Kyle Brady: Blog » Stupid

A Terrible Recruiter [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:23:58 +0000

I don't know why I still get recruiting emails, but I do*. And today I got an especially bad one.

Hi Brady,

This is Aish from Integnology. I am looking for IE6/UI developer for a 2 weeks + assignment for our Client in San Francisco, CA. You might not be looking for an assignment, but would you be willing to take this assignment along with your present job or project. Please send me your resume & contact me to discuss this .

IE6/7 UI Developer

-Make existing Firefox-friendly website and Facebook application IE6/7

compatible.

-All Javascript features that work on Firefox to be ported over to both

IE6/7.

-Must be AJAX and CSS savvy

-Must have exposure to Ruby on Rails

-Must have written FBML for Facebook

All of the formatting (spaces and punctuation included) remains intact, and this email is completely unedited.

Here's my appropriately Kyle'd reply.

Do not contact me again, especially given your poor English, poor email skills, impersonal email, and how you got my name wrong.

Maybe you should learn to be "smooth" before you try to make money by doing so.

BURN!

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*Footnote (2/6/09 3:15pm PST): as mentioned in my reply to "Bad Show", my profiles on both Monster and Dice are hidden/unsearchable, or are supposed to be, based on my account settings/preferences. And if recruiting firms are stooping to trolling blogs like mine for resumes...

Well, I think they need to find a better data pool.

The Greatness of Jason Calacanis [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:37:58 +0000

I emailed Jason to let him know that Mahalo qualified as one of the places that should take my advice on cost-cutting (aka quit), and he had a rather ... interesting ... response.

So here it is, in it's full glory.

(Me) Thought you might find this interesting, Captain Wasteo.

http://www.kyle-brady.com/2008/10/10/how-to-cut-your-startups-costs/

It applies to people like you.

(Jason) I'm sorry, who are you?

(Me) One of the many people who don't like you, and find your "startup" attempts pretty worthless.

(Jason) 1. Clearly you don't hate me, you're obsessed with me. Why else would you email?

2. Your advice is based on what success exactly?

Best j

(Me) 1. No. I emailed you because I like getting the people I'm offending riled up.

2. a) I'm 20. You're an old man. I have time.
b) I'd rather have no success than the "success" you've had. Training a bunch of monkeys to manually type in the results from Google is not running a startup- it's a low-level temp agency for manual data entry. And I wouldn't even begin to call Mahalo, or any other number of Web 2.0 startups, a success.

Not the best.

(Jason) Blahblahblah....

Now consider this: Jason thinks of himself as a god among men, with lots of experience and success that he can rain down upon us from his own slice of Heaven. But when you respond so defensively and immaturely... doesn't that ruin your credibility?

Just a little.

Funding: An Insightful Insight [Old Content]

Kyle Brady — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:31:46 +0000

[aka "Funding != Good Idea" or "Funding Doesn't Mean They're Smart"]

I spoke to a recruiter via phone yesterday who was trying to interest me in getting a job with RockYou. When I politely declined, he wanted to know why, and I said something to the effect of "I have no interest in working for companies whose sole existence is, and always will be, dependent on outside funding and other people's platforms...not to mention those without any real business plans or actual use value".

His response? A resounding "I don't think they would have gotten [insert large number here] of funding if they didn't have value or a business plan."

So, out of that lovely event, comes this exciting installment of "Kyle telling you what should already be obvious."

How VCs Work
Venture Capitalists are well known for investing in things that have either:

Already been funded
Already been proven successful

This isn't true across the board, but when you look at the subset of VCs that invest in Internet-based "software" companies, the probability of truth gets much closer to 1.

Don't believe me?

How many fully-funded Twitter clones are there?
Facebook clones?
"Digg killers"?
"Google [search] killers"?

Web 2.0 Is Not Business
Another widely acknowledged nugget of gold is that most "Web 2.0" properties are not profitable. In fact, most of them have no idea how they could generate a revenue stream even remotely close to their operating costs, other than "oh, well we'll just put ads on the site!"

Good Idea? Yeah, Right.
One of my biggest pet peeves of the Internet at the moment is the "me too!" atmosphere. If one person does something that becomes popular (note: popular is not the same as successful), or gets a large round of funding, there's immediately a gaggle of idiots who want to do the same thing, but with some twist.

Alot of good ