stephsmithio

Darn, somehow posted the wrong link and now can't edit/delete this post and new attempt shows up as dupe.

Found this via a tweet that quoted the article, saying "I think most people don't spend more than 10 minutes a year seriously contemplating this question yet assume they are orienting around its answer."

I wonder if that's true. How much time do people actually spend understanding what they want versus asking others what they should do, admiring what others do, thinking about what other people have, obsessing over what other people may think they have, etc.

A lot of new creators will message people they admire, asking for advice on their projects. The problem is... even if they have the time to respond, even the most experienced operators are in no place to predict whether people need your product, since they likely aren't your target audience.

Inspired by "let me google that for you", this is a friendly reminder to builders to focus on building... and that much of the time, the advice from busy strangers is going to be a guess at best and misleading at worst.

Even though it may seem harsh, I think this is actually a more valuable lesson to creators and plan to start sending this to people DMing me for feedback. If you resonate, feel free to use it too.

While I hear the, "But anything could be viewed as societal and political discussion", it's kind of a straw man argument. We all know what types of discourse Jason and David are referring to and they augmented their request with, "But if you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world. Someone will gently remind you of the etiquette, and we'll move on. This isn't some zero-tolerance, max-consequences new policy."

From my POV, they're taking a difficult stance to rid the workforce of the extreme forms of toxic distraction (which happens across the political spectrum and is pretty recognizable) and for the most part, doing exactly what you articulated: returning to reasonable adult conversations that 99% of people are capable of doing.

I thought that the infamous Dropbox comment on HN was the outlier, but when I saw Daniel Gross' tweet about Brian Armstrong's early projects (https://twitter.com/danielgross/status/1382348690606616581), I did some more digging and found that the non-linear story was pretty consistent. Most "successful" founders today, felt just as lost as the rest of us.

BTW, my process for finding them was pretty simple:

1. Started with top YC startups

2. Hunted down their HN launches (first instance of the URL)

3. Browsed the founder's posting history

I'm sure there are many other examples of this.

I don't know if it's just me, but Calendly feels like the perfect company to stay private, continue generating really healthy cashflows, and pay off the founders millions per year. I suppose the company had already raised a round, so they were already stuck in the "hypergrowth at all costs" trajectory, but seems like that kind of multiple for that kind of company is going to be destined for failure. I hope I'm wrong, but am I missing something here?

There are lots of people on HN that share their startups every day. Every so often (but with increasing frequency), you see someone building 12 startups in 12 months.

I decided to do 12 scholarships instead. I think that the winners' collective ability to innovate will be much better for society than my individual contributions.

The scholarships will be tracked openly throughout 2021 in terms of funding, donors, winners, etc.

I made this because I kept stumbling upon resources and thought "more people should know this exists". So, I tried to make a central directory of important resources, whether it be places to access important data, job openings and trackers, tools for people or businesses trying to access funding, and of course, resources for people currently with the virus.

As someone that used to travel the world and play chess competitively as a kid (fun fact: against Botez), it's been great to see chess embraced as an esport and the definition of a "sport" be rethought entirely.

I remember growing up in the chess community being asked whether chess was a "sport". Most people within the community would say yes, while most people outside the community would unequivocally say no, since it wasn't physical.

It's amazing how quickly one can go from a "disciplined" investor to making decisions contrary to their principles, regardless of how much you think you believe in them.

I too, found myself making emotional investment decisions throughout this pandemic, despite typically just leaving my money in ETFs and rarely checking them.

Nice work here. I personally found around 2-3 years of reading non-fiction extremely helpful in my personal growth. An "inflection point" some would say.

But in the last year, I've been struggling to pick up as many books. I posit that it might have to do with many of the books feel similar. It's almost like once you get the baseline level of information, it's more fruitful for you to go out and learn yourself. Or perhaps I just need to expand my mind and find a new set of books.

I had a similar experience. Started nomading in 2016. The idea of being able to hop from one place to the next sounded amazing. In many ways it was, but it got old quickly. I think the hedonic treadmill accounts for a lot of this. I became completely numb to the experience.

