This seems to be the new trend on HN job posts: "we're xyz ycomb company. we're solving extremely difficult technical problems! [end]" ...yes, routing all those lunch orders must be a real pain...
Yeah this is driving me nuts. It feels like a lot of companies are throwing around the same catchphrases, when instead they should be describing what they actually do or need done.
While not mentioned in the article, one annoying phrase that has emerged recently is "X for Y". "An AirBnB for music." "A Yelp for wedding dresses."
To me this speaks: "We aren't able to clearly explain what we do, but here's this other well-known company that solves a similar problem in a different market. We'll piggy-back from the recognition of their name. Look at us, look at them, and try to make a connection."
Cheap shot. You can't win with this one. You know what would happen if they described the product in a vacuum? The top comment on the HN thread would be "Basically, it's like an X for Y."
If somebody correctly makes a connection from your explanation to something they are familiar with, you have done your job.
If you need to make a connection with something you hope someone is familiar with in order to explain your product, you don't understand your product well enough.
Do you think it's important to differentiate your product in such a way that it can't be described as X for Y? I suppose there are arguments for either case.
If you can be described as X for Y, then you can make the argument that "it worked for the Z industry".
However if you can't be easily summed up as X for Y, you can claim that this is something completely new that's never been done before. And people like that...I think? I don't know, I'm rather new to this. What do you think?
I disagree. The formula "We're X for Y" is a very succinct way to start painting a picture of what your company does. It's supposed to be a "hook" for an investor or a tech news writer (or reader) to keep listening to you. So I wouldn't assume they aren't able to clearly explain what they do.
Still, your complaint might be that, even if works for investors or tech news writers, it shouldn't necessarily be used for prospective employees. In that case, I agree. But I'm sure that, if you happened to be interested in a particular startup that used that formula to describe themselves, they'd be happy to provide you with more details on what they do.
Haha, I agree. I've never understood why defining your company in relation to another company makes sense. If you have a good business idea your company should be able to stand by itself.
If you don't have a good business idea (or if yours is underdeveloped) you try to create a connection with something a person might already feel positive about.
Perhaps, startups have been reading Hacker News/Y-combinator too much? ;-) (http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html). Y-combinator applicants are encouraged to make such associations to enable the evaluators to quickly grasp what they are doing.
There is so much noise out there that mediocre companies manage to position themselves as the best of the best, or at least manage to make the best companies look foolish at this point.
The problem is that it's a lot easier to imitate the talking points of successful startup than it is to actually imitate the success.
Funneh. Particularly enjoyed “We’ve got great backing" as =
"We managed to convince VCs to give us money but we haven’t convinced any actual customers to do so".
"We've got early traction" = Our investors has made sure their other portfolio companies use our product.
Would you rather work for a company where the investors can't even convince their portfolio companies to use the product? Sure I get the humor. Maybe a solution would be to actually name one of the (hopefully big/famous) companies that use the product, instead of being vague. "Some great places have employed our solution! But we can't reveal any of their names!" Um. Yeah.
They'd be better off prefacing each statement with "We wish ..." as it would sound a lot more sincere.
To be honest, the descriptions that stand out most to me are "we have X problem within Y context and we need a solution that will solve Z for us. Can you focus on it exclusively for six months?" Those usually turn out to be the most interesting problems to work on and will probably not attract people who are just interested because of the company is in a particular industry segment or focusing on a certain technology.
Work hard, play hard? You're probably doing neither and your holiday parties suck.
A job post needs to tell me what problem you're trying to solve by hiring and why I should care about your problem. The overwhelming majority of job posts completely fail to outline a clear value proposition.
I agree with this. I already had a few of these buzzwords on my list for job postings to avoid.
"Work hard play hard" - Yep, the author's right
"Significant Equity" - I guess I've read too much HN to know that that's nothing
"Pre-revenue" - Entirely too much risk to leave your current job to go to; maybe if you were between jobs.
The last thing I avoid is the list of perks that make it seem like your life is work. Sure, perks are nice, but not so I can all my time there. I got a tour of Palantir, and I'm like "This is really sweet." Then I got to their nap time room, where you can sleep for a bit when you're pulling an all nighter. I drew the line there because the way it was positioned was too strongly implying you must spend all your waking hours at work, and then some.
Definitely funny, entertaining, and there's a case to be made that its true a lot of times.
I don't know how to feel about it though. On the one hand I'm hoping it was a joke and nothing more as there are some good apples out there but then I also remember that there are a bazillion little startups that are just either clueless, incompetent, or decent but overhyped and overfunded.
Since when are such cynical attempts at humour posted on hn? Best not to read something like this if you want to stay motivated enough to do the work required to get "post-revenue" whatever that means.
