Brad Feld created a Hacker News-esque site, Startup Revolution

http://hub.startuprev.com/

by jqueryin • 14 years ago

46 43 14 years ago

hub.startuprev.com

jqueryin• 14 years ago

For those interested, there's also a post on Tech Cocktail describing Brad's vision for the community:

http://tech.co/brad-feld-startup-revolution-hub-2012-12

Udo• 14 years ago

"The audience is different – I’m focused on entrepreneurs who want to engage in discussions about creating the companies and startup communities, having an awesome life, and exploring better ways to be effective as entrepreneurs,” Feld tells Tech Cocktail. “I’m less interested in all the current tech news / issues discussions."

Sounds like they are going to concentrate on what I would characterize as fluff stories. I realize those are important to a lot of people, but some day I would really like to discover a friendly hacker community where the focus is on, well, hacking and making things.

Bjorkbat• 14 years ago

A superficial issue I'm sure, but the abundance of pink is somewhat offensive to the eyes, a lot of things really need to be toned down.

But content is what matters, and the content seems alright.

danso• 14 years ago

I have to agree...and I'm a proud owner of a pink iPod and pink tablet case. At first giant, it looks like the color scheme of various fashion blogs

Vivtek• 14 years ago

One of those few situations where color-blindness pays off, I guess.

Thanks, Mom!

alexbenzer5• 14 years ago

Done. Better now?

kmfrk• 14 years ago

No disrespect to Brad, but just "Brad Feld" in the title as someone everyone should know? I can see that he's an insider and all, I just have never managed to hear much about him.

Should I be familiar with him?

The site looks great, though, although the white-to-pink contrast is pretty bad. The more HN alternatives, the better.

jhuckestein• 14 years ago

Brad Feld is one of the founders of TechStars, which is a network of incubators much like YCombinator.

colinsidoti• 14 years ago

His reach is right up there with Fred Wilson IMO. He's a well respected guy in the entrepreneur/investment community. He also always answers his wife's phone calls, even in the middle of talks.

alanctgardner22• 14 years ago

Sorry, but no. While the content may be the same, the format is entirely the opposite of what I read HN for. Even given the same quality of discussion and links:

- The thumbnails add nothing useful

- Fewer headlines are visible without scrolling

- Insipid 'social' functions showing me everything going on down the right pane

I read Reddit and HN, but I read them for different reasons. I'm not looking for a Reese's-esque solution, I would like my chocolate and peanut butter decidedly separate.

jgrahamc2• 14 years ago

Also, on the first visit I'm urged to "log in to start earning great rewards". No, thanks.

To build a Hacker News competitor you need to build a community of equal value, not some 'rewards'. The reward here comes from having intelligent people read my comments and write intelligent responses. Build that and it'll be worth checking out.

And, making it look like a pink version of Digg circa 2007 isn't enticing me at all. I do not need avatars, lots of whitespace, fancy fonts, etc. And it has precisely the horrible thing Digg had: two clicks to read a story (one click to get to same lame summary of a story, another to read it).

Hacker News is all about respecting what Shannon told us so long ago about noisy channels.

trendspotter4• 14 years ago

And the rewards are not even for this website, they are managed by "BigDoor" - a gamification startup Brad Feld has invested in: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2010/06/fun-and-games-with-b...

ScottWhigham• 14 years ago

It's answers like this that make me wish for the karma/comment score system to be returned. I 100% agree - the "information density" is just digg-like and, as a result, I'm out. But if I just upvote you, so what? Maybe it floats to the top, maybe it doesn't. Who knows how many people agreed with you? You might get 150 votes but no one will ever know that 150 people agreed with you. And if I was the developer/Brad, I'd want to know that "150 people in my target audience agreed with this" vs. "This is the top commment as voted on by an unknown number of people".

jgrahamc2• 14 years ago

If you really want to know how many points that comment received then use the HNSearch API.

alanctgardner22• 14 years ago

Well, I appreciate your upvote ;)

More seriously, I think the tone of the comments on HN is not supposed to be binary: we don't aim for solely critical or supportive feedback. We try to improve things by offering suggestions. That my comment made it to the top means my suggestions were widely viewed as useful, or at least my criticism was accurate.

The magnitude of the negative sentiment isn't really important. It's the fact that, if the creator values HN's input, he should accept suggestions more-or-less from the top down, and weight them appropriately. If he scrolls to the bottom to see some generic 'Good work man, way to hustle', he doesn't really get it, does he?

andygcook• 14 years ago

Found two bugs in the sign up and took me 5 tries to get through the form:

1. The about me field and uploaded image input reset themselves whenever your form is invalid.

2. When signing up with Twitter, the form doesn't register that your image is already set via Twitter and forces the user to upload one locally.

trendspotter4• 14 years ago

I was able to sign-up via Twitter without that or any problem.

alexbenzer5• 14 years ago

Might be bugs - we'll look into these right now!

pclark• 14 years ago

Good grief that is a hideous website

alexbenzer5• 14 years ago

How can we make it better?

rdl• 14 years ago

copy news.ycombinator.com. differentiate yourself (if you want) with content (maybe geo-focused? hn might be comparatively weak on NYC, Boulder, Seattle, Austin content?), and/or add actual features.

