tyng

Essentially all social oriented startups face this problem initially. You need to identify who are the people most likely to adopt your service and focus all your marketing source on them accordingly. Once you build up a sizable user base within your first target group you can then leverage that to launch into other target groups.

Think facebook - initially it was only targeted at college students. Start small and focused

Who is this Ed Turner guy? Sounds pretty awesome

What industry is this?

Very true - for both "in business there's no right or wrong answer", and "no plan survives contact with enemy". But on the other hand simplified principles and rules-of-thumb help us make rapid decisions with some good accuracy.

Agree with everything said there. The question left unanswered is where to draw the fine line between focusing on a predefined strategy and react to what your competitors are doing. Example: today Facebook announced Deals, should Foursquare just keep doing what it is doing or do something different to counter Facebook's invasion?

(I personally believe Foursquare should just keep doing what they are doing but let's discuss this anyway)

This dude is even crazier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmpX4jCpbDI

Surprise the UK made the move before US given all the hype about #startupvisa a few months ago.

That's why I keep three separate social networks: one on facebook (friends), one on Twitter (colleagues and strangers) and one on LinkedIn (professional contacts).

It's hard to keep them separated though, especially since now I feed my twitter stream to the other two, seriously considering to remove the feed.

While I think Arrington is justified to express his views on the matter, he should certainly start a personal blog that's not affiliated with TC to do it. Lately he is bringing too much of his personal and company dramas (CrunchPad, Angel Gate, Jason Calacanis) to the TC world and it's hard for people not to think he is leveraging TC to his own advantage.

Sorry to say this but your baseless accusation of the HN community is also unwarranted.

It's funny that Apple released a 11" MacBook Air because it seemed to compete directly against it's own iPad. Now it's a tough choice between the two for the average consumer.

I remember my college economics professor always made the point that "risk-averse consumers" are the rational decision makers in our economy. I almost totally believed him, and thought hack who'd be that dumb kid taking the extra risk without being benefited from it.

Well, now I realise, that dumb kid is me!

This reflects what the HN community represent, and we are certainly not all hackers. Entrepreneurs? Perhaps. Notice a lot of VCs got pretty high up on the list.

Good point - reminds me of the ridiculous amount of money Yahoo was making back in the early days of internet, probably not going to be sustainable.

Agree with the easier to entertain part - I don't get excited by games anymore, probably the same reason.

On another note, big biz opportunities often exist in small niches, rather than trying to come up with the next facebook or whatever.

I hope you aren't walking near peak hour traffic - exercising near traffic will make you inhale more polluted gas (from cars) than usual, which will actually damage your health

sodium nitrite? please enlighten us :)

You made a good point. Those floppy disk icons probably mean nothing to Gen X.

I'll refrain from using that icon on my websites/apps from now on.

Wow, you keep track of calories for every meal? how do you manage to do that? any tools or resources?

A very diverse range of selections, I'm impressed!

I wouldn't touch pizza even if I had no other options - bad experience from eating nothing but pizza for a whole week at college

How often do you switch restaurants? Same place almost everyday or must always be different everyday?

Well, I'm in Australia, and the nearest thing I could find in our supermarkets is kangaroo meat, sliced and packed

I got a friend who also eats raw plants for lunch everyday, I tried it for a few days, raw capsicum is juicy and delicious!

There's a video by founder of Sequoia Capital, saying that market is even more important than both the founders and the product, i.e. best product + best team will still fail if there isn't a market

Water definitely, unless I feel so sick of the taste(lessness) of water I'd get an ice lemon tea. By the way I hate energy drinks but at times they can be life savers...

Here's another post for discussion about the best hacker food http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1825811

Brilliant, where do you get that stuff anyway? In restaurants or home made? Would love to try just for it's rarity.

were you serious about the ostrich/bison part?

"Planned scarcity" is the term. But I still think "lending" is a step forward to enable booking sharing, while preserving the incentive for writers to keep writing.

Needless to say Amazon will take a cut in this feature, perhaps some to the book publisher and author too. Kind of works out for everyone.

Interesting, please link me to the source