So Close • Hacker News Board

Re: So Close

#151

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:42 AM UTC

fuJiin wrote: post #146

exergy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irreverently, fuck this attitude instead. Silicon valley is chock full of know-nothing delusionals who love the smell of their own farts a little too much. People who're convinced that their idiotic pilgrimage towards delivering a "magical" "experience", while completely divested from common sense and lacking any semblance of an answer to "but why?", will nevertheless change the world and "delight" users. Fuck all of…

These know-nothing delusionals who love the smell of their own farts likely made both the hardware and the software you used to read that article, as well as everything you are using now using to post your message, on a site run by other know-nothing delusionals. So yeah. Fuck them and their attitude. How dare people try anything.

[deleted]

Re: So Close

#152

Post by siddharthdeswal » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:42 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #29

tlb wrote: post #6

Ouch. A sadly common outcome of talking to corp dev. http://paulgraham.com/corpdev.html Agreeing to no-fundraising and exclusivity clauses during a long due diligence process really puts your head in their vise. And once it's there, people within the acquirer will start saying, Hey, we could built this ourselves! Let's run the clock out and kill the competition.

Seems strange that anyone would agree not to raise more funds or negotiate with other parties for their entire remaining runway. I mean, it puts you in the situation that you either sell to that company or you go out of business. They could offer you a fraction of the amounts they were talking about before you signed, and you'd have no alternative. Hell, even asking you to agree to such unbalanced terms seems like a…

Not defending him, but seems like a chump who had exhausted every alternative, but won't talk about it honestly, and prefers to go with "this wasn't a failure, you were amazing, I was amazing, product was batshit amazing, onwards to our next adventure!"

Re: So Close

#153

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #106

mikeash wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A typical smart lock still supports a physical key, so you have a backup method of access. It looks like this particular one does not, though.

So you still need to carry keys around. Or at least hide the backup key somewhere.

Depends on your risk tolerance. I always carry keys and use the smart features as a convenience and backup. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to ditch the keys if you were fairly confident your phone would still work when you arrive home and you’re willing to take the small risk that it doesn’t.

Re: So Close

#154

Post by exergy » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #141

exergy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irreverently, fuck this attitude instead. Silicon valley is chock full of know-nothing delusionals who love the smell of their own farts a little too much. People who're convinced that their idiotic pilgrimage towards delivering a "magical" "experience", while completely divested from common sense and lacking any semblance of an answer to "but why?", will nevertheless change the world and "delight" users. Fuck all of…

> Silicon valley is chock full of know-nothing delusionals who love the smell of their own farts a little too much. And Hacker News is full of people who lob bombs at everyone who tries and fails because it makes them feel superior for never having tried, all the while vastly underestimating the difficulty of building something meaningful. Most efforts at building something great fail, so it’s easy to shit on everyth…

[Removed pointless ranting]

Re: So Close

#155

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

brucephillips wrote: post #129

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely that several of these employees are legitimately broke (for reasons beyond their control, not because they're bad at adulting), but they conceal it. Signs of weakness harm your negotiating position.

Honest question: What normal circumstances would lead to anyone making six figures being broke that doesn't involve bad adulting?

[deleted]

Re: So Close

#156

Post by dang » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:45 AM UTC

angel_j wrote: post #90

What a garbage post from a garbage project that wasted lots of time. Locks keeps honest people honest, they don't stop a determined burglar. A digital, key-less system with new gears to move the same deadbolt, is providing zero innovation, b/c it's still just a little deadbolt securing all ~inch of door-perimeter to the frame (unless I missed something and they also re-invented the door hinge). So much business BS in…

Please don't post indignant rants like this to Hacker News. It reliably leads to garbage threads, as the embarrassing sequence of 'fuck you', 'fuck you and your farts', and 'no fuck YOU' amply demonstrates below. It's cringeworthy.

The users who posted those things should be ashamed of defacing HN this way, but the original fault lies with your comment, since had you posted a thoughtful one instead, those other comments wouldn't have followed.

Your post was upvoted, predictably to the top, but that doesn't mean it was good. It's because of the fact that rage activates the Jerry Springer Show impulse in most of us. This is a weakness of the upvoting system and something that amplifies the worst in online communities. As a result, we need all HN users, including you, to exercise a bit of self restraint and not go straight to the bottom of the barrel. That doesn't mean you have to change your views, just post thoughtfully and with an orientation to good conversation rather than venting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: So Close

#157

Post by jamestimmins » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:45 AM UTC

These responses contain a lot of condemnation (based mainly on price) of a product that these people have never used. Building a premium first product to fund further development is a common approach (think Tesla), as is creating a premium niche in an otherwise commoditized market (Apple).

While it does sound like costs/scope got out of control, please remember that price is oftentimes determined fairly far down the development path, and that the ending price may not reflect the initial plans. They may have just pushed scope too far and then backed themselves into a corner. Once the money is spent on R&D it's not like you can get the money back just by developing a simpler product.

Startups are hard. Hardware is hard. Products are hard. Security is hard. This is a site for people who want to build things. Please stop pissing on the grave of a failed attempt to build something new, especially when your information is limited to a Medium post by the CEO who just had to fire all of his employees days before Christmas. That hardly counts as an objective or substantial source of information.

Re: So Close

#158

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:46 AM UTC

majos wrote: post #111

JepZ wrote: post #110

Why are there so many (large) companies calling themselves or their product Otto? A probably incomplete list: - http://www.otto.com - https://www.ottomotors.com - http://www.otto-company.com - https://www.meetotto.com

Presumably for the "auto" homophone?

And it makes for a nice Airplane! reference.

Re: So Close

#159

Post by wdewind » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:46 AM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #88

brucephillips wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CEO and investment team ignored the negative aspects of the $700 lock and didn’t see that the competition would be able to provide the same features (and more) at less than 1/2 the price. If Ben realized this, he should have never worked at this company in the first place. It sounds like it was a failure of a product strategy.

A $700 lock is a product offering, not a product strategy. A strategy could have been "start with a $700 offering at the top of the market and work down," but that's not something they tell you on the way in, and even if they do, it's no guarantee that the execution will/won't work.

> A strategy could have been "start with a $700 offering at the top of the market and work down," but that's not something they tell you on the way in

This is absolutely the kind of thing you should be asking about and they should be telling you on the way in. As an early stage startup employee you are basically an investor. You should deeply understand how the businesses you are joining are going to work, and if they wont tell you you should consider it a red flag.

Re: So Close

#160

Post by _aarti » Tue, Jan 02, 2018, 2:47 AM UTC

jamestimmins wrote: post #157

These responses contain a lot of condemnation (based mainly on price) of a product that these people have never used. Building a premium first product to fund further development is a common approach (think Tesla), as is creating a premium niche in an otherwise commoditized market (Apple). While it does sound like costs/scope got out of control, please remember that price is oftentimes determined fairly far down the…

Thank you so much for saying this. The engineering team was literally in tears because they could not ship. We all wanted to ship the product so bad. It hurt.