instruction stringlengths 4 105 | output stringlengths 8 56.7k |
|---|---|
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | Lagged2Death: If Dilbert started his own company, then Dilbert would become the pointy-haired boss, or the VC that controlled his fate would be the pointy-haired boss. And the underlings would become Dilbert. Nothing would really change.Dilbert (the comic strip) isn't really about any particular character. It's about patterns of relationships in all hierarchical human organizations. No escape is possible for Dilbert (the character) because his tribulations are all the result of emergent phenomena. The comic has distilled those conflicts down to their essence, so they're visible anywhere. Call it the Dilbert Pattern. |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | seregine: See Achewood calling out Dilbert:http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=07312008 |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | Tichy: Because secretly he likes feeling smarter than his co-workers, and he dreads the responsibility of accomplishing something real. |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | Misanthrope: First, remember that he is an engineer, not a computer programmer. There isn't much demand for engineers in this once great nation. For him to move to another enterprise, he'd probably have to emigrate to Elbonia.Second, many engineers, while incredibly bright, are not the types to know how to successfully run their own businesses. Dilbert has never been portrayed as business savvy. Nor has he been portrayed as the type who could sell his ideas well enough to partner with someone who is.Third, comment one nailed it perfectly, the comic wouldn't be funny. |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | zitterbewegung: Because its Dilbert. Not ycombinator. |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | yaj: he needs to pay the bills |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | MaysonL: Because he loves bitching about how fucked up everybody else is. |
Advertising networks that pay per click, but are flexible. | mrtron: I have found that if you do your homework and use well targeted ads you will make much more using non-PPC advertising.
edit: I was avoiding introducing too many new acronyms, but I was suggesting CPALet's say you use some sort of program and get paid per lead - I would suggest CJ/Linkshare/Neverblueads[1]. Then track the ads well, see which work and fit in with your site. Look for a clickthrough rate of at least 0.10% (although depending on how you display/cycle the ads this could be off). Then from there look to have a conversion rate of definitely better than 1/10, aim for about 1/3.If you work in those numbers (probably your first attempt will be about half that), you will make more than PPC. You will also completely control how you serve ads and not be bound by the conditions of something like adsense.I used to work for a major website, and they tended to make more per click on their ad campaigns that were revenue sharing than PPC as well.Because of how behind the times the ad industry is in terms of AJAX sites, I really doubt you will find someone who allows you to change the ads in the method you desire.[1]http://www.neverblueads.com/signup?ref=aff_66639 if you want to signup (that would give me a referral). It is pretty highly rated. |
Advertising networks that pay per click, but are flexible. | staunch: > For a webapp where you don't have any page reloads, the exsting google adsense is pretty useless.You could just auto-refresh the javascript using an iframe if necessary. That would solve that problem at least, although it may raise some additional ones. |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | donniefitz2: He's working through some things right now. |
Multi-Monitor w/ Laptop? | jlogic77: I run 3 monitors.1. Open Laptop
2. 22" Widescreen LCD connected to laptop
3. 17" LCD to a desktop computerDesktop and Laptop share a keyboard and mouse using Synergy. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ which makes it seamless to use! |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | rudyfink: Stockholm Syndrome |
Why doesn't Dilbert quit? | michaelneale: I don't pity Dilbert - he whines constantly yet makes no effort improve things. He is very cynical, and has no interest in improving his lot of those around him, so he gets what he deserves.I wonder if that is part of Scott Adams intent - people pity him, yet he is not really worthy of pity (which most people wouldn't realise). |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | zacharye: Definitely don't ignore them. Learn from them. Do all you can to see what works for them and what doesn't. Pay close attention to what users (and blogs) are saying about the product. What do they like? What do they dislike? What features are they asking for? This competitor will give you they best market research money can buy - for free. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | run4yourlives: Of course it's normal. Ask everyone from Pepsi to Burger King. :-)That being said, from the sounds of it, the competitor seems to be very visible in the market. Given that, can you see that there is something that they're not doing? Is there are group of users that are under-served? Do you figure one might surface? It looks like they've got you beat feature wise, but can you go the other way even further? (Super simple?) These are areas that you can explore.At any rate, keep going. You idea has been validated. It's a big world out there, odds are in the next two months you'll understand that there will be room for you, them, and probably a few others.Good luck. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | matthewking: I've been reviewing web apps recently for accounting within my startup, there's a lot of offerings and most of them cover all the same functionality.But even though they all do the same thing, its the way that they've implemented the functions that makes each app different, and has ultimately influenced my decision.At this point, I have no idea what one came along first, that doesn't matter to my decision, and I didn't just pick the first one I found, I reviewed 5-6 before making a choice.Another point is, that after your initial release hopefully you'll get a user base who will provide you with feedback and ideas, its up to you how you act on that feedback. You may react to your users differently than your competitors, and ultimately that too will distinguish you from them further.Good luck! |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | olefoo: If the market supports a number of competitors that are doing OK, and you are fine with working in that market, then go for it.If you were wanting to be a category-killer then it doesn't sound like your market is suitable for that. So if you're playing "Go Big or Go Home."; you should find another market. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | oldgregg: Large markets almost always have room for a #2. However, unless you can make substantive improvements over their product or target a different niche that they are missing, you could be in for a hard slog. |
