, even patio11's, this is capital-A Art.

Re: Founding is a snowball

#15

Post by with »

The metaphor is broken. The snowball grows passively over time naturally, but being a founder requires you to actively create value in your startup. Snow doesn't choose to stick to your ball based on PMF, and the entire piece romanticizes grinding without once mentioning customers, revenue, or whether you're solving a real problem people will pay for.

I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (startup) and just keep pushing it forever it is guaranteed to grow to something large. Some might say "duh, of course", but I still think a lot of people don't understand this.

Re: Founding is a snowball

#16

Post by perfmode »

bryantwolf wrote: post #10

Hey hacker news! I wrote this and I’m glad it connected with folks. To answer a few of your comments: Writing is all mine but I had Claude proofread it, in addition to some close friends. Honestly it pointed out some great weaknesses in the original draft. The art is all nano-banana through a tool called flora ai. I’d love to work with a human illustrator for something like this. I can draw, but I can’t paint and the…

The end result is quite stunning. quite beautiful. Thanks for taking the time to create it.

Re: Founding is a snowball

#20

Post by cmishra »

A single metaphor cannot describe all aspects of company building.

That being said, this is definitely one that's particularly optimistic, particularly low-ego, centered around a curiosity one has with the world.

That I like quite a bit.

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