Some solid points here, but I gotta disagree with this one...
If a product grows huge quickly, which almost always requires it to be free, it will probably be acquired for a lot of money. Free products that don’t grow quickly enough can usually die with an “acquihire”, which lets everyone save face and ensures that the investors get something out of the deal.
I think this way of thinking is the product of a very frothy market over the last few years. Now, I'm not one to scream series A crunch from the mountain tops, but it's unrealistic to think that thousands of these startups that "don't grow quickly enough" will be acquihired. In 2012 Google and Facebook combined to make 21 acquisitions. That doesn't put much of a dent in the number of failing startups. And with the Formspring shutdown announcement last week, it seems that even companies that have achieved impressive scale (30M users in since 2010) cannot rely on being bought.
I don't know enough about how things went to agree or disagree. I'm still amazed at how many "aqui-hires" there are in the industry. How many companies that have made it to a solid Series A round have fallen flat on their face?
Formspring seems like a red herring to me; everything I heard about it in the real world (as a high-school teacher) was toxic. Of all the online bullying issues I had to deal with, more involved Formspring than even Facebook. The anonymous thing was a double-edged sword.
Ok, this is something that I cannot seem to understand - why is it impossible to create a well-designed remote for a TV device? Look at (seriously, look at them now) your remotes for your TV. What the hell? Compare this to the design of your actual TV. Or how about your laptop or phone.
I'm blown away that they insist on designing their remotes like kids' toys.
On top of that why is that silly ABC keyboard used everywhere on TVs? I've seen it on the 360, Apple TV, and the Roku. I have to actively look for where the keys are. If it's QWERTY, I may have to push a few extra buttons, but I know where the keys are.
I was going to say something sarcastic about how most of us still remember the order of the alphabet, but then I realized that there is probably another reason for their choice. Unless the software keyboard is going to have four wide rows, alphabetical order is probably better. In the video the keyboard is a 6x6 grid, which lets it fit alongside the search results better.
Those keyboards are the devil, they're the most infuriating part of modern technology.
The most sensible work around seems to be generating passwords based on the keyboard type, having passwords that don't require jumping up and down left and right for every new character reduces the experience to a mild inconvenience. Fortunately I've not had to use a device with such a keyboard in a while, since putting my Apple TV in a box... if I ever have to go near one again then investing an hour putting together a keypad friendly password generator may be in order.
Aside from the numbers (which isn't really relevant for internet set top boxes), normal people only tend to use the channel changer, volume control, and the power button. Most of the other buttons tend to be ignored, unless it's Netflix related. Did I miss something?
It can be annoying to have multiple "layers" of volume control: one for the player, one for the TV, one for the receiver/sound system, etc. It's arguably a lesser evil to leave volume completely up to the user's TV or audio system, the way Apple TV does.
But then you need multiple remotes, which I feel is the greatest evil of all. I agree the Roku doesn't need its own volume control, but if you stick one on there, you can make it programmable to control the volume of your TV.
That would be ideal, though it might complicate the experience for non-techies, especially during setup.
Tangent: one thing that drives me nuts about universal remotes that they are all modal; ie, you must put the remote in receiver mode before you change the volume, etc. I wish I had a remote that could remember device presets for each button simultaneously, such that volume always uses the receiver RF, D-pad always uses Apple TV RF, etc.
The problem with it, is that it's the size of real keyboard. It's just huge, and it just doesn't feel natural either in the living room or on your bed. I've never found a way to only use it with one hand.
I see where you’re coming from but honestly the Roku remote feels pretty good to me. It ’s not too thin like the Apple remote, the round back feels great in the hand, the buttons are good, and it’s a dead simple layout.
You can't really blame them for taking the path they chose. Check-ins were what the market wanted at that time. Gowalla was guaranteed to be building for a market that existed. Yes, they could have said, "Screw check-ins, let's focus on photos", but that would have been a much bigger risk than going to war with an equally early staged startup.
Imagine if they would have drastically pivoted away from check-ins and failed. I'm sure Gowalla would be contemplating what could have been if they stayed true to check-ins and went to war with Foursquare.
I think it's too easy to say in retrospect that they should have "played by their own rules." Even though they were playing by the check-in rules, at least they were playing in a real game.
Actually, you can, which was the point of his essay: focus on validating your vision, rather than being reactive to someone else's actions.
They were too focused on being reactive to a competitor, rather than really understanding their users. Because if you just copy whatever your competitor is doing, you're getting the understanding of your users second-hand, and you might end up copying things that aren't important--you might end up cargo culting.
He's not saying, "Oh, if we had only just done photo sharing, we would have knocked it out of the park!" He's saying that while checkins was a way to validate that users want to play a game that lets them see the world through their friends' eyes, they should have been open to other solutions to validate against that original thesis (like photo sharing), instead of being caught up in being competitive overriding the validation and learning about their users.
