
Ask HN: anyone else sick of startups for startups posted on HN? - padseeker
I've seen 3 different "Review my startup" posts on hacker news in the past week that was a startup whose sole focus is curating content for startups. I hate to sound like an ass, but it feels a bit like navel gazing or preaching to the choir. It would be one thing if those startups are doing something truly extraordinary, but so far I can't even say that.<p>I realize that hacker news is the ideal place for marketing to other startups, so kudos to you for knowing your market. But it feels a bit like when I played in a band and most of the audience watching were in other bands. If you are going play to a bunch of other musicians you better be amazing and blow people away or have something that will make jaded people remember you, i.e. amazing musicianship, great energy, brilliant songs or talent, even something unique like using different instruments like accordion or tuba. Otherwise you are wasting your time.<p>Similarly the expectations for building a startup for startups is very high, and these little projects for curating content for other startups when there are already some brilliant sites for startups does not bode well for your idea. Sorry to sound like ass, believe it or not I'm trying to help.
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edw519
Hacker News is our gym. We're just working out.

You bring up an great point about excellence and applicability. I agree. Just
remember that each of us is in a different place and many of us are not as far
along as others. Better to get feedback here first before approaching others
in the real world.

The rest of you, keep those "Review my startup" posts coming. We won't be
bashful. Promise.

~~~
Peroni
_Hacker News is our gym. We're just working out._ \- Possibly the best analogy
for HN I've heard.

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runjake
I'm sick of a lot of things... but one of them is all the "Ask HN: Anyone else
sick of $foo" submissions. If you don't like a submission, don't click it. If
you think it doesn't belong, flag it.

If other people were, in fact, sick of topics they'd disappear off the front
page rather quickly.

~~~
chrisdevereux
Although this post was upvoted by quite a few people...

I think it really depends on the tone of the post. If you don't really see the
point in something and it turns out there _is_ a point, it's better to say
something and find out, than just ignore it.

Of course, if the point of a "anyone else sick of..." is just to be snarky,
then I'd agree. But this felt like an honest question to me.

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brudgers
There's a difference between, "I am sick of..." [as implied by "anyone else"]
and "Are there too many of..."

In the first case the question doesn't facilitate investigation and reasoned
argument, but rather venting and defensive rebuttal. The question isn't about
analyzing the content but a rallying cry.

~~~
chrisdevereux
Fair point. The title could definitely be phrased better.

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ZanderEarth32
"If you are going play to a bunch of other musicians you better be amazing and
blow people away or have something that will make jaded people remember you,
i.e. amazing musicianship, great energy, brilliant songs or talent, even
something unique like using different instruments like accordion or tuba.
Otherwise you are wasting your time."

I look it at more from the angle that if you want to become a better musician
you should play with musicians who exceed your ability and learn from them. HN
isn't the big stage in my opinion. Maybe it's more of a jam session or an
audition, where you can show what you've got and display the potential.

I honestly don't think there is too much promoting of new start ups, but the
"Show HN" makes it easy to avoid them if I wanted to.

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zalew
Like Oracle sells software to companies making software. It's called B2B.

The quality of those 'startups for startups' thingies is another thing,
obviously some of them will fall more into a 'wannabe for wannabies' category,
but it doesn't mean the model is broken.

When it comes to 'preaching to the choir', I feel like all those 'why you
should start a company / learn to code' are exactly that.

~~~
btilly
The key to B2B is finding customers that actually have money.

Startups, practically by definition, generally don't.

~~~
jeremyjh
A startup with no money is not in business. Yes they have limited funding, and
they have to use that funding wisely to build their product and customer base.
But if you sell them a tool that will clearly help them to do those things,
they will spend money. Heroku is the canonical example of this. They extract a
premium price from many small startups who value a hassle-free production
environment more than a few hundred dollars a month they could save by hosting
themselves.

~~~
btilly
Do you think that Heroku makes most of its money from startups? I don't.

However they definitely do believe in getting people to be customers early.
Hence they market to startups in the hope that they'll grow up.

~~~
jeremyjh
I don't know about most of their money, but almost all of the companies listed
on their (fairly extensive) success page are start-ups or small businesses.

To me, Heroku makes the most sense when you are building a business that may
scale very quickly, and especially one that does not have a full-time
sysadmin. It also makes sense for web apps that will stay very small and
unlikely to grow that much past the free tier, but those are pretty much a
loss-leader for Heroku.

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tinco
In case of a gold rush, sell shovels?

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jasonkester
The thing is, businesses like that work.

Compare the tool seller you describe to this other "review my startup" that
happens to be on the "new" page at the moment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4904624>

With no additional information, would you expect a company selling a product
that fixes a real problem that real businesses with real money actually have
and are willing to spend money fixing to be more or less profitable than the
startup in the linked article? How many Instagrams does
instagramfixerthing.com have to connect to how many Twitters before they are
matching the revenue from a single $50/month plan from a boring tools company?

B2B makes a lot of sense. So that's why people build B2B companies.

~~~
padseeker
B2B is great - my startup is B2B. I'm just saying I am seeing a lot of
startups whose sole market is other startups. And they are not impressive.
Wouldn't you say the hacker news crowd is a bit jaded? Review my startup is
great, but not sure if the startup you built is a startup for startups is the
right direction for most of these people unless they do something amazing. And
so far I have not seen it.

~~~
frankdenbow
The conventional wisdom is to start with a niche, do well, and expand. They
may not be impressive to you yet, but certainly some of them have the ability
to do more that what you can see initially.

~~~
stephenhuey
And if they can't come to the HN crowd to have their ideas vetted, where would
padseeker have them go instead?

