Drop the ego and prove "I could make that so much better" | Hacker News Reader

Drop the ego and prove "I could make that so much better"

blog.lawnstarter.com

140 pointsstevencorcoran94 comments

I consider this post part of a nascent trend to de-bullshit the startup and technology scene. For years the narrative has been "we in the tech industry are standard bearers leading society into a bright new tomorrow." The recent protests around the Google buses, as well as John Oliver's takedown [1] of the tech industry seem to be striking a chord with the public, and there's a lesson to be drawn: we tech folks are not as important as we think we are.

A business is just that: a business. Not a humanitarian aid mission dispatched from your benevolent head into a world made unbearable by its lack of smartphone apps and productivity software. It's an organization that is focused on delivering a product that people will pay for. I'm thrilled for the author that he found something he can profitably produce, and I commend him on his exit from the messiah complex echo chamber that's plaguing our industry.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/11/john-oliver-kills-at-crunch...

"Join us and help change change the world" - _every valley startup ever_

Some businesses change the world more than others :)

http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-platfor....

What do you think?

http://platform.qbix.com

"Help us make <INSERT PRODUCT> beautiful."

The world must be one hell of a shitty place if it needs to be changed so much every single time.

The world is extremely shitty place and you dont see that only because, I assume, you are the part of the top earning cohort.

It certainly needs a lot of change. The change it needs is not necessarily the change it gets.

And how many tech startups serve any other cohort?

Most startups are b2c and serving mass markets. This is fairly obvious if you look at their target audience.

Exactly! I don't see how an Uberpriced Taxi changes the world you describe.

"We're changing the world." This will be our excuse for low pay, crappy benefits, fast firing, and nonexistent career planning. We want you to think of yourself as a founder but you'll have employee-level equity and if you try to use our rising star to advance yourself (i.e. by acting like a founder in the public) we'll fire you.

Those companies are halfway houses for college kids who don't want to grow up, but they're actually more dangerous to one's career and income (short-term and long-term) than regular corporate jobs-- and the quality of work is often, ceteris paribus, worse in the goofy startups.

If you truly are changing the world for the better, (eg. healthcare, energy, non-profit, science, etc.) that's awesome and you should totally flaunt it.

...but if you're building another rehash of some shitty social network that helps people "connect" at a more "intimate" and "personal" level please don't say that you're changing the world. You may very well be changing the world but it'll be a shittier place when you are done.

> and you should totally flaunt it.

Eh, not so much. Yes, you should be proud of what you're doing, but don't waste time "flaunting it." Spend that time getting the people and resources together you need to accomplish your mission. Passion about your mission isn't the same as flaunting what you're doing.

This also assumes that healthcare, clean energy, etc are "sexier" problems then connecting maids to people who want their house cleaned.

I 100% agree here but it can be expanded further. It's not just about products. A business simply fulfils needs in return for more than the cost to fulfil those needs.

A business can be a service, where I or someone I employ can fulfil a specific need using a set of skills.

A business can be in renting, where I can rent an object for a pre-determined amount of time for a fixed cost at regular intervals over a certain time period.

There are many more ways to fulfil specific needs and these can be and often are combined in several ways. For example, offers of travel insurance and such during the check out process of purchasing a plane ticket.

LawnStart could even offer a range of lawn/garden care products to his customers, if they are so inclined on top of his general service, such as products which improve the growth/health of lawns which may need to be applied more regularly than Steve is able. Of course, this is only to illustrate combination of service and product (I think the people paying him to care for their lawns means they wouldn't be so interested in lawn care products).

Agreed. We should stop calling everything a "startup". This shit is getting old. Business is business. People do things to solve problems, and by doing so, they generate income.

Give this guy a medal.

This resonates with me. In my view the real superstars in this industry are people who listen well, have humility, are grounded in reality but are smart and confident.

It's one of those things you (well I at least :) learn when you get older; you have a few years to do what you came here for and then you expire, so feeling embarrassed or otherwise caring about the negative things people might think about you is not very interesting and should best be not at all even in your brain at any time. Took me about 34 years to learn that and it's not actual advise you can give someone as people don't listen or cannot do it, but it will make everything a lot easier (and more successful as well).

