Calacanis vs DHH on This Week in Startups
thisweekinstartups.com
thisweekinstartups.com
Sometimes I wish I was still a journalist.
There are exceptions like John Markoff from the New York Times, Peter Rojas of Engadget/GDGT, Kara Swisher, Walt Mossberg, Henry Blodget and Michael Arrington. all of those folks have deep knowledge... many other folks are simply rewriting press releases.
But if you think that reporters in general are bad, wait until you see a "documentary" on it. Hollywood's attitude is, "If we don't know the difference then our audience won't either." It shows.
"I could have been one of the best ever if I weren't cursed with having to make millions of dollars." It sounds so cocky.
I actually don't hate you (When I first heard of you, I asked a friend of mine "Is this guy a dick, totally awesome, or both?" and I still think "both" is a pretty good way to describe you, so you could say I'm split.), but I hope you see why people do.
And like Jobs, Gates, Ellison, Branson, or whoever, I hope he doesn't care if random people on the Internet think he's arrogant or is a "dick." You don't get to even Jason's level by dwelling on this (or, at least, showing it in public).
That aside, if Jason had a ton of time to dump into being a "top tech journalist", would he be up against really serious competition? Cringely? Mossberg? Scoble? Arrington? All awesome in their own ways but the gamut of skill in that game is pretty thin.
Actually, I wish he would try and become a top 10 tech journalist. His writing is good and certainly more entertaining than the constant Mahalo SEO-runaround forced down our throats here at HN..
... thus the reason I'm here with the doers. I'm from the bottom, so I still feel it for the bottom.
Personally I like hearing from people who tell it as they think it is, even if they're wrong sometimes.
Don't be fooled by the blogs that I rocked;
I'm still, I'm still Jason from the block
Used to have a little, AOL gave me a lot
Mahalo isn't spam and I still know where I came from.As to the comment. Honestly. If your good at something and you worked at. You should not be afraid of the thought of telling someone your good at it, perhaps even one the best.
rock on
If you really wanted to realize your potential as a tech journalist, you could have. No one forced you to start companies.
Saying that you're "cursed" by achieving one of the top goals of half of the people here (having a wildly successful startup)--and becoming orders of magnitude richer than the average person because of it--isn't going to help with all of those "haters" who downvote half of your comments to -4.
Because he admires himself? What is this, Sunday morning church moralizing about the SIn of Pride? This is Hacker News! We pride ourselves on our hacking prowess and startup-fu!! If you want a sin to rail against, it's false modesty.
Jason may be wrong about how smart he is. That's just being wrong about something. It's no more reprehensible than my being wrong about thinking I could raise a son and found a company at the same time (Paul, you were right about my chances even if I have no regrets about my choice).
Back to work for me.
Really enjoyed having him as a guest.... the show will be up at www.thisweekin.com in two hours or so.
best j
The blogosphere is like an organism that can eat itself to survive and grow.
From what I can tell, DHH is much more focussed on Quality of Life than simple monetary gain which was only briefly touched on (if at all).
Good discussion.