4 ms·

Ah, come on, that's a bit unfair, no? Do you really expect all the useful information to be custom tailored to exactly your requirements? If so, you might want

by swombat 14y ago

Ah, come on, that's a bit unfair, no? Do you really expect all the useful information to be custom tailored to exactly your requirements? If so, you might want to look into hiring expert consultants for thousands of dollars per day, not books for $10, mixergy for $25, or free blogs. You do get what you pay for. If you can't get something useful about tool X out of listening to how someone else used tool X in a different but related context, then I'd say you need to work on your ability to learn from incomplete information - not blame the informational medium.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Unfair to Andrew to drag him into a discussion about the larger community of folks who are trying honestly and diligently to help startup guys? Yep, I do. But you started this with a remark about how HN'ers would just snark-out his service, to which I replied that there were good reasons to be careful about choosing what you consume that had nothing to do with Mixergy. Then you followed up with a comment about startup failures and a full-length article on your blog. What do you expect? No reply? Surely you know me better than that :) "...Do you really expect all the useful information to be custom tailored to exactly your requirements?..." No, I do not. The discussion here was about best expenditures for startup help, not about what my expectations are. In fact, my conclusion is that such advice cannot exist, why would I expect it? And there's no blaming of the medium going on, just an acknowledgment of its limitations. It's a great medium for entertainment, and 25 bucks or whatever is a fine price to pay to be entertained. With enough listeners, odds are that somebody somewhere will get that spark they need from each podcast, so it's definitely worth it as an exercise from the publisher's standpoint. The math works out completely different for the consumer, however. The question you should have asked me is this: okay smarty-pants, how would YOU go about doing this? I don't have a firm answer, but I've been encouraged watching experts politely argue over real-world problems. So a startup approaches with problem X and two people who have been around the block take up contradictory positions and have at it, with the petitioner playing the role of questioner. As the discussion progresses, the audience can interject questions (many times using IM or whatnot) and those help pin each position down. What happens here is that during the process of challenging the answers, a broader argument and discussion happens around whatever the problem to be solved is. This increases the "surface area" of the piece of advice and help; it is described in various scenarios and under various edge-conditions. The places where it might fit more exactly in a reader's situation greatly increases. That's just one idea. There are others. Outlining a problem like this is a great way to start figuring out ways forward. Apologies if I only sounded unfairly negative.
- swombat 14y ago
  No, I meant that it's unfair to expect custom-tailored advice out of a mass media. Perhaps all startup advice is entertainment, i.e. entreporn, for you, but my response to that is that you need to work on how you seek out and absorb that advice, because that's not the case for everyone, so if you feel this way you're missing a trick somewhere. Do you also think Peepcode screencasts and programming books are worthless? And yet, they never offer personalised advice. All they promise is "I will try to teach you how to do this stuff, and use a contrived example to show you how I might do it, and hopefully it's of some use to you." Business advice is no different - if you want it customised to your situation, hire a consultant, don't read a book...

by swombat 14y ago

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Unfair to Andrew to drag him into a discussion about the larger community of folks who are trying honestly and diligently to help startup guys? Yep, I do. But you started this with a remark about how HN'ers would just snark-out his service, to which I replied that there were good reasons to be careful about choosing what you consume that had nothing to do with Mixergy. Then you followed up with a comment about startup failures and a full-length article on your blog. What do you expect? No reply? Surely you know me better than that :) "...Do you really expect all the useful information to be custom tailored to exactly your requirements?..." No, I do not. The discussion here was about best expenditures for startup help, not about what my expectations are. In fact, my conclusion is that such advice cannot exist, why would I expect it? And there's no blaming of the medium going on, just an acknowledgment of its limitations. It's a great medium for entertainment, and 25 bucks or whatever is a fine price to pay to be entertained. With enough listeners, odds are that somebody somewhere will get that spark they need from each podcast, so it's definitely worth it as an exercise from the publisher's standpoint. The math works out completely different for the consumer, however. The question you should have asked me is this: okay smarty-pants, how would YOU go about doing this? I don't have a firm answer, but I've been encouraged watching experts politely argue over real-world problems. So a startup approaches with problem X and two people who have been around the block take up contradictory positions and have at it, with the petitioner playing the role of questioner. As the discussion progresses, the audience can interject questions (many times using IM or whatnot) and those help pin each position down. What happens here is that during the process of challenging the answers, a broader argument and discussion happens around whatever the problem to be solved is. This increases the "surface area" of the piece of advice and help; it is described in various scenarios and under various edge-conditions. The places where it might fit more exactly in a reader's situation greatly increases. That's just one idea. There are others. Outlining a problem like this is a great way to start figuring out ways forward. Apologies if I only sounded unfairly negative.

swombat 14y ago
No, I meant that it's unfair to expect custom-tailored advice out of a mass media. Perhaps all startup advice is entertainment, i.e. entreporn, for you, but my response to that is that you need to work on how you seek out and absorb that advice, because that's not the case for everyone, so if you feel this way you're missing a trick somewhere. Do you also think Peepcode screencasts and programming books are worthless? And yet, they never offer personalised advice. All they promise is "I will try to teach you how to do this stuff, and use a contrived example to show you how I might do it, and hopefully it's of some use to you." Business advice is no different - if you want it customised to your situation, hire a consultant, don't read a book...