Also people looking down on you are usually not better off either; I had a guy at a party talk to me about my 'little company', 'little moneys', 'little investments' (these words don't translate well; in Dutch you have 'small' words geldjes, investerinkjes which I don't know how to translate). He was a banker guy making E500k/year after tax (the fact he said that makes him a loser already imho); when he told people about his job my ears started bleeding out of boredom. I would not trade places with him for any amount of money let alone be bothered about him belittling what I do :) It's not often (never...) that belittling/offensive people actually have a life to be jealous about; that's why they are offensive and give you shit; they envy you.

Is your attitude toward bragging about income culturally typical for Dutch people?

Is certainly typical in the UK. Income is considered an intensely personal matter. You may as well walk into a party and proudly start telling people your genital measurements.

Here's an amusing video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E837tnxRVS0

"It's essentially a distillation of the problem we always have with american behaviour that's different from ours: Are they being admirably honest and upfront, cutting through the cant and failing to be hamstrung by old-world prejudices and preoccupations, or are they just being rude?"

The video is actually about asking other people their income, rather than stating your own. The point is basically the same.

Good one that video. I'm not sure if that's it in the Netherlands either.

When thinking about it; why do you tell or conversely, why do you ask? Why you tell without being asked, to me, is just a sign of you having a very small penis (it's usually guys). Asking it; are you really interested? Or are you comparing to yourself in some kind of oh i'm really not interested what you answer I make more anyway and really want to tell you that!? Or do you want to feel bad about your own income in some kind of sadomasochistic manner people seem to enjoy? Or do you want the other person to feel bad because you know he makes crap or is 'in between jobs'?

I'm trying to figure out what the upside is here; I don't mind telling what I make per se but I'm curious why anyone would want to know and when I think about it I cannot come up with any positive reasons. And so it never came up as a question from or to me and the only people I heard talking about it are guys I suspect were picked on a lot in high school. But maybe someone can enlighten me here? :)

Not sure, but 'we' find it very sad when people do that. It generally means there is something wrong with them, why else would you feel the need to do that? It's generally some kind of insecurity, not unlike bragging or showing off in other ways like driving up in an expensive car you cannot actually really afford. It more entices pity in me than anything else.

Is it not typical in for many peoples?

I think it is a Douche thing to do.

I experienced a similar change in mindset regarding the valley and the tech scene, catalyzed by recent trips out to SF that left me with a very uneasy feeling.

The uneasiness, I think, came from realizing that the community I wanted to be a part of for so long consisted largely of the same young, inexperienced recent college grads with self-appointed expertise in a variety of abstract fields (marketing, social behavior), who peddle the same formulaic and shallow insights on business and life, all with the belief that they are changing the world for the better. And look, there's nothing wrong with being inexperienced and wanting to do big things, but what irritates me is the semblance of expertise, arrogance, and contribution startup people put on without putting in their time to attain a deep understanding of any one area, especially since I come from a medical background where you know the people you work with are intelligent, have run the gauntlet, and prove themselves on a daily basis.

Or maybe that's how you hack wealth and I'm growing old and grumpy.

That's how I was feeling about the recent article on the Bitcoin robbery at Silk Road 2. A lot of libertarian-minded tech nerds are all hot about "disrupting" frumpy old fiat currency with its baroque rules and distasteful whiff of authority. Now they're finding out that there's a reason for that frumpy old system and all its baroque rules.

IMHO you are simply hang out with the wrong people.

There's plenty of bullshit in SF - it's an unavoidable effect of something real going on. Fortunately, the plastic people are also pretty easy to avoid.

The author touches on being embarrassed.

As a game developer making games that many players would call evil (IAPs, IAPs everywhere.), I tend to prefix my "what do you do?" with "Oh uh, it's not something I'd actually play, but it's called ...". Shame, really.

There was a great comment recently about "social" game developers being like heroin dealers who don't use their own product and look down on their customers, and "traditional" game developers being like cannabis dealers who are happy to smoke it with the customer.

We don't look down on our customers at all. But certainly, those in-charge of design don't care where the line is. If the change is a net profit increase (almost exclusively, we go on insider's reports from other studios on how their changes worked out) we do it.

