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Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

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31–40 of 93 posts

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#31
post #11

Not to be that guy but it's like the author is writing a novel. What's the tl;dr here?

The author attended an "American Idol" for startups. It's hip to have a startup. The names of said startups may as well be gibberish (yet they attempt to explain the meaning behind them). Pitches consist of ridiculous buzz words and maketing speak to cover up the fact that none of these ideas are solving problems or something that people want. tl;dr of my own reply: Have you seen that movie Idiocracy? It's like that,…

It's got what entrepreneurs crave.

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#32

Really enjoying the author's prose. This had me rolling: >> It’s like watching some sadist work over a baby lamb with a rusty crowbar and a broken gin bottle. The names of these startups sound like the products of an aggressive brain tumor on the frontal lobe. Crowdegy, Placeling, Kouply, QuoteRobot, Appthwack, Makegood, Onthego, Nickler, Kahal, Tanzio, Taskk. They’re all whimsical and unique in exactly the same way.

Actually, I quite like the name Appthwack.

For those of you who are too young to have lived through the original dot-com boom, I can't recommend this 1999 article on company naming from Salon highly enough:

http://www.salon.com/1999/11/30/naming/

Read the whole thing, it's hilarious.

As soon as I saw the parade of names in the OP I was reminded of one of the names the naming consultants in the the Salon piece devised -- "Jamcracker":

When Altman and Manning presented the name Jamcracker to a client recently, the reception was not everything they had hoped for. "I put the name up in front of their creative people," Manning says. "There were a couple of women sitting in. One of them got up and said, 'Oh, that's disgusting.' Another said, 'This is really sick.' I said, 'Excuse me, what are you talking about?' They said, 'We can't explain it, but that name is just creeping us out. We don’t know what it is, but could you take it off the wall, please?'" Manning remains mystified by the incident. "There's apparently some strange, uncomfortable meaning attached to it in the minds of some women," he says. "God knows what that could be."

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#33
post #30
post #28

"These women and men have come together to do brutal violence to the English language, to leave the spoken and written word bloodied and victimized on a cold cement floor, wishing for the sweet relief of death." I will read anything this author writes. Thanks for spotlighting this blog. Tip: if you want your blog READ instead of skimmed for buzzwords and facts, make sweet love to the English language. Then worry abou…

I think you should figure out what content you want to convey first; throwing pretty descriptive words at a page with no content is a good way to get garbage.

I understand this sentiment. e e cummings and James Joyce might be interesting counter-examples, but then again they were not tech writers. I suppose that I mean incisive and beautiful prose will keep me coming back and paying attention to what you say (because it is a pleasure to read) rather than being lost in the flotsam and jetsam of articles bobbing to the surface of HN every day.

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#35
post #28

"These women and men have come together to do brutal violence to the English language, to leave the spoken and written word bloodied and victimized on a cold cement floor, wishing for the sweet relief of death." I will read anything this author writes. Thanks for spotlighting this blog. Tip: if you want your blog READ instead of skimmed for buzzwords and facts, make sweet love to the English language. Then worry abou…

"...smart people I consider to be excellent writers—are unironically using the word “SPOTLIGHT” as a verb in an Hacker News thread."

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#36

Woah. How did this drop from #2? There are articles above this on HN that have less points and were submitted at an earlier time...

It may have been flagged. If a post gets flagged enough it will get pushed to page 2 no matter how many upvotes it gets.

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#37
post #14

"tiny little ideas" - for me the best startup ideas are those that start with some small idea, but it is actually a trojan horse to get something into the market that is actually very large.

That's assuming that there actually is a significant idea bound up in the tiny idea, which is not generally the scenario that the author is complaining about.

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#38
post #37
post #14

"tiny little ideas" - for me the best startup ideas are those that start with some small idea, but it is actually a trojan horse to get something into the market that is actually very large.

That's assuming that there actually is a significant idea bound up in the tiny idea, which is not generally the scenario that the author is complaining about.

Of course. It was just a phrase that jumped out at me.

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#39

Really enjoying the author's prose. This had me rolling: >> It’s like watching some sadist work over a baby lamb with a rusty crowbar and a broken gin bottle. The names of these startups sound like the products of an aggressive brain tumor on the frontal lobe. Crowdegy, Placeling, Kouply, QuoteRobot, Appthwack, Makegood, Onthego, Nickler, Kahal, Tanzio, Taskk. They’re all whimsical and unique in exactly the same way.

I just realized I must be too old for HN, because it reminds me of nothing so much as the writing that went into the "underground newspaper" my high school creative writing teach had us "publish" above the urinals.

Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

#40
I can't say I ever expected to see a Slog post on here. Slog's where I go for my daily dose of adorable animal videos at lunch, sex advice from Dan Savage, and Seattle/Washington state political news.

All that said, Paul Constant is a fantastic writer, and I'm glad to see he's found an audience here.

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