Daniel Tenner

Sorry to see you go! I hope you're not leaving the IRC channel though :-) For what it's worth, for those who feel HN is a bit too engaging but still want to read the best, most useful startup articles every day (according to who? according to me!) do follow http://swombat.com as a low-engagement substitute. Swombat.com will never take over your life - you can't even comment there! :-) (Email subscriptions are coming soon, for those who don't even want to open up the browser)

There are very few people with ops in there and one of them is well known on HN (http://swombat.com/). Now that I think of it I've never seen any other op speak.

It's still a tricky choice though. By going with Flash you're tying yourself into a dying technology which may not be such a hot choice if you're building a business [1] I'd still try to go with js/html and shim away as best I could for older IEs. [1]http://swombat.com/2011/12/7/picking-technologies

Great post. Much more eloquent than Mark Suster's[1]: Yes, I know it’s my job as the CEO to be the coach for people and that’s fine. But if everybody is looking for me to make their decisions we’ll never get anything done. And makes a nice complement to Swombat's Making all the decisions yourself[2], and to Ben Horowitz CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is[3]. Also the same point of Delegate or Die[4] [1] http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/19/what-makes-an-entreprene… [2] http://swombat.com/2011/7/13/taylor-drucker [3] http://bhorowitz.com/2010/07/02/why-ceos-should-tell-it-like-it-is/ [4] http://sivers.org/delegate

Personally, Daniel Tenner's Swombat [1] is already fulfilling that need. [1] http://swombat.com/

If you're going to talk of great companies, you can't leave out the two juggernauts of our time. Neither Google nor Facebook started as a company. Both search and social networks were written off as markets when the two current leaders entered the space. I don't want to invoke another semantic wrestling championship between execution and ideas, but you have to give credit to Facebook for realising that social networks are not just about dating. It was their idea of exactly replicating offline social relationships on the web, executed to near perfection that made them successful. Great ideas are a combination of many small seemingly trivial good ideas. They do matter, otherwise one wouldn't know what to execute. I'm afraid this article does rather poorly on the swombat-o-meter - http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advice-articles

Marketing is a HUGE field, there's so much one could say about it, that it's hard to know where to start. So don't expect anyone to be able (or willing) to give you a cookie-cutter, step-by-step instructional guide, or to write a book here. There are tons of marketing books out there already. To be completely honest, you should probably consider going on Amazon.com, or to a used bookstore, and look for a cheap used copy of a generic "marketing 101" textbook and read through that for starters. Beyond that, there are a ton of web based resources, and there are some HN regulars who have written quite a bit on the topic. Check out, for example, what swombat has to say: http://swombat.com/founders_library grep through that list for the marketing related ones. Likewise, patio11 has written a lot about marketing. http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/ You might want to look through some of the interviews and courses available on Mixergy.com as well. Even the stuff you have to pay for is well worth it. Personally, I recommend a Mixergy subscription. Also look into the marketing related courses on sites like Udemy or Coursera, or stuff from MIT's OCW. https://www.udemy.com/courses/search?q=marketing You could also do worse than reading the stuff Seth Godin puts out. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Modafinil and Startups (Daniel Tenner): http://swombat.com/2012/2/27/modafinil-and-startups Here is the conclusion: "I will come strongly on the side of saying that anyone who wants to build a startup should stay away from any regular or semi-regular Modafinil use, as it will impair their judgement enough to make up for any apparent gain in productivity, and I would further posit that any founder who takes Modafinil regularly has a habit (as I did) of taking on potentially large, unknown long-term liabilities for small short-term gains, which is not a good thing."

This is a very comprehensive write-up by Daniel Tenner, startup founder, about his experience taking Modafinil: http://swombat.com/2012/2/27/modafinil-and-startups

Maybe. Although there are some (very good) VCs and investors in Europe, especially in London. But it's often overlooked that actually, maybe you don't need a VC/Angel to run/setup your company. It mostly increases your risk, and I concur with Swombat's views on this: http://swombat.com/2013/12/27/investment-increases-risk So given that you can (and people do) get serious cash outside the US, and everything you've said, Nitai, I'd be pushed to even think about the US as a venue for my next project, even if that was where the market was.

Woah: I never called anyone a liar. Product business and service business are fairly common labels. http://swombat.com/2011/4/26/services-products http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/24/what-should-you-do-with-your-crappy-l… So I don't think they're made up at all, seeing as how they're in common use. It's probably true that there is not a black or white line between the two, and both can be good businesses, but I did think it fair to point out that cleaning is very much a "service" whereas 37 signals started out doing services (sites and so on) and moved towards products, which tend to scale up more.

