An Article About Startups That Wasn't Written By A Pretentious Asshole

http://teddziuba.com/2008/08/an-article-about-startups-that.html

by joao • 18 years ago

52 71 18 years ago

teddziuba.com

swombat2• 18 years ago

Not Found

The requested URL /2008/08/an-article-about-startups-that.html was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

If you're gonna vote-bomb something to the top of YCNews, you might want to check the URL works first!.....

swombat2• 18 years ago

Also, without having read the article, since it's not found, any article with that title can only have been written by a pretentious asshole. :-)

babul2• 18 years ago

I thought he had read...

http://blog.dougpetkanics.com/the-404-test-wildly-brilliant

(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=275168)

rokhayakebe3• 18 years ago

It worked the first time. I read it. He took it down because the content was insulting.

joao• 18 years ago

Seems like Ted deleted the article...

skmurphy2• 18 years ago

http://teddziuba.com/2008/08/an-article-about-startups-that.... works for me

joshwa• 18 years ago

404

bluishgreen• 18 years ago

you didn't miss much.

pmorici• 18 years ago

"As an entrepreneur, probably 2 days out of 3 are better than they would be if I had a real job. That's probably the best reason I can come up with." [ for why he became one ]

That about sums up the content of the article.

rokhayakebe3• 18 years ago

"Anger is a cowardly way to express Sadness"

The article was funny, but he should not have insulted anyone. I think he is angry at the world.

EDIT: Mostly mad at bloggers because his application did not get the best reviews which is ironic because his blog uncov trashed most web application development teams.

rantfoil• 18 years ago

Looks like the link is back. I enjoy Dziuba's writing, but it's not cool to personally call out PG.

My only reaction to this article: Don't feed the trolls.

sd• 18 years ago

Even though this article is brimming with hyperbole, it brings up a number of important points that are often glossed over by many readers of HN. These include:

1) For most entrepreneurs, the present value of expected personal profit from a startup is probably less than that from a salary at a big tech company -- or even less so than from on Wall Street. 2) Luck begets success in entrepreneurship. Sure, it requires hard work and some intelligence, but obviously there are far more smart and hard working people than people who started public companies. Perhaps the function should be "(success) = (hard work) * (intelligence) * (luck),” where hard work and intelligence = 0 or 1 and luck is any real number. 3) Many tech bloggers and journalists are writing about things in which they don't have expertise. It's commonly cited among the academics whom I’ve met that expertise requires 10+ years in a field. Many of these people are in their 20s. Something doesn't add up. Moreover, many experienced people extrapolate their previous lessons to situations that are too broad or not directly parallel.

rokhayakebe3• 18 years ago

Yep. That was wrong. I thought Dzubia took the page down. He could have stayed away from naming anyone.

azharcs• 18 years ago

What Goes around comes around.

nickb• 18 years ago

Add http://teddziuba.com/atom.xml to google reader and you'll find it there if you're curious.

alex_c• 18 years ago

Meh.

deathbyzen• 18 years ago

Stopped reading at "cocksteaks."

swivelmaster2• 18 years ago

But that was the best part! (Anyway, that's how Ted writes.)

scott_s3• 18 years ago

So, badly.

edw519• 18 years ago

Will my startup make it? Who knows, but at least it was more fun than a colonoscopy.

Too bad we can't say the same about your writing.

huhtenberg• 18 years ago

In short, and quoting from the article itself, - some dick writes about startups or entrepreneurship on his "Random Musings of an X Programmer" blog

aasarava• 18 years ago

Aren't direct notes from a developer who was in the trenches at a startup exactly what you want? (As opposed to say, a Harvard Business Review article trying to give advice on how best to run a Silicon Valley tech-based startup?)

sysop073• 18 years ago

I have no idea where the lottery analogy is going. Winning the lottery is entirely luck, so it seems to imply that building a successful startup is luck too, but since he doesn't actually argue that point anywhere I'm inclined to think he's just spouting analogies at random hoping nobody will notice they're baseless

eugenejen• 18 years ago

No, some lottery winners will say they spent a lot of time and effort to figure out the hidden pattern among winning numbers in a lottery. So they worked a lot just like all startup founders.

mattmaroon2• 18 years ago

It's certainly not entirely luck. There's a literal 0% chance I'll ever win.