Password managers? | mechanical_fish: I created a complex paper-based system once. Then I got bored with the tedium of retyping big strings of characters off a sheet of paper and started just using 1Password for everything.You can use 1Password to create passwords that aren't associated with websites and stuff them into the equivalent of encrypted notes. When I need one I just pull up 1Password using Quicksilver and do a cut-n-paste. It's a little bit tedious, but not as tedious as paper -- and, as you say, I don't do it that often. I use ssh-keychain for most of my logins.If you're freaked out about the probability that 1Password will somehow leak your bank password... don't put your bank
password into it. Use paper for that. I avoid allowing my laptop's copy of 1Password to know any password that could be used to harm my finances.If you have a need to log in to registration-required sites on other machines... carry a piece of paper with the passwords you need. 1Password will print things out for you (also good for emergency backup -- stuff a paper log of your passwords in a safe deposit box).1Password also has an iPhone app. I avoid using it because my need for portable, secure passwords is low compared to my fear of losing the phone and having to change all my passwords.Really, you shouldn't type secure passwords into random other machines, anyway, since any of them could be compromised. Keysniffers. Rootkits. If you often log into security-sensitive accounts from strangers' machines... perhaps you should consider getting a laptop, an iPhone, a Nokia, or an EEE?95% of my passwords are of scant interest to anybody, such that the (tiny) risk of allowing a piece of software to remember them for me is nil. I advise getting the software, and letting it go to work on the 95%. If you don't want to trust it with the remaining 5%, don't trust it. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | fallentimes: Two things:1. Respond to all user emails within 24 hours or less - even if it's just to say "thanks" or "this should be released next month". Not only will you know exactly what your users want; they'll tell your friends how quickly you responded. And of course, don't ever ever use form responses/letters.2. Keep your burn rate super low. If you do that you're a cockroach - no one can kill you. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | menloparkbum: Go for it. One of the projects I am working on is Yet Another Photo-sharing Site. Here in SF the first thing people ask is "Why? Why not just use Flickr?"But when I leave SF, I tell people "I am making a photo sharing site, kind of like Flickr, but how I want it." The response I get is "Sounds Cool - what is Flickr?"Sites like Fotolog and Photo.net and Photobucket eventually sold for way more than Flickr.The point I'm trying to make is that if the market is big enough, there will be people who want to use your product, even if there is an entrenched competitor. In fact, your competitor may not be as entrenched as you think. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | wheels: There will always be competition. There are probably half a dozen other companies doing similar things that you just don't know about yet. Most of the really successful companies that I can think of weren't the first ones on the market.Like others have said, learn from them. Figure out some need that they're not addressing and sure up that niche and try to grow from there. That may actually lead you to a point where you're not going head-on against them, and even if it doesn't it'll give you some runway before you're really going one-on-one. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | furiouslol: I'm probably going to be the sole wet blanket here.Ask yourself this question. Will your product be substantially different from this competitor's product?If yes, you might want to do something else. Like what you said, this competitor has growing traction. It'll be difficult for you to break the momentum especially if you provide nothing different.If you really want to fight with this competitor well, you must offer something different to the users. Eg. tumblr or posterous is like a super-easy lite version of wordpress. That's why they're gaining traction. There are probably XXX number of blogging systems out there that are similar to blogger/wordpress and they just can't break through. Those that broke through differentiate themselves well from these existing services.dropbox is not like the hundred other online storage site. Their interface is brain-dead simple compared to the competition.Will your product be so? That's the question you have to ask yourself.I'm not saying this to be a spoilsport but to help you prevent wasting your precious development time. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | rokhayakebe: If you have same set of features, then beat them on the UI. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | metajack: If you believe in your idea, keep going. While they may have hit first, you can adjust your strategy now that their hand has been played.This sort of thing happens all the time; few ideas are truly original. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | JD12: Profit, is the 100 pound gorilla. Can two company survive and make money both at the same time? |
