InfinityX0

Also: https://www.google.com/search?pws=0&q=tilt

Bellevue, WA - Senior Software Engineer - ClassifiedAds.com

I don't work directly with this arm of our company, but here's more details on the job description: http://www.classifiedads.com/technical_jobs-ad4787967.htm

One of the things discussed here that isn't as frankly discussed in detail is the diminishing value of a one-word name. A startup such as "color" has little value in selecting such a name, at least comparative to the value the name has itself. As Graham discusses, a little iteration, many beers and constant thinking could probably create a name that would only be slightly less effective.

Wufoo is such an example. Both are short but with both, I literally have no idea what they do at first mention. But they're both memorable and fit generally good brand rules - while Wufoo, undoubtedly, was a much cheaper domain.

But the one-word benefit is strong, and tangible, with a domain such as "shirts.com". Here, there is real and significant SEO benefit, as well as potential branding benefit when posited correctly. When not attached to the physical product - or at least without significant "what the hell this does" connotation - the value of a one-word domain is really not that significant comparative to the perceived mass market value of many of these domains.

Apparently I didn't have clarity on the technicalities of a "Partner". Always imagined it as someone with a percentage stake of the company and/or here, someone who was also investing their own coin.

One thing that may be awkward to talk about but comes up, here, is that my imagining of VCs were that of all rich people, even partners. I imagine Siegler is well taken care of a Techcrunch, but it seems "well taken care of" is a far broach from having the cash to be a Venture Capitalist. Am I misinterpreting the needs of such individuals? Is it possible he's just a one-off exception who has the cash to spend here?

Reportedly costs $150k/yr, flat. http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/google-breaks-paid-ana...

Cool stuff here. My comment is not on the app itself, it's on how it's being marketed. My initial impression was that this was some Google-affiliated 10% project or something based on the branding on the page, then I noticed the owner in previous comments say different.

The person who made this, if even for purely altruistic purposes, should be leveraging the eyeballs into some lifetime value, whether it's Twitter followers, awareness of who created it, clickthroughs to a blog, etc. It saddens me - as a marketer - to see a cool project like this essentially exist in the wild without an author's signature.

Whoops, didn't see that before. I frequent HN so I guess there may be a few people who are of the same mind as me and missed out on it the first time around - thanks for pointing out the previous comments.

I put together this 76-point summary of Hackers and Painters on my blog: http://www.rosshudgens.com/thoughts-from-paul-graham/

Herein lies the importance of metacognition - "thinking about thinking". If we are aware of this bias, it lowers the blow when it seeps into our consciousness. I am becoming increasing aware of the power of mindfulness, as promoted by Merlin Mann, Buddhism and more. This is the hack that can drive happiness, health, and the interaction of the two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition http://www.43folders.com/topics/mindfulness

Ah, I was using Yahoo! Site Explorer as a judge.. which only showed PCWorld. http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGk.jo20F...

Crazy that a site such as PCWorld could bog down a site as popular (or so it seemed) as Hacker News. Goes to show what kind of a small fish Hacker News is in a much bigger pond..

He doesn't mean be nice to them even if they have a shitty project. He means don't let the onslaught of launches actually partially sour your perception - use your un-saturated viewpoint that is then cognizant of the bias saturation imbues - to determine your true opinion of their service.

Which - if still bad then - should be correctly harsh and honest.

You need more clarity on the homepage. It's obvious that it's car insurance but the process is information->information->start, which Leaky makes it obvious and it basically goes start->figure it out.

Get the user started on the conversion funnel while you explain to them what the service does - I'm pretty certain (based on my lead generation experience) that this will end in a far superior conversion rate for you.

Reminds me of one of PG's best posts (IMO), See Randomness: http://www.paulgraham.com/randomness.html

This is absolutely brilliant. Incredibly well executed. I have never seen a post at once hybridize promotion and great content so well.

My first thought is that social sharing should go down dramatically. A lot fewer social CTAs on each post, and the left buttons, although aesthetically pleasing, don't really incite the user to share.

Mashable is an example of the in-your-face sharing buttons allows social sharing to go through the roof, and also allows for immediate social proof that hey - other people thought this article was cool, too.