I agree that software solutions can be leveraged for more financial success than (say) hardware solutions. I also decided to switch focus (at least temporarily) from what would have been a medical devices startup to software for that reason, among others. But I think an entrepreneur's skill set is more of a limiting factor in the type of startup he/she can decide to pursue. After all there are problems that are potentially more lucrative than social networks but if you don't have the domain expertise or technical knowledge to solve those problems you may not even know they exist and if you did, would not be able to solve them. There's a more extensive discussion on this here: http://swombat.com/2012/1/19/idea-reach-cofounder-myth

Off-topic: Every new paragraph starting with an "I" comes off as distracting for the reader. Also the repeated use of "I would / wouldn't" makes it sound like it's a stylistic grip, but the sentences doesn't seem to be set up that way. Seeing as you're interested in improving your writing [0] I thought I should mention it. Apologizes in advance if this wasn't the right time and place for it :) 0: http://swombat.com/2010/12/6/get-better-at-writing

Two myths at play: 1. Overnight is never overnight. More probably you just never heard of it before. 2. If you just keep going you will eventually make it. But probably not. (http://swombat.com/2012/3/10/successful-people) Believe what you want and act accordingly.

This article (http://swombat.com/2012/1/17/army-of-one-entrepreneur) seems to have some application to my situation. To quote "If you want to maximise your chances of running a successful startup, where success is defined as achieving at least the "survival" level outlined in this article, and ideally the "comfort" level, it makes a lot more sense to invest your time in many ideas at the same time, test all of them (in parallel or one after the other) and then pursue the one or ones that are most promising." The question is whether or not I'm at a point to start narrowing to the "most promising."

I remember first reading about Bushido at http://swombat.com/2011/4/12/bushido. After reading the blog post, I gave Bushido a spin, and their service really felt like magic. I got to know this team as part of the YC S11 batch, and they're building an awesome company that's giving back to open source. Lots of good things in their future.

Swombat gives a pretty complete answer to that here: http://swombat.com/2011/1/13/how-to-get-your-startup-on-hacker-news

See these useful posts by Daniel Tenner: http://swombat.com/2011/1/24/how-to-PR-firms-startups http://swombat.com/2011/2/4/attention-seeking-for-startups

Awesome resource for people who are, or want to be, startup founders. The OP links to the blog post. But here is the URL for the actual page: http://swombat.com/founders_library

Tweeting about your posts is fine. I do that myself. But you didn't link to your post (http://swombat.com/2011/4/12/bushido) but rather to the HN story about your post.

Have you read this: http://swombat.com/about In particular, have you checked out these: * https://www.woobius.com/ * http://www.granttree.co.uk/ In short, did you try looking up who he is and what he does? Or did you just ask the question. P.S. This is not a personal attack. If it comes off that way, it's my fault and failing.

Thanks for your post! http://swombat.com/2010/12/21/startup-fundraising-story

Launching on HN is a risky business. Your product typically only does well if it exists within the HN target market. Don't ignore luck as an important factor. HN traffic also doesn't tend to convert that well. It's a little like Techcrunch - getting a post on TC doesn't guarantee your startup will be a success. How to Launch on HackerNews 1) Understand Read, contribute and build a reputation. 2) Research Read swombat's Post: http://swombat.com/2011/1/13/how-to-get-your-startup-on-hacker-news Read jacquesm's Unofficial Hacker News FAQ: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ 3) Time It Typically, there are good times to submit on HN. However, take this with a pinch of salt as if too many people consult these resources, you'll find some stiff competition. http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news-a-co… http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best-time-to-post-to-hackernews/ http://hnpickup.appspot.com/ 4) Ask Reach out to your community and ask for feedback on a post - before you post it. Make revisions and then ask your community/friends to check out the /newest page. If they feel like commenting or upvoting, they will. 5) Luck Out Produce something of high enough quality that the HN community deems it worthy of the front page. Then enjoy the server thrashing around 10K-100K visitors

I'm not sure if @Bubs will ever read this, but I found this was a deeply interesting article, that hits close to home. If you are reading this - thank you. There is so much to say on this subject, from various perspectives. Me, I'm stuck in Europe (offers-a-plenty, no chance for a visa). I am a founder of a start-up here, and I cannot complain about how it currently runs - but the things I've been through to get here ... A lot about the start-up culture is simply different here in Europe - so maybe I am a little out of place among you. But what I believe is largely the same is the pressure, the stress, and the pretending. There are but few people who really understand what you are going through. "Why don't you just quit and get a (real) job ?" - if I had to raise a finger for how often I've gotten this response in dark times, I would be several hands short. I believe there may be a need for some sort of chatter group for this. Maybe a tad unconventional, perhaps with a respected gate-keeper (like @Bubs) to check on people before they are let in (prevent moles), but once inside, everybody is anonymous to everybody else, and all conversation is group-private. You could be Mr Brown, I could be Mr Black - as long as I'm not Mr Pink. Perhaps it could have prevented what happened to those two founders mentioned in the article. I would be interested to join it, both for giving as well as receiving support. The good just writing something that the people who read it would…

First, validate your idea. Do you think it's good, or do you have people outside your circle of friends and family saying it's good (and ideally, telling you they'd use/pay for it)? If not, that's your first step: http://swombat.com/2010/12/20/how-to-validate-a-startup-idea If you're beyond this, hire someone to make a minimum viable product (MVP). You can either pay somene's market price (odesk, elance, forrst and similar are okay places to find'em, although be careful in selecting/vetting the people), or offer them some partnership. In the latter case, keep in mind you're asking them to invest in your idea - you have to convince them (why) your idea is good and that you can execute on the business side (or whichever angle you'd be covering). And whatever you do, please don't try the "do it for free, there will be more work coming" or "it's going to look good in your portfolio" route.