

What does "it's a good start" really mean. - cosminro
http://okvivi.com/?p=55
Lost in translation type differences in evaluating projects for people in US, Romania or the startup community.
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jcampbell1
This strikes me as very true, but irrelevant. As an American I say something
positive to every startup founder I encounter, but secretly think they are
nuts. Had I met the founders of these companies, below is what I would have
thought:

Heroku: Sounds nice but impossible to deliver. Even if you do, no one is going
to trust their business to your startup's platform.

Dropbox: Yet another backup solution that is going nowhere.

AirBnb: Have fun building a marketplace. Chicken and egg problems are
impossible to solve.

I have learned to not trust my instincts. Now I tell startups, "Sounds cool,
but why are you at a tech event? You should be at an event for
fashion/teachers/bar owners/tour guides/whoever your customer is. Why are you
clowning around seeking reassurance from from other programmers?"

~~~
Okvivi
I think there are benefits and drawbacks to both being supportive even if you
don't think that the idea is good, and to being brutally honest.

After living here long enough I'm no longer trying to judge, it's just the way
things are, and I just learned to translate. That's why I made the graphs.

I think it's only irrelevant if you understand this difference of translation
and adapt to it.

Not everybody understands it though, specially when you first move here or
when you first have contact with the US. I know it took me a non trivial
amount of time to realize it.

~~~
jcampbell1
I think your piece is interesting, informative, useful, and well written. I
just don't think others' opinion on ideas are particularly relevant. My
opinion on Dropbox/Heroku/AirBnb's ideas would have all fallen on the left
side of the bell curve, which only shows my opinion on ideas is irrelevant. I
am just saying that the position one is placed on the bell curve is not
important. Understanding different cultures is very important.

I won't address the relative merits of different cultural norms on being
supportive vs being brutally honest.

~~~
ido

        I just don't think others' opinion on ideas 
        are particularly relevant. My opinion on
        Dropbox/Heroku/AirBnb's ideas would have all 
        fallen on the left side of the bell curve, 
        which only shows my opinion on ideas is 
        irrelevant.
    
    

I think what you are trying to say is "take advice/opinions with a grain of
salt".

I've recieved plenty of bad (and good) feedback on products that ended up
being successful, but if someone who is considered a world-renown expert in my
field tells me I have problems A, B & C I'm going to listen carefully.

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coenhyde
As an Australian I can relate to this. Often American's think I'm putting our
startup down, just because I'm not overly excited saying everything is awesome
and fantastic. I'm extremely positive and have absolute confidence that we
will succeed. But I prefer to look at things objectively and to tackle the
problems. However American's translate my language into "my startup sucks".

So recently I've been training myself to talk roses when dealing with
American's. :)

~~~
timknauf
We're just across the Tasman from you, and have experienced the exact same
thing with our games startup. When my (admittedly modest, even by Kiwi
standards) co-founder was over at E3, he reportedly initally caused great
confusion amongst Californians by describing our games as 'merely' "pretty
good".

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gojomo
I'm guilty of overusing 'great', especially as the first word (actually full
sentence) of an email response.

In that colloquial context, it means, "total assent/acknowledgement with what
you've proposed or reported", rather than a quality evaluation.

If aimed at a more concrete bit of work output, 'great' is more likely to be a
superlative quality evaluation.

For example:

Q: "What about this general logo theme for exploration?" [a proposed abstract
direction/plan]

A: "Great!" [means, I agree that's worth pursuing, let's see where it goes]

Q: "I've made this logo treatment."

A: "Great!" [Somewhat vague; definitely means I'm glad we've reached this
point (regardless of the treatment quality), but might (if directly gesturing
at the object) also imply some evaluative approval]

Q: "How would you rate logo treatment #2?"

A: "Great!" [this finally really means it's evaluated as great on the relevant
scale]

Even 'excellent', 'fantastic', and other adjectives are often used this same
way: casually used to signal sufficient approval, when describing something
prospectively/abstractly/directionally, but only being strong signals of
judgement when applied to specific, concrete, completed instances.

------
rwhitman
Continuing the generalizations depicted in this post - I would say that the
politely disingenuous "this is awesome" response is actually endemic to the
West Coast. I've found folks in the Bay Area in particular have a strong
aversion to "negative energy".

Having spent some time on both coasts I'd say its not necessarily an
"American" thing, its more a "Californian" thing. Here in NYC, I'm learning
that negative feedback is pretty common and often encouraged.

~~~
hvs
Here in the midwest, "this is awesome" is not commonly heard, but people are
generally averse to confrontation. So, they will most likely give a "that's
interesting" up to, and past, the midpoint of the normal distribution
depicted. If it's really a terrible idea in their eyes, they will most likely
make a sarcastic comment. Midwesterns (as a general stereotype, which is what
we are talking about here) also tend to be less than energetic about new and
different things, so no matter how good your idea is, you will be seen as
crazy (or stupid) for trying to start a company in the first place.

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snprbob86
Maybe I'm a cynic, but I tend to think that a left-leaning log normal
distribution is more likely:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+log+normal+distrib...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+log+normal+distribution+with+sigma+.6+and+mu+.5)

------
eel
I'm fascinated by cultural nuances like this. I really, really wish there was
a website where you could look up things like this based on culture. I don't
know how one would start to gather the data for a site like that.

