Seeing a borderline hustle culture article illustrated with AI slop in the style of Bill Watterson, who famously opposed commercial exploitation of his work, is deeply saddening.
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Founding is a snowball
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Founding is a snowball
#32Founding is a lie.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#33Hey hacker news! I wrote this and I’m glad it connected with folks. To answer a few of your comments: Writing is all mine but I had Claude proofread it, in addition to some close friends. Honestly it pointed out some great weaknesses in the original draft. The art is all nano-banana through a tool called flora ai. I’d love to work with a human illustrator for something like this. I can draw, but I can’t paint and the…
This is one of my favourite styles of illustration and I really wanted to know the source. I read so many children’s books for my son and sometimes I take books from the library just for this clean style.
I know it wouldn’t have happened easily with Nano. Banana to keep things consistent across multiple images. I haven’t tried recently, but image generation gets progressively worse (darker and off base) as you generate multiple of them. So kudos for the amazing art.
As someone who had an interest in drawing as a child and have bought trackpads and tablets, but never had the time & developed the skill to actually create the things that I imagine, I completely understand what you did.
I know some people are going to be upset at model generated illustrations. But I think the alternate is probably, no illustrations. There’s a lot of unnecessary AI image slop all around and most add no value or worse makes you just avoid reading the content by their awfulness. This was done really well and I am not sure I would have read it fully without it.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#34The metaphor is broken. The snowball grows passively over time naturally, but being a founder requires you to actively create value in your startup. Snow doesn't choose to stick to your ball based on PMF, and the entire piece romanticizes grinding without once mentioning customers, revenue, or whether you're solving a real problem people will pay for. I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (…
> I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (startup) and just keep pushing it forever it is guaranteed to grow to something large.
You first have to find somewhere that involves pushing it mostly downhill instead of uphill. Otherwise this turns into the tale of Sisyphus.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#35Hey hacker news! I wrote this and I’m glad it connected with folks. To answer a few of your comments: Writing is all mine but I had Claude proofread it, in addition to some close friends. Honestly it pointed out some great weaknesses in the original draft. The art is all nano-banana through a tool called flora ai. I’d love to work with a human illustrator for something like this. I can draw, but I can’t paint and the…
This is one of my favourite styles of illustration and I really wanted to know the source. I read so many children’s books for my son and sometimes I take books from the library just for this clean style. I know it wouldn’t have happened easily with Nano. Banana to keep things consistent across multiple images. I haven’t tried recently, but image generation gets progressively worse (darker and off base) as you genera…
> As someone who had an interest in drawing as a child and have bought trackpads and tablets
Buying digital drawing tools before you have the fundamentals nailed is a bad idea.
For anyone reading this who wants to learn how to draw: look up dynamic sketching, it’s a method that was developed by Norm Schureman at Art Center in LA in the 90s, targeted to getting product design students quickly up to speed. It’s very analytical and works well with engineer-brained people in my experience.
It’s mostly carried by Peter Han, a former student of his, these days, you can easily find resources online.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#36The metaphor is broken. The snowball grows passively over time naturally, but being a founder requires you to actively create value in your startup. Snow doesn't choose to stick to your ball based on PMF, and the entire piece romanticizes grinding without once mentioning customers, revenue, or whether you're solving a real problem people will pay for. I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (…
> I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (startup) and just keep pushing it forever it is guaranteed to grow to something large. You first have to find somewhere that involves pushing it mostly downhill instead of uphill. Otherwise this turns into the tale of Sisyphus.
Yes. But a hill is easy to push up when it’s small and sticks to the snow. As it gets bigger, you can still go uphill but you just have to be strategic about it (as mentioned in the story). But small snowballs can go uphill all day long, they just have to make it to the top of the hill before they get too big.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#37Pushing snowballs is a cute sentiment, albeit an incomplete metaphor, but it is also quite romanticized as depicted here.
I get that it is about cooperation, "pushing" and growing the size and impact of organizations, but applied to the wider world it quickly becomes complicated; the snowballs interact.
Everyone is pushing multiple snowballs over complex terrain. For many their snowballs are melting as they roll them, sometimes actively counteracted by institutions or higher powers.
And don't forget that huge snowball we all roll around on, called earth, because it's losing snow...
Re: Founding is a snowball
#38The metaphor is broken. The snowball grows passively over time naturally, but being a founder requires you to actively create value in your startup. Snow doesn't choose to stick to your ball based on PMF, and the entire piece romanticizes grinding without once mentioning customers, revenue, or whether you're solving a real problem people will pay for. I think it's dangerous sentiment to say if you create a snowball (…
Stay away from metaphors. They are higher than your rational level.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of my favourite styles of illustration and I really wanted to know the source. I read so many children’s books for my son and sometimes I take books from the library just for this clean style. I know it wouldn’t have happened easily with Nano. Banana to keep things consistent across multiple images. I haven’t tried recently, but image generation gets progressively worse (darker and off base) as you genera…
> As someone who had an interest in drawing as a child and have bought trackpads and tablets Buying digital drawing tools before you have the fundamentals nailed is a bad idea. For anyone reading this who wants to learn how to draw: look up dynamic sketching, it’s a method that was developed by Norm Schureman at Art Center in LA in the 90s, targeted to getting product design students quickly up to speed. It’s very an…
I completely agree. But, it’s one of those things you do “as a hobby”. I have also been gifted some Japanese drawing pencils because of my interest and occasional scribbles, but I have refused to open them because I can’t do justice to them.
Re: Founding is a snowball
#40Hey hacker news! I wrote this and I’m glad it connected with folks. To answer a few of your comments: Writing is all mine but I had Claude proofread it, in addition to some close friends. Honestly it pointed out some great weaknesses in the original draft. The art is all nano-banana through a tool called flora ai. I’d love to work with a human illustrator for something like this. I can draw, but I can’t paint and the…
You left out the higher entity that takes away a significant portion of the snow that was accumulated at regular intervals.
It doesn't need to ruin the metaphor, though: The sun could do that job. It could also explain the fact that the portion that's taken differs depending on where on earth you are creating the snowball.