5 ms·

Is there anybody in this thread actually reading this essay seriously and weighing its merits, instead of dismissing it on superficial stylistic reasons? The m

Is there anybody in this thread actually reading this essay seriously and weighing its merits, instead of dismissing it on superficial stylistic reasons? The man brings up interesting points regarding the Mint.com merger and how 37signals handled the news, f-bombs be damned. Especially in regards to the differing metrics of incentives for startups, VCs and preexisting competitors.

dannyr 17y ago
Agree. Dave can be very blunt sometimes. I saw him on a panel earlier this year and he's just very direct. It's refreshing to get very honest answers. Some people just play too nice just not to offend anybody.
- sofal 17y ago
  Here we go again with the fallacious nice == indirect argument. I've heard this over and over again and it never makes sense. Why do you think that it is necessary to go on an offensive rampage in order to be honest? Guess what? Some people actually don't hate everyone who disagrees with them and these people can be very blunt and honest without petty insults.
- callmeed 17y ago
  I wouldn't call this post "blunt" or "direct" It's got to be 2-3x the length of Jason's original post ... and poorly written
- philwelch 17y ago
  Somehow, adding various conjugations of the word "fuck" and the like into a blog post seems to make it longer and hence less direct. Direct is bluntly and baldly stating claims that people find offensive and outrageous. You don't need to throw in extra invective on top of that.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  If your aim is to communicate ideas and not simply to offend, then it's a good thing to be willing to accept offending people with the ideas you express (e.g. disagreement, criticism, heresy). However, it's a bad thing for communication to offend people with things that aren't ancillary to those ideas, you fucking retard. See what I mean?
drusenko 17y ago
Agreed. If you actually read the article instead of dismissing it based on its content, you'd find that Dave makes a great point. The Mint sale may not turn out to be great for Mint users, and it certainly wasn't amazing for (most) of their investors that were hoping for a home run -- but I know with certainty it was amazing for Aaron, personally. Saying that the VCs forced Aaron to sell is an absolutely ludicrous statement.
- weaksauce 17y ago
  I can't agree more. That kind of sell is a life changing amount of money for most people. I would have sold and moved onto the next venture.
- petenixey 17y ago
  Having now sold a company (albeit for nothing like the scale of Mint) the value of simply having the stripe is immeasurable. People get confused between what the right thing is for a company's customers or the "ecosystem" and what the right thing is for the entrepreneur (even taking account of the other two). As a Mint user I'm really sorry Mint sold to Intuit. I also think it is a bit of a waste for the ecosystem as Mint was positioned to do something pretty amazing that probably won't happen now. However, the decision was very sensible indeed for the founder. Mint may never have sold, he could have been ousted as CEO. Now he's a great bet for future investors and employees and he is cash independent (both as an individual and an investor). Knowing when to stick and when to twist is invaluable. I am interested though why the VC's cash him out $20M and keep in the game as Matt Mullenweg's did. That way he would have hedged his risk and everyone swings for the fences.
Confusion 17y ago
Superficial stylistic reasons Style is an indicator of content. If someone uses five different colors and five different ways to emphasize text (I'm not exaggerating: count them) in the first few paragraphs of a blog post, then I expect the content to be equally lacking in thought. These 'interesting points' have already been made a zillion times by a zillion different persons in the time since the Mint acquisition. Instead of shortly restating the argument, he seems to think he needs to repeat it a number of times in a row, with small variations. This certainly doesn't deserve the term 'essay'.
- danielzarick 17y ago
  While I do agree that ridiculous colors and font sizes do lower the deemed quality, it doesn't hurt to hear similar statements, though slightly revised, from an adviser close to the company. If anything, his 'interesting points' help to keep us levelheaded after reading Jason's rally cry.
- donaq 17y ago
  Style is an indicator of content. If someone uses five different colors and five different ways to emphasize text (I'm not exaggerating: count them) in the first few paragraphs of a blog post, then I expect the content to be equally lacking in thought. Have your expectations ever been proven wrong? I try to keep an open mind and pay more attention to the message than the messenger. I must say it's given me a few pleasant surprises (because I am not a buddha and naturally still have prejudices).
jacquesm 17y ago
I think on the internet you have to separate the message from the delivery regardless of the source, this author seems to be making a pretty good effort at making that harder. That said, I can see the humor in answering a post with a very provocative title in an even more provocative way. It's just that I think that delivering the message is more important than the 'lol' factor, and maybe in this case the message is important enough that it would have been better served by some more moderate language. Sure, we're all adults and so on, I'm no shrinking violet myself but I would think twice before writing like that. It's simply not conducive to getting your point across. And, that's a fact, the points are pretty good. Even if Jason Frieds original article gets misrepresented a bit. Jason brought that on himself by making his point in a vacuum, after all he had no idea of the backstory, so he shouldn't have used it as the main point of support for his argument. The trouble now is that Jasons original argument is threatened to be lost because of that, and that's a pity because it too had merit.
ivankirigin 17y ago
I might point out that while Dave says "fuck", he is responding to a blog post whose title implied forced anal sex: "next gen bends over". That is quite offensive, independent of the backward thinking.
- borism 17y ago
  wtf? Bend over may refer to the action of bending one's body over, as in to pick up something, or, for example, as the hydra does in order to move when hunting, in dancing (like in the various breakdance moves), gymnastics, and sports (like snap football), as well as to be (vaginally or anally) penetrated in sexual activity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bend_over http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bend_over so even if you took bend over literally there's nothing wrong (or anything implying anal sex) in saying that Mint guys bent over to pick-up Intuit's offer. and while Jason Fried has actually added value by using such provocative but eloquent metaphor, Dave McClure has totally subtracted any little value that was in his rant by obscuring it with fucks etc.
  - davemc500hats 17y ago
    oh puh-leez... srsly? i don't need to apologize for swearing... and similarly, you don't have to perform semantic acrobatics to find a different definition for "bending over". jason certainly meant the headline in a "don't drop the soap" fashion, just like i meant to use the word "fuck" for emphasis. get over yourself and get off your victorian soapbox. people swear. they've been doing it for hundreds of years. if you can't get past the use of either as a literary form of emphasis, then you're the one being juvenile.
scrame 17y ago
Its not just his style, his content is generally suspect too. His articles tend to focus on really obnoxious and tired metaphors: Metrics for pirates: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/10/startup-metrics-for-pirates-kill-a-feature-fowa-london-oct-2009.html http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/10/startup-metrics-... Hard for a web 2.0 pimp: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/02/its-hard-out-he.html http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/02/its-hard-out-he.... And in general seems to be a big proponent of that really tired "Im a rockstar ninja coder because I write facebook apps in rails" attitude. ( http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/kottke-is-wrong.html http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/kottke-is-wrong.... ) For someone who is a self-styled "master of 500 hats", he could work to be at least a 5 or 6 in writing and text layout.
- davemc500hats 17y ago
  sorry you feel that way, but i'm actually quite proud of those posts... to each his/her own i guess. for me, both entrepreneurship & technology are about passion. to remove that passion from my writing would seem to miss the point.

