Criticism has its place, and some of your concerns may be helpful, but "you don't know what you're doing" and "this is all bad" are simply rude judgments.
I don't see the point in accusing the team of "selling air". Would you accuse a trainer of "selling movement" or a coach of "selling words"??
Breath is a fundamental component of the human experience that affects our mood, health, and everyday experience. Learning how your breath affects your experience is valuable just like any other physical activity (yoga, running, meditation, exercise). There is also a spiritual component to introspective practices like meditation which can be quite valuable. For some people, it's definitely worth paying for these things.
If you're only comfortable with gurus doing this work, what would a guru need to be "qualified"?
I have recruited several folks to Chorus this year and they are finding it quite helpful! My husband in particular has had some really intense (in a good way) experiences. A friend just reached out to me today to tell me how much he is enjoying it, and mentioned he noticed your launch on HN, so I wanted to come put in a good word :)
Interesting pattern, the people I've referred who have gotten the most out of chorus are/were startup CEOs. I wonder if this format is particularly good for people who are comfortable in intense environments? Or maybe those who have already learned the benefits of an introspection practice? I know it helps me show up better as a leader.
I started doing Chorus meditation at Twilio prior to the pandemic and let me tell you it was WILD. My first session, I experienced a full body high and I was hooked. My mood after these sessions was fantastic. I was relaxed, confident, and my perspective felt so clear. I let go of all those meetings and tasks that were cluttering my day but didn't matter, and thought about the big picture.
In some sessions, I found myself weeping, processing grief I didn't realize I had been holding onto. In others, I had intense visual experiences like sinking to the bottom of the ocean or dissolving into the earth, which helped me to let go of things outside of my control. In another session, I connected with a deep desire to have another child, and decided it was time to do that. I would describe my chorus experiences as relaxing, fun, important, profound, and psychedelic.
I'm one of those people who found meditation frustrating and "not really doing anything", but had a completely different experience with Chorus. I was also really skeptical when a friend first described Chorus to me. I thought "Isn't listening to loud music the opposite of meditation!? That sounds cheesy." I was quickly won over. I encourage anyone with even a slight interest to try it. If you really lean into the experience and let go of your expectations, you might be very surprised at what can happen!
Nice and sweet love letter to Greg. Shared with our founders.
We have a slightly alternative model: There hasn't been a consistent Greg 5+ years, but there is always a founder willing to be Greg when the previous Greg needs a break. Especially important once people start having children and go through the various ups and downs of life.
We're around 50 and we have about half of our company working remotely at any given time - and we love it. We've introduced a lot of communication rituals to make this work. Starting a weekly all-hands with good AV setup was a huge improvement for us. In addition to saving the space for people to ask questions in a big group, it also got us in the habit of preparing data & updates to present to the entire company (e.g. write everything down). It can be monotonous at times, and we resisted big group meetings for 4 years, but it's pretty critical and works well at this size.
We also schedule quarterly travel to the office, and have a weekly meeting where remotes get together and share what they are currently feeling anxious & excited about. That's a remarkably effective way to learn a lot of things you might otherwise pick up on w/ body language, and more.
Every person has an internal life that is completely unique, and can be vastly complex. Some good storytellers know how to weave their inner tensions and wanderings into a narrative.
Cool idea! I just submitted a question and I'm waiting for an answer :)
Just wanted to provide some feedback. On the screen that says "Thanks for texting Suto! You'll get a response shortly.", there is a section that says "Here are some other questions being answered now:"
It's blank!
That makes it seem like no one is using it, or something is broken. I really like the idea of having some examples, there, though. Maybe just switch to some good examples rather than a feed?
Hi there - I wrote the piece and you pretty succinctly summed up some of my internal arguments for not sharing the story. I'll share some of my thoughts on those and why I ultimately decided to share anyway. While I knew some customers/prospects would appreciate and possibly admire the transparency, my main concern was that others might be deterred.
