I'm not sure about your last point. It seems there are some extremely important implications from the determination that "black swan" events are often of incalculable risk. I already posted the link farther down the thread, so I won't repost it, but I highly recommend reading the article - it is written by Taleb and reframes this concept in terms of the current crisis. It really is one of the most interesting high level overviews of the problem I have come across.
Really helpful, thank you. I am in a similar situation and have felt pretty uncomfortable assigning different weights to each of the founders, but I can relate to your situation where different members are contributing different amounts of time. One thing I was a little unclear about - what is the "total vanilla" line about? Thanks!
Horizontal drop down for primary navigation elements seems most intuitive to users in my experience. I think the most important thing is to keep common elements together and enduring - primary navigation elements (home, news, etc) and account option (sign in/out, edit, etc) should be separated and distinct, but they should always be visible and in the same place.
I agree completely - the concept is powerful. If the task before you is large enough, at some point you let go of self doubt and perfectionism and start generating content. I really enjoy NaNoWriMo and I am looking forward to this years run.
The failure of startup companies is real news, but I wish there were more focus on the reasons behind the failure. Most coverage I read comes across as mockery, as to suggest that the concept or group could never have succeeded in the first place. Perhaps that is often the case, but it teaches others little. Real investigation into the failure would be both entertaining and edifying.
Real investigation into the failure would be both entertaining and edifying.
Sure, but as they say: Success has a thousand fathers, failure is a motherless child.
It's very hard to get a good, real-time post-mortem on a startup. One reason is that, oftentimes, failure is a big amorphous mess. If all the employees agreed on what the problem was, they might have been able to do something about it before it killed the company. :)
(By contrast, it's easy to explain a successful company's success: Just look at where the money is coming from.)
Moreover, it's in nobody's best interest to call attention to their own bad decisions, and it's even less wise to poke fun at the bad decisions of your coworkers, who may be a vital part of the personal network that will keep you alive after the startup explodes.
The entire point of this Techcrunch article is that doing post-mortem work on a startup is a thankless task. No matter what you say, you will be treated like an assassin. Look closely at your complaint:
Most coverage I read comes across as mockery, as to suggest that the concept or group could never have succeeded in the first place.
You call that "mockery", but isn't that the polite alternative? What else can the coverage say? That the concept was sound, but that the founders made a bunch of boneheaded mistakes in execution?
Distinguishing between concept and execution failures would be a huge start, actually. Don't you think that makes a big difference in your final evaluation of the company - particularly from a startup perspective? Absolutely fair point that it may be difficult to determine where the failure was - but you could start by interviewing the management and go from there. Isn't journalism about investigating things that aren't immediately obvious? Anyone can lampoon a company for failure.
If you think the investigation isn't worth it, either because it is thankless task or because the cause can't be determined (the founders won't admit to their mistakes, etc), then why write a story at all? It is just sensationalism. Publish a report every week with a list of startup failures. Other startups will get the idea - lots of startups fail - and they will have learned just as much as if they had read the types of stories that are being published now.
It is still important that people know about it in some capacity, so I have to agree with the article. For every Facebook, there are a hundred failed startups, and not reporting these failures is just going to delude people.
Why are they mutually exclusive? Seems like they each work best when supported by everything else. The defining characteristic of 2008 is not twitter, as it was blogging in 2004, but rather the growing interconnectivity of all web services.
