Yes, but what does your startup do?
shkspr.mobi
shkspr.mobi
Since then, whenever I make a website (or a README.md) for my open-source projects, I always make sure that it starts with
1. a short description of what the project is/does in one or two sentences, and
2. a longer explanation of the how and why in one or two paragraphs.
Representative example: https://github.com/sapcc/limes/tree/master/README.md
Imagine you have to install a database (let's say postgres) on your machine. You could just install it the regular way - when you do this postgres uses certain things by default like the port 5432.
Now you're going to install a different piece of software on the machine, but this software also uses port 5432 by default and there's an error about the port already being in use. This is a pain, now you have to change the default port. It turns out these conflicts are happening for a lot of things on the machine and it's a hassle to have to make non-standard changes all over the place that you have to keep track of.
For your first attempt to solve this you decide to run postgres in a virtual machine and connect to that, but now you have an entire extra operating system to deal with and all of the overhead that comes with that. Plus you have to configure access to the VM and get all of those pieces to work too.
It'd be nice if there was a way to just install postgres in a place that is easily accessible, but separate from the rest of your machine with regard to things like ports and such. A "container" that it could be installed in that automatically handles things like port conflicts in some magical backend you don't have to deal with so it looks to you like you can always just use the defaults. This container model is basically docker (or at least my current understanding of it).
Which it isn't, and I still don't know how to attach permanent storage to a docker (if thats even the right term).
Outside of trickery requiring the use of bind mounts (I use one to share ~/.ssh between a host user and container user, for example), volumes are recommended.
OH MY GOSH CAN YOU PEOPLE NOT SEE HOW BADLY DEFINED ALL OF THE NOMENCLATURE IS?
So it makes sense to provide an initial explanation of one in terms of the other, in special for people who already have some mental model of what virtual machines do.
That is... yes, that's technically true but to the end user there is very very little difference, if any, unless you start playing with advanced stuff that affects the guts.
For example, when explaining bitcoin to people I use the analogy of a stack of receipts. That's not technically how a blockchain works, but my mom doesn't care how a blockchain works.
If I were explaining them to someone less technical I'd say something like they're a way to package programs with the other stuff programs need to run so that they can be reliably and quickly started up and moved from place to place.
· How to get an open source community to be interested in helping you | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15538112 (2017Oct:140points,45comments)
And a checklist for the reverse, as you discuss:
Edit: Useful as in "knowing is half the battle". Being able to make an informed choice is worth something, even if it takes extra effort to filter back down.
This doesn't help someone who is completely new to the list topic though. Even worse they're probably going to get bad information.
So many times something is created to solve a particular problem, and for those who have experienced that problem the need for the solution is obvious. But for those of us who come along later it's not so obvious why I would want to use X.
I've thought many times that the number one thing that should be explained in any documentation, article about a technology, etc. is what problems this solves and give examples of the problems and how this is a solution to those problems.
When I go to a project's site, I should be able to tell what they do and what they're for within 5-10 seconds, preferably without any scrolling (depending on screen size) and definitely without having to click on anything.
(People usually don't link to the README file)
Notable catch phrases: human ingenuity, interoperable connectivity, universal intelligence, distributed intelligence, Chip-to-cloud, unconditional interoperability, ...
"nio provides the technology to unleash your imagination"
"That's Unicorn food? Looks like Froot Loops to me."
If it's actually a real company, my best guess is they are a custom engineering software consultancy. Although on the other hand, they seem to have some sort of product you can download, but I can't tell what it does. It's all so confusing. Perfect example, whalesalad.
Representative example: https://unroll.me/team/
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/24/stop-using-unroll-me-rig...
They do get points for, "Gus - The Lead Software Barkitect"
If it's not real then I don't know why someone would go through all that trouble, unless it's real in the sense of existing solely for conning someone or acting as a front for a 3-letter agency or something.
EDIT: Yeah, it's definitely real. Their team page's link to CEO Twitter account has 14 400 tweets and 1st tweet features a video of a guy listed as one of their engineers.
