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Comment by wilfra | Hacker News Reader

Just because he was not successful (yet) does not mean it was a foolish effort. It's attitudes like yours that make hustling work, simply because so few people are willing to even send an email to somebody because they think it's unlikely they'll get an affirmative response. Getting rejected is like ketchup on french fries.

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He flew from London to NY and showed up at their office uninvited only to find out the CEO was in Aspen. After spending countless hours stalking the guy and hundreds (or thousands) on a plane ticket, he missed by 2,000 miles...

If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack".

Most people would agree you with you. But that doesn't make you, or them, correct. You should learn to embrace failure as a completely normal and natural part of success, instead of fearing it. This story, and the fact that he is proud of it, is evidence that he gets that.

I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish.

I would not. Not all failure is created equal. Failing is fine. Even failing big is fine. But the risk has to be worth the reward. His reward was a name. That's it - not the success or failure of the project he wanted to start, but just the name. Sure, names are important, but spending this much effort on the name and not the project itself does not, to me, indicate good judgement on where one's efforts are best spent.

"Learning to embrace failure" is not an excuse to avoid basic cost analysis.

"I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish."

- best comment in the thread so far

Successful people have certainly failed, but spectacular failure isn't a particularly good sign of future success. You should only embrace failure if you are learning things. Successful people treat failures as the price of learning.

I admire this guy's persistence, but not his incredible arrogance ("swaggadocio", "sound my huge balls made as I sauntered"), his poor risk/reward assessment, or his lack of lateral thinking skills.

His behavior only makes sense if having name "zap" is the riskiest thing in his current business plan. If everything hinges on him having a specific fancy domain name, then I doubt he'll be delivering sufficient customer value to his users to build a real business. And if that wasn't the riskiest thing, then he's just wasted a lot of time and money in a poorly planned exercise to get something that was a shiny distraction.

That sort of behavior is a great example of why solo founders are dangerous. Startups are endlessly distracting, and a good partner can keep you from taking off like a missile at something that, in the end, isn't core to what you're up to.

Failure as part of the hustle is not a learning process in the same way as a failed startup is. Sure, you can learn something, but if you aren't getting rejected often in sales, you're simply not trying hard enough.

That view isn't totally unreasonable in the context of an established product with proven product-market fit. But it is incredibly dangerous when what you're selling may have no value at all. This guy is definitely too early in the process to be testing the hypothesis, "Hey, maybe I'm just not enough of a dramatic stalker." And if he did want to test that he shouldn't start by doing it with such a high-value target.

Hindsight is 20 20. You would sing a different tune if he was there and let him in!

If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack".

I wouldn't. I think it shows exactly what he is trying to show: a tremendous amount of "hustle", indomitable fortitude, drive and passion... sometimes if you really want to make something happen, you have to take some chances and go a little over the top. And more importantly, it shows that this is a guy who doesn't just sit around and wait for things to come to him; he takes action and makes (or at least attempts to make) things happen.

I would think a more impressive effort at hustling would be to find a (more readily) available domain name, then focus on building such a great product that it works anyway.

IMO the story shows great hustle but poor prioritization. Domains don't matter that much. One of YC's most successful graduates is airbnb after all. That domain is basically nonsense, but the product is so good, now it's their own special nonsense.

I thought airbnb meant "air bed 'n breakfast" which makes complete sense for their product.

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