watsonc73's comments

Thanks, yeah agreed on the discipline itself. You'll usually find a few errors in your plan if you take the time to think it all through.

I just published a Substack on how to score your product ideas like a VC.

This one definitely comes from the heart having spent years building things that not enough people wanted. So I put together a simple model on Google Sheets which helps you rank concepts between 0 and 100 based on numerous inputs.

My hope is that founders can use it at the ideation stage to make better decisions about what opportunities to go after.

I'd welcome any feedback.

Hi HN! I've spent over a decade creating startups, some that went nowhere and some that succeeded (2 exits - Soundwave was acquired by Spotify, Retro Patents was sold on Shopify Exchange). I'm now helping other teams avoid building the wrong thing using a reliable and repeatable product discovery process. There's obviously no magic bullet to product/market fit but the frameworks I've developed can help increase the likelihood of shipping something that sticks. I'd be happy to answer any questions and would welcome feedback!

Great to hear. Thanks for the support.

That was also a surprise to us too!

Awesome suggestion! Sounds like a fun summer project.

We're also fans of some of the classic inventions but we have a preference for modern products that still inspire.

They're more relatable and it's cool when the actual patent authors are still alive as it makes the product's growth all the more impressive.

AFAIK we're the first to focus on the startup world. As flagged in the intro, we took our inspiration from a print of a motorcycle but wanted to flesh out the idea in the tech and gaming world which we love.

We've also filed patents ourselves so know the space pretty well.

Thanks for the feedback.

We actually split test this at the very start and the name variant won out. Seems like the majority of customers have a loyalty to the brand/product and preferred having the name.

I guess art is subjective and I can understand why you'd prefer it the other way. Cheers for the comments anyway!

There's a contact us section on the site where we collect all patent requests - please feel free to submit some!

Thanking you kindly!

Great idea - we'll look into this, thanks!

You're right but we have spent a lot of time cleaning and tidying up the designs and formatting the final piece of art.

I'd also add that our final product is of the highest quality and most local print shops couldn't give you the same service.

Saying that there is an original patents page on the site for this purpose. We're happy if you're hanging patent art either way :)

glad you like them and good choice :)

Happy Friday!

I'm the co-founder of Retro Patents and we're super proud to bring the site to the HN community.

Last year, we were travelling in Europe and we came across a boutique print shop that had a Harley Davidson motorcycle patent in the window. We really liked the minimalist look to it and remembered how we'd used early product prototypes for motivation in the past. There's nothing more inspiring than seeing a world beating product stripped down to its core.

So we started the website you see today to help inspire others to go out and create magic. The prints also look really good as wall art ;)

There's a 15% discount for the HN community if you use the code (HACKER).

P.s. Max Levchin (PayPal founder) bought his own print and shared it on Twitter earlier this week - it was a great moment !

Hey folks, founder of Activation Hacks here. I'd love your feedback on the site.

I've spent a bit of time collecting as many behavioural nudges as I could find in the tech/product space. The goal of the site is to highlight these tactics used by some of the best product psychologists in the business to retain mobile users.

It's basically like a product onboarding teardown but from a behavioral economics point of view. Hope you like it :)

If you like KurzweilAI I'd also check out Technically Sentient by Rob May and The Exponential View by Azeem Azhar. They're both great sources of info about the AI space.

Got it, thanks for clarifying Patrick. That sounds like a fairly clear ethical line in the sand so kudos for taking that position.

Good luck with the US launch :)

I'm a fan of Stripe generally and loved the concept of Atlas when I first heard about it.

I'd be slightly concerned about the commitment bias that might creep in though for startups who rely on Atlas for all their incorporation and financial needs.

As a future gatekeeper for some pretty crucial operational issues, do you see any risk in Stripe eventually becoming a dependency for startups?

I'd compare it slightly to the App Store where Apple made it simpler for developers to submit, launch and market their apps. As the gatekeeper they then kept increasing their portion of in-app charges. Reduced friction at the start for developers resulted in a sort of sunk cost problem at a later stage.

As Da Vinci said "it's easier to resist at the beginning then it is at the end".

+1 Sums up my point beautifully - to be clear I'm not trying to clamp down on free speech and would encourage reporters to "report" breaches like this. The main issue I have is that there's a first to post mentality without adequate fact checking. Speed is beating substance. The incentives in media are unfortunately all lined up the wrong way. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic but I miss the days when any journalist (amateur or not) would pride themselves on the accuracy of their statements. I've basically just stopped believing what I read after the FB fake news revelations.