Found this via a tweet that quoted the article, saying "I think most people don't spend more than 10 minutes a year seriously contemplating this question yet assume they are orienting around its answer."
I wonder if that's true. How much time do people actually spend understanding what they want versus asking others what they should do, admiring what others do, thinking about what other people have, obsessing over what other people may think they have, etc.
A lot of new creators will message people they admire, asking for advice on their projects. The problem is... even if they have the time to respond, even the most experienced operators are in no place to predict whether people need your product, since they likely aren't your target audience.
Inspired by "let me google that for you", this is a friendly reminder to builders to focus on building... and that much of the time, the advice from busy strangers is going to be a guess at best and misleading at worst.
Even though it may seem harsh, I think this is actually a more valuable lesson to creators and plan to start sending this to people DMing me for feedback. If you resonate, feel free to use it too.
While I hear the, "But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion", it's kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, "But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we'll move on. This isn't some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy."
From my POV, they're taking a difficult stance to rid the workforce of the extreme forms of toxic distraction (which happens across the political spectrum and is pretty recognizable) and for the most part, doing exactly what you articulated: returning to reasonable adult conversations that 99% of people are capable of doing.
I thought that the infamous Dropbox comment on HN was the outlier, but when I saw Daniel Gross' tweet about Brian Armstrong's early projects (https://twitter.com/danielgross/status/1382348690606616581), I did some more digging and found that the non-linear story was pretty consistent. Most "successful" founders today, felt just as lost as the rest of us.
BTW, my process for finding them was pretty simple:
1. Started with top YC startups
2. Hunted down their HN launches (first instance of the URL)
I don't know if it's just me, but Calendly feels like the perfect company to stay private, continue generating really healthy cashflows, and pay off the founders millions per year. I suppose the company had already raised a round, so they were already stuck in the "hypergrowth at all costs" trajectory, but seems like that kind of multiple for that kind of company is going to be destined for failure. I hope I'm wrong, but am I missing something here?
There are lots of people on HN that share their startups every day. Every so often (but with increasing frequency), you see someone building 12 startups in 12 months.
I decided to do 12 scholarships instead. I think that the winners' collective ability to innovate will be much better for society than my individual contributions.
The scholarships will be tracked openly throughout 2021 in terms of funding, donors, winners, etc.