Fear and Loathing at Zigfu: My Y Combinator Experience | Hacker News Reader

Fear and Loathing at Zigfu: My Y Combinator Experience

fpgacomputing.blogspot.com

122 pointsamirhirsch40 comments

Amir, thanks for writing this article. Very informative! Just a few weeks ago I tried out ZigFu and really liked it. I'm sorry to hear the team has left. But I hope, ZigFu keeps being successful, even if not in the VC sense.

In my humble opinion, one, if not the biggest problems is, that the Kinect is just not good enough, yet. My experience is, that the Kinect works well for the T-pose and anything that resembles it, but not well or at all once your arm is pointing towards the Kinect. Here [1] is a recent paper, with the most detailed validation of the MS Kinect I have seen so far. They report a maximum error for reaching movements with OpenNI of 46.9 deg in the elbow angle estimation. Another problem is lag. From what I hear, the main problem here is the USB 2.0 bandwidth. Hopefully the next generation, Kinect 2 and co., will improve a lot.

[1] S Choppin, J Wheat , 2012, Marker-less tracking of human movement using Microsoft Kinect http://w4.ub.uni-konstanz.de/cpa/article/view/5271

Thanks for trying it.

I agree that the sensors are a limiting factor for the current applications and of course Kinect is just the beginning of this technology in consumer markets. The description I provide of a 3-D integrated computer vision processor attached to a high-pixel-count CMOS array will address the latency, power and frame-rate issues. The algorithms and automation of computer vision to hardware still needs to be solved.

Sony is already licensing 3-D integration techniques for their image sensors: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4229507/Ziptronix-bo...

Personally, I have mixed feelings about integrating the skeleton trackers into the hardware. While this might drive down cost for specific use cases, it limits the capabilities of these natural interface devices. The skeleton trackers are based on many assumptions, like approximate camera angle and position, proper clothing etc. Once, any of these assumptions don't hold true any more, for instance a camera from the top, side or back, a object held by the user, uncommon clothing like baggy pants or skirts, you have to write your own skeleton tracker in software.

Looks to me as if you're on the road to building a company the hard way, but if you persist I think you just might get there. Taking a few wrong turns doesn't need to be the end and you seem to have learned a number of valuable lessons.

Interesting post. Seems like you were affected by the standard SV MO - worry about profitability later, only after you'd scaled your user base.

Sounds like you're still a believer. What is your plan now?

I'm going to keep supporting Zigfu, release more products, and recruit people after I save enough money. I'm also working on secret projects that I can't talk about.

So are you going to seek to raise money eventually, or try to bootstrap?

Smart words: aim to earn money instead of raising money.

He also said he should have been more frugal with the money they had, and focused more on developing product instead of chasing investors. I agree.

As an investor I'd look for a business like this to be break-even after 12 months then aim for 100% growth funded from cashflow or 200% with a modest additional investment. VCs will be interested and bring big dollars after you've reached a critical market threshold, but in the mean time you're building a real business.

Cash invested should match your ability to use it effectively, but as in this case it can distort your priorities by making your day more about getting more investment than creating a great business.

Amir, stick with it. Focus on building a rapidly-growing busines. If you do need more investment, keep it to the minimum and be really clear on what you're going to achieve with that capital. If you're demos are already that good, you should be able to find the money.

Man, had to stop after the cigarette comment and ask -

What is it with people in SF smoking? When I visited I felt like I spent my entire day walking through a cloud of smoke. So odd for me to see programmers that smoke. Just can't reconcile it. (back to the article).

A lot of neuroscience research has pointed to the fact that people often don't make decisions entirely rationally or consciously. This applies to highly logical people as well.

I quit smoking after I wrote my master's thesis in 2007, but the scenario described certainly describes a conscious decision.

I'm more impressed by the number of tech nerds and investors that go completely balls out at Burning Man. It must be like 20% of YC companies represented.

I didn't notice this about SF, at least compared to Britain. Perhaps on Market St, but then generally they weren't smoking tobacco... :-/

Not sure why you got downvoted. I rarely see people smoking in SF especially compared to other cities I've visited (Paris, London, Hong Kong)

Americans, I think, just generally smoke less than people elsewhere in the world.

I can give an anecdote that supports this with Doctors. I worked in a cancer research group and the docs would always make comments about how many doctors smoked when they went to conferences out of the country.

As a developer who smokes, there are a couple aspects I've discovered that I think make the habit more popular with developers.

Obviously, the short-run benefits of smoking are far outweighed by the long and medium run detrimental effects, and this isn't an argument in favor of people smoking.

1) nicotine is a cognitive enhancer, giving short term improvements in attention and memory.

This has pretty clear benefits for programming. See sources/citations at end of comment for more information.

2) The nicotine addiction withdrawal cycle of leaving the building to smoke every x hours provides a relatively scheduled context shift. I've found this to have similar effects(albeit more mild) effects to timer based productivity techniques with timed periods of focused effort followed by breaks. I frequently have 'aha' moments in the elevator on the way down to smoke from my office after being stuck on a particular problem or bug coding.

See: NIH 1992 - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1579636 " Abstract 1. Nicotine improves attention in a wide variety of tasks in healthy volunteers. 2. Nicotine improves immediate and longer term memory in healthy volunteers. 3. Nicotine improves attention in patients with probable Alzheimer's Disease. 4. While some of the memory effects of nicotine may be due to enhanced attention, others seem to be the result of improved consolidation as shown by post-trial dosing."

