
You're Not Allowed to Criticize Startups, You Stupid Hater - minimaxir
http://minimaxir.com/2016/01/startup-haters/
======
aerovistae
I think that's the point of the Valley, isn't it? That you can try to do
something stupid and people will give you the benefit of the doubt? Idk about
you but I made $6k off AirBnB last quarter, which was nice, so I'm not
complaining. That's a big obvious one, but I could probably list 20 others
from the area that have affected me in a positive way. (My point being that
sometimes something great comes out of what seems dumb, as is well known.)

I don't disagree at all that serious looks at what went wrong are very, _very_
useful to everyone else, but I personally _like_ that Silicon Valley is a sort
of safe space for experimenting with dumb ideas where people won't make a big
deal out of it if one or more of your ideas don't work out.

~~~
nickpsecurity
You didn't counter his assertions at all. The first thing is anecdotal and
meaningless: give me a person who benefits from most I can give you someone
who doesn't. Overall data is more important. This is about startup companies,
though, not individuals.

Back on startups. Sure, it's great that you can experiment. We can still
experiment while calling bullshit when we see it. There's a huge gap between
"They're trying something we think might be cool or make it but ton of risk
here as prior examples illustrate" and "World-changing app here whose initial
uptake indicates billions in making and any problems are just a hiccup! Get it
today!"

A bit more of the former will at least let people spot problem areas and maybe
avoid them more often.

~~~
volaski
"Avoiding problem areas" is the last thing you should do if you're working on
a startup. It's a good thing that people make stupid mistakes because
sometimes something extraordinary comes out of them. If everyone acted in
conservative manner because they don't want to make mistakes and be called an
idiot by others, we will have much slower innovation.

~~~
nickpsecurity
You going to build a bunch of services on Gopher protocol anytime soon?
Require people pay large amounts of money upfront for stuff they usually get
free? Expect no browser? Do a mobile solution that requires a specific device
rather than smartphone?

There's all kinds of products that failed for specific, sometimes-lasting
reasons. You should avoid them in your next startup if those reasons or
contexts still apply. Otherwise, your startup's chance of failure just
skyrocketed with little justification.

" If everyone acted in conservative manner because they don't want to make
mistakes and be called an idiot by others, we will have much slower
innovation."

That doesn't contradict what I'm saying. I'm saying people shouldn't act in an
ignorant manner when confronted with data saying they'll have problems, are
having problems, or totally failed. They can be conservative or risk-takers.
They just better keep lessons of history and business reality of their market
in mind when making their decisions. It's considered common sense in other
aspects of life.

~~~
volaski
> You going to build a bunch of services on Gopher protocol anytime soon?
> Require people pay large amounts of money upfront for stuff they usually get
> free? Expect no browser? Do a mobile solution that requires a specific
> device rather than smartphone?

Yes. This is exactly what I am talking about. While most people won't bother
to try, there will be some people who keep on trying. Most _experts_ will say
the same thing: "This and that company already tried this and failed you
idiot". But here's why sometimes it works: Startups don't succeed purely based
on their absolute value. It's all contextual and relative, which means the
same model that didn't work last year may work this year because of how the
situation has changed. But nobody knows that until it actually happens. The
reason why a lot of disruptive startups are built by inexperienced people just
out of college instead of experienced people is because experienced people
already know too much and have seen certain models don't work and their
thought process is just like you stated. Whereas younger people who have no
idea will just try (and most of the times will fail) and sometimes it works
because of the right context.

In fact your rhetorical questions I quoted above--which you probably meant
cynically--are very interesting questions and I encourage that you seriously
think them again. You seem to think they're idiotic but I think they are
brilliant questions. YES, it is possible that a new model can arise that will
make people want to pay for stuff that they usually get for free. Yes, there
can be something that completely rethinks how we consume information (not our
contemporary browser). Yes, there can be an entirely new device that can
replace a smartphone.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"It's all contextual and relative, which means the same model that didn't work
last year may work this year because of how the situation has changed. But
nobody knows that until it actually happens."

"In fact your rhetorical questions I quoted above--which you probably meant
cynically--are very interesting questions and I encourage that you seriously
think them again. You seem to think they're idiotic but I think they are
brilliant questions."

