bmcmanus

Codecademy is smart - they realize that collecting use/accomplishment data on high-quality lessons carries much more upside than trying to sell the content created on their platform.

thanks for posting these, guys.

one request - could you please get rid of the devastating meebo bar?

Frankly, this is just sad.

Your answer is based entirely on the premise that working for a startup boils down to killing yourself for the chance to get rich, which couldn't be further from the truth.

The "rich people" who do startups do it because they love building things that solve big problems, the work hours and payouts are, if they're lucky, just a byproduct.

Sure, I'm 24 and I have basically nothing to lose, but really I have no choice - I have to build things. I can't deal with just performing maintenance.

And even if you are ok with just performing maintenance, working in a small team is simply more fun than working at a larger one.

Seriously, reflect more on this. Writing off startups because they're "in a business of greed" is a straw man at best.

The tech world deserves to read a post on one page too.

Why is "resume comes in" always accepted as a given first step?

Redesigning the tech hiring process starts with discovery. You can't keep posting your hiring needs on HN, Github and Stackoverflow and just expect a great person to find you, read more about you, and pull a resume together for you to make your life easier. We expect you to make our life easier because we know we can work just about anywhere.

As I guess pg might say "Go to your users!" to founders looking for help making a decision, you need to go to us if you want to grow your team! We're real freaking people who hate creating a BS piece of paper for you that means absolutely nothing. Find us in person and spend time with us so we can skip this resume crap and focus on actually building things that we both actually enjoy.

"some conversations will be different?"

...and that's worth building an entirely new product and trying to move select people from HN to it?

Honest question -- what's the real utility of a founder network like this above, say, actively participating on HN regularly?

Forrst is so useful because it's specialized. I don't see that (yet) here.

Amen. I think an information shortage is at the root of all of this outrage.

For example, check out resources like LiveScience or MobileActive.org every once in a while.

Wonderful people are solving big problems as we speak, I promise.

Best one I know is the Silicon Valley HackersDigest: http://thehackersdigest.com curated by Santiago (@dfect).

covers lots of bay area user group meetups, hackathons, & hacker dojo events.

Which StartupDigest issue(s) do you ignore and why?

As easy as that is to say, this isn't a get-bought-and-get-paid company; it's a shake-up-the-world company. I'm sure he and his co-founders discussed that at length and understand it.

And ultimately, if you have a remarkable team with strong financial backing, isn't that the type of company you really want to work for?

Tell HN: Don't waste your time watching this like I did. It's a two-minute video with a sexy headline and no insight.

Can anyone recommend a few useful post-acquisition interviews? Thanks.

Agreed. Small, focused local meetups, however, I've found useful much more frequently and should not be lumped together with said conferences.

While I do like your last name, I have a hard time believing that "it's had an m for 15 years" is really the best argument against .co.

For example, does a .co domain inherently carry any security or SEO problem?

I'm having a hard time evaluating this. Is there a member who can accurately explain the real differences in value between owning a .com and .co domain?

For example, I imagine that .com just being the socialized norm does not come close to telling the whole story. Thanks.

Do offers/deals really have a place on HN?

Realizing that starting an email newsletter company is costless and doesn't have to distribute only news is actually a big idea. There's a ton of businesses to be made around distributing curating publicly available content, and being able to serve members of a community you really love is a rare, awesome opportunity.

I agree. There was recently a Startup Weekend event in Detroit with all of the displaced and laid off auto workers. It was pretty inspiring to see many of these people only working in the auto industry their whole lives, starting over again and starting startups.

hackers & founders will be cool next tues with the wepay/mixpanel talk at hacker dojo

Interesting to read that, but Chris and Peter are actually friends and he's very kindly helped provide guidance for this. I'll let you know if we get a call later though :-)

Amen to that. Working on it :-)

Last time I checked, real people make up the public.

What's wrong with those words exactly?

Totally understand. I pasted it because in the past I've found that people are more likely to leave comments here than on a foreign blog.

Link is http://startupsrule.com

There is tremendous value in taking the first step to anything–especially starting a great company.

Being confident enough to go out and meet anyone, to share opinions, to think differently, to solve your own problems and to shape your reality is both admirable and necessary to change the world for the better.

That being said, starting a great company is not a one step process. Your problem which you bravely solved may be shared by many people around the world, but a great company will never grow and survive around you–it will do so around that which makes other people’s lives better.

I don’t know every step to making a great company, but I’m pretty sure that Step Two is to look beyond your own needs and develop a deep interest in how your actions will affect others. I guess this fits somewhere in between “building for a market of one” and scaling your solution after discovering product/market fit.

Today, it’s easier than ever to hear what the people you affect are saying, but no one teaches you how to listen. It’s also easier than ever to publish content and put it in front of others, but no one teaches you how to think about the ways in which readers will perceive it and respond.

I think that the best way to approach Step Two is to assume that everyone can see straight through you. If you interact with them only to inflate your own status, they will eventually pick up on it. If you publish content to broadcast your own needs without serving theirs, they will figure it out and abandon you.

“You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” - Bob Marley

People are smart–they can tell when someone spends extra time thinking about what they need. You’re smart too, but you’re not smart enough to fake that.

Great companies spend more time thinking about the problems of others than they do their own. Those companies understand the best ways to solve our problems even before we do because they’ve spent so much time thinking about it. We love that feeling, and we pay for it.

So, whether you were part of the founding team of your company or not, be the first person on your team to take Step Two. Spend extra time to make everything you produce more helpful to everyone else, and ignore those on your team who will tell you that you are wasting time.

Your thanks will not come from them, but from the smart, real people whose lives you improve while building your great company.

Question for comments: Does what I wrote resonate with you? If so, please tell me what you’re thinking about now.

Cool stuff always rules. The point is that timely, physical interaction between talented hackers and the "heroes" that inspire them will lead to more cool stuff being made even faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Thoughts?

You should get in touch with @jonnyli and @okuda_wiz

I have a few friends in Atlanta who love the growing scene there. What are you up to in the area? I'd be happy to put you in touch to see if they can help.

If needed, my direct email is brendan [at] thestartupdigest [dot] com.

Great to hear about the culture in Northeast Ohio, Jim. It definitely is a start. I think that "hero" should be taken as a wide-reaching term. Ron Conway and Fred Wilson are rockstar examples, but the main point is that early stage entrepreneurs need to put faces to success stories for a startup hub to be healthy. Those success stories can be as simple as getting one startup off the ground and operating it as a break-even business.