N Reduce opens up as alternative to ultra-elite startup incubators | Hacker News Reader

N Reduce opens up as alternative to ultra-elite startup incubators

xconomy.com

53 pointswaderoush21 comments

Take that in your faces "Elite" startups, you wouldn't be selected, you're not even "Ultra elite"!

More seriously though, I respect the initiative, but I would love to hear why this particular vocabulary is employed (from the website and the company's website): [ "ninja", "ultra", "elite", "brotherhood", "sisterhood" ]. I don't believe you say that randomly and you want to appeal to a certain population with these words but don't you think you'll only attract bozos and pretentious people?

For your website ( given in the comments) please no violent transitions like that, it's really bad for slow computers like mine. If anything I would have think that ninjas love discretion...

Key phrase is "alternative to".

About attracting bozos... maybe we will. We think that instead of trying to weed out the bozos, let everyone in and see how well they perform. If a "bozo" can ship and gain traction with their product, then they aren't bozos are they? But if the bozos flake out, that's ok too. What will be left is the "elites".

Yeah, we're joking around with marketing on our site. We figure it's better than being ultra serious. But I'm sure there's a balance that we're going to need to eventually get to.

Thanks for your answers.

I am genuinely interested by what words carry and in your case the kind of people they are going to attract. I actually write a bit on that. If you emphasize a lot on ninja/ elite etc... I would guess you will attract a lot of immature people who have ego probably bigger than their talent.

If you look at the phrasing of Y Combinator or even Facebook ads for developers you can see that even if they add some words to be fun they are careful about their use not to send the wrong signals.

Anyhow I wish you the best for your initiative!

Cool, thanks a ton for your feedback!

Maybe I live in a bubble (downtown SF), but it seems the best devs I've ever worked with on open source and consulting project tend to have a pretty weird (maybe immature) sense of humor. In most early stage startup offices here, it's not weird to see grown men (and brilliant devs) run around the office and shoot nerf guns at each other.

> it's not weird to see grown men (and brilliant devs) run around the office and shoot nerf guns at each other

1999 called, it wants its startup cliches back.

Well, I was in high school in 1999. Very sad to have missed the previous generation of nerf time fun.

The thing about a weird sense of humor is it's likely not the same weird sense of humor any particular other person is likely to have. The problem with "ninja" developer and the like is by now it's starting to get played out, even among more serious advertisement such as job postings. At least some of the best devs you work with in SF (I know some I work with... in SF) are long since tired with the whole ninja, zombie meme.

Kudos, I adore this idea.

You should see if YC will fund η-Reduce during the next cycle. I can imagine them getting a kick out of funding their own disruption.

Can use the following link to sign up: http://nreduce.com/#signup

Sorry about the super cute hipster homepage :) We're cleaning it up and making it a bit better organized.

Thanks for the support!

What will be the likelihood of NReduce accepting single founders?

100% likelihood of being accepted. We accept everyone who can ship products.

I'm sort of with PG on this one though. I've tried to do startups alone in the past. It's such an insane amount of work, stress, and pressure that doing it alone is quite a challenge.

But if you think you can do it, we'd love to have you!

If your name comes from eta reduction, shouldn't it be "H Reduce", not "N Reduce"?

It's true. We messed up the capitalization

η-reduce is the correct name. Ah well, N Reduce looks a bit nicer so we went with it :)

You should change your logo to η , otherwise you're going to be getting this question over and over. At least the hint in the logo may forestall some of it, and if not you can point people to it and give them a little test.

I don't think it will matter. Google misspelled googol. Flickr misspelled flicker (that one was probably on purpose though). If N Reduce hits it big, no one will care about that and they will recognize it as a company that works.

Edit: I just noticed Chrome doesn't have googol in it's spell checker dictionary. I wonder if that is intentional.

Right in the first paragraph it says "... they’re introducing a new, more open ...". I don't know much about other incubators but can't really understand why YC would be considered less "open" or "exclusive".

My understanding is that powerful incubators form around influential and visionary people (with money or good connections) so it may not be a good aspiration model for startups.

N Reduce? Y Combinator? Sure, why not.

Well good luck. This looks like a great opportunity.

May you share an email address?

Sure, email us anytime at contact@nreduce.com

Do you want to join an ultra elite ninja brotherhood?

Hell yeah! Let me fetch my nunchucks.

I would like to see this project succeed, but the language used (too much enthusiasm?) makes me skeptical. Anyhow, good luck guys.

great, an startup for building up startups.

It's like the circle has been closed.

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