As a developer I put up as much resistance as possible when it feels absolutely ridiculous - when design becomes more about tricking people into accidentally doing things they didn't want to do. At one point we made the flow for connecting to Facebook pretty ambiguous, where "Skip" meant yes and "Continue" meant no. Eventually that got voted out...

I do often feel a bit conflicted, but to be honest, I don't think we're the worst within our competition (Dungeon Keeper takes that crown, now). I've been playing on our production server since launch with no cheating, and no spending, and I'm doing just fine, and get enough minutes of play time for free to keep me satisfied.

The flip side from the rage we see on things like Reddit, we do receive far more messages and comments about how much people enjoy our game than those who don't. And if people are spending money, they must actually like it, right?

If your company is doing things you don't agree with morally, I believe it's your responsibility to do something about it. Sounds to me like you do to some degree, IMO that's something to be proud of.

> when design becomes more about tricking people into accidentally doing things they didn't want to do.

Is that share really worth frustrating users for? Can't you find some way of incentivising sharing better?

Sounds, from what little I know, like the company could do with some long-term thinking. Some ideas for selling that:

1. Would it make sense to increase player happiness? Word of mouth and upselling comes to mind.

2. I assume the company wants to grow - wouldn't it make sense to seek a positive perception at least in game developer circles to have a larger/better hiring pool?

3. I presume you're optimising for daily revenue and daily shares, but maybe there are other relevant metrics you should keep an eye on? Like the number of people who stopped playing (maybe "haven't played in a week"), daily negative ratings vs daily total ratings, perception (sentiment analysis?) etc. Even if you're not optimising for these things, it might stop changes that trade a small increase in revenue for a huge drop in another metric during A/B testing.

Feel free to drop me an email at fhd@ubercode.de if you'd like to chat more about this, I obviously find it fascinating :)

At one point we made the flow for connecting to Facebook pretty ambiguous, where "Skip" meant yes and "Continue" meant no.

Wow wow wow. That is beyond ambiguous into downright misleading. I've always stayed away from these games because I largely don't find them fun, but now I have the additional reason that they are trying to fuck me from the moment they are installed. I didn't realize it was quite that bad.

This one was proposed because a competitor was doing the exact same thing, and we knew from someone inside that it boosted registration by ~25%. Seems quite a lot of people don't really think, "Why did Facebook appear?".

Fortunately we argued this one down before it ended up in production.

I'm a web developer. Occasionally I'll get a client who can't be talked out of video/audio that autoplays. I think I understand that feeling.

What is "IAP"?

    Spend 100 karma to view this reply? 
    [yes] [no] [purchase]

In-App Purchase aka "the thing that ruined the gaming industry".

In-App Purchase

In-App-Purchase

The latest in a string of things people who don't handle change well are saying is killing the game industry.

As a game developer, I make games that I want to play; I make them for myself. It's nice that sometimes other people want to play them too.

I make roads for a living. (Well, my software does.)

Actually this has been a bit of a boon for me - whereas in the past peoples eyes would glaze over when I told them about SIL-4 practices and other such nonsense involved in keeping the trains running on time (safely), nowadays I can just point at the road and say - software makes this happen, now.

Software is boring. What the software does - now _that_ captures peoples interest!

My view is that software is fascinating and the real world problems you can solve with it are also fascinating - so it is a double win!

I of course meant in the social context - if I didn't think software was interesting I wouldn't be involved with it. But I have to say that this is an article about the social effect of explaining what you do to people - so many times, young developers come to the scene wanting to be rock stars, whereas that's just simply not going to happen in software. If you want to be a rock star, learn to play the guitar and rock ass.. but if you want people to understand why your job as a developer is so cool, you have to be prepared to explain it to them. If a person doesn't have the humility to describe your task in a way that people will understand - they've got a ways to go as a developer.

Saying "I make a logistics/analysis/solver system for mowing lawn - i.e. I'm a gardener" is not so easy when all you want is praise for doing something cool .. right .. coz mowing lawns isn't cool. Well it sure is, if you're using software to do it ... better.

