Why I'll be a solo founder next time - <AUTHOR> http://dennybritz.com/blog/2013/08/05/why-i-will-be-a-solo-founder-next-time/ <comment><USER4> Interesting points, but a lot of it is contradictory to the advice you hear from successful startups, so I'd take this with a grain of salt.

 _" I believe that my previous two ventures failed mainly because of the founding team (which I'm included in). How do I know? Because companies with almost identical products and value propositions succeeded afterwards._"

I'm not sure if you're drawing the correct lesson there. Sounds more like implementation issues. I'd recommend you spend some effort improving your ability to implement / find people who can implement and then try again.

<comment><USER5> I'll chime in here and say that reading this article sounded exactly like reading about my own 3 previous (failed) partnerships.

My sole successful venture has been solo all along (not including employees), and has outlasted the rises and falls of the other businesses (during the amateur entrepreneur "too many fingers in too many pies" phase). I don't think I'd do a partnership again. But maybe I just don't play well with others?

Anyway, can't speak for the OP, but when intelligent, ambitious friends around you see that you work your tail off and already have succeeded at building a profitable business from scratch, they suddenly get really excited about starting new businesses with you that often sound great. At least in my experience though, many of these people turn out to see themselves as "the visionary" who kinda sorta checks in from time to time and you as "the worker," which, if that isn't the role you're interested in, causes things to unravel rather fast.

<comment><USER6> I suspect this is a key insight. There is a colloquialism for a company of people all trying to be 'the boss' called "Too many Chiefs, not enough Indians" (in reference to the tribal organization of Native American tribes, where in fact there was exactly _one_ Chief who was the final arbiter) but another spin on this is "Too many Medicine men, not enough Indians."

The "fantasy" life of a startup founder is that they see things others don't (vision) and lead people who make those visions real (workers). Except you can't really lead someone with a vision if you don't know yourself how to make that vision real.

The challenges of startups are that you have to be able to "do it all" in order to know what "doing it" actually entails, then you can bring people in who can do a part of it (that you were previously doing) and _know_ if they are doing it well or not. Folks who are visionary in their thinking but can't break that down into actionable steps toward that vision, and then break those steps into problem assignments, aren't really going to be an asset for your startup until you already have a product and a revenue stream.

Even then, there is nothing more irritating to folks than a clueless visionary. Someone who says something like "The underlying problem is energy dependence, so our goal should be to provide an unlimited energy source to break that dependence, let's get some smart people working on that!" Accurate vision, but ultimately clueless, they just slow people down who have to explain the 2nd law of thermodynamics to them (if they are patient enough).

<comment><USER7> ""(in reference to the tribal organization of Native American tribes, where in fact there was exactly one Chief who was the final arbiter)""

AFAIK absolutely false. It is also a gross generalization about a diverse group of people with differing sociopolitical structures.

I would suggest reading "Empire of the Summer Moon" for an example of a famous and incredibly egalitarian American construct, or just read about Iroquois political structures via Googling, for two examples.

[http://www.cokesbury.com/forms/ProductDetail.aspx?pid=939760...](http://www.cokesbury.com/forms/ProductDetail.aspx?pid=939760&vsl=0001)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois)

<comment><USER8> omg, secret political correctness police, please go away!

<comment><USER9> Whiddershins' comment has nothing to do with _political_ correctness, but rather with actual _historical_ correctness. The comment is polite, sincere, and provides a further source of information for those who seek it.

<comment><USER10> _actual historical correctness_

This is silly and trivial. Two reasons:

[1] The phrase is the analog of an idiom. It is shorthand for "hierarchy" and used as such. The parent is explaining its use.

[2] There are many tribal organizations. This cuts both ways. Provided there is a single one that was historically rank-hierachical, the data is not even a counterfactual.

[3] Provided [2] is ok, so is [1]. We know [2] is ok. Hence, the comment is logically ~gratuitous.

See, for example:

[http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/too+many+chiefs...](http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/too+many+chiefs+and+not+enough+indians.html)

<comment><USER11> Besides, my Grandma used to say it all the time! I'm bringing it back!

\---

I don't think the correct response when called out the use of a racist stereotype is to claim it's silly and trivial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A partnership is more work and harder than marriage because you have to:

\- get on and stay on the same page

\- agree on both of your live's direction and commitment to a path has to be the same for the next 2-3 years

\- have the ability to defer to each other in your area of competence

\- have to be skilled at learning and getting anything done, whether its business or tech.

\- know that your entry and exit goals have to be compatible. Some people want to get rich quick, others are happy with organic growth that scales as well.

\- be able to have a disagreement and move on for what's best.

\- remember it's not about who's right, but what's right. Have a overarching vision, mission and values that you agree with so you can test any idea against them to see "does it fit how we're trying to do?"

\- understand that it's about creating value for your customers, not making your own lives easier through the latest technology that makes something easier for you in development

\- remember building channel to a market is more important than anything you build.

\- building a financial engine early is the biggest indicator of whether your partnership will last

\- building a partnership that grows in to friendship is easier than the other way around. Build things with people who you have experience building things with, and if you're new to each other, see if you can build something small together before taking the plunge.

<comment><USER13> Almost all of these things apply to marriage as well, minus the bits about exit strategy. If you think committing to the same direction for 2-3 years is difficult, it's not time to get married yet!

<comment><USER14> A couple doesn't need to have the _same_ direction, they just need to have compatible ones.

For example, a programmer married to a doctor. They have two different directions, but if the only real compatibility requirement is that they live in the same city, then seems fine.

<comment><USER13> I think what you're describing is exactly the same situation in which start up founders find themselves. The couple needs to agree on the direction and organization of their family, just like the founders need to agree on the direction and organization of their company.

For example, a couple needs to agree on:

* How to divide up responsibilities at home

* Expectations of income (who works? how much?)

* Whether or not to combine their income or keep it separate (and how will they spend it)

* Whether or not to have kids (and who will raise them)

* How to negotiate extended family commitments on both sides

I think your example of the programmer and the doctor underlines the need for more agreement than physical proximity. What if the programmer wants to quit her job and work full time on a start up idea, taking no salary for the next 3 years? The doctor will have to make adjustments in his lifestyle to accommodate that decision. If they are not headed the same direction, that would bring enormous pressure to the marriage.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely. I only used physical proximity because it's a clear example; even relationships don't even need physical proximity at all times. I myself have spent most of the year away from my long(est)-term partner, because we explicitly agreed to pursue other goals over proximity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a single founder and can only say the experience is rather grinding.

I'm all up for the "If you don't help, at least don't get in the way" motto. I decided to pursue my current venture without a cofounder precisaly because I didn't find enough people that had both the skills and (understandably) the willingness to quit their nice paying jobs.

For me, it doesn't really make sense to have people aboard unless they add some real value to the two core functions of what a startup needs to do: building something and sell it. It's fine if you can't build it, but you better be damn good at selling it. Photo ops and "vision, mission and values" statements don't really justify a position on a bootstrapped startup that's trying to get a product out (this obviously varies, having well connected co- founders may make a lot of difference, some people are well worth their pay just because of their business karma).

The big problem of a solo venture, IMO, is that you find yourself doing these two roles simultaneously, which can be exhausting. It is for me, at least. I can do both rather well, but after a while I start finding it difficult to focus on designing a system for scalability, designing its database, reflecting on security, writing and testing Android code, building prospects lists and getting their contacts, getting meetings and attending them, fine- tuning your sales pitch and getting the man to write out a check. And I left out all the menial work that still has to be done.

By the end of the day, you're in agony not only because of that feature that is taking too long to build, but also for not getting enough customer meetings, because of not having enough positive answers and, mostly, because launch is (or should be) just around the corner and there's still a lot of stuff to be done and no one except you to take responsibility for it.

It's an emotional rollercoaster, so having the right partner seems like a good move.

<comment><USER16> I agree that it is exhausting. I'm 2 months into a solo founded startup and the mental fatigue is not what I expected. Reflecting on it now, it certainly makes sense, but I just didn't know that it can be so taxing.

I've told myself that if I make it to a next round of funding I need to find a partner stat.

<comment><USER17> Two months? Just wait. I'm 9 months in solo, and day-jobbing to pay for the bootstrap. It's incredibly exhausting.

If I could find a co-founder or two, I'd be thrilled. But finding someone really worth their weight hasn't happened yet. And I'm not going to just sit there and ignore this opportunity just because I can't find someone to hold my hand while I'm doing it. I'm _going_ to get it out the door, even if I have to do every little thing myself.

Having a co-founder is great. But not having one is no excuse to not work.

<comment> w0rd-driven I'd suspect there are a number of people in your shoes and in the shoes of this entire thread.

I read these responses and thought "Hmm I wonder what it is they're doing. Maybe I could help or at least offer some brain power?" then realized clicking usernames revealed dick-all about any one of you.

I had a thought "Why hasn't there been a matchmaking service for entrepreneurs?" A quick Google search gave me the answer: some already exist. You could try one of those. Alternatively you could use HN to help solicit help by using the about section or use posts like this to give some modicum of detail.

When I see nothing in your about section and nothing in these messages that seem to explain the "what" you're trying to accomplish, I have a hard time believing you're really serious about your search.