I thought it would improve with "slowmad"-ing...instead of spending weeks places, I'd stay for months. But even then, everything still felt super transient. It's hard to develop relationships when you know that you or your friends will be leaving soon.

With COVID I was forced to settle down and even though the circumstances are horrible, there's solitude in not having to "know" where I'm going next.

Do you use any tools to intentionally filter what can reach you?

Stumbled upon this today and although the title is a bit extreme, it resonated with me. I normally don't read very much news, but ever since COVID, I've just been in a sea of information. I need to stay informed for my job, but now I struggle to skip any newsletter in my inbox, in case I'm missing some piece of vital information. I wonder whether reading/watching everything that I have over the past few months has actually served me, past the essential info (ie: there's a deadly virus and it's important to stay home). Curious if others are finding the same.

I have to agree with this. People have focused the entire conversation on if/when the virus will slowdown (which is of foremost importance), but there are business fundamentals that have already been stretched. We are already in a recession.

To reinforce this concept, take a look at how unemployment now compares to previous recessions: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio/status/1250122624094490624

I think headlines like these are extremely detrimental to the global fight of this virus.

Whether or not you're at risk (age, health problems, etc), you are a vehicle for transporting the virus and so while there is no need for "panic", it's both respectful and pragmatic to distance so that the virus can be contained.

Thank you for sharing this. I've also been using a similar frictionless observation and clustering method, but I never had a term to label it with. I'll be reading up more on the Fieldstone method.

I think this is a great point. When I was growing up, I really struggled with writing and in hindsight, it was because I had no freedom with it. I was writing about topics that I didn't care about and trying to write in a way that I thought would be graded well. For years after, I thought the struggle I faced just meant that I "wasn't a writer" and avoided it at all costs. Only recently have I started to explore it more due to a strange string of career events, but I hypothesize that many others will never revisit it once they've classified it as something they're not good at.

I think that I would really enjoy attending one of these.

How have you gone about finding them? Is there a good online directory of them in different locations?

Growing up, writing was often my least favourite thing to do. It still doesn't come "naturally" to me, but this year I starting using a process that makes it easier for me to "show up". I've basically tried to lower the barrier to entry.

Curious to know what writing tips or processes others are using to strengthen their "writing muscle".

This is a great story. If only AdChoices would stop dumping all over the site, so I could read it to the end.

Do you think that the language you speak impacts the way you think?

After leading a team for the first time this past year, I've been reflecting and feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about leadership. Things like being confident, being incredibly sure about your decisions, etc.

I wrote this article to think through what I consider to be the fundamentals of good leadership. Would love to get some feedback and hear what others think. Are there any that are missing?

Thank you!

The chronological order was VisiCalc, then Lotus123, then Excel. Microsoft had a spreadsheet tool called Multiplan during the era of Lotus123, but it didn't get much traction.

Yes, agreed that there's lots of room for improvement. It's actually quite amazing that the core functionality has enabled it to stick for so long.

Re: Excel is Fun, found the channel while researching for the piece and it is truly a hidden Internet gem. We can only hope more people find their passion as this guy has.

I had so much fun writing this so it was super nice to run into it while browsing HN.

I think there's a lot we can all learn from the history of Excel (arguably the most bulletproof software of the past few decades), particularly in the age of crazy valuations and unicorns.

Curious to know what more recent software people think will hold up to the test of time, like Excel has?

I strangely found myself spending my weekend writing something spanning a love letter and evaluation behind Excel's unparalleled success over 3 decades. I'm not entirely sure why I chose to spend my time doing this, but I think its story provides a lot to learn from.

In the age of the overnight unicorn, how does Excel still manage market dominance? IMO it was through making something completely inaccessible (analytics) available to the masses.

What do you think the "next Excel" might be?

Interesting! I had a post top front page earlier this year and it generated 31,029 pageviews - almost exactly what you experienced.