4 ms·

This proposition's assumption is that there's something special about ideas. Reminds me of the kind of person that might make you sign an NDA before telling you

by dvt 8y ago

This proposition's assumption is that there's something special about ideas. Reminds me of the kind of person that might make you sign an NDA before telling you a "cool idea I had last night." It's no secret that YC -- like basically all incubators -- invests in people, not ideas. Teams will sometimes fumble for years before they find product-market fit. There are no shortcuts.

elpakal 8y ago
Great point. I give the author of this post props for trying this and it has been an entertaining proposition. But to me premise 2 is admitting there will be massive shortcuts taken here. There is now way one person could build a product that would scale as well as a product made by an entire team. You might be able to get it about 90% there, but the last 10% is the hardest IMHO. In my experience this kind of rationale is what leads to MVPs being spun out quickly using hybrid tools which have a hard time scaling. Sure it kinda looks like the real deal, but the product will limit the growth potential of your company.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  There are plenty of products/services built by a single person that only hired more people once they were able to afford it and needed it. This is especially common when access to VC funding is pretty much non-existent and you can't just hire a bunch of people.
- esquire_900 8y ago
  I'd much rather be in the position of having too much demand for a badly build piece of software then an awesome team, VC funds and a beautiful Elixir architecture with no demand. Reminds me of this post [1] that hit the top pages yesterday. It's actually the anti-example for my argument, but the way software runs in the real world. Apparently it's commercially more interesting to run cr*p, even if that gives rise to a significant probability of costing you $172k a second. I think the first sell is special, the idea just leads you there. [1] https://sweetness.hmmz.org/2013-10-22-how-to-lose-172222-a-second-for-45-minutes.html https://sweetness.hmmz.org/2013-10-22-how-to-lose-172222-a-s...

by dvt 8y ago

elpakal 8y ago

Great point. I give the author of this post props for trying this and it has been an entertaining proposition. But to me premise 2 is admitting there will be massive shortcuts taken here. There is now way one person could build a product that would scale as well as a product made by an entire team. You might be able to get it about 90% there, but the last 10% is the hardest IMHO. In my experience this kind of rationale is what leads to MVPs being spun out quickly using hybrid tools which have a hard time scaling. Sure it kinda looks like the real deal, but the product will limit the growth potential of your company.

zzzcpan 8y ago
There are plenty of products/services built by a single person that only hired more people once they were able to afford it and needed it. This is especially common when access to VC funding is pretty much non-existent and you can't just hire a bunch of people.
esquire_900 8y ago
I'd much rather be in the position of having too much demand for a badly build piece of software then an awesome team, VC funds and a beautiful Elixir architecture with no demand. Reminds me of this post [1] that hit the top pages yesterday. It's actually the anti-example for my argument, but the way software runs in the real world. Apparently it's commercially more interesting to run cr*p, even if that gives rise to a significant probability of costing you $172k a second. I think the first sell is special, the idea just leads you there. [1] https://sweetness.hmmz.org/2013-10-22-how-to-lose-172222-a-second-for-45-minutes.html https://sweetness.hmmz.org/2013-10-22-how-to-lose-172222-a-s...