It's more likely that you have your own system of who you deal with or you're just _passively searching, severely_. That's all perfectly fine, just not something I would be doing in either of your shoes.

<comment><USER16> It might be a poor idea, but I've planned to hold off on actively searching until I get more funding

<comment> w0rd-driven I took comments on a post to mean "I'm ready for" when I should've realized a lot of what we do as people is talk ourselves up to something.

I wouldn't consider it to be a poor idea at all. I was primarily trying to offer suggestions to help with passively searching when the need arose but I couldn't get around being specific, realizing it could partially sound mean or negative when that wasn't what I was going for at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I co-founded a startup that lasted for 4 years. Once we wound that down I began doing side projects on my own or with another friend of mine.

In the end I decided that I'm better off going at it alone. Mainly because I had a hard time finding someone else to join me at the same commitment level (and that's with a side project).

So I quit my job and started to bootstrap as a solo founder (this time with a wife, two kids and single income --- mine). I brought on a co-founder about 6 months in to fill out a few gaps that I didn't have the experience or time to do myself. Not having enough revenue to pay them meant equity was the only collateral I could offer.

Fast forward 2 years and I can say that without a doubt, if I was a single founder I'd probably have thrown in the towel by now.

And my co-founder is remote! 1/2 way around the world. So as the post suggests, it's harder but I don't think it's impossible.

Obviously it depends on the individual and the business. All I can say is that the value my co-founder brought to the table was different than what I originally thought. The emotional support greatly outweighed what I thought I was bringing him on board for.

If I had picked the wrong co-founder it would have been much worse than not having one at all.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you're not good at building a founding team, how will you excel at building a company? Technology and design are great, but companies are the people that they are comprised of.

There's nothing wrong with being a solo founder because being one doesn't mean you can't build a good team. But you obviously have issues with team building, so I'd work on that first or found a company with someone who is actually good at it.

<comment><USER20> Recruiting employees requires different skills from recruiting cofounders. They have different incentives, different roles, and it happens at different stages in your company.

<comment><USER19> Recruiting is an entirely separate issue. Building a team begins where recruiting ends.

In this talent market (in Boston in my case) we have a difficult time with recruiting, but our experiences with team building have been far more painful (as growing pains go).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I allready decided to be a single founder. It's damn hard to find someone interested in starting a venture together, it's even harder finding someone on the same wavelength. I could grow a beard (omg I have!) waiting for this to happen.

I burned out working my ass off nights and weekends because my previous partner was absolutely sure he'd be able to sell our product. Which unfortunately turned out different (but that venture still makes money... Too much to let it die... Too less for it not to be a pita)

'your startup chances increase with a partner'. Yes, but I'm not interested in a startup that makes me filthy rich, I'm just looking for something to replace they daytime job where I don't have to be at an office 5 days a week and where the office can be wherever my laptop is.

I have built several succesful applications over the years (for others) where I used my UI/UX skills (and really just common sense and thinking before code/design). I can make the tech side of a project from A to Z (and in my current daytime role also doing sales and marketing as I'm the sole manager of a very small but very profitable company).

And next time I'm taking on a co-founder, I want proof that he has commercial skills because it seems anyone thinks they can do marketing and sales or that it will happen by itself or something.

<comment><USER22> _I 'm just looking for something to replace the daytime job where I don't have to be at an office 5 days a week_

Wouldn't it be easier to simply find a job that lets you work remotely? Not every employer would allow that, but I have to think if you put a startup level of effort into such a job search you would find and land such a job in a month or two. I could be wrong (maybe you've already tried), but it from an outside perspective it seems to be the case.

<comment><USER21> Hmmm... That was just my 1st annoyance with a 'normal' job. And which company is going to pay me when during summer time I work 1-2 hours or only the really necessary/urgent stuff from a campsite somewhere? I'd rather have the flexibility to work like crazy when I want to and relax when I need it.,working for someone else is just too rigid.

What also bothers me: -working my ass off might mean I get a bonus, but this is only a 1 time thing. No boss is happy to give a raise (maybe I'm already earning above market). Slackers (laggards? English isn't my mother tongue) often earn slightly less compared to people working their ass off.

-I can put my blood and sweat into the company, but from one day to the next they can fire me (ok, they'll,have to pay a hefty fee for breaking the contract). I've got a couple of ongoing projects at the daytime job right now, and I'd worry more about the projects if they'd fire me than about getting a new job... Which is probably an unhealthy attitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have yet to find a single formulaic way for founders of a business to succeed.

That being said, these are my own findings/thoughts:

\- Companies with 1 + n cofounders tend to be more successful

\- Working (in a commercial manner) previously to the startup helps massively. You learn a lot about people's business behaviors when you actually work with them (business and personal relationships can be very different)

\- Finding a good co-founding experience on your first time is extremely difficult

\- Experience with project management (and more specifically stakeholder management) is very valuable

\- No more how much you read about startup stories, nothing can prepare you for the experience of a business partner relationship. It's just like dating - it's all about communication and compromise.

\- I like the Hustler (CEO), Hacker (CTO), Hippie (CXO) setup for internet based startups. It also helps when each one has a experience with each other roles.

<comment><USER24> n ∈ ℤ, n > 0

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I spent a few months a few years ago looking for a good cofounder.

Let me tell you, it was a waste of time. The odds of running into somebody where everything initially meshes are astronomical. And you're already facing long odds as a startup, why add to the stress with all that other stuff? Failure to co-locate alone is a show-stopper, much less issues about flipping versus growing, or financing versus bootstrapping, or where your real passion is, or whether passion alone is enough...

I'm glad it works for so many successful folks, although I note that many times these are college buddies who have spent a lot of time together _before_ their startup.

This is one of those things that looks different depending on where you sit. If you're an investor, teams do better than solo founders. If you're a founder who's worked alone for many years, my conclusion was don't kill yourself trying to find a partner that probably isn't there. This is much the same as my conclusion on Venture Capital: some things are not worth chasing.

<comment> w0rd-driven From my personal experience and from all the information I have on the sidelines, I see 2 camps arising.

1) Build a perfect product. Rally everyone around this perfection. 2) Build a perfect team. That person or people you know of where if you could just work with them on what you want to do, you could accomplish _anything_.

I've been in camp 2 with a friend of mine for a few months now and it's extremely difficult. It's difficult because we've yet to find an idea we can agree on implementing for the long term.

Camp #1 seems really difficult too because you have to sell a small group of people on your vision. A vision living entirely in your head.

I have no clue what's worse but I think it'll be subjective anyway. I would much rather be people in search of product than product in search of people but that's how I roll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it's important to be honest with oneself about the motivations for starting a business with somebody else. From what I see, some entrepreneurs don't want to go it alone because they believe there's safety in numbers. If you're leaving a good job, have a family to take care of, etc., it can be easier to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing if someone else is taking the plunge with you.

This is a really bad excuse for bringing on a co-founder. In my opinion, it's a primary reason you often see bloated founding teams comprised of individuals who have similar skills, not complementary skills.

<comment><USER27> Completely agree with what you said, but I think you mean "complementary", not "complimentary".

<comment><USER26> Good catch. Although in line with my comment, some entrepreneurs _are_ looking for complimentary co-founders. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I believe that being a solo founder contributed to the failure of my startup. In short, it puts a lot of pressure on yourself, that can't be split with other members of the team. If the ship is sinking, you have to go down with it. Other friends and mentors can offer support, but they're not in the same boat as you. When times are tough, founders can help pull each other through.

I think the reasons described in the OP are more about having the wrong founding team. This is also why we have things like vesting - if someone decides not to work full time, consult elsewhere then they should lose part of their shareholding.

<comment><USER26> Don't take this the wrong way, but your entire rationale for having co- founders seems to be based on fear and negativity. Your comment implies that you're most interested in providing yourself with the comfort that somebody else is taking risk too and will be there to drown with you when the ship sinks.

Per my other comment, this is simply the wrong reason to bring on a co- founder. If you truly aren't confident in the opportunity you've identified and don't feel comfortable owning your pursuit of it, convincing two or three other people to come along for the ride isn't going to prevent failure. In fact, it's probably only going to make the process of failing even _more_ stressful.

<comment><USER28> It's not about fear of failing. I wouldn't do it again unless I was convinced the venture would be successful (and I think there's a significantly increased chance of that, based on what I learnt during the failed startup and since).

What I'm saying is that having equal co-founders gives you the ability to share the workload, emotional strain and get through the pain barrier.

It's obviously not impossible to build a huge business as a single co-founder, but it's unlikely that I'd want to do it again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I'm learning as an early stage solo founder...

1\. Not having co-founders is no excuse to not work. I _want_ to turn this idea in my head into a working product. Saying you can't do it because you don't have a co-founder is an excuse, not a reason. It's not impossible, merely harder.

2\. The critical problem is bandwidth. I'm day-jobbing to make ends meet, which bites even more into my time. My primary challenge now is finding a way to go full time, either with funding or with a revenue-generating subset of the functionality.

3\. I'm the visionary. If I can find a technical co-founder to take over the coding work, great - better, even, because coding is bad for my big-picture focus. But ultimately, it's my product and my vision. If I find "co-founders" at this point, it will likely be just a label to make investors happy. In practice, they will be early employees.

4\. Team-building, on the other hand, is going well. I'm a social person, an extrovert, and I can generate a pretty decent reality distortion field. I've been able to get help so far as I've needed it, and I think this will continue. Part of this comes from not asking too much of people, which is what the usual co-founder issue seems to be.

<comment> w0rd-driven An extrovert is typically better at marketing and sales, namely for the social aspect. For someone like me that's an introvert and extremely shy around new people, I gain XP by tackling technical problems.

That doesn't mean technical people can't be a visionary too because you'll definitely need it. Someone that can get a complete grasp of the scope to tell you when a decision will lead you into more or less technical debt. You can make all the right business decisions and still fail miserably if you make wrong technical ones.

I'm likely not telling you anything you don't already know but I just wanted to make sure you weren't compartmentalizing things too much.

<comment><USER17> I think I'm a visionary technical person. The problem I'm addressing is based on two decades of experience in enterprise configuration management - <USER2> the forest/trees problem of seeing small technical changes in the context of bigger business changes, and/or drilling down from the big business tasks to the technical details that implement them. It's a boundary-crossing technical issue that's near and dear to my heart.

A good CTO could devise their own implementation path rather than following mine, but that's not really "vision". That's about _how_ it works, not _why_ it needs to exist. I can do the "how" myself, but I don't think it's a good use of my time and focus.

<comment><USER29> Hey, configuration management is something really interesting to me. I don't suppose you'd mind emailing me with a link to your startup (email in profile)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It sounds like your previous endeavors failed before the stages in which you'd wish you had one or more great co-founders. What if you raise a lot of money and want to share the responsibility with someone? What if something urgently needs to be done during Christmas? Who else could you ask to cancel their vacation? (unless Ron Conway is amongst your investors ;)).

In my experience it's easier to start something alone, especially if it's not technologically difficult (i.e. most webapps). Down the line it's important for me to have wingmen, though. Even if you can carry the load intellectually, it's nice to have somebody with skin in the game for moral support when shit hits the fan. Of course anything is better than having co-founders that don't work out for whatever reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, you're right. Both of my previous two startups failed in the early stages. I think down the road there's no way around hiring a great team if you want to scale..

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think most people recognize that the team is the most important aspect of a startup - from Paul Graham allowing people to apply to YCombinator without an idea, to investors my co-founder and I have talked to being much more interested in who we are, what we know, how we get along, and why we do what we do than product or traction, I think it's safe to say that the team is the most important aspect of a company.

I wouldn't, however, decide to "go solo" next time; that may even be a worse option. You'll never find someone who you work with 100%, but you _need_ a co- founder. Keep "shopping," find someone you click with, and have another go.

<comment><USER26> Building a solid team does _not_ require one or more co-founders. It is entirely possible to start a company on your own, hire employees/contractors and then recruit for key leadership positions.

Mark Suster's Co-Founder Mythology ([http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/09/the-co- founder...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/09/the-co-founder- mythology/)) and comments at Startup Grind earlier this year ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHgGUFjK3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHgGUFjK3c)) are well worth reading/watching.

Of course, if your goal is to have a great team on paper so that an investor will feel comfortable writing you a check, let's call the exercise what it is: building a team that might build a business once it has funding. That's _not_ building a business.

<comment><USER31> I can only speak for my own experience; I would be dead in the water without a co-founder, and I would never try to do it alone, nor would I recommend someone else try alone.

<comment><USER26> Fair enough, but translating your experience into such absolutist advice is sort of like saying "I wouldn't be able to drive without an automatic transmission therefore I recommend that everyone avoid manual transmissions."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You really have to make a distinction between who the subject of a lot of these studies are. It is mostly young fresh-out-of-school (or still in school) guys (and gals). They generally have very little life and business experience. They are full of ideas and passion. But few have had to endure difficult situations in their lives --personal or business.

If you take that profile and suggest that success as a solo founder is possible, well, you would be wrong. The road to success is actually a mine field for most. And these young entrepreneurs, for the most part, are simply not prepared to have a steady hand at the tiller in a storm. So, yeah, that the probability for success goes up exponentially for teams is no surprise. So long as everyone is pushing in the same direction reasonably well things move forward. Add to that guidance and adult supervision (I don't mean that in a derogatory sense at all) and it could and does work well.

Of course, there are lots of examples of teams that self-destructed as things got difficult. I watched a documentary on indie game developers a while ago and that seemed to be a common theme: As they started to get stuck in the mud that can be a never-ending project partners started to become enemies and things went from bad to ugly fast.

It is my firm conviction that a well-rounded, experienced solo founder does not need a co-founder in order to succeed. You still have to hire good people to work with you, which is a fact regardless of how many founders might be at the top.

Outside of the tight-knit university-centric circles of places like SV, finding suitable co-founders is hard and fraught with problems. And this is particularly true as you get older. Everyone can get excited about launching a new business. Few are willing to put it all on the line to make it go. I've experienced this first-hand with friends. When you finally say "OK, let's do it" and start to discuss the reality of what's expected from each founder things slow down very quickly. That's when "we should do this together" turns into "Well, let me check with my wife" or "I don't think I can put in the time". The co-founder pool is smaller and smaller as you get older and/or accumulate responsibilities.

I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of businesses in the world are started and run by solo founders. I know a bunch of them. I am talking about everything, from a mechanic's shop to a software company. Partnerships are far more difficult than marriages to get right and the consequences of failure can be just as dire, if not more.

A lot of these discussions on HN tend to be software-startup-centric. There's far more to the world than web and mobile software startups. By comparison software startups are easy. That's why people can write these really amazing zen sounding introspective pieces with revelations on how they did this or that, failed and then did this or that, learned, pivoted, raised some money and eventually succeeded. Try doing that with a self-funded (from savings, loans, credit cards, second mortgages or all of the above) hardware startup, a restaurant or a dry cleaning business. The phrase "I'm all in" comes to mind. Most businesses cannot be built sipping latte's at Starbucks while listening to cool tunes. Be sure to consider context before reaching some of these conclusions.

<comment><USER33> Great points. Somedays I do tend to wonder what makes founders stick through rough times and as you rightly pointed out having been through life experiences where they stick it out is a definite advantage. You tend to see through the period instead of knee jerk reactions.

I come from a family where both my grand parents & uncles used to run a small restaurant as a family business, starting all the way from the bottom. And they used to do it together for 35+ years through various family situations, sticking together. I just can't complain having seen what they went through and accomplished.

For a lot of people out there that is just life. Only in software startup world we plan for compatibility in lots of different ways. Example, there are lot of people who want to know the plan for an 'exit' even before starting up. Not wrong. Just different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > In particular, don't found a startup with people that ... have newborn kids

As a startup founder with a newborn (well, 14-month-old) I would say that this shouldn't be a global condition. There are plenty like me that I know who can put forth their full commitment - because we have supportive spouses that are completely on board with our entrepreneurial ambitions.

<comment> w0rd-driven I'll agree and raise another important point: With enough money, almost nothing is a barrier.

I wouldn't found a startup with no income and looking to leverage that success early or your family will starve. If you have an adequate enough padding though, and yes a supportive family, you can easily be solo.

<comment><USER35> As a father and sole-founder I would most certainly agree and say that a family helps you focus and re-balance while lack of money is putting pressure on both. So bottom-line lack of money is a bigger problem than having a family (which should not be a problem at all)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I just figured I'd throw this out there to see if anyone has any insight on it: Do you think certain personality types are probably _better off_ being solo founders? Maybe loners, or people who aren't people persons. Or maybe ADHD types who have trouble keeping relationships on an even keel? Or maybe the Steve Jobs egomaniac, force-of-will types (although, I know he started w/ a co-founder).

Obviously, it could depend on the nature of the startup, in that it could be strategically important to compensate for one of those "weaknesses".

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it depends on what business you're in. Almost all businesses require a combination of "hustling" (sales/marketing) and "hacking (tech skills). This may be a stereotype, but I think most hackers aren't good hustlers. I'm not a good salesperson, wich is my biggest problem, but I'm trying to learn...

<comment><USER36> Whoops, sorry. Looks like we were typing at the same time. I just added the last line, making a similar point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think most of the 'tips' and lessons learned make sense and are useful but I don't agree with the overall message. This is like saying 'I went to two restaurants and they were no good (for various reasons that can be avoided in the future), now I'll always eat at home'

<comment><USER12> I don't think entirely ruling out partnership, or thinking it's the only way is right.

I've done both, and both offer interesting pros and cons. Namely if you have the ability to fund a project yourself while building it, you can be in the drivers seat more and some partners are okay with that.

Would you mind sharing your experiences?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "This is one of the reasons why young people often make for particularly good founders. They don't have a lot of other commitments."

Bleah. It's a balance of ability, interest, commitment, urgency and experience. Interest and commitment are not the same thing and neither is urgency. Experience does have value.

You limit yourself pretty badly if you follow this youth principle. Finding a twenty-something willing to bang his/her head for 80 hours a week is about the least useful thing a startup can do.

</comment><comment><USER39> The article makes a fantastic argument... for investing a lot of time in picking your founders. This is like a single person saying that they're going to stay single forever because two previous relationships didn't work out. Except instead of a marriage here, you're talking about something which greatly increases the chances of success in an endeavour.

