4 ms·

The initial problems that inspired the biggest companies in technology

27 points by manjana 5y ago

throw0101a 5y ago
Stewart Butterfield has started two gaming companies that ended up creating two other products: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield
rhtgrg 5y ago
I’m not sure the problem statement for Stripe is quite right. PayPal was quite simple to set up when Stripe came around, it was just a little amateurish looking compared to the big players, and you couldn’t white-label it at all. The Facebook one is silly as well since MySpace existed…
gnabgib 5y ago
"In no specific order".. but at #3 you'll find a company you've never heard of listed beside Facebook, Stripe and Instagram. Oh and they wrote the post. Alphabetical (listed at the very bottom of the article) or founded-year order seems a far better "no-particular"(* apparently benefits author) order. On the other hand.. if this really only took 100 hours to compile, that's impressive.
- dang 5y ago
  That's really too bad, as there was interesting material in there otherwise. It's really important to avoid anything that feels to readers like a bait-and-switch. It's ok to write about / include your own startup in a post, but you should be really explicit about it and you should do it up front, because readers feel misled if they encounter it later. I have some notes that I send to startups who are trying to write for HN, explaining various pitfalls including this one. If the OP or anyone else wants a copy, email hn@ycombinator.com and I'll send it.
  - danielkyne 5y ago
    Hey, original author of the article (only just discovered it was shared on HN). I really appreciate both your comments about how we can improve the post, have added it to my to-do list to update this to put them in a better order and to make the self-referencing part about OpinionX more transparent (outside of the list of 99 companies, I think). As much as the original order was indeed mostly random, I also placed them so that each 'pair' side by side were roughly the same length, purely for aesthetic reasons. I think alphabetical order might just make more sense.

27 points by manjana 5y ago

Stewart Butterfield has started two gaming companies that ended up creating two other products: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield

rhtgrg 5y ago

I’m not sure the problem statement for Stripe is quite right. PayPal was quite simple to set up when Stripe came around, it was just a little amateurish looking compared to the big players, and you couldn’t white-label it at all. The Facebook one is silly as well since MySpace existed…

gnabgib 5y ago

"In no specific order".. but at #3 you'll find a company you've never heard of listed beside Facebook, Stripe and Instagram. Oh and they wrote the post. Alphabetical (listed at the very bottom of the article) or founded-year order seems a far better "no-particular"(* apparently benefits author) order. On the other hand.. if this really only took 100 hours to compile, that's impressive.

dang 5y ago
That's really too bad, as there was interesting material in there otherwise. It's really important to avoid anything that feels to readers like a bait-and-switch. It's ok to write about / include your own startup in a post, but you should be really explicit about it and you should do it up front, because readers feel misled if they encounter it later. I have some notes that I send to startups who are trying to write for HN, explaining various pitfalls including this one. If the OP or anyone else wants a copy, email hn@ycombinator.com and I'll send it.
- danielkyne 5y ago
  Hey, original author of the article (only just discovered it was shared on HN). I really appreciate both your comments about how we can improve the post, have added it to my to-do list to update this to put them in a better order and to make the self-referencing part about OpinionX more transparent (outside of the list of 99 companies, I think). As much as the original order was indeed mostly random, I also placed them so that each 'pair' side by side were roughly the same length, purely for aesthetic reasons. I think alphabetical order might just make more sense.