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Vidly is building on Twitter in the same way Micro-soft (as it was then called) was building on the Altair. So sure, Vidly could IPO. Their path from here to

by pg 17y ago

Vidly is building on Twitter in the same way Micro-soft (as it was then called) was building on the Altair. So sure, Vidly could IPO. Their path from here to there would be as tortuous as Microsoft's, but all the best companies are transformed as they grow. All you need initially is a starting point, to engage with users. You are in effect framing the question as "could Vidly, without writing another line of code, have a successful outcome?" Probably not, but that's not the question that matters. The question that matters is "could Vidly, starting from this point, have a successful outcome?" The answer to that is, of course they could; any point where you've made something people want is probably good enough, barring certain pathological exceptions. When you and the TechCrunch trolls make fun of startups launching their initial version, you're like someone making fun of Dell when it was just Michael Dell assembling computers, or Microsoft when it was just a pair of undergrads writing a Basic interpreter. How could such companies possibly grow huge?

jawngee 17y ago
What an epic stretch. Altair had a business model, they sold something of value for money. Microsoft sold something for money. Neither twitter nor vidly sell anything for money and both will be struggling with monetization schemes for some time to come. Furthermore, the simplicity of what they do will be cloned and aped in months if not weeks, leaving them scrambling to add value, thus complicating their offering, effectively killing what little value they have now. The other problem here is that there are heavy brands that already exist that can sink the whole ship if they chose to, creating a mountain of Everest proportions for Vidly to climb. Look at how many URL shortening services exist today. Simple ideas get cloned quickly, then eventually open sourced, shorting the original business to offering infrastructure over product. Unfortunately the infrastructure for Vidly is dumb simple. Give me an account an encoding.com and twitter library and what more do I really need? And before anyone goes off on the famous I could build that in a week, keep in mind I built massify.com's self-scaling cloud-based HD video encoding solution in about a month, so I know what I'm talking about.
- pg 17y ago
  It's always what you call an "epic stretch" for any company to make it from startup to IPO. By the time they IPOed, Microsoft was so huge, and so different from what they started with, that it's irrelevant what sort of business model they had when they were a couple undergrads writing an interpreter for MITS. Why don't you cut these guys a break? They've just launched. When I recently wrote If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you waited too long to launch. I was thinking of TechCrunch. I'm embarrassed for HN to find this attitude here.
  - wensing 17y ago
    Not defending the attitude, but wrt fostering a better attitude on HN towards YC-startups, maybe some "Meet the founders" threads would help? Purpose: provide HN readers a chance to offer constructive criticism to YC-startups early on, and give those startups some crowd-sourced wisdom from a lot of smart HN readers (there's an example below where Vidly got a valuable nugget on video compression). In other words, get the "Review my startup" thread going a lot earlier than Demo Day. Maybe these threads could be invite-only, or accessible only to readers over a certain karma threshold? (Another epic stretch: from a community-management standpoint, this may also help bandage the "I got rejected"/"I got accepted" divide.)
  - jawngee 17y ago
    I really think you are in the woods on this one. I think the comparison is particularly weak to the point that there isn't any comparison or that the comparison is so broad it could be applied to anyone and therefore isn't particularly applicable to Vidly. Micro-Soft solved problems that nobody else was solving. And the problems they were solving where enormous. Vidly solves a small problem in a very narrow market. The two just don't add up, regardless of how broadly you want to paint it. I'm curious if we're trolls because we have an opinion, or because we don't share yours? What would be the point of this community if nobody had an opinion? And regardless of the means by which these opinions are phrased, you might want to consider that a community of startup focused people whom are having an unfavorable reaction to a business idea really means. If HN is trolling an idea doesn't mean we are becoming techcrunch, it might mean there is something fundamental about the business idea that isn't jiving.
axod 17y ago
Altair had a business model figured out. Twitter do not. They've sacrificed most of the potential business models in favor of growth. A massive gamble IMHO. Microsoft and Dell had a business model. They sold stuff. Vidly also have a number of free competitors, Microsoft did not at the time. Maybe they have far bigger plans than just "HD video for twitter". If so, it'd be good to know, and if they turn out to be cool, then great - I'll be first to congratulate them :) >> "you're like someone making fun of Dell when it was just Michael Dell assembling computers" Again, the comparison isn't good IMHO. People pay money to purchase computers. There's an obvious business model there. People currently don't pay to upload videos. The potential business model is far harder to see. Couple that with making it "for twitter!" and for me, it looks like a bubble - startups funded to make features to be acquired by another startup. Endless cycle of investor money being pumped in until something explodes. Again, FWIW I wasn't making fun of. But IMHO vidly should rise above the "We're X for twitter". Hopefully they will.
- netcan 17y ago
  Now you are talking specifics. -Twitter doesn't have a business model. OK. So twitter has a better chance of going out of business, maybe, then a company with a business model. Are you saying there is no chance twitter will be around in 5 years time? No? then what is the point of that objection. Who care what Twitter's business model is. You only care about it inasmuch as it affects the stability of Twitter as a platform. -Vidly has free competitors Are you applying this as a general rule? Anyone in a type of business where there are free competitors is disqualified? Sure there are obstacles. The chances of any little company of getting massive are tiny almost by definition. But you haven't put forward anything disqualifying, which is what you are implying.
- grinich 17y ago
  Google didn't have a business model either. People thought they were crazy for keeping ads off their homepage, as was common practice at Yahoo, AltaVista, etc.