Cognitive Effects of Nicotine Amir H. Rezvani and Edward D. Levin (2001) http://directory.umm.ac.id/Data%20Elmu/jurnal/B/Biological%2...

Interesting... there is a an accessible meta-analysis here - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151730/

There is some evidence that achieving cognitive benefit is related to genetic variants that promote nicotine dependence - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20886544

Ever thought about just chewing gum or using an inhaler?

I also hear that since smoking is now taboo and smokers now gather outside in well-defined areas, smoking is a great networking opportunity. You end up talking to people you'd never talk to otherwise, with the built in opener of bumming a cigarette or asking for a light.

Why not just chew nicotine gum and abate the possibility of cancer.

Nicotine gum is addictive too, with its own set of problems.

I know, but it's not nearly as bad as tobacco and smoking imho.

If your goal was to reduce the risk of cancer, but you wanted to enjoy nicotine, that would probably be a reasonable thing to do.

I can only speak for myself, but I find smoking is much more enjoyable than chewing nicotine gum. There are probably lovely tasting brands of nicotine gum but I've tried about three or four and they have all shared a strange characteristic... it's like a feeling that they are chemically burning the inside of your mouth slightly, and for me the feeling intensifies the longer I chew the gum for. Of course when smoking there's lots of nasty effects too, but I'm just saying given the choice I'd take smoking.

Source: non smoker who has tried to give up lots of times

I have to do something with my hands when I'm thinking and not typing. I don't smoke, but I do have this unconscious need that arises during this time. My negative reaction is to get really hungry (even though I don't need food), I've been trying to change that to a video game "break" while I'm pursuing some mental gymnastics (which is working fairly well).

So I could see how smoking easily would fit into that unconscious need. In fact, most of the people I have daily interactions with smoke. I'm in the process of removing myself from the situation (of having to deal with smoke clouds 5 feet from my computer).

* I have nothing personally against smokers, the smoke clouds (3+ people) just disrupt my mental processes.

Data does not support your anecdote. SF has the 9th lowest smoking rate in the country according to one study [1]. California in general has the 2nd lowest smoking rates after Utah, which is impressive considering how big California is.

[1] http://healthyliving.blog.ocregister.com/2010/06/18/what-cit...

Of course it's my personal experience, but I feel it's more acceptable to be a smoker in NYC than SF.

I have the opposite anecdote. I was talking to someone who was smoking a few weeks ago, and I could not recall the previous time when I had even seen someone smoking. I have never seen a place where so few people smoke!

Some great thoughts, like this one:

"Revenue is just like funding but it costs you less to get it, and building products isn't a total waste of time even if they don't succeed at massive growth."

Yes, the first part of this quote is now part of a question I asked on Quora.

I'm adding my answer on quora now. Many hugely disruptive breakthrough technologies will require massive upfront funding before revenue is possible, but perhaps those kinds of startups are not accessible to those in YC. This was supposed to be a message to companies that start with $250K to not just spend money building a team and tech-demos assuming more funding will get them to revenue-generating products.

It seems you paid yourself large salaries. What was your burn rate? I paying myself $1K salary and only because of the minimum wage law. Even paying $3K to 4 people gives you ~ 21 months run

We had more people on our team than the four founders, and we had higher expenses being in separate apartments.

I like the way Stripe was built on a long vacation in Buenos Aires. If you're doing something that only requires internet to be built, your entire team could go on a several month vacation after demo day and it might result in a 50% lower burn rate depending on where you go, and probably 50% higher output.

it takes a lot of courage to be open and honest; a heartfelt kudos on the post Amir.

Is today the official "post depressing things about YC to dissuade people from applying, but not really" day (sort of like converting to Judaism...)?

this wasn't supposed to dissuade people from applying! just sharing some wisdom.

Amir seems to be the opposite of many other YC startups, which launch product, wait 3 months and then pivot. Some already pivoted 3 times.

The problem is, you're a sharecropper. Microsoft owns the Kinect and its surrounding ecosystem-- lock, stock, and barrel.

If there's a real market for Kinect development tools, Microsoft will sooner or later own it, exactly the way that they own the C++ development tools market on Windows, Zune, XBox 360, etc.

It would make a lot of sense for them to release something like what you've developed for free. After all, if it pushes up Kinect sales and locks developers more tightly into the Microsoft ecosystem, Microsoft will want to do it.

Even if they don't want to release the development tools for free, I see no reason why they should let you access their hardware. The next version of the device could easily have a locked-down, encrypted communication channel. Look at how hard Microsoft tried to prevent the various XBox iterations from getting hacked. They even went so far as encrypting the buses that ran inside the device.

If you really want to work in this area, build your own hardware and make it a truly open platform. However, be prepared for attacks from a known patent troll.

> It would make a lot of sense for them to release something like what you've developed for free.

Yeah, sounds like the whole bet there is on Microsoft SDK being not good enough.

Back in the 90s a whole bunch of companies were making money off their own libraries and SDKs. Borland, Microsoft, Crystal Reports. Then the trend kinda died off, and SDK developers usually sell consulting or SAAS.

You could also use the Asus Xtion Pro Live. Like the Kinect, it's derived from the original PrimeSense device. As an added bonus, there is no annoying extra power cord and the RGB and depth frames are actually synchronized.

The problem zero userbase - it was supposed to be launched with an ASUS media-center PC with some other cool tech as the WAVI Xtion (WAVI is an existing product they make that does uncompressed 1080p streaming). Unfortunately, that just didn't happen, so there's still no competing consumer product.

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