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Startup Lessons
- rokhayakebe 18y agoStartup lesson 1: Better have a marketing plan. EDIT: That is assuming you already have a great team building the product.
- abstractbill 18y agoAngels are just wealthy people who typically sums of between $10 and $100k, with $50k probably being a good average. Did you accidentally the verb? (sorry, couldn't resist).
- mattmaroon 18y agoOh, I somehow omitted the word invest.
- spencerfry 18y agoWho is Matt Maroon? I see his blog posts always get a lot of attention here. Just a quick bio would be appreciated!
- matt1 18y agoPoker player gone YC entrepreneur gone HN hero FTW.
- spencerfry 18y agoWhat was the startup?
- rnesh 18y agohttp://www.draftmix.com http://www.draftmix.com
- luckystrike 18y agoAlso writes some of the most wittiest comments on HN. But for some reason, most of them get downvoted. :-)
- markessien 18y agoHe's the Kim Kardashian of YCombinator - you are not really sure why he's famous, but for some reason everyone seems to be paying attention to him.
- alaskamiller 18y agoDoes he have a fat ass or a sex tape?
- fallentimes 18y agoI guess that's better than being the Paris Hilton of YCombinator. However, I wouldn't call any YC founders "famous".
- mattmaroon 18y agoI don't know who Kim Kardashian is, so I'll just take that as a compliment.
- markessien 18y agoRead more MediaTakeOut. You'll know with time, oh yes, you'll know with time...
- mattmaroon 18y agoI have a feeling that in this case, ignorance is bliss.
- markessien 18y agoActually, on a more serious note, I'm disappointed that you don't know who she is. If you want to be an entrepreneur, then you need to be aware of things that are outside of your field. You need a diversity of information, not just pre-filtered information. You don't need to follow her antics, but being totally unaware of her shows a serious hole in your exposure to popular culture, which would make me wonder how you can create a product for the masses, when you are not aware of what media they are consuming. You see what I'm saying?
- mattmaroon 18y agoI started a company that was funded by YC. It's Blue Frog Gaming, and our first product is Draftmix.com
- randomwalker 18y agoHey, what is with the black backgrounds? Maybe my eyes are unusually weak but I just can't read pages with black backgrounds. I mean, it's not a preference -- I just can't. (Which is also a tip to designers out there.) Anyway, here's what I use on those pages: http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html (there's one called zap colors)
- rantfoil 18y agoFor most hacker founders though -- $500k is a much better sum to raise than $5 million. Do you really want to have to hire marketing people, give up board seats, give up more of your company than you should, and significantly reduce the % probability of success? For many founders, raising $5 million is like pouring gasoline all over yourself when you're on fire. Syndicating a bunch of smart angels who have been there and want to help you may be harder to do, it's probably the right call for most startups.
- natrius 18y agoPatent trolls serve no useful function. There already is a secondary market for innovation. Companies buy and sell patents all the time, and the buyers often use those patents to create innovative products. The problem is the patent trolls, which I define as a company that owns and litigates patents without actually using the patents for anything. You should have to be using the patent or at least show a clear intent to use the patent to be able sue people for infringing it. This part is probably more complicated than I'm making it out to be, but that is clearly the intent of patent law, so it should be changed to reflect that intent.
- cwp 18y agoI think patent holders should only be able to sue for lost revenue. That is, damages should be limited to what they would have been able to earn from the invention if nobody else had been using it.
- anamax 18y ago> Patent trolls serve no useful function. There already is a secondary market for innovation. Are you saying that independent inventors should not be compensated or that they should only be compensated when they sell to practitioners?
- ericb 18y agoIf you sell a great idea to someone who ensures it will never be realized (patent troll), you should not be compensated--you have caused the destruction of a great idea from the world of possibilities, which is akin to vandalism. Patents are intended to spur innovation, but when there is no production, the greater good suffers.
- mattmaroon 18y agoPatent trolls buy patents with the intent of licensing them to people who produce. In fact, they often as such spur on production. They sue only when a patent is infringed upon. It's not typically their goal to do so, their goal is to license.
- netcan 18y agoCertainly the trolls go too far sometimes, but on the whole it’s a respectable business model, and one that I think encourages, rather than stifles, technological progress. I think this is sort of missing the point. Proper trolls make their money by stopping the application of that invention or by significantly raising the cost of applying it. If the patent is owned by a troll it is more likely that anyone applying it will get sued, rightly or wrongly. In fact, it is almost always wrongly in a sense because if the patent troll didn't exist, noone would be sueing. So with one hand they provide some cash to inventors. With the other they take more off the application developers. The difference is probably huge & is split between profits & legal bills on both sides. It's like a tax on innovation.