First, they might be deterred by the issues I mentioned in the post. None of the challenges I mentioned in the piece were special. We lost a customer. We had an outage (a year ago). We were stressed. Every API company and competitor, not to mention our customers, have had a similar story. Of course we made it through those challenges, or we wouldn't be telling this story. They made us stronger. Plus, we love it when prospects ask about uptime because it's something we take seriously and where we have a great track record :)
Second, they might be deterred at the idea of failure being ok. Perhaps the message in the piece is too subtle. It's not supposed to be that it's ok to be lazy and fail at stuff. It's about getting perspective and not letting your anxiety cripple you. I hoped what would come through in this piece is that we care very deeply about our work, so much so that sometimes we needed to be reminded that it's not life or death.
Finally, I'll share some of my thoughts on why it might be beneficial to share.
First, like I mentioned in the post, being a part of the tech community and contributing to it, sharing some of the lessons you've learned, is very rewarding. I've found that when you give, not only does it feel good, but the community gives back, often later on and in surprising ways you didn't expect. You reach like-minded customers, partners, candidates, investors, all kinds of things.
Second, as a data company, trust is incredibly important to our brand. Some might disagree, but I think sharing the more human sides of the company helps to expand that trust. This is how we have always operated the company, and I think it is a large part of why we not only have a lot of customers (and growing), but many fans. We like knowing our customers and we like them to know us too.
Hi Tom. I was anticipating a response like this and I'm glad you shared your perspective. One of the reasons this piece was difficult to share is that the last thing that I want my customers thinking about is failure.
Let me clarify one thing (and perhaps I should do this in the blog post as well?). Our team cares incredibly deeply about our commitments to our customers and their data. I 100% agree with you that we can _and should_ double-down and work through the weekend when that's what it takes to maintain that commitment.
The thing is, we already do that, and our team was already doing it at the time I wrote this message. People at Keen take their responsibilities to our customers and to each other very seriously. That's why we haven't had another loss since then, now almost 12 months later. When I wrote this message, the problem wasn't that people weren't working hard enough. It was that we were stressed out and burnout was becoming a risk. In this situation, reminding people to take a deep breath and get some perspective seemed to be really helpful.
There definitely is a time and a place to rally and to push through, and we have plenty of experience with that too :)
Hi there. Thanks for reading my piece. I was delighted when one of my teammates informed it was trending on HN today. Then I noticed there were 7 comments and I got pretty anxious. I was nearly too afraid to click and read them. But now that I'm here, wow, I don't know what to say. I'm tearing up, flooded with relief, filled with gratitude that people seem to understand not only I what I was trying to say, but a little bit of what we are trying to do with Keen. Thank you.
It's probably an overshare, but this is one of the first things I've published since returning from maternity leave. I was feeling more vulnerable than usual, and the support from the community means a lot to me personally. Thanks again.
I think we're almost all in agreement that pitch video doesn't do a very good job explaining Keen IO. I mean, it was posted on HN three years ago as an example of a bad pitch :).
The idea for the service was at its infancy and Kyle's ability to articulate it to pg in front of 300 people just wasn't there yet. If you'd like a more up-to-date answer, here's one I wrote to the question "Why wouldn't I just roll my own" that someone else asked in this same thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378228
[note: I work at Keen and have a lot of biases :)]
The main alternative to Keen IO is to build your own backend. Some developers will always prefer that, but many folks don't have the time & resources to devote to constructing & maintaining an analytics backend. Here are some things that people appreciate about Keen IO:
- The ability to start collecting & querying their event data immediately & easily
- Keen's uptime and reliability (transferring backend ops from their pager to ours).
- Not having to worry about scalability. For customers who are collecting billions of events per month and planning to double in less than a year, data challenges are less trivial.
- A point and click query interface that can be used by some non-devs to run analysis, create graphs, extract data, etc
- Query & visualization libraries that allow you to create reporting interfaces (websites/dashboards/customer-facing-analytics) much more quickly
- A growing inventory of features & open source tools that build on the API (scoped keys, caching, notifications, dashboard templates, etc)
IMO the benefits of seeing the company's reaction to one's lifestyle far outweight the risks of making the interview process slightly uncomfortable for risk-averse interviewers.