I agree. The point I'm making is you can _sometimes_ know these things because
they were obvious with 20/20 hindsight & market feedback. The questions
weren't cynical so much as best examples I could squeeze out of my brain in a
hurry that I could justify with examples. Glad you liked them. :) Let's look
at them.

First, Gopherspace is gone in about every way you can think of. I predicted it
could return on feature phones with a new implementation. There's a system in
developing world that's essentially that & text-based. Yet, it's an inferior
experience to both Web and native due to lack of rich content and network
effects. Almost all growth happens due to network effects. So, deny the
network effects, then you're almost guaranteeing no growth. An imitation of or
improvement in Gopher model will fail unless it addresses this. Every company
that I ever heard of that tried failed. Of course, modifying Gopher to have
network effects basically turns it into Web 1.0. ;)

Second example is paying a _lot_ for what they can get free. The exception
where this works is luxury or coolness markets. I'm ignoring that here, which
I should've mentioned, because it's the exception. You release an email client
for personal, not business, users that cost $50 a month... you will fail. Even
high-assurance security, my subfield, had a _really_ hard time pushing
messaging and email systems that baked in strong, endpoint and protocol
security due to premiums charged for high cost. We saw same for usability,
platform integration, etc. It had to have certain features and not be too much
money. Even Apple, an outlier, went through hell trying to fight this rule
until they acquired Next Computers and their I.P. that was worth extra money
by being substantially different and cool. Even iPhone follows my rule because
they had to basically put a Mac in a phone & hit coolness crowd to charge what
they did. Try this stuff with a basic differentiator and too large a value? It
will fail. Companies keep trying and failing on that.

Third example: "Do a mobile solution that requires a specific device rather
than smartphone?"

Pagers. Mobile communicators. Briefcases for secure, satellite phones. Ultra-
thin, netbook-like devices. GPS systems. PDA's. Tomagatchis. All sorts of
things came before cellphones got good enough to do the same stuff with more
convenience, low weight, etc. People kept trying to market the same kinds of
stuff from there with 100(?) failure rate. Question mark as something
successful might have slipped past me that wasn't an outlier. Browsers,
productivity apps, note taking, telling time, games... all of that goes on
mobile outside extremely nich markets (eg Garmin's). Smartwatch's might be an
outlier that cleverly exploits that a watch is only other thing that's
acceptable and semi-mandatory to carry. It doesn't break my rule: it replaces
an existing, marketable category of product with added value. Otherwise,
virtually everything like before is failing if it's not on a phone. Next one
will too without compelling reason.

So, it's not about experts or limited views. Even an average person will tell
you they don't want to carry a 2nd device for your note-taking app. They want
a pretty Web interface or good native one over manually navigating Gopher
folders. That the app isn't worth a bunch of money if something else does
almost same thing for free (also see "Worse is Better" for 90% rule). In all
of these cases, someone should've stopped to interject these issues to steer
the startup toward an offering that lacks these risks and has components of
success. After all, the ones that succeeded mostly had those components and
we're play the odds where we can right?

I'm for experimentation and risk-taking where context changes. It's just that
many attributes keep showing up in both successful and failed products. So,
making one or avoiding the other could benefit from those most of the time.
That's all I'm saying. Past that, a proven thing that applied in the past
might suddenly apply again in new circumstances seen only by a visionary. Go
for it. Try it. After all, I am "that guy" (or one of them) on Hacker News
that keeps reminding IT people they're always re-inventing stuff (good & bad)
from the past without learning lessons from those that did it right. ;)

------
BinaryIdiot
I think this depends on the demographic and context more than anything.
Sometimes a start-up will be posted to HN and it feels like everyone in the
comments section has "drank the kool-aid" and othertimes it seems the exact
opposite possibly being too critical (though I feel like a healthy mix is the
usual around here). As far as HN is concerned I don't think there is a general
"you can't hate on start-ups" mentality but there are times when things can be
click-y on any conversational site.

Now news sources like TechCrunch? Good luck. If a start-up is on the rise
they'll publish whatever gives them more clicks. When a start-up is on the
decline they'll still publish whatever gives them more clicks. If that means
"not admitting they're wrong" then that's just how it'll be.

