Written by billclerico, my co-founder at WePay (S09), and now founding partner of Convective Capital, a venture capital firm committed to solving the wildfire crisis.
1,374 karma · joined March 13, 2009
If it's a software product, and you're debating whether it's time to release, it's probably time to release.
If your customers try your product and quickly abandon it because of it's imperfections, you prioritize fixing those imperfections. If they complain a little, and a few of them leave after a while because they're fed up, it's probably worth fixing those imperfections at some point, but you may want to focus on other priorities.
It's easy to make a list of everything wrong with your product and spend eternity trying to fix it all. It's harder to reconcile imperfection with the reality of limited resources and business objectives.
I doubt the author consciously thought: "i'm going to make this apology less effective," so who cares if the language didn't exactly resonate with you or the OP? I don't think it was malicious or disingenuous; if anything, the NYT needs to hire better copywriters, so their emails don't get dissected as frequently.
Quick clarification: We're actually not really working on solving the problem of helping people "send" money. Our primary focus is making it dead simple for anybody to get-up and running, collecting/accepting payments online.
We think that collecting money is a bigger pain point and a larger market.
"Sending" money falls into two categories: P2P transfers and remittances. Remittance is a pretty large market, with old (Western Union) and new (Xoom) players alike. It's not very exciting to us, and it's a difficult business to break into.
P2P is a little sexier, but the pain point is not as high, people are incredibly sensitive to cost, and it's a problem that will be "absorbed" by the bigger companies (Amex/VISA now have solutions, PayPal offers it for free, your bank will offer it soon). It's more of a feature than a real business. I actually think Venmo has an awesome product and does a great job solving this problem, but I'm guessing that it'll be hard for them to build a big business on that alone.
I'm not saying that having a blog makes you an "accomplished author" as the original commentator suggests I was implying, I'm just saying that seeing your work is the easiest/only way to screen for talent.
Would their academic credentials have been more helpful?
I also caveated that comment: I may be missing out on some good candidates, but seeing something they've created is the only way I know how to screen design candidates. Perhaps that does make me an idiot :(
And don't worry, his investors knew that he had no idea what he was doing when they wired him the money. If they didn't, it's their own fault. At least he knows what he doesn't know, which is more than I can say for most people.
Again, I agree - I didn't think this belonged on HN.
I figured it might get posted to HN, but I was hoping it would just live on reddit for a while...
edw519: I know what you're going to say...and I agree with you this time ;)
I'm always more impressed by the companies that show a list of customers before they launch, then the companies assuming they need to launch to get customers (or that launching will necessarily lead to additional customers).
Is it because you are interested in hearing the answer? It's a social media company focused on attracting users and eyeballs (at the moment). The revenue is nil, same as it was for fb and google in the early days (not saying that dailybooth will be the next facebook and google, just that there are examples of companies that were once focused on users and eyeballs that are now focused on revenue).
Or is it because people enjoy the snark? Screw that company that just raised $6M!! I'm not jealous, I'm just...Bubble, bubble, stupid VCs, no revenue, no business model, pictures, bubble!
I know of dozens of incredibly talented potential male founders who applied with killer ideas and were rejected. Seriously.
> I think it is very likely that YC has a strong bias towards men, which this data certainly supports.
Why do you think it's very likely? What data supports that. As one of the other commentators already pointed out, the percentage of YC founders that are women is about equal to the percentage that apply. Saying that the "data support" the argument that YC is biased when there is such an obvious alternative explanation (namely, that there are less female founders) is disingenuous.
> since YC is a for profit business they are making economically sound decisions.
Wait, what? Are you saying that since Silicon Valley (I'm guessing you mean investors in this context?) favors men, YC intentionally (and consciously) chooses to fund men in order to increase the chances that YC founders raise subsequent rounds of financing? That's crazy talk...
> saying any fault lies with women is really unfair.
I don't think anybody is "faulting" women. They are just stating the facts - there are less female engineers, and less female YC applicants.
In my humble and limited experience with both PG and VCs, the focus has always been on customers.
I'm surprised that you include PG in your sweeping statement. He is a pretty outspoken advocate of launching early, listening to customers, and iterating.
Do you mind sharing where you get your perspective?
Not many consumers (besides people collecting donations) need international, and very few merchants would be happy without it.
It's been made clear to us that this is a pretty big opportunity.