I'm the solo founder of a venture-backed startup in London. That's a bit like being the single mother of a kid in the projects who ended up going to Harvard. When we successfully make a 100x return on investment for our backers it will be the equivalent of that kid becoming president. This is a tough business and whilst I don't whinge because I knew what I was signing up for, OP is misguided to think the sole-founder grass is greener. Sole founders exist in a vacuum irrespective of how many great colleagues and mentors they have.

</comment><comment><USER40> All of this stuff is spot on. I especially like the bit about lack of commitment. Lack of commitment can even be expressed through things like someone addicted to gaming or watching to much TV. A friend of mine called those activities "Time-Stealers."

I also tried to co-found a company with someone that had all of the boxes checked. At first I was part of the vision, but as the project grew I was slowly removed from the project. Afterwards, I felt like I was trying to force the co-founder issue because "PG said you need a co-founder." After that experience, my formula is: bad cofounder < solo founder < good cofounder.

</comment><comment><USER41> In my experience the bottom line is that you need good people around you in order to succeed. It doesn't matter if that's a co-founder, a CEO, developers, etc.. If you don't have good people around you helping you in your journey of success you won't have any.

For example, in my first startup I had a very good co-founder but we were both very young and inexperienced. We didn't hire the right people to surround us and help us in our journey. As a consequence we had a great run but were out maneuvered by other companies. In the startup I'm doing now, I started with great co-founders and we then proceeded to hire more great people to surround us. We haven't completed our journey yet but the driving force in the company now is not only me (the other co-founder left to pursue other interests) but many others that share my passion and goals.

Take your time and look for people that share your vision and passion. These people are out there it just takes time. And remember, no one can do it by themselves.

If you never read it, by a copy of Good To Great ([http://www.amazon.com/Good- Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/00...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great- Companies-Leap- Others/dp/0066620996/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375746786&sr=1-1&keywords=good+to+great)). There's a whole chapter devoted to how great companies need great entourages.

<comment><USER42> This makes me wonder if two solo-founders working together (on their own projects) but bouncing ideas off each other would be more successful than going it alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> There is a correlation between startup success and "founding teams" therefore investors often use the existence of a team as a proxy for a higher probability of success.

Teams can have convexity or concavity effects - that is, they have the opportunity to make you a lot more successful or a lot more unsuccessful.

Since it's hard to tell the difference between a good team and a bad team there's a lot of room for people to to create inauthentic signals by bundling together impressive-looking people that form bad teams. Therefore the heuristic of "a founding team exists" is easily gamed [0] to the point that it's losing its utility. However, since in a few cases it's exceedingly important to the success of the startup, and because of information asymmetry faced by investors it's one of the only good signals for success.

On a generalised individual startup level it was probably always more harmful than it was profitable.

 _In practice ask yourself:_

Do you feel this person will help your company to succeed or are you just adding them because you've been told that this makes a startup more investable? If it's truly the former then take the risk; otherwise be careful, work hard and increase your exposure to suitable co-founders.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_Law)

</comment><comment><USER44> You can either get stuff done, or you can't.

I'll take working solo any day, over working with those who can't. Been there, done that.

P.S. Also applies after s/can't/won't/ . And corporate life is full of cases that leave you wondering which apply and in what percentages. "Team" is not a panacea -- not from my perspective.

P.P.S. I do not mean to ignore the roles and need for training and learning. But there are people who hardly seem to benefit from, or even genuinely engage in, these.

</comment><comment><USER45> Heads up, your blog ([https://blog.cameralends.com/](https://blog.cameralends.com/)) gives me the red screen of evil on Chrome:

You attempted to reach blog.cameralends.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.herokuapp.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of blog.cameralends.com.

</comment><comment><USER46> You deserve kudos for your efforts so far. Every failure will breed some type of insight. The statement, "I believe that my previous two ventures failed mainly because of the founding team (which I'm included in)." \- may be true, but could probably just as easily be said of solo founders. Especially after reading your list of deficiencies in the founding team members, they may be the same short-comings as the person staring at a solo founder in the mirror! It is sometimes harder (or impossible) to find that rare person who can wear all hats.

My major concern about being a solo founder would be the possible loss of productivity- how much more a team can accomplish over one person, and collaboration. Also, and this may seem horrible, but if we crash and burn, we can do it faster as a team, and pivot or move-on without the time equity that one person will have invested.

To answer the questions you posed at the end of your article, my two cents is that I have found it impossible to succeed at scale without an agile team (one mans opinion). I hate to preach process and organization, but if a team follows the resources available to start-ups, such as business model generation, etc. You can identify holes in the team, or where someone needs assistance. This leads to the second part of your question and the most important attributes to look for in a co-founder. They should already have expertise, but the two attributes that I would look for are Objectivity- nothing ruins like the inability to be flexible, and Leadership- in the sense that leaders tend to be people of action, they bring people along, and they celebrate success wildly.

Not that you cannot achieve success alone, but it is definitely a lot tougher to celebrate alone.

</comment><comment><USER47> Best advice I ever got on partners/co-founders: "Before you take on a partner, think about it long and hard, then don't".

</comment><comment><USER48> I think your (the author) ability to be a solo founder will probably be a great deal more successful simply because you've been a founder before. That's a huge leveling of the learning curve. I don't think I could recommend going solo to a first-time founder though, unless it's someone who has capital on hand to hire people to fill out the team.

 _Lack of skills: Don't work with people that don't bring unique skills (applicable to a startup) to the table. Having someone like this in your team will down the mood of the other teams members that are providing value. There is one exception to this: Bring on smart people that are willing to learn whatever it takes. Be particularly wary of people that have a certain skillset, but are not motivated to learn new skills relevant to a startup environment._

That's really great advice, but not really a reason to go solo. It's just a reason to pick your partners carefully.

</comment><comment><USER49> "Co-founders can complement each other's skillsets, provide psychological support, and prevent you from chasing down a rabbit hole or losing sight of the big picture."

I'm a solo founder of a nonprofit (we haven't launched yet). Of course the rules are different, we don't have to "ship" anything, and there's almost no time pressure, but I find that I can get those things from my board. They were picked very carefully to get diverse domain experience and because I know I can trust them to provide intelligent ideas (they're all wicked smart) and I know I can trust them to provide moral guidance, very important for a nonprofit.

I surmise that for a solo founder for-profit, finding people who can help you with those very important assets is necessary, but you might be able to find it outside of a "co-foundership".

</comment><comment><USER50> In my own experience, item #1 is by far the most critical of all reasons listed. It's big enough to have pages and more pages written solely about it. I was the technical lead of an "educational platform" being developed and most of its products. As soon as two of the co-founders - out of 5 - <USER3> themselves jobs and other full time activities things started to go downhill very fast. One of the most annoying behaviors those then absent co-founders started to display was a sense of: "Why are you asking me that? Isn't this [feature/decision/scope] too obvious for you?". Hey, it's not a matter of being obvious or not; but still current or valid according to project's timeframe. I can't even elaborate on the amount of energy we lost.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Because companies with almost identical products and value propositions succeeded."

There's so much more that goes into a product and its success or failure than what such a simple statement would imply. That's a very thin premise to launch such a big position with.

One word rather sinks it in fact: luck

I've yet to run across an interview with a candid successful person that didn't count dumb luck as an important part of the equation. Right place, right time, right marketing, right people, right choices, right capital, and dumb luck.

Also, no two products or companies offer identical products or value propositions. That means the author isn't being objective about the situation one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm sorry to sound pithy here, but it sounds like the lesson here isn't "be a solo founder", it's "build the right team."

Either way, this is an interesting perspective - thank you for sharing your experience!

</comment><comment><USER53> I like being a solo founder, only partly because I can't tolerate all the things listed in other people too. The main, unforeseen, problem is that while growth is not hard as a solo founder, you can quickly run out of time working on the businesses' _present_ than anything for the businesses' _future_. Having other founders who can be diverted to things like funding, hiring, training, etc, is surely a huge boon, as being the day to day 'boss' but then suddenly adding one of those activities in is quite stressful :-)

</comment><comment><USER54> I hear a lot of stories of people that have a tough time finding co-founders. My tip would be to not just find any random Joe Schmoe in a tech meetup, or even similarly minded people who want to be entrepreneurs. Rather I would find people who already have done a Show HN with a similar idea, or someone who launched a competitor product (by himself/herself), and ask if they want to partner with you.

You'd be surprised because most of those people themselves want a cofounder as well to take the product to the next level.

</comment><comment><USER55> Nice article but I disagree. I am very technical person and I really miss cofounder who would take care of social/business side.

First heaving new born children gives me focus on work. Before I would procrastinate a lot. Now I have to turn my idea into business, or there will be serious trouble. Sure I can only give it 10 hours X 6 days a week, but that is enough.

Secondly I disagree on remote location. It takes extra money (fast internet, video conferencing gear) and effort. But it also gives more freedom to choose best partner.

</comment><comment><USER56> "I believe that my previous two ventures failed mainly because of the founding team (which I'm included in). How do I know? Because companies with almost identical products and value propositions succeeded afterwards."

This is a dramatic and flawed oversimplification. There's no one reason why one company fails while another succeeds. The founding team may be part of the issue here, but I almost guarantee that there were probably plenty of other things going on than just that.