As for Peach I downloaded it to try it. I didn't "get it". Thought it was
terrible because I couldn't share or do anything without finding people first.
So I uninstalled. I don't have time to cultivate friends on yet another social
network; it needs to essentially be done for me. Which yeah sounds super lazy
but I don't think it's off the mark either.

------
rburhum
This is HNs, plenty of people think they know everything about startups
because they can deploy a React app on Digital Ocean.

Running a startup is difficult as hell, so IMHO, if an app manages to have a
successful launch, then more power to them. At the end of the day, it boils
down to capturing value to be able to make it. For some businesses
Techcrunch/Buzzfeed/etc press may be a key factor in this process, for others,
it is just vanity. Why do we even care?

------
rm_-rf_slash
I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that criticizing startups is a
social faux pas. My friends and I talk about startups like sports teams and
there's no small share of schadenfreude when our predictions of failure came
true.

~~~
potatolicious
It depends on what circles you're in. I'm in your boat - most of my friends
talk about startups and tech and are routinely skeptical, if not brutal, in
our assessments.

But I also know a few people who are much closer to the money side of the
business who don't ever shit-talk startups, no matter how crazy and dumb they
are, or no matter how scummy their behavior.

I would say that the social acceptability of criticizing startups is
proportional to your professional distance from a VC. Accordingly, the social
acceptability of criticizing the meta-aspects of startups (fundraising,
investing, etc) is the square of your professional distance from a VC ;)

There's definitely a "cone of silence" effect around VCs/incubators. Everyone
walks on eggshells around them and criticism is extremely muted. Forget
optimism/pessimism, even criticism of downright unethical/illegal actions is
largely nonexistent.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
>Forget optimism/pessimism, even criticism of downright unethical/illegal
actions is largely nonexistent.

This is something that scares me about Silicon Valley. That kind of attitude
opens a market for respectability, and once that becomes accepted, the tech
bro douchebaggery is going to get shunned, hard. The services they made so
cheap will make it even easier for someone else to eat their lunch, and even
pointedly NOT being a part of the Valley could be a point in a company's favor
(privacy-centric consumers who see SV companies willingly send personal data
to NSA dragnets). Then it becomes a matter of fashion. ("You're still using
snapchat after X came out? What are you, 12? The government is reading all of
your snaps by the way.")

But leave it to a society of nerds to forget the vital necessity of being
cool.

------
jasode
It seems most people criticize software not because of hate but because of
_confusion._ Digital products like software don't have a physical "shape" that
makes it obvious what they improve on. (E.g. the initial confusion about the
intended usages of Adobe Lightroom vs Adobe Photoshop.)

Imagine if blind person was told about a bicycle and how it can transport a
person from point A to point B. Then someone else presents him with a
description of a car and how it has 4 wheels. The blind person might say, "but
what the hell would I want 4 wheels instead of 2?!? That's twice the
maintenance and replacement parts!" But then you explain that the 4-wheel can
self-balance without a kickstand and can transport 5 people instead of just 2.
Those kinds of conversations never happen because people can _see_ the obvious
differences between a bicycle and a car.

Unfortunately, the "shape" of software is amorphous. We can all be "blind" to
the value proposition of unknown software. Software is described with "words".
(Sometimes with screenshots too but then again, the screenshots themselves
often have more "words" surrounded by GUI boxes or colors.) This is why so
many "Show HN" threads have the question, " _what exactly does this do?_ " or
" _how is this any different from X?_ "

As for your theme... I don't know about Techcrunch comments but on HN, there's
a propensity to be skeptical & criticise rather than fawn & praise.
([https://venngage.com/blog/why-you-need-to-stop-obsessing-
ove...](https://venngage.com/blog/why-you-need-to-stop-obsessing-over-
comments-on-hacker-news/))

To me, " _hater_ " is somewhat clickbaity but I think it originates from the "
_haters gonna hate_ " meme so if you want to riff on that, I get it.

~~~
minimaxir
> To me, "hater" is somewhat clickbaity but I think it originates from the
> "haters gonna hate" meme so if you want to riff on that, I get it.

Yes, it's a riff of that, and a term I've seen expressed by the startup crowd
frequently. (That, and "anyone who criticizes my startup is just trolling,"
which is a related but different problem.)

