

Does Quid Have The Most Pretentious Website of Any Startup Ever? - bwaldorf
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/17/quid-futuere/

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tripngroove
The section of the website in question is basically a colophon. See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_(publishing)>.

Including a colophon is a fairly common practice, especially in the world of
print design, when a publication has been artfully assembled and polished by a
professional designer. I hardly think it's fair to use this as a point of
criticism; it just means they have a designer on staff who: a) might have a
history in print design b) knows his typography c) was thinking about the
culture of the business when making design decisions

It's no mistake that all the typefaces they've chosen have long, strong
histories firmly rooted in England. They are Bulmer, Baskerville, and
Underground (of London underground fame - most of us have seen the old signs
from the subway).

Furthermore, wccrawford's earlier assertion that their name and typeface
choice has nothing to do with the business is obtuse; if you check out
<http://quid.com/team.html>, you'll notice that most of the hackers involved
are either from, or studied in, England, which makes their branding choices
eminently appropriate in the context of their shared history.

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petervandijck
Mmm, no, it's not a colophon.

The page is titled "the quid story". If the best you can do there is some
branding drivel, then that's a huge red flag. The quid story should tell us
something about the company, what it's goals are, why it was started. Not why
some branding consultant chose a god damn font.

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gcheong
CTO Sean Gourley gave a TED talk on the "Mathematics of War":

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_war.html)

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aston
Looks like it's founded by one of the founders of YouNoodle, which had similar
foundations in big data crunching. Is this a rebrand? A new company based on
similar technology?

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wccrawford
I think it is. Never before have I seen a company's website with so much pomp
and so little substance. Going on and on about your name and typefaces, things
which appear to have absolutely nothing at all to do with the main business,
tops it off.

~~~
hugh3
Going on about the typeface is probably overkill, but I think we can assume
there must be a serious typography geek involved.

There isn't much substance there, but the company appears to be in a pseudo-
stealth mode where they don't especially want to tell you exactly what they do
or to sell it to you. They do, however, want you to know that they're all very
clever, and that's exactly the impression which their site manages to convey.
They use the word "lacuna" on their front page, for crying out loud! Who uses
the word "lacuna"?

Actually, I thought that this:

 _Oh, and I almost forgot, good news for those who have recently finished
their Rhodes Scholarships in Classics/Particle Physics and are looking for a
gig in between singing in an Art Rock band, learning their 16th language and
joining the French Foreign Legion! Quid is hiring._

sounded sufficiently enticing that I thought about applying, but turns out you
also need to know Javascript and Rails.

~~~
pigbucket
Aside from the word "lacuna" there is also an actual lacuna on the front page:
it's missing a specified referent for the word "lacuna."

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dannyr
So many cliche words in one page: "Innovative, disruptive, explosive impact,
novel uses, proprietary algorithms, etc."

When I visited the site a few days ago, I wasn't quite sure if it's real.

The team's record is impressive but I hope they get it why people think their
site is pretentious.

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sabj
It doesn't seem like all hot air. Problem is, how to actually apply? Their
jobs page doesn't have any links or email addresses.

~~~
frognibble
I'd want to know where the company is located before applying, but I cannot
find any mention of the location the website. Perhaps that's a test and I
failed.

~~~
bkudria
Good point. We're in SF.

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jeffffff
their requirements for data engineer make no sense. why would you need to know
html, css, javascript, and web frameworks to do data mining?

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the_rara_avis
What a cute little slideshow...