DaniFong• 18 years ago

It's pretty amazing. A few years ago, entrepreneurs wouldn't have even tipped into this guy's radar.

We've hit the big time. People are dripping with hate, envy, and disparagement. It seems as if entrepreneur hackers -- people who try to make something new, are now officially a subculture. Hurrah?

toki• 18 years ago

Just another rant. Once i liked rants very much, because they are often funny and somehow cool, but after reading too much of them in blogs i have become a little bit bored and suspicious:

If i read a rant what makes me say "yes!" to the article?: Is it the content? Or is it more the writing style which makes even the most stupid points and argumentations sound logical and cool?

Take this rant as an example: it is somehow succesful on hacker news despite having absolutely no content other than that its author feels fine two days out of three. If he would have written that in a normal style not even his mum would have read his blog entry. But by insulting other people and writing somehow aggressive he creates attention that isnt supported by the content.

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

Imagine Zed Shaw, only angrier and a less effective writer (I know, it's hard to imagine either...), and you won't have to actually read any Ted Dziuba posts. You can just imagine what he would say based on the title alone.

whalesalad• 18 years ago

I have nothing whatsoever against Paul Graham, I really don't know too much about him and aren't one of the many on here who paste all of his articles onto the cube walls surrounding their toilet, and have read them dozens of times, etc.... blah blah.

However... I do think that a lot of you are shutting Ted down simply because he said shit about PG.

Ted is funny as hell, and pretty much everything he said in his "rant" is spot on.

Personal note: I submitted this at +152 points here on news.yc, let's see how far it drops! Like Google after their earnings report? We'll see :)

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

If by "funny as hell" you mean "good at making up phrases like 'cocksteaks'", then yes.

People like Ted Dziuba and Zed Shaw seem to have found a winning formula for getting attention on the internet: yell loudly and profanely and don't be afraid to blatantly insult people, even if it's uncalled for.

tokipin• 18 years ago

so in other words, try to be like maddox. though maddox is a different beast, and actually has sensibility

gojomo• 18 years ago

Shaw is a builder who also rants. Dzuiba just tears down.

menloparkbum• 18 years ago

"Cocksteak" is indeed hilarious and could have only been created by true genius. It starts out with a word that generates guffaws on its own and strengthens it with imagery of slabby meatiness. The composition of the two pierces the rational mind and draws out autonomic "laffs" from deep within the humor cavities of our reptilian brains.

I just hope his startup, a web page that lists links to other web pages, does not get in the way of his truer literary calling.

edit: </sarcasm>

gruseom• 18 years ago

I kind of agree. He can be a very good (though uneven) writer. You couldn't possibly take the vulgarity out of his best stuff without rendering it, uh, flaccid.

Great satirists can be witty, vulgar, and highly personal all at the same time and yet come across as hilarious rather than offensive. But you'd better be saying something good or true. If you miss the mark, you're just an asshole. The trouble with this piece is not that it's vulgar but that it's mostly unfunny and drab. And the trouble with the swipe at Paul Graham is not that it's vulgar (or even that it's personal) but that it's gratuitous.

Edit: incidentally, your last sentence strikes me as a shrewd observation.

ojbyrne• 18 years ago

"true genius" is a little much. Maybe appropriate for the guy who started the whole concept with "asshat."

scott_s3• 18 years ago

The title lies.

maxklein• 18 years ago

He's right. The odds of actually making millions of this startup game are pretty low.

emmett• 18 years ago

For Y-Combinator founders it appears to be pretty decent so far, but perhaps that's an anomaly.

maxharris• 18 years ago

This article is empty and the title is misleading.

paul3• 18 years ago

Poor Ted. He spent all that time trashing other people's startups, and now he has to cope with his own startup problems. It must be Paul Graham's fault.

Perhaps PG's advice isn't all perfect, and maybe it's not for everyone, but the fact is that he has helped a lot of people, including hundreds of YC founders, and they generally seem pretty grateful. Who has this guy helped? What has he done to make the world a better place?

timr3• 18 years ago

That's not even remotely fair -- he makes several reasonable points, and other than a mention of the fact that his startup life is hard, the post isn't really a complaint, so much as a criticism of the blind optimism that seems to run rampant in the startup world.