Which entrepreneur(s) do you admire the most? | MaysonL: Muhammad Yunus, Nikola Tesla, Akio Morita, Kiichiro Toyoda, Jeff Bezos. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | vaksel: there are millions of people in this country. Even now when I tell people about craigslist they ask what is that? There is always place to compete.I mean look at eBay, they are in world known, but their user base is only 144 million people world wide. Sure it sounds huge, but in reality its just a tiny portion.As long as there is no first comer advantage(i.e. how eBay pretty much has a monopoly on auctions), you can launch a decade later, and still manage to get up on top(i.e. Google) |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | jonny_noog: I would definitely suggest that you not give up development of your idea.As someone else has already said, learn from your competition and make your product better as a result.If the idea you're working on is a good one, then you're almost bound to have competition. So I see competition as a sign that I'm on the right track.Keep at it! You just have to make your implementation a little bit better than the other guy. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | drawkbox: Google wasn't the first search engine. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | mattmaroon: Wrap a dead fish up in some newspaper. Mail it to them with a kind but clear warning that they better pack it up and go elsewhere. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | 13ren: Competition also validates the market in that some won't buy unless there is more than one supplier; the first doesn't always win (Edison had the 19th light bulb patent); and your greatest competitor is non-consumption (not this competitor).There's one danger in learning from them: don't become fixated or intimidated. What you have to offer is your passion for that "fresh take", which is still your original idea, and is still real, and is still needed by people.It will turn out that your "fresh take" is not identical with theirs - non-identical features, non-identical audience. It could be that yours is better.Marketing is important - if you are "far from" being an expert, one way to gain experience is to have a go.I want to encourage you, but courage is only needed because of the unknown. A start-up is high-risk, with many risks and many ways to die. A competitor is just one of them. But fortunately, the plurality of risks doesn't really matter, as you can only die once. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | TCL15: You should look at this as a good thing. You can use them to see what work and what doesn't. Adjust your product and add features that your competitor lacks. Any market worth while will have competitors. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | ojbyrne: I saw reddit as a digg.com competitor when they launched. Much, much smaller, less hyped, but guess who found an exit first? Small competitors to large, VC-funded products often do well, perhaps partially helped by the hype surrounding the leader. Jaiku would be another example. |
Advertising networks that pay per click, but are flexible. | netcan: Look at it from this angle: With ppc, the advertiser needs to make buying clicks worth his while. A big part of that is advertising in the correct place.If you the 'publisher' want control over what ads appear, how often etc. you'll need to remove any risk from the advertiser - CPA/affiliate so that it's always worth it to the advertisers.'When it's up to the publisher to make the advertising work, they can have control. When it's up to advertisers, they need it. I don't see an obvious way around that. |
Algorithm to identify the same events based on semantic similarity | aristus: The current consensus is to use statistics without trying to write a program that "understands" human language.A common approach is to break your items down into a vector of "features" (words, phrases, tokens, etc) and apply standard IR techniques like kNN, singular value decomposition (SVD), tf/idf, etc.One interesting thing about your problem is that people use different words and phrasing for the same thing, which means you need a way to equate different tokens with each other. SVD is pretty good because it finds degrees of similarity based on context: 'Pikachu' becomes strongly associated with 'Pokemon' and 'Squirtle', and also with misspellings like 'Picachoo'. SVD is tricky and expensive if you implement it wrong. The good news is that it recently came off-patent so there are a lot of new libraries popping up.When I worked on a keyword search engine prototype for Brasil, I found that a mix of Tanimoto and Ferber similarity scores worked very well for finding similarity between short phrases, and I didn't even need to know how to read Portuguese.PressFlip is using support vector machines for a similar task of clustering news items. The Vowpal Wabbit is a stellar library used by Yahoo. I think they recently open-sourced it. allvoices.com is tackling the same area as well. (disclaimer: I am a dev at allvoices, though I don't work on that part :) |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | tptacek: In 2003, me and a partner decided it'd be pretty neat if companies could deploy firewalls that filtered AOL Instant Messenger, Jabber, and MSN IM, with rules for users and groups, not IP addresses, and with automatic encryption and message relaying to keep corporate secrets off the OSCAR servers.Then AOL announced they were going to go release the same thing. We had pretty much everything but the user interface done.Like the man said, "In a situation like this, there's a high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out". We bitched out.A few months later, AOL dropped the product. Akonix and IMlogic, two companies that didn't bitch out, went on to gross something like 30-40MM in revenue each. I stopped paying attention to them; I assume they exited nicely.Your competitors don't decide whether you're going to succeed. Your judgement and execution do. We probably would have failed even if we kept moving --- our hearts weren't in it. Is yours? If you have to ask whether you're going to keep going, maybe you should do something else. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | rtf: You have the "second move" in this chess game of monopolistic competition. Even highly successful, technically superior, first-to-market products have been beaten out by competitors. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | pageman: what's your exit strategy? For example, if you were planning on getting bought let's say 100M - with a competing company, that might mean you might get bought for higher or lower depending on the timing. Assuming a bidding war, if someone buys your competitor first, the losing bidder might just buy your company for roughly around the same price (or higher) for PARITY. It probably helps to stick around. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | Eliezer: Ask Graham's Question: Are you still creating value? Take your eyes off the greenbacks for a second - are there still more-satisfied users at the end of your quest, or is it now only about the money? |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | umangjaipuria: It's not as much about the idea as about the execution.