Edit: The individual product pages are a lot more informative. Looks like they specialize in visual code editors and a platform for distributed apps.
Missing from the home page.
WTH it's hilarious that the once-harmless-banal-mild-infantilism of odd underdog side projects and garage up-starts has now infested every executive's/investor's mind such that they feel apparent competetive pressure to ensure a quip like the above will be "obligatorily" present. The only reason this sort of stuff was at first inspiring, "human touch", or exhilarating was because it contrasted so starkly with mainstream biz heuristics. No longer, so might as well all drop the pretend bouncy-castle-playground-mentality right now.
Product viability being equivalent, the decision comes down to "do I want to do business with some hipsters and their dogs, or do I want to do business with the Borg and their lawyers?"
The human approach still works.
Although hold on, it dawns on me that they might be trying to say these are things in the actual workplace, i.e. it's loud and distracting and smells like burrito farts and (most likely unwashed) dogs. If that's the case, I actually do appreciate knowing up front. But even here they're being super vague. "I like dogs" is different from "I bring my dog to work." Is it the one or the other? Even if I wanted to bring my own dog to work, I still have no idea if that's okay. Don't make people guess!
EDIT:
(Besides that, i agree, realizing this was still the n.io thread after posting this, there’s definitely no reason to take this shop seriously...)
I wonder why they themselves have not made all those smart cities from their wonderful technology. It sounds like an omnipotent force!
"Behind several years of research and development by the niolabs team, the nio platform was created to seamlessly enable innovation across the world’s biggest issues. As “things” become smarter, the opportunity for technology to provide transformational value becomes both real and increasingly complex. With no agenda or bias other than to provide a tool to deliver hyperconnectivity and intelligence on the user’s terms, nio simplifies the process of digital transformation."
That seems to sum it up.
Please no.
This is just too good.
Oh dear, I forgot to include the cloud. And machine learning (in the cloud).
"This conference room table raised our valuation by $800K."
I'm happy I no longer live in Silly Valley.
Yes, I remember at least one case [1] where that caused some issues :-).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420223
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4680182
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727770
The reified imagination genre is rife with unintended consequences.
You could probably get a cool half million in seed money for this.
To: all-employees@company.com
From: elpresidente@company.com
Subject: email signatures required.
--
Name McNamerson - Official Title
Official Group Name - City, State, Country
https://www.company.com/
Thanks!
--
Edgar L. Presidente - Director
Human Resources - San Francisco, CA USA
https://www.company.com/Unless their salary depends on it.
There are already multiple companies that do this. Not really any reason to raise venture money for it though.
> It's important to remember that no one cares about your startup!
That original email was written with a tone of someone who expected the recipients to know who the company is, what they do, and expected the reader to care or be excited.
No one cares about your start up. Your customers might not even care - they just want a problem to go away.
I'm Joining Report URI | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15599906 (2017Nov:160points,64comments)
>skrebbel: I don't get it. What does Report URI do? (top comment)
I learned something that day though. It's very cool that browsers can report CSP violations. HN is good for stuff like this.
/s/Flurboska/GenericPhrase
"New version of Pandora Nexus released."
Great - is this any relation to the 2 Pandoras or the several Nexuses? Does this play music on my phone or move assets into a VM? Neither, it syncs bookmarks between browsers.
Knowing your audience seems really important to this discussion. Those of us with technical knowledge immediately want to know "what does it actually do?"
But there are a lot of decision-makers without technical knowledge who might be swayed by their "general impression of the people they meet." This group doesn't necessarily care if they're in need of what you're selling.
There's a spectrum between these two extremes and how you approach marketing is going to depend on your opinion of how the audience is distributed in this spectrum. If you believe there are more people toward the latter end of the spectrum then a more general, details-free approach may make sense.
I think it's a joke, but there is actually real advice along the same lines. When cold emailing someone with the goal of getting a phone call, you want to avoid giving the person enough information to say no.
