Startup Playbook • Hacker News Board

Re: Startup Playbook

#141

Post by will_pseudonym » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 11:22 PM UTC

stevesearer wrote: post #137

m_fayer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the DHH rant linked above, I'm not condemning the Big Startup / Growth / VC approach. At a societal level, it has managed to spin up many game-changing companies very quickly. I think it's a movement that will go down in the history books for creating a lot of rapid progress in the first half of the 21st century. But I'm also not convinced that it's the best way to be happy as a technologist. The system produc…

I started my business 8 years ago and might be able to hire an employee soon and have been considering writing a post called "How I Hired My First Employee In Only 8 Years". The goal would be to balance out some of the other posts here about getting 10000 users in a week or "bringing in $500k of revenue in 3 months.

Please write that post!!! I would LOVE to read it! I am sure thousands of other people would too!

Re: Startup Playbook

#142

Post by ekanes » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 11:26 PM UTC

trdm wrote: post #132

davepeck wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Basecamp (née 37Signals) folks have been beating this drum for quite some time. DHH posted "Reconsider" to their blog today, actually; it's an entertaining read, if nothing else: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider Here in Seattle, there's a great community of small software businesses with meaningful profits and impact. We have ties to the broader Seattle startup and technology community, without bein…

That "Reconsider" post was at the top of HN yesterday(1) but it was quickly removed from the front page(2). What a coincidence. DHH's "Reconsider": "Our definition of winning didn’t even include establishing that hallowed sanctity of the natural monopoly!" Sam's "Playbook": "We also ask how the company will one day be a monopoly." (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506422 (2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

There's plenty of room for both models. Lifestyle businesses are awesome. 100% great. But we wouldn't have society-level upgrades like Uber, Twitter or Apple without venture capital. They just don't work any other way.

Re: Startup Playbook

#143

Post by tdicola » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 11:36 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #134

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised that article didn't trigger a bigger response on HN. It is a little over the top, but it leaves a lot to think about. The Unicorn, disruption PR wheel has drowned out the virtues and benefits of other forms of entrepreneurship.

For me personally I tend to ignore most of what DHH writes. He has an unfortunate tendency to see the way that he was successful as the only way to be successful, and seems to lack the ability to benefits in other ways of doing things. We used to see this in PG's writings too: back before he started YC he appeared to be utterly convinced that it was Lisp that made his company successful. After he started YC and he sa…

> Regarding DHH, I'll just point at [1], with the comment that Facebook made $891 profit last quarter. It's also currently valued at ~$300B. > [1] https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33....

To be fair that blog post was written in 2010 when Facebook was still a private company and had nowhere near the level of advertising, reach, etc. that it has today. In particular they had barely scratched the surface of mobile and were only making money off Farmville and other ephemeral apps.

Re: Startup Playbook

#144

Post by gkoberger » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 11:43 PM UTC

vrnayini wrote: post #122

I really like the illustrations. Any idea what tools were used for the animations? Thanks!

I did them by hand with CSS.

Re: Startup Playbook

#145

Post by mbesto » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

kilimchoi wrote: post #123

Has anyone been able to get a letter of intent with just an idea? Is that even possible?

Yes.

Re: Startup Playbook

#146

Post by kilimchoi » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 11:54 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #145

kilimchoi wrote: post #123

Has anyone been able to get a letter of intent with just an idea? Is that even possible?

Yes.

would you like to share your story of how you did it?

Re: Startup Playbook

#147

Post by jjoe » Thu, Nov 05, 2015, 11:54 PM UTC

Word Occurrences Frequency Rank

you 196 4.2% 1

your 74 1.6% 2

company 60 1.3% 3

it's 59 1.3% 3

great 56 1.2% 4

product 52 1.1% 5

people 51 1.1% 5

get 44 0.9% 6

founders 42 0.9% 6

good 40 0.9% 6

Re: Startup Playbook

#148

Post by billmalarky » Fri, Nov 06, 2015, 12:08 AM UTC

ekanes wrote: post #142

trdm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "Reconsider" post was at the top of HN yesterday(1) but it was quickly removed from the front page(2). What a coincidence. DHH's "Reconsider": "Our definition of winning didn’t even include establishing that hallowed sanctity of the natural monopoly!" Sam's "Playbook": "We also ask how the company will one day be a monopoly." (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506422 (2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

There's plenty of room for both models. Lifestyle businesses are awesome. 100% great. But we wouldn't have society-level upgrades like Uber, Twitter or Apple without venture capital. They just don't work any other way.

Sometimes they do. Wikipedia comes to mind. Your point is still valid though.

Re: Startup Playbook

#149

Post by _s » Fri, Nov 06, 2015, 12:18 AM UTC

I don't suppose I could make a small request - could we have a print stylesheet that does page breaks on the headers? I'd love to be able to print it out and go through it :)

Re: Startup Playbook

#150

Post by patio11 » Fri, Nov 06, 2015, 12:31 AM UTC

soneca wrote: post #107

m_fayer wrote: post #36

I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns. I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet…

This is your place I guess: http://www.microconf.com/ I never went to one, I just follow patio11 tweetstorms whenever he is on it and it is full of gems (the tweets, I can only imagine the conference itself). They have lots of videos on the website, but a "playbook" format would by an awesome resource! BTW, I work at "trying-to-be-big-with-outside-investment" startup applying to YC, but I see A LOT of value on the ad…

Microconf is the best conference anywhere. Other options if you enjoy that one: Baconbiz and DCBKK (less software focused but much of the content and crowd generalizes).

To the extent bootstrapped SaaS has a playbook, it is Start Small, Stay Small. I'd probably write one eventually but Starfighter is cutting into my writing bandwidth at present.