But your idea has been validated. And so has your idea-generation. Quit your 9-5 and start off on this full time. |
Algorithm to identify the same events based on semantic similarity | joshu: I recommend an IR and/or NLP book.Check into Jaccard distance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaccard_indexYou might consider looking at WordNet for generalizing words... |
Algorithm to identify the same events based on semantic similarity | snprbob86: Will these people be mentioning the same URLs, by chance? :-) |
Free-to-Premium business models. Any working examples? | jacobscott: Chris Anderson's article on Free in Wired is six months old but probably a good reference if you haven't seen it:http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?curre...I guess his book isn't out yet but it looks like he's blogging about free @ the long tail:http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/ |
Free-to-Premium business models. Any working examples? | webwright: 37Signals stuff, Wufoo, BlinkSale, Flickr, Freshbooks, RescueTime, Harvest, etc.If you want some good data, you'll really want to read this:
http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/ |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | splenda: What kind of application is it? How you would compete depends a lot on the nature of your audience. |
Free-to-Premium business models. Any working examples? | rantfoil: Smugmug is a pioneer in this. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | blader: If you are screwed because somebody beat you to the punch - then you were screwed anyway. Sustainable companies have a lot more going for them than just being a few months early than the other guy. |
Free-to-Premium business models. Any working examples? | tstegart: Isn't Flickr the perfect example? I know a lot of people that pay for it, and a lot of people that don't. Some blogging platforms also use the model successfully. |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | leonroy: Paul Graham mentioned in one of his essays that although ViaWeb faced tough competition he knew that working hard enough, his team could implement features that would force his competitors to drag themselves over rocky terrain just to try and keep up.If you think there's a chance in hell, give it a go. Otherwise you'll always wonder 'what if...?' |
Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice? | NoBSWebDesign: If you love what you do, keep doing it. Improve upon what they have, whether that be the customer support, the interface, an extra feature or two, integration with other services... competition is good for you. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | noodle: a good idea keeps me from starting my next startup right now.i've said this many times before here, but one of the biggest things that prevent people from starting a startup is the instability of the startup. the family man or person with larger financial responsibilities will usually need the steady paycheck.some of the pro-big-company arguments that you make are off the mark.make more money? yes, in the short term. with the risk of a startup, there's potential for great reward, especially if the company gets acquired.ownership/equity? those are nice, but you typically get more with a startup.responsibility? career path? sure, you get some control, but not nearly as much as you will in a startup with a small team. you get to do so much more when working on a startup.influence? again, so few people, your voice counts way more, especially if you're an expert at something.company benefits/culture? they don't even compare. a company can pay for lunch, great, but that doesn't mean that they understand what the people want (my company is a good example of that). "paid vaccations"? typical startups don't track hours and you take off the time that you need when you need it. just get your work done. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | ComputerGuru: It's an incorrect assumption that you can't work on a startup while working at a company. If you have a boring 8 hour day job, you still have sixteen hours left in the day. The first 8 hours may be mind-numbing and leave you exhausted and incapable of independant thought, but focus hard enough and you can get a decent 6-8 hours for a quality coding spree at minimum. You just have to get used to the work. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | maxklein: Offer him a pathway. Making a startup will be hard on him, so if you offer a soft job and allow him time to work on his ideas, he will stay.But if he has the bug, he will leave at some point. You can't hold down a ramblin man... |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | swombat: Nothing, I'm on my second one.Oh, and to answer your question, what made me go start my own business is I couldn't stand the way things were done in the big corp world.I'm impatient. I want to get things done. I want to achieve things. I cannot stand the idea of being given orders. I have no respect for authority, only for competence. I want to realise my potential. The tedious and endless game of corporate politics bullshit is just a problem to be solved, as I see it. And one valid solution for it is to get out. This game just isn't worth the candle. What do you get for learning the ropes of the politics game? More politics. It's self-defeating. "The only way to win is not to play".The corporate world also has a well earned reputation for being bland and boring. All the dishonesty and obsequiousness that comes out of needing to maintain a "normal" image makes it conforming like a mass of grey goo. Embrace weirdness and difference. Accept the idea that exceptional people are not normal. Then maybe it'll be less bland.I haven't looked back since I quit. Life is so much more varied and interesting. I only ever do things that I think are worth doing. I work at my own pace (which is 10x faster than anything I ever observed in the corporate world). I work exclusively with brilliant people, doing something which I think is worthwhile.Even if there wasn't more money in the long term, this is an infinitely preferable lifestyle.What about you, yourself, who asked this question? Why do you stick around in this corporate world? If you're wondering why all these people are leaving, maybe you should go and find out for yourself. Believe me, it's worth it. |
Algorithm to identify the same events based on semantic similarity | sbt: What you are trying to do is very hard. Statistical NLP is the way to go for unbounded domains. You might be able to do better semantic analysis for smaller closed domains.There is a relatively new great book on NLP out now that I suggest you take a look at. Particularly the chapters semantics are very useful, but they should give you an idea of how incredibly difficult what you're trying to do is.Book: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Processing-Prentice-Artificia... |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | perdurabo: Lack of what I perceive to be a solid idea that I can maintain interest and passion in. ADHD is a bitch.I tend to be a jack of all trades (master of all, too) flitting from one thing to the next.Other than that, little fear about the rest of the stuff you mention. I'm hungry for an idea I can be devoted to. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | vaksel: Savings is the most important thing...once you have enough savings you can walk out.If you really want to keep the guy around, make it easy for him to do his startup while he still works for you. i.e. have him spend 60% of the time working on your stuff, and 40% of the time are free for him to work on his startup. If he gets that security he'll probably stick around.And chances are he'll be able to provide the same amount of productivity during that time. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | brm: Sometimes it not as much about money as it is control of your destiny and the ability to do interesting work |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | ph0rque: To join the several comments here: let him work on his startup part-time (20-40%) during work hours, as long as he gets his responsibilities done. I've quantified this idea a bit in a blog post: http://blog.ezlearnz.com/post/40316576/the-6-hour-workday |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | mooders: This may sound glib, but have you asked him?Have you explored with him, with you in a Coaching/Mentoring role, where he sees himself heading; who he sees himself being; what effects he sees himself making over the next year / 2 years / 5 years / at retirement?Once you have the answers to those (and he may not have fully considered these things himself, to that degree of clarity and detail), you can then work together to see if any options exist where you both get what you want. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | mannylee1: Knowledge. I believe it is very important to know the code behind the startup. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | johnrob: A start up is desirable because:1) Chance for a life changing payday, that could free you from the burden of working (if that were desirable - I have a theory that working is more fun when it isn't required).2) Ability to control how the game is played. You don't want to lose because you were forced to follow someone else's direction - if you lose it should be your own damn fault.If you can create these two things in a big company, let me know :) |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | chriskelley: For me, it's freedom. And only he can give that to himself. I would say your best option is to support his decision, but give him a big welcoming door to walk back in if his startup doesn't work out. Sometimes people with the drive to do things on their own need to try it first, and maybe it won't work out for him. Then he will come back to your company with that much more experience, plus he will be more invested in your company emotionally as you supported him along the way.It's hard to lose good people, but even harder to see somebody leave their dreams on the table. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | ryanwaggoner: Have I missed anything?Yeah, you've missed everything. It's a nice idea to try and give an employee what he's looking for from a startup within your corporate environment, but it's just not possible. Corporate employees exist to build wealth for someone else. That's just the reality of the situation. There are a lot of benefits that come with corporate life, primarily stability, but if he wants freedom, he won't get it working for someone else. When I was an employee, I had to remind myself that every benefit and incentive was an addicting trap, designed to keep me from leaving. A steady paycheck will erode an entrepreneur's soul over time, because you come to rely on it and striking out on your own is that much harder.To be clear, I think it's commendable that you're trying to provide a great environment for your employees, but I think the best case scenario here is that you'll work hard to keep him, and you might succeed, but something inside him will die a little and he'll always wonder if he made the right choice. Why not just let him go give it a shot? I think it'll cost you more in the long run to fight it than it would to just get a new employee.And I know we don't want to get sidetracked on this, but entrepreneurs do not "quit their boss". They absolutely do quit their jobs because they long for the freedom and rush of creating something on their own, no matter how awesome their boss is. If you disagree, perhaps that indicates more about the difference between a corporate and entrepreneurial mindset than anything else. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | jsmcgd: I would agree that most people quit their boss and not their job, there's empirical evidence to support this. However it isn't true all the time. I'm wondering if what he wants to do more interesting to him than what he is doing at the moment? Does it scratch his itch? |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | ptn: Im in Peru, so I first have to figure out a way to move to a startup hub and only then can I start. I'm possibly going for a scholarship to do a masters, which would delay me (I must finish it, being a scholarship I can't drop out), but at least would get me there. This is kinda frustrating, because to get a scholarship I must have good grades, but studying steals hacking time...In the meantime, I'm honing my programming skills. I've been programming for a while now, I'd say that I'm intermediate. I know Pascal, C, Python, and bits of Java, C# and Lisp (I'll look deeper into this one though). My main objective now is to design and code larger apps. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | mseebach: Have you ever made him do something in a specific way, because of "enterprise"-reasons, politics and "that's the way we do it" instead of arguments?Do you make him run windows, when he'd rather use a Mac or Linux, because he has to use Visual Studio? Did he ever suggest that you do a project in Ruby or Python, to be told that "we're a Java shop"?Do you have bureaucratic rules? Do you make him punch in and out, and log time down to the minute? Are certain websites blocked because they are not work-related?Is the working environment pleasant. Are you six developers and two PMs on cheap chairs and small tables, in a 300 sq ft office, with hard floors and no sound dampening?Is management not only a step up in salary and responsibility, but also access to unrelated perks like a better chair?But mostly, I think, it was the "talk the talk" about creative minds, and not walk a single step of the road, that made sick of that place. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | rokhayakebe: Be the first to fund his startup.This is one mistake employers do. Do not try to retain him. If he wants it enough (and in this case he does) he will sooner or later find a way to make it happen.Join him. Give him office space. You can still use his brain while he is around.EDIT: Entrepreneurs should also not be afraid to share their ambitions with their boss. That is only if your boss started his own business. You may find a new partner in your boss. Remember that those who made it always want to help others make it as well. They will see themselves in you and noone can resist that. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | tjr: I like to create new things; develop new ideas and build them. In most jobs, you are but a cog in the machine, and have relatively little creative allowance. I just churn out code per requirements, or test code per requirements, or write requirements per requirements. Not a whole lot of in-depth thinking seems to occur.Personal time off, and ability to set my own schedule. In a job, my ability to take time off to travel, do volunteer work, do research, whatever, is not so much limited by a lack of money as it is by a lack of formal vacation time. If I want to take two months off a year, and have the money to do so, then I want to be able to do it. If I want to set my own hours to best suit other things in my life, I don't want to be confined to the general expectation of 8-5 M-F.And yes, money does play a factor. In most jobs, you and your peers make the same salary plus or minus 5%, regardless of how hard you work or how inventive you are. If I can work harder and/or smarter and produce something worth more money to more people, then why should I not reap the financial benefits of my labor?There certainly are advantages to working at a regular job, among them fairly reliable income and insurance benefits and what-not. But even so, employment can be fickle. If "the economy" turns sour, your job may not be as stable as it seems.