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Every time I read one of these (less and less frequently) I find that the core problem is the management writing the article. None of the insights they talk ab
by throwaway5752 10y ago
Every time I read one of these (less and less frequently) I find that the core problem is the management writing the article.
None of the insights they talk about are particularly noteworthy or trade secrets. They could have been discovered as part of coming up with their business plan. It's more than fair to assume they'll make the mistake again.
- thebladerunner 10y agoWhy so negative?
- tmat 10y agobecause this is HN... it's a circle jerk of people who think their shit don't stink.
- zarriak 10y agoI mean I don't think they ever literally did any testing on the usage of their website. They have some nice settings for using their website, but they don't have a landing page for it so they allow you to have lots of great functionality in searching for food, it is about useless. Not only do they not show them at the start, they also have absurd and odd defaults on the ones that would be most generally useful at the start For example: The distance setting starts at infinite distance instead of the 5, 10, or 15 increments they have. This would be a great app if they just had you go through the settings each time you started using it, as they have lots of details, like times, ambience, payments, and whether alcohol is served. They could even expand this to if you logged in they could list the settings you used previously or you could save some as presets for going out with friends or something like that. It is clear that it had potetntial, but I think they didn't have a clear idea of the service they wanted to provide at the start and got too bogged down in both the implementation and problems to recognize the things that made them want to do it in the first place, along with the investors that liked it. But ok fam
- dang 10y agoPlease don't react to someone making HN worse by making HN even worse yourself.
- rhizome 10y agoNone of the insights they talk about are particularly noteworthy or trade secrets. The trade secret is in what's not mentioned: what's wrong with paper menus?
- imron 10y agoYou can't bill clients recurring revenues each month for them.
- rhizome 10y agoPresumably that's why OpenTable went towards POS.
- onion2k 10y agoConsider a menu to be like the API documentation for a restaurant. Keeping printed documentation in sync with what's available online is actually quite hard, especially if it's something that changes regularly. It feels like something that can be improved by keeping everything digital. If a user insisted on written documentation for a project that moved quickly, how would you manage that? Would you give them a printed copy? Or would you say "the latest docs are at <uri>"?
- rhizome 10y agoWhat I can't figure out is how you get around menus, does everybody use a tablet? I know Chili's has something a little like that these days, but seriously, I don't want to hold a tablet at dinner.
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11925924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11925924 and downweighted it. It's not strictly off-topic, but it's a nasty, generic dismissal. Piling onto other people's mistakes ("They could have been discovered as part of coming up with their business plan") is a lousy thing to do, and if you're going to do it here (though please don't), your comment should have at least have some other redeeming quality. Instead you draw contemptuous conclusions about someone's character, kicking them when they're down. This is the sort of comment that, even assuming it's 100% correct, says more about the commenter than its subject. I'm ashamed to see things like this on HN and particularly ashamed that they routinely attract upvotes.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- throwaway5752 10y agoThis was a hurtful response. I am a single poster/person, not a group of people or a pattern of commenting.