Lawns are conspicuous consumption at its finest; improving them is not making the world a better place. This is one case where the guilt is telling you something.

Lawns, as in well-manicured grassy areas, are not typically the only thing a lawn care company does. The ones in my area do full landscaping, possibly excavating, and they have someone with a landscape architecture background. In the Fall they do leaf removal, which is changing now to leaf shredding. In the Winter, they do snow removal.

We have a mix of elderly and families with young children in my neighborhood. Having affordable lawn care companies helps us tremendously.

I totally agree with you.

but....

If we are ever going to see great alternatives to lawns develop, I wouldn't be surprised if it is going to be in part done by good-quality landscaping firms. Team up with a permaculturist and start making a bigger difference.

Would you prefer to have a road/more dense urban space/a parking garage?

I agree with you in that I wouldn't find my own personal lawn satisfying, but lawns are not nearly the worst option. Humans need outdoor space - the lawn also benefits people passing by.

More dense urban space, yes. Once you increase the housing density you can have walkable/cycleable cities and decent public transport rather than urban sprawl.

I'm in favour of open, green spaces for people to play or relax, but that doesn't happen on lawns; public parks (at least as implemented here in Europe) offer much more chance for everyone to enjoy, and socially rather than on their own.

didn't take long for someone to miss the point entirely.

A quote I once heard from a very bright hedge-fund guy: "My gardener drives a Mercedes SUV. There is no one I can't learn something from."

I can see that happening, gardening is a beautiful profession. A friend told me a story about how his great uncle became rich: he was a piano player on cruise ships (thus not having a lot of expenses). Every now and then when he was on the shore he'd buy another house and rent it. By the end of his life he ended up owning most of the small English town he was from.

A quote I once heard from a very bright hedge-fund guy: "My gardener drives a Mercedes SUV. There is no one I can't learn something from."

That actually sounds crass and a bit stupid. Any idiot can buy an SUV on credit, and SUVs just show that one has shitty, suburban taste in vehicles.

I agree with the sentiment of, "Don't assume someone's an idiot because he does physical labor". But it shouldn't take a fucking ugly hunk of metal to make someone learn that. If you actually go out and talk to people who aren't like you, you learn that there are some extremely intelligent people in blue-collar labor by, I don't know, high school at the absolute latest.

Thanks for reading my comment in the most argumentative way possible! Yes, pedantically pointing out that owning (or leasing) a car beyond ones means is both possible and foolish, while claiming to agree with the main point but then belittling it anyway by declaring it obvious -- that's why I keep coming back to HN.

What I learned from you today, is that I'm the real asshole, because I keep coming back and reading this crap.

SUVs just show that one has shitty, suburban taste in vehicles.

You make an impressive number of assumptions! SUV's have plenty of use outside of suburbia, and perhaps a gardener (who likely drives a truck for work) might want his personal vehicle to have space for transporting the odd lawn-mower or towing ability to move his work trailer, should his work truck be in the shop or what have you. You know, things that a gardener might feasibly do, that a Tesla Roadster cannot.

> Any idiot can buy an SUV on credit

i take the point that you hate cars, but this isn't actually true.

I don't hate cars. I hate when people buy unnecessarily large, unsafe, and environmentally irresponsible cars as a status symbol.

guessing you've never had to drive around with a bunch of gardening equipment, or potted plants, or bags of soil, or take a crew of 5 out to lunch.

My step-dad didn't graduate high school. He was a mechanic since he was around fifteen and when it came to things mechanical in nature he was one of the smartest guys I've ever met.

Interesting company - refreshing to see some different ideas out there. Congrats on making the plunge!

  > For some reason, I bought into this premium that our 
  > community puts on companies that produce gimmicky 
  > technology and raise massive rounds without having any 
  > real revenue streams. I got so caught up in this 
  > mentality that I was literally embarrassed to be working 
  > on a company that was making money in a less than sexy 
  > industry.

Anyone who is looking to take VC money needs to be able to convince investors that they'll have a 100M+ exit within seven to ten years. Investors who are looking to make these "long-shot" bets are not looking for solid companies with predictable growth like a lawn care business.

