3 ms·

This really feels like it would have had a better time with a smaller "meet the batch" thread. Given that which startups get to be featured in one of those thre

by caslon 5y ago

This really feels like it would have had a better time with a smaller "meet the batch" thread. Given that which startups get to be featured in one of those threads rather than a standalone thread is decided by dang, it almost feels like this thread was intentionally greenlit standalone to start a flamewar. The odds of that are slim, probably, but it seems impossible that anyone thought this was a good idea to give its own thread rather than a smaller and more under-the-radar spot in a group thread. It's so early that it has support for effectively a single version of a single operating system (it isn't even an OS X web browser, it's a macOS browser), it doesn't have ad blocking or extensions, it doesn't look like it fits the HIG of any operating system, let alone the one it was apparently purpose-built for, it really drastically needs a designer, and to top it off it's got a subscription model in a genre of software that has never worked well at even a one-time price. There has never been an iteration of HN that would have given this product at this stage of its development anything but a disaster of a thread. I'm not going to insult the product (I doubt I'd say anything that someone else hadn't already said), but I can't see how anything productive or useful would have or could have possibly came about from this thread.

dang 5y ago
Of course I didn't pick it to intentionally start a flamewar. The things you guys come up with! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20flame&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- caslon 5y ago
  I know the rules! I said the odds of it were slim! What was your reasoning, though, over all of the other candidates for standalone posts that instead got a group "meet the batch" thread? I can't think of something more like gasoline than this product/stage-of-development/thread combination.
  - dang 5y ago
    I'm just guessing at what you all might find interesting. They're informed guesses, but guesses still. In this case, these guys are working on something big and the background from which they're approaching the problem seems solid to me. There's an interesting delta here between how YC thinks about startups and how HN thinks about startups. I'll try to come back and add more to this comment because it's something I've been meaning to write about for a long time. Edit: here it is... Think of the current state of a product like this as a point on a plane. When YC funds a startup, they're not so much looking at that point, but rather at the vector it's part of. That includes, yes, current position, but also direction (how it might develop over time) and momentum (how fast it's developing, how capable the founders seem). When HN evaluates a startup, people really just look at the current product point: how valuable it is right now, i.e. how ready to fill important use cases and how good a business those make for. That's a perfectly fine thing to assess, but it's a totally different assessment. This is the delta that I mentioned above. Partly this is because of a difference in the amount of information available (YC gets detailed applications, gets to interview founders, works closely with founders during a batch, and so on—HN posts don't provide any of that). But partly also it's a difference in mentality. YC is making decisions from a place of high uncertainty. HN, or at least the critical side of HN, only values what can be demonstrated today and has low tolerance for uncertainty. For YC, the home runs are funding a company that starts out looking like a toy and ends up developing into a big business. But if the startup does a Launch HN while still at the "toy" stage, HN tends to have a big allergic reaction: "how could YC fund such a thing?", etc. etc. Well, YC is funding such things all the time. That's the core of the business. A few go on to get big and then the startup (or YC) gets to point back at threads like this and say "I told you so". More, of course, never amount to much, and in those cases it's the commenters who get to point back at threads like this and say "I told you so". It's hindsight fallacy in both cases though. The lesson for Launch HNs might be that it's in a startup's interest not to come to HN while still at the tadpole stage, when people say things like "I can't see how anything productive or useful could have possibly come about from this thread". On the other hand: those are just comments, and only part of the comments at that. There are also bound to be a lot of users who are interested in the vision and willing to try the new thing even if it's in an immature state. So it's actually not so easy to say what's in the startup's best interest. It's much easier to say what's in HN's best interest: interesting conversation. I'd say we got that here. Alternative/future web browsers are an interesting theme, and while the reception has been mixed, I wouldn't call it a flamewar. It was a bit unpleasant at the negative end, but then other commenters have shown up to compensate for that. That is the natural cycle of many HN threads (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objection%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).

by caslon 5y ago

dang 5y ago

Of course I didn't pick it to intentionally start a flamewar. The things you guys come up with! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20flame&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

caslon 5y ago
I know the rules! I said the odds of it were slim! What was your reasoning, though, over all of the other candidates for standalone posts that instead got a group "meet the batch" thread? I can't think of something more like gasoline than this product/stage-of-development/thread combination.
- dang 5y ago
  I'm just guessing at what you all might find interesting. They're informed guesses, but guesses still. In this case, these guys are working on something big and the background from which they're approaching the problem seems solid to me. There's an interesting delta here between how YC thinks about startups and how HN thinks about startups. I'll try to come back and add more to this comment because it's something I've been meaning to write about for a long time. Edit: here it is... Think of the current state of a product like this as a point on a plane. When YC funds a startup, they're not so much looking at that point, but rather at the vector it's part of. That includes, yes, current position, but also direction (how it might develop over time) and momentum (how fast it's developing, how capable the founders seem). When HN evaluates a startup, people really just look at the current product point: how valuable it is right now, i.e. how ready to fill important use cases and how good a business those make for. That's a perfectly fine thing to assess, but it's a totally different assessment. This is the delta that I mentioned above. Partly this is because of a difference in the amount of information available (YC gets detailed applications, gets to interview founders, works closely with founders during a batch, and so on—HN posts don't provide any of that). But partly also it's a difference in mentality. YC is making decisions from a place of high uncertainty. HN, or at least the critical side of HN, only values what can be demonstrated today and has low tolerance for uncertainty. For YC, the home runs are funding a company that starts out looking like a toy and ends up developing into a big business. But if the startup does a Launch HN while still at the "toy" stage, HN tends to have a big allergic reaction: "how could YC fund such a thing?", etc. etc. Well, YC is funding such things all the time. That's the core of the business. A few go on to get big and then the startup (or YC) gets to point back at threads like this and say "I told you so". More, of course, never amount to much, and in those cases it's the commenters who get to point back at threads like this and say "I told you so". It's hindsight fallacy in both cases though. The lesson for Launch HNs might be that it's in a startup's interest not to come to HN while still at the tadpole stage, when people say things like "I can't see how anything productive or useful could have possibly come about from this thread". On the other hand: those are just comments, and only part of the comments at that. There are also bound to be a lot of users who are interested in the vision and willing to try the new thing even if it's in an immature state. So it's actually not so easy to say what's in the startup's best interest. It's much easier to say what's in HN's best interest: interesting conversation. I'd say we got that here. Alternative/future web browsers are an interesting theme, and while the reception has been mixed, I wouldn't call it a flamewar. It was a bit unpleasant at the negative end, but then other commenters have shown up to compensate for that. That is the natural cycle of many HN threads (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objection%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).