
Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die. - fixie
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/08/09/yesterday-i-went-to-the-american-idol-for-startups-it-made-me-want-to-die
======
polyfractal
Really enjoying the author's prose. This had me rolling:

>> _It’s like watching some sadist work over a baby lamb with a rusty crowbar
and a broken gin bottle. The names of these startups sound like the products
of an aggressive brain tumor on the frontal lobe. Crowdegy, Placeling, Kouply,
QuoteRobot, Appthwack, Makegood, Onthego, Nickler, Kahal, Tanzio, Taskk.
They’re all whimsical and unique in exactly the same way._

~~~
trevelyan
Actually, I quite like the name Appthwack.

~~~
smacktoward
For those of you who are too young to have lived through the original dot-com
boom, I can't recommend this 1999 article on company naming from Salon highly
enough:

<http://www.salon.com/1999/11/30/naming/>

Read the whole thing, it's hilarious.

As soon as I saw the parade of names in the OP I was reminded of one of the
names the naming consultants in the the Salon piece devised -- "Jamcracker":

 _When Altman and Manning presented the name Jamcracker to a client recently,
the reception was not everything they had hoped for. "I put the name up in
front of their creative people," Manning says. "There were a couple of women
sitting in. One of them got up and said, 'Oh, that's disgusting.' Another
said, 'This is really sick.' I said, 'Excuse me, what are you talking about?'
They said, 'We can't explain it, but that name is just creeping us out. We
don’t know what it is, but could you take it off the wall, please?'" Manning
remains mystified by the incident. "There's apparently some strange,
uncomfortable meaning attached to it in the minds of some women," he says.
"God knows what that could be."_

~~~
RyanIyengar
The Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN) enables Service Providers to
unify the delivery of disparate cloud services to their direct customers and
through their channels. Key features include:

<http://www.jamcracker.com/>

Oh goodness

~~~
visualcsharp
Most of their Web site seems to consist of jargon and puffery--"across the
enterprise," "enables" and "ecosystems."

~~~
muzz
They raised over $142M including $100M in one round in Oct 2000. Wired
article:

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/jamcracker.html>

------
jboggan
"These women and men have come together to do brutal violence to the English
language, to leave the spoken and written word bloodied and victimized on a
cold cement floor, wishing for the sweet relief of death."

I will read anything this author writes. Thanks for spotlighting this blog.

Tip: if you want your blog READ instead of skimmed for buzzwords and facts,
make sweet love to the English language. Then worry about your content.

~~~
smsm42
I'm sorry but I completely disagree with that. I got a distinct feeling that
the author of this blog is in deep passionate love with himself and his
writing, and the topic he is writing about is remote secondary to the flourish
of his expression. I personally don't care too much about this flourish, when
I get craving for it, I can read classic authors that tell real stories about
fascinating things in great language and not a bit of snobbery about some
geeks naming their companies wrong. When I read technical or around-technical
article, I expect a decent command of English, but I expect the author to
worry about delivering his point and not about loving his own voice so much
that he can't stop embellishing and loses he sight of why he's doing it.
Reporting and opera aria are different genres.

In this article, what is the point of it? That all startup ideas suck because
they think too small? And the author instead thinks they should be doing...
well, he doesn't. He just thinks they are named wrong, think wrong, dress
wrong, speak wrong, live wrong and their future is wrong. Everything is wrong
except for the one shining light that is the author of the article and his
perfect whimsical metaphor-filled style. Bleh.

~~~
GnarlinBrando
I get both of those impressions (your's and one up). Just because someone is
an egocentric narcissist doesn't mean that they aren't on to something. In
fact, as they say, it takes one to know one.

------
kstenerud
"Hell, as I check my e-mail, I notice with a resigned shame that my
coworkers—smart people I consider to be excellent writers—are unironically
using the word “spearhead” as a verb in an e-mail thread."

Aaaaand this is where I dismiss the author as simply looking for things to
complain about.

Complaining about names (as if that even matters). Complaining about the way
they dress. Complaining about the way they talk.

Might as well end it with "get off my lawn!"

~~~
Apocryphon
Buzzwords must die.

~~~
samstave
I feel like you and I have synergy on that opinion.

------
mamoswined
"The women have it tougher. Their business casual is neither business-minded
nor all that casual, a confusing melange of sundresses and sensible slacks,
gossamer sweaters tossed over spaghetti straps."

That seems weirdly sexist to me. I guess I really like working in tech because
I can wear generally what I want, and often in the summer, that means
sundresses, instead of a stifling business suit. And I guess I always assumed
the tech world, particularly the start-up scene, wasn't judging me as less
business-like because of it.

TLDR: yes, a lot of the startup world is full of shallow business-speak, but
don't you dare insult my sundresses.

~~~
awakeasleep
I think you have it backwards. The sundress is overly-dressy. The shoes are
designed to be looked at and to impress, rather than for comfort.

I think that sort of misrepresentation (not you specifically, the event) is
what the author resenting. Read me out.

Brute utility defines romance of 'startup culture'. Humans understanding their
world, and interacting with it in a straight-forward way. I'm modifying the
code to do this. These effects will alter this part of our business. You're
attempting to account for everything. Money has definite purposes. Your time
has value measured in the sort of excitement that makes your brain burn like
you were lifting weights with it.

Those conditions do not include men spending their money on jeans, and women
spending self control on culturally approved foot torture. At that point the
focus has moved from interacting with the business to something about social
status.

Buzzwords really give things away. I'm only now learning that buzzwords are
the most important part of modern established businesses. They're fucking
amazing. A buzzword represents an abstract concept.

Abstract concepts come in two flavors. Those that represent something very
specific/complex in concise terms, and those which represent something very
vague/simple in bombastic terms. In use, they are the guardians of
understanding and agreement. Secrecy and manipulation and power with publicly
spoken words. A stark contrast to the liberal sharing of knowledge and honest
curiosity of the startup dream.

~~~
mamoswined
I suspect neither you nor the original author have worn many women's clothing
or shoes. Sometimes things look uncomfortable that are not. And why does it
matter anyway if my clothing accurately reflects some abstract startup ethos?
Startups talk about attracting women, but what happens when women get
criticized for doing things a lot of us legitimately enjoy like wearing pretty
clothes?

Either way, nothing is less business-like than judging a tech event by the
attire of the participants. In tech, it's a lose-lose situation. Dress in a
baggy Defcon t-shirt and don't brush your hair...you are too ugly and you must
not be a "people person." Dress nicely...oh you must have just chosen those
clothes to impress people, so you must be superficial.

~~~
mistermann
Or if you want to be taken seriously, as the target of such criticism you
could roll your eyes and devote exactly as much mental energy to such
criticisms as they deserve, which is approximately zero.

Finding sexism in absolutely any scenario where there is a reference to sex is
an all too common skill that one might be better off not possessing, but
that's just my opinion.

------
zalew
I bet these dudes were there
[http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-
sta...](http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6507690/hardly-working-start-up-
guys)

~~~
dag11
That is definitely one of the better CollegeHumor videos.

~~~
zalew
from the internet-themed, I prefer this one
[http://www.collegehumor.com/video/2563451/internet-
commenter...](http://www.collegehumor.com/video/2563451/internet-commenter-
business-meeting)

------
TenJack
Here's the author's bio and picture if it helps put this article in context:
[http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/paul-
constant/Author?oid=...](http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/paul-
constant/Author?oid=17693)

~~~
hkmurakami
_> He became the 2009 I.D. Spring Roll Eating Champion after consuming 23
deep-fried spring rolls in two minutes. _

Pretty impressive if I may say so.

------
barbs
>"You can do anything you want with an idea. It can be as big as you want. It
doesn’t have to solve a minor problem that nobody ever really realized was a
problem. It doesn’t have to fit into something the size of a button crammed
into a “folder” the size of a button on a screen the size of a playing card.
But everywhere I look, I see tiny little ideas,ideas that are almost petty in
their inconsequentiality."

This. This sums up how I feel about the whole startup scene. The lack of real
innovation is incredible.

------
akoumjian
The Stranger disappoints, as usual. Easier to poke fun at people's clothes and
other shallow topics than provide something of substance. Don't get me wrong,
I love the occasional quip, but the author has put zero effort into
understanding the culture before casually ridiculing it.

------
artursapek
A very pleasant surprise seeing The Stranger on HN today.

------
LeFever
I was there yesterday, and we actually presented and ended up tied for second
place. AppThwack (Not to be confused with a "brain tumor") is a rapid,
automated QA service for testing Android apps on real, non-emulated devices in
a massively parallel and fast way. I realize it's not a world-changingly noble
mission, but I also don't think it's trivial or inconsequential. Regardless,
here are my thoughts. I posted a bit more in the article comment, but thought
I'd paste part of my comment here.

"This article is definitely entertaining. It's vapid and catty and well
written, and accurately portrays an event from an outsider's perspective. Of
course there are lots of things that look like "bad ideas" on their face. On
the other hand, there are lots of ideas that seem dumb at first that grow into
interesting companies that end up solving legitimate problems.

Overall I think the event was very well run and I met a lot of great people. I
was there with the goal of getting something out of it, though, and that
something was connections, potential partners/customers, and some more pitch
experience. Obviously the author got what he was looking for as well.

I think it's important that the "startup community" (I hate that that's a
thing people say) gets kicked in the balls every now and then. For example,
this look at TechCrunch Disrupt: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/jackstuef/scenes-
from-the-pounding-h...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/jackstuef/scenes-from-the-
pounding-heart-of-a-tech-bubble)

------
SCdF
So those names were indeed terrible. But how the hell do you name things well?
It's _really_ hard.

The second you write some code you have to call it _something_ , and I imagine
that's the point where people think up janky cute names, and then it's in the
codebase and that's that. I know for me I think up something stupid and then
roll with that, presuming that if it ever makes it out of localhost it will be
renamed to something sensible.

These people are just pitching, no wonder there names are like AwesomeSaucr
and CakeBacon and what-not.