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ef4
It's not that these ideas are necessarily bad. But they need to convince me
that they're not being done purely out of the fear of getting out and talking
to potential customers.

Make a product you would use yourself is all well and good, but there are two
ways to get there: limit your products to the domains you know, or go out and
learn new domains.

I believe the second strategy has a dramatically higher chance of success,
because you can pick from a near-infinite choice of domains, many of which are
woefully lacking in people who understand software.

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nekopa
Maybe these start-ups _will_ be something extraordinary.

I am sure most of us here have looked at a particular start-up and thought 'No
way in hell that will fly!'. For me it was Facebook.

I am not sure of which ones you were talking about, but I did see the one on
curating info for start-ups. That could turn into an interesting business:
link it with the the topic on 'how would I get started' and it could turn into
an uber FAQ for start-up newbies (maybe even keeping HN clear of some noise)
Breed it with the idea of stackoverflow and you could have an interesting site
which collects info instead of creating new info (there's some great stuff out
on the web, but, there is a lot of it). So who knows what it could become.

So three in a week isn't bad. It could be great in the end.

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threepipeproblm
Honest question - before you complained, did you make any effort to understand
the origins of Hacker News, and why it exists? Before stomping on a flower,
you might endeavor to understand something about the soil it sprang from; as
well as whether it is rare or common, and what nutrients it needs. If you do
that, you will understand why HN needs startup posts, but probably not you (or
me).

HN exists to serve the needs of a specific startup community. There is nothing
wrong with this. If the flowers bring forth fruit that can entice we who do
not have the needs of that community in mind to eat it, and spread the seeds,
fine. But asking the organism to bear forth, say, twinkies, is a waste of
time.

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halis
Well I think it's important that people bring these ideas they have to
fruition. Because you don't know what is going to be completely disruptive
going forward. Look at Twilio. Anyone following their entrepreneurial dreams
is to be commended in my book.

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codegeek
Startups for startups is a real need and even pg encourages startup for
startups here (item #30) <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

Now, as far as the quality of startups for startups is concerned, you can
always argue whether they are good or bad etc. So you saying that you are sick
of sick of startups for startups is probably no different than someone saying
"I am just sick of all these Show HN posts" because essentially both are
trying to achieve the same thing: get their startups shared with HN community
(regardless of quality, purpose, type etc.)

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ryporter
Your complaint seems to have two main components: (1) that the startups exist
at all, and (2) that they were posted to HN. While you may be right about the
quality of the ideas, I definitely want people to continue to post any and all
startups for review on HN. Both great and horrible ideas tend to lead to
intelligent, informative back-and-forth in the comments from which I feel like
a learn quite a bit even as just a lurker.

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melvinmt
When in search for a new idea one starts looking at a well-known problem
domain, so for most of us who work at startups, talk about startups and live
amongst startups, solving startup problems is a very natural thing to do.
While it does allow us to be domain experts in this field I do agree that this
whole thing can feel a bit 'meta' and inflated.

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pestaa
I somewhat agree with this sentiment, but the `musicians playing for
musicians` analogy just does not make sense -- it implies the target audience
(the other startups) has the same skillset the new product demonstrates.

However, I too feel these new startups are ends in themselves, but then again
I'm not in their target audience.

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meaty
Yes definitely. I'm here for the technical discussion which I think is
unsurpassed.

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dr_doom
You posted a thread asking for help on your startup after being a member for
15 days.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4240543>

Seems like an unfair rant. Flagged.

~~~
padseeker
fair enough. Although I feel like you missed my point. Review my startup is
great. And all for people building a startup for startups.

I'm just seeing a lot of startups whose focus is to market to startups. And I
feel like many people might be spinning their wheels by building for a market
that is oversaturated.

What the hell do I know? Keep building startups for startups and asking for a
review on HN. I'm just concerned that those people who are building their
startup for startups might be wasting their time. And I myself and finding
myself irritated about seeing nearly the same exact startup idea within a
week. So flag me, I deserve it.

~~~
dr_doom
Sorry, my post came off as being a total dick. I didn't flag it lol.

~~~
padseeker
lol, thanks man - it's alright. The title of the post was not quite on target.
Startup for startups are alright if it is something compelling.

I wrote something on "review my startup" for another site where there was a a
list of categories for tutorials, and under the javascript category were
videos for JAVA. Between that and the 2 posts this morning for startups
curating conent for startups I just found myself annoyed, like "really, is
this what is has come to?". I did sign up for user diary, a start up for
startups but it struck me as compelling.

Your apology has been upvoted.

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jere
Darn, because my next project is for startups.

~~~
padseeker
don't not do it because of me. Just make sure it is compelling and interesting
or creates real value. To hell with this post if you are doing something at
least slightly different.

All I'm saying as a HN reader is I am seeing the same type of post - a startup
for startups that is not doing anything new or compelling.

~~~
jere
>All I'm saying as a HN reader is I am seeing the same type of post

Ok, I can definitely see that. I personally hate seeing clones and "me-too"
offerings.

My idea, in case anyone cares: naming. The "From Holden" debacle has reminded
me how people struggle with naming and I've kicking around the idea of a
naming tool for a while.

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benjlang
I'm sick of hearing news about different accelerators, there are way too many
being posted on HN.

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nighthawk24
S2S anyone? Startups to Startups!

~~~
sharemywin
S2S4S - I'm working on this startup for startups who market for startups. I'll
post your startup on hacker news and filter out complaining and only send you
constructive criticism.

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zgembo
"Review my startup" posts should be moved to <http://www.pivoted.co>

~~~
padseeker
I still think people should post "Review my startup" on hacker news. I am just
seeing the same exact idea over and over again. I will definitely check out
pivoted.co