</comment><comment><USER57> Thanks to Paul Graham, I've understood why starting a company with one co- founders is absolutely essential. This is because a startup idea is a vector (see the _vector_ section): [http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

Starting a company solo is worse than starting it with bad co-founders because you don't know at start that your co-founders are bad and then you still have a chance.

</comment><comment><USER58> "As a startup founder you'll be working 48 hours a day" This is something I hear founders claim all the time... Reality is they actually don't "work" that much. I challenge any of you who disagree to measure yourself for 2 week.

[http://kevinhenrikson.com/2013/07/23/how-many-hours-do- you-w...](http://kevinhenrikson.com/2013/07/23/how-many-hours-do-you-work/)

</comment><comment><USER59> It seems like when things got tough you focused more on what your co-founders weren't doing and less on what you could be doing yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I definitely see that as an issue. Once you have someone that's "responsible" for something it's easy to blame them instead of doing something about it yourself. If you're a solo founder there's no one else you can blame for the mistakes..

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I would agree with many of the other commenters but chime in with the "correlation does not prove causation" there are many other factors why the other startups could have failed: the other companies were better capitalized, had better processes, founders that worked together better, etc.

</comment><comment><USER61> When I visit with hot-blooded partners ready to set the world on fire I often think of this line from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969):

Butch Cassidy: [to Sundance] Kid, the next time I say, "Let's go someplace like Bolivia," let's GO someplace like Bolivia.

Right, Next Time.

Easier said than done.

</comment><comment><USER62> "In particular, don't found a startup with people that are busy with school, have personal issues, are traveling, or are working a full-time job." I'd like to know if there is anybody without personal issues, or what the author is trying to say in this context.

</comment><comment><USER63> OP: Business is hard, stop whining.

There's not much rhyme/reason for landing a hit, just don't fuck it up too much.

Get your meta game together and fucking hustle. If you can't work with people and (hack or hustle), you are better off doing something besides startups.

</comment><comment><USER64> I imagine one reason investors like co-founded start ups is because of the bus factor: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

Or boiled down: less dependency on a single person.

</comment><comment><USER65> Hey hey, what the author suggests is not that solo founder is better. It's that temporarily solo founder is better than getting fucked by adding the wrong co-founders.

</comment><comment><USER66> This is not a compelling reason to go solo but instead makes the case for being careful when choosing people to work with.

</comment><comment><USER67> Yes, like most successful software companies were built by one man: Microsoft, Apple, Google... oh wait...

</comment><comment><USER68> Isn't there a massive stigma against solo founders? I get that impression from most of what I read.

</comment><comment><USER69> Or perhaps timing was a factor if they succeeded after. Timing plays a huge role in success.

</comment><comment><USER70> When it comes to business even scientists start judging too much and perceiving too little.

</comment><comment><USER71> Get a secretary.

</comment><comment><USER72> The biggest advantage is that you won't have anyone slowing you down or standing in your way.

Everything falls on you to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER73> Having done this wrong, how I look at it now:

You cannot expect anyone else to share your dream.

You can either hire them, or find commonality in a dream.

But at the end of the day, if it's your idea, it's going to have your name on it and thus, will be what you work on the most out of all the people who touch it.

</comment><comment><USER74> The common factor in all your dysfunctional relationships is: you.

</comment><comment><USER75> You will be a solo founder next time because anyone who Googles you will realize you are the kind of moron who throws his former cofounders under the bus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if it came across like that. I myself was one of guys who wasn't committed enough in a previous startup.

<comment><USER76> You don't have to be sorry, I thought it was clear you weren't throwing anyone under the bus.

You're also quite the bigger person, I make it a rule not to respond to people who feel the need to use a clear insult like "moron" in addressing someone they don't know, especially here on HN. There was simply no need for that kind of disrespectful language</comment></comment></comment>


Getting Grounded: A Thermocouple Rite of Passage - <AUTHOR> http://www.mindtribe.com/2015/01/getting-grounded-a-thermocouple-rite-of-passage

<comment><USER2> I've used cryogenic thermometers in my physics research, which IIRC were not thermocouples but basically calibrated chips of semiconductor, increasing their resistance at low temperatures. (Our usual temperature range went from 20 K down to 10 mK).

The trick with these puppies is to read the resistance without heating the thing up. We'd typically use a brief 4-probe DC measurement (4 probes so the leads don't contribute to the resistance), and inject a few or tens of nA, and read the voltage (in range of uV to mV).

Sometimes we used a lock-in amplifier, which is a pretty ingenius invention. You input a small AC signal, and then bandpass the output at the same frequency. That really cuts down on the noise at other frequencies, and lets you zero in on tiny signals from tiny currents with minimal heating.

</comment><comment><USER3> I once wanted to measure the temperature dependence of some electronics component. Aha, I thought, I don't need no oven or such fancy things, I will just do my measurement while cranking up the room temperature, which I can record with a thermocouple!

I wondered why the thermocouple always returned to the same "room temperature" after half an hour or so, even though I and everyone else began transpiring heavily. It took me embarrassingly long to realize that the thermocouple only gives you the temperature _difference_ between the two points of contact (tip and inside multimeter), and the multimeter took half an hour or so to warm up.

<comment><USER4> There must be a reference temperature sensor near the "cold junction", where the NiCr-Ni thermocouple wires are terminated.

Remark: The external temperature probe is always called "hot", the reference junction always "cold", even if you measure liquid nitrogen with your sensor...

If the "cold junction" is just the banana-plugs, then it's obviously not too easy to get a reading of the temperature there. Better devices will use these rectangular thermocouple-sockets (a rectangular block with two small, dissimilar, slots) and have proper NiCr-Ni cabling inside, just up to the termination point on the PCB, right adjacent to the voltage amplifier/sensor for the reference temperature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> s/dark sheep/black sheep/g

<comment><USER6> Or maybe s/dark sheep/dark horse/g ?

In any case, I think the g is superfluous, as "dark sheep" only appears once.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Sudolikeaboss – Use 1password on the terminal as easily as the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ravenac95/sudolikeaboss <comment><USER2> The name is bit odd considering that it seems far more general than just for sudo. Otherwise, neat idea; I might do something similar for urxvt and keepass (or pass)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! I mulled over this for a while, but couldn't come up with a general name that was adequately light-hearted for me. Originally, I named the project `termpass` an obvious portmanteau on terminal and 1password (or I guess just password). That name seems pretty stale though. `sudolikeaboss` just seemed like a fun name that was particularly direct about the core use- case for which it was designed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So this is a redo of [https://github.com/georgebrock/1pass](https://github.com/georgebrock/1pass) ?

Which was just featured on HN just before the time your repo got started, it looks like. His post was here 9 days ago, your repo has been around for 8 days.

Why not give credit, if it's inspired by that? You make it sound like you created this whole idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> @natch, I actually saw that and thought it was the same thing I was building. So I thought someone beat me to the punch.

The projects look similar, but georgebrock/1pass is a CLI to 1password db itself. It doesn't do anything to render the UI or anything like that. With sudolikeaboss, I don't actually decrypt any of the password data stored on your machine. I actually call to the undocumented API for the local 1password daemon. So it took a small amount of reverse engineering to get to this point.

In terms of age, I have actually been using a prototype of sudolikeaboss, written in Node, for several weeks.

Hope that is clear! I wouldn't ever want to say I'm using someone else's idea! I think georgebrock's 1pass is an awesome project. I also intend to port it to Go at some point. When that is done, I promise I won't say it's my own work. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Creator here! I'd love any comments if anyone has them. This project is particularly useful for me so I was hoping others would find great use for it as well :)

<comment><USER4> Since 1password only runs on OS X and Windows, I'm curious why you're optimistic about doing something about Linux ("yet") but merely took a shot at Windows in your README. This might surprise you, but a significant portion of the non-valley world works on Windows, and it's fairly frustrating for Windows admins (I used to be one) to come across a neat tool and get "sucks for you, better luck next time" in your documentation.

Normally I wouldn't say anything but 1password runs on Windows, not Linux, so it was odd to come across and, if I'm honest, made me lose a small amount of interest in your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make an excellent point. I did not, in any way intend to offend Windows users. I was merely trying to be "tongue-and-cheek"-y with my comment. Really, I wouldn't know how to make this work well for an admin on windows. Last I used windows to SSH I was using putty, but that was back in 2005. I have since completely moved from using Windows to *nix systems.

As far as Linux support goes, I had planned to take a stab at writing a tmux plugin so that could potentially get me in the door to supporting Linux.

All that said, I am updating my README to address some of these concerns. Thanks so much for the great feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any possibility of a Terminal.app version with SIMBL?

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't know about SIMBL. Learning something knew every day.

So the answer is maybe: [https://github.com/ravenac95/sudolikeaboss/issues/2](https://github.com/ravenac95/sudolikeaboss/issues/2)

:)</comment></comment>


New FreeBSD Security Officer - <AUTHOR> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-05-21-new-freebsd-security-officer.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I managed to juggle the Security Officer hat and running a startup for five years, and I still think the former was incredibly useful for the latter, but there's a limit to how long I can juggle.

</comment><comment><USER2> Best of luck with tarsnap. I would expect it will continue to grow. Is that the only startup you worked on?

