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Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

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Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#41

Post by bpatrianakos »

nirvana wrote: post #19

The silicon valley Startup Kool-aid has a false dichotomy: You're either patio11[1], a "nobody" building a "lifestyle business" or you're making the next Instagram. Consequently we have a cargo cult mentality that has evolved. Lets compare these two: Location: "Obviously you need to be in Silicon Valley. This is where all the wannabe startup hipsters move to!" I mean, you can't go to a coffeeshop without hearing a ha…

Right on. I tried to understand startups and funding for the longest time and in my head there was always this creeping intuition that it was all just bullshit and way simpler than people made it seem. Don't get me wrong, I know there are legit startups out there but they are the true minority. These days everyone whos heard the word "startup" seems to "have" one and that's just ridiculous.

I don't think I'm too far off the mark in saying a lot of this is just a big circle jerk. Money is just changing hands between VCs, they get paid no matter what, and the founders get to work harder than any person should just for the ego boost that comes with calling yourself a startup founder even when you walk away with nothing.

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#42

Post by eavc »

incision wrote: post #33
jackkinsella wrote: post #3

Small online business owner here, chiming in. I believe the overuse of the word startup comes from a certain kind of pretentiousness, a want to associate one's own small-business, small-market, technically trivial, mom-and-pop online business with world leaders like Facebook and Google. Making the linguistic link is good for the founder's ego, and even better for convincing naïve investors to fund barely viable visio…

"Let's get realistic here - building a web app or an Iphone app these days is no more high-tech than a mechanic fixing your broken car." I think high-tech folks tend to underestimate what it takes to be a mechanic.

I think the HN crowd (as a whole) tends to underestimate what it takes to do just about any job aside from programming.

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#43

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

finnh wrote: post #27
personlurking wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a 4 yr old startup. I'm an ideas guy but I didn't have the idea for the startup I work for, I merely do administrative projects for it. Nonetheless, I have to be careful how I word things. About a month ago, I was at a meetup which had nothing to do with technology or the internet but I ran into a guy who was throwing out some buzzwords. The point came early on when he asked me what I do, and I really didn…

This will come across as rude, but I don't think there's such a thing as an "ideas guy". Every person I know who says that is covering for a lack of attention to detail and a general inability to get shit done. Maybe there's a rarefied world of amazing CEOs who spin off amazing ideas every 10 minutes, and then legions of people go do them ... but I doubt it. And you're probably not going to get to that job without a…

We do exist. I'm an ideas guy, I specifically build my portfolio to showcase my diverse creative thinking. http://www.chrisnorstrom.com Unfortunately my best ideas, the projects (NOT startups) I'm working on, I can't share, because then I give myself a deadline of 1 year until they become unpatentable by law. So it sucks I can't share 87% of the ideas I come up with. I love prototyping my inventions and products and as they fail, post them online. Which I'm gearing up to do in the following days actually. I've got 5 failed products that didn't pass the prototyping stage. Since I'm not interested in patenting & building a business around things that don't work I'll throw them up on my blog.

My advice to "ideas people" is that you need to prove you're creative and useful. Otherwise people think you're bull-shiting them.

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#44

Post by CodeCube »

potatolicious wrote: post #25
alberich wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that a lot of articles here wouldn't really be categorized as "hacker" news :) Lately, everything is "hacking". Seems like the word lost its meaning.

It's been like that forever - "hack" has become a buzzwordy synonym for "clever trick". Found a cool way to get the word out on your product? You've "hacked marketing". Have an increment improvement on an existing concept? You've "hacked" that vertical. Interesting new job posting system? "Hacked recruitment". I'm pretty sick of this community/field forcibly inventing words for every old thing instead of just calling…

That is in fact the origin of the term. Check out the book Hackers, by Steven Levy (http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Lev...) and read up on how the Tech Model Railroad Club appreciated 'clever tricks' on how someone solved something, and it didn't necessarily have to be a 'technical hack' to warrant the phrase.

Another great text on the topic was written by Stallman: http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html

"It didn't become easy—for practical purposes, using two chopsticks is completely superior. But precisely because using three in one hand is hard and ordinarily never thought of, it has 'hack value', as my lunch companions immediately recognized. Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking."

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#45

Post by einhverfr »

dasil003 wrote: post #35
incision wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's get realistic here - building a web app or an Iphone app these days is no more high-tech than a mechanic fixing your broken car." I think high-tech folks tend to underestimate what it takes to be a mechanic.

Perhaps, but the analogy is not all bad. After all, there's a lot to know about making web or iPhone apps. You might pick up the basics fast enough, but if you don't know what you're doing it's liable to blow up down the road.

Are you saying there is not a big difference between a great mechanic (who fixes stuff that stays fixed) and the one to whom you are always bringing your car back to?

