I don't like that idea. Part of what makes Hacker News great is the forced absence of comment self-promotion/signatures and a extremely high focus on what's being said rather than who says it.
Anecdotally, if I find myself particularly interested in what someone says I'll visit their profile to learn more about them.
>What I hadn’t seemed to realise (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), is that this fourth day is where angel funds and VC’s pay upwards of £50,000 to attend (no kidding!)
I'm not complaing, just making fun of :). It probably worked in terms of sales. But unfortunately it has the unintended consequences of all these people trying to coin unnecessary gobbledygook words when simple English will suffice. Now sometimes reading a newspaper article feels like sitting through a business school class. IMHO if anything making up terms and introducing more jargon just makes communication harder.
>Many of the basics are now essentially free, which means a business built on the infrastructure laid down by the first two generations of Web companies can gain scale on a shoestring budget, all while giving away its products and services for free. Call it Web 2.5.
Or in other words, things have become cheaper and it's easier to start a web company. Call it technology. Also, this has been true for much longer than the author acknowledges. He's trying to a fit a company into his cookie cutter view of the internet while coining an unnecessary word.
Your perspective seems to have more to due with pitching him than the merits of the article.
Well in that case apology accepted. And to your second remark I agree with you - I'm genuinely against built to flip companies. I just don't think Mint was one of them.
Perhaps, but calling yourself a revolution is kind of like calling yourself insane or weird or unique or a celebrity; it's just disingenuous. If you have to call yourself something...
It's out of context because I wasn't saying to be "selfish" and do nothing. I was saying they could work on whatever they wanted regardless of whether or not it's monetizable. There's no way to know that without context.
>Many founders set out to create a company for the sole purpose of selling out (which in the author's context included Aaron).
You don't know that. Aaron could have set off to build a long-term profitable company, which they appeared [1] on their way to doing. But 170 million dollars is 170 million dollars. Almost everyone has their number especially if they have shareholders and vested employees (which 37s does). Their responsibility isn't just to their customers, but to their shareholders, employees, vendors and other people in their life. Who's to say their customers will be treated worse because of the acquisition (granted, Intuit has a poor track record, but this thread has enough assuming in it already).
You run in to the same problem as the OP does: a lot of assumptions without any real knowledge of Aaron or the company's dealings. Instead you're relying on blind assertions and tunnel vision to judge others.
[1] Based on lead gen affiliate fees and the amount of users they had. Unfortunately I don't know this for sure.