7 ms·

Honestly I don't get it. While the story is cool, it really just seems like you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a ve

Honestly I don't get it. While the story is cool, it really just seems like you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name. I know this story speaks of SV culture in some way; huge risk, huge rewards and the idea that no one can stop you. If the venture pays off, it makes you a hero. If it doesn't, well you get a cool story. But you're aiming to be head of your own company, you need to make wise business decisions. This doesn't look like one, and just shows (me) that you're willing to make large gambles for a chance at winning the lottery. Where do you draw the line?

wilfra 14y ago
Just because he was not successful (yet) does not mean it was a foolish effort. It's attitudes like yours that make hustling work, simply because so few people are willing to even send an email to somebody because they think it's unlikely they'll get an affirmative response. Getting rejected is like ketchup on french fries.
- Irregardless 14y ago
  He flew from London to NY and showed up at their office uninvited only to find out the CEO was in Aspen. After spending countless hours stalking the guy and hundreds (or thousands) on a plane ticket, he missed by 2,000 miles... If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack".
  - wilfra 14y ago
    Most people would agree you with you. But that doesn't make you, or them, correct. You should learn to embrace failure as a completely normal and natural part of success, instead of fearing it. This story, and the fact that he is proud of it, is evidence that he gets that. I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      I would not. Not all failure is created equal. Failing is fine. Even failing big is fine. But the risk has to be worth the reward. His reward was a name. That's it - not the success or failure of the project he wanted to start, but just the name. Sure, names are important, but spending this much effort on the name and not the project itself does not, to me, indicate good judgement on where one's efforts are best spent. "Learning to embrace failure" is not an excuse to avoid basic cost analysis.
    - ldn_tech_exec1 14y ago
      "I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish." - best comment in the thread so far
    - wpietri 14y ago
      Successful people have certainly failed, but spectacular failure isn't a particularly good sign of future success. You should only embrace failure if you are learning things. Successful people treat failures as the price of learning. I admire this guy's persistence, but not his incredible arrogance ("swaggadocio", "sound my huge balls made as I sauntered"), his poor risk/reward assessment, or his lack of lateral thinking skills. His behavior only makes sense if having name "zap" is the riskiest thing in his current business plan. If everything hinges on him having a specific fancy domain name, then I doubt he'll be delivering sufficient customer value to his users to build a real business. And if that wasn't the riskiest thing, then he's just wasted a lot of time and money in a poorly planned exercise to get something that was a shiny distraction. That sort of behavior is a great example of why solo founders are dangerous. Startups are endlessly distracting, and a good partner can keep you from taking off like a missile at something that, in the end, isn't core to what you're up to.
      - wilfra 14y ago
        Failure as part of the hustle is not a learning process in the same way as a failed startup is. Sure, you can learn something, but if you aren't getting rejected often in sales, you're simply not trying hard enough.
  - Tyrant505 14y ago
    Hindsight is 20 20. You would sing a different tune if he was there and let him in!
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack". I wouldn't. I think it shows exactly what he is trying to show: a tremendous amount of "hustle", indomitable fortitude, drive and passion... sometimes if you really want to make something happen, you have to take some chances and go a little over the top. And more importantly, it shows that this is a guy who doesn't just sit around and wait for things to come to him; he takes action and makes (or at least attempts to make) things happen.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  I would think a more impressive effort at hustling would be to find a (more readily) available domain name, then focus on building such a great product that it works anyway. IMO the story shows great hustle but poor prioritization. Domains don't matter that much. One of YC's most successful graduates is airbnb after all. That domain is basically nonsense, but the product is so good, now it's their own special nonsense.
  - nekopa 14y ago
    I thought airbnb meant "air bed 'n breakfast" which makes complete sense for their product.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
sturt 14y ago
Spot on. Seem to have forgotten to address the 'to your advantage' bit in the question. It's a bit rash jumping on the first plane out before even sending out a speculative email to find out if they'll disclose a price tag for it, which can be budgeted for at a later date.
- sjtgraham 14y ago
  Obviously send an email to /dev/null, er I mean the proxy email address on the whois, but is me adding that worthy of your time? Also the post states I tried contacting people via LinkedIn and telephone before jumping on a bird. Did you read it?
Peroni 14y ago
