Can’t help but think that all of FANGS would have seemed to be “transparently idiotic” early on. I mean, creating yet another search engine with no business plan is pretty idiotic. As is creating yet another social network or a book store. Come to think of it, all of the “v1.0” projects I worked on seemed pretty idiotic too and I thought they’d never make money. A good number of them have $1B+ yearly revenues today. To me the takeaway is: aside from the truly clinica cases, you can never tell what will take off and what won’t.
How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
91–100 of 128 posts
Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#92The important thing to understand here is that you shouldn't write on a latex balloon with a Sharpie. It works well for a while, but when the balloon inevitably pops or deflates, the Sharpie ink will re-liquify and get all over the place. Then you will learn the meaning of the phrase "indelible on porous surfaces".
It should be noted, there are a variety of chemicals that will dissolve and carry away the ink from most things if you look for it. Of note, rubbing alcohol and paper towels work well. Likewise, the paint markers which I make use of are easily removed by rubbing alcohol.
There's a useful trick many educators know: if someone uses sharpie on your whiteboard, draw over it with another whiteboard marker and you can wipe it up like normal. Also applies to glass and some other surfaces. Essentially the same process you're mentioning but different chemicals. But always be careful with solvents. If water or isopropyl alcohol (IPA) doesn't work, you should know what you're doing/using.
Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's exactly the opposite, they're essential and certainly do not have a "mixed history". Every product you interact with at the grocery store, every movie, most music, and most products in our modern life go through this process. It's called user focused design.
> It's exactly the opposite, they're essential and certainly do not have a "mixed history" Focus groups are good for refining. They're absolutely terrible for new product development. If there is an OG playbook for start-ups defeating incumbents, it's in exploiting the committee-based designed process that large companies tend towards. (Owning a product decision is hard. Outsourcing it to a marketing consultant isn't…
I wasn't quoting him.
It's not really that way anymore. The vision of a loan visionary coming up with a new product or invention like being hit by a lightning bolt and then getting rich by building a factory that builds it is just a fairy tale.
In reality it looks more like a series of focus groups. They may not be focus groups per se, but showing your idea to potential customers, getting feedback, refining and showing again is how it's done.
That's how startups that are successful do so.
Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
They didn't innovate there! Safeguard Global and plenty of others were doing the same middlemanning for years before. Just because they interact with employment doesn't mean they're as important as the whole concept.
> Safeguard Global and plenty of others were doing the same middlemanning for years before This is sort of like saying the iPod was a better Walkman. Yes, you could functionally do the same thing. But no, it wasn't as easy which meant it wasn't as frequently done. (And as a result of pressure from the upstarts, payroll across the board became smoother.) > Just because they interact with employment doesn't mean they'r…
I don't like Deel, but you do.
Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's exactly the opposite, they're essential and certainly do not have a "mixed history" Focus groups are good for refining. They're absolutely terrible for new product development. If there is an OG playbook for start-ups defeating incumbents, it's in exploiting the committee-based designed process that large companies tend towards. (Owning a product decision is hard. Outsourcing it to a marketing consultant isn't…
I wasn't quoting him. It's not really that way anymore. The vision of a loan visionary coming up with a new product or invention like being hit by a lightning bolt and then getting rich by building a factory that builds it is just a fairy tale. In reality it looks more like a series of focus groups. They may not be focus groups per se, but showing your idea to potential customers, getting feedback, refining and showi…
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Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that might have been Yo, which I actually enjoyed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app) super dystopian channels got setup on there like get a yo everytime a missle alert came in Israel
I think that might have been Yo... Ya think? I mean, whatever could parent be referring to? :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41037336 (or let your eyes go drift four lines above your own comment).
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Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's exactly the opposite, they're essential and certainly do not have a "mixed history" Focus groups are good for refining. They're absolutely terrible for new product development. If there is an OG playbook for start-ups defeating incumbents, it's in exploiting the committee-based designed process that large companies tend towards. (Owning a product decision is hard. Outsourcing it to a marketing consultant isn't…
I wasn't quoting him. It's not really that way anymore. The vision of a loan visionary coming up with a new product or invention like being hit by a lightning bolt and then getting rich by building a factory that builds it is just a fairy tale. In reality it looks more like a series of focus groups. They may not be focus groups per se, but showing your idea to potential customers, getting feedback, refining and showi…
> wasn't quoting him
Norman coined the term user focused design.
> may not be focus groups per se, but showing your idea to potential customers, getting feedback, refining and showing again is how it's done
Sure. I’d argue both focus groups and the lone visionary are myths. But in order to show an idea properly, you have to start thinking about building it. And to start thinking about building it properly, you have to start building it. For every Juicero there are teams iterating around a local optimum.
Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Safeguard Global and plenty of others were doing the same middlemanning for years before This is sort of like saying the iPod was a better Walkman. Yes, you could functionally do the same thing. But no, it wasn't as easy which meant it wasn't as frequently done. (And as a result of pressure from the upstarts, payroll across the board became smoother.) > Just because they interact with employment doesn't mean they'r…
I don't like Deel, but you do.
No, I hate pretty much all payroll processors. I also hate most IDEs, that doesn’t mean I don’t see value in them.
Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too many syllables in the name, and too much functionality. I refer you to Yo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)
I registered yo.wtf a long time ago, I need some suggestions what to do with it.
AI summarisation of existing ? maybe provide it a url and it'll tell you what the website does or something
Re: How much money we can raise for transparently idiotic startups?
#100It's not just AI startups. It's almost all of them. The startup world is just a massive pump and dump scheme, and so it moves from field to field finding the next hotness. Self-driving cars, VR, EVs, AI, and so on. People soon realize that you can't just take a bunch of hipster tech employees and suddenly create non-solutions that need to have problems created for them to even be solutions, much less choosing extreme…
This is simply not true. Most startup founders are genuinely trying to build something that has value to the economy, and therefore society. Most fail early, most of what's left fails later, but some go on to be real, profitable, businesses. That's how it works outside of the startup world too. Most restaurants, clothing stores, car repair shops, etc. go out of business after just a few years, while a few move on to…
> Most startup founders are genuinely trying to
get wealthy, and not really good 9-5 job wealthy. Properly wealthy.