dannyr 17y ago

Agree. Dave can be very blunt sometimes. I saw him on a panel earlier this year and he's just very direct. It's refreshing to get very honest answers. Some people just play too nice just not to offend anybody.

sofal 17y ago
Here we go again with the fallacious nice == indirect argument. I've heard this over and over again and it never makes sense. Why do you think that it is necessary to go on an offensive rampage in order to be honest? Guess what? Some people actually don't hate everyone who disagrees with them and these people can be very blunt and honest without petty insults.
callmeed 17y ago
I wouldn't call this post "blunt" or "direct" It's got to be 2-3x the length of Jason's original post ... and poorly written
philwelch 17y ago
Somehow, adding various conjugations of the word "fuck" and the like into a blog post seems to make it longer and hence less direct. Direct is bluntly and baldly stating claims that people find offensive and outrageous. You don't need to throw in extra invective on top of that.
GHFigs 17y ago
If your aim is to communicate ideas and not simply to offend, then it's a good thing to be willing to accept offending people with the ideas you express (e.g. disagreement, criticism, heresy). However, it's a bad thing for communication to offend people with things that aren't ancillary to those ideas, you fucking retard. See what I mean?

drusenko 17y ago

Agreed. If you actually read the article instead of dismissing it based on its content, you'd find that Dave makes a great point. The Mint sale may not turn out to be great for Mint users, and it certainly wasn't amazing for (most) of their investors that were hoping for a home run -- but I know with certainty it was amazing for Aaron, personally. Saying that the VCs forced Aaron to sell is an absolutely ludicrous statement.

weaksauce 17y ago
I can't agree more. That kind of sell is a life changing amount of money for most people. I would have sold and moved onto the next venture.
petenixey 17y ago
Having now sold a company (albeit for nothing like the scale of Mint) the value of simply having the stripe is immeasurable. People get confused between what the right thing is for a company's customers or the "ecosystem" and what the right thing is for the entrepreneur (even taking account of the other two). As a Mint user I'm really sorry Mint sold to Intuit. I also think it is a bit of a waste for the ecosystem as Mint was positioned to do something pretty amazing that probably won't happen now. However, the decision was very sensible indeed for the founder. Mint may never have sold, he could have been ousted as CEO. Now he's a great bet for future investors and employees and he is cash independent (both as an individual and an investor). Knowing when to stick and when to twist is invaluable. I am interested though why the VC's cash him out $20M and keep in the game as Matt Mullenweg's did. That way he would have hedged his risk and everyone swings for the fences.

