mrhektor

While I agree that the article is a bit specious, I think there is a deeper argument to be made about Springstein's specific kind of lyrics.

As mentioned in the article, his lyrics are about blue-collar workers and the associated struggles and life. This was probably an under-served / poorly talked about community when he was on the rise. It's just a case of focussing on an under-served market. I'm not sure of Springsteins' background, but if he came from a blue-collar background, then he would have known his community / market really well.

So I guess the lesson is, serve an under-served market with talent that's good enough. It helps if you, yourself, are the customer :)

I think the "looking back on your life" happens in advance as well.

My father has stage 4 cancer, and while he is undergoing treatment and we have hope, he is now confronted with the possibility of death. I've found him recounting stories of his childhood and younger days a lot more. I've never asked him about his dreams, but clearly the possibility of death has changed something fundamental where he's looking back a lot more and thinking about his parents / grandparents and others who've passed on.

`Equity language doesn’t fool anyone who lives with real afflictions. It’s meant to spare only the feelings of those who use it.`

This perfectly describes what's going on. Rather than working on the actual problem, the people gunning for purifying language are yak shaving. I think we all recognise the good intentions, but how do we convince the people with good intentions that they're solving the wrong problem? Sounds like the classic case of a startup not talking to their customers :)

I wonder what the impact on the soil would be. If we have super-charged growth, can the soil support many generations of fast-growing trees?

I've been on Hacker News for several years now, and I'm often surprised about the amount of content on stuttering that ends up on the front page. Being a stutterer myself, I find it nice that the community upvotes such content.

On a separate note, I wonder how many stutterers end up as software engineers or similar technology related work and as a corollary, how many people on Hacker News are stutterers. It would make sense that there would be quite a few; it's a vocation similar to writing, with a large amount of time spent not talking. It's also lucky that software engineering has an outsized impact in this day and age, so stutterers might actually do quite well!

Super interesting analysis of the trucking market.

A couple of questions would be:

* At what speed is the industry going to embrace self-driving / "augmented driving" in trucks? I'd imagine a driver would still be required at the wheel in case of emergencies for the foreseeable future. What new skills would truckers have to learn?

* Given the environmental impact of trucking (self-driving or not), what are some interesting propositions that climate change startups could come up with? Do any players in the value chain even care about climate impact? Clearly, given the cut-throat nature of the business, there would necessarily need to be a revenue impact otherwise no one is going to use the proposition.

* I find the insurance part more interesting that the factoring part. Given the generally poor service quality of insurance companies, I'm wondering if there is a possibility of a "Lemonade" like insurance company in this space? Lemonade started out as a home insurer I believe. What is the killer proposition for an insurance company in this space?

Lots more thoughts come to mind. Again, great writeup, thanks!

What are the chances that Google starts charging $2/month (maybe lower in certain markets) for Gmail? I imagine there would be plenty of takers. Maybe not 2 billion takers, but quite a few.

I am a stammerer, so I have some experience with social anxiety and fumbling when asked impromptu questions in front of an audience.

In a situation such as what you're describing, and where I couldn't avoid answering, what ended up happening with me was that I would want to get the answer over with as quickly as possible. And that often resulted in fumbling, not thinking things through and generally gibberish coming out of my mouth.

The key for me was to slow things down. I know it sounds simple, but avoid rushing your response. Just take a beat. Make the answer deliberate, and make your brain think about the question being asked. When my brain started working on the problem of "answering the question", I found my anxiety was replaced by eagerness to answer the question. It also did wonders for my stammering, because when talking deliberately about something I was an expert in, the confidence comes naturally.

Easier said than done, but try slowing it down :)

I think he's referring to startups as his "users". In that context, I guess he's saying he's learnt the common patterns of why startups fail.

You're probably right, besides aesthetic value, writing on paper has little utility left

That's a good point. It's like how writing a good email is pretty essential these days, and people might lose out these days because of poor "online" communication

I looked up letters written by other 20th century scientists, the average looks pretty good: Marie Curie: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7722951 Tesla: https://www.benjamindecasseres.com/nikola-teslas-letter-to-b...