(Actually, I would advocate spending time running multiple diverse business projects, to help balance out "the economy".) |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | webwright: I don't think startup people are "quitting their boss" (i.e. running FROM something), but they are rather running TO something that is magical and not entirely rationale. Statistically/financially, it's a dumb decision to start a startup-- but it doesn't matter. You can sit down, run the numbers, make pro/con lists-- but it doesn't matter. You've already lost. Here's what you can't match:1) The big win. You can heap stock options on him, but your board will block you from giving a dev more than 1% or so, I presume.2) His baby. His own company. A sense of TRUE ownership.3) A clean slate. New companies/new products are more fun than existing ones for a lot of people.4) Having ANY boss. Everyone rolls their eyes at even the best boss SOMETIMES. The irony is that, if he succeeds, he'll be that boss. But it's a great feeling to NO MATTER what, be able to fix something that organizationally broken if you think it's important. To be where the buck stops.5) Fame/notoriety. Some people are motivated by this. If your startup wins, he'll be an unnamed dev in a winning startup. If his startup wins, he'll be the guy the led it there. Either way, it feels WAY cooler to say "I own my own company" when someone says, "so what do you do?".Doing a startup isn't a sensible CAREER decision... It's a largely emotional lifestyle decision. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | rthomas6: A killer idea. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | mdasen: Risk. I'm risk-averse (as most people who objectively have it pretty good are). I have shit to loose.Bureaucracy. I hate that I can't just do something. Ironically, the level of bureaucracy might be less at my job than if I worked for myself because if I work for myself I have to do lots of crap like dealing with laws that govern companies. I could hire a lawyer/accountant, but that gets back to Risk.Sites like this. They make you think too much about scaling and building for a billion users. Databases don't scale. None of them. You do have to turn to a dumber object store at some point and loose a lot of query power. I'm moving past this mental roadblock.Winner-take-all economies. A lot of what I would like to create isn't likely to result in money. This isn't because they don't have value. It's because they aren't good without lots of users. This is the most aggravating. Once users are using one thing, even if you're better, they just use that one thing for the same reason that more data trumps better algorithms. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | gasull: Procrastination. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | pavelludiq: I'm still in high school, but this summer i had a chance of getting a job. I didn't get one, instead i decided that i need to learn to program better and learn a few new languages. I also learned to draw, and I've been working on my writing style and my English. I also learned a lot of otter stuff(how to meditate for example). I don't know if I'll ever get a "real job", but I'll avoid it if i can. I probably will get one eventually, money is not useless. We like adventure more, and don't like having a boss in general(or any other authority figure for that matter). We are not afraid of failure, if we fail, big deal, we can take it(job security is for people who are afraid of change). I don't know how many hackers are like this, but from what I read on HN, there are a lot of them. You should ask your hacker about his plan, he may have good reasons. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | Flemlord: If you don't think you can stop him, don't try to fight it. Let him quit, and work out a part-time consulting deal. If you really think so highly of this guy, offer to become his first client and maybe invest in his new venture. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | dawie: 20% to do whatever you want (as long as it makes things better), kept me in the corporate environment ... |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | floozyspeak: The security blanket is nice and its probably what keeps most people in their place in a kind of Matrix mentality. Startups only offer the truth of what you dare to be vs what the blue pill offers you.He has you, and all that corporate goodness but thats just it, you have him. He needs more.I think only thing you're missing here is the sheer creation aspect. Creating, manifesting that did not exist before and won't go beyond your napkin sketch unless you take it somewhere. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | donniefitz2: Freedom. You can't keep someone employed that values freedom. A startup offers freedom from being a "wage-slave". It offers liberation from indentured servitude and if that is what your employee values, nothing you do will satisfy him. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | ajmoir: The freedom to develop code I want to in the manner I wish to. Enough of the usual crappy corporate tools/procedures/apathy.To be judged on what I produce not how many hours I'm in the office.Rewards equal to my contribution, this is where corporations fall down completely. If I'm ten times more productive than my team mates why am I not rewarded in such a manner OR to be more truthful I will not put in any more effort than is needed to secure my position in the corporate hierarchy. So I dutifully do what I consider a mediocre amount of work and yet am rewarded in the top 10%I couldn't care less for the crappy soda and chips or a paid lunch. Pay me the money and I'll decide how I wish to spend it. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | jwilliams: For me it's the need to try and do something for myself, and to do something that is excellent - something I'm proud of.I've been in large corporates for 10 years. A corporate can basically never compete against this kind of desire (which, is actually quite rare).Even though I've got more senior over the years, you just end up with less control over more - until you reach the point that you're just a powerpoint jockey.It's almost impossible to do something innovative at a large corporate - because of the inertia and the massive amount of consensus building that's required to do anything different. Pure design doesn't exist, it's an exercise in compromise.That's not meant to knock it. The environment suits many (i.e most) people. It won't suit everyone though.Personally, I've never found going over the top to keep someone around is a good idea - If someone wants to leave to broaden their horizons, I'd encourage it.Sometimes they leave and succeed - then they're a great person to keep in contact with. Sometimes they leave and it doesn't work out - in this case they sometimes come back, and usually a much better and more capable person for the experience. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | lallysingh: Depending on how far you're willing to go with this, there is the best of both worlds. Give him command over a group. If they get somewhere, offer the chance to lead a spinoff.The other thing that'll hold a hacker in a job is a hot wife and a good family life. A man's focus can change over life, and one can prefer to put their heart there instead of in the industry. Of course, there are few legal ways to work in this area... |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | anamax: Why is it so important for you to keep him? |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | brandon272: Your post in and of itself is why your employee wants to found a startup. Instead of sitting down directly with him and saying, "What will it take to keep you here?" and listening to the nitty gritty of what he wants for himself, which would totally make your post here unncessary, you are posting here, trying to convince everyone bullet by bullet why corporate life is the shiz and looking for someone to hand you some magical answer that you can whisper in his ear to get him to continue working for you.Look at it this way; people don't leave companies when they:a) Have a vested interest in staying (they share in the rewards)
b) They believe in the company's vision.
