Wow. Thanks for putting my presentation on Hacker News. I believe this is my first appearance here. :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask! (p.s. thanks Jerome for jumping in! that's why he's an amazing cofounder!)<p>And point taken re: stock photos, not putting all of the points up front (more for the audiences sake) and using Guy Kawasaki's stuff...
Gems! I just went through this & felt compelled to thank - dropped a note to author.<p>Very nice presentation with plenty of pictures & amazingly good words of wisdom all through.<p>One thing that stood out for me is this: "just because your competitors have raised more $$ doesn't mean they will win. (we've watched 10 competitors raise oodles of dough and then shutter or pivot)". (paraphrased it).
I'd add "know when to quit". Determination by itself is great, but sometimes the right thing to do is to abandon your current startup and work on something else. How do you know when to quit? Unfortunately, there's no formula for that. (My tendency, if anything, is to quit too late.)
these are good slides. just realized that buyosphere is the same as pinterest.<p>one succeeded and one didn't (or maybe hasn't yet?). my first observation about buyosphere is that the name itself drives users away. to the user, it kind of sounds like spam, a site where they have to buy stuff.<p>and..."pinterest" is resonates better with the user.<p>so give a choice, i'd probably choose pinterest, even though the two sites you could say are similar.
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” - Thomas Edison. I've never seen that quote before but I love it. Great slideshow and thanks for sharing.
I clicked the first 2 or 3 slides, and did not see all ten mistakes listed at once. I am NOT going to click through 60 odd slides to see if it might be worth my time to click through 60 odd slides.<p>Probably decent advice in here, the comment is more on attracting views. Let me know it's worth it.
She obviously didn't get the memo about the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint.<p><a href="http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html</a><p>If I had been in a room where she presented this live, I would've fallen asleep in about 5 minutes.
I like the point about how being in covers of tech blogs doesn't mean much. It's all mostly noise, and if one did a study, I bet they'd find the failure rate of startups covered by tech blogs to be around the same as the overall failure rate of the average business. E
Bone - pick:<p>Please, if you are going to upload a presentation online after giving it, have a version tailored for Slideshare or Speakerdeck.<p>Please for the love of all that is holy in the world: stop with the meme's, stock photo + funny/ironic text. Getty Images et al have some funny stuff, and if you type "guy frustrated with the world with frizzy hair" you'll likely find something, but it's over-played.<p>For the most part, presentations work better online as a visual accompaniment to a really well thought out and concise blog post.<p>With no info graphics please.