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Comment by replicatorblog | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, the "Sticker Comapany Guy" is really cool and helpful to the startup community. He donates his products to almost any tiny technical gathering, shares a lot of info on his business, and provides a great product and excellent service to customers large and small. Also, his site has anywhere from 80-150K visitors a month who pay for his products so he may know a thing or two about running a business online http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stickergiant.com/

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And somehow he gets to be the target of this rant. That is really depressing.

That is the one thing that consistently amazes me about entrepreneurs - no matter how silly, ridiculous, dull or otherwise negative opinion you may have of an idea/area - someone is probably doing something really impressive in the space. I've done a lot of interviews with entrepreneurs and honestly, sometimes I read the quick description and go 'oh god, not another one of these <stereotype>.' Sometimes, I am right, but there have been quite a few after doing my research have really impressed me. Even if I think it will be boring, I am willing to give it a chance because I've learned I can't predict what will be impressive or not with any significant degree of certainty.

Also, while his web site is not the paragon of UI design, it does manage to be #1 on google for "stickers." I can think of half a dozen things off the top of my head that he could be doing that, it would seem to me, intuitively, would make his business vastly more successful still –– but why would I think I'm right, having never lifted a finger to explore the sticker-selling business, while he has clearly been iterating the hell out of it?

Also I wonder what the ranting anonymous coder has to show for that is so cool. But I can guess: he can code, therefore he is a god who has to be worshiped accordingly.. No need to show actually viable products he created.

Well, he sells stickers. He shouldn't be talking about how a technical founder/entrepreneur doesn't need to know anything about the technical aspects of his company/product.

If you sell stickers it maybe will work out for you. But if your company is highly technical you should at least know a little about how your product is made to decide if ideas are feasible or not.

Read "I, Pencil". http://www.fee.org/library/books/i-pencil-2/

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