

Dalton Caldwell, you should move to New York and re-rethink app.net - nottombrown
http://waxman.me/dalton-caldwell-you-should-move-to-new-york-and-rethink-appnet

======
dalton
Here is how I responded to Michael via Twitter:

"I don't want to move to New York because my wife and son live here with me,
and we have a whole life outside of tech that matters.

The thing about imeem and picplz is they seemed really stupid and
insignificant at first too. But the issues they tackled ended up being about
something very important and fundamental. At least in my opinion.

imho everything worth doing looks stupid and insignificant at first:
<http://daltoncaldwell.com/the-makings-of-history-are-banal> "

Source tweets:

<https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/224947883009515521>

<https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/224948252141830145>

<https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/224948783891496960>

~~~
waxman
Thanks for responding, Dalton. I really appreciate it.

Responses to the responses below :)

"can't argue with that :) meant Valley v. New York more as ideas than places,
but you should at least come visit for inspiration

I actually agree with that :) I like the Paul Graham line that many huge
startups start off as "toys"

seriously best of luck with <http://app.net> , I don't want to come off as a
dick

I just find the idea of crusading against ad-supported models with an awesome
team inspiring, but not necessarily the api idea"

Source tweets:

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958061226360832>

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958718230544387>

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958289140658176>

<https://twitter.com/wxmn/status/224958976733888512>

~~~
dannyr
waxman,

Have you actually lived in the Valley?

The "bubble" indeed exists but there are so many things about the Valley that
outweighs that negative.

What are the chances in NYC that I go into a cafe and meet a startup founder?

For me, being in the Valley means I'm surrounded by people who understands
what I'm going through. It keeps me motivated.

I haven't been to NYC for years but I'm pretty sure that when I walk in a cafe
there, I won't think that the people there are probably building the next
great web startup.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"What are the chances in NYC that I go into a cafe and meet a startup
> founder?"_

As someone who lives in SF and is moving to NYC, your odds are pretty low. But
I think there's a better question here:

What are the chances in SF that I go into a cafe and meet a startup founder
_working on something big and impactful_?

I don't know about you, but my time in SF has netted me a lot of opportunities
to talk to founders who are working on [insert social/mobile/local thing here]
which IMO simply aren't big enough (or original enough) for me to care. For
every Square there are dozens of Square copycats who aren't really executing
anything substantially different. For every Zynga there are dozens of startups
in SF egging their exact formula and not really mutating it in a meaningful
way.

Certainly _very, very_ few are working on anything that has relevance outside
of the tech community, with impact IRL - I'm talking about the AirBnbs and the
Squares. Stuff that will change the lives of people who _aren't_ plugged into
the pulse of the California tech scene.

SF is full of startups, sure, but the vast majority aren't doing anything
interesting. I'll trade quantity for quality, though I'm not asserting where
one might find higher quality between SF and NYC.

~~~
kurtvarner
_[...] though I'm not asserting where one might find higher quality between SF
and NYC._

Thank you for including this.

------
untog
Eek, Valley vs Alley flamewar approaching!

The downside here is that the article doesn't really do a great job of
explaining the "move to New York" comment. I live in NYC and I agree that the
tech scene is far less of a bubble than the Valley, simply because we are
surrounded by so many different industries. Everyone in the Valley is in tech,
but I have friends here in NYC in fashion, banking, media... you name it. I
don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of NYC startups touch on these
industries.

But when you say:

 _They talk about real problems. Like loneliness or stress or sickness or
unemployment or high prices or lack of education._

It sounds _bad_. Like, "typical arrogant New Yorker" bad. There is a valid
point being made here, but I fear that it's going to get lost.

~~~
ryguytilidie
I think its funny that New Yorkers always tell me how they're surrounded by a
variety of industries whereas all us San Franciscans know is tech. My office
in SF is in the Financial district, with probably 50 banks within a 10 block
radius. 3 blocks over is Union Square, which has a Niemann Marcus, Macys,
Nordstrom's, Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton, (essentially you name the high fashion
company, its there), 2 blocks the other way is Chinatown, one of the biggest
concentrations of Chinese culture. To imply that those of us out here are
living in a bubble where all we can experience is tech makes me think one just
needed to grasp at straws for why NY is better...

~~~
SeoxyS
I'm with you here, I think San Francisco is an awesome and diverse city. But I
think that people who talk about Silicon Valley being insular are talking
about the actual valley: Sunnyvale to Menlo Park. And they have a point; if
you're in the valley, you're definitely missing out on the many advantages of
being in a real city surrounded by real people (whether it's NY or SF).

------
rudiger
Off-topic: Anyone else noticing the proliferation of Svbtle[1] blogs on the
front page of Hacker News today? I counted three in the top ten links just
now.

[1] - <http://svbtle.com>

~~~
rrbrambley
I don't think it's completely off topic. I'm not trying to be snarky, but he
says "The world doesn’t need a slightly better Twitter, just as the world
doesn’t need a slightly better ad model." as he writes on his slightly better
blogging platform. I think there's always room for new and improved versions
of existing services, but they just have to stand out and have the community
behind them to succeed.

~~~
jonny_eh
Especially since most innovation is "slightly better x". Facebook was just a
slightly better social network, google a slightly better search engine. That's
how great things start.

------
swanson
Is a direct email to Dustin Caldwell not a better medium for this content?
Aside from beating the "wasting smart people on advertising" horse to death,
what value does this provide as a blog post and why is HN upvoting it?

~~~
stephengillie
This is straight spam and phallus-waving. It's like this is a gaming forum or
something.

------
dr_
There aren't many new York startups that are aimed at solving the so called
serious problems you mention. A large number of them are focused on online
fashion sales, with a mixed bag of other things. Foursquare is in NY, but it's
mindset in terms of revenue appears to be no different than any company in the
Valley. Tumblr hasn't really figured it out yet either. Hopefully this will
change but as of now the various industries you are exposed to in NYC hasn't
resulted in startups serving all of them. Otherwise you'd see a whole slew of
financial startups but that hasn't been the case. The one that comes to mind
at first is banksimple (or simple) which was trying to tackle a behemoth of an
industry that needs change, but even they took off for Portland. Sometimes a
revolution comes from the outside.

------
achompas
I'm a big cheerleader for NY tech (hence why I live there now), but you see a
different flavor of "goofy problems." Instead of social apps, you get
advertising or fashion startups. Companies on the west coast (SpaceX, Tesla)
are tackling big problems just like companies on the east coast (Foursquare,
Tumblr) are tackling "goofy problems."

Ultimately, tackling serious problems involves understanding your own values.
Some "non-serious" startups handle incredible architectural issues and produce
amazing technology (memcached, Cassandra, Solr) that improves our lives in
subtle ways. Similarly, serious startups produce can have high-risk, pie-in-
the-sky goals (SpaceX) that may not materialize.

------
toddmorey
I don't think NYC (or any location) offers real advantage towards thinking
bigger. May I humbly, and with good humor, present Michael's own endeavor--
Grouper: "a social club that arranges drinks between two groups of friends who
don't know each other."

I do like that the tech community worldwide seems to have a new concern with
tackling larger and more important issues. I'm excited to see what emerges.

------
lnanek2
I'm native NY/NJ, but have been in the SF area the past month for conferences
and hackathons. I have to say that tech is much more mainstream here. Whereas
hackathons in NYC are largely white guys, here you see a lot more women and
other cultures involved. One group of Mexican participants put together a cool
5 player tank game running on a bunch of devices in many modes and all demo'ed
it on stage.

An iPhone using business major friend here I was hanging out with picked up my
Nexus 7 from a pile of devices at the side of my room and fell in love with
it. Back in NYC there'd be much less interest and willingness to try something
other than a fashionable, everyday-person-celebrated-and-marketed iPad.

So yes, there are blind spots in that people think the world in general is
much more interested in esoteric tech (like APIs), but there are also much
more real world things and histories getting dragged in and overlapping as
well - much like how colleges and universities are always arguing that
diversity is a strength worth biasing admissions toward.

------
shmageggy
Are there any forums like HN but more focused on areas that are, as the author
put it, more "steeped in reality"? I love having the ability to follow some of
the best minds in SV's tech scene, but ultimately I would be much more
interested in things like (off the top of my head) cancer research,
sustainable energy, or education than the latest social network.

I understand, as other posters have mentioned, that work in HN-friendly areas
can potentially have important effects, such as the democratic empowerment
enabled by social media for example, but I'm sure there are amazing technical
things being done in all sorts of interesting fields that don't get much
traction here.

Also, I think the author is misunderstanding the business model Dalton is
proposing. The platform will be paid for via subscriptions; the crowdsourcing
aspect is just there initially to ensure a critical mass of participants,
something crucial for venues with network effects.

------
mcmatterson
I fear michael may be misunderstanding the depth / underlying intent / happy
follow-on effects from the app.net proposal. I don't see it as a 'better
Twitter' so much as I see it as an app-friendly social network touchpoint,
basically OpenFeint with less of a gaming bias. This is a separate
consideration than how 'real-world' the product is, but one that nonetheless
merits mention.

------
cletus
I almost missed this post (meaning I scanned the title and didn't read it).
I'm glad I didn't. It's a good post. I like it for a number of reasons:

1\. Speaking as someone who lives in NYC, I too think it's got a lot going for
it. Housing (at least compared to SF; I'm less familiar with how horrible the
housing market is further as you go towards San Jose), infrastructure, a more
balanced mix of people (the Valley is more dominated than NYC by 20 and 30
something male engineers), etc;

2\. This post in some ways echoes my own feelings about Twitter {eg [1]).
Twitter seems to suffer this dichotomy between being a service and being
infrastructure. One of my arguments is that the messaging infrastructure that
ultimately dethrones SMS is too valuable to be proprietary.

Of course to be clear Dalton seems to be talking about a "real-time
notification API", which is a little different to messaging but it shares a
lot of the same problem domain.

I think this is important infrastructure but it's going to be a thankful (and
probably fruitless) task, particularly in building an open, well, whatever.

3\. It echoes my own view that something like a "better Twitter" is really a
"small problem" [2].

I see Dalton has responded and there he has roots in his current community.
You can't argue with that. But I'm all for promoting NYC as an alternate tech
hub and the idea of tackling big problems.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4186157>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4244709>

------
budu3
Can you please let the man at least launch first before you start tearing down
the project?

------
54mf
A better Twitter is insignificant, but a dating service with a gimmick isn't?

