Comment by themanmaran | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themanmaran | Hacker News Reader

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> "Right then, give me your laptop" and set them up on the spot.

This article just makes me miss the pre-pandemic times when touching someone else's laptop didn't feel like a huge health violation.

> things that don't scale

Some things that don't scale (i.e. super personal interactions) do have non-linear returns. An email blast can hit 1000 users. But talking to 10 people can generate recommendations. Which hold way more value than marketing emails.

I launched a product earlier this year and it has been much harder to get this level of personal interaction over email / digital platforms. It's a lot easier to ignore an email than someone in the same room.

Very excited to return to a world of human > human interactions.

There are things that don't scale that you can still do its more given as an example.

Like for instance Groupon was prototyped in Wordpress. I believe Mailchimp would send their customers actual physical letters. Stripe would send you card readers for free.

It is better to validate the idea before writing a line of code if you can do it.

Did you mean Square instead of Stripe or does Stripe have a consumer facing side I wasn’t aware of?

It's Square that sent the card readers for free, not Stripe.

Still will send you a card reader for free, as a matter of fact, but only the magstripe-only ones. You have to pay for readers that do chips or any of their more advanced hardware.

Nothing beats human to human in person interaction, nothing.

Totally. And this is why I think all this "move to the suburbs" business is overblown.

Physical proximity still matters a hell of a lot. Especially on the margins when making something 1% easier is the difference between doing and not doing something.

Ironically pg is the guy who said the real world is really high bandwidth (Cities and Ambition) and that going where you have an audience is important. I share your frustrations about it being difficult to get to people to pitch them. Doubly when you aren't chasing an audience that spends all day in front of a screen.

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