Nearly everyone here is focusing on the attack on pg, and ignoring the substance of the argument. Perhaps that's just because Ted is a controversial character, but it still doesn't make the discussion here much more than a collective ad hominem attack.

paul3• 18 years ago

What are his reasonable points? That startups are hard? Everyone says that. If you took out all the insults, hate, and swearing, there wouldn't be much there, and it certainly wouldn't have as many votes as it does (because it would just be yet another, "startups are hard" blog post).

It's possible that he _could_ have an interesting blog post here though. If he spent less time attacking people and more time thinking about his motivations, there might be some genuinely useful insights. His comment about "taking shit" from everyone is somewhat revealing. It may be that he simple has the wrong personality for this. I like our users (well, most of them), and it's part of what I like about my job.

auston2• 18 years ago

That guys startup, pressflip has a sweet logo: http://pressflip.com/ !

babul2• 18 years ago

Very nice logo. Simple and elegant. Also works well in black and white.

Ideally, it is good to have a logo that works in monochrome (for laser prints, photocopies, embossing/engraving, etc.) and if possible includes the company name.

jacobbijani• 18 years ago

Why is it on the page three times?

auston2• 18 years ago

Because it's that good.

pxlpshr• 18 years ago

Except that it looks heavily influenced by the INHD logo.

http://media.jackmyers.com/images/march-inhd-logo.gif

http://pressflip.com/static/pf_web_logo_front2.png

jonknee• 18 years ago

Well INHD hasn't existed for a while, so I don't think there will be much confusion.

hooande• 18 years ago

I don't know...I think that people who are wildly successful have a right to have a bit of an ego. If you do something ridiculously difficult and succeed, you should feel proud and let people know that you're proud.

Can you imagine the New England Patriots without a Super Bowl swagger? A rock star who is genuinely humble? The president of the US acting like he's just an ordinary person?

I think if you sell your company to google (or better, start the next google) you almost have a responsibility to act accordingly. Walk around with your chest out and your head held high! Talk like you know something! Or else what's the freaking point? If you don't act like you're at least supremely confident, you're almost doing a disservice to everyone else who is trying to get to be where you are.

defen• 18 years ago

Remove the pg name-calling and this is exactly the "Random Musings of an X Programmer" post that he mocks, that no one would have read.

noonespecial• 18 years ago

FTA Money can be made elsewhere, without nearly as much bullshit: Wall Street, the court room and the operating room, to name a few.

He just named the places where bullshit lives. I'm speechless. And I liked Starcraft dammit!

mattmaroon2• 18 years ago

I know for a fact one can play Starcraft and get with girls. One of my college roommates did both at the same time. I wish I were joking there.

fallentimes4• 18 years ago

Quiet or I'll 4 pool ling rush you.

Did he picture her as Kerrigan or the Zerg Queen?

fallentimes4• 18 years ago

"Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you're smart. A smart guy will figure out how to make a bunch of money while taking on much less risk. Corollary to this, there are a lot of dumb entrepreneurs out there."

I'd argue that doing a startup with someone else's money (thanks PG and Co), at a young age, and in a struggling economy is much less risky than my former spot.

I used to work in finance and many of my friends are out of jobs with nothing to fall back on. I could have easily been one of them. At least if this fails, I'll come out with a ton of experience in numerous areas and good friends.

m0nty• 18 years ago

"I'm just full of piss and vinegar, and I call 'em as I see 'em."

Definition of "asshole."

iamelgringo• 18 years ago

Should this article be flagged? It's pretty trollish.

baruman• 18 years ago

"An Article About Startups That Wasn't Written By A Pretentious Asshole"

...Wanna Bet?

skmurphy2• 18 years ago

"Entrepreneurs start businesses because...they have no choice. Passion and energy drive them on good days and sustain them on bad days." Barry Moltz in "You Have to Be a Little Crazy"

An Article About Startups That Wasn't Written By A Pretentious Asshole

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