Why? What's the point in wasting time having a call with somebody when the answer is going to be "no" either way? Better to get to "no" as fast as you can, so you can move on to a better prospect.
No one is ever going to say 'yes' to a $10M sale from a cold email. They'll only say yes after they've met you in person, but they're not going to agree to meet you in person until you've done a phone call.
The problem is that everyone will say they don't need what you're selling, even if they do. You want to disqualify folks as fast as possible, but email doesn't work for that because even if you're selling the cure to cancer to someone with cancer, you're still going to have basically a 100% false negative rate.
I won't pretend I'm great at sales, but this is directly contrary to the advice I get, which is you want to filter out people who are a sure "no" or not a match (eg, on budget) as fast as possible so you don't waste sales resources on them while minimizing the chance of leaving a bad impression from trying pressure tactics on someone who wont buy.
What am I missing? (I guess it could be intending to be unethical, but I prefer to assume I don't understand.)
This, so very much this. I love what Jeff Thull says about this... "always be leaving" (as opposed to "always be closing"). Make it clear to the prospect that you are not going to be the stereotypical sales-person who grabs onto them like a little pit-bull grabbing onto your leg, and who won't let go until they've been beaten over the head with a stick. Show them that you respect them, and leave as soon as it's clear that there isn't a good fit. Leave a good impression and later, when they do need your "thing" they're more likely to call you up (or take your call when you call again in a year).
If you leave a good impression, there's every chance they'll recommend you to someone who does need $thing, doing much of your selling for you -- you just have to leave them thinking "well, $thing wasn't right for me, but I'd do business with $person and $company".
Unfortunately this never turns out well. Even if the marketer uses the prescribed wording, it'll look like marketing BS to any engineer ("web scale," anyone?). If the marketer steers clear of any specifics, then... well, we get posts like this.
The solution is to push your marketing team to understand your product well enough that they can talk about it with accurate specifics, at least to some extent. Or hire marketers who have some basic understanding of software (cough cough).
Finally, a big issue I see is that companies use internal language to describe their software, rather than using the language of their prospect. They do this to "raise up" their messaging, but the result is often a word blob mashup of internal language and industry buzzwords which don't connect to the problem the prospect is trying to solve.
Perhaps it represents a bias towards investors rather than customers?
So say you're making software for car washes. Don't lead with the fact that you make software. Instead, show the benefit by saying something like "Book 73% more car washes" and then say "Car wash booking software to increase revenue."
Marketers are often consumed by showing the company's "Why" - but the challenge in that is it often gets too abstract and generalized and may make you sound like everyone else. A great example of this is that many companies make software that, in the end, is designed to improve end-user experience. You might be, say, a testing company. The end goal is definitely improving end-user experience, but if that is all you say, then it won't be clear how you do that, or how you're different from, say, a UI optimization tool which also improves end-user experience.
In this example, what if the company isn't any different? The marketer has to find a way to hide the fact that the company they've been hired to promote is not actually that innovative. An inferior product can still be a success if the right combination of hype, timing and smart promotion is combined.
What you're describing is fast becoming a reality for most software businesses imho - the days of feature differentiation are rapidly declining.
I don't care that your product is going to make me the reborn Buddha, because if you lead with that there's an overwhelming likelihood that your product doesn't stand on its merits and there is no underlying value. Blame the other marketers for spoiling the game if you want, but I think marketing is fundamentally a business mistake in that it makes you an adversary of your customers, not a partner. It's based on attacking customers with weaponized psychology. That's the premise of the modern field, and there's no escaping that.
If you had a product that I actually needed and provided value, you could just tell me what it was. It should be straightforward how that addresses my needs -- or it likely doesn't.
That still actually tells me what the product is, which is way more than we keep seeing for all these start-ups, open source software etc, which seem to revolve around hippie meaningless B.S. that doesn't provide any value proposition up front.
