The stone cold truth of the matter is that most of the people pandering this advice are only doing so to build up their “guru” status ... They do this so that look up to them. They do this so that you talk about them (getting you to help them grow their audience). They do this so that you’ll feel like you’re somehow less than they are ... I promise I’m not going to do any of that to you.
Really? Just a couple of paragraphs down:
First off, you should know that your idea probably sucks ... It doesn’t matter what you think ... we’re not going to refer to your precious game-changing idea as “your idea” anymore. We’re going to refer to it as “your guess”.
Ok, so first he's telling you that he's the honest guy who would never bullshit you and really would never try to make you feel less than him. Then goes on to do exactly that.
To me that's an immediate red flag. I don't know the author personally and can't tell what his intentions were when he wrote his essay but I've had the past displeasure of dealing with sociopaths who showed the same kind of behavior.
Where I was coming from with this was that I was sick of seeing all of these posts and podcasts where they were saying things in a very humblebraggy way like "Yeah, I only got something like 3,000 signups for that but was able to launch anyway" or "Yeah, I did a soft launch to $25K MRR just to my Twitter followers" or "I spent a weekend ranking #1 for this keyword and it took off from there" or "I've never spent a dime on advertising and I've never done any marketing and I don't spend more than 10 hours a month on this thing, but it pays for my awesome lifestyle."
I was referring to that kind of attitude when I wrote about how they do that to make you feel like they have some secret knowledge you have to pine for.
My approach was to say "That's total bullshit. Let me show you what it's really like." Because in my experience it's been nothing like that. In my experience, that was fairy tale land.
So I tried to write the guide as if I were the one it was written for - I wanted to put something out there that I wish I could have read 5-10 years ago that would have given me a brutally honest view of what was involved, just how bad it could be, and that would have shown me what the most important things to focus on were. And most importantly, to get me to think critically about everything I was doing. Hence the strong tone. I wanted to write something that would have gotten my attention and would have made me stop and think and avoid wasting time. So that's what I wrote.
> I wanted to write something that would have gotten my attention and would have made me stop and think and avoid wasting time. So that's what I wrote.
And that exactly what happened for me as a reader: I've read it because of this introduction. It was really eye-opening in a way ‑ it is so easy to forget how much work is behind the non-code side of a start-up project.
Your response logically follows, however it is my belief that the inconsistency you point out is too nit-picky. What I mean is that HN generally follows the Principle of Charity [1] where we should seek to understand the authors strongest possible conclusion rather than tear down an entire article simple due to a relatively minor inconsistency.
There's only hypocrisy if one is to assume the author doesn't start his projects with the mentality of "lets check out this guess that probably sucks".
Because I read it far more as "This is going to be fucking hard, it sucks. Welcome to the trenches." That's considerably different than "I just did this simple thing and then money fell from the sky."
That, and the rest of the article goes on to focus on validating why your idea might not suck, or can at least be refined.
Your point is valid but if you read my comment I'm not arguing why the author is better or worse than the people he criticizes.
My point is that the author is using questionable rhetoric and is not being honest with his audience at best (and manipulative at worst) in his article. He could have easily made his point while not being any of that.
Disagree. His rhetoric is a necessary antidote to the rhetoric of the real snake-oil salesmen who speak from an assumed position of authority and present their entrepreneurship as a matter of blind will and charisma, when in fact - as he openly says has happened to himself - the real process is much much harder. You seem not to be able to read tonal nuances: he is clearly not placing himself in a position of greater success than his readers in order to sh*t on their ideas; he is deploying a generalised "reality-check" rhetoric to try to disperse the stench of nonsense emitted by the other "entrepreneurs". For you to take it personally kinda makes me chuckle.
The stone cold truth of the matter is that most of the people pandering this advice are only doing so to build up their “guru” status ... They do this so that look up to them. They do this so that you talk about them (getting you to help them grow their audience). They do this so that you’ll feel like you’re somehow less than they are ... I promise I’m not going to do any of that to you.
Really? Just a couple of paragraphs down:
First off, you should know that your idea probably sucks ... It doesn’t matter what you think ... we’re not going to refer to your precious game-changing idea as “your idea” anymore. We’re going to refer to it as “your guess”.
Ok, so first he's telling you that he's the honest guy who would never bullshit you and really would never try to make you feel less than him. Then goes on to do exactly that.
To me that's an immediate red flag. I don't know the author personally and can't tell what his intentions were when he wrote his essay but I've had the past displeasure of dealing with sociopaths who showed the same kind of behavior.
(Edited for less drastic choice of words)