A well-written humblebrag.
Ain't nobody humblebrag like Dustin Curtis humblebrags.
What a stupid idea
121–130 of 231 posts
Re: What a stupid idea
#122I'll confess something similar, but a bigger whiff on my part.
Wifi was becoming common when I entered college. Around that time, laptops were underpowered, especially compared to desktops.
I thought wifi was a fad. After all, you generally had to plug your laptop in after 2 hours. What was the big deal about a cable for network too?
Re: What a stupid idea
#123Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…
I'm going to say it first, I'm sure others will be thinking it. This is the WORST type of comment on HN.
Tobacco was invented in 5000 BC according to wikipedia. At that point in time it had basically none of the bad side effects you mention due to shorter life spans. It probably had numerous positive side effects.
Now you don't like facebook??? Well, honestly, I do. I like it to keep in touch with people and it had real value to me when I moved to a city where I didn't know a single person as it made me feel less alone. I'm sure many others have benefited.
Judging a startup, company, etc. because you don't see the value shows you are overly judgmental and immature.
The product market has been very good at delivering value over the last 7,000+ years. Let it do its job and try to get off your high horse.
The companies mentioned are highly successful. If you think you can do it, feel free to do it, donate the cash you make to Watsi and sit in your recliner while enjoying how good of a person you are. Otherwise, make a comment that adds value like the OP did.
Full disclaimer: I couldn't care less about any of the companies mentioned, I'm just sick of reading comments like this.
[edit] added an n't to could
Re: What a stupid idea
#124Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…
The part that got to me was: "They saw the future and they built it."
These applications are toys, not the future. They may be well built, popular, amusing but they are still toys. When I think of someone who sees the future and tries to build it, the first name that comes up is Elon Musk with SpaceX. There are others.
Saying an iPhone exclusive application that lets you share 4 second videos is the future is simply insulting to my intelligence.
Re: What a stupid idea
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, to be sure the magic ingredient in Youtube's success was not the idea of uploading and watching videos. Many people were working on video sharing at that time (myself included). Youtube's secret was that the founders were already successful entrepreneurs who were well connected to VC's. Thus they had access to the capital that allowed them to lose ungodly amounts of money in the quest for growth.
Well, they also had an impressively cavalier attitude to copyright. Which was a major advantage. But they also had excellent design sense. YouTube made uploading, viewing, and sharing content very, very easy. I did some consulting for a semi-competitor, so I paid a lot of attention to the market then. YouTube did a great job, which helped them get users, which surely didn't hurt with VCs. Also, Crunchbase says they t…
Yes, I should have mentioned the copyright issue. The Napster lawsuits were still fresh in people's memory, and I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs and and VC's were frightened of starting a video sharing site that was so openly being used to share copyrighted clips.
Youtube was acquired very quickly (within a year of public launch), so total losses were of course much lower than Facebook. But due to the bandwidth costs, YouTube had to burn a half-million+ a month very quickly after launch. Not many entrepreneurs are connected enough to get that kind of cash so quickly. Facebook could grow the site while spending only in the low five digits, without needing to quickly raise a large venture round.
Re: What a stupid idea
#126Very well argued indeed. I'm glad someone shares the same thoughts as me.
Re: What a stupid idea
#127I'd have dismissed the facebook idea if zuckerberg would've came to me in the beginning. There were myspace, hi5, orkut and a few other already on the market.
Re: What a stupid idea
#128Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…
I'm going to say it first, I'm sure others will be thinking it. This is the WORST type of comment on HN. Tobacco was invented in 5000 BC according to wikipedia. At that point in time it had basically none of the bad side effects you mention due to shorter life spans. It probably had numerous positive side effects. Now you don't like facebook??? Well, honestly, I do. I like it to keep in touch with people and it had r…
I don't feel like "but I like it, so your argument is wrong" is a very good counter-argument to "facebook makes human interactions worse".
Re: What a stupid idea
#129It may not be that the ideas are 'stupid' per-se. It's just that we tend to underestimate how complex some tasks are for ordinary people.
I mean, I could take thousands of pictures and automate the process of applying photoshop filters and uploading them as they arrive - and I bet most of you could do it too, perhaps in some even cooler way. That'd be just black magic for most people.
Re: What a stupid idea
#130Success is not validation of an idea and we should be ashamed to think so. Cigarettes are one of the most successful consumer products on earth. Inhaling a lungful of carcinogenic smoke several hundred times a day is undoubtedly a stupid idea. Tobacco has made a small number of people incomprehensibly rich, to the great detriment of humanity. Personally, I think nearly all of these 'social' startups are bad news. Not…
This is one of the best comments I've seen on HN in awhile. I think once you spend enough time in the valley, you see how many hacks are trying to "change the world" right until their startup is about to fail and then they adapt the exact same behaviors they were trying to disrupt. It's about survival and once a company becomes your baby you will do anything to survive. It's not a terrible thing, but it is something we should be aware of. This isn't all the peak of innovation, many times it's just people working on a CRUD site trying to "disrupt big industry player x" until they run out of money and then resort to the same cheap tactics as everyone else.