
  Delicious Founder Joshua Schachter Leaves Google  - jasonlbaptiste
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/01/delicious-founder-joshua-schachter-leaves-google/
======
fleaflicker
In his AMA thread here recently I asked him what he does at google and he was
aggravatingly vague, replying: _Press buttons, mostly._

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357182>

~~~
joshu
To be fair, I've been using that joke for years.

~~~
antidaily
Good One. So ... what _did_ you do at Google?

~~~
quizbiz
I find it interesting that this question goes unanswered but I am more
interested about what motivated you to work at Google.

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firebones
Joshua's story in "Founders at Work" is one of my top three most inspirational
tales from the book. The combination of creating something while working a day
job (breaking the work down into 15-minute problems he could solve at night)
along with the idea of narrow, vertical services that do one thing well--great
lessons.

While I don't buy into the whole maxklein nerdfight aspect of all this, I do
look forward to seeing whether Joshua establishes a new pattern (parlaying the
one-hit wonder into a series of relationships and investments that take him to
a higher level) or whether he repeats the success (more like Andreesen).

Good luck with whatever comes next...

~~~
joshu
delicious was the most successful thing in a long series of projects. there
were other successes (but none as big) and many, many failures.

there will be more failures. hopefully a few successes, too.

~~~
lkozma
Would you tell about some other projects that you did before delicious? Not
necessarily their names, just roughly what they were about. Basically I'm
curious whether there was a logical succession or were you just trying out
random ideas.

~~~
shadowsun7
This is taken from Founders At Work, which you should buy (it's great!):

Bookbook - Schacter never came up with a name for this, but it's basically an
XML file on your website where you would provide a feed and other people would
do this and create a central crossing engine that would say, "You have this
book and he wants that book, and you are not that far from each other."

Loaf - a fully distributed social network (no central server whatsoever ...
yes, that _does_ sounds like Diaspora). Uses email as a carrier, a bloom
filter, and it basically tells people you talked to about other people you
corresponded with 'in an encrypted and compressed way'.

Memepool - which was a blog of links (before people knew what blogs were, this
was in 1998). So basically an editor with reader submissions - a link at the
bottom saying "Send us an email. Give us good links."

Muxway - 2001, 'which was a lot like del.icio.us'. Only it was single player -
Schacter could save links, and those links were public, and that was that.

GeoURL - <http://geourl.org/>

Reversible - a failed version of del.icio.us. It was 'different in a few key
ways that made it fail.'

~~~
joshu
good list.

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thunk
Fuck yeah, joshu! Make something awesome -- you know you want to :)

~~~
bdr
And don't forget to update your HN profile. ;)

~~~
joshu
Fixed, thanks.

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pavs
Take back delicious if you can and make it better. pls.

~~~
supahfly_remix
I'm curious: what's wrong with delicious?

~~~
pavs
Nothing and thats the problem. Its the same it was since it started (as far as
how it functions is concerned). And if I were to guess[1] it is rapidly
loosing whatever standing it had good old days. Its horrible, because it had a
lot of potential for growth in to something really amazing. In the fast moving
internet landscape, you have to evolve with everyone else in order to survive.
Other than a facelift, nothing much changed with delicious.

Sure there are sites and services that survived without evolving, but they are
exceptions not the norm.

Once awesome but dying sites/softwares: Myspace, Digg, IE

[1] <http://siteanalytics.compete.com/delicious.com/>

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camworld
Some companies acquire people for their talent. Few know what to do with that
talent once they have it. Google is no exception. I wish Josh the best of
luck. Wonder if he'll revive memepool?

~~~
joshu
Oh god. I totally should.

I can't think of anything to do with it that doesn't turn into Delicious or
Reddit or something. Any ideas?

~~~
kls
I have a great idea for a app, but it is not related to memepool. If you are
looking for ideas for interesting apps that could change the way people
distribute information on the web let me know. It is basically a better mouse
trap blog and threaded conversation app and I would love to see someone run
with it. I won't bore you with the details, but if you have an open ear to
ideas, I could sum it up for you pretty quickly.

~~~
bvi
Just do it here already. Anyone could run with it. :)

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angelbob
Congratulations! Best of luck on whatever comes next.

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staunch
This seems like a positive move. I imagine he learned the hard way that Google
may be better than Yahoo, but it's still a Big Dumb Company.

~~~
joshu
Google is a great place. I am glad I worked there. I probably should have
stayed longer than I did. I just had that itch to do something different.

------
sk5t
Only read this post because I remember Josh's participation in the CMU
bboards. Batmail, good times...

~~~
joshu
ezmail forever.

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didip
Any chance u'd make a better delicious joshu?

~~~
shrikant
Pinboard.in already exists ;)

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maxklein
I don't think he was happy at google, just like I don't think he was happy at
yahoo.

I think he should write a book now. It's the natural progression for people
who make a single hit startup - they sell it, join some big company, decide
that it does not make them happy, give a lot of talks, then fall into some
type of mentoring role, then write a book.

~~~
joshu
You're big on jumping to conclusions on pretty limited data, aren't you?

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staunch
Not this again... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357708>

~~~
maxklein
Don't worry, I'm about to go to sleep so I won't go on.

~~~
pavs
Seriously, whats your deal man?

~~~
maxklein
My deal is that I will not let myself be bullied by a person who people
support just because he is an angel investor (and they want his money). He's
relentlessly attacking me every opportunity he gets for absolutely no reason,
and because he knows that people will support him (being a big tech brand name
and all) over me (being unimportant).

~~~
joshu
In what way am I bullying you? Relentlessly or otherwise?

