[ale] Hopefully not spam, Atlanta pre startup idea

Jay Loden jloden at toughguy.net
Thu Mar 10 08:19:10 EST 2005


I'd have to disagree with this part, though you do make a lot of good points.  
I read Paul's book (incidentally, the best read I've had in a long time) and 
between that and some biographical information about him that's out there, 
it's pretty clear he has actually had a role that's exposed him to all the 
problems of a startup.  

The company he and his friends started was the epitome of a startup, and they 
had to do everything - sales, coding, venture capitalist meetings, customer 
service and systems administration.  I'm pretty sure he's been "in the 
trenches" when it comes to working at a startup.  He hit the jackpot, sure, 
and eventually got bought out by Yahoo for millions, but until then, he and 
his friends were ViaWeb's staff, responsible for every aspect of making it 
into the number one online store that was worth those millions to Yahoo.

On the other hand, I would say that he probably over-generalizes based on his 
experience, in which he happened to be successful.  I think that it's 
difficult to make hard and fast rules about startups based on a single 
person's experiences.  However, that being said, his book is insightful and 
inspiring in the way it looks at wealth, hackerdom, and social structures. 

I think his point about dating sites is not that an undergrad could write 
match.com in a weekend, but that an undergrad could easily develop a concept 
that could outstrip the world of dating sites, because there's a lack of 
innovation in the industry.  Not having ever tried one, I can't comment on 
it, but it's probably a valid point.  College kids have an amazing ability to 
come out of nowhere with some crazy ideas that sometimes just happen to also 
be good ones ;)

Unfortunately, I'm not in Atlanta (actually in London at the moment) or I'd be 
interested in this idea....I've been heavily considering a startup of my own, 
probably later in life.  Though I'd been considering it prior to reading 
Hackers and Painters, the book certainly spurred my excitement at the idea.  
I sat down the night I read that book and wrote out a couple pages of ideas 
and thoughts brought on by the chapter on wealth and startups. 

P.S.  Christopher - you made some great points and I think you're right on the 
money, just wanted to point out that however right or wrong he may be, P.G. 
at least "was there"

-Jay


On Thursday 10 March 2005 4:09 am, Christopher Fowler wrote:

> I think Paul has not had a role in an organization that has exposed him
> to the problems of a startup.  Take sales for instance.  Finding a great
> Sales rep is very difficult.  It is hard to measure a sales reps
> performance based on past products they've sold.  If a product has an
> awesome marketing department and high demand the Sales rep could sale
> millions and basically ber an order taker.  Give them a phone where they
> have to hunt then they may fall flat.  Basically sales reps come in two
> categories.  Hunters and Farmers.  If you have a new product with no
> install base you'll want a hunter.  A farmer will do you no good with no
> seeds planted.
>
> I don't think Paul really looks into things.  Take this statement
>
> "For example, dating sites currently suck far worse than search did
> before Google. They all use the same simple-minded model. They seem to
> have approached the problem by thinking about how to do database matches
> instead of how dating works in the real world. An undergrad could build
> something better as a class project. And yet there's a lot of money at
> stake. Online dating is a valuable business now, and it might be worth a
> hundred times as much if it worked."
>
> A undergrad can not create match.com as a project.  All dating sites
> took real time and many people to create.  You can have some bad sites
> out there but someone spent a great deal of time and effort creating
> that dating site.



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