I've seen the silly "start-up vs. project" debate rage on and on, to no end, but I have NEVER seen someone try to define what a "project" is and isn't. Are you actually serious???
I find that when it comes to these sorts of arguments that the people who spend their time telling you what they think are usually the people who care too much what other people think. Startup vs. Project? Computer Programmer vs. Software Engineer? CEO vs. Single Founder?
It's all so completely irrelevant to who you are or what you're doing. It's just noise.
Right... because Bill Gates didn't make billions from the education market.
You go build a company around giving things to the education market for free and I'll build a company around selling things to the education market, and we'll see whose company is better off in five years and whose customers are better off in five years.
There is a difference between selling someone something that they need but don't realize it yet vs. selling someone something that they don't need. The term "sell ice to eskimos" means you're so good at selling that you can sell someone something they don't need. You don't need that skill in a startup. Sure, good at sales, and sure, good at communicating benefits, but you don't need someone so good at sales that they can sell someone something they don't need.
Ignore anyone who says they don't need cash. It's nonsense. Just turn your TV on for two minutes. We should be opening our wallets as much for Japan right now as we've done for any country facing this sort of crisis in the past.
It would be nice to do that, but if Apple has shown us anything, it's that you either play entirely by their rules, or you don't play at all. ANY attempt to circumvent this will just mean your app gets bounced, then you're fucked. Once you're in the game, you'll have customers who depend on that app being available on the iPad. You can't risk pissing Apple off, so these types of workarounds aren't going to work. Anything that just involves physical goods is fair game, but if you're offering anything that's accessible through the app, you're digging your own grave by messing around.
Last time I checked, HN was just a site that didn't make any money, not a content company. YC selling to AOL, I suppose, would be a possibility, but good luck attracting startups if that's the case.
He's a brilliant guy, but this is a terrible example. Worms can't communicate with us, so obviously we're not going to try to have a conversation with them. If we found a worm-like species on another planet and their vocabulary consisted of nothing more than a couple hundred words, I can guarantee you we would stop and try to have a conversation with them. If a vastly superior race came upon us and we were the first species they ever found that they could communicate with, I'm pretty sure they'd do the same.
If you care about actually making money from the very beginning (as opposed to just being bought -- which isn't likely to happen -- or just getting a tonne of users and worrying about it later), then consider your business model at the very beginning. Changes or problems with either your product or business model can significantly affect the other, so if you can focus on both from the very beginning, I can't think of many reasons why you wouldn't.
This is literally unfathomable to me. This guy has to be some sort of serious genetic freak. I workout regularly, but I think I just got chin splints just from reading that article. When you consider how even the most elite athletes fall victim to overtraining, I can't even imagine how his body was able to hold up to this. Truly amazing.
I have a big problem with this because it takes advantage of people who need the money, otherwise they wouldn't be participating in this kind of contest. It's one thing if you have ten participants and you pay the winner the equivalent of 10x the value of one site. But that's not happening here. If there are ten sites worth of work being done, only one site worth of pay is being spent.
Let's make a comparison:
Let's say a day's worth of yard work is worth $100. Ten home owners in a neighborhood need yard work done. They get ten unemployed people to each do the work on their homes. These people really need the money. At the end of the day, the person who does the best job gets the $100, and the rest get nothing. Ten houses worth of yard work has been done, but only one day's worth of pay is given out.
Yeah, you can get away with it, but it's because you're taking advantage of people. Just because you can ask for it and just because you'll find people to do it doesn't make it right.
I remember the days when people just down-voted inappropriate comments instead of "warning" me about what I could or could not write before I had even written it.
I'm 36, but in internet years, you're two generations ahead of me, so go back to your retirement home, grandpa, and leave this technology stuff to us young'uns.
Don't ignore your stupid ideas... that only waste a few hours of your time if they don't go anywhere; otherwise, your first instinct is probably the one to go with.
Actually, I can't be downvoted for posting. That's part of the safety of it. You can only downvote a comment... so here's a comment ;-)
Really, I was just throwing a bit of commentary and intentional hypocrisy in there at the same time. The karma is meaningless.
Polls are great if either the question or answers (or ideally, both) are really well thought-out and interesting. That's not the case with a lot of the polls that hit the front page these days. But people keep voting them up, so the community has spoken.
It's not that big of a deal. I just felt like being a smart-ass.
Don't worry, they'll just put a new clause in the agreement that says you can't charge more to iOS users than non-iOS users. Stores won't raise their prices 30% for all users or they'll go out of business. So they'll either give Apple their 30% or not sell through iOS devices at all. Not necessarily an easy choice, especially if you're already established with millions of iOS users.
That 30% will not come out of your pocket; it will come out of the provider's pocket. Apple will see to that, don't worry.
Apple will amend that agreement as many times as they need to in order to maximize the benefit to them. Let's not kid ourselves and think the benefit is for their users. I think we're all wise to that one by now.
There's too much grey to make this black and white. What would you say to a closeted gay politician pushing anti-gay legislation? Would you not consider that person a fraud, just like someone saying their research is based on the universe being 13 billion years old when they don't really believe that?
I was thinking about writing an article giving advice to people who want to write articles giving advice to people who are writing articles that give advice about startups. I'm short on sources though. If anybody has any, please post a link. Thanks.
I find it humorous that there is such a need to DEFINE Facebook. It's different things to different people. We really don't need one definition of what it is or a nice tidy list of the ways people use it, what the benefits are, what the drawbacks are, etc. Every time I read about somebody complaining about Facebook, I usually just end up thinking "I don't use it (exactly) that way, so this doesn't (completely) apply to me."
I have a lot of friends that I don't see more than once every year or two, but I will be close to them until the day I die. I like seeing their status updates, their vacation photos, their kids, etc. Facebook makes our connection stronger, not weaker. It doesn't replace the need to see them and talk to them; it makes those infrequent visits/conversations better when they happen because it feels like we haven't really been out of touch for so long.