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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

What Diaspora should do is ignore everyone, stop talking to the press, and write some code. Then we'll see what they've got.

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I have to agree. After watching the Kickstarter video I was left with a bad impression. I heard a lot of buzzwords and ideas, but utopian ideas like this one just warrant a show and tell. You can't just say you're going to break the mold of the social web, ask for money, get the money, and then do a bunch of photo ops and expect to succeed. There will come a time when everyone who donated will ask, "Where is it?". Of course, the attention span of the Internet is so small, by the time the app comes out it may well have already been forgotten.

Unfortunately, I think this is a case of "I'll believe it when I see it."

Applying to Y Combinator might be good for them, if for no other reason than the support and drive to actually complete the project. Maintaining that level of visibility while getting things done would crush the team, but I think YC could help with that.

They claim to have a " rudimentary prototype of Diaspora running on [their] machines" which "includes GPG encryption, scraping Twitter and Flickr, awesome design aesthetics, and the initial stages of connection infrastructure (“friending” other Diaspora instances)." Wonder why they haven't done a show and tell with that?

What they ought to do is implement just one of their core features (eg the friending protocol) and release that. With core functionality in place others can help them innovate. If they did that plus scalable status updates it would already be big.

I was trying to be a little bit subtle. They claim to be so passionate about this idea that they gave up other opportunities to work on it. All I've seen is a passion for talking about it. Talk is cheap, just get to work and show us something. I'm not even sure their hand wavy ideas are very well thought out.

I agree that I would like to see some code, but don't underestimate the importance of funding when running a startup. Even if Diaspora is not, strictly speaking, a startup, it's worth talking to press while the story is hot because it likely translates into more funding, and more funding can't hurt their chances of success.

37signals (and many here, I suspect [myself included]) believe differently: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2330-diasporas-curse

There are more than a few arguments that say more funding does hurt their chances of success.

I'd be less interested in arguments than seeing hard data that analyzes the correlation between funding and successful outcomes. Money buys you time and resources. Yes, there are famous examples of startups that have burned through scads of cash, and failed, but I think there's a selection bias in those stories; it's less remarkable when a well funded startup succeeds.

Not sure why your posts are being down voted. Up voted to keep the discussion fair. Just because I may not share your opinion shouldn't mean that you can't be heard. :)

Thanks for being a good spirit. I guess Haters gonna hate: http://teddziuba.com/images/step-1-load-the-gun-step-2-kill-...

The empirical evidence strongly favors taking funding. If you try making a list of successful startups, without thinking about whether they took funding or not, you'll find practically all the companies on your list took funding.

The fact that the few who succeed without raising money tend to be famous on that account is evidence of how rare that combination is.

It's not that simple though, funding comes in many forms and at different times. Maybe large amounts of money upfront without any product is bad, but large amounts of funding after having built something and gotten traction is good.

If money were of no concern and you were solely interested in maximizing their chances of success would you give each Y Combinator company 10 or 100 times as much money?

Yes. They do get 100x as much money when they raise series A rounds, and I don't consider the ones that raise series A rounds to be headed for disaster as a result. Nor empirically do they seem to be.

I think there is something powerfully motivating about having such a limited amount of time and money to build your product.

There probably is no ideal solution, different teams flourish under different conditions.

Unless it's no-strings-attached funding like Kickstarter, it can absolutely hurt their chances of success and of personally reaping the benefits of success.

I think it can hurt them.

You see I thought 10k was a good idea - a little cash to keep them going over the summer while they build something.

I mean, I don't think they have entirely the right solution - but it's interesting enough that I would happily have funded them 10k to see what comes of it.

Several hundred thousand is another matter - that can become a distraction. Look at other startups that recieve disproportionate funding and lots of hype then peter out.

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