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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

1) Entrepreneurs need to understand that [ ... ] or I will stab their eyes out. Please fill in the blank.

2) What is the most broken thing about angel investing?

> Entrepreneurs need to understand that [ ... ] or I will stab their eyes out. Please fill in the blank.

Communication is key. If you want people to do things, you must communicate in ways that facilitate the action. Make it easier for me as I am bandwidth constrained.

> What is the most broken thing about angel investing?

I haven't been doing this long enough to have a sense for that, which is surprising. I am frequently cranky about things that don't work well.

Funny story: When I see names in the press that look familiar, I often check to see if I've communicated with them. I saw an article about a company that raised money, and checked, and sure enough I had talked with them about it.

The entrepreneur had written ten paragraphs. I sent a "sounds interesting, send screenshots or a prototype" and they wrote ten more paragraphs. I didn't follow up.

However, smarter people than me invested, so what do I know?

Probably you made him realize the importance of screenshots and working prototypes, while pitching.

Incidentally, I have sent at least three startups to your blog, just for an example of crisp thinking they needed to emulate.

Thanks, that is a wonderful compliment. If you have something specific you like crispified, I'd be happy to do a summary post about it. (The user experience of accessing my blog for the first time is terrible if you're not coming to a particular article, since it degrades into "what am I thinking about this week" and doesn't usually include context for the last four years.)

Not really.

I wish you'd do something bigger. You certainly have what it takes. I hope appointment reminder turns into that thing. (Also, ++ for using Twilio)

I'm cautiously optimistic. Bigger, though, is just a side effect of playing a game well, not a goal I really go after for it's own sake. Pick a name out of your Rolodex, any name: I wouldn't trade my life for his for all the tea in China.

Let me rephrase. Something wider in possibility.

When I started delicious, I had no idea that it would someday be a company. Instead it was a thing I wanted to make. But it turned out to be very pregnant with possibility.

I'd like to see you do something that is similarly wide.

Does that make any sense?

I get you.

I'm sitting at home at 3 PM on a Tuesday writing patches to the OSS project that spun out of the day job that spun out of the weeklong project which was supposed to, someday, buy me a video game. We never know what the future holds, right?

We're always creating the preconditions of our own future. At some times more deliberately than others.

What video game?

Thank you for this perspective. I was recently thinking about how hard we strive to become the best at what we do, and how hard it is to actually know if/when you have gotten there (let alone how long you will be there if you get there) and thus it is a horrible thing to hang our sense of significance and worth on. I don't know the specifics of how you define your sense of contentment, but it seems pretty clear that you do.

I know a guy who composed a message to aliens, uploaded it to his iPhone, traveled to Arecibo, and transmitted it to the stars.

I'm happy he's happy. I'm also happy he has never talked to me about my opinions on NASA. (Or iPhones, for that matter.)

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