fallentimes

It's the PG microblog.

I don't like that idea. Part of what makes Hacker News great is the forced absence of comment self-promotion/signatures and a extremely high focus on what's being said rather than who says it.

Anecdotally, if I find myself particularly interested in what someone says I'll visit their profile to learn more about them.

So it's like saying Sequoia paid $2 million to come to YCombinator's demo days?

>What I hadn’t seemed to realise (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), is that this fourth day is where angel funds and VC’s pay upwards of £50,000 to attend (no kidding!)

£50,000!? Can anyone else confirm this?

Great run down, but this part is inaccurate:

>They have a small number of employees, strong revenues, no funding, and apparently consistent operating profits.

Funding: http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests...

Redorb already covered that before me so I didn't.

Besides, Twitter will eventually make money; it caters to too many of the seven deadly sins not to.

One creates their own linkbait, the other their users do it for them.

>killed somewhere around 20 people through fear alone.

Do you mean without even biting them? How do the people die? Panic attack/heart attack?

Not true on both accounts. They rank for over 125,000 keywords.

Source: http://spyfu.com/Domain.aspx?d=4637578045168633002

It's like a more civilized version of 4chan.

Because they get tons of traffic.

This more of a case in point than a because of. 37s has always had very very responsive customer service.

I'm not complaing, just making fun of :). It probably worked in terms of sales. But unfortunately it has the unintended consequences of all these people trying to coin unnecessary gobbledygook words when simple English will suffice. Now sometimes reading a newspaper article feels like sitting through a business school class. IMHO if anything making up terms and introducing more jargon just makes communication harder.

>Many of the basics are now essentially free, which means a business built on the infrastructure laid down by the first two generations of Web companies can gain scale on a shoestring budget, all while giving away its products and services for free. Call it Web 2.5.

Or in other words, things have become cheaper and it's easier to start a web company. Call it technology. Also, this has been true for much longer than the author acknowledges. He's trying to a fit a company into his cookie cutter view of the internet while coining an unnecessary word.

Your perspective seems to have more to due with pitching him than the merits of the article.

Yeah but the whole O'Reilly empire sells books, conferences, webinars, etc. all bearing the Web 2.0 scarlet letter:

http://search.oreilly.com/?q=web+2.0&submit.x=0&subm...

The guy sells books and conference tickets :).

It's marketing/douchebaggery and demonstrates a lack of creativity. "Web 2.0" was coined by a dude trying to sell more books.

Well in that case apology accepted. And to your second remark I agree with you - I'm genuinely against built to flip companies. I just don't think Mint was one of them.

Their support is brilliant too.

Perhaps, but calling yourself a revolution is kind of like calling yourself insane or weird or unique or a celebrity; it's just disingenuous. If you have to call yourself something...

It's out of context because I wasn't saying to be "selfish" and do nothing. I was saying they could work on whatever they wanted regardless of whether or not it's monetizable. There's no way to know that without context.

>Many founders set out to create a company for the sole purpose of selling out (which in the author's context included Aaron).

You don't know that. Aaron could have set off to build a long-term profitable company, which they appeared [1] on their way to doing. But 170 million dollars is 170 million dollars. Almost everyone has their number especially if they have shareholders and vested employees (which 37s does). Their responsibility isn't just to their customers, but to their shareholders, employees, vendors and other people in their life. Who's to say their customers will be treated worse because of the acquisition (granted, Intuit has a poor track record, but this thread has enough assuming in it already).

You run in to the same problem as the OP does: a lot of assumptions without any real knowledge of Aaron or the company's dealings. Instead you're relying on blind assertions and tunnel vision to judge others.

[1] Based on lead gen affiliate fees and the amount of users they had. Unfortunately I don't know this for sure.

Their linkbaiting is brilliant.

Sure, out of context. And that doesn't mean it wouldn't be awesome :) You throw out a lot of insults and blanket statements without a lot of backing. Also, you're insinuating that it's selfish (and perhaps wrong?) to sell a company, which is just ridiculous.

It's funny you're nitpicking a quote when the original article is pretentious and what were your words "short sighted and immature" enough to call their own company a revolution.

How's it selfish and short-sighted? And certainly that's better than making blanket statements about the next generation or having the gull to think a company is sparking a "revolution". That word is starting to become more overused than the word "celebrity".

That's just not true as the CEO himself admits and as their job postings and SERP rankings reveal. Mint were absolute masters of SEO and PR:

http://spyfu.com/Domain.aspx?d=-3624320565025573542

http://www.onecubicle.com/page/jobs/job/4581

"We didn’t have money for writers, so most of our original blog content then was guest posts from other personal finance blogs, plus a couple of columns on people’s worst financial disasters. To build demand, we started asking for email addresses for our alpha 9 months in advance of launch. Then when we had too many people sign up, we asked people to put a little badge that said “I want Mint” on their blogs to get priority access. We got free advertising and 600 link backs which raised our SEO juice."

Instead, we relied on press. It’s where I spent 20% of my time. I’m spending it right now while writing this."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/the-value-of-techcrunch...

Having an awesome product certainly helped but it was in conjunction with their other efforts.

That's what it does mean.

Eh even when you're doing a startup you're still working for your investor :).

Ha I never said their families would starve. My point was most people are beholden to many debts, people and obligations that prevent them from doing X.

You can obviously still work (as I mention), but the point is you can work on whatever you please for whoever you want (including yourself). And most importantly, it doesn't have to be monetizable - that's one of the biggest limiting factors out there.

And Mark, I know your situation, you're more fortunate than others :).

That's partially true, but what also made them popular is exceptional PR, SEO and marketing. Yodlee has some features Mint does not and vice-versa.

Even if it's true [1], lottery winners are a completely different group of people than startup founders who built massively successful companies.

Here are some more examples: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney...

They were working for their investors. Now after a temporary transition stint with Intuit, they won't have to work for anyone.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. I've read estimates that Facebook now shows 10% (!) of all U.S. display ad inventory on the internet.