Confusion 17y ago

Superficial stylistic reasons Style is an indicator of content. If someone uses five different colors and five different ways to emphasize text (I'm not exaggerating: count them) in the first few paragraphs of a blog post, then I expect the content to be equally lacking in thought. These 'interesting points' have already been made a zillion times by a zillion different persons in the time since the Mint acquisition. Instead of shortly restating the argument, he seems to think he needs to repeat it a number of times in a row, with small variations. This certainly doesn't deserve the term 'essay'.

danielzarick 17y ago
While I do agree that ridiculous colors and font sizes do lower the deemed quality, it doesn't hurt to hear similar statements, though slightly revised, from an adviser close to the company. If anything, his 'interesting points' help to keep us levelheaded after reading Jason's rally cry.
donaq 17y ago
Style is an indicator of content. If someone uses five different colors and five different ways to emphasize text (I'm not exaggerating: count them) in the first few paragraphs of a blog post, then I expect the content to be equally lacking in thought. Have your expectations ever been proven wrong? I try to keep an open mind and pay more attention to the message than the messenger. I must say it's given me a few pleasant surprises (because I am not a buddha and naturally still have prejudices).

jacquesm 17y ago

I think on the internet you have to separate the message from the delivery regardless of the source, this author seems to be making a pretty good effort at making that harder. That said, I can see the humor in answering a post with a very provocative title in an even more provocative way. It's just that I think that delivering the message is more important than the 'lol' factor, and maybe in this case the message is important enough that it would have been better served by some more moderate language. Sure, we're all adults and so on, I'm no shrinking violet myself but I would think twice before writing like that. It's simply not conducive to getting your point across. And, that's a fact, the points are pretty good. Even if Jason Frieds original article gets misrepresented a bit. Jason brought that on himself by making his point in a vacuum, after all he had no idea of the backstory, so he shouldn't have used it as the main point of support for his argument. The trouble now is that Jasons original argument is threatened to be lost because of that, and that's a pity because it too had merit.

ivankirigin 17y ago

I might point out that while Dave says "fuck", he is responding to a blog post whose title implied forced anal sex: "next gen bends over". That is quite offensive, independent of the backward thinking.

borism 17y ago
wtf? Bend over may refer to the action of bending one's body over, as in to pick up something, or, for example, as the hydra does in order to move when hunting, in dancing (like in the various breakdance moves), gymnastics, and sports (like snap football), as well as to be (vaginally or anally) penetrated in sexual activity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bend_over http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bend_over so even if you took bend over literally there's nothing wrong (or anything implying anal sex) in saying that Mint guys bent over to pick-up Intuit's offer. and while Jason Fried has actually added value by using such provocative but eloquent metaphor, Dave McClure has totally subtracted any little value that was in his rant by obscuring it with fucks etc.
- davemc500hats 17y ago
  oh puh-leez... srsly? i don't need to apologize for swearing... and similarly, you don't have to perform semantic acrobatics to find a different definition for "bending over". jason certainly meant the headline in a "don't drop the soap" fashion, just like i meant to use the word "fuck" for emphasis. get over yourself and get off your victorian soapbox. people swear. they've been doing it for hundreds of years. if you can't get past the use of either as a literary form of emphasis, then you're the one being juvenile.

scrame 17y ago

Its not just his style, his content is generally suspect too. His articles tend to focus on really obnoxious and tired metaphors: Metrics for pirates: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/10/startup-metrics-for-pirates-kill-a-feature-fowa-london-oct-2009.html http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/10/startup-metrics-... Hard for a web 2.0 pimp: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/02/its-hard-out-he.html http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/02/its-hard-out-he.... And in general seems to be a big proponent of that really tired "Im a rockstar ninja coder because I write facebook apps in rails" attitude. ( http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/kottke-is-wrong.html http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/kottke-is-wrong.... ) For someone who is a self-styled "master of 500 hats", he could work to be at least a 5 or 6 in writing and text layout.

davemc500hats 17y ago
sorry you feel that way, but i'm actually quite proud of those posts... to each his/her own i guess. for me, both entrepreneurship & technology are about passion. to remove that passion from my writing would seem to miss the point.