

A HireVoice postmortem - lessons learned trying to get a startup off the ground - byosko
http://www.etiennegarbugli.com/getting-out-of-recruitment-a-hirevoice-post-mortem/

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Argorak
Uargs. Who had the idea of having every paragraph leading up to a quote that
has a big "Tweet this"-link next to it? It feels like a kid jumping up and
down, desperately trying to get more attention.

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objclxt
I wouldn't object to it quite so much if it wasn't for the "Tweet This" links
_next to every one_.

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Argorak
Even then, I find the style debatable. I think its overused, with some quotes
only separated by a small sentence. But "tweet this" is definitely the thing
that kills it all.

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objclxt
> "Bootstrapping a startup when you’re 30 and have a rent to pay is incredibly
> hard"

I think bootstrapping a startup when you have no capital is incredibly hard.
The age you are and whether you're renting or not are merely contributory
factors - imagine if you were paying a _mortgage_ rather than rent...this
could make bootstrapping even harder ( _could_ being the important word here,
before someone corrects me!).

(maybe this is a controversial viewpoint, but I feel Twitter is for 140
character insights, and a blog post is for longer ones. Having _24_ quote
blocks with 'Tweet This' next to it didn't make for a great reading
experience)

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mgkimsal
100% agreed on the age thing. Comments like this just reinforce the stereotype
(myth?) of 20 year olds chasing multimillion dollar lean startup VC IPO
dreams. Many people over 25 start up organizations/companies.

You can look at it as "oh it's so hard, i've got a mortgage!". Or you can look
at it as "Wow, I've got some really good experience in industry X, skills to
sell, and established roots in industry X and my local/regional area to help
me get moving faster!".

There's a few entrepreneurs/startups in our area that I really respect, and
most of them started over 30. One was closer to 40 before he started, and
wasn't really rocking it until 40 or just a bit after I think.

Living at home with your parents, no rent/food to pay would still be hard if
you didn't have enough money for a computer and net connection (assuming
you're trying to work online). Having capital relative to your startup needs
is key - age is immaterial.

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jwwest
Less than a year and 5 different products? I'm all for validated learning but
it seems like they needed to stick to an idea longer than an average of two
months.

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austinlyons
> "I had learned that, with half the time you get half the results so, for
> HireVoice, I was all-in, committed to success or, at least, piling up
> debts."

If you look at the author's LinkedIn, you'll see he started another consulting
job after four months working on HireVoice full time. Is this because he
realized the initial idea wasn't going to pay the bills?

I wonder if he would have been better off getting a full-time job first and
iterating on this idea as a side project? It seems like someone who is fully
employed would be more rigorous in choosing which idea to spend their precious
spare time on.

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breckenedge
What's with all the blockquotes? Made it a bit difficult to read => Sentence
"Blockquote" Sentence "Blockquote".

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zio99
Agreed, make it a bulleted list instead.

    
    
      1. People
    
      2. Like
    
      3. Lists

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zio99
>Btw landing pages and mockups don’t create a lot of trust...

Why do you say that?

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unoti
Demos build more trust. Working products even more. Revenue builds more trust
yet. Customers with recognizable names in your target market helps even more.
A long track record of revenue showing the health of the company helps more,
too-- nobody wants to be a customer of a company that's likely to disappear.
It's like the opposite of the saying "nobody got fired for choosing IBM."

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nollidge
What's with the random words and phrases _italicized_? It didn't even look
like it was for emphasis.

