Two special startup types: the Twitter and the Hoverboard | Hacker News Reader

Two special startup types: the Twitter and the Hoverboard

danshapiro.com

52 pointsdanshapiro13 comments

I sense that we could construct an amusing zoo of subcategories here.

e.g.

The Oyster: A species of Hoverboard that appears to magically parse natural language or generic web data but which on close inspection turns out to be a slick-looking wrapper around a rat's nest of Perl regular expressions which are being frantically updated by a harried group of hackers to deal with each "edge case" as it arises.

The Turk: Like an Oyster, but without the regular expressions.

The Esperanto: A Hoverboard that promises to help non-programmers write programs by using "natural" syntax that is "just like human language". See e.g.: AppleScript.

The Gift-Horse Engine: A Twitter that is in fact virally popular, but only because it bribes adopters by giving away something below cost in an unsustainable way.

AirBnB in my opinion is no longer a "Twitter Startup." Maybe at first, but now they've proven people will sacrifice some level of comfort to save money, which in my opinion took a lot of gumption. This now proven disruptive model (sacrificing some comfort/certainty/social norms to save money) I think is only beginning.

I think this article isn't describing startups so much as startup ideas, and/or very early startups that have yet to demonstrate the elusive product/market fit. Once you've proven that your Hoverboard works, and that it really is a Hoverboard ("an idea that, if it works, will practically sell itself") then it isn't really a Hoverboard anymore. And once your Twitter concept has users and a viable business model it isn't a Twitter anymore.

Ironically, AirBNB is no longer a Twitter startup, but Twitter arguably still is. ;)

Good point, although I'd argue Twitter has shown its product/market fit (political strife/breaking news/Bieber).. Also, I agree, my comment is off topic, but I'm a bit tired of poor little AirBnB (now valued at $1 billion) not getting credit for sticking their noses in and bravely creating a new market.. PG might agree w/ me http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html

AirBnB is great if you have time, but there is something to be said for the zipless convenience of just booking a room with a hotel. It is a genuine pain to go back and forth with a few different people to get a room. Unless they have some sort of solid state, instant/confirmed booking option, it's better for casual travelers and sublets than business travelers.

(May all be obvious, just my $.02)

Sacrifice some level of comfort? Huh. I use AirBnB to book places that cost about the same amount as a hotel, but are significantly nicer.

I like the part where he says "if you aren't one of these types, keep calm and carry on."

A lot of articles seem to try and classify all startups into 2 or 3 types which is honestly pretty silly.

This is a neat, memorable way of explaining what Steve Blank calls [Customer/Market Risk versus Invention Risk](http://steveblank.com/2009/05/28/vertical-markets-2-customer...)

Here is Ali G pitching a hoverboard to a VC.. great stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkuOuxRD1Bc - go to 5:20 on the video.

  Ali G: "Its a hoverboard" (holding a skateboard with no wheels)
  Investor: ".. but it doesn't do that"
  Ali G: "Well, it doesn't do it yet.  Thats where you come in - with your science"

He's a non-science founder ;)

it’s not going to be very hard to solve the problem technically (you’d be wrong, of course, but that’s besides the point)

Actually, I would say that the problems twitter is solving aren't terribly difficult. Now, doing it at such a massive scale is very difficult. But I think a large portion of twitter's success is that their solution seems rather easy to implement at small scale.

Agreed. Twitter-like apps seem to be the go to first project for learning a new language for web development.

But the scale is an essential part of being Twitter due to network effects. A small-scale Twitter isn't Twitter.

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