They all seem to have this really "flowy" style

Interestingly, I think the reason is that cursive has been dropped from the US curriculum since 2013: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171108-the-uncertain-fu...

I'd just like to say that Thomas Edison's handwriting in his letter is absolutely beautiful. It almost looks like it's been typed out on a computer using a funky font. It's funny how the handwriting of almost everyone I know is quite bad these days. My own is almost illegible! I wonder what everyone thinks about this general degradation in penmanship? I guess it's not really needed in this day and age, but there's something beautiful about nice handwriting on paper.

Is what's happening comparable to a bank run? Tether didn't have a 1:1 ratio with USD, and suddenly everyone is trying to liquidate? That seems to be the most simple explanation.

This is such a cool project. Quick suggestion: would be nice to have some way of "smoothening" the animations; I think a simple interface for that would make it a lot more usable in practice. The human hand is a bit shaky :)

Anyway, bookmarked!

This reminds me of the book Speaker for the Dead, which is book 2 in the Ender's game series. The creatures found on the new planet had different languages for men and women. I wonder if Orson Scott Card took inspiration from some of these cultures in building the narrative for the book!

I don't know about that. Carbs combined with sedentary lifestyles, processed foods etc is probably closer to the truth

I have a stutter. Years of speech therapy as a kid did very little to solve the problem. The only thing that helped somewhat was a device called the "Speakeasy". It looked similar to a hearing aid, and essentially played back what I said to me. The insight was that when people who stutter speak along with someone, they tend to stutter less. I've also noticed I don't stutter at all when singing along to a song. It kind of ties in with this study; your brain knows exactly what speech to form, so the "weak" connections are sufficient.

Really happy about the progress being made in this field. Stuttering has been both a cause and result of my social anxiety, which people often mistake for aloofness or worse. Can't wait to try new therapies!

"The concept is based on the assumption that if you build something that is useful and works well, the users will eventually come to you as result."

Sounds a lot like "Build it and they will come", which has been the death of quite a number of startups. Certainly it's important to build something amazing, but I think you ignore marketing and sales at your own peril. You need someone looking at how a product is perceived in the market, not just how amazing it is.

First of all, thank you! This is such a great collection. One thing I would like to see more of is resources on customer retention. I know you have about 4/5 articles / videos on it, but they didn't directly address measuring retention and best practices on how to make sure you're not building a leaky bucket. Since customer stickiness is so important, I think it should merit a lot more resources.

"You are fighting uphill against a cultural expectation for things to be free on the web."

A great solution to this problem of "free", is to make things that are "better than free". Kevin Kelly explains it really well in his essay (https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/), but TL;DR is that traits like Immediacy, Personalization and Interpretation play a very important role in getting people to pay for stuff. Software: Free, The manual: $10,000

Aside from the very slick website, I found the problem statement articulated in your description above super convincing. Really resonated with me. Congrats on building something that's really needed. I'll be signing up for a trial now!

I think the trick is only owning assets that might appreciate in value.

I wouldn't want to own a car because the value of cars drops as soon as you take the car out of the lot. But owning a house /apartment might be a good idea if the market is relatively stable and you can actually afford it.

It also depends on lifestyle. For a person like me, who moves around a lot, owning furniture for example doesn't make sense. The moving costs, maintenance costs and so on are just a pain. I'd rather rent the furniture, or rent a furnished place.

One of the most important things I learned while being in a somewhat similar position as you a little while ago, is to stop concentrating on sales at this juncture, and concentrate on the product instead.

As a solo-cofounder, your focus will keep shifting from sales to engineering, and it's very very hard to do both. I recommend stopping all new sales, align your entire company on stabilizing the product, and your existing customers will become your sales team.

As others have said, it would be helpful to take a break with your team, craft a new product-focussed strategy, and make deadlines for delivery.

Lastly, remember that you've actually achieved a lot (getting paid pilots is hard as a startup). Even if you do quit (I recommend giving it some more time though), I think you have learned what NOT to do in your next venture. Good luck!

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Could you give us a few examples of such businesses? Do customers really switch for marginal improvements?