HN is a mirror on the tech world -- which is dead. There is dearth of original ideas, generally. There are no cool startups, no investment, nothing happening.
I agree there. Back in 2009 I used to be excited by each new YC batch. There were fresh new ideas like Dropbox, AirBnB, Instacart. I feel like there were cool stories around those startups, like Drew losing a thumbdrive and coming up with the idea for DropBox, or the AirBnB marketing hack with the cereal, or Instacart's founder having beer delivered during the YC interview. I can't think of any recent YC startups that I've cared about. Maybe it just became saturated or maybe I just moved on to other things. I will say this, that the ideas I had 15 years ago needed a startup and investment. Now I'm able to build a lot of those ideas using the cloud and AI. It seems inevitable that some solo founder will soon be able to build a unicorn with no investment and no employees.
> It seems inevitable that some solo founder will soon be able to build a unicorn with no investment and no employees.
I know I'm no ivy grad or some hot shot, but this is my goal. Although I have a small team that I want to build up (they're fresh) because they're passionate about the problem space.
Exactly, and the formula in the past was less "[hot new tech] for [some industry]" back in the day, and more "[problem solved] for [target audience]". Maybe it is just the wording that I object to, and not the substance of the startup's solution to the problem?
I guess I don't care about today's "AI agent for the agricultural industry" as much as I cared about yesterday's "Tool to help farmers plan crop rotation".
"$Foo for $Bar" has always been a common formula for startups that are just getting going, including in YC. I think you guys are rewriting the past a bit here.
I have to defer, you're a lot closer to these things than I am, but I remember since the 90's the "this-for-that" analogies were around and became hot at some point, so that you were even encouraged by some to put it into that form for a while.
Where I see a difference is that it used to be about creating unique combinations and now it's more about deployment. "What about the known tool for this market?" It's banal. I can honestly say, it's not that I don't remember -- I do -- it's that I'm waiting and hoping to get excited about a startup again.
Yeah I remember the "X for Y" format being encouraged [1]. But X was always an example of a successful startup that was a leader in one category/audience, and you were saying you would be the X for a different category or audience.
PG's examples here were AirBnB as the "Ebay for space" or Viaweb as "the Microsoft Word of Ecommerce".
I'm not rewriting history when I say that the X has changed from a representative example of a successful company to a lazy broad technology like "AI agent for insurance" or "AI native recruiting". Here is a current YC batch startup: Manicule - AI Native Developer Relations. I have no Idea what that is. Does it talk to devs using my product like in a chatbot? Does it help them write code using AI? If they said "HubSpot for developer content" or "Vercel for developer relations" I would get it right away. But better than the X for Y formula would be just to describe the startup: we provide an AI-native developer relations team that owns documentation and technical content end-to-end so you don't have to hire someone for $300k.
Correct $Foo for $Bar was common back then but I made the subtle distinction between "TikTok for Math Tutors" ([solution] for [audience served]) where naming a startup in a different vertical is a shortcut for the solution, and what we see now which is "AI agents for Banking" ([technology] for [industry]) where naming the technology doesn't make it clear what the problem or solution is, and the industry doesn't necessarily say who has the problem or needs the solution.
And yet, it's not unusual that a poorly written book gets a decent movie adaptation. Sometimes it's not even a good plot OR well written, sometimes a book is just popular and the execs cash in on its popularity.
I'm thinking things like Da Vinci Code, 50 shades, Twilight, neither of which (the books) are particularly good or tasteful or whatever, but they were very popular, appealing to people who normally don't read books.
You're definitely looking for something other than the writing and even the plot. For example, the novel "The Firm" had a ridiculous ending but they fixed it for the screenplay.
I dropped of a book to this guy that I had just finished called "The Hotel on the Roof of the World," and he later told me that they optioned the author. Unfortunately the film never got made, but if you read it you'll see it has the bones of a really nice film.
How did he get that job? I imagine you have to prove you have good "taste" for what makes a good movie... I imagine some difference from what makes a good book
I think it was a combination of right place/right time, knowing everything about film-making (and you're right, what makes a good adaptation) and was just a naturally cool, interesting guy, so that everyone who met him just liked him.
It didn't last forever. The last time I saw him was one of those wild random coincidences. I was visiting Cannes during the festival (as a tourist) and ran into him on the Croisette. We went for coffee and he told me that he had become a television producer.
Exactly this. They're a necessary evil and they require constant vigilance to minimize the "make what you measure" effect.
The original author's point is interesting, seeing rules as the constraints that, in one sense, spur creativity, give life. The reason the trumpet is the instrument of jazz isn't in spite of it having merely three valves, but because of it.
The Spirit Level by Pickett and Wilkinson argues convincingly that the pursuit of equality and social safeguards makes life better for everyone, rich and poor.
San Francisco used to be my favorite big city in America; now it's a hellscape. The experiment, whatever experiment we're running, failed.
I remember in the couple years before the dot com crash in 2000, there was a lot of satire being written which was being taken very seriously. You couldn't tell what was serious and what was humor because both were absurd.
In 1961, Peter Benenson, a British lawyer, read a newspaper story about two Portuguese students who went to jail for making a toast to freedom. He wrote letters to the Portuguese government and got others to do so as well, and it got media attention, and they were freed.
That was the start of Amnesty International, which to this day, simply asks people to write a letter when they see an injustice. The spray painting potholes story has the same theme: "Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness."
Hi, I'm David and I run the "What are you working on?" posts. I hear what you're saying and yet I think it's just the new reality. There will be more projects and some of those will be quickly-made vibe-coded projects. I'm not against it.
In Moveable Feast, Hemingway talks about being opposed to ski lifts (which were probably fairly new at the time). He thought, if you're fit enough to hike up the mountain, you're going to be fit enough to ski down without getting injured; it opens skiing up to people who maybe shouldn't be skiing. I deeply prefer ski lifts. :-) And I love agentic AI coding.
I guess what I'm saying is that we shouldn't compare it to the past, because that's gone. And yet, each month the number of comments breaks 1000, so "drowning" is a fair word for just number of projects alone. And I don't have any answers.
Anyway, you (and anyone reading this) can feel free to email me. My email in my profile.
It doesn't seem like you hear what they're saying at all.
Writing code to coax computers into doing specific things in specific ways is a craft, trade, and art form older than pretty much anybody alive today.
Writing prose instructions to direct LLM's to generate that code also produces software, but it's essentially a different craft/trade/art altogether.
Whatever success the latter claims in commerce or mindshare, both of these arts will coexist for longer than anybody will be around.
It's completely natural to carve out spaces where people who appreciate the process or character of hand-crafted projects can discuss those projects without people talking about a whole different thing crowding out their conversations.
I heard what they're saying, and while I don't personally agree with it, I can see it's shared by a lot of people.
Personally, I'm not sure a separate thread makes sense. What if people mark their project as "[ARTISAN]" like they do with [Remote] in Who's Hiring? Any other ideas?
One day, way before the lifts had started, I hiked up the mountain, snowboard under my arm. Trudging, my breath heavy, lungs filling, oxygen, snow, blue sky, cold but my body warmed. There was not one track in the fresh powder. My snowboard was slower in the powder, and I felt safe in the knowledge. I had to work a little harder. Carving.
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