6 ms·

hackernews.. the place for uber quarterbacking.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
For what it's worth, comments like these here on HN tend to be seen as "sore loser" comments and find their way to the graveyard. Congratulations on your foresight, however I think the chorus you should expect from this audience is "they did it better than you, so get over it."
- codecamper 9y ago
  second post.. why can't I delete the whole tree?
  - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
    I'm actually a DNN that can recognize social patterns based on sentiment analysis of text in the context of HN. ;) Seriously though, this is a super common thing that happens on HN all the time. This community is actively hostile to people who aren't winners and talk about why they should have won if only they were "given a chance" or did something differently. Pretty typical recipe for the bottom of the page. I'll note that I didn't vote either way on your comment so as to not bias it. Though simply posting my comment might actually sway people to vote it up - there is also a very strong contrarian trend on HN as well.
    - codecamper 9y ago
      bye bye HN. going to get some work done.
      - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
        Actually, I'm on your side here, which I why I wrote the FYI so you could understand why this would (likely) not get much love.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        > Fine, I'll delete the post then. Why? Screw the downvotes, thanks for writing that. It beats the crap out of all those so called 'success stories' that if you look at them closely merely amount to a half-assed hobby project that accidentally made some money. FWIW: My partner Michael in 1999 suggested that besides live content we should find a way to easily host videos. I nixed the idea. For an encore, a couple of years later when confronted with gamers using our service to live-stream their games I wrote a bot to block them. Youtube and Twitch happened anyway :)
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      I suspect your comment may actually cause people to downvote the OP.
jacquesm 9y ago
> I'm 43 and would like to start a family. Don't wait for success or money if you want to start a family, there really never is a 'right' time.
- codecamper 9y ago
  You are right. Time to get started.
- codecamper 9y ago
  Why does HN limit the depth of replies? Just to keep the page looking snappy & fresh? That's pretty awesome that you guys thought of hosting videos. The idea escaped me, even after watching photo.net & then Flickr. I was working on an idea back then & the issue was the cost of bandwidth, right? Sure.. put videos on the Internet... but how would you ever pay for that much bandwidth? I guess that's why a Silicon valley crew did it. They could somehow see the decline in bandwidth pricing, understood how much extra fiber capacity there was. We should have gotten together then. I owned the domain fullscreen.com (and I made nice websites!) Software is hard! The winners show what it takes. Just put something out there! AirBNB ruby on rails! Facebook... PHP! Google... python!
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Well, to be honest, the cost of bandwidth was one of the factors that caused me to nix the project, we were having enough bandwidth problems as it was (we got kicked off the international backbone because the webcams saturated it). Was the first iteration of Google really written in Python? That's quite interesting.
    - andrewljohnson 9y ago
      Pretty sure it was Java: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO05LIU/ushhUIQQ-ogJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO0...
  - nebabyte 9y ago
pfarnsworth 9y ago
Don't worry, don't lose too much sleep over it. You forget that Uber was the last one to market with ridesharing. Lyft and Sidecar were out there faster. The reason why Uber is huge is because it was the first company to take all its money and go all-in into growth, by any means necessary. They spent and grew and got more funding until they were global within a few years, unlike most other companies. Their growth strategy is unprecedented and what is the most special about Uber, not the app itself, or even the idea. You would most likely not have duplicated their growth strategy, and would have gotten steamrolled. At this point, there's no way you could get your foot in the door next to Lyft or Uber, without significant funding.
- codecamper 9y ago
  I think there are some strategies that may still work. FWIW, back then my friends sounded a lot what you are saying. Oh it's too hard. Oh you'll be up against big boys. And I didn't do it b/c I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Uber did it. And, from what I understand, they did it by hiring someone off an offshore programming website. MVP. And they built the human pyramid. That's what you need to do to retire. Build a human pyramid.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    I'm troubled by the things that you say and your tone. I think you should talk with a therapist. Money is not everything. You don't have to be a millionaire to have children. You don't need to be filthy rich to retire. But you also have to accept that you would never, ever have built Uber. The growth strategy was executed perfectly, so far. So don't feel bad that you didn't finish the app, it wouldn't have made a difference. So please move on, have a family, stop thinking about money.

