Ask HN: What lessons you learned in 2011

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3309772

by markhall • 15 years ago

15 9 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

As 2011 comes to an end, I'm working on a blog post about what big lessons entrepreneurs, hackers, bloggers learned this year. My focus is around technology, entrepreneurship, web, etc. Give me your thoughts.

delwin• 15 years ago

Ideas don't mean anything, execution is everything. Feel free to give away your idea to everyone.

This applies to entrepreneurship, but not, I believe, to other more "creative" fields, like art/music/etc. Fine arts are judged much more on the fundamental idea behind the work rather than the execution. For example, with the exception of mainstream music, excellent records are released all the time that have sub-par mastering/production.

markhall3• 15 years ago

Thanks delwin! Great points

gw666• 15 years ago

As I get older, writing stuff down pays bigger and bigger dividends. I have a series of "notes" files on various subjects, which I keep on Dropbox. When I learn something (especially something undocumented), I put it in the right file so I can find it later. I've become much more productive (and less frustrated) as a result.

markhall3• 15 years ago

Thanks gw666!

iSloth• 15 years ago

The biggest thing that I learnt was you don't have to find ways of driving traffic to your site with advertising and link building etc...

Just social web interactions such as replying to posts and helping people on sites such as server-fault (with a discreet link in your profile) can generate a substantial flow of users to your websites.

And the best thing about this flow of users is that they are more likely to find value in your website than the average person which would be directed from paid advertising.

markhall3• 15 years ago

Great point! I couldn't have agreed more. Thanks for the comments iSloth!

decadentcactus• 15 years ago

I'm sure others learned this before me, but it seems to be something you have to experience: Things take so much more work than you expect, and will take a lot longer than you planned (eg post-release building up to good traffic levels).

Also agree with delwin

adrianwaj• 15 years ago

Most people aim to take rather than give and come from a place of insufficiency (not sure how that can help you) - maybe explains why business models based on donations don't work, and why Wikipedia is struggling.

Although very admirable, should've Sergey Brin (or Google) given more - how much is Wikipedia worth to Google?

FameofLight• 15 years ago

The main learning is we try to solve the problem first, before understanding and defining the problem.

You can see it everywhere, we always want to jump and skip to solution, skip the process and get to result, skip the learning and get the work done in most cases its a very bad idea.

See in personal life, we were always trying to make ourselves better but, where does it goes nowhere, you don't know what you are trying to become better at.

I think we need to relearn the basic problem solving, we have forgotten with so much noise and fast moving world. 1. Understand the problem 2. Define the problem. 3. What are various approaches and solution to the problem. Understanding them pros and cons. 4. Applying and finding the optimal solution. Refine the solution over time.

Ask HN: What lessons you learned in 2011

Related Stories