Startups Shouldn't Follow Trends | Hacker News Reader

Startups Shouldn't Follow Trends

adii.me

27 pointsadii13 comments

I couldn't agree more. We're in Toronto and I'm often left scratching my head asking "Why" after reading Techcrunch, HN and other startup-centric sources. If you aren't solving a problem for a customer, then you are wasting effort. Problems come in many shapes and forms - seek them out and solve them better than anyone else, that's the secret to a successful business in a nutshell.

In some cases the customer is the investor; the product is the startup. Or so it seems.

I agree with this. I see most of the people here doing what everyone else is doing. Using RoR and AWS because it's 'cool', using all kind of bullshit names to indicate non-existing bullshit jobs, applying practices because everyone else is using them... There's nothing wrong with using a normal programming language that has debug tools (such as C#) and there is nothing wrong with building something that has nothing to do with social media, but something that's actually useful. Yet some people think that they can become rich by doing what everyone else is doing... Doesn't work like that.

Too bad the author kind of participates in this as well with hipster terms like 'ex-rockstar', 'bootstrapping' and 'lean startup'.

There's nothing wrong with using a normal programming language like Ruby either. Many people use RoR because it's a good tool, not because it's 'cool' (aside: is RoR even 'cool' these days?). All tools have their strengths and weaknesses and while I tend to agree with you that C# has nicer debugging tools, that is only one of many important considerations when choosing a tool.

Agree with your other points, particularly about doing something that isn't social media.

Wait, blogging using Svbtle about not following trends as the ceo of a web startup centered around delivering wordpress themes? I don't mean to hate, but I can't not ask for an explanation.

To be fair to Adii, he was one of the first to sell WordPress themes. His startup, WooThemes, helped lead that trend.

Though I completely agree about the blogging on Svbtle.

Agreed. I go to startup meetups and it's crazy how similar all the ideas are. My startup is B2B and ad-supported, two things that are definitely not trendy, and I kinda dig that.

I've observed this too at a number of startup pitch events. There are countless people ready to build a business based on some little missing feature of Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, etc., but there is almost no one that wants to solve any problems in any established industry. Seems crazy to me. Sure maybe building B2B software isn't always sexy, but there are tons of interesting problems to solve, and lots of real money to be made.

[x] shouldn't do [y]. meh

Social was taking off (myspace, friendster etc) and Facebook hopped aboard that train, and road it longer and harder, than the others. The rest is history.

However I do agree that going against the grain can work too, just skeptical of one-size-fits-all advice.

Also, one should always tell readers not be trendy, while blogging about it, on the ultra-trendy and exclusive SVBTLE network. :p

I agree with this article, but I have one suggestion. Don't do what's trendy, but also don't start to hate everything that is trendy either.

I've seen people on both sides. Those who wont touch anything that is conservative or a little bit enterprisey and (quite intelligent) programmers who have allergic reactions to anything that is not .NET or Java (and even within .NET, they don't consider things like F#).

I agree. The product decides itself, how it's gonna be implemented. Things evolve with time, just you've to look the best option at that time. I do agree too with the bootstrapping point, it's always good to be in a lean mode, if you are doing a startup and do not have a solid back support.

Stop doing things just because they’re trendy and mainstream media seems to reward it with publicity. It’s not clever business.

Am I the only one left wondering why isn't it clever business?

solve hard problems. Things have become easy now a days so it should be more affordable and doable to really solve hard problems.

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