It's not like the community even cares about "pretty" design, they want functional design, and HN is approximately as good as it will get. The things to fix about HN are the non-reversible actions, annoying link-timeout due to continuations (hint: don't use Arc, probably...), etc.

dudurocha• 14 years ago

For some odd reason, www.about.me/myusername is not a valid webpage. I'm a bit pissed with the sign up. Third time in a row I can't sign in.

tzaman• 14 years ago

While I think HN could use some UX improvements, this attempt adds too much noise while adding little value.

greyboy• 14 years ago

Also, confusingly (after browsing HN), clicking the link title on the home page brings you to the 'Comments' page (just as clicking '# comments' will). Then, on that page, click the title takes you to the actual article/page.

Not quite what I'm used to.

trendspotter4• 14 years ago

So far Startup Revolution is crap. I was neither able to edit my submission there (title,description) after posting, nor was I able to delete my own submission. And when posting the same link again, it wasn't detected as a duplicate and organized in such a way.

mrgreenfur• 14 years ago

Why are there "rewards" and why can't I register?

alexbenzer5• 14 years ago

What problem are you having with registration?

chris_l• 14 years ago

Can't stand that pink for very long :(

kyt• 14 years ago

I doubt Brad spent much time on this. If you notice, it's powered by "SocialEngine", which got its seed funding from TechStars where Brad is a mentor.

colinwinter• 14 years ago

Good point. Also everyone in this thread, even the OP, failed to realize the main difference/point with the site: it's about LOCAL entrepreneurship and building your LOCAL community, something Brad has been writing about. http://www.startuprev.com/about

Although, they did do a crap job at emphasizing 'LOCAL' on the site besides using the once in the sidebar description.

exogen• 14 years ago

Exactly. That's also the reason the rewards program is on there (I work for BigDoor). Brad is great at dogfooding his own investments.

bdcravens2• 14 years ago

Went to Social Engine's site. See a few quotes on the bottom of the home page which seem to imply testimonials, and I see:

"SocialEngine is rapidly evolving as an amazing tool for building and managing communities." - Brad Feld, feld.com

Huh. Now that I know he's involved at some level, but this isn't disclosed with his quote, it makes me question the credibility of the entire site.

bdcravens2• 14 years ago

HN isn't driven by a product YC or PG sells. To me, that speaks volumes.

SR (gotta refer to it by an acronym you know) is powered by SE. If it could handle HNish load, that would speak volumes about Social Engine, no?

Obviously there's a commercial interest (even if it doesn't drive decisions, it's still there)

benhebert• 14 years ago

I don't know that I would have lead with "Brad Feld" while he's certainly a respected entrepreneur it takes away from the news-esque site that wants me to earn rewards. No thanks.

robot• 14 years ago

A "pink" revolution?

theshadow2• 14 years ago

This is slightly offtopic but there used to be a clone of Hacker News that someone created. It was HN without all the startup stuff, instead focusing on hardcore technical topics. I lost the bookmark a while ago and have never found it again. If anyone has a link, it will be greatly appreciated!

billturner• 14 years ago

Was it this? https://lobste.rs/

theshadow2• 14 years ago

It might be, the design was different but this seems like an excellent resource too. Thanks!

sjmulder• 14 years ago

That’s really interesting, thanks. Looks like I’ll be frequenting that one.

By the way, the name reminded me of the uploaded lobsters from Stross’ Accelerando.

justhw• 14 years ago

No. I hate x ways to do y articles (lists). Hate social media expert-esque posts.

alexbenzer5• 14 years ago

Hey guys, I'm with SocialEngine - we are helping Brad build this community. First off, want to thank you all for the helpful feedback here.

- We've toned down the colors. Look better? - Sounds like you guys feel that the right-side gutter isn't serving a good purpose? Should we just ditch that? - We are going to tone down the BigDoor plugin.

This is still, at its core, an experiment. It definitely isn't perfect yet - the underlying platform is only 2 months old - so your feedback is really helping us... please keep it coming!

trendspotter4• 14 years ago

As I wrote here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4872853) please fix the issue of enabling the user to edit posts after submission (in a time frame like 1 hour or 1 day). And enable users to delete their own submissions.

orangethirty• 14 years ago

I'm having a hard time understanding how that website is any different from reddit.com/r/startups. Sure, it looks different, but the content is the same. The reason I visit HN is for the people commenting here, not the actual posts. Even the simplest thread can spark an interesting discussion from physics to business. I fail to see how that site will try to build such atmosphere. The desgin is also too busy, looks like a wordpress blog with one too many plug-ins.

Brad Feld created a Hacker News-esque site, Startup Revolution

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