Unrelated question: What do you use for communicating with EC2? Are you satifisfied with using their Java solution and the large installs for the JDK or installing scripting languages, e.g., like Python in order to use boto? Or have you written something smaller with less dependencies?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Tarsnap is my only startup.

I use the Java EC2 tools when I need to script something (which is quite rare). Most of what I do with EC2 is manual, via the web console. If I needed to launch or reconfigure EC2 instances on a regular basis I might write my own API code, but right now that's not an issue for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> All the best, Colin.</comment>


Self-Driving is already here for highways? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/04/15/tesla-road-trip/ <comment><AUTHOR> This blogpost reminded me of how drastically things are going to change, and likely for the better. Less vehicles sitting around doing nothing, less vehicles needed at all, replaced by shared vehicles. Should be a big improvement for both the economy and the environment.</comment>


"Fun" working environment? - <AUTHOR>

I recently left a job at an advertising agency where there's a Wii, a dart board, and a big comfy chair in the office; there are lots of employee contests; and basically, people are encouraged to screw around when they feel like it. The job posting described what a fun place to work it would be and how cool everyone was, and listed Wii skills as a job requirement (should've been a warning sign I guess.) Employees other than higher up management work in one big, open room with little division or personal space to encourage chatting and "blowing off steam."
Call me boring, but I'm a young guy just starting a family. I like to have fun, but I'd much rather spend my time at work getting work done so I can get home to my family, than play a spur of the moment 2 hour Mario Kart tournament. And in this kind of environment I felt like no one, including me, was getting anything done. People would pull 10-12 hour days and not have anything to show for it.
I know it's kind of a trend these days to have "toys" and relaxation at work - but what are your thoughts? It may make people happy but what does it do to productivity? <comment><USER2> I'm in the same boat as you. I like to have fun at work, but that's mostly because I want to work where my tasks are rewarding. Fun people also add to the mix of course. But there is a limit; sometimes you have to get stuff done. That's when I enjoy the job the most.

You say that this office regularly pulls long hours, but doesn't progress. To what extent is this true? If its literally 100% fun with no progress (ie nothing that will later lead to cash inflow), then something will have to change very soon. People are the biggest cost in most companies, and if they don't justify their expense, it's a matter of time before the inevitable.

<comment><AUTHOR> The work eventually has to get done, and it generally happens in 14-hour-day crunch sessions right before a deadline, where people basically live at their desk and food is brought to them. There were a couple projects I wasn't even told about until the day before they were due, and was basically told I'd be working all day.

The company is the biggest of its kind in the region, so they get a lot of clients and charge a lot - but I also think they're ripe for being picked off by smart competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's just a matter of cultural fit.

For some people being at work is more enjoyable than being with their family, and 12 hours at the office for five hours of productive time is seen as a benefit.

Keep in mind that adherence to the puritan work ethic is not always a great way to measure productivity. For an enterprise like an ad agency, one really good idea can be worth an employee's entire salary.

And high holy creative time is what pays the bills. If that's at four in the afternoon then dinner will be late.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would find that big open space very distracting. I'm all for letting employees walk away from a hard problem and play some Wii Bowling to clear their head and decompress. I like that kind of environment and culture.

However, for those periods of super-productivity when I'm "in the zone", I don't want to be interrupted by an impromptu Nerf Blaster war.</comment>


Memorandum from Maury Maverick to Everybody in Smaller War Plants Corporation - <AUTHOR> https://research.archives.gov/id/7788338 <comment><AUTHOR> A funny - but real, it seems - 1944 memo warning against the use of gobbledygook in memoranda. Seen on [http://boingboing.net/2016/04/29/1944-memo-from-manager- sick...](http://boingboing.net/2016/04/29/1944-memo-from-manager-sick-of.html)

According to [http://www.futilitycloset.com/2016/04/29/clear- purpose](http://www.futilitycloset.com/2016/04/29/clear-purpose), this is the first known usage of gobbledygook to refer to obscure jargon.</comment>


Ask HN: What Hosted E-commerce solutions do you use? - <AUTHOR>

I have seen the following options like:
shopsite.com, volusion.com, bigcommerce.com,
shopify.com
Which is the best and why? <comment><USER2> If you're looking for a full service solution, there's FastSpring for downloadable products and SaaSy for SaaS services. The biggest advantage over others is the quality of customer service.</comment>


The Simple Truth About Gun Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-simple-truth-about-gun-control <comment><USER2> In Brazil we banned guns 12 years ago.

Today we got more than 60k murders every year, being number 1 in absolute numbers in the world.

Violence just got worse and worse after that.

</comment><comment><USER3> "in other [countries], like Canada, it is merely very, very difficult."

This is not true.

More difficult than the United States? Yes.

"Very, very difficult"? No.

There are millions of legally-owned firearms in Canada.

"I'm grateful to my colleague Jeffrey Toobin for showing so well that the idea that the Second Amendment assures individual possession of guns, so far from being deeply rooted in American law, is in truth a new and bizarre reading, one that would have shocked even Warren Burger.)"

This crosses the borderline between "untrue" and "deliberate lie".

At the time the Constitution was adopted, private individuals could, and did, own everything from personal weapons up through artillery pieces and fully- equipped ships of war.

</comment><comment><USER4> More guns may indicate more deaths by guns, yet the author doesn't mention a specific or proposed gun control law, or method that would reduce the the number of guns.

</comment><comment><USER5> The opening metaphor, of guns as a disease, sets the tone of the rest of the article; deliberately misleading and incredibly biased. It sets gun rights supporters as superstitious ignoramuses, gun control legislation is painted as being as effective as antibiotics in curing illness, and completely ignores all of the millions of people who benefit from owning guns for sport, recreation and peace of mind. The New Yorker is perceived as a prestigious publication, this article convinced me of nothing other than the New Yorker is rather overrated.

</comment><comment><USER6> yeah and lets ban cars, they also kill people.</comment>


Testing Java Microservices - <AUTHOR> https://itbook.store/books/9781617292897 <comment><USER2> Every submit for this site is just a daily ad for Amazon affiliate linked books (tag=itbook.store-20)

New ads are submitted most days.

There is no "store". Even the descriptions are ripped from other retailers' pages.</comment>


Eli Lilly drug lowers levels of coronavirus and prevents hospitalizations - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/health/coronavirus-drug-eli-lilly.html <comment><USER2> That's encouraging, at least. Not exactly a "cure" and not a vaccine, but if these results hold up, this could be important.</comment>


Yum impacted by CVE-2020-8492 with no identified path to mitigation - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1827852 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-8492](https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-8492) ReDoS on python</comment>


Inside Apple's 20-Year March to $1 Trillion From the Brink of Bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/technology/apple-stock-1-trillion-market-cap.html <comment><USER2> duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17672415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17672415)</comment>


The Three Types of 'Computer' People - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jwegener.com/2010/12/17/three-types-programmer-best-cofounder/

<comment><USER2> I think it is important to note that everyone can be a hybrid of all three.

I do it all the time, and I just wrote about it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2042017>

I find that looking at the problem enables me to pick which hat to wear. Do I need to bust out some spurs and cowboy up and hack a way? Or, do I need to sit down and identify the state of the problem formally? Or, do I need to write up a specification and ship it overseas?</comment>


Pandora Quite Literally Bought the Quarter - <AUTHOR> https://sentieo.com/blog/bears-be-warned-pandora-p-quite-literally-bought-the-quarter/ <comment><USER2> My main complaint with Pandora (and what encouraged me to try spotify) is that they seem to repeat the same songs over and over again for a given playlist. For some stations it can be as few as 10-20 songs which really gets boring when you are using the service to find new songs.</comment>


Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longer-immune-to-chinas-scrutiny-of-us-tech-firms.html <comment><USER2> China has to play fairly carefully with Apple. On the one hand it's an American company that puts microphones and cameras into the cafes, offices, and bedrooms of many of their citizenry; but on the other hand, with decreasing competitiveness due to rising wages there isn't anything specifically _stopping_ Apple or other American tech companies from moving manufacturing out of China. Foxconn alone employs about 4.3 million people, and while it would be very difficult to move operations to Tiawan, Singapore, Japan, or even the United States; it would also provide a number of benefits since any new hosting country would very incentivized to make the move happen.

<comment><USER3> You make it sound like Apple can easily move out of China. Think again. Apple's profits are largely due to the cheap labor market (just like many other companies)

<comment><USER4> > Apple's profits are largely due to the cheap labor market (just like many > other companies)

Foxconn is replacing millions of workers in China with robotics. Couldn't Apple acquire these same robotics, perform their own manufacturing in the US (remember, substantial tax breaks in the US for equipment purchases!), and then lease out any spare capacity.

Seems its all coming back to US shores. As a US citizen, I don't mind.

<comment><USER5> Not really since all the components that actually make the phone are also made in China.

<comment><USER5> Won't let me reply to you, but really if you're making it in the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan are the same thing as China.

<comment><USER6> >., Japan, Korea, Taiwan are the same thing as China.

Hahahaha nope.

<comment><USER5> Great contribution. You must feel pretty good about yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A key sentence from the BBC article on the topic: " The strict rules are also seen as a way to foster the success of indigenous net Chinese firms such as Huawei, Alibaba and Tencent."