For what it's worth, comments like these here on HN tend to be seen as "sore loser" comments and find their way to the graveyard. Congratulations on your foresight, however I think the chorus you should expect from this audience is "they did it better than you, so get over it."

codecamper 9y ago
second post.. why can't I delete the whole tree?
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  I'm actually a DNN that can recognize social patterns based on sentiment analysis of text in the context of HN. ;) Seriously though, this is a super common thing that happens on HN all the time. This community is actively hostile to people who aren't winners and talk about why they should have won if only they were "given a chance" or did something differently. Pretty typical recipe for the bottom of the page. I'll note that I didn't vote either way on your comment so as to not bias it. Though simply posting my comment might actually sway people to vote it up - there is also a very strong contrarian trend on HN as well.
  - codecamper 9y ago
    bye bye HN. going to get some work done.
    - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
      Actually, I'm on your side here, which I why I wrote the FYI so you could understand why this would (likely) not get much love.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      > Fine, I'll delete the post then. Why? Screw the downvotes, thanks for writing that. It beats the crap out of all those so called 'success stories' that if you look at them closely merely amount to a half-assed hobby project that accidentally made some money. FWIW: My partner Michael in 1999 suggested that besides live content we should find a way to easily host videos. I nixed the idea. For an encore, a couple of years later when confronted with gamers using our service to live-stream their games I wrote a bot to block them. Youtube and Twitch happened anyway :)
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    I suspect your comment may actually cause people to downvote the OP.

jacquesm 9y ago

> I'm 43 and would like to start a family. Don't wait for success or money if you want to start a family, there really never is a 'right' time.

codecamper 9y ago
You are right. Time to get started.
codecamper 9y ago
Why does HN limit the depth of replies? Just to keep the page looking snappy & fresh? That's pretty awesome that you guys thought of hosting videos. The idea escaped me, even after watching photo.net & then Flickr. I was working on an idea back then & the issue was the cost of bandwidth, right? Sure.. put videos on the Internet... but how would you ever pay for that much bandwidth? I guess that's why a Silicon valley crew did it. They could somehow see the decline in bandwidth pricing, understood how much extra fiber capacity there was. We should have gotten together then. I owned the domain fullscreen.com (and I made nice websites!) Software is hard! The winners show what it takes. Just put something out there! AirBNB ruby on rails! Facebook... PHP! Google... python!
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Well, to be honest, the cost of bandwidth was one of the factors that caused me to nix the project, we were having enough bandwidth problems as it was (we got kicked off the international backbone because the webcams saturated it). Was the first iteration of Google really written in Python? That's quite interesting.
  - andrewljohnson 9y ago
    Pretty sure it was Java: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO05LIU/ushhUIQQ-ogJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.lang.java/aSPAJO0...
- nebabyte 9y ago

pfarnsworth 9y ago

Don't worry, don't lose too much sleep over it. You forget that Uber was the last one to market with ridesharing. Lyft and Sidecar were out there faster. The reason why Uber is huge is because it was the first company to take all its money and go all-in into growth, by any means necessary. They spent and grew and got more funding until they were global within a few years, unlike most other companies. Their growth strategy is unprecedented and what is the most special about Uber, not the app itself, or even the idea. You would most likely not have duplicated their growth strategy, and would have gotten steamrolled. At this point, there's no way you could get your foot in the door next to Lyft or Uber, without significant funding.

codecamper 9y ago
I think there are some strategies that may still work. FWIW, back then my friends sounded a lot what you are saying. Oh it's too hard. Oh you'll be up against big boys. And I didn't do it b/c I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Uber did it. And, from what I understand, they did it by hiring someone off an offshore programming website. MVP. And they built the human pyramid. That's what you need to do to retire. Build a human pyramid.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  I'm troubled by the things that you say and your tone. I think you should talk with a therapist. Money is not everything. You don't have to be a millionaire to have children. You don't need to be filthy rich to retire. But you also have to accept that you would never, ever have built Uber. The growth strategy was executed perfectly, so far. So don't feel bad that you didn't finish the app, it wouldn't have made a difference. So please move on, have a family, stop thinking about money.