Just because something "exists" doesn't mean it's a good thing. Try to use silence instead of those ummms. You'll notice you'll get much more attention when you're talking. Silence introduces tension to conversations which makes people pay attention. This is based both on theory (there are tons of books out there that talk about this) and practice (mine).
1. A lot of successful companies started out with super ghetto technology--even the ones that are famous for being very high-tech in the current days.
2. Nobody knows what company will succeed, including the VCs and you and me.
3. It is arrogant to think anyone has any idea what company will be a NO or MAYBE or YES. If you think that's bullshit and it's easy to spot a "NO", it probably means you haven't experienced this before, because I used to think that way too in the past. Then I went to SF and met companies that I thought would surely fail, they were disorganized, founders looked stupid, working on stupid problems, etc., then the next day they become wildly successful. After encountering several of those you become humble.
4. Conclusion: There is no such thing as "process" you're looking for, and that's how it should be because if you're a VC that follows a strict "process", you won't be around in a while. You can't predict anything. VCs are doing whatever they can and I am pretty sure they are statistically better than you and me at it because that's their job. We can say whatever about them but if somebody gave you $100million dollars today and asked you to invest in startups you and me will probably fail much more miserably than any VCs out there. It's not like I'm a VC fanboy, I just don't agree when people criticize others for something that they are not familiar with.
You're making a lot of assumptions. Just because someone doesn't code on a daily basis doesn't mean that person doesn't know about tech. If I were their LP, I would be worried if the VCs were coding. Lastly, being good at predicting the future in terms of technology has very little to do with those little details you mentioned. I see so many developers just focused on learning the next new technology like react, grunt, es6, etc. but never even think about where this is all going, they're just satisfied that they have great skills. Not saying it's a bad thing, I'm saying being very good at technical details and seeing the trend has very little to do with each other and sometimes even contradictory (If your goal is to become the best developer who knows every single new technology, you won't have time to think about other things)
Looking at it from another direction, maybe it's because that's why they're good at dealing with founders and LPs? The point is, everyone has biases, and probably one bias results in another. You can't just say "They hire people who look like them" without thinking about why that happens.
Like sveng1826 mentioned, a lot of statements have absolutely no logical ground and they're just condescending remarks telling people what they should do.
Of course it would be nice if companies focused on diversity, and I think large companies should definitely think more about it, but telling small startups to do it is wrong at best and exploitative at worst (personal agenda).
I would like to know of any successful company that focused 25% of their time thinking about diversity during their early startup stage. Thinking about diversity 25% of the times means you're thinking less about your customers 25% of the time. This type of company will probably not be around the next year--Congrats, your diverse company is now gone! I'm sure your employees are all happy!--So I wonder where she pulls "if you're an early stage startup with little to no diversity, you're in trouble and need to fix it fast." out of. There's no evidence, and logically it doesn't make sense. It's just her own entitled sense of justice (which I don't even believe is genuine).
I'm not saying diversity is not needed, I don't think it's right to capitalize on social trend by misleading the public. Basically the narrative nowadays is "Let's shame and punish all these companies that are not thinking about diversity", and I think that's as bad as those companies neglecting diversity, in a witch-hunt sort of way.
Startup's job is not to accommodate "young people's career choices". If you spend 25% of your time thinking about how to make your company more diverse when you're a 5 people company instead of thinking about your customers, your "diverse company" will probably be gone by next year.
This is the most meta post I've ever seen in a while. Basically this guy is writing about why "this is the best time to become a writer" and uses an example of another guy who became successful because he wrote about "how writing everyday changed his life". Dude, you are doing it wrong if you are writing for the sake of writing. There are too many of these people nowadays, especially with the rise of Medium. There used to be a time when people used to write because they had something to express to the world, not because "it's the best time to become a writer". These new "writers" lack genuine quality because the motivation is wrong from the beginning. Nowadays these people write for the sake of writing, because "writers are in high demand". Don't dishonor people who actually write things to make a difference.
