Oh for the love of god, will everyone please stop posting these sanitized, pointless, pretentious, vague points that ambigiously state the obvious while cowardly avoding any bold points that might actually bring a non-zero amount of useful info.
"Build your product to solve a customer’s problem." was absolutely revolutionary for me, I'd never even considered doing that, as it's completely counter-intuitive.
But when you think about it for a few hours, it kinda makes sense. Then an alarm goes off in your head and you're like "wait a minute, if I make something that solves a customers need..... they might use it". That was an absolute turning point for me after I read this very article 5 minutes ago.
I agree. People should write more about specific challenges they had, and how they overcame them.
Talk about the tough bank negotiation. Or when your biggest customer threatened to leave. Or didn't pay. Either something controversial or, better, specific, concrete, and useful.
The advices are very specific and concrete. If you actually run a startup, u will get the gist. You take care of your business while others take care of theirs. You can ask somebody for vision, but nobody can take action for you.
I do run a company. It grosses a few million a year, so I'd be in the position to "get the gist". These posts may be helpful for people who've never done a startup before, or are very early in their current one, but are not useful for people such as myself and many other HN members at a similar or later, greater stage than myself.
Agree massively. This is one of the reasons why books are often still better than the internet: you're more likely to get some meaty information, rather than a list of vague points. These kind of posts are like knowledge candy, fun to consume but don't provide much nourishment.
Should add that the "Top n things" kind of posts are inordinately popular on these kind of websites (Digg is much worse). I wonder what the appeal is? Perhaps internet users are at the centre of a Venn diagram: geeky types, who like things organised in a logical way, and people with low attention spans, who like everything in bite sized chunks. Solution: everything's a list!
Interesting. Is what you might consider "real content" (i.e. longer form, more substance, not popcorn ideas) lost on the web? Or is there still a place for it? I notice that when I write shorter articles it's much easier to get coverage for it than longer, more detailed articles that I personally find more interesting.
PG has postulated that it's an inevitable fate for communities like this because the short, easy to digest pieces are simple to view and upvote. Longer, meatier content is more difficult to digest, and thus receive fewer upvotes, even if the people who finish it find it more interesting.
I'm kind of curious about the response of this list to statement #2: Hire those with the best attitude and a willingness to learn over those with experience.
If that is truly good advice then I can see it saving me some 'wrangling with indecision' in the future.