It's really important to understand the investor's point-of-view when considering a position at a VC-funded company, otherwise the company's behavior may seem irrational.

I'm guessing they aren't looking for companies like Uber and Handybook, you know because they're in predictable industries like taxi cabs and house cleaning...

My phrasing was poor. I should have said "companies with predictable growth", not "predicable growth industries." I've edited my post.

Loved this piece.

> I got so caught up in this mentality that I was literally embarrassed to be working on a company that was making money in a less than sexy industry. Seems ass-backwards to me...

Spot on! I wish you much success in your venture. Oh and in my opinion, a freshly cut baseball field is waaay sexier than any mobile app haha

I like that he had some personal revelation but he loses me when he assumes that everyone else working on "the next" Facebook or Snapchat is suffering from his same ego problems. There is a much more benign explanation for the glut in the consumer internet/app space; domain experience.

I'm actually working for a company now that specializes in online marketing/websites for lawn care and pest control companies. There's a guy in the area that was a programmer for a big corporation (IBM, maybe?) and he saw an opportunity in pest control, so he started his own company and pretty much wiped out all the competition. Then he bought the agency I'm now working for so we could focus on similar lawn/pest companies across the states.

I don't think that's really your plan at all, but it's awesome that you're looking into a market that is full of outdated websites and definitely has room for improvement!

Innovation is to make something better than the current state... Anybody who does that, are more creative and daring than most!

If you actually help people and make them happy - then you've got a something to proud of, in my opinion! :)

While I assume this is really the intent of posting this - I did end up going to the main site. I'm missing how this is disruptive in any way. Maybe I'm totally not getting it.

It is a different way of doing business in the industry. For a typical lawn care company you: 1) Call to schedule a consultation 2) Person comes out, looks at your yard, gives you a list of options and schedules. 3)You select the options, the person performs the "giving of the quote" ceremony 4)You choose whether to accept the quote, possibly negotiating further.

It's labor intensive on both sides. Lawn care companies don't emphasize individual residential customers. They want commercial contracts. The ones servicing individuals are generally one man operations, new the the business, or just use them to fill in time between commercial contracts.

Disruptive means potentially viable business. It used to mean something else, but it is not used that way anymore.

Well, uh, either definition would apply here.

Which isn't to say that any given lawn care service is not viable, but the whole "we're doing it differently" would indicate something more than, you know, setting it up online.

That's just me and I'm a cynic. But I feel like if you're going to take a stab at a paradigm shift in an industry, you should aim higher than this.

Keep in mind, this is precisely how I found and set up my lawn service, which is just two guys. :shrug:

[ And do keep in mind that I realize that self-promotion requires a healthy dose of hyperbole, but save it for the customers, not your peers ;) ]

People build products related to fields they are familiar with. The percentage of us that have experience with lawn care or some other specific industry is far less than the percentage that have experience with Facebook and the like. People are wary (and rightfully so) of building a startup to "disrupt" an industry that they have no experience.

The photo of Kate Upton on their "customer satisfaction" part of their main website really helps this.

I was slightly impressed after reading the blog post and then completely turned off by seeing that image. I almost thought they might have forgotten to take it off, but it seems pretty intentional. It's just so completely irrelevant to their message. It might be funny to men, but I can't imagine many women who would find that charming, so you're alienating the demographic that schedules services for their homes.

That was what stuck out to me most of all, after initially actually thinking it was a pretty good idea. I was totally turned off as a woman, and it make me feel immediately that this service, whatever it was, wasn't targeted at me.

Seems like they copped up to it and said they forgot to remove it in their new HN piece.

The validity of this approach depends entirely on your goals. If you just want to run a successful business, then by all means, mow lawns for a living. However, if you have passion for a particular market or technology, then you'll be bored mowing lawns, even if you make money at it.

I grew up with a father who owned garbage companies and caught a lot of shit about it when I was a kid, but for as "unsexy" as garbage is, it's a goldmine(esp things like owning landfills). I live in DC, if I had a lawn(condo) I would have you cut it. Good luck

That's pretty cool. I've always been curious about how well served waste management has been with technology and innovation over the years. It doesn't seem like we'll ever stem the tide of consumerism and the relentless torrent of disposable crap we manufacture and throw away. Have we progressed beyond digging holes and filling them up or dumping it all in the ocean?