~~~
gbog
You can start with something more concrete, like color names, ie where stop
the yellow and start the red on a rainbow. But in fact, this is just a matter
of definition, and is not that interesting. I would find more interesting to
diff daily life things, like fridge content, number of close relatives,
hygienic habits.

------
Spenny
I am not sure that the American viewpoint is necessarily bad in this case,
especially as it pretains to working on projects. I think it is pretty safe to
assume that people are more likely to pursue something further if they have
positive encouragement. Thus, if "it's a good start" generally means that it
is an awesome idea to a group of people, couldn't that be translated into
meaning that those people continue working on something after they have shown
it to others more often? I have nothing to back this up with, but it is just
how I would interpret the idea.

Additionally, I always hear the line "it's a good start" as an acknowledgement
that the person sees some potential in the idea, but that it needs a lot of
work to achieve said potential. In fact, I can't remember a time that I have
heard "it's a good start" by itself in a sentence. It is usually accompanied
by a ", but ...", and I think the person behind the idea would know that this
is coming, as he/she should know that there is still a lot of work that can be
done.

~~~
tripzilch
It's _incredibly_ tiresome in a group, when you can't even bring up a random
side thought without people going crazy about it.

Especially once you start to notice they don't quite mean it but just like
"being part" of the conversation by drowning it out in praises, to hear their
own voice, which is natural, and all very sweet and positive, but it's not
very constructive.

It might seem motivating at first, the praise to urge the other guy to
continue like that, but at some point it becomes laziness, because you're not
adding anything to the conversation or thinking for yourself, just going "yeah
yeah great awesome!" and you're not being useful at all, anymore.

It's kind of a bit like what Douglas Adams said, "if their mouths stop moving,
their brains might start working".

------
dools
This was hilarious :)

But I think you left off the one, international word for "totally fucking
awesome I don't care where you come from":

WOW

If anyone says wow, you know you've got a hit.

~~~
Terretta
Unless you've just bumped into Cassie from the first UK series of Skins.
They'd have you believe UK girls say "Wow" to everything.

------
TamDenholm
I'd like to see a graph for British people.

~~~
kslimbs
Feedback from us Brits is even harder to parse. I always point those who are
struggling to this handy table:

<http://yfrog.com/z/gy5gxvxj>

~~~
paganel
Funny, I've worked for both British and American startup-owners, and I could
certainly relate to both charts (yours, and the OP's). I liked the British
style more, but that's maybe I'm also Romanian and as the OP also showed we're
kind of used to being negative about all things :) Whom I didn't like at all
were the French (I did work for such company for a year or so), but maybe that
was caused by my former bosses having graduated from École Normale Supérieure
which made them a little, how should I say, arrogant.

~~~
toumhi
Sorry to hear that (I'm French myself, but have worked in US and now in
Netherlands). Apart from arrogant bosses, do you have more gripes about
french's work culture? I think we are pretty pessimistic in general,
especially compared to americans :-) But I think that's more of a european
trait (we call it being honest).

~~~
paganel
Nope, not really :) In fact, I'm a pretty big fan of French culture in general
(being able to read Balzac or Stendhal in original is certainly a treat for
me). About the French work culture in particular, my other "small" complaint
is that I think the 35-hour week is not going to work. I went to Perpignan as
a tourist in 2007 or so, and I was a little bit surprised that the only
"tourism info center" had a 1h-break in the middle of day, with nobody left to
answer requests. That's not a French-only problem, though, I saw similar
issues in Barcelona or in Greece.

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martinkallstrom
I like the faux-2D diagrams that are in reality one dimensional. Inventive to
label the Y-axis "stuff" and give it a recognizable curve to make the post
seem _scentific_.

(Don't know how to rewrite the above to remove the traces of sarcasm. It's
just an observation, I'm not trying to depreciate the OP)

~~~
martinkallstrom
After reflecting on this with a colleague I realized I was wrong. The OP has a
thought-out reasoning around the choice of distribution of "stuff" as well.

Downvote well deserved :)

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VonLipwig
American boss just told me what I had made was awesome. After reading this
article this morning I am significantly less flattered than I was last week.

~~~
Okvivi
You should send him a link to my blog post. :-)

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smoyer
I'm American ... I tend to look for the positive in other people's ideas but I
can be brutally critical of even my best ideas. Self-deprecation is an art-
form best practiced in the company of friends who will contradict you :)

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nicksergeant
It means "This is good, but it has a long way to go."

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diolpah
I must be living in a different version of the United States than the author
is. I don't think I've ever experienced the kind of false optimistic outlook
referred to here. Is this a Silicon Valley thing?

Most people I talk to about our business are fairly realistic about the
challenges we face, or progress thus far, etc.

