Comment by terramauthe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by terramauthe | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

As college student who grew up watching Zuck "get rich easy", I was easily taken in by the Hipster startup culture. Very unfortunately for me, I only found out about this fantastic site (Hacker News) about 5 months ago. By this time, the hipster ethos was rampant and I was swept up by it. My ego deeply resonated with their fancy promises and extravagant buzz words.

However, there is a thread of hope. An undercurrent of truth which I have recently started to uncover within the layers of crud. I just read Paul Graham's essay Beating the Averages last night and realized that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

Lately there has been a growing thread of dissatisfaction with Hacker News. It feels as though the original community has become diluted by an influx of folks like myself, eager to make their mark but too naïve to really do anything constructive (and too naïve to realize we’re naïve). But we are learning.

So, Hacker News, thanks for putting up with us noobs! I realize now that I won’t be the next Zuck, but if I keep listening and learning from HN, I just might make a dent in the universe.

I work for a 4 yr old startup. I'm an ideas guy but I didn't have the idea for the startup I work for, I merely do administrative projects for it. Nonetheless, I have to be careful how I word things.

About a month ago, I was at a meetup which had nothing to do with technology or the internet but I ran into a guy who was throwing out some buzzwords. The point came early on when he asked me what I do, and I really didn't want to say I worked for a startup (because I sensed what was coming) but I did because I do. Then came the 20 minute monologue throwing out many more buzzwords and how he'd just moved to SV. He was going over how he was just pre-launch and outsourcing the coding, blah blah blah. He was very, very excited about his project (at least there's that). But then he told me what it was (I forget but it had to do with health, it might have been a lifestyle app) and I thought to myself, "but specifically what you're describing is not a startup, that's a small business that happens to be online."

He wanted to keep in touch, almost as if we were two kindred souls braving the unknown and at that point I gave him the (true) line that works really well in certain circumstances such as these. "I'm not searchable on Facebook, sorry, but you can send me an email." In casual settings, no one ever sends the email, by the way. It's FB or nothing.

Being that I have another regular job (that happens to be online), I now say I do that instead of "I work for a startup." Though, believe me, if I had one, I'd have zero shame in saying it.

This will come across as rude, but I don't think there's such a thing as an "ideas guy". Every person I know who says that is covering for a lack of attention to detail and a general inability to get shit done.

Maybe there's a rarefied world of amazing CEOs who spin off amazing ideas every 10 minutes, and then legions of people go do them ... but I doubt it. And you're probably not going to get to that job without a lot of plain old execution first.

Not rude at all.

I'd say I mean that in the sense that my mind always has put seemingly unrelated concepts together to form a new idea and that I have a daily habit (of at least 7 years) of reading tech news. Put the two together and it's not too difficult to imagine that a lot of my ideas would relate to the subject matter I consume regularly.

But as far as an "ideas guy" in a company whose purpose is just to have ideas, I agree with you.

Or, put another way, I'm an ideas guy. So is my co-founder. Both of us have really good ideas, pretty regularly.

But that's not my job in our startup-- I'm in charge of engineering. My cofounder does design & marketing, and we split a lot of the CEO stuff.

People say ideas are worthless, but that's not always true- I've seen worthless ideas and really valuable ones both.

I think what you're reacting to, and what the parent is acknowledging in a humble way, is that some people have a lot of ideas but aren't yet ready to be "in charge of engineering" or whatever.

When I went to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I think ther are a lot of kids[1] today who have the idea they "want to work for a startup" or "found a startup"... but they still don't yet know what they really want to do with their life.

Some are foolish and think that being the "ideas guy" is valuable, some are not (and I think the parent is not.)

[1] in the sense of "younger person, cause I'm old", not in the pejorative sense.

"but they still don't yet know what they really want to do with their life" | -> exactly this. So until I do figure that bit out, I'm gonna keep my eyes open and make like a sponge.

Additionally, I used to think that being the "ideas guy" was valuable... I think there is a general understanding among average people that being first-to-market is THE driving force behind successful brands. After numerous business and entrepreneurship classes at university and reading many case studies of businesses; I have come to the realization that (of course) anybody can have an idea: it's the execution that matters.

I guess what I'm trying to acknowledge or convey is that we know not what we do. Us noobs, who are invading and "hipster"-izing this community.

So please, guide us! Love us, that we may love you back...

But posting articles detesting hipsters won't help, since a hipster never considers themselves a hipster. (and they will just agree with your article "Damn those hipsters!")

Well said. I think that I would be shy of describing myself as an "ideas guy" simply because of the experience I've had with people who describe themselves that way.

But I appreciate your more nuanced interpretation of both the phrase and the parent's intention.

Looking back at the vantage point of my own 10 year old "startup" - oops, I mean "small SaaS software business" - I can certainly point to a couple good ideas that took about 5 years' execution apiece =)

To put it all another way:

If some young person said to me "I'm an ideas guy", that would probably be the end of my taking them seriously

If that same young person said to me "I've got a lot of good ideas - I think - but I'm not sure of my ability to make them happen", then I would respond very differently.

I think real ideas guys get stuff done too. You can;t get good, practicable ideas without doing stuff. That;s the nature of the beast.

I get lots of good ideas because I do stuff. Many of those ideas I will never be able to follow up on and so I share them. After all, if my ideas help someone become successful, that is better than letting them die because I can;t get it done myself. Moreover maybe it helps build relationships with other businesses.

Ideas without hands-on experience invariably suck.

We do exist. I'm an ideas guy, I specifically build my portfolio to showcase my diverse creative thinking. http://www.chrisnorstrom.com Unfortunately my best ideas, the projects (NOT startups) I'm working on, I can't share, because then I give myself a deadline of 1 year until they become unpatentable by law. So it sucks I can't share 87% of the ideas I come up with. I love prototyping my inventions and products and as they fail, post them online. Which I'm gearing up to do in the following days actually. I've got 5 failed products that didn't pass the prototyping stage. Since I'm not interested in patenting & building a business around things that don't work I'll throw them up on my blog.

My advice to "ideas people" is that you need to prove you're creative and useful. Otherwise people think you're bull-shiting them.

You're absolutely right on all counts. But also realize that while, 4 years ago HN was more diverse in many ways, it still was overrun with "startup hipsters", though they weren't called that.

You saw people denigrating others startups as "lifestyle businesses" and me suggesting that one might pursue product market fit before VC money was laughed at.

Back then the Word of PG was the Word of God, and you could be shot down with a misrepresentaiton of a PG quote. (Did you know PG opposed customer development? I bet he didn't!)

For awhile I though HN was going to become a cult of personality for PG.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com