by pg 17y ago

jawngee 17y ago

What an epic stretch. Altair had a business model, they sold something of value for money. Microsoft sold something for money. Neither twitter nor vidly sell anything for money and both will be struggling with monetization schemes for some time to come. Furthermore, the simplicity of what they do will be cloned and aped in months if not weeks, leaving them scrambling to add value, thus complicating their offering, effectively killing what little value they have now. The other problem here is that there are heavy brands that already exist that can sink the whole ship if they chose to, creating a mountain of Everest proportions for Vidly to climb. Look at how many URL shortening services exist today. Simple ideas get cloned quickly, then eventually open sourced, shorting the original business to offering infrastructure over product. Unfortunately the infrastructure for Vidly is dumb simple. Give me an account an encoding.com and twitter library and what more do I really need? And before anyone goes off on the famous I could build that in a week, keep in mind I built massify.com's self-scaling cloud-based HD video encoding solution in about a month, so I know what I'm talking about.

pg 17y ago
It's always what you call an "epic stretch" for any company to make it from startup to IPO. By the time they IPOed, Microsoft was so huge, and so different from what they started with, that it's irrelevant what sort of business model they had when they were a couple undergrads writing an interpreter for MITS. Why don't you cut these guys a break? They've just launched. When I recently wrote If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you waited too long to launch. I was thinking of TechCrunch. I'm embarrassed for HN to find this attitude here.
- wensing 17y ago
  Not defending the attitude, but wrt fostering a better attitude on HN towards YC-startups, maybe some "Meet the founders" threads would help? Purpose: provide HN readers a chance to offer constructive criticism to YC-startups early on, and give those startups some crowd-sourced wisdom from a lot of smart HN readers (there's an example below where Vidly got a valuable nugget on video compression). In other words, get the "Review my startup" thread going a lot earlier than Demo Day. Maybe these threads could be invite-only, or accessible only to readers over a certain karma threshold? (Another epic stretch: from a community-management standpoint, this may also help bandage the "I got rejected"/"I got accepted" divide.)
- jawngee 17y ago
  I really think you are in the woods on this one. I think the comparison is particularly weak to the point that there isn't any comparison or that the comparison is so broad it could be applied to anyone and therefore isn't particularly applicable to Vidly. Micro-Soft solved problems that nobody else was solving. And the problems they were solving where enormous. Vidly solves a small problem in a very narrow market. The two just don't add up, regardless of how broadly you want to paint it. I'm curious if we're trolls because we have an opinion, or because we don't share yours? What would be the point of this community if nobody had an opinion? And regardless of the means by which these opinions are phrased, you might want to consider that a community of startup focused people whom are having an unfavorable reaction to a business idea really means. If HN is trolling an idea doesn't mean we are becoming techcrunch, it might mean there is something fundamental about the business idea that isn't jiving.

axod 17y ago

Altair had a business model figured out. Twitter do not. They've sacrificed most of the potential business models in favor of growth. A massive gamble IMHO. Microsoft and Dell had a business model. They sold stuff. Vidly also have a number of free competitors, Microsoft did not at the time. Maybe they have far bigger plans than just "HD video for twitter". If so, it'd be good to know, and if they turn out to be cool, then great - I'll be first to congratulate them :) >> "you're like someone making fun of Dell when it was just Michael Dell assembling computers" Again, the comparison isn't good IMHO. People pay money to purchase computers. There's an obvious business model there. People currently don't pay to upload videos. The potential business model is far harder to see. Couple that with making it "for twitter!" and for me, it looks like a bubble - startups funded to make features to be acquired by another startup. Endless cycle of investor money being pumped in until something explodes. Again, FWIW I wasn't making fun of. But IMHO vidly should rise above the "We're X for twitter". Hopefully they will.

netcan 17y ago
Now you are talking specifics. -Twitter doesn't have a business model. OK. So twitter has a better chance of going out of business, maybe, then a company with a business model. Are you saying there is no chance twitter will be around in 5 years time? No? then what is the point of that objection. Who care what Twitter's business model is. You only care about it inasmuch as it affects the stability of Twitter as a platform. -Vidly has free competitors Are you applying this as a general rule? Anyone in a type of business where there are free competitors is disqualified? Sure there are obstacles. The chances of any little company of getting massive are tiny almost by definition. But you haven't put forward anything disqualifying, which is what you are implying.
grinich 17y ago
Google didn't have a business model either. People thought they were crazy for keeping ads off their homepage, as was common practice at Yahoo, AltaVista, etc.