Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you please get the designer of this playbook and ycombinator.com to redesign HN too?
And Craigslist. And ReadMe.io.
And RFCs.
Startup Playbook
151–160 of 243 posts
Re: Startup Playbook
#152I 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…
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 believe this used to just be called "a small business". Not a terribly new idea, but being rediscovered perhaps by tech people?
This is as good excuse as any to link to my rant post that we need a new term for startups that are not focused on VC funding.
1. http://www.tillett.info/2014/11/24/lets-kill-the-term-lifest...
Re: Startup Playbook
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Gmail founder" sounds a little funny to me. If I am employed as a developer in a company on a new product, am I then a founder of that product? It just seems like the word founder just keeps being used more liberally as time goes on.
I think it's appropriate in this case. Paul started Gmail inside of Google as a side project. At first most people were not a supporter, including Marissa Mayer and other peers. He was scratching an itch though and eventually got Larry and Sergey on board which helped the cause and eventually grew into what it is today. So with that, there are a lot of similarities into what we'd call a founder today. While financial…
Not really, he did it inside a big company with a nice cushy salary and lots of hardware supporting him. Absolutely ZERO risk.
That's not a founder.
It's a great product, he did a brilliant thing, but he's not the gmail 'founder'.
Re: Startup Playbook
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 believe this used to just be called "a small business". Not a terribly new idea, but being rediscovered perhaps by tech people?
This is as good excuse as any to link to my rant post that we need a new term for startups that are not focused on VC funding. 1. http://www.tillett.info/2014/11/24/lets-kill-the-term-lifest...
Sort of similar:
micheleincalifornia.blogspot.in/2014/03/i-love-lucy-lifestyle-business-that.html
Re: Startup Playbook
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
That's kind of the point!!
The trajectory was clear enough that all those investors DHH called "star struck" put money in.
To quote him: Irrational investor exuberance indeed. I think it would be more sensible to class them as "investors who had more foresight than DHH".
He berated them for being dumb. Since we can now see that they weren't dumb at all we should consider DHH's insights questionable.
Re: Startup Playbook
#156Why is the title in orange? Color does not convey logical information when used in text.
Re: Startup Playbook
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
To my mind, this mainly reinforces that ample success does not lend one's opinions any credence. Fortunately, there aren't many people relying on DHH for market analysis. It's kind of like how no one really needs to hear my opinions on politics just because I'm a championship level drinker (but I'll give them anyway).
Re: Startup Playbook
#158(This got published a little early because it got indexed. I'm still going through and fixing some typos and will maybe add a few other things.)
Found one:
> Founders and employees that are burn out nearly always work at startups without momentum. It’s hard to overstate how demoralizing it is.
s/are //
Re: Startup Playbook
#159Great stuff, thanks
Re: Startup Playbook
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's appropriate in this case. Paul started Gmail inside of Google as a side project. At first most people were not a supporter, including Marissa Mayer and other peers. He was scratching an itch though and eventually got Larry and Sergey on board which helped the cause and eventually grew into what it is today. So with that, there are a lot of similarities into what we'd call a founder today. While financial…
Not really, he did it inside a big company with a nice cushy salary and lots of hardware supporting him. Absolutely ZERO risk. That's not a founder. It's a great product, he did a brilliant thing, but he's not the gmail 'founder'.
...and he probably wasn't all that "passionate about" it either.