We Built It, And They Didn't Come • Hacker News Board

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#41

Post by lfittl » Sun, Sep 22, 2013, 8:55 PM UTC

serverhorror wrote: post #38

(This is not a flame or anything just my subjective impression. I know the people who built this (well 2 of them) personally. So forgive me guys) I was asking a few times how things were going and that I could need something that sounds like what they were building -- granted on a very informal level but still I asked and expressed my interested. Problem was: They never came back to me and told me: Hey here's the stu…

Author here - thanks for the comment (and please don't worry about sharing stories, its true after all!)

This was a big problem/mistake we made back then (and which isn't obvious from the slides) - we just didn't let people try the product, since we didn't want to be a hosting company ourselves.

We did show demos to people and did pilots in a few cases, but it would have benefited us a lot to have a public installation where people could have tried out the product.

I'm sorry we didn't get to work together then - there was certainly a lot of interest that we managed (and filtered through) poorly.

Luckily I've learned from that (I hope!) :)

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#42

Post by lfittl » Sun, Sep 22, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

curiousdannii wrote: post #8

"Ideating"? Really? Yes I know it's not a new word, but really?

(author here)

Yeah - I'm not 100% happy with it either. Initially I had Exploration, which is really what I mean (you open up the floodgates and look quickly at a lot of different ideas, before zooming in on one).

But that sounded kind of quirky/confusing when used for comparing it with Execution, as in Execution vs Exploration.

And after all, Ideation is also a valid word to use in this context.

Re: We Built It, And They Didn't Come

#43

Post by goggles99 » Mon, Sep 23, 2013, 8:05 AM UTC

geon wrote: post #37

goggles99 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem here is your product. Why would anyone want a self driving RC car? The whole point/fun of an RC car is driving it yourself. Why do you think a market actually exists here? I don't quite get it.

I think the key word is "platform". Robotics hobbyists would enjoy writing software and design sensors for it to drive itself.

Oh you mean like arduino? The very thing that he is using to create this? He has so far achieved less than I did in a high school tech class 20 years ago (and kids do far better in high schools today) and he wants some kind of funding? are you kidding? Forget the piss poor presentation. There is no product. Not even a virtual prototype of what he hopes to accomplish. I sure hope that he doesn't quit his day job over this.