Comment by Sukotto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sukotto | Hacker News Reader

I think there are some great points that adapt well to the startup mindset.

* [Ship stuff]. A lot. Try stuff. Make your best stab and keep stabbing. If it's there in your heart, it will eventually find its way out. Or you will give up and have a prudent, contented life doing something else.

* We did not start as friends, but as people who respected and admired each other. Crucial, absolutely crucial for a partnership.

* Have heroes outside of [startups / technology / business]. ... You're welcome to borrow [other people's], but you must learn to love them yourself for your own reasons. Then they'll push you in the right direction.

* Love something besides [technology / startups / business]. Get inspired by a particular poet, film-maker, sculptor, composer. You will never be [ $famous_startup_personality]. But if you want to be, say, the Salvador Dali of [startups / technology / business], THERE'S an opening.

I also especially liked the "be the $personality of $unrelated_domain". I think it could work really well because you can extract "meta-qualities" (if you'll excuse the made up term) that personality has and re-apply them to your domain.

Musically, punk rock popped into existence in a world of disco and polished/complex 'arena rock', bringing music back down to the essentials and playing it loud and fast. Be the punk rocker of startups by creating products that are lean, refuse to hide anything under a polish, and don't apologize for it.

When you edit a video (without musical soundtrack), you can get a good pacing for the scene by editing it to sync up with a song that evokes the emotions you want to express, and then removing the song when you render out. In this way you take in the qualities of pacing/emotions of the music, but don't need to actually reference the music.

And of course, we all write our code like poets. We rewrite lines that don't fit in well, and we refactor when functions get too long. Or we at least recognize when we're reading something that someone has put effort into crafting.

I'm not sure I'm supporting the argument well, so much as I'm just dumping out thoughts that the idea triggered.

Add to the list...

* Surprise users.

A perfect complement to this article is the short film "Resonance - a film about design strategy" by Continuum. http://jonathanmoore.com/post/129160860/resonance

“Sometimes the user needs are to be surprised and delighted. And they can’t tell us how to surprise and delight them, that has to come from us.”

Have heroes outside of [startups / technology / business]. That's a solid statement right there.

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