Last January, I wrote a blog post rhetorically titled "You're Not Allowed to Criticize Startups, You Stupid Hater" in response to the disproportionate hype around Peach ("it's a messaging app that hit #10 in the App Store so it is a success and the haters were wrong!") and how the fact that the startup had credible backers does not give it immunity from criticism. (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10967859). Nowadays, we can see Peach did not succeed because it was another messaging app.
Likewise, I'm disappointed to see this post from Sam as it advocates ignoring the haters. "Don't let their lack of imagination hold you back" is terrible advice for people who want to find pain points for their product to improve. The assumption that all criticism is bad is, in my opinion, toxic to the startup ecosystem.
I found "Don't let their lack of imagination hold you back" amusing because those "hating" on these new companies for being allegedly boring, pedestrian, derivative ideas are criticising a lack of imagination on the founders' part.
Re "The people who have said there is nothing new left to do in the world have been wrong every time.": I must admit I didn't spend terribly long reading the comments myself but again I don't recall 'everything has been done already' being the theme either, rather the companies are not doing anything new themselves.
This illustrates another point: what is the line between "criticism" and "hate?" Can an entrepreneur accurately differentiate and classify between the two?
Many entrepreneurs just classify anything contrarian as hate because it is easier/faster.
"This service sucks, I hope your company goes bankrupt" vs "This sucks, I tried to upload a pdf to the dooberywhatsit file storage service and it error out because the file had DRM on it and it couldn't read it. It should just store it as a standard file instead of rejecting it as an invalid PDF"
Example made up, I don't even know if pdfs have DRM aspects.
Generally the line is around the "Can I use this information to fix the problem (even if I don't want to)" mark.
Based on my limited reading comprehension abilities and complete misunderstanding of Sam's advice, I'm choosing to ignore your constructive criticism, hater.
> Likewise, I'm disappointed to see this post from Sam as it advocates ignoring the haters. "Don't let their lack of imagination hold you back" is terrible advice for people who want to find pain points for their product to improve. The assumption that all criticism is bad is, in my opinion, toxic to the startup ecosystem.
He didn't say that all criticism is bad. From the article: "some criticism is useful, and that you should pay attention to, but that's not normally what gets people down"
(Also, it seems like you missed the point entirely.)
Losing a critical customer and following up to get feedback as to why it happened seems like something you should listen to that also gets you down. Not mutually exclusive.
Max most of your comments here are well thought out and argued (I don't always agree with you), but unless you are an investor or employee what does it really matter if Peach succeeds or fails? I also thought Peach would go nowhere (not much sign of 10x), but I kept my opinion to myself as I had nothing productive to add.
I think it is fine to talk about startups and even criticise them when you have something constructive to say. In the case of Peach I had literally nothing to add that was constructive so I kept my opinion of it to myself.
The original article elaborates on this more; I just paraphrased it here for convenience.
Peach's success/failure, like that of all startups, is a valuable data point. As I said in the original article: the startup world is in dire need of cautionary tales as valuations inflate to absurd levels.
The reason I wrote an article on Peach in particular was that the hype was an outlier of weirdness and I wanted to take a closer look for my own curiosity.
I've discovered that some people are annoyed at a project merely existing. Criticism is great, but it is best not to listen to people who have nothing to add other than seeing your project as "pointless."
Criticism needs to be constructive which is surprisingly hard to give well. It is a real art to do this well so it actually helps the person receiving the criticism.
Yeah, I'm really tired of this line. It leads to a place where everyone who doesn't agree with your vision is a hater. Well, ok, but what's the word for the person who thinks everyone else is a hater?
Likewise, I'm disappointed to see this post from Sam as it advocates ignoring the haters. "Don't let their lack of imagination hold you back" is terrible advice for people who want to find pain points for their product to improve. The assumption that all criticism is bad is, in my opinion, toxic to the startup ecosystem.