c) They believe the company is run by competent individuals who can execute that vision. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | sjs382: I work 30 hours a week. I'm taking a heavier course load than I ever have. And to top it off, I'm in a semi-long-distance relationship (3 hour drive) and make every effort to see my SO.My current job isn't so bad, either. The pay is peanuts, but it isn't "corporate" (100-ish employees, but just 6 in my department) and they've been great about working around my school schedule for the last 4 years.So yeah, jumping feet-first into entrepreneurial waters is appealing to me for all the usual reasons, but I just don't have the time to devote to it right now. And weekends are off limits, too.I should have more time in the spring, but Spring Fever usually starts early for me. :) |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | omfut: I have been working for more than a decade in startups, and when folks as me why im still continuing doing so, simple answer is- the passion and the drive to work on something innovate, that, someday will change the world. |
How Would you Implement this? | jwilliams: Option #3/4: In a software project, you have three main levers - time, quality and cost. Improve one, then you need to lose on one or both of the others.If you want real ballpark to start the thinking process (can't really promise much more than that without a lot more information) - well I'd say that a local 2-3 man shop might quote around $25k on this (i.e. ~4 weeks work).Course, people will tell you that this is 1 week's work, or 2 days, or whatever, but generally this will be coming a developer, and they'll only quote the development time.This cost will vary greatly depending on location (e.g. India vs Bay Area vs elsewhere). You could look at going somewhere like India, China or the former Eastern Block for development - the daily rate will be lower, but I suspect the overheads will swamp you, particularly for a one-off piece of work.The approach will make a big difference too - I suspect you'd find if you tweaked certain requirements something like Google Checkout could provide a lot.If you wanted to build something to demonstration level only, then probably half that.A larger professional development shop could easily quote 50-100k. They'll want to do requirements, testing, etc, etc.If I was building this in/for a corporate environment with all the trimmings, then I'd push this ballpack up to 100-200k. (You don't really get "Hello World" in this environment for less than 100k - but it'll be tested to the n'th degree, scalable, fault tolerant, etc, etc).There are other costs as well, perhaps more significant and something to be aware of.1. How much interface/web design do you want to put into the product? You can spend very little through to astronomical amounts on the design.2. If you're handling images, potentially large ones, then you're going to have a much higher bandwidth and storage requirements than many web apps.2B. If you need to scale (i.e. X new users every day) the you'll need to accommodate that. Even if you're not paying for the capacity, building in the ability to scale can be expensive. This could be anything from using a top-tier host, or investing a lot more in development and performance testing.3. You might need other things like domains, secure certificates, company formation fees, legal fees (disclaimers, etc). You might (and I usually recommend) want a good copywriter. These things are usually pretty manageable in themselves, but add up really quickly. |
What does your room look like? | kylec: Sorry to come so late to the party, but I just got around to cleaning my desk. Here it is:http://modos.org/desk.pngIt's nothing special, but I like it. It's two pieces of plywood glued together and suspended around the perimeter. I prefer the feel of real wood to that fake stuff in low-end desks. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | edw519: Have I missed anything?Yes.No matter how pretty you make your diapers, they still have your baby's shit in them.Entrepreneurs want to change their own babies' diapers. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | hopeless: What stops me starting a business or even working for a startup?A 6 month old daughter and a wife who's been made redundant. All dreams and ambitions play second fiddle to keeping your family alive.My day job was a smallish business that got bought out by one of the largest IT companies in the world and the birth rate has shot up dramatically since we were acquired. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | iigs: Is it influence, decision making, and direction setting? Well, we kinda fall down there. Many cooks in this kitchen, and most have greater influence than is available to him. His voice is heard of course, and great ideas are easy to spot no matter who they come from, but if he expects his voice to win out every time I can't provide any assurances that it will be so.That's probably the biggest one, if I had to guess. I don't know what this individual's motivations are, but if he has his heart set on something you're best not to pull a subtly different direction, the impedance match will eventually cause something to give, and maybe not on the best terms.Now, maybe you can flip this from a specific role to a personnel management pattern.You've clearly found someone who has been a valuable member of your team. You might believe that some of the things that would make someone a good entrepreneur would make them a good employee for your company, and from the outside, at least, that seems pretty sane. Someone who is intelligent, has drive, and is interested in all aspects of the business seems like the kind of person you'd want to have working for you.If you know you can't hold on to good people like this forever, maybe you could build a culture of growing people up and out. I don't think it would take a whole lot -- open, "face-up" handling of the business in the presence of your employees, a positive attitude towards contractors, mentoring and maintaining good relationships after they've left, and the opportunity to come back should the gig not work out and you have a position available, are all non-cash things that seem to basically be heresy to the standard beige manager, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. They also are generally things that you can do toward the end of the employee relationship where you appear to be now.Don't throw him out of the nest, of course, but definitely encourage him to spread his wings. Think of it as putting a little "Sponsored By: OurCo, Inc" on his brain. He'll either fail at his task and possibly come back as a better, more mature employee, or he'll soar, and he'll be thinking of your company in a positive light when he is networking like no tomorrow. Sounds like a win for you either way. :) |
Algorithm to identify the same events based on semantic similarity | MaysonL: There was a great Google teck talk posted here a while ago:
