It's more than a little suspicious that I immediately got 5 down votes for my critical comment, but have since broken even on karma again. I'd like to think my further arguments below did it, but more likely this thread was posted in one of the hashtagstartup channels.
Don't usually do this, but I'll explain the downvotes (I've never heard of this project). Your original comment felt needlessly aggressive and had nothing to do with discussing the project's merits. The follow-on comments were in the same vein, and the entire comment thread felt like a flame war for no reason.
So I downvoted because I wanted to signal that I'd like to read less content like that on here. I went and checked the HN guidelines on content, and here's a few points which I felt supported the downvote:
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
"Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."
And now I have contributed in uselessness to this comment thread, the cycle is complete :).
Its fair because people identify # as "hashtag" anyway. "poundstartup" has a more questionable ring to it.
Also, you get what you dish out. Saying its "dumb" is what earned you the 15 year old in me. had you said something like "i disagree with their use of the word hashtag" it would have given an entirely different tone, don't you think?
Yeah no thanks. I've been on there a few times. That channel is filled with a bunch of sweary and self-centered people. It's probably the anonymity but I'd rather hang out in r/startups before I'd go back to the IRC chat.
It's got its plusses and minuses. People sometimes shoot the breeze rather than narrowly focus on the topic at hand, so yeah, sometimes there's a lot of noise compared to signal.
I prefer here, or, as of late, http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/ for more serious discussions, although occasionally something interesting comes up on #startups. Sometimes the informality is helpful, as you can chat about something you don't particularly want plastered all over HN...
I was ready to donate the €10 but found it just wants me to enter credit card details onto the application form and I was on a non-https page. It said it uses Stripe but it's tricky to tell if that's really the case (I don't believe there's bad intent here at all, but the UX for taking the payment doesn't inspire confidence).
We've heard this once before. And I totally get the concern. I'll make sure someone at Typeform hears about this, as they are on #startups. We'll embed stripe checkout on the homepage soon I guess. Thanks.
Great idea with #Startup, guys! An insecure HTTP address is a concern though, which gave me a bit of a pause --- the developer in me speaks here --- although it's great a TypeForm page is offered at the bottom of the "Apply" panel (except it's not easy to notice; maybe a bigger font or highlight color will do the trick)... I believe an HTTPS-hosted page will do wonders, guys! :)
I have a Typeform account so I'm going to have a look at how it works :-) Assuming it's all good, I'll be back, because the ultimate idea sounds very appealing.
The form is hosted on Typeform which is served over https. But since it is embedded via an iframe, the secure connection is not communicated to the user by the browser.
So your data is safe, however, I do agree that https for hashtagstartup.co would clear up the confusion.
You don't have to become a member of our community, but I might be able to give you a couple of reasons why it is what it is today, if you can let me know which one we should put up on the page according to you?
- hosted/organised by an independent non-profit with the goal to help founders
- using slack, easy and unobtrusive cross platform system
- members are selected upon their motivation
Or because it already exists in a great form? There are multiple others, but we are open to anyone that can provide a motivation.
Pretty cool! I just signed up. I think its an interesting line of dialog to have going in the background, and am hopeful it will make the path to starting and running a startup clearer for me.
The signup process is kinda neat, but some of the questions made me go "errr..."
edit: i see they(you?) use typeform for the signup form; never heard of them before, but pretty neat!
Which made you go "errr..."? We try to get an idea of who a person is. Also, if they have founders in their network, or if they are just lazy and skip questions ;-)
All of the questions around "What can you bring to #startup?" or "What do you want from #startup" or "What #startup founder do you want to connect with" fell extremely flat with me - I abandoned the form.
I'm on the page because you posted it here, on HN, and I started the flow because the premise seemed interesting, and I have a startup. I don't have any goals, and frankly, the pitch made it sound like more value would be flowing from the community to me. I don't have goals I need met from #startup because I have no idea what it will be like.
Those questions made it seem like you guys are just in it for a PR grab or a pivot into an incubator, which I am absolutely not interested in at all.
We know it's a ton of questions, and not all of them are very important. But the goal here is to separate those who are truly motivated from those who will come in and just lurk, self promote or scout.
I'm sorry if you think we have some hidden agenda, which is certainly not the case as screening the applications is an extreme amount of work. The way the application is set up we will also have a lot less applications being submitted, which is a nice side effect as we already have hundreds waiting.
We've been making something during our internal hackathon with a similar goal in mind, but perhaps a different approach. Hopefully I can get some feedbacks: http://jiver.co/startup
It's a rough alpha (desktop web-only, mobile support in January).
It goes to the Startup Foundation, an independent non-profit supporting founders building more successful startups, of which I am the Chairman.
#startup is our latest initiative, but we're working on a progress report tool (enabling founder to give peer feedback and to report to investors and coaches).
We also have a weekender format like Startup Weekend or Lean Startup Machine, which we have done 10 of to date and will roll out in 2015. Next to that we have an incubator in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and a big meetup group for that city.
Our goal is that all of our initiatives generate surplus revenue to be able to roll out new initiatives and improve existing ones.
But for #startup, it is also a great way to find out who is motivated to get in and contribute. Most of the contributions are actually from people who have heard about what it is like on the inside.
You see, we normally get tens of applications per day, and some people just want to get in ASAP. This way they can, without us having to screen everyone that wants to get in directly.
Now that we're on PH, HN, Reddit and Betalist, we've got hundreds of applications just today. And we will screen them all, so it might take a week to get in.
+ not every motivation is good enough to get in, cash tells us you are at least slightly dedicated.
Edit: hey hastagstartup.co downvote brigade, hashstartup.co is still available. So is hashstartups.com which is even better.