...you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name. Considering the context I have to vehemently disagree. Steve's really well known in the UK tech scene. He's a regular attendee & speaker at the Hacker News London meet-ups. Acceptance into the YC program would have vindicated his ambitions. YC is seen as almost mythical in this part of the world as it's a huge ask to move to the opposite side of the world to go through a program to gain funding when there are an insane number of VC's & angel investors in the UK. YC is essentially 'Tech Hollywood' as far as most UK hackers are concerned. You can make yourself a household name as an Actor based in the UK but most Actors would jump at the chance to make it in Hollywood. The appeal of YC is a microcosm of that analogy. EDIT: I appreciate CaveTech is referring to the zap.com situation but the entire trip was a guy doing everything humanly possible to make his dream a reality. I stand by my point.
- tetomb 14y ago
  I do not understand your comment at all. To what do you vehemently disagree? That it is a slim chance of securing the domain name? If so, why does the rest of your comment discuss how important YC is to UK programmers?
  - Peroni 14y ago
    I disagree with CaveTech's summation that the process was all about securing a domain. It was about the author doing everything he could to bring his intentions for his product to fruition and the original article was about the significant effort the author made to get accepted into YC only to blow it on a single question. I believe a lot of folk aren't quite grasping how or why one guy would go to such extremes with such ridiculously low odds of succeeding.
    - tetomb 14y ago
      I guess the post can be seen as a cautionary tale about the dangers of spending too much time on your domain name and not enough on your product.
TangoMango 14y ago
He did it because it is fun.
sjtgraham 14y ago
Quite a lot of people seem fixated with the money aspect. Not that I feel the need to defend myself and how I spend my own money, but I used the trip as a holiday too. After reading some of these comments I wish I went to the beach instead!
- tetomb 14y ago
  I think the issue that people are picking up on is that if that is how you spend your own money, it is likely that you will spend company money in the same way making you a riskier investment. I know my comments haven't been full of praise but I enjoyed your post and it seems you have the personality that is needed for success.
paulsutter 14y ago
Good domains are valuable, so a few thousand pounds is a small amount to risk. Zap.com is a really good domain. His approach was smart. A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about. I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people aren't willing to try (EDIT - thanks). EDIT: Outlandish stunts are the best way to improve your hustling abilities. If you have the time and money to try it, you win either way.
- sjtgraham 14y ago
  Thank you for breaking this down.
- jessedhillon 14y ago
  I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people don't have the cojones to try them. I get the point, but why the snark? Why be so dismissive? Especially since this "stunt" didn't work. (Yet?)
- tetomb 14y ago
  But the more valuable it is the more unlikely it is that it will be given away. Is spending time and money on the extremely small chance of getting hold of zap.com smarter than using those efforts to get hold of zap.co or zap.me? How much more is zap.com worth to your business over other alternatives? If a few days and a few thousand pounds isn't worth much to him then I understand but if resources are scarce, using them on long shots that might not even pay that much over the alternatives is not good business. edit: punctuation, grammar
  - wpietri 14y ago
    For a startup, time and energy are always scarce. Payments are a hard space to break into. Putting even 1 second into a particular name is a mistake if that isn't the highest priority. And given that Paul Graham turned Stevie Graham down for not having thought things through, rather than for lack of a good domain name, then I'd say the time and money was wasted. With those resources he could have conducted 20 user tests against prototypes. If PG was wrong about his concern about the business model, Stevie Graham would have had real evidence from real users. And, if as is more likely, PG was right, then Stevie Graham would have discovered the problem before he was pitching somebody so important to the future of his company.
crowdmatch2 14y ago
I recently read through a cliche list of attributes of successful people, one of them was 'don't have a backup plan'. I think while this is cliche, it is also true in a lot of ways. To me this sounds like your backup plan became having an awesome story to share, and your persistence transitioned from trying to obtain zap.com to trying to amplify the entertainment value of the story.
wpietri 14y ago
I'm with you on this. Marc Andreessen was the closing speaker at the Lean Startup conference yesterday. One of his key points was that the pendulum of SV culture has swung too far in favor of failure for failure's sake. His quote, via Gigaom: "We joke around the office that the worst is the fetish for failure. You want to preserve the good of the idea when it comes to pivoting, but you don’t want people to be intentionally encouraged to fail. Maybe it’s time to add a bit more stigma."

wilfra 14y ago

Just because he was not successful (yet) does not mean it was a foolish effort. It's attitudes like yours that make hustling work, simply because so few people are willing to even send an email to somebody because they think it's unlikely they'll get an affirmative response. Getting rejected is like ketchup on french fries.

