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"I have a three-point throw that's different, but way more useful. I'm just too busy working on other stuff to show Steph Curry who's boss."

There's nothing helpful in your comment. At risk of being hypocritical, I'll add a piece of advice; be constructive. Telling everyone you have a genius solution that you're hogging all to yourself (but aren't acting on?) is not helpful. "Here is a way you could make this tool more helpful to people like me."

Ideas aren't valuable. If they were, there would be a marketplace for ideas, and it would be doing billions of dollars in business. It's execution that's valuable. There are 7 billion people on the planet, your idea isn't unique, so share it to be helpful to others or build it yourself, but please don't berate the hard work of others and then tell us you have something better with nothing to show for it.

I'm falling into the trap of HN negativity here, but it's so frustrating to see talented creators who are actively executing get roasted with no discernable actionable constructive criticism.

Listen - I get it, we have guttural reactions to things (especially things we have neat ideas about or know ways to do better.) I tell the people I work with to lead with a compliment, always, before criticizing and I often forget to do so myself (I didn't do so here ;)). Doesn't mean it's OK - and in an environment like HN where you actively have time to think before you hit the "reply" button, it's pretty unacceptable. We're adults. We're all trying to build things and do what we love. We can be supportive.

There's more concentrated disappointment here that's aggregated from other sources besides you, so please don't feel like this is targeted to call your comment out, specifically. Please try to be thoughtful in the future, if you can.

Edit: You updated your post, thank you. Please be kind to content creators - they're working to make things better for more people than just you, and could use your help in figuring out how to make their products appealing to you.

You're right. I realized I wasn't being very constructive in the comment, and edited it. I only saw your comment afterwards though.

No worries. I did it, too. I led with criticism followed by understanding instead of the other way around. It's hard to get ourselves out of destructive patterns. :)

This is so awesome to see polite, constructive criticism. This is why HN is awesome. I feel like I just saw a rose sprout up out of a concrete parking garage.

Even if content is no good?

It would be nice to see a review site modeled after Consumer Reports. They tend to compare, with a well defined criteria, products in a category. It's a professional unbiased review system rather than a crowdsourced low value review system.

This is along the lines of what I'm thinking.

I second this - it would be much more useful

I Was just thinking of something similar today. I was reading a blog tutorial on a tool I am unfamiliar with but want to learn. The whole time I was wondering if this author knew what he was talking about. It would be nice to have a vetted list of tutorials that could be trusted to be utilizing best practices.

Hi sixQuarks, genuinely appreciate the feedback, and the additional comments that came in here while I was writing.

In our experience, actionable feedback comes from founders who have used a product, not those who just spend a lot of time researching. That's precisely the problem with Gartner, Forrester (who basically get paid by both vendors AND buyers to make decisions for companies, with zero interest in the best tool for the job). If you want to throw darts at a product, theirs are world class targets.

While it's easy to throw darts at a handful of short reviews from founders who are so busy they can barely keep up with email, we hear from Founderkit users daily that they find tools and are able to make decisions immediately. Don't read too much into the short reviews. There's a lot more going on here.

No, I totally agree that founderkit is useful, I'm just saying it's not the tool that I personally want or need. I have a clear vision for the site I really want, and am surprised no one is doing it yet.

Spot on. It's getting tiring/old to see these sites pop up over and over. I get that it can be a fun project to work on, but it seems like too many people are working on these types of sites and hoping they'll be going concerns when the value is dubious at best. I think people need to think bigger and not avoid schleppier ideas.

I _just_ commented on the stackshare post earlier today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13375748

How is it tiring to you? if you don't think it's useful for you - just don't open it, no need to say it's tiring...

So basically all criticism is bad?

Sites that make it easy to say "We should use this because $Cool_Company_X uses it!" are doing everyone a disservice. We have way too much of this cargo cult thinking going on. I don't know if I'm just starting to realize it more lately or if it's actually getting worse, but it's really been irking me.

When you're picking a tool to use in your software stack, use something that makes sense for you. Say "I need something that will let me do X effectively" instead of "We need to use the latest technology from the hippest news makers."

Barring a handful of nearly-universal tools, it's very unlikely that the types of things that work great for massive public companies like Facebook and Google are going to be the best options for your 1-10 man startup.

Well, I think the main thing Founderkit IS doing right is targeting the small startup.

Like Wirecutter for Saas.

yes!

I hear you - there's a lot. Seems people are motivated to build tools for founders, which is great.

When we built this, we were tired of the curated lists too. 1) They don't change as the community's barometer on what they're using changes. 2) It's one person's view, not the founder community.

The goal of founderkit is to be more than just reviews, but this was the logical place to start since nobody seems to have done it in a way where it's alive.

If you don't want to use it, no prob. Lots of people have found it useful. Maybe you will too after it's more than just reviews.

Look, I'm not saying the site isn't useful or bad per se, you guys have obviously put a lot of hard work and thought into it.

It's just that I really want to see something different being done in this space, and I'm always hopeful when I see a new site tackling this, only to then be disappointed with the same old same old.

Take what I'm saying as constructive criticism. I know it's hard when you've worked so hard at something, and the first thing you see is criticism (trust me, I've been there).

But to your point, you say those other sites don't change as the community's barometer on what they're using changes, and it's one person's view, not the founder community. But this is exactly what BestVendor was doing. Their tagline was "Learn About The Best Tools From The Best Entrepreneurs"

Check out the internet archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20130412003037/http://www.bestven...

I was saying that all the examples you provided were of curated lists from one person/org. I personally would rather listen to a community of peers than of a single person's opinion.

Not sure what happened to bestvendor but they're clearly offline now. Another reason why we need a community driven product.

I'm biased but we found that it's so incredibly rare that a single person has extensive experience with all the options, esp when it comes to electronics. We went in a different direction than reviews, slightly more collaborative:

https://www.slant.co/topics/341/~2d-game-engines

edit: another problem with a single person owning the comparison is keeping it up to date.

Hi sixQuarks,

Really appreciate you mentioning Stacklist here. Your comment has given me a lot to think about in how we can provide value to other entrepreneurs and founders.

Would love to connect and learn more about your idea. Email me at danny@stacklist.com.