~~~
smsm42
Names don't matter. Google is a terrible name. Yahoo is a terrible name. Do
you think Facebook became what it is because of their name? Do you think
MicroSoft got where it is because of the name? Do you think Linux and Apache
took sizable chunk of their market afterward because their names were better?

Names are insignificant. You can pay millions for most awesome name on the
planet and flop, and you can choose name like "git" and create awesome
software that everybody uses. People would use anything under any name if they
like it.

~~~
chris_wot
Possibly the worst names for the most popular software are git and gimp.
Nobody cares. They use them, because they are awesome!

------
MIT_Hacker
Woah. How did this drop from #2? There are articles above this on HN that have
less points and were submitted at an earlier time...

~~~
sp332
It may have been flagged. If a post gets flagged enough it will get pushed to
page 2 no matter how many upvotes it gets.

~~~
Devilboy
Must have hurt someone's feelings

------
aaronbrethorst
I can't say I ever expected to see a Slog post on here. Slog's where I go for
my daily dose of adorable animal videos at lunch, sex advice from Dan Savage,
and Seattle/Washington state political news.

All that said, Paul Constant is a fantastic writer, and I'm glad to see he's
found an audience here.

------
dinkumthinkum
Not to be that guy but it's like the author is writing a novel. What's the
tl;dr here?

~~~
polyfractal
He went to Startup Riot, saw a bunch of consumer internet startups pitching
their product.

Complained about the names, the language used to describe the ideas ("content"
vs "text", "consume" vs "read", etc) and the ideas themselves.

Half of the article sounds like sour grapes, half is legit criticism.

~~~
bradleyland
Eh, I don't know. I think it's wise to take a step back and listen to yourself
from time to time. When you set out to do something, you start by learning,
then by doing, then you recyle that process over and over. You entrench
yourself with like-minded individuals, and everything starts to become second
nature.

This is the exact moment that you should take a step back and read a piece
like this. In the process of trying to succeed, there's a very good chance
that you're going to pick up some habits from those around you. Some of those
habits are good and will contribute to your progress, but many of them are
just useless baggage.

When I read this piece, I thought to myself, "My god, we sound just like the
Six Sigma biz-ops guys we make fun of." That's an insight I wouldn't pass up,
even if it means feeling a little sting of broken pride.

~~~
polyfractal
Yep, I'm right there with you. I enjoyed this piece, and that's why I said
half was legit criticism.

If I hear a startup unironically use the term "leverage" or "pivot" one more
time...

~~~
ktizo
I think it is allowed if they are engineering some sort of giant pivoting
lever.

------
cindywu123
I was one of the presenters at Startup Riot. Events like Startup Riot give
early stage founders the opportunity to showcase their products and it is
extremely important to keep this a safe place for newbies and encourage
entrepreneurs to keep at it!

Two cents from a presenter at the event:
[http://www.moonsovermyhammy.com/post/29112090592/if-
youre-a-...](http://www.moonsovermyhammy.com/post/29112090592/if-youre-a-
little-person-sharing-a-big-idea-do-it)

------
iblaine
Investors are so desperate to find the next homerun that they'll cater to the
ridiculous that is speed dating for startup ideas.

~~~
GnarlinBrando
I think that is a point missed by this article and many others. People are
going after what they think they can get funded in large part. In the comments
on the post there is a nice Peter Thiel quote about innovation in the physical
world basically getting outlawed (his libertarian bent shows strongly here)
driving innovation to software. And while I don't really agree with all of it,
I really think that to a certain extent, be it through patents, super dominant
companies, government prohibition, or even just cultural forces, it is really
hard to go big.

------
njx
When the dust settles, we all will remember those crazy startup euphoria days
and this article would be one of it. Pretty soon we might need to ammend the
Dictionary with new words or spelling corrections

------
ojbyrne
"tiny little ideas" - for me the best startup ideas are those that start with
some small idea, but it is actually a trojan horse to get something into the
market that is actually very large.

~~~
ldh
That's assuming that there actually is a significant idea bound up in the tiny
idea, which is not generally the scenario that the author is complaining
about.

~~~
ojbyrne
Of course. It was just a phrase that jumped out at me.

------
petitmiam
Some of the photos for 'Stranger Personals' that appear on the right of the
article aren't really safe for work.

------
lukejduncan
Anyone else have a bunch of pop-up ads when browsing there?

------
rprasad
_"When the language you employ to communicate your ideas is small and boring,
your ideas are going to be small and boring."_

That's how I felt reading this blog post. A long, pedantic, raging post that
does nothing but demonstrate that the author has an inflated sense of his
writing prowess. His post is basically one type of Hipster raging against the
Hipsterisms of a different type of Hipster.

~~~
qu4z-2
That line made me think of the Hemingway quote:

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He
thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are
older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

------
thinkingisfun
Two quotes from George Orwell spring to mind:

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between
one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long
words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."

"If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think
well, others will do their thinking for them."

nuff said...?

------
jason3
Great writing, reminds me of David Foster Wallace's work.