Irregardless 14y ago
He flew from London to NY and showed up at their office uninvited only to find out the CEO was in Aspen. After spending countless hours stalking the guy and hundreds (or thousands) on a plane ticket, he missed by 2,000 miles... If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack".
- wilfra 14y ago
  Most people would agree you with you. But that doesn't make you, or them, correct. You should learn to embrace failure as a completely normal and natural part of success, instead of fearing it. This story, and the fact that he is proud of it, is evidence that he gets that. I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I would not. Not all failure is created equal. Failing is fine. Even failing big is fine. But the risk has to be worth the reward. His reward was a name. That's it - not the success or failure of the project he wanted to start, but just the name. Sure, names are important, but spending this much effort on the name and not the project itself does not, to me, indicate good judgement on where one's efforts are best spent. "Learning to embrace failure" is not an excuse to avoid basic cost analysis.
  - ldn_tech_exec1 14y ago
    "I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish." - best comment in the thread so far
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Successful people have certainly failed, but spectacular failure isn't a particularly good sign of future success. You should only embrace failure if you are learning things. Successful people treat failures as the price of learning. I admire this guy's persistence, but not his incredible arrogance ("swaggadocio", "sound my huge balls made as I sauntered"), his poor risk/reward assessment, or his lack of lateral thinking skills. His behavior only makes sense if having name "zap" is the riskiest thing in his current business plan. If everything hinges on him having a specific fancy domain name, then I doubt he'll be delivering sufficient customer value to his users to build a real business. And if that wasn't the riskiest thing, then he's just wasted a lot of time and money in a poorly planned exercise to get something that was a shiny distraction. That sort of behavior is a great example of why solo founders are dangerous. Startups are endlessly distracting, and a good partner can keep you from taking off like a missile at something that, in the end, isn't core to what you're up to.
    - wilfra 14y ago
      Failure as part of the hustle is not a learning process in the same way as a failed startup is. Sure, you can learn something, but if you aren't getting rejected often in sales, you're simply not trying hard enough.
- Tyrant505 14y ago
  Hindsight is 20 20. You would sing a different tune if he was there and let him in!
- mindcrime 14y ago
  If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack". I wouldn't. I think it shows exactly what he is trying to show: a tremendous amount of "hustle", indomitable fortitude, drive and passion... sometimes if you really want to make something happen, you have to take some chances and go a little over the top. And more importantly, it shows that this is a guy who doesn't just sit around and wait for things to come to him; he takes action and makes (or at least attempts to make) things happen.
snowwrestler 14y ago
I would think a more impressive effort at hustling would be to find a (more readily) available domain name, then focus on building such a great product that it works anyway. IMO the story shows great hustle but poor prioritization. Domains don't matter that much. One of YC's most successful graduates is airbnb after all. That domain is basically nonsense, but the product is so good, now it's their own special nonsense.
- nekopa 14y ago
  I thought airbnb meant "air bed 'n breakfast" which makes complete sense for their product.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

sturt 14y ago

Spot on. Seem to have forgotten to address the 'to your advantage' bit in the question. It's a bit rash jumping on the first plane out before even sending out a speculative email to find out if they'll disclose a price tag for it, which can be budgeted for at a later date.

sjtgraham 14y ago
Obviously send an email to /dev/null, er I mean the proxy email address on the whois, but is me adding that worthy of your time? Also the post states I tried contacting people via LinkedIn and telephone before jumping on a bird. Did you read it?