The Next Generation of Neural Networks by Geoffrey Hinton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M that might be applicable. |
Password managers? | ScottWhigham: I use http://keepass.info/ and have for a while now. Works great and is free. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | briancooley: Let's not forget the other things that corporate life provides that Start Ups simply can't compete against: we've got cash which means all your standard developer care and feeding: snacks, beverages, free lunches. With cash comes profit sharing, job security, benefits, paid vacations, etc.These are the kinds of things that "concerned" family and friends will point out. They're nice things, but I think the arguments about their value just amount to FUD to a person longing to make a move. They are reasons not to leave, not reasons to stay. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | unalone: I'm slow to develop mine for the worst reason in the world: I can't program.Oh, don't get me wrong. I have a coder's mind. I'm content with sitting down for hours and nitpicking code until it works just fine. It's just that I don't know the languages I need to know, and so development happens slowly.It's happening, don't get me wrong. But if I could actually program, this thing would be out in a week, rather than a month or more. |
What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? | icey: I jump between working for myself and working for other people somewhat regularly.Right now for example, I have what I think is the perfect job. The pay is good, I work on interesting problems, I drive all the dates and functionality; basically I am getting paid to make all the IT decisions and I have enough budget to do things the way I want to do them.But even though I have the perfect job, it still feels like servitude. So, at some point I'll have the next idea I think is worth striking out to try, and I'll be gone. It won't be because I dislike my job; but it will be because it's in my genes to go out to the frontier and pan for gold. |
Looking for hard-working, ambitious co-founder | dcurtis: I'm looking for a beautiful blonde attractive wife. She has to be ready to live with me in a deep relationship, starting immediately. I have a good idea of where I want the relationship to go, as I have some experience-- I previously had a successful marriage with 2 kids and a minivan.Contact me if interested.(Seriously, I think this reads too much like a stereotypical job ad, and less like a search for a cofounder. Cofounders need to have much better relationships than employees, and I'm hesitant to think that four paragraphs of generic superlatives is the right way to find partners for a business venture.) |
Looking for hard-working, ambitious co-founder | Brushfire: Seriously?OK. I'm in. But I need 55% ownership and a 75k/yr Salary + benefits. Also, I prefer to do the business side, so I'll go ahead and file all the papers and then hire you as an employee (dont worry, you can still be silent, minority investor too, but I'm afraid I cant give you any real voting rights). :)With that out of the way -- there is a lot of discussion about whether hacker news is a great place to find co-founders. To be honest, this place is probably chock full of awesome co-founders, both technical or business. But the method of your request is all wrong.Great partnerships are sort of like relationships. Its about give and take, its about strengths and weaknesses. I hate to say it, but you arent going to have any idea about that from a post on here, and its a horrible way to start an enterprise. $10 says you get 6 months in, realize you have different visions for the company, and one of you walks, leaving the other with a pile of shit and a lot of bills. Nevermind, you can keep the $10. You're going to need it.To be frank -- You would be better off using this place to ask for advice on a more specific topic -- perhaps something you are weak at. Then look through the responses, find the ones that strike you as the smart, intuitive responses, and ask those people if they mind having lunch with you. Rinse, repeat 20 times. Then you will start to build a network. Have a beer with those people occasionally. Talk about similar interests (I guess for you, your idea in enterprise software...). A natural choice for someone who COULD be a partner will filter itself out. And you'll be better off, because you will actually be at least ACQUAINTANCES with that person, so you'll have an idea if they are shitting you or the real thing.[Sidebar -- If you are equally as capable in business and technical side, wtf do you want a partner for? You need employees and investors.]Sorry to be a downer on your idea -- but your methodology stinks as either someone who is lazy or a liar, and neither of those make good partners. |
Looking for hard-working, ambitious co-founder | an0nymous: I am a charismatic figure, often seen leaping tall buildings in a single bound or moving faster than a speeding bullet. I have been known to build houses for the homeless in the slums of Harlem on my lunch breaks. I walk old ladies across the street, I write motivational speeches, and I double down on twenty and win - all in half an hour. I sleep in a Yoga position on a bed of nails while drinking water. Occasionally, I run the New York Marathon and win. I take women’s breaths away with my divine artwork.I move so quickly I make Jet Li look like a chump and my deft-defying footwork leaves Michael Jordan in awe. I am wanted in 2,359 countries as a political outlaw and am worshipped by a small Pigmy tribe in Africa. Using a pair of chopsticks and soy sauce I once saved a small Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn from the Asian Mafia. I build mainframe telecommunication networks for fun and single handedly defeated twenty 5 yr. olds in a game of Dodge Ball. I’ve been banned from playing the lottery because I win so much. In a Hyundai Excel I ran the quarter mile in the high 9’s. My incredible good looks are such that I make lesbians go straight.Scientists have preserved my DNA for the cloning of a future biogenetically engineered army to take over the world. I coined the phrase “Bootie Call” and your sister once had a crush on me not so long ago. I write articles for GQ, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times just to amuse myself. I scored a 1600 on the SAT. |
Looking for hard-working, ambitious co-founder | dthefounder: You guys are giving me a hard time.
I'm just tired of trying to convince my friends to start a business.
I wanted to outline my "forces" in this post; just hint about what I'm capable of.
As for Craigslist: it's too local, not technical enough to find anyone.
I just want to meet someone who share the same interests and values. Obviously some of you don't, and I'd suggest just stop whining about it.
BTW, your assumptions are sometime telling a little bit too much about you... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.