Redoubtable

Ah the faulty algorithm.

Right because the first thing I think as a founder is oh definitely I'd love to have my work judged by the insane neckbeard posse that is Hacker News Commentariat. That's totallllllly something I'd love and will likely to end up producing better and more diverse result. Sorry guys I should really not even get involved but this is baffling. HN is second only to Reddit in terms of its nasty, divisive, anti-anything that doesn't pattern match to the literalism horror show that is white men in technology.

But let’s remember that computing used to be a hobby for most people and largely the domain of professional computer scientists. It was also a highly profitable, multi-billion dollar industry even back in the day. But once it became easy enough for regular people, personal computing exploded into a industry so large & worth so much you are probably reading this on a mobile computer in your hands. Don’t you wonder why it is that makeup hasn’t had this explosion? It is a big industry with a lot at stake, but largely serves very skilled women with a lot of time & often cash on their hands. It serves very skilled hobbyists & professionals. But shouldn’t it serve any woman so that say someone like me can use it with ease and joy?

Now that is fascinating. It explains a lot of the really depressing studies about how we perceive shows like The Biggest Loser and how it makes us both less sympathetic to overweight people as well as makes us perceive that exercise and health are not fun http://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/2013/01/2...

Thanks. Hmm. So you are saying that the Baumeister study doesn't apply because if we believe we power through we can? I feel awfully tinker bell about the issue now :-)

Quoting a comment found in the post you linked that led me to Wired : http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/mf-willpower/

"Some of his further studies have suggested that willpower is fueled by glucose—which helps explain why our determination crumbles when we try to lose weight. When we don’t eat, our glucose drops, and our willpower along with it. “We call it the dieter’s catch-22: In order to not eat, you need willpower. But in order to have willpower you need to eat,” says John Tierney, coauthor with Baumeister of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength."

I'm not coming up with much when I search for cognitive overload being debunked or being a myth. Do you remember the name of the study?

I agree that willpower and motivation are separate issues but I'd be curious to see further references on the issue.

Dick asks if you ever approached fitness resolutions with a “just do it” attitude only to be disappointed that you summoned up all of the willpower that you could muster and still failed. A further discussion is happening on Lifehacker on the topic http://lifehacker.com/ask-an-expert-all-about-health-and-fit...

Thanks for this! The fact that I got wrapped up in constructing the identity of a company (thank god not the actual product or how we related to our clients) to be appealing to someone that wasn't its core client was definitely my problem and not theirs!

While I can't deny that I was responding to a certain kind of risk/reward perception that has a certain value it wasn't right for what we ultimately wanted to build as a company.

And I think this happens in so many areas of life. How we date, how we pick our hobbies, how we choose our education. Because forming a core identity and a core business is actually tremendously hard. Picking up one that is already socially validated seems easier. It just isn't a recipe for long term happiness or success.

I'm sure I do or I wouldn't have felt the need to exorcise it in public. But I do definitely care that my business makes money and that what it costs us to make our product is less than what what we get paid for it. That is just running a business and answering to the market.

Heh well yes. Logical win :-)

You got it. :-)

Though I admit I wasn't quite expecting a personal Tumblr post to make it to Hacker News.

Heh. Thanks. Glad someone thinks it is cool!

Heh well you know actually I do have PMS! I'm due to start maybe tomorrow or Tuesday. Wow and to think my epiphany was just hormones. Man those things are useful!

Indeed! We've rarely had a confused customer thankfully.

Thanks!

Well now that I've just managed to out myself to the entire world (well the world here, wasn't expecting that). We probably will!

No VC we've talked to has ever wanted to hear we make marketing software for brands. But if I'm not caring anymore then yeah how we speak to our clients will be how we speak to everyone now. How very liberating.

Indeed it is what says! Which is kind of the lost point I should make in all of this in that we've in the past positioned the company to appeal to certain things we thought the industry would find appealing not necessarily our customers.

Who really don't find us through our website but through word of mouth with ad agencies, brand managers and media partners. But nevertheless we say PLATFORMS! SOCIAL GAMES! SHIT WE THINK WILL PLAY WELL BUT OUR CUSTOMER BASE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT REALLY.

And well I suppose this is all true. But also framing.

Heh I'm stoked someone called us an API for social games. Usually people call us wildly less accurate things. YAY!

We are technically a suite of tools (which you know depending on your executional ability is an API, or a set of SDKs, or us hand holding you through using them) for brand managers and marketers to build applications and games with their own data. Layer up content + actions and out pops your very own custom THING.

We have found that there is a huge demand for brand creative, as digital marketing requires more marketing, not less, with newer storylines & media format being demanded w/ever more frequent turns.The advertising agencies are struggling to deliver quality, timely results, and brand managers struggle to afford the associated cost of traditional, all original (or custom) marketing.

We believe that if brands could rapidly create compelling new campaign media by leveraging a standing (and hopefully ever improving) body of component elements with their own brand data and concepts this is a powerful

Obviously this approach is well accepted today in software creation and the good news in we have worked with host of brands to try this theory out in practice- aka in client paid efforts. 

Essentially what we're seeing, is if the tools allow quality brand marketing results, that reflect the brand’s story telling objective, then the brand manager is satisfied. 

If the creative cost & delivery are both materially lower, this is a winning path—and the birth of a potentially formidable new cloud based SaaS business

Unburden myself from otherwise useless and unproductive emo feelings? I sure hope so.

You would think I would take that too but apparently I'm an idiot and got caught up in useless crap. We make marketing software for big brands so all our "users" are monetized because well ummm that is our business model. Enterprise is great that way! No one gets the product for free!

Apparently it is my mysterious drivel! I have no idea how it got to the front page and this is Brian Van: http://brianvan.tumblr.com/

Could not agree with you more. Part of the reason I wrote this was so I could mentally reset myself to get back to work. Frankly I'm embarrassed I got caught in the trap and spent valuable emotional energy on it caring about it in the first place. - Julie

I will upvote my own ramble!

Curious to see the pitches! And not just because my start up is one of them.