Peroni 14y ago

...you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name. Considering the context I have to vehemently disagree. Steve's really well known in the UK tech scene. He's a regular attendee & speaker at the Hacker News London meet-ups. Acceptance into the YC program would have vindicated his ambitions. YC is seen as almost mythical in this part of the world as it's a huge ask to move to the opposite side of the world to go through a program to gain funding when there are an insane number of VC's & angel investors in the UK. YC is essentially 'Tech Hollywood' as far as most UK hackers are concerned. You can make yourself a household name as an Actor based in the UK but most Actors would jump at the chance to make it in Hollywood. The appeal of YC is a microcosm of that analogy. EDIT: I appreciate CaveTech is referring to the zap.com situation but the entire trip was a guy doing everything humanly possible to make his dream a reality. I stand by my point.

tetomb 14y ago
I do not understand your comment at all. To what do you vehemently disagree? That it is a slim chance of securing the domain name? If so, why does the rest of your comment discuss how important YC is to UK programmers?
- Peroni 14y ago
  I disagree with CaveTech's summation that the process was all about securing a domain. It was about the author doing everything he could to bring his intentions for his product to fruition and the original article was about the significant effort the author made to get accepted into YC only to blow it on a single question. I believe a lot of folk aren't quite grasping how or why one guy would go to such extremes with such ridiculously low odds of succeeding.
  - tetomb 14y ago
    I guess the post can be seen as a cautionary tale about the dangers of spending too much time on your domain name and not enough on your product.

TangoMango 14y ago

He did it because it is fun.

sjtgraham 14y ago

Quite a lot of people seem fixated with the money aspect. Not that I feel the need to defend myself and how I spend my own money, but I used the trip as a holiday too. After reading some of these comments I wish I went to the beach instead!

tetomb 14y ago
I think the issue that people are picking up on is that if that is how you spend your own money, it is likely that you will spend company money in the same way making you a riskier investment. I know my comments haven't been full of praise but I enjoyed your post and it seems you have the personality that is needed for success.

paulsutter 14y ago

Good domains are valuable, so a few thousand pounds is a small amount to risk. Zap.com is a really good domain. His approach was smart. A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about. I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people aren't willing to try (EDIT - thanks). EDIT: Outlandish stunts are the best way to improve your hustling abilities. If you have the time and money to try it, you win either way.

sjtgraham 14y ago
Thank you for breaking this down.
jessedhillon 14y ago
I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people don't have the cojones to try them. I get the point, but why the snark? Why be so dismissive? Especially since this "stunt" didn't work. (Yet?)
tetomb 14y ago
But the more valuable it is the more unlikely it is that it will be given away. Is spending time and money on the extremely small chance of getting hold of zap.com smarter than using those efforts to get hold of zap.co or zap.me? How much more is zap.com worth to your business over other alternatives? If a few days and a few thousand pounds isn't worth much to him then I understand but if resources are scarce, using them on long shots that might not even pay that much over the alternatives is not good business. edit: punctuation, grammar
- wpietri 14y ago
  For a startup, time and energy are always scarce. Payments are a hard space to break into. Putting even 1 second into a particular name is a mistake if that isn't the highest priority. And given that Paul Graham turned Stevie Graham down for not having thought things through, rather than for lack of a good domain name, then I'd say the time and money was wasted. With those resources he could have conducted 20 user tests against prototypes. If PG was wrong about his concern about the business model, Stevie Graham would have had real evidence from real users. And, if as is more likely, PG was right, then Stevie Graham would have discovered the problem before he was pitching somebody so important to the future of his company.

crowdmatch2 14y ago

I recently read through a cliche list of attributes of successful people, one of them was 'don't have a backup plan'. I think while this is cliche, it is also true in a lot of ways. To me this sounds like your backup plan became having an awesome story to share, and your persistence transitioned from trying to obtain zap.com to trying to amplify the entertainment value of the story.

wpietri 14y ago

I'm with you on this. Marc Andreessen was the closing speaker at the Lean Startup conference yesterday. One of his key points was that the pendulum of SV culture has swung too far in favor of failure for failure's sake. His quote, via Gigaom: "We joke around the office that the worst is the fetish for failure. You want to preserve the good of the idea when it comes to pivoting, but you don’t want people to be intentionally encouraged to fail. Maybe it’s time to add a bit more stigma."