Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What does "it's a good start" really mean.

okvivi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#31

Post by prawn »

coenhyde wrote: post #7

As an Australian I can relate to this. Often American's think I'm putting our startup down, just because I'm not overly excited saying everything is awesome and fantastic. I'm extremely positive and have absolute confidence that we will succeed. But I prefer to look at things objectively and to tackle the problems. However American's translate my language into "my startup sucks". So recently I've been training myself…

(Australian here.)

I think I could have a top-tier international corporation and still have to force myself to describe my product or service as great. I'd probably try to qualify it as opinion - "Well, I think it's pretty good."

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#32

Post by [deleted] »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #5

This strikes me as very true, but irrelevant. As an American I say something positive to every startup founder I encounter, but secretly think they are nuts. Had I met the founders of these companies, below is what I would have thought: Heroku: Sounds nice but impossible to deliver. Even if you do, no one is going to trust their business to your startup's platform. Dropbox: Yet another backup solution that is going n…

[deleted]

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#34

Post by hooande »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #5

This strikes me as very true, but irrelevant. As an American I say something positive to every startup founder I encounter, but secretly think they are nuts. Had I met the founders of these companies, below is what I would have thought: Heroku: Sounds nice but impossible to deliver. Even if you do, no one is going to trust their business to your startup's platform. Dropbox: Yet another backup solution that is going n…

Even though you might have been wrong about those successful startups, there are dozens or hundreds of others for which your negative first impression would have been dead on. You shouldn't stop trusting your instincts because you might have been wrong about a small number of high profile companies.

As you pointed out, the main issue here is that founders are counting on other people so much for validation of their ideas (and staking their egos on it). I don't see why you wouldn't just give your honest initial impression. If the founders become discouraged or upset with you for doing so, then that's their problem and not yours.

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#35

Post by palish »

younata wrote: post #20
palish wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mm.. I don't think you could have seen Drew's original Dropbox screencast and thought "This is going nowhere". But I suppose that's why I have Dropbox account #314...

> I have Dropbox account #314 Did you wait until they had 313 accounts before you signed up, or was it by random chance?

Heh. Random chance.

Though, my area code is 314, strangely enough.

And I've been age 3 and age 14.

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#36

Post by tripzilch »

Spenny wrote: post #13

I am not sure that the American viewpoint is necessarily bad in this case, especially as it pretains to working on projects. I think it is pretty safe to assume that people are more likely to pursue something further if they have positive encouragement. Thus, if "it's a good start" generally means that it is an awesome idea to a group of people, couldn't that be translated into meaning that those people continue work…

It's incredibly tiresome in a group, when you can't even bring up a random side thought without people going crazy about it.

Especially once you start to notice they don't quite mean it but just like "being part" of the conversation by drowning it out in praises, to hear their own voice, which is natural, and all very sweet and positive, but it's not very constructive.

It might seem motivating at first, the praise to urge the other guy to continue like that, but at some point it becomes laziness, because you're not adding anything to the conversation or thinking for yourself, just going "yeah yeah great awesome!" and you're not being useful at all, anymore.

It's kind of a bit like what Douglas Adams said, "if their mouths stop moving, their brains might start working".

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#38

Post by srl »

kslimbs wrote: post #18
TamDenholm wrote: post #4

I'd like to see a graph for British people.

Feedback from us Brits is even harder to parse. I always point those who are struggling to this handy table: http://yfrog.com/z/gy5gxvxj

That's funny - living in the U.S. (and having almost not contact with Brits, and too much with Aussies), most of these are still true to me. (In fact, most of them I've used or heard in the last week, intended in the British sense.)

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#39

Post by gbog »

eel wrote: post #17

I'm fascinated by cultural nuances like this. I really, really wish there was a website where you could look up things like this based on culture. I don't know how one would start to gather the data for a site like that.

You can start with something more concrete, like color names, ie where stop the yellow and start the red on a rainbow. But in fact, this is just a matter of definition, and is not that interesting. I would find more interesting to diff daily life things, like fridge content, number of close relatives, hygienic habits.

Re: What does "it's a good start" really mean.

#40

Post by hvs »

rwhitman wrote: post #15

Continuing the generalizations depicted in this post - I would say that the politely disingenuous "this is awesome" response is actually endemic to the West Coast. I've found folks in the Bay Area in particular have a strong aversion to "negative energy". Having spent some time on both coasts I'd say its not necessarily an "American" thing, its more a "Californian" thing. Here in NYC, I'm learning that negative feedb…

Here in the midwest, "this is awesome" is not commonly heard, but people are generally averse to confrontation. So, they will most likely give a "that's interesting" up to, and past, the midpoint of the normal distribution depicted. If it's really a terrible idea in their eyes, they will most likely make a sarcastic comment. Midwesterns (as a general stereotype, which is what we are talking about here) also tend to be less than energetic about new and different things, so no matter how good your idea is, you will be seen as crazy (or stupid) for trying to start a company in the first place.
Post reply on HN