Somewhat counter to the original comment in this thread's tone, this was an interesting piece in that the OP revealed little to me, but the comment thread was the most informative thing I've read here in weeks. Incredibly valuable.

Google likely uses clickthrough rate (CTR) in their algo. If your site has a high CTR, it should hypothetically rank higher, so it makes sense for them to include it in their algorithm - to the point that it can't be manipulated.

So, if the metadata doesn't directly increase rankings (which I'm pretty positive it won't), it can indirectly do so by grabbing the users eye and improving CTR, which I am most certain it will.

Half (or more) of the problem with ideas is the vetting process. You need to vet your ideas. Very frequently, as stated in the article, some ideas are "dead on arrival". This is because founders don't have the proper frame of reference, they're expertise is lacking, or they've made some concept framed early on their baby - that is, unable to let go. Ideas need to be vetted. Like getting your first customers, in whatever you do, you need approval from something or someone to know that something is there, and you need it fast.

You can't be in your basement grinding with one other person for four months just to find out you misappropriated your customer base, or the problem your software solves, only to find out there's nobody has that problem, nobody cares, or some amalgamation of that and many other factors.

I see this elsewhere as well. People want to be a model their whole life but never had a hope from the getgo. They want to be an architect but their frame of reference is so off they'll never have a chance. Not saying that work can't make up for a lot of it, but I'll never in the NBA. Talent dictated that. There are several other dictators that create the same boundaries as well.

I wonder what kind of value Ashton could provide through simply tweeting about AirBnB once a week to his audience - whether or not he had one half decent thing to contribute tech wise. That seems like a real big benefit for AirBnB if he chose to do it, because his influence and reach is so huge, and there is no marketing cost for him to do so.

Well played. I guess I am thinking to my singular situation of living with lazy/pressuring roommates in college. But I imagine, also, that finding highly motivated people as in the Hacker News mold is pretty hard to do in general.

Yup. I'd like to add "not living with people you like". I think having social connectivity is big outside your home, but when you actually live with people you like/are peer pressured to do things within your dwelling, it is really hard to get things done.

Entrepreneur Magazine is the exact match domain of the magazine world. Because of the name entrepreneurs will always read it, but the content is rarely good enough to be worth buying or even shelf-reading.

It is posts like these, where a majority of the audience will be super-educated and a small portion (me) not at all, that it would be great to have upvotes. I can only make an educated guess as to what the best advice is to learning code here.

A strong opinion could send me on my way for months doing the wrong thing.

Strangely, this sort of post sorta said "the writing's on the wall we won't be soon". Multiple mentions of "we're still here" as if expectation is that they're gone. And there were not-so-subtle inferences that they really need VC backing to grow faster.

John Siracusa had a great point about Merlin. There was some criticism that a "productivity expert" not being able to ship is quite paradoxical. However, as Siracusa stated, the reason Merlin has so much to say on the subject is because he's spent so much time struggling with his own failures in that area. Someone who's trying to lose weight isn't going to learn much from someone who's 80 pounds and has been their entire life, because they've never really faced the struggle of ever losing the weight themselves. On the other hand, Jared from Subway may be an apt subject to learn from because he has faced the path and difficulty of obesity and continues to fight it.

That, combined with the ADD he is diagnosed with, means that I find reading his advice and loving it while still knowing that shipping stuff for him is an extremely difficult thing to do completely acceptable.

I see some deeper meaning in this - in that it is an explicit way to show how communication can be parsed down so simply. Many writers/communicators want to extrapolate every thought into word tombs - when they can very often be summated in something as small as "I made tea." Beautiful execution, here, on getting me (and hopefully others) to think about writing/communicating more simplistically - and then actually doing it.

Otherwise stated, "This makes me want to communicate more simply."

Seems appropriate (although somewhat fractal) - http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt.

I feel the same way. The weird thing to me (observing from a distance), is that having kids is in a way, a projection of those things you're already doing, just in a physical form. But I don't have kids, so I don't know for sure, that's just what it seems to be - projection of ego that can capture your attention, instead, because it seems like a bigger thing to "build" than some webapp.