"little looking". Yeah you looked. There's a huge difference between 0% and 1%. I'm saying it's a nice to have feature but that doesn't make you ditch one for another--it's just an incremental innovation. Just like you moved away from it.
If you trace this thread all the way back to its root, the guy said having tactile feedback will solve the problem of not being able to type without looking, and I said I have tried and it doesn't. Of course there are many ways tactile feedback can improve experience. But in any case, I don't think it's a significant change. Even if you could do all you mentioned it's just an incremental innovation. When iPhone first came out it changed everything by getting rid of physical keyboards because a "soft" keyboard that adapts to its container app is much more flexible than a physical keyboard. That started this entire app ecosystem. But I don't think these nifty little touch UI innovations will change anything further as far as iPhone is concerned. As an example 3d touch is an interesting and sometimes even magical technology but it hardly makes any difference in purchase decisions.
You're just re-iterating your initial comment. I said it's bad to hire mediocre talent in any circumstances. You said something that doesn't make sense as a response to my comment.
Like you said, you still need look at the screen to see if you're typing in correctly. I am not sure if you read my original comment, but this is one thing I learned while experimenting that's obvious in hindsight. On your computer, you can type completely without looking at your keyboard because you are looking at the monitor/screen which is a separate device from the keyboard. On a mobile device, they are a single screen. Which means you still have to look at the screen portion of the "screen" even when you don't need to look at the "keyboard" portion. Which is why it doesn't make any groundbreaking improvements even if implemented. At best it's just some minor add-on convenience. Your steam controllers example is exactly the same as computer keyboards because you're looking at a large screen (which is again a separate device from your gamepad) when you're playing games.
What you say doesn't change anything significantly, which means it doesn't change the way we type on mobile phones--you still need to look at the screen. Also it's a bit of a stretch thinking because it works on a game controller with limited number of inputs, it will work on a keyboard with way more keys, isn't it?
As I mentioned above, I explored into building a mobile device that you can type into without looking, and my first hypothesis was "tactile feedback is key". And turns out there are many many other factors at play. Even if Apple built something like you say, that won't make more people buy iPhones, it's just an incremental innovation that doesn't significantly change any user behavior for the better.
So what's your point? I commented because you said hiring average people is ok, but now you're saying average people don't want to work with hardworking brilliant people so it would be easier. Make up your mind man.
I'm guessing you downvoted me because you disagree with my point of view. I'll just tell you this: I have been thinking a lot about the stuff you talk about here and even prototyped a hardware device to try out the idea. I had the same point of view (It would be nice to have an input device I can use without even looking) but after experimenting I realized this isn't the case.
Also this "vibration" thing you're talking about--it's obvious you haven't thought deeply about this because if you took at least a couple of hours thinking more about how this would work you would realize vibration itself has nothing to do with this". I have had a phone that gave you nice tactile feedback using vibration (Prada phone), and while it does feel nice, it doesn't do anything in terms of letting me know my input was correct.
Anyway this all doesn't mean anything if you don't really believe me. So let me ask you a rhetorical question: Do you think you will be able to type into a blackberry absolutely without looking at the keyboard? Also, when exactly would you be typing while NOT looking at a mobile screen? Even on a blackberry people have to look at the screen to make sure they didn't mistype something (Even with all that tactile feedback). On a desktop computer typing without looking makes sense because that's the mode in which people use the device (whereas on a mobile phone the screen and the keyboard are attached so looking at the screen means also looking at the keyboard)
Anyway if you really believe in these ideas, you should at least try an MVP or any simple experiment (or maybe even some thought experiment) before being so sure about it.
That sounds like emulating for the sake of emulating. I'm sure even you would hate it if you actually saw it in production. Typing on keyboard is shitty as it is. By making it force touch, it will be much slower to finish a sentence. When people use physical keyboards their fingers are by default resting on the keys. When most users type on mobile, they're not. It's easier to NOT rest fingers on the keys than resting for so many reasons, such as you not being able to see the keys if your finger is covering them.
