The Uber of X: A translation of 47 startup one-liners | Hacker News Reader

The Uber of X: A translation of 47 startup one-liners

unsupervisedmethods.com

38 pointsRobbieStats20 comments

This article seems to be trying to disarm tech elitism by diving into the deep end of it, but by and large the humor is pretty forced and the tone condescending.

I'd also recommend that the author remove the attempt at being edgy at the end with the snide reference to the reports of sexual harassment at Uber. Especially the cheeky "too soon?", which simultaneously acknowledges the gravity of the situation for the victims while also dismissing it entirely in favor of an attempted joke.

So it is not only that you don't find it funny (which is a common thing about jokes - many jokes are bad in the eyes of many people), but also that you want someone else to therefore remove this part.

Where does this idea come from that just because one doesn't like something or finds it stupid/silly/inappropriate/not funny, it has to disappear?

Before you get too defensive consider that they said they'd 'recommend' the author remove the joke, not that it has to go. That's how constructive criticism works.

I think the comment can be better interpreted as 'the tone of the article could be improved, in my opinion, if the author would remove the joke about sexual harassment at the end'

Wherein our intrepid author discovers that

a) social groups develop jargon that is often impenetrable to outsiders

b) humor is really hard.

c) The in-group doesn't care for being made fun of, and the outgroup doesn't care about the jargon - and so the article will be much less popular than others they wrote

The translation of lean-startup means absolutely nothing, link tells me to buy a book. No.

being told what I am thinking about things is really needlessly confusing, because its often wrong, then I need to remind myself that those statements arn't meant to teach me anything, but instead make me laugh? I don't know.

It'd be better to have like, 1 line of joke per 5-10 dotpoints, not 2-3+ lines of joke per dotpoint, that is my opinion though

Uber but for X demonstrates how a lot of startups are trying to reinvent stuff that already exists, but works around labour laws on a technicality.

It's a common misconception that startups are primarily about innovating something new out of whole cloth. Once you gain a bit of experience, you realize there are only M business models, N channels, O verticals, P org structures etc. and most of those have existed for hundreds of years.

Most successful startups are about artfully cobbling together the right combination of those factors into something that can be a viable business.

Genuine, real innovation tends to come from either large corporations or governments, not startups because the risk is too large for a startup to bear.

>We are going to keep things simple and use a convertible note with 20% discount and a $4M cap. > Normal’s response: That doesn’t sound simple at all.

Why is this not simple? I thought the point of convertible note/safe was to make seed round as simple as possible. Is there something I am missing?

It's not simple if you don't know what a "convertible note" and a "cap" are.

Not to mention "20% discount." Discount on what?

Always thought moving fast and breaking things was the least intelligent approach to any problem..except when people can only learn things the hard way and are in too much of a hurry to do anything but cash the check.

Start-ups move fast to see what works and what doesn't (from a product perspective, not technology). Breaking things is just a byproduct of moving fast. Once you realize something is worth the effort, e.g. a new feature is loved by everyone but it's got a few problems and might be breaking things, then you slow down and do it right. If you did it right to begin with, you might've spent a ton of money and engineering hours on a feature that users didn't even want.

I see your point. What I was trying to get across is that there is a method to a sustainable model and then there is everything else that just makes money for a while. Nothing wrong with the latter except my personal opinion of it.

It's sort of how evolution works. It might not be intelligent but it can be a very successful strategy.

Excellent analogy except the losers die.

Yes but the unit is not company, it's strategy/experiment.

Well that depends, doesn't it?

Just in this second I wanted to post this. You beat me by seconds :)

First mover advantage ;)

> We’re running out of dry powder so we asked our existings for a bridge.

> After not achieving product/market fit, we’ve decided to pivot into an adjacency.

> We started looking for a soft-landing and got an acquihire offer from an 800-pound gorilla.

> Did you see all the skeletons in their S-1? At least they are in the three commas club.

I'm honestly not sure if this is real or just clever satire.

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