Was anybody else bothered by the giant moving spammy pop-up on that site? I'm currently reading on an iPhone and it took up practically the whole screen.
This has to be one of the best don't judge a book by it's cover biographies I've ever read. I love that he left MIT to persue acting. Follow your dream.
Sylvester Stallone studied in U of Miami and in Switzerland under a scholarship and Schwarzenegger built a succesful business empire from scratch. There's no reason a good brain and big size would be mutually exclusive.
Eventually, complacency and failure to innovate will probably kill off Facebook. I know it's hard to look at Facebook now and see the possibility that they will be much less relevant in 10 years. But that will probably happen.
Prodigy, CompuServe, AmericaOnline, Friendster, Myspace and to a certain extent even Yahoo and Microsoft. At one point in time they were all pervasive, disruptive, and dominant. And now they've either gone or are having to pivot into a niche to maintain viability at a fraction of their former glory.
The internet and technology will keep growing. Facebook will get marginalized at some point.
Though "Facebook will fail because pretty much all companies fail eventually" is a reasonable one.
No-one, looking at Apple in 1998, could have correctly predicted what they would be like a decade down the road. It's not unreasonable to suppose that guesses at what the big companies in the industry will look like a decade from now will often be wildly incorrect, no matter how obvious things seem.
No, I stand by my statement. I don't believe that Facebook will continually dominate the hearts and minds of the online world in the way it does now, in perpetuity. My reason given for failure was "complacency and failure to inovate" which I believe is the downfall of most great companies. The companies that I listed were examples of this phenomenon. You can really take this theory all the way back to the Dutch east India trading company if you want to. Evolve or die. In all probability, someday facebook will stop evolving.
Now I'm currently refering to facebook failing in the same way that "Microsoft and Yahoo" have failed. They still exist, are still (quite) profitable, but their relavency is fading.
As to apple. I've always wondered if the magic there will continue after Steve Jobs dies.
Apple's secret to ongoing growth and success is introducing a major new product category every few years. Six months takes nothing out of that--the long term visionary work Steve Jobs does can be missed for six months without much impact. Six years and Apple would be in decline.
It will be a new product (killer app) that at first doesn't seem related per se, but that network will then able to use its scale to back into being the next facebook.
You may certainly be right, but I wouldn't bet on it: for all the services you mentioned, I always would have been surprised if a person I'd just met were on any one in particular. Now when I hear that somebody's not on Facebook (even (especially?) non-techies), that's what's surprising.
"The experience I could gain at that new company is probably loads more than I could ever get slogging away on my own."
It kind of seems like you've already made up your mind here. If you think that you can get more value out of the job for the time being, don't feel bad about taking it.
I see the big variable that you haven't talked about here is your commitment level to this particular startup. Is it something that you love doing? Or is it just something you are passing time with.
In my experience, I've built startups that I could have jumped ship on. With others, that thought wouldn't have even entered my mind.
So I think the variables here are more than just should I take the job or not. We don't know your situation well enough. My guess is you are already leaning one way though.
The idea I'm working on is definitely something that I want to do, and it's something that I truly believe could be useful to some people, so it's not something I could turn my back on at a moment's notice.
The other factor also is that I'd like to at least prove to myself that I'm able to launch something of my own, which, honestly speaking, constitutes a large part of the hesitation I'm facing.
I see benefits in both situations – self-validation vs opportunity, so I wouldn't say I'm leaning one way or another particularly.
All the same, I think your comment has given me some perspective to think about, thanks.
Well, I'm glad to hear you say that. I actually read you as leaning the other way. I'm glad I was wrong. So let me jump in on this side.
The question is not opportunity vs. self-validation, it's opportunity vs opportunity. If you believe in what your doing, and you can keep chugging along doing that, that's what I would do. Thank the company for the opportunity but tell them you are committed to your startup, they will respect that. And if they don't, you probably didn't want to work there anyway.
On the note of experience. At the job you are being offered, most likely you would gain specific technical experience. But you get hordes of experience from running a startup too. The startup experience tends to be on more of a macro level and you will find it useful in many aspects of your life. Running your own company will force you to put on lots of hats and give you a more complete look at how things fit together on a grander scale.
Not saying that the job experience is not valuable. Just reminding you not to forget about the experience you are already getting at your startup.
I guess I forgot to mention that this job is with yet another startup. Though true, I'd probably be looking at a much narrower scope than running my own gig.
The team there is still small, but the guys at the helm have set up and sold their own companies before and have pretty good contacts and networks from what I hear (hence the opportunities for learning and gaining contacts). So unfortunately, it's not as clear cut as startup-vs-corporate life.
As for my startup, no offence, but I probably won't discuss it here… though hopefully we'll be able to announce something small soon =)
It's not impossible, it's just adding another degree of difficulty. I did exactly this in the second half of my twenties. Working on my projects, doing consulting when I had to to support myself and my family. I believe the impetus that drives "family men" to seek shelter in a "normal" job can also drive you to be relentless in making your startup work. More skin in the game.
Also, team comes into play here. Personally. I know that if I wouldn't have had such a wonderful and supporting partner at home, the startup issue would have been a non-starter.
Ok, so there are actually quite a few variables when you are considering. Mainly, the type of T-shirt you want to print on and the type of graphic you want printed.
The three main types of shirt printing are...
Screenprinting - The Old standby. Looks good, washes fairly well. But can get expensive when you get into multiple colors. Also, only higher end houses are going to be able to handle larger resolutions on your graphics.
Direct 2 Garment - This is the new kid on the block. It's essentially an Ink Jet printer that has been hacked to take garment dye. Upside is it prints RIDICULOUSLY high resolution graphics. And you can generally get a small run done for not a ton of cash. Down side is, the house doing the work has to know what they are doing. Poorly cured DTG work will fade almost immediately.
TRANSFER PRINTING - This is like a hybrid of one of the two above methods with the Iron ons you get at office max. Don't hate though, Transfer printing can be awesome. Pretty much every sports team ever uses transfer printing. It makes the graphic stand out (physically) from the shirt.
Find someone local to you. I guarantee there is a hungry local print house that is close to you that would trip over itself for your business right now. The economy has hit printers pretty hard.
I will be happy to discuss your order specifics with you in more detail and point you in the right direction. Full disclosure, I'm from a Garment Industry family and I currently own a T-Shirt company myself. Not sleazy though, as we just print our own stuff for resale and I won't be trying to get you to buy from us :-)
My contact email is in my profile, or we can discuss it right here in the HN Comments section.
Hey Diaspora, if your reading this...GO GET 'EM! You guys will do great.
A lot of people seem to be concentrating on this idea that having a lot of money is bad for these guys. I'm on the other side of the fence. History favors companies that have taken money. And unlike any investment round I've ever participated in, they gave up no equity to fundraise. They also have a gaggle of really awesome, very experienced mentors helping them. I think they will be fine. I'm rooting for them. REALLY rooting for them. They're just nose down in code with the door shut and the phone off the hook. Good on ya.
It seems to be a bunch of submissions are effected. The page past the picture I took now has 3 of the double submissions. I just added a second screen shot.
I think it depends. I've seen some decent discussion of TechStars on here before. I'm sure there is a Harvard and Yale aspect to it it as well. But overall I think that HN is a fairly impartial site. I would be much more inclined to think that people just didn't like the article then think they were boycotting TechStars.
In this specific case, there was a better article from TechCrunch covering the same info. I just didn't see it before submitting. Also, it was upvoted quite decently.