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#46

Post by npguy »

Here is the real issue: finding problems. Here is why:

Anyone who tracks startups knows these two conflicting facts:

1. Ideas are not everything – execution is key 2. It is extremely important to solve a problem that people would find value in, and therefore pay for.

Summary: It is of course important to execute well and solve the problem, but the starting point is to know if the problem is worth getting solved.

Now look at our education system through this new prism the flaw comes out very, very clearly the system today teaches problem solving, applying theory to practice etc but there is little to no emphasis on identifying problems. Think about your own school / college days for a second in how many instances were you given a situation, and were asked to identify problems to solve?

The problem to be solved was always STATED nobody ever asked us to come up with a set of difficult problems to solve.

Over time, this lack of practice in identifying problems translates into difficulties in spotting profitable opportunities. Even if we do, there is a lack of conviction and we end up pivoting multiple times.

Our education system cultivates employees, not employers – to be one, you need to be trained not to solve a problem, but to identify one.

For some reason HN would not allow me to submit the link for the above, it kept killing the post and any related query. Am trying to be reborn as a new guy on HN now.

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#47

Post by jackkinsella »

incision wrote: post #33
jackkinsella wrote: post #3

Small online business owner here, chiming in. I believe the overuse of the word startup comes from a certain kind of pretentiousness, a want to associate one's own small-business, small-market, technically trivial, mom-and-pop online business with world leaders like Facebook and Google. Making the linguistic link is good for the founder's ego, and even better for convincing naïve investors to fund barely viable visio…

"Let's get realistic here - building a web app or an Iphone app these days is no more high-tech than a mechanic fixing your broken car." I think high-tech folks tend to underestimate what it takes to be a mechanic.

Nothing against the skill of mechanics here. Striped of hyperbole my point was that 'high tech' is another phrase that needs to be rescued. Recently the term has come to mean 'anything that uses custom code', and the distinction between technology and high technology has decayed. Of course mechanics are skilled; my point was that the bar for considering oneself to be on the cutting edge of technology has moved upwards and that the companies and programmers building routine Ruby on Rails web-applications and iPhone apps need to re-assess their place and adjust their egos accordingly.

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#48

Post by josscrowcroft »

skyhook_mockups wrote: post #39
josscrowcroft wrote: post #12

Fantastic writing style in this post - it somehow jumps out of the page, not sure how to describe it. Congrats. Only time I ever felt like giving up on my latest venture[1] was when I started trying to view it as a "startup" and thereby compared it to other "startups". I got really depressed for a week or so trying to be a "startup guy", which thankfully I didn't become. It was like the goals of the business (provide…

ahhh please don't give up on openexchangerates.org, it's an awesome service which I'd be happy to pay for.

Thanks!

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#49

Post by josscrowcroft »

greenyoda wrote: post #34
josscrowcroft wrote: post #12

Fantastic writing style in this post - it somehow jumps out of the page, not sure how to describe it. Congrats. Only time I ever felt like giving up on my latest venture[1] was when I started trying to view it as a "startup" and thereby compared it to other "startups". I got really depressed for a week or so trying to be a "startup guy", which thankfully I didn't become. It was like the goals of the business (provide…

I looked at openexchangerates.org and it looks like a very useful service (real time exchange rates via a JSON API) that people would actually pay for. But there already seem to be other businesses competing in this space. I'm curious as to what advantages you provide compared to sites like xurrency.com or exchangerate-api.com.

Thanks, and good question - it's a very old industry in the web, so the main benefit is ease of implementation (and about to get even easier), highly responsive support, great community and remarkably low prices :o) - that said, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on other advantages that could be provided - hit me up on twitter @josscrowcroft if you have any ideas.

Re: Don’t drink the startup Kool-Aid – just find a problem and try to solve it

#50

Post by nandemo »

nirvana wrote: post #19

The silicon valley Startup Kool-aid has a false dichotomy: You're either patio11[1], a "nobody" building a "lifestyle business" or you're making the next Instagram. Consequently we have a cargo cult mentality that has evolved. Lets compare these two: Location: "Obviously you need to be in Silicon Valley. This is where all the wannabe startup hipsters move to!" I mean, you can't go to a coffeeshop without hearing a ha…

> "Japan? There's no startup scene in Japan. Hell, that's a 12 hour flight. You think VCs are going to fly 12 hours for a board meeting?"

Who said there's no startup scene in Japan? On the other hand, it's indeed much harder to get funding for an early stage startup in Tokyo than it is in Silicon Valley. This is not obvious, because Tokyo is home to one of the biggest stock markets in the world, and to a lot of rich people too.

I don't think you're contributing to the discussion by juxtaposing a fairly ridiculous statement with a reasonable (but not obviously true or false) one; unless someone in fact said that.

> I don't think people are this naive about Japan in particular, but I hear them say the strangest stuff.

So why write it? Honestly I don't see the point of making up some quotes and then countering them.

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