Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#1

Post by yaronhadad » Fri, Jul 06, 2018, 11:49 PM UTC

Imagine Jeff Bezos offered you 100 of his top people (engineers, designers, product ...) for 100 days and told you that you could work on whatever you wanted. The only condition is that at the end of the 100 days you need to start paying salaries in order to retain these people.

What would you work on?

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#2

Post by trcollinson » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:12 AM UTC

As a theoretical experiment it’s interesting. But it would never ever work. You’d literally spend a year or more trying to prepare for that 100 days and I’m still not convinced you’d get anything out of it.

Now, if you were going to give me 6 people that would be a different story. With 6 people I have a number of startup ideas that I would love to work on and I think I could get a working mvp out of in 100 days.

As of today it would be around health care billing for small to medium sized US based medical practices encompassing ehr, billing, office management, and cash flow management. Not exciting but it’s what I’d be doing.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#3

Post by agravier » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:16 AM UTC

An Amazon competitor. Either in a few underserved niche markets, or in an area where Amazon is not very present.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#4

Post by posix_compliant » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:18 AM UTC

trcollinson wrote: post #2

As a theoretical experiment it’s interesting. But it would never ever work. You’d literally spend a year or more trying to prepare for that 100 days and I’m still not convinced you’d get anything out of it. Now, if you were going to give me 6 people that would be a different story. With 6 people I have a number of startup ideas that I would love to work on and I think I could get a working mvp out of in 100 days. As…

You could make 16 teams of 6 and give each one a different startup idea. You could then create some metric for success and then choose to continue to work on the one with the most success.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#5

Post by arthev » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:19 AM UTC

trcollinson wrote: post #2

As a theoretical experiment it’s interesting. But it would never ever work. You’d literally spend a year or more trying to prepare for that 100 days and I’m still not convinced you’d get anything out of it. Now, if you were going to give me 6 people that would be a different story. With 6 people I have a number of startup ideas that I would love to work on and I think I could get a working mvp out of in 100 days. As…

Agreed. I have no idea how to manage 100 people, nor how to utilize 100 people in any effective way.

I guess I would be hacking the challenge by holding some clumsy event on the first day or two where we sorted into 5 to 20 different teams, and then got to work on a lot of things in parallel. And then people could switch around between teams as interested or as they might use their skills.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#6

Post by songzme » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:20 AM UTC

I would have them train 2 people (each) in their field to be as good (if not better) than they are. At the end of 100 days, I'll have 200 people trained by Jeff Bezo's top people. These 200 people will be tasked with building a learning system / school that teaches these skills to underprivileged communities for free. Each school would be named after each of the original 100 top people.

I'll keep tabs on each of the 100 top people and ask them for donations every year to keep their schools alive. If they don't (and we ran out of money), we'll close down the schools.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#7

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:22 AM UTC

Supporting progressive candidates with tech for Congressional midterms. Huge ROI if effective, and they’d only be needed for 100 days.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sanders-campaign-technol...

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#8

Post by pro_zac » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:26 AM UTC

posix_compliant wrote: post #4

trcollinson wrote: post #2

As a theoretical experiment it’s interesting. But it would never ever work. You’d literally spend a year or more trying to prepare for that 100 days and I’m still not convinced you’d get anything out of it. Now, if you were going to give me 6 people that would be a different story. With 6 people I have a number of startup ideas that I would love to work on and I think I could get a working mvp out of in 100 days. As…

You could make 16 teams of 6 and give each one a different startup idea. You could then create some metric for success and then choose to continue to work on the one with the most success.

That's great! You could secretly give some teams the same idea and compare approaches and results afterward.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#9

Post by harlanji » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:28 AM UTC

Have them turn on my youtube engineering vlog and work on something interesting. Self organize onto teams using a compatible approach. I’ve just a few months of lectures recorded, but I’d have them give me enough money to keep supplying them with vision.

Re: Ask HN: If you had 100 talented people for 100 days, what would you work on?

#10

Post by doctorless » Sat, Jul 07, 2018, 12:30 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Supporting progressive candidates with tech for Congressional midterms. Huge ROI if effective, and they’d only be needed for 100 days. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sanders-campaign-technol...

Same could be said for conservative candidates. You’re making the assumption the userbase of HN is politically homogenous, when it is not.