HN won't probably like the tone of this one. But one thing I want to emphasise from the post: <i>you don't need to be innovative</i><p>I see a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs wanting to build something, and get obsessed about finding a new idea that's never done before, and failing at it.<p>As if there was only one of everything in the world. There cannot be another restaurant in this city because there's already one. No one can make money selling phones, shoes, browsers, utility software, because they already exist. Nonsense. Either you have a new idea and invent a monopoly, or you have an old idea but you make it better. And you probably don't want to build a monopoly just yet, that's a whole other game.<p>The bonus of being a startup is that you can afford to try out new approaches to old problems. You don't need a crazy new idea, just to make a marginally better product than the competition. Effort > originality.
This reads as if The Dude Lebowski was a software engineer. And that's immensely refreshing, almost as entertaining as Mataroa's blog posts (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329</a>).<p>In line with other commenters, I think the biggest value of the post resides in remembering folks to think critically and not going full cargo cult.
This is some creative (and cringe) marketing for a calendar app.<p>To summarize in a sentence;
Basically build something that people want, make it accessible and don't burn out on useless cargo-culting
For bootstrappers, the philosophy here is sound. Don't make a fancy restaurant, just build a better burger joint. There are endless burger places. Why? Because people love burgers. Innovation is great once you have money to burn. Until then, be the corner roast beef place that everybody loves and is an institution. The business model is sound, no great innovation is necessary, just hard work, persistence, cleverness yes but not genius. Startup this way is still challenging but not impossible, and initially no major pivots are needed. Customer acquisition is still the most difficult part, and that takes time no matter how well you are funded.
Great read.<p>If you are not going to take VC money, then I think this attitude should absolutely be the default approach unless you've got a proven reason not to. There is a large world to be tapped outside of VC funded category leaders where there is enormous, life changing amounts of money to be made by intelligent, pragmatic founders just trying to build real businesses.<p>And the reality of these businesses is that you don't need to be the best out of everyone -- you just need to be the right kind of good enough: better than the alternatives.
Absolutely golden.<p>Paul Graham et al. are spewing out these godawful, borderline fucking idiotic ideas and he giggles as all the emptyheaded fucking idiots copy it, try to interpret it and gospel it like some fucking world changing mantra. Wake the fuck up naive plus stupid mudabitches, those who have the brains often feed shit to you, so you won't succeed.<p>Really, people are like pigeons. Walking around and picking up all kinds of debris, thinking that it will change their business or it has some groundbreaking idea enclosed within. Why? Because people are STUPID, utterly stupid, brainless monkeys.<p>He said that the sky is not blue, but green. He is an established person with high net wealth, he must be right. So let's say the sky is green. Fake it till you make it, suuuuuure.<p>Read books so you could hone your bullshit filter.
This would be a a great article if instead of "fuck off" it used the phrase "focus", all the points are valid, and the anger against low mental effort conventional herd mentality is also justifiable. Maybe to a a certaian extent, the strong wordage exposes a contradiction: why did you write this, if what you're thinking is only "F* off"...
One thing I do enjoy is low cost clones of mainstream software. So more power to this guy. A reason I use Zoho is that it’s a complete suite I can use at low cost to run a company. There’s lots of non venture scale businesses where you don’t raise and costs matter. And software like this helps. If he can offer it at low cost that’s great!
This post reminds me of the John Goodman "The Position of F*ck You" scene in the 2014 movie "The Gambler", not only the tone but also the the attitude of self-sufficiency.
You are not the smartest person in the world. You are lucky if you get one thing better than everyone else, but you never know everything better than everyone else. So sorry, but fuck hubris and I'm going to follow the best practices whenever I don't know a specific reason why I can do better.
Reminiscent of <a href="https://programming-motherfucker.com/" rel="nofollow">https://programming-motherfucker.com/</a><p>Perhaps the attitude is just moving up the management stack? :-)
I am not even remotely an entrepreneur, but if I were then this is totally the sort I would want to be!<p>8<-----------<p>I agree. The path is not easy but I'm not worried. As I said in other comments all Neeto products are "by products" of my consulting company. Even if I have zero customers today we are profitable as a whole company.<p>To prove my sincerity I have not yet built a way to charge money. Sign up for NeetoCal and there is no way for you to pay me money today.<p>Unlike Silicon valley fucking notion that you need to go "all in". I'm not all in. All in means I will cross the river or I'll drown. Fuck that shit. That's too risky. If Neeto doesn't work out nothing will change for me. That's why I can afford to compete on fucking price.
If you look closer, you can see what "Founder mode" is really about, and it's right there plain as daylight in the original post:<p>> Airbnb's free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley.<p>> free cash flow margin<p>In the end, Paul Graham only cares about how you run your company insofar as it's VC funded, and aimed towards making him and his tech-bro buddies as much money as possible (any other externalities be damned).