philco

Love all those use cases. I wonder if their launch would have been more successful if they picked one of the above, gave it away for free to X doctors at St. Luke's in NYC with software adapted to their niche, and waited for word to spread about how useful they were for doctors and had metrics for the impact they had.

Your examples make me think of segways...great for cops apparently...but not so awesome for domestic use cases.

It's not a micro-improvement on my phone. It's an additional device.

Yep. Solid TL;DR. Should've just blogged that instead.

I may be wrong! Thanks for correcting me. That having been said, it should REPLACE glasses, not be in addition to. Still doesn't solve a problem for their prime target demo.

That's really annoying. Sorry about that. Cross posted here: http://philco.squarespace.com/philcosblog/2013/6/25/why-goog...

That's interesting. What are the work use cases you're seeing value in? (I haven't been in a formal office for so long, I may be missing the opportunity there entirely)

Hah, that's funny, but I disagree.

The walkman delivered value I couldn't get otherwise. I wanted to carry an extra device because I wanted music, and I couldn't play music otherwise. (Unless I carried a boombox on my shoulder, which some people did in awesome rap videos).

Google glass doesn't add tremendous value over what I can currently do with my phone. It takes pictures...faster...but I can already take pictures with my phone.

Thank you Zergy!

Deep down, I just knew I'd be blown away by both the thoughtfulness and prose in this thread. I was right. Thank you fellow HN'ers!

Update: Looks like it's not a hostage situation. Armed man on an overpass, no hostages reported: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_fran...

Simple - contract him for a while and see how things work. Remember, technical competency is just one factor in evaluating a good co-founder, and studies show that interviews are horrible predictors of an individual's abilities. Just try him out! See how you work together.

I don't think he gets it. The choice is clear, do you want to earn, or do you want to learn? Going to an early stage startup as a non-founder is learning...you don't have the upside of a founder, but you're exposed to a lot of really cool shit.

You want to earn? Then go earn where people will pay you what you want?

The post had nothing to do with benefits, it had everything to do with money. IF you want to make money, and you don't care about the problems you're solving, and you don't care about learning, then go work for Oracle.

Stop bitching.

Talk to people, ASAP. Hone an elevator pitch, go to a coffee shop, and pitch strangers the idea in exchange for buying them a cup of coffee.

Tell them it's your "crazy cousin's" idea, and that you don't think he should quit his full time job for it, but you wanted to see what other people thought of it before you got back to him. (This will make it so that they'll be more honest with you. If they know it's your idea...they'll feel bad telling you it sucks).

Are people giving you their business cards and asking you to email them when it launches? That's the litmus test, make it so that people want what you're pitching so bad that they GOTTA HAVE IT TODAY.

Otherwise, don't even bother building it.

I've been suffering from the same thing. The posts that make the front page stay on for a while, then get modded off without notice.

TheLadders.com started exactly like this. IT was an email digest of 100k + jobs, went crazy viral.

Upvoted for the title. Reading the post now.

Thanks Yajoe!

Nope.

Thanks for that advice. Was thinking of writing a weekly column, or a small book about mistakes I wouldn't repeat in my next venture. Like you said, it would make it easier to remember the lessons over time - completely agree.

Follow up question: Could it be the exact opposite of what you're saying that did us in? Could it be that we spent TOO much time planning, and not enough time actually DOING (which leads to learning?)

I'll leave this here: http://marshmallowchallenge.com/TED_Talk.html

This is really interesting. I would love to see what my Co-Founder Chris would say about this. He was a perennial planner, scores through the roof on conscientiousness.

The most interesting question you ask is: "Are we going about this the right way"

That's a question we asked ourselves...A LOT. We never quite found the answer.

...and diagnosing the right problem is really hard. Then coming up with the "right"/"better" solution is even harder. Lastly, chances are it was a combination of reasons, and you had to fix more than a few to keep the kite going.

Not douchy at all - I sometimes very much feel the same way you do. The vision, as I saw it in 2008, was this:

Social Networkin 1.0 was about connecting with people online, that you had already met in real life. (You added a friend on Facebook, because you already knew them).

The next evolution of Social Networking was about people discovery. IT was about leveraging all that data we had online about ourselves, and our friend graph, to connect with new people based on our needs. Need to connect with someone at Amazon? Need to find a date for next week? Need a new cycling buddy?

Chances are that your new professional contact/date/cycling partner are just a friend away. Manufacturing the serendipity to make you connect with them is what we envisioned.

It's really powerful if you think about it - life comes down to relationships (and I don't mean that in a pure network-y sense).

It's also extremely monetizeable. Dating websites and LinkedIn make their money off of being the gatekeeprs to new relationships. If you can build the platform that is used for all of those contexts - you have the next big thing. (And Facebook just rolled out their attempt at this, which is stumbling with problems of identity and intent, but they'll figure it out hopefully)

Hold on, let me get us some nails and a hammer. We'll get this coffin shut tight if we work together

Thanks for the kind words. It was great meeting you!

That was a lot fun - don't get to do that often in your life. Learned a lot from Mark that day, his composure and fluidity in conversation (holding court against three overly eager entrepreneurs) was unbelievable.

Stats were horrible, and happy to share them (vanity metrics, and not):

8,000 Registered Users (Growth was horrible) +1M people in our database total (after importing friends/connections)

Peak Engagement: 30% MAU 10% WAU Around 0.5% DAU (I think, this last one I'm less sure about)

Our SXSW Service was the most successful, but still not good enough : Signed up 3% of conference goers (As much as Glancee, Highlight signed up 5% of SXSW) 25% of our SXSW users logged in 3 or more times 20% of our users reached out to their matches.

I'll keep thinking through what other stats I can share.

I actually relate to you - but when meeting a stranger online, I'd rather have inroads to use to introduce myself than have none and say "we have nothing in common, but would love to chat."

Thanks for the feedback. Not hoping to have to write one of these again anytime soon - but I'll keep that in mind.

Great post Dan!

Not sure I completely agree, though. If you're talking to people who are socializing, eating lox, and talking about how nice the weather is...coming in trying to sell an umbrella is interruptive at best.

If, however, you find a bunch of people huddled under a bus stop because they dont' have umbrella's, and are all waiting for the rain to stop....then coming in trying to sell an umbrella is genius.

It's all about targeting correctly. If a bunch of people are on Twitter complaining about how their new Ford is having alternator problems, and you run a mechanic shop that specializes in fixing them on the cheap, then you're providing value. Right?

I think it just has to do with how advertisers approach this, and how good of a job they do in crafting their copy, and their target demographic. Let's hope for our sake (and theirs), that they spend a real amount of time focused on that problem and don't mess it up.

Love this. So true. Thinking of writing it.