It is NOT worth hiring a few average people just for one brilliant person. First of all "brilliant" person is overrated, unless we're talking about hiring someone at a CTO level. One could be brilliant yet a perfect disaster for the company if he doesn't fit in, not to mention many other factors. Also you seem to think mediocre employees don't hurt the company but mediocre people hire/attract less than mediocre people, who in turn hires/attracts people even worse, and so on. As a startup you don't have that luxury. And the company culture goes to shit. I would never make that decision. I've had both cases, one of the employees was a brilliant guy but was lazy, and he fucked up the company culture by acting as a "role model". Soon everyone in the company started acting like him. I've also hired someone who didn't really fit in and was passive aggressive, and it was hard to communicate with him. Thinking back it wasn't because he was not talented, but because he just didn't care much (This is equivalent to having a mediocre employee). Because of this the entire team had hard time making decisions. When your team is small even one person can influence the culture in negative ways.
I don't know, to me it just sounds like a gimmicky way to get more people to apply. That's what recruiters do. They try to get as many people to apply as possible, and then filter the hell out of them. So just because a recruiter "reached out" to you via linkedin or something, it doesn't mean they think highly of you. Actually, you should assume that they don't care at all about what you've achieved. You're just one of many fish they're trying to pass through their funnel.
That's why I am genuinely curious what they plan to do once they hire teams. Let's say you hire a team of a designer and a developer. It's not like they will be always working together and with no one else in the company. Chances are you won't be working as the tag team forever. That would be stupid both for the company and for these people because you are being too closed minded and won't learn much by only interacting with the other person when there are so many other talented people in the company. I presume that isn't what they plan to do. Then that leaves us with the option of just hiring them "as a team" but once they're in, there's no guarantee that they will work as the same team, just like how most acquisitions work--when they acquire a company they say stuff like "Company A's expertise will be helpful in us developing our such and such core features", but after the acquisition they all disperse and get assigned to different teams after a while.
So... what's the point? Well that's why I think it's a gimmicky way to attract attention and get more people to apply. Any counter argument?
It's interesting comment coming from the moderator. I know what you mean, but it is "Hacker News" after all. That's why when sometimes people see irrelevant posts they say "why the hell is this on the front page of HN?". The reason I said "Theme" instead of "Topic" is exactly for the same reason. I think the theme of this site is something that would interest people with curiosity (which comes from the "Hacker" theme).
I think it's because HN has a single theme. Like you said there are many annoying cases on HN too. Let's say your chance of coming across one is 1%. On Reddit you have many of these communities, so the chance of coming across annoying posts become N% (depending on how many subreddits you read)
If you are asking "where are these other ones" you probably need to do some market research. There are many many many others that are much more "exactly the same" as this than yours. You can start here: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/down-to-lunch
The reason this "LTV" notion doesn't work is because "Lifetime" doesn't mean anything if your own "lifetime" depends on customer lifetime. These companies calculate "LTV"s based on the assumption that the companies themselves will be immortal and end up learning that that isn't the case.
Have you ever thought about the possibility that NYT wrote about it because it's one of the most popular apps nowadays? Snapchat UI used to be super ghetto too. When you provide something that resonates with people, nothing else matters.
> I built exactly this app (functionally, but even used "down" in our vocab) in 2003 for a class project called Nitester using the web and an AIM bot. If only I had the drive then to push it further rather than jump to the next project :/
Do you seriously think a web based, AIM bot from 2003 is "exactly the same app" as a mobile, iOS, push notification based app of 2016? Your takeaway from this shouldn't be thinking you would have succeeded if you had the drive and kept working on it. There are probably at least tens of thousands of other people who tried solving the same problem, counting myself. I honestly have no idea how this took off because I've seen so many apps that tried to do the same thing and never took off, but these guys did. So I give them credit for the execution.