I've heard about incinerator technology in some Baltic country that uses liquid magnets to extract precious metals from the ash piles.

Makes me wonder if there's some way to reclaim other materials... though I don't have the chemistry/physics background to know if it's worth following through.

Still... garbage companies are important!

Sounds like you're on the right path. Nothing to be ashamed. Although you do get that feeling when you're not "changing the world" . But if you're helping people in reality you are changing their world for the better.

We all have a list of things or industries that “we could make so much better”.

We do?

Don't you?

I've got a list of things that I think could be improved. For instance:

  The interface of the remote control? Could be improved for elderly.
  The price of a CNC router? Could be cheaper.
  The atmosphere of that bar? Could be nicer.

Easy to say, hard to do.

Same here. I want to make a battery powered noise canceling headphone that automatically shuts off if the jack isn't plugged in. Why should a 250 dollar pair of headphones not do this automatically when the battery is required for the experience!?

Because there's a niche market for people like myself that wear noise canceling headphones without music?

Seriously though, if I go in a server room I'm putting noise canceling on. I still need to hear if someone is talking to me, so no music unless I'm doing repetitive work.

Fair enough. I think you are a very small niche though and my proposal would save tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people from wasting expensive batteries. Worth it.

They do do this automatically. You may have been using the wrong type of headphones.

http://www.headphone.com/headphones/in-ear.php?sort=value&di...

Don't you?

No, not really. I mean, sure, I can think of things that could be cheaper or nicer, but that's almost anything. It'd be easier to make a list of everything that couldn't possibly be improved.

LawnStarter, happy to give you a revenue arm - www.yourlawnsucks.com - it provided beer money in college. Condition: slightly old - looks like fb code snippet needs some love as well.

Dedicated lawn genius and part time red carpet crawler.

Hahaha, impressed you saw that, redid the site yesterday and forgot to swap pictures before going live :)

I'm really happy for the author and simultaneously really disappointed because I have recently started work on a very similar venture.

People should do what they enjoy! If you enjoy the lawn mowing, don't feel embarrassed about it.

RESPECT!

For me, it's not about ego. It's about practicality.

There are hundreds of places where I see inefficiencies and know I could make it better. It happens every day. But I'm also humble enough to know that superior capability does not mean that I'm guaranteed to make money doing it.

Two examples come to mind for me personally. First, venture capital. What they do (picking companies to fund) I could do better, guaranteed. I wouldn't fund zeroes like Lucas Duplan. I'd fund people with actual capability, not fuckups. However, VC is a business with a lot of variance and a lot of corruption (connections really matter) so, as to whether I'd actually make money, who knows? Given enough time and money for the noise variables to even out, I'd beat the leading players, but the world can stay random longer than one can stay solvent.

Second in that vein, games. Game quality is something at which the main players are failing miserably. I have no doubt that if I ran those studios, the games would be higher in quality. Would that automatically ensure more money? Fuck if I know. I don't know all the details of the business. I know that I'm better at one kinda narrow thing (technical excellence) but that doesn't mean I would run a more profitable enterprise. Maybe they produce shitty games because, guess what, shitty games make a lot of money for minimal effort.

Competence is only a small part of the equation. (If it weren't, then VCs all over the Valley would be calling me up every damn day to run their companies.) Connections and political leverage and just plain luck are also huge factors.

So, what people like me tend to end up doing (and this may be a bad strategy, but that's another discussion) is to try to stay fairly general in business scope while diving deep on a technical specialty. At this point, I'd rather climb the ladder at a boring company (and gain general technical skills and, more importantly, the relationships and credibility to advance later on) than start a potentially world-changing game company, knowing that the skills and credentials that come from the former are more transferrable. You can say that resume culture is the devil, and that it's making us all mediocre in our ambitions, and you'll be right... but I don't have the power to change it.

The real issue is that no one insures the careers of the people who start "real world" businesses. If fixing, say, the moving industry had the landing pad that being Staff Engineer at a Twitter did, then more people would do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com