------
pfarnsworth
To be fair, there is a lot of hate on tech forums, because that is generally
the attitude of most techies. "Oh, that's stupid because of X. I've seen that
back when it was Y." Most people in tech appear to believe that if you think
of reasons why an idea will fail, that somehow makes you smart. I've learned
the opposite, that figuring out how to make idea work is what makes you smart.

That said, HN is the Mecca of all startup-wannabes. You're going to get a
disproportionate amount of lashback here either for or against all-things-
startup.

Like anything, if you're going to post a comment, or a product, expect a lot
of dumb negative feedback and ignore the haters. Take the good negative
feedback and internalize that, though.

------
desireco42
Ha, nice writeup. It looks like it was well organized campaign to launch app,
they did everything right, yet even with all this 'cheating' involved, it is
genuinely hard to make a successful app.

Plus this is area that is crowded with apps and probably not the best place to
focus your efforts.

~~~
potatolicious
Messaging is hard, speaking from experience having been part of an attempt
that failed.

IMO it seems like Peach did everything they possibly could and the execution
was in broad strokes excellent, but a messaging app in 2016 is the Hail Mary
of Hail Maries.

Firstly, there are no "new users" to messaging. Literally everyone is already
using something for messaging - Hangouts, Messenger, Line, WhatsApp, etc etc.
Unlike other areas of tech, _social messaging is a zero-sum game_ where every
user you gain means someone else loses a user. This is hard environment for
any new product with no existing traction.

Messaging is also one of those things that is used so much that it's driven
heavily by habitual behavior. Which also means you have to break a user's
muscle memory/habits before you can have a shot at keeping them in the long
term. The default for a competent messaging app is that people try your app
out, think you're cool, and then promptly go back to whatever they were using
before, because you haven't broken their old habit and/or haven't formed a new
one. 14-day cohort retention is going to be nearly zero in the default case.

Habit-formation within users is really, really, _really_ f'ing hard.

------
nickpsecurity
Good write-up. What we're seeing is something similar to the Gold Rush and
Dotcom Boom of the past. There's a bit more reason involved thankfully.
Everyone has their eye on the prize and golden ticket to it (tech startups)
that they're ignoring every detail that distracts from it. They continue to do
this even when the details show they're stepping away from the prize or
probably won't achieve it. A chance to pivot or cut losses in favor of
different product/service is lost due to how this perspective blinds
onlookers.

To be honest, it's a lot like a religion. Creating, pouring energy into,
praising, and not blaspheming startups is the religion of Silicon Valley. They
need more reason and less religion.

------
calcsam
The existing puff piece aura of most startup articles has a more simple
explanation: selection bias.

Many people have an incentive to write "Startup X launched!"

If Startup X never raised significant funding, no one has an incentive to
write "Startup X died."

------
taytus
This is the guy who became "famous" for commenting ALL the time on TechCrunch.
Sorry, I can't take you seriously.

~~~
minimaxir
Incidentally, one of the reasons I started commenting on TechCrunch was
because the authors were being too soft on startup shennanigans.

~~~
lanewinfield
Hey man, I didn't realize until the end of your (well written) article with
your photo that it was you, the celebrity TechCrunch commenter.

I'm a fan. Keep at it!

------
mattmanser
Top and 3rd comments on the HN thread are both criticism, and if you actually
read the follow up article on tech crunch:

 _Some say it’s dumb, some say it’s great, and a lot say something in between_

 _What do I feel about it? It feels fresh_

 _Mind you, it’s on a massive hype-train right now so take it all with a grain
of salt_

That doesn't sound like you're not allowed to criticize a startup.

~~~
coldtea
To me those statements feel like they're covering their ass for being positive
on the rest of the article about an app that's ho-hum at best.

Fresh? What exactly is fresh about it?

------
6stringmerc
It's one thing to needlessly criticize a new business (start up), or an
espoused goal (hyperloop) but a completely different situation when bringing
in some run-of-the-mill skepticism. I think skepticism is healthy - it's one
of those interesting emotional/intellectual mechanisms. In the most effective
circumstances, skepticism seems to blend past experience + current facts +
future hypothesis, all of which fit into the context of the referenced
article.