<comment><USER8> as if Tencent needs the help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think as the technical part of the population, we have the opportunity now to greatly change the structure of the world.

Government can be largely replaced by software. (just thinking long term here)

Democracy can be more pure. Corruption can be controlled. Economies can be stabilized and better planned. Environmental resources can be better managed.

We've got a lot more work to do past sharing images & allowing chats (though look at the massive affect of just those things)

<comment><USER10> Which functions of government can be replaced by software specifically? Making laws? Interpreting them? Diplomacy??

I think as the technical part of the population we tend to be overoptimistic about technical solutions, which then get steamrolled by the real world's existing power structures.

<comment><USER11> One obvious one is the gathering of feedback and debate about decisions. Governments barely encourage that today, except when they have dumb petition sites and the like, but there's no real reason why they couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious how China is able to do this and belong to the WTO?

</comment><comment><USER13> It shouldn't be too surprising with China's history of censorship that they would ban iTunes from selling books and movies to their citizens. What's surprising is that they apparently allowed it for several months.

<comment><USER14> It would be very likely that Apple was following by "the rules".

<comment><USER13> How could they? The communist party would have to literally read every book and watch every movie for approval, so to really go by the rules, the only content they could offer is media in favor of the cultural revolution. I doubt Apple even tried to play it like that, so why be surprised when it's shut down?

<comment><USER15> There are bookstores (both online and brick-and-mortar) with a large number of books approved for sale in China, so if Apple stuck to selling those books, it would not be a censorship issue.

<comment><USER13> Fair enough.

Apple needed to put more thought and effort into their launch if they were considering becoming a mainstay in a completely different political/cultural market.

Others have pointed out that China's closure to outside (software) tech. has helped them as an incubator, but really I think American companies have failed to bend their policies to the degree necessary to continue to exist (in China). Google for a while has tried to resist censorship, but it's really a question of whether a company wants the one billion Chinese citizens to have access to their products at all, or if they would like to be shutout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apparently there was a movie that China didn't approve available on iTunes that might have triggered the stoppage.

<comment><USER17> It's the Ten Years movie

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Last week, Apple's iBooks Store and iTunes Movies were shut down in China, > just six months after they were started there... then a regulator, the State > Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, asserted > its authority and demanded the closings

Unsurprising. China has a habit of allowing foreign services to operate for a bit. Then they come out with their own version.

</comment><comment><USER19> and this is a reason why china with the current government can never truly be a world leader in anything: Your entire enterprise can be distroyed at the whim of a few unrestrained individuals. Sort of like apple's app store, but at a much bigger level.

<comment><USER20> Being from india, i have come to the opposite conclusion.

Chinese protectionism (aided by the language barrier) has served chinese entrepreneurs quite well.

They have their own google. Their own fb. Their own twitter. Basically all services that India doesnt have. The list goes on. These services may or may not be inferior to the original but from an economic standpoint, its good since the money and data flows within the economy instead of going abroad.

India has its own taxi service but they are getting severe competition from uber (with rumours floating of a possible buyout by uber). We have flipkart but they are getting pummelled by amazon (which just walked in late to the indian ecommerce market after flipkart laid all the groundwork) and was recently down-valued by investors.

China is also successfully exporting to india- chinese smartphones are doing very well, much better than Apple.

<comment><USER11> Served Chinese entrepreneurs but that isn't the same thing as served the Chinese people.

For instance, at the time when Google was kicked out of China essentially leaving their market a Baidu monopoly, Baidu lacked many useful features of Google especially if you wanted to search for non-Chinese websites (e.g. if you were a scientist wanting to do international research). The PRC didn't care. Having a pliable and controlled 'captain of industry' in the form of the Baidu founder was a more important goal to them, than the convenience of their own people.

Repeat that story a million times and you have an economy that looks superficially strong but makes its people miserable .... oh wait no it doesn't, because the censorship and language barriers ensure most people have no idea what they're missing out on.

<comment><USER21> You're being quite presumptuous in assuming the Chinese people served by local firms are miserable or worse off than their Western counterparts.

Not everything has to be seen through Western colored goggles. There is something quite admirable to me about China forcefully wanting their own local products front and center and frankly it's worked out well for their economy all things considered.

<comment><USER11> By definition, if protectionism is needed, then the locals preferred the foreign made products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't imagine ibooks and imovies was making in money in China given how easy it is to get content without paying. Apple's probably OK with just the hardware profits from iphones. Developing countries aren't great markets for IP/copyrighted products.

</comment><comment><USER23> Will they put the same restrictions on Ios apps. No one has been able to make Apple open its hardware to non appstore apps. Would be interesting if in the future they ask for that as well.

</comment><comment><USER24> This almost certainly a consequence of pissing off the USG.

It's a pretty rare event to create a situation where the interests of the PRC are directly aligned with the US government's interests.

<comment><USER25> Are you referring to the FBI decrypting situation? If so, I very much doubt that decrypting phones is even remotely important as billions in taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a huge difference between iCloud not working and the content sale restrictions that this is. This is irritating but not key for Apple - but if iCloud and activation for iPhones and iPads stopped working, that would really be a big deal.

China doesn't want to be a dumping ground for western media, and they're rightfully concerned about not being able to build a content export industry.</comment>


Hacking Traction: The Dark Side of Marketing Optimization - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/06/07/hacking-traction-the-dark-side-of-marketing-optimization/

<comment><USER2> You get what you measure. Frederick Taylor (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor> ) invented "Scientific Management" by measuring the behavior of manufacturing employees at Western Electric. He got amazing results. Only later was it observed that any goup of people improved their efficiency if they knew they were being watched. Another corollary: if you give salesmen higher commissions for product warranties, they will sell warranties at the expense of actual product. So if VC's ask for quantifiable "traction", they will get quantifiable "traction" at the expense of real innovation. Of course, it looks slightly wrong to the VC's, just as backing the "perfect team" gives only a 10% chance of a home run.

A disruptive venture is going to be disruptive because it cant be quantified, giving rise to "I cant define it but I know it when I see it." Or maybe not. Ask the VC's that passed on Google.

<comment><USER3> The Hawthorn experiments were run by Elton Mayo. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_Mayo>

A disruptive venture can be quantified by revenue (at least in hindsight).

<comment><AUTHOR> In hindsight...

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

<http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

<comment><USER3> "Life must be lived forward but can only be understood backward." Soren Kierkegaard

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author is using machine learning and multivariate testing as straw men.

No matter how much multivariate testing you do to optimize your "copy, size, color, font and placement of data fields; the format and text of buttons; the flow of pages", in order to get millions of users to sign up, you still have to a) Get millions of users to your web page b) At least appear to offer something they think may be valuable. Millions of people won't sign up for free TPS reports no matter how well you design your site.

What's more, if the number of "accounts" was the metric everyone used to judge companies, MySpace would be hot hot hot. Active accounts have to be considered and their definition obviously matters.

The author's last argument is the only one that I find to be strong: First spend time building a great product and then focus on optimizing things like font size using multivariate testing. When you build something people want, any traction you get is there to stay.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't you think the article is lacking depth and is based on unfounded assumptions. Moreover, the author doesn't cite any examples.

To me the title of the article seemed interesting, but when I read it, turned out to be very vauge.</comment>


Declining Antarctic Sea Ice Could Disrupt a Major Carbon Sink - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/declining-antarctic-sea-ice-could-disrupt-a-major-carbon-sink/ <comment> Futur-envi-tech Polar bears a top predator of the eco-system are also in danger og going extinct by 2050 due to lack of food caused from the declining ice.</comment>


How Minecraft Was Born - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/11/minecraft-book/ <comment><USER2> After watching Minecraft: The Story of Mojang [1] I was left with the impression that no one at Mojang really knows how to run a business, but since the cash from Minecraft just keeps coming in, everybody at Mojang is just having a great time.

In this sense they a very much a like a startup learning to become a company, but without the financial pressure.

It will be interesting to see if Minecraft will be a one-hit wonder for Mojang or if they will be able to grow into a company with sustainable profits from multiple IPs.

[1] [http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft](http://www.2playerproductions.com/projects/minecraft)

<comment><USER3> WRT multiple IPs, I am interested to see how they interact with the mods ecosystem over time. Not so much can they make a twitter app or a 2-d platformer or something equally unrelated. I don't want a blocky minecraft looking pacman clone, at all.

I'd pay more for the RailCraft mod than I paid for minecraft itself, in terms of enjoyment per $. Of course the RC mod is free ... Also I use buildcraft mod although the gold pipes suck for steam distribution, and I'd pay for buildcraft, although thats free. Thermal expansion has better steam distribution...

The great mothership recently released a new minecraft version, which amounted to a couple new flowers and some biomes for people who don't mine, and nothing at all for anyone who does anything below the surface. Its called Minecraft, gentlemen, not fuzzy bunny craft so lose the giant mushroom biome please, and beg borrow or steal the buildcraft, railcraft, forestry, applied energetics, universal electricity, and a couple other mods so people who mine in MINEcraft actually have something fun to do rather than admiring double height grass blocks and mesa biomes.

