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Comment by dsirijus | Hacker News Reader

Why add unneccesary noise channels? Not everything is black and white. Open up when it makes sense to be open, and be stealthy when it's appropriate.

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How would you define unnecessary noise? Conversely, what do you see as the necessary noise channels? How would you define and know when it is appropriate to open and close? (edit: added last question)

Example of neccesary noise would be me trying to support clients who don't have a clue what they're doing with the product (and it's their stupidity to blame).

As for unneccesary noise example, that would be feedback of people whose feedback I do not value.

And as for edited and added last question - it depends. :)

How do you know to objectively value feedback sources? Why and how does it depend?

I usually bundle feedback in two groups - first one is my target demographic, the second one is professional. First one is pretty straightforward to parse, the second one is a kind of a double-edged sword.

Whatever your methodology is, at some point you can't parse more feedback, and it's then noise, whatever its contribution is.

I see it this way: The higher frequency of exposure, the larger the sampling pool, the more noise AND the more opportunity to spot a recurring signal in that noise. If you keep your sampling pool low, how will you separate noise from signal?

When you say"support clients", I assume people already paying for what your startup is offering? For clarity, I'm explicitly talking about sharing for pre-product-market fit, pre-validated business model startups. (edit: sloppy fingers)

Well, with your openess, you're out of the gate already, so "pre-" prefix isn't in the same sense as for stealth startup.

Dilluting my karma like I just don't care! :)

What do you mean? Could you elaborate how my startup is now in fact different than one hour ago before the post?

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