Any decent marketer, imho, would argue against not telling people what your company does (it's usually the CEO making that case) - the good marketer just moves the "what you do" to behind a value/benefit.
If you want people to do something, make it as simple as possible to do so as the slightest obstacle can turn them away. That includes informing them what the whole thing is about (googling is an extra step that you can remove from the process by including the necessary information from the start). (same applies to oneself as well, e.g.: if you want to go cycling regularly, make sure that you do not have to carry the bike from the cellar upstairs to do so)
Earlier, they kept telling me that I have jumped their queue and will soon get access. Now they ask me to upgrade the plan to keep using it. Complete BS!
All inwards focussing, completely useless info to that/those which are most important: customers.
Maybe some founders are confusing what's important to signal to investors with what's important to signal to customers?
Q: OK, that's nice, what do you do? What value do you offer the customer
A: Big data analysis! Synergise!
<sigh>
Bad emails are one thing. Bad presentations to investors just reeks of incompetence.
Also at least in my domain, I've found analogies are a great way to explain super complicated things very easily.
Old world physical analogies work great (like a bank, wallmart, etc) but analogies using other startups, i.e. we're the Uber of X, or we're the blablacar for Y not so much. Because sometimes the other person may not know what blablacar is (or for that matter Uber).
It is a service to arrange long trips from one city to another with other people, so that the driver can share the ride and get compensated from passengers (and also have company) in return
The main issue drivers were complaining about with the free version was no shows (=no money) which the company version tries to fix by taking money beforehand.
It's a fickle market though since every journey is independent ( so it's not hard to move platform) people are very price-conscious (many students etc) and the social features are not popular.
"Sign-up is simple and should only take about three minutes"
If a simple signup only takes three minutes, I can't imagine how long a complex one takes!
The way I always solved this was to get someone with technical insight write the first version and then have the copywriter re-write it into a human.
It's remarkable how well it works.
:D
(You could also drop both uses of "very" in that sentence and it's a stronger statement.)
Prior to going to DevBootcamp I worked as an engineering consultant, my product was informational reports that had to describe specifically what the problem was, how we determined that, and what we recommended to resolve it.
Sometimes my reports would be returned to me in a blood bath of red ink on changes but eventually you understand what it means to get the point across objectively and concisely.
My point is, get your copy proof read, limit the jargon, and get to the point in the first sentence.
GIS is a database with mapping software attached. I began explaining it to people as "kind of like SimCity for the real world." People who do GIS get lost in the details. They can't see the forest for the trees. Laypeople need a quick and dirty sketch of the forest in the simplest, most pertinent terms possible.
This is just not easy to pull off when your day to day work is all about cataloguing individual leaves in this vast forest.
So, while the 2nd example is an improvement, many people might read the first para - So you are attending the conference and are some kind of bank with APIs...umm..so what? Why should I be interested in it?
The better structure will be to start thinking in terms of why/what an intended recipient might want to use the API, followed by the process and conference.
>Xunxi: some of the examples are dated [...] how to "stoke the hivemind"
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=the%20hidden%20persuaders&sort...
It is one of the biggest goals for such a page, to show the what & why of the product, and still too many people do it in a way that lets no clue about what the thing is about.
It is good to see other people noticing this and writing about it. Hopefully this will be included in good/bad practices lists in the future.
But if they state their model is Enterprise SaaS or Subscription-based Media Content. Then its easier to suggest a quick hack for training sales teams or where to find freelance editors online, etc.
Arrrr!?
If they told you their signup process was quick, they would lessen their ability to convince you that you need to sign-up right now.
If they told you what they did, then you wouldn't have to click through to their home page or twitter account to find out what it is.
And finally if you weren't annoyed, you wouldn't have given them all of this free marketing on Hacker News.
For instance, I'll often start off with something like(notice that I start off with the value proposition too): "Never break your code: We build Regression tests, so you don't have to" Check us out here: https://swif.club/?s=hn
And I include that in my signature as well.