The harder part is really looking at your users, how they use the product, what they want - but not what they say they want. With my product, we have people requesting features of the 'big dog' - only because that's what they've seen. We're not about to blindly implement what a competitor does just because they did it - it's assuming they did the research into that feature, and we don't have to.
Anyway, essentially - it's really hard to not copy a competitor when that's all your users are vocally asking for is to do just that.
Burbn pivoted and they knew what they were going after - it was not by accident - that they built an app that was gorgeous to use and make part of your life - they were focused.
I sort of interpreted this to mean that though neither of them had evidence about whether check-ins translated to revenue over time, Foursquare chose to project it as though it did, thereby creating the "game" that Gowalla joined.
He's being replaced by Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonisis. They will serve as co-CEOs until they find a permanent replacement.
Here is Lefkofsky's statment: On behalf of the entire Groupon Board, I want to thank Andrew for his leadership, his creativity and his deep loyalty to Groupon. As a founder, Andrew helped invent the daily deals space, leading Groupon to become one of the fastest growing companies in history. Groupon will continue to invest in growth, and we are confident that with our deep management team and market-leading position, the company is well positioned for the future.
And if I remember correctly, Eric Lefkofsky was one of the investors who cashed out ~$1billion (!) of his Groupon shares during one of their last VC rounds. I'm surprised they were able to do that, but so many people were killing themselves to be a part of the deal that Eric was able to push this slimy deal through. How any rational VC allows early investors to do that is beyond me...
Nothing against the guy (I have no experience with him) but that deal just smelled rotten. So I'm not convinced that these two people are going to be particularly effective replacements/stand-ins.
(This is for Groupon employees, but I’m posting it publicly since it will leak anyway)
People of Groupon,
After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.
You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I’m getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we’ve shared over the last few months, and I’ve never seen you working together more effectively as a global company – it’s time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise.
For those who are concerned about me, please don’t be – I love Groupon, and I’m terribly proud of what we’ve created. I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I’ll now take some time to decompress (FYI I’m looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.
If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness – don’t waste the opportunity!
Trust me, I don't like GoDaddy either. But they're the most popular registrar, and I think it'd be foolish of me not include them. The market much, much larger than the subset of people like us.
Despite the vitriol for GoDaddy, I understand why you feel the need to include them. Don't let haters (no matter how justified their feelings) stop you from doing what you need to get a business off the ground.
If you don't like GoDaddy it would be nice for you to use your service to also educate users on which registar to use. By making GoDaddy the default, you give it your approval. What might be helpful is a page explaining the registrars, or simply selecting your favorite. No reason for GoDaddy to be the default if even you don't use them.
Our thinking was to emulate the experience of watching previews in the theaters. You don't know anything about the movie, making it more intriguing. That's why we chose not to fade in the title until the last 15 seconds of the trailer.
I can respect that thinking. But one of the beauties of the Internet is having more control over consumption than in real world situations. I've sat in a theater many times wishing I had a "skip" button. Not because I hate trailers... I like them. But I only need to see most of them one time. :)
We built MovieDip over the last few days as a way to easily watch movie trailers. We have a lot of ideas of what we'd like to continue to build, but wanted to ship it quick and get some feedback.
It's sad that people call their little/fun projects useless. I just used your project and thought it was awesome. And even the worst project ever is useful for you. It's how you learn, build and explore. Plus, some truly great things have started out as "useless."
Sadly, it's often a good idea to preface "Show HN" submissions with this nowadays so that someone else doesn't tell you how useless your project is in the comments thread.
Sort of, except that this is usually considered as down vote baiting on HN and is frowned upon. From HN's guidelines: "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."[0]. In this case though, I don't feel it was OP's intention to invite down votes.
Perhaps "pointless" or "aimless" might be better than useless, but a useless item can be a item which exists merely to delight the mind/spirit. Of course, internet pedants and other cutting edge point-missers would likely argue that this is in fact itself a use. Such is the way of things.
Maybe "intrinsically motivated" would be a more HN compatible term.
If a product grows huge quickly, which almost always requires it to be free, it will probably be acquired for a lot of money. Free products that don’t grow quickly enough can usually die with an “acquihire”, which lets everyone save face and ensures that the investors get something out of the deal.
I think this way of thinking is the product of a very frothy market over the last few years. Now, I'm not one to scream series A crunch from the mountain tops, but it's unrealistic to think that thousands of these startups that "don't grow quickly enough" will be acquihired. In 2012 Google and Facebook combined to make 21 acquisitions. That doesn't put much of a dent in the number of failing startups. And with the Formspring shutdown announcement last week, it seems that even companies that have achieved impressive scale (30M users in since 2010) cannot rely on being bought.