Generally I don't bring much of any philosophy into the skepticism approach.
Every once and a while though, it does play a role. I'm not really proud of
it, but I'll publicly admit that I was so utterly repulsed by the Aurous
concept that I did a little happy dance when market forces (i.e. the RIAA)
took on Aurous, shut it down fast, and moved on from the dead carcass. Am I
happier for its demise? Yep.

------
pj_mukh
Meh. The valley needs its naysayers, but it mostly works because a select few
can ignore naysayers completely. Unless, I see a reason why this is dangerous
to anybody other than private consented money, this is a molehill not a
mountain.

~~~
zpallin
Yea. We're only really looking at the criticism of _one_ startup. If we looked
at the whole, we'd probably find that a vast amount of startups are simply not
even "starting up" because of criticism, which is good.

Perhaps the point here, which we could explore more, is that startups backed
by tons of money typically push relatively unoriginal ideas to the forefront
that are simply "marketed better" because of $.

~~~
pj_mukh
SV famously values "execution". A combination of finding the right market
(slightly more complicated than just pumping money into marketing) and staying
doggedly focussed.

Sometimes if you focus on the wrong thing, you die (and get made fun of). The
press coverage the author seems to have such an issue with is famously fickle.

Make an electric car that looks like a toaster and a fish and market it to the
general consumer. You die. Make an electric car that looks like a luxury sedan
and market it to the top end of the market. You become Tesla.

Obviously, in the latter case he backed up that market selection with world
class engineering. The two then get inextricably linked. You have to look past
the predilections of the establishment to get there though.

------
milesf
Well played. You took a dying app, and managed to bring it back onto the radar
by spinning a story that has nothing to do with the app itself.

There must be some sort of pro version of the Hype Cycle circulating in the
Valley
([http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hyp...](http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-
cycle.jsp)). "Okay marketeers, we need to begin the 'underdog' portion of our
marketing campaign. If that doesn't work, then we may need to engineer a
scandal to boost traffic".

~~~
minimaxir
I have zero affiliation with Peach, if that is what you are implying.

"Any publicity is good publicity" is another fallacy I'd like to take a closer
look at.

~~~
milesf
Naw, I just meant it in the same vein of your article :) Being critical of
people being critical by being critical.

------
pekk
Too much of what gets called "criticism" comes from people who aren't really
qualified to make that criticism, and is expressed in a way that is not civil
or objective or relevant, let alone constructive.

Some critics are just sniping at their competition. Many critics are just
trying to show off and look smart. Many critics have the crab bucket
mentality. A few critics are the kind of people who entertain themselves by
pulling the legs off of animals.

That is why we have the word "haters" to describe those kinds of critics. It's
a useful word.

~~~
te_chris
Oh please, so critics have to be credentialed now? We're not THAT precious
around here now are we?

------
dang
People criticize startups on HN just fine. What you're not allowed to do here
is post linkbait titles.

------
volaski
It's not cool to criticize startups in silicon valley because that's what the
place stands for. There's already enough people in the world who will say it's
a stupid app (probably 99.9%), I don't see anything wrong with some
encouragement from a small community. And like you observed, an app won't get
traction no matter how famous the founder is if it's not good enough, so life
is not exactly "unfair".

~~~
jff
> It's not cool to criticize startups in silicon valley because that's what
> the place stands for.

Fucking what? Would you say nobody in Hollywood should ever judge a movie
script because the place is _about_ making movies? "Well, whoever wrote this
script obviously put a lot of effort into it, so here $50 million"

~~~
volaski
No investor says "Well, whoever wrote this script obviously put a lot of
effort into it, so here $50 million". But I'm sure hollywood community also
encourages each other for their creativity no matter how crazy something
sounds. Encouragement and actually putting in $50million are very different
things. Everyone outside of silicon valley will react the same way you do, and
that's why silicon valley is necessary because it's one of the few places on
earth where you can talk about ridiculous stuff and not worry about being
judged, which encourages creativity. (For example, most people will think
"AirBnB for pets" is an idiotic idea and it probably is, but the fact that
people can talk about these things freely is a good thing)

------
nathanm412
I would imagine that many in Silicon Valley has pushed the issue of hyper
valuation into a deep dark pit inside of themselves. They don't want to
consider what would happen to them if this turns out to be a bubble that may
one day pop. You'll make these people insecure if you start questioning the
way the system currently operates.

