Hacker News Reader

Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

Many of these are good, but a couple are wrong. We've funded both a social network (http://dailybooth.com) and a travel site (still only soft launched) and they're both doing well so far.

View on HN

He's not really saying it's impossible to succeed at these things. Only that there are other ideas out there with far better conditions and chances.

I simply don't see the reasoning behind high competition = low chances. The whole idea of web startups is to be able to move fast around big, slow competition.

Then by all means, out-facebook Facebook. I'll be cheering for you.

In regard to social networking, I think the author means "Don't build a generic social network (Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, etc)" We have enough of those, and I think Social Booth doesn't really fit in to that category.

All useful modern web apps have elements of "social network" in them.

Good point. Facebook can't be all things to all people, so I definitively think there's room for niched community sites. Facebook hasn't crushed Flickr, for example.

I hate to be the one to defend Java, but he's so wrong about this one that it's laughable. He and I and you and all kinds of people use Java apps every single day; they just happen to be server-based.

And Posterous can be counted as a counter-example too, couldn't it?

I imagine having YC behind you makes a significant difference.

Could you be more specific, please? I too think YC backing can be a great advantage, but surely it's not impossible to »make something people want« without it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com