The other thing which is hilarious from a guy who's been into computers since 1981 is the mods ecosystem is from a software engineering / systems administration standpoint just a tiny bit more advanced than the msdos era, actually pretty close to my historical digging into MVS/360\. So its 2013 and apt and dpkg and friends have existed since the very early 90s, but in 2013 the way you handle version dependence and bug tracking and distribution is you manually visit adware download spam sites and click 50 times to download a tiny mod, and then track version compatibility manually by visiting 50 decentralized web forums. Oh and don't get me started on people who think a 15 minute youtube video with awful video and music counts as the only form of "documentation" required. Dudes, its 2013 almost 2014 not the era of msdos 3.11 and warez BBS systems? It really does suck after using Linux since the early 90s and downshifting back to 1985, even though I run minecraft on linux (both client and server).

Mojang should implement a minecraft mod store with a payment system thats trustworthy/reliable and very fast with excellent versioning compatibility. I'd pay $40 for railcraft and mojang can keep $10 of it and everyone else will be happy as long as I get $40 of actual service, like its very fast and completely transparent and highly reliable and effective and perhaps dare I ask, effectively and centrally documented and centrally bug tracked?

<comment><USER4> Okay, you're kidding, right?

Minecraft 1.7 did not include any major changes. They just rewrote about 50% of the source code.

Nah, not a lot.

And they're doing it EXACTLY so they can make a mod store.

Now, the only reason you cannot pay for Railcraft is because Mojang included a clause stating that you cannot sell modifications or derivative works based on Minecraft's source code. They ARE working on a mod store and API... since 2011. I believe it will be coming in the next year or so, Mojang claims January but I stopped believing them long ago.

About modifications, I started work on a way to improve mod distribution from servers to clients: AsieLauncher. It automatically generates a launcher, a list of modifications and a list of changes between modpacks. It supports delta updating, all MC versions from 1.2.3 to 1.7.2, optional mods and a lot of other things.

The plan was to add support for automatic mod updating and dependency tracking, but the problem is mod authors aren't often willing to participate, due to stubbornness or just plain assholery or laziness. That's why such projects rarely take off.

<comment><USER5> Mod authors indirectly monetize their mods by hosting them on the deceptive and ad laden file hosting sites that have some tiny return on traffic.

<comment><USER4> Yes. I prefer donations, and AsieLauncher got more money for donations than it ever would from adf.ly for the next 2 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Notch described what later became Minecraft in a 2009 youtube, calling it an 'Infiniminer clone' he was working on

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k)

<comment><USER7> I've been involved in the indie game dev community for a while now, and I was an active member on the TIGSource forums when Markus first presented Minecraft there[0] (he still posted, at the time!)

I remember from day one thinking it would be pretty cool if he could make infiminer with gameplay (at the time, he was talking of a capture the flag mode, and a "defend the castle you built from zombies" mode).

Then he started charging $10 for preorders, which I thought was insane- who would pay money for a prototype that he'd probably abandon within 6 months anyway? (most indie game debs abandon their project- finishing a game puts you in the 0.0001%)

But it actually worked, which surprised me. I finally preordered myself, because everyone was doing it to support him- I think I was order ~11 000 or so. I thought it was insane that he managed to get 10k+ preorders for his small project, and a little something clicked in my head then. Of course, now of over 12 million people have bought the game :) [1]

[0] [http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6273.0](http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6273.0)

[1] [https://minecraft.net/stats](https://minecraft.net/stats)

<comment><USER8> Preorders were $5, at least by the time I bought (in alpha), which IMO is a much more justifiable price for an impulse buy that might not work out. It was raised to $10 after it hit "beta" (which was after it was already popular and had made at least a million, IIRC).

<comment><USER7> Ha, thanks for correcting this- faulty memory :)

Even $5 was surprising, as most people on TIGS just post their demos and games for free- back then, most people made games with the only intention of making something cool. It's only recently that everyone builds a game with money in mind, and Minecraft was amongst the games to start that trend (remember, this was before Kickstarter et al.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if minecraft's financial success (after the initial stage where Persson couldn't have done it another way as the article argues) was because of the pricing model that bucked trends in the gaming world, signalling "this game is different", or if it was despite the difference?

<comment><USER10> I was pretty surprised when Minecraft was charging money for a fairly simple and uncompleted game. I was surprised because I had not seen that done very often. Now it's definitely more popular with things like Kickstarter but I think the fact he was asking for money early on helped a lot. If he had not asked for money, he may not have been able to develop the game to the level he did.

<comment><USER11> Steam is now overloaded with "early access" game sales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 98% of all great startups are copycats, not original innovations. Markus copied the look and feel from infiniminer, but minecraft was far better executed.

<comment><USER13> No, he didn't just copy it, he looked what the players liked and what they didn't like, extracted the good stuff and made a game out of this.

This is how everything remotely successful works.

This is also why things later fail!

The companies want more customers and add stuff to their products to appeal. But what they end with is a product, that doesn't reflect the good things extracted anymore, because they got bloated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm still not sure I'm entirely clear what about this story is "amazingly unlikely"?

</comment><comment><USER15> Passion > Business. Passion that makes a business is even better.

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing. This is inspiring. Hope to grab a copy of the book!

</comment><comment><USER17> TL;DR he ripped off Infiniminer.

<comment><USER18> Inspiration is not the same thing as blatantly ripping off other games and passing them off as unique creations. Comandeer Keen started out as a project to copy Super Mario Bros. 3, for example. But is Comandeer Keen just a "rip off" of SMB 3? Hardly. And Minecraft is far from a rip off of infiniminer. If anything, today infiniminer is much more well known due to minecraft's success. Infiniminer is about as similar to minecraft as pong is to breakout.

<comment><USER19> What is "amazingly unlikely" about that though? Revolutionary games that create their own genres (Rogue, Adventure, Dune 2) are amazingly unlikely. Minecraft is just evolution of the games that already existed.

<comment><USER20> Not sure of the others, but Dune 2 certainly didn't spontaneously big bang in a vacuum either, it was built on earlier iterations of similar games most notable being Herzog Zwei,whose english translation curiously enough is just 2 letters forward on a single letter, it translates as "Duke 2"

that said, played the shit out of dune 2, what a game!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every time I read a story about some unassuming person getting rich off of doing what they love, I always ask myself: how can I do this?

Step 1: find something I love.

Does lying in bed surfing the internet count?

No?

Damn.

<comment><USER22> Based on your comment and your username, you must be in bed, drunk and surfing the internet! :-)

Here's an idea for a simple app that prevents you from phoning / texting your ex when you're drunk in bed. You have to (previous to being drunk) mark all of your contacts that you aren't supposed to contact when drunk and give reasons. Use the acceleromter to test if the user is able to stand up straight. If not then block certain outgoing calls / texts.

Then place ads in bars that say, "Don't drunk text your ex tonight. Download the app... DTP (Drunk Text Protector)". Hint: You can charge a little extra for the app because the user is probably part drunk anyway. ;-)

So, as the user, you get drunk and get home and text your ex 'Anna' and the app says:

      Your message to Anna was blocked. You previously told me that she
      was "some crazy bitch who slept with your best friend".

      If you really want to text Anna, then you can use one of your "go on
      be a dumb ass" credits to bypass this drunk text lock.

      You currently have [0] credits. Click here to purchase some now.

If you really want to text Anna then you can, but you have to buy a "I'm an idiot" credit pack as an in-app purchase, which gives you a number of credits to text / phone people you shouldn't.

Profit!

<comment><USER23> _Use the acceleromter to test if the user is able to stand up straight._

Riding on the bus/train can cause a lot of wobbling around. How well can an accelerometer-based system distinguish this from drunkenness?

<comment><USER24> It doesn't. That is a bonus feature for all the other people on the bus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone find it funny that Bezos is making money off this inaccurate book about himself, that he probably hates, by selling it in his store? And that his wife's bad review of the book probably drove more sales? (the rank is currently 83, earlier today in a Google cached version of the page the rank is 86)

Not that he should/would pull the book or anything. Just kind of funny.

<comment><USER26> Wrong thread, you must have mixed up tabs :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Android project for introducing teenagers to programming? - <AUTHOR>

I'm one of the founders of ImagineK12-backed Tutorcloud.com.  We've been talking to lots of parents who want their kids to learn a little programming.  We'd like to help them, and we need your help.
Specifically....Recommend a project we can use in our Intro to Android Programming workshop.
These kids are 12-16 years old.  No programming experience.  Eager to learn.  Dying to build "cool apps".  What could we build with them?
The workshop is only 4 hours long.  Can we build something kids will think is cool in that time?
Comment here, or contact me directly.  And if you're interested in teaching teenagers in the Bay Area, or online, drop me a line as well.  [email@example.com]. <comment><USER2> Don, a local developer, put this together for a two part meetup group:

[http://blog.machineinteractive.com/2011/05/reflections-on- ru...](http://blog.machineinteractive.com/2011/05/reflections-on-running- android-game.html)

Includes full code for the app on github. He also did a quick gps + yahoo weather api which isn't as exciting, but, might fit the time constraints.

Don also uses processing.org for a lot of projects which is a pretty good learning environment - though, not android. Peruse his blog for more stuff.

He also wrote the Myxer.fm Android app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you seen MIT (formerly Google) App Inventor?

<http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I have. Unfortunately, it looks like MIT hasn't re-released it yet. Although it looks like it's possible to run your own server now. Thanks!</comment></comment>