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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

by 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.
  - rantfoil 17y ago
    Between this thread and the Dustin Curtis mob lyching, I think the larger problem is that of tone, and not of content. It's fine to provide constructive criticism, but these threads are not constructive. They're wholesale character assassination and haughty dismissal of entire business strategies.
    - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
      This isn't going to make me very popular, but I think you have a key point here. This is a "your baby is ugly" situation. Sometimes the baby is ugly. Don't mean it won't turn out to cure cancer, don't mean it ain't a great thing, just it ain't hitting on much with us so far. In these situations quite naturally the parents have tendency to be overly-touchy. Internet posters, and this group especially, have a tendency to be arrogant jerks (myself included). I'll just say it: some folks need to get a thicker skin. Some others learn to be more democratic. Lots of blame to go around everywhere. Internet text, whether posting, email, tweets, or whatever, is just really tough to do well. But for this board to work like it is supposed to -- providing help and assistance to startups -- it's critical to be able to provide negative feedback, even if we screw it up from time to time.
- axod 17y ago
  I'm not saying the Vidly guys are not going to be successful at all. I'm just skeptical that "HD video for twitter" is a good idea, or a profitable one (Unless twitter aquire to pump the bubble some more). I'm sure they'll likely iterate on the idea, but I think feedback is always useful. I really don't see how you can claim it's "trolling" to give feedback on an idea. That's what makes HN useful IMHO. If we want "That's nice dear, what a great idea" we go to our parents... surely?
  - pg 17y ago
    This If there's a sign of a bubble, it's companies building things that already exist, on top of companies that have no business model. is not simply feedback on an idea, is it?
    - axod 17y ago
      In my own way it was supposed to be. It translates as: * I think this idea is risky (building on another startup with no clear business model) * I don't see the value add (already exists) I expected a reply saying why it's not as risky as it seems, and how they're doing something fundamentally different from all the other video sharing sites out there. Sometimes we all take shortcuts when giving feedback. Sorry if it was taken as a snipe, insulting or a trollish comment.

by jawngee 17y ago

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.
- rantfoil 17y ago
  Between this thread and the Dustin Curtis mob lyching, I think the larger problem is that of tone, and not of content. It's fine to provide constructive criticism, but these threads are not constructive. They're wholesale character assassination and haughty dismissal of entire business strategies.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    This isn't going to make me very popular, but I think you have a key point here. This is a "your baby is ugly" situation. Sometimes the baby is ugly. Don't mean it won't turn out to cure cancer, don't mean it ain't a great thing, just it ain't hitting on much with us so far. In these situations quite naturally the parents have tendency to be overly-touchy. Internet posters, and this group especially, have a tendency to be arrogant jerks (myself included). I'll just say it: some folks need to get a thicker skin. Some others learn to be more democratic. Lots of blame to go around everywhere. Internet text, whether posting, email, tweets, or whatever, is just really tough to do well. But for this board to work like it is supposed to -- providing help and assistance to startups -- it's critical to be able to provide negative feedback, even if we screw it up from time to time.
axod 17y ago
I'm not saying the Vidly guys are not going to be successful at all. I'm just skeptical that "HD video for twitter" is a good idea, or a profitable one (Unless twitter aquire to pump the bubble some more). I'm sure they'll likely iterate on the idea, but I think feedback is always useful. I really don't see how you can claim it's "trolling" to give feedback on an idea. That's what makes HN useful IMHO. If we want "That's nice dear, what a great idea" we go to our parents... surely?
- pg 17y ago
  This If there's a sign of a bubble, it's companies building things that already exist, on top of companies that have no business model. is not simply feedback on an idea, is it?
  - axod 17y ago
    In my own way it was supposed to be. It translates as: * I think this idea is risky (building on another startup with no clear business model) * I don't see the value add (already exists) I expected a reply saying why it's not as risky as it seems, and how they're doing something fundamentally different from all the other video sharing sites out there. Sometimes we all take shortcuts when giving feedback. Sorry if it was taken as a snipe, insulting or a trollish comment.