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The OP is 'begging the question', by not explicitly stating the purpose of such conversations, and the fundamental reasons for avoiding these questions. Here is
by nickff 5y ago
The OP is 'begging the question', by not explicitly stating the purpose of such conversations, and the fundamental reasons for avoiding these questions. Here is the critical paragraph:
>"It is almost certain that if someone is smart enough to build a search engine while living off of ramen, they also know more about what Google is capable of. Your attempt to question them is not helpful to anyone. If anything, you’re totally denying the fundamental aspect of innovation and entrepreneurs throughout history who have established that one or ten person team can conquer many a Goliaths, or bring to the world something entirely new."
Notice how the author says: "[y]our attempt to question them is not helpful to anyone". They also say imply that non-technical conversations about start-ups are basically useless: "[t]here is already enough knowledge about startups".
- randrews 5y ago> who have established that one or ten person team can conquer many a Goliaths, or bring to the world something entirely new. I wonder how many of those teams couldn't answer what was better about their product than the one they were replacing? I'll bet Google themselves could have answered that question, comparing themselves to Yahoo, back in the day.
- notahacker 5y agoI think the key part is less that and more the way of phrasing it. So you're encouraged to ask non-technical questions how they're supposed to be better than the competition but not allowed to say "but Google dominates that space, doesn't it?" to imply they don't necessarily need to exist. (though the author also says "I think your UI is not good" is 'constructive' feedback, so they don't think you have to be nice!) I think there's a point to that especially if it's a business you don't know and you're not a VC or angel, but I also think there's a surprisingly large number of entrepreneurs out there who are smart enough to live off ramen and program something complex like a search engine who do have a massive blind spot about routes to market or the complexity required for the software to actually be viable rather than just minimum. Sometimes the blunt approach "doesn't the network effect of $dominantplayer create a massive lockin" is more helpful than a general "so how are you going to get customers?" which is easy to answer with a generic "sales/marketing/referrals/affiliates". The entrepreneur ought to be able to give a more interesting answer to the first question, and if they aren't able to they're going to need to figure it out...