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

Half-Baked Product

weli.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 447 posts

Re: Half-Baked Product

#351

Post by cm11 »

red_admiral wrote: post #187
brap wrote: post #159

We keep seeing this. If you had to point out the fundamental problem, what would it be? I think it’s the disconnect. Each persona is an expert in their own field but is completely oblivious to other critical areas. The founder knows how to raise money but doesn’t really understand the customers. The engineer knows the tech but doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the business afloat. The salesperson knows…

To me, the fundamental problem is what Paul Graham pointed out here: https://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few goo…

People trying to think of startup ideas aren't doing it accidentally. They don't want ovens or baked goods. They want to be a founder and/or money. I feel like PG is only right halfway (which maybe means he's not right). He's implying it's wrong to do it that way (to try to think of startup ideas), that it won't work, but geez louise has it worked. To get funded, to get rich, to get an exit. He's also helped enable that path quite a bit.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#352

Post by move-on-by »

DANmode wrote: post #176
move-on-by wrote: post #94

I remember sitting in on a sales meeting early in my career. I kept quiet, but afterwards I complained to my manager that they were selling features that didn’t exist and conflicted with core concepts of the product. My manager told me that was how sales were made. I left the company not long after, I was already disgruntled prior to that discussion. I’ve seen the same thing everywhere I go. I don’t have the disposit…

> There seems to be no downside. If you don’t see the value of your own word, I can’t give it back to you.

This is just one of the many reasons I don't have the disposition to be in sales

Re: Half-Baked Product

#353

Post by Chyzwar »

contrast wrote: post #30
Chyzwar wrote: post #14

This is such European take on startups. Tesla was making shitty overpriced status symbols/value signalling cars and selling FSD for 10k knowing very well that it will not work with car hardware. It took them 10 years to "fake it until you make it stage". If founder keep iterating and hyping his ovens with enough capital he could become big player in oven maker space and disrupting industry. Learning from this article…

I'd argue the spirit of entrepreneurialism and salesmanship in the story is more American! I've just been through this process. Very painful. SF based company, US founder. Same founder story - couldn't focus on customers, couldn't focus on product, always a shiny new idea to distract him from had just been decided or what needed to be decided. Each idea could be the thing that made the difference. Willing to work har…

He diluted his vision to garbage on the first enterprise customer. Because he needed to sell now. From OP, there is visible urgency to do sales even when the product is not ready.

Tesla was overhyped in the first decade after acquisition by Musk; it was bleeding money for 15 years. Arguably, the first Tesla cars were worse and pricier than traditional cars.

My point is that compared to the US, in Europe you have very few stories of successful stealth startups or startups that have needed lots of money for many years. That is a main reason why we cannot create a frontier LLM lab.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#354

Post by fragmede »

johnfn wrote: post #343
vntok wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the same guidelines: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

I don’t see anything in there about not commenting on whether the author is using an LLM?

That's covered under

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

If there are specific tells that the text has been AI generated, point them out! A lazy drive by of "that's AI!" doesn't teach anything.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#355

Post by neilv »

Unrealistic.

There's no way a contemporary tech founder would offer 5% of the company to an engineer that late in the game. It would be 0.5%, and it would be ISOs at worthless pricing.

Also, for all the founder's Leadership contribution that warranted owning more than half the company, apparently they didn't know that those VCs could pressure/pay all their other companies to buy ovens. And then you simply ride that growth signal to a successful exit. Building and sustaining a viable business is a problem for seasoned professional managers, not brilliant innovators.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#356

Post by Chyzwar »

Sheeny96 wrote: post #123
isoprophlex wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

weak minds can't comprehend this but indeed, this is the ultimate goal to reach in life: hyping shit up to out-con the conmen into giving you money so you can disrupt things. just pull harder on the vision bong, and grab some more of that sweet capital bro, or you're not gonna make it

Yeah bro like why would you just build what you want to your vision? Other people don't want that! Other people know what they want, just build what they want!

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Henry Ford.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#357

Post by ShroudedNight »

fragmede wrote: post #350
nikanj wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what were the huge, established companies that had refused to deliver a better product before Google came along?

Altavista, Yahoo, AskJeeves, Excite.com, something Rocket. It was a long time ago and I've forgotten the rest.

Lycos

Re: Half-Baked Product

#359

Post by 8b16380d »

brickers wrote: post #110
Mizza wrote: post #29

Ouch, that hits close to home, and it seems like it does for a lot of others out there as well. So what's the solution? Is there a playbook that avoids these pitfalls, or is it just the cost of the spin. Ideally, something early engineers can point to when we see non-technical founders falling into familiar traps.

My personal take: - you need aligned incentives across the board. Sales and accounts mustn’t promise what the company can’t deliver - people need to defend their area of expertise whilst listening to what others are saying about theirs. For me this boils down to a division between technical and business focussed. Techies need to push for non-client facing technical improvements without making everyone ignore them eve…

Have you ever been in a situation where this was the case? The only time I've come close, the business was a dog.

Re: Half-Baked Product

#360

Post by esprehn »

nikanj wrote: post #319
stickfigure wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was definitely "exact same product, but better". It was a search box. However, I think Anova would be a better direct counterpoint. They started in sous vide, replacing existing products that did the same thing but better. But now they are literally trying to replace ovens . That effort started after the Electrolux acquisition in 2017, but they do seem to be pretty successful. A friend of mine really likes the…

But what were the huge, established companies that had refused to deliver a better product before Google came along?

Yahoo. They very nearly bought Google too, but refused the initial $1m offer and then bid too low the second time. Kind of hilarious to see how that played out over time.

  Yahoo had two failed attempts to acquire Google; in 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin approached Yahoo to sell their nascent search engine for $1 million, but Yahoo declined the offer.[37][38]

  In 2002, when Terry Semel entered into negotiations to purchase Google. Google was reportedly seeking a price of $5 billion. After weeks of negotiation, Yahoo's final offer was $3 billion, a figure that Google's leadership rejected, leading them to terminate the deal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo
Post reply on HN