flipside

Awesome. That said, it'd be even better with a small color key you could toggle on the top right.

It would probably help if you shared more anti-zuckomorph stats / anecdotes so people could chew on those endlessly instead.

Got any?

I'm optimistic because I love Pulse and Linkedin has definitely been pushing into the news feed space so it makes a lot of sense.

Slightly concerned though because of what happened to CardMunch.

Either way, grats to the pulse team!

"sex" is complicated too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

Not like most people even check which chromosomes people have.

binary? really?

There are other answers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

Edit: Thanks for adding other.

Zombification, a fate worse than death.

Major props for separating the mission from the vision and going with the mission.

I tell myself (and whoever asks) that I'd be okay if our startup turns out not to be viable, but I'd never forgive myself leaving our potential as a big fat question mark. We finally started a beta last week so answers will come in time, I just hope that if it ever comes down to it, we also pick mission over vision.

Best of luck with the next incarnation of Referly.

As a 4 time YC reject I really liked this post. I'm surprised I haven't come across this before given how much research I've done on YC.

On monday we're starting our beta, so we'll finally be able to apply with traction data.

“Be so good they can’t ignore you” are words to live by.

As someone who switched from a nanoengineering phd focused on medical diagnostics and blood analysis (including some diabetes work) to an internet rating startup, I have some opinions on this matter.

1. The time scales are completely different for internet and biotech. A/B testing online can take hours or days while biotech experiments take months to years. In fact, I came up the idea for the startup while I was waiting 4 months for a substrate to be synthesized!

2. The costs are also dramatically different. The limiting reactant isn't people, it's $$$. Biotech is extremely capital intensive. Equipment, reagents and people all require significant amounts of money over a long period of time.

3. Lastly, hard sciences do not have a monopoly on "big problems". Maximizing my impact is a desire I share with many of the HN crowd. For me, the impact I foresee by improving rating systems dwarfs what I thought I could accomplish in bio-nano. Don't get me wrong, this was simply the right decision for me, which is why I dropped out a year ago with zero regrets.

Can you provide more detail on your feedback model?

Are you crowdsourcing feedback?

How many people are spending how much time/effort per song?

What criteria are songs judged on and how complete is the feedback?

What is the minimum amount of feedback artists can expect?

Basically, make it clear what the $20 is buying.

If you would like to talk more about any of these things, feel free to email me (listed on my info page), crowdsourced ratings are kinda my thing.

Different pitches for different people/situations. The problem is, people don't all have the same pain. It gets worse. Some people have gone numb from the pain and aren't conscious of it any more. The irony is that our rating system would be perfect for matching the right pitch to each person.

I've more or less mastered the 1-minute demo, hard not to since I've done it a thousand times (and a thousand different ways too). Trust me, I used to suck a lot more.

As for the "externalize opinions" line, just trying something new.

I'll definitely need to take a day to improve our SEO before we launch. In the mean time, you can sign up at http://tinj.co

I used to start pitches by telling people we're fixing rating systems, that was usually enough to get people's attention.

I think you're talking about Yahoo and the J-curve, couldn't find anything by Bezos.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, we went through a phase of pitching ourselves as "Disqus for ratings" but the problem was it's hit or miss with people.

Awesome! The beta should start in the next few weeks.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot. I don't believe I've tried that particular wording yet.

See if you can follow this:

Ratings are a form of feedback.

Feedback helps people learn.

Therefore, if we can build a better rating system that lets people share more and better feedback, then we can speed up learning and improve the flow and evolution of ideas.

Also, this system wasn't designed for movies, it was designed for answers on Quora. Movies are just a better beachhead.

It's certain that the problem is me, and my poor communication skills, I never blame the audience.

Describing what we're doing and illustrating the pain points aren't the same thing.

How about this: Tinj is a rating system that lets people externalize opinions about movies in context so they can receive comprehensive recommendations.

See? Told you I still suck at this.

Here's a problem we're solving: Given that opinions are complex, how do you figure out what other people think about a movie?

Read reviews? That's biased to critics and writers (less than 1% of the population).

Look at star ratings? What does 4-stars even mean?

Check out social media? How many tweets and blogs would you have to read?

Ask your friends? Which ones actually share your tastes and have seen the movie?

Unfortunately, complicated problems tend to have complicated answers.

You're right, convincing others is a whole different ball game. Since I clearly suck at it, I've done my best to suck a little less each time I try.

Here's hoping pg writes that essay next.

Of course you do, otherwise I wouldn't be frustrated. =P

If you take another look at my original post, my point was that I still can't articulate why this is such a huge pain. If it helps to put it in perspective, I abandoned a Nanoengineering phd doing promising work in medical diagnostics because our rating system solves an incredibly painful problem for me and I'm convinced it's a more important contribution to the world.

To make a (hopefully apt) comparison, what pain point did twitter initially solve? Sharing what you had for lunch?

Context is definitely missing from most systems and it's one of our key differentiators. Our goal is to handle all those contextual details so you don't have to.

Can you share anything about how you define a voting ring?

Hypothetically speaking, the odds of getting laid after seeing a movie with a date probably go up if both people liked the movie.

Not exactly how we'd track it but the number of people that get laid after using our system would be a fascinating statistic.

Thanks for the questions.

1. A big reason more people don't rate movies is because it's unclear how or if it actually helps others (my vote doesn't matter syndrome) or themselves (black box recommendations).

2. Validation is a big motivator, seeing that others agree with you or trust your judgement is huge.

3. Funny you should mention curating beauty, individuals will be able to share and discover based on people that share the same taste in "beauty" in the context of movies.

4. Reading tons of reviews or trying to decide if 79% on RottenTomatoes or a 3.8 stars from something else means you'll actually enjoy a movie is a painful (or ugly) experience to most people I've talked with.

I assure you, @javajosh, we are taking this very seriously as a startup. The launchrock signup page is not the primary way we're finding beta testers, it's merely sufficient before we start a closed beta.

Getting back to the bigger picture though, we're really building a system to efficiently share opinions and see what other people think.

Reading essays like this drives me crazy.

No, it's not because pg is wrong or I disagree with anything he's saying, it's because everything resonates with my startup (Tinj.co, interactive movie ratings) but after 1000+ pitches I still can't succinctly articulate how I know this.

I could probably make a checklist for the criteria of great startup ideas (seems like a toy: check, personal problem: check, inspiration from other fields: check, etc) but I have a hard time imagining that to be persuasive. I guess all we can do is push on towards a beta and let traction speak for itself.

Truly disruptive ideas are difficult to communicate because most people do not have the mental framework to truly grasp them. I guess that's just the catch-22 of disruptive ideas.

Wow, that's awesome. It's a huge win for Andreesen Horowitz but also the bay area since it looks like he'll be making SF his primary residence (with the secondary being NYC).

I was importing things from bootstrap before so thanks for streamlining the process!

Also, FYI: the link to the blog post is broken

Rap Genius's stated plans are to be more like Stack Exchange than Quora. Each vertical will have it's own separate community and site so things will be more focused. As long as they're smart about picking verticals where they can get past critical mass, they'll be fine.

Quora on the other hand has been pursuing the one-size-fits-all approach which conflicts with the diversity that comes with increasing popularity.

Successful crowdsourcing is about identifying a community with passion that can be channeled into useful work. Hats off to Rap Genius to nailing this for annotations.

Must have also taken some time to get such high profile investors and advisors. Care to share your secret?

I totally got what you were saying, communicating the why, the purpose of the company is essential in order to be great.

Unfortunately, your post triggered a HN immune response because the tactics you cited don't work with everyone. Just one of the current limitations of public writing, you can't choose your audience or personalize the context.