Spinning the Decks and Startup Success: A Lesson from My DJ Days | Hacker News Reader

Spinning the Decks and Startup Success: A Lesson from My DJ Days

cameronwestland.com

16 pointscamwest12 comments

Running a startup is in many ways not much different than writing a blog post about running a startup. There will be no shortage of opinions from friends and investors on the direction of your blog post about running a startup. Sometimes your opening paragraph winds up being very different than the middle section, and you need to be open to that. You will be tested in ways you never thought possible, as your runway narrows and you race to publish your effort to the world. In the end, the blog post about running a startup is not just your journey, but that of the many people who trusted you to bravely steer the ship towards a successful blog post.

DJ'ing - not the wedding or corporate event type - is two things:

- Sometimes you give the room what it wants

- Sometimes you give the room what it needs

The better you are at the latter, while leading the room to believe it's the former, the more you're able to make a name for yourself.

On the other hand, simply banging out the obvious, with no story, no journey isn't special. It will only get you so far. Who is going to champion average, if not forgettable?

Yeah, I suppose startups are the same. Safe will only get you so far. Better to skate to where the puck is going to be.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Balancing is crucial, and taking calculated risks can help set you apart. It's all about skating to where the puck is going to be, as you said.

Fyi...the puck bit was something I read in Forbes years ago that the hockey legend Wayne Gretzky had said. No need for disruption. No need for innovation. Just skate to where the puck is going to be. :)

This is an extremely cringey blog post.

And... I found this https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/17/delphia-co-founder-placed-...

Putting pressure on his employees to party after work. Seems like he may have taken the metaphor too far.

Went looking through some of the rest of his posts and found this...

https://cameronwestland.com/accountability-and-growth

I'm glad you found my other blog post on accountability and growth.

As you can see, I'm working on taking responsibility for my actions and working on self-improvement. I appreciate you taking the time to explore my writing.

Pressuring employees to party is putting it lightly. This sounds like I vert sexual harassment followed up by retaliation. An employee received unwanted physical touches, and a proposition for physical intimacy and was fired less than 3 months later.

I completely agree that any form of harassment is unacceptable. As I've shared in another recent post, I'm committed to addressing my past mistakes, learning from them, and ensuring a safe and inclusive environment in my future workplaces.

Question is whether one's product is for "my one thousand true fans," or every such user in the problem space, or a mix?

If we accommodate both power-users and beginners? And provide a path from one to the other.

Whether the product is itself the means to the end, if the product is content itself, or the tool that empowers that creation.

Author explores requirements gathering further in a link from that post:

https://www.fforward.ai/blog/posts/unleashing-creativity-my-...

Great question.

Thanks for sharing the link to the post on unleashing creativity—I hope others find it helpful as well.

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