Ask HN: Would it help you if I shared my entrepreneurship / engineering notes?
4 comments
Notes, video summaries, etc. are always welcome, I think. It would be great if in addition to raw notes, you add 1-2 sentence summaries to each note cluster.
Thanks for the response. I'm struggling with the content length limitations (2000 characters) and the formatting (no images, bullets, etc).
I also happen to be building a wiki / collaborative self-education tool that I'm using to take and then share these notes, but I don't want to violate etiquette by sharing these links if the perception is that it's primarily self-promotional. It is, but it's also value-promotional, I hope. Would it be bad form to do so?
Example for the above:
https://www.karma.fm/p/LQjKNte/sam-altman---how-to-succeed-w...
I also happen to be building a wiki / collaborative self-education tool that I'm using to take and then share these notes, but I don't want to violate etiquette by sharing these links if the perception is that it's primarily self-promotional. It is, but it's also value-promotional, I hope. Would it be bad form to do so?
Example for the above:
https://www.karma.fm/p/LQjKNte/sam-altman---how-to-succeed-w...
My take is: If the karma.fm link that you're posting provides value to the crowd than it's not bad form. This will also enable you to get feedback about your site (design, accessibility, etc.) from the HN crowd.
Another (I think better) approach that a lot of people use is to post a blog entry (you do have a company blog, right? If not, start one asap!) with some learning/summaries/etc. that you think would be useful with links to the karme.fm pages.
The worst that can happen is: you post and get no upvotes. In this case try 2-3 more times being mindful of the post time (there are many posts on HN about ideal post timing, use https://hn.algolia.com/ to search). If none succeeds, well, you conclude people don't see the value in your notes. Maybe time to rethink your value prop. Good luck!
Another (I think better) approach that a lot of people use is to post a blog entry (you do have a company blog, right? If not, start one asap!) with some learning/summaries/etc. that you think would be useful with links to the karme.fm pages.
The worst that can happen is: you post and get no upvotes. In this case try 2-3 more times being mindful of the post time (there are many posts on HN about ideal post timing, use https://hn.algolia.com/ to search). If none succeeds, well, you conclude people don't see the value in your notes. Maybe time to rethink your value prop. Good luck!
This is fantastic! Thank you for the information :).
Here's an example:
Sam Altman - How to Succeed with a Startup
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lJKucu6HJc
My Notes:
- The degree to which you're successful is the degree to which you build a product that is so good that people spontaneously tell their friends about it.
- We find out about great products from our friends.
- One litmus test here is to ask yourself, is your product easy to understand? Can it be explained in a simple sentence?
- If you can't explain what your product does in a sentence, it's a bad sign. People don't pitch their friends. People share cool stuff with their friends.
- You also need to be looking for a market that is starting to undergo or is soon to be undergoing exponential growth.
- One of the biggest mistakes that investors make when evaluating startups is to focus on the growth rate. Investors will forgive low revenue if there's rapid growth. For some reason, people don't think about markets this way. They should.
- Most successful startups start in small markets that are growing very quickly. You want to identify a market that's set to grow every year and then ride the elevator up.
- It's important to distinguish between real trends and fake trends. If your product is targeted at a real trend, then your early adopters will use it obsessively.
[~ 80% notes cut off from 2000 character limit]
Do you want to see this kind of content? If so, is it ok if I link to my off-site space to address formatting/length limitations here? What are you most interested in seeing distilled like this? I've done books, videos, documentaries, etc.