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Garrett Camp never ran a taxi company. Bill Gates never ran a computer business. Etc. All them did know the problem they were solving though.

Previous knowledge of running a parking lot is not causal with startup failure. I think a better way to be critical is the fact that they say they're "disrupting" parking lots, but can't describe the problem they're solving.


>Bill Gates never ran a computer business.

Yes he did.

>At age 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.[1]

And the idea that someone needs to have run a computer business in the past in order to run a computer business in the future is illogical. It means that no one would ever be able to start running a computer business. The requirement should not be running a business in the past, but having some experience with that type of business in the past. Bill Gates had tons of computer experience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates


"It means that no one would ever be able to start running a computer business. The requirement should not be running a business in the past, but having some experience with that type of business in the past. Bill Gates had tons of computer experience."

Thanks for helping me make my point.

Also, I didn't say "Bill Gates" and "Microsoft". You're right, Traf-O-Data was a "modest success". It reinforces my point.


Right, who could forget the epoch-making work of Traf-O-Data.


Since when is success dependent on the amount of people in the world that know about it?


They know the "problem" they're solving, they just can't publicly advertise it, because their actual business model is to track drivers' movements and sell the data. Want to know where Bob Smith parked on 14 May 2018? That'll be $32, thankyou.


Here's the full list, saving you 60 clicks:

Create a Crunchbase page

Share your website on Startupli.st or Erlibird.com

Share your pre-launched website on Betalist.com

Respond to unanswered questions in your niche on Quora. Look for questions with a lot of people waiting for an answer.

Submit a free press release using a service like PRlog

Message meetup coordinators and ask for speaking gigs at local events

Film your speaking gigs and share videos of your talks on your blog

Send personalized E-mails to your existing users, ask for referrals or their help promoting your company

Create an infographic, share on free distribution sites like Visual.ly and Pinterest.

Write a post called “Our competitor vs Our Company” - This will attract search engine traffic looking for reviews of your competitor

Submit a presentation or slidedeck to Slideshare

Giveaway a free ebook, and let users download it in exchange for their email address

Write a “how-to” guide on Medium for something that is difficult in your industry

Promote your product in your email signature

Sponsor a newsletter on Upstart.me & promote your product to other people's lists

Submit your product to Producthunt.com

Create a free online course on a topic related to your product

Reach out to relevant bloggers and ask to write a guest post on their blog (don't forget to include a link to your project)

Update your Linkedin status and link back to your website

Grow your social media follower base by following the followers of your competitors

Create relevant Youtube videos and add relevant keywords in the title and description

Run Facebook Ads

Run Google Ads

Run Twitter Ads

Run Linkedin Ads

Subscribe to Helpareporter.com and provide quotes to journalists

Reach out to podcasts to get interviewed

Start your own podcast

Let your first 100 users pay with a tweet, to sign up in exchange for a share

Create a Facebook page

Make your UI remarkable and shareworthy

Run Stumbleupon ads

Get an Instagram influencer in your niche to promote your product

Get a Youtube influencer in your niche to promote your product

Get a popular Facebook page in your niche to promote your product

Add screenshots of your product to a Pinterest board

Create a profile on Angel.co

Ask your friends to share it with their friends

Sponsor a hackathon

Sponsor an event by offering a service (instead of money) in exchange for promoting your product

Go live on Periscope and talk about your product

Engage in online forums where your target audience is hanging out

Write on-topic comments on Reddit.com where your product seems to be a solution to the discussion

Start a Facebook group

Post articles to Reddit.com in relevant subreddits

Submit your project to ShowHN on Hackernews

Comment on industry blogs

Host giveaway contests on social media

Offer discounts in exchange for sharing your website

Create a free Slack community for your target audience

Host a webinar

Start a daily email newsletter where you link to relevant news that your audience might be interested in

Giveaway t-shirts with your logo & website on them

Create different landing pages with different messages, that all link to your main website

Attend conferences and talk to as many people as you can

Be the bonus in someone else's product. Let a different company promote you to their audience in exchange for a commission

Got a beautifully designed product? Apply for design awards.

Create a course on Udemy.com

Advertise at conferences


Which anecdotes do you find useless?


The author's iPhone 6+ does not age well with apps consuming significant power. That anecdote is not useful, because that is a particular issue with the author's phone and not general enough to be useful. If you abuse your phone battery, it will not maintain capacity. My 6 plus's battery is at 89% capacity after 3+ years.

The author complains about Apple technical support, but brings up a anecdote about a laptop (I thought this was about a phone). Can you bring a Samsung phone to a Samsung store to get it repaired? I remember needing to mail my Samsung phone in for warranty repair and the screen coming back with a diagonal slice where they cut the packaging open. That sucked, but I am not going to blame all of Samsung for that (it was probably an unfortunate mistake) or blame the Android ecosystem.


What issues in particular beyond device storage and background photo syncing? I don't think it cuts the issues in half. Using iCloud creates its own issues as well (like paying for yet another cloud storage)


Does Google Drive+Photos monetize its data even though it's a subscription product?


Have a look at the EULA for Google Drive, they take the rights to use the data for promotions and improvements of the product.


I imagine that one factor into resale value aging well is that the price is already high and Apple has a strong brand, versus the actual quality of the device. But it's hard to tell.

RE: personal anecdotes. Fair feedback, but the post was meant to be based entirely on my own experiences. Agree that a more comprehensive post could be done that includes real world data. Although that data would be challenging to gather.


Why is my post marked as flagged?


Because the title is "The iPhone is Dead" instead of something like "Why I Switched to Android".


Ah, I see. Thanks for clarifying! Will be more careful with my titles going forward.


That link doesn't contain any information on who's for overturning it so I'm not sure how it's related to this TIL.

Also, reason.com is funded by the Koch brothers, who also funded brigading FCC comments with anti-net neutrality posts. https://gizmodo.com/half-of-anti-net-neutrality-comments-cam...


Why would it be better as a medium post?


Blog or Medium post. Medium has an advantage that it is a bit more capable in virality out of the gate as Medium will recommend posts to users based on their interests. A posting on an obscure blog I won't see, but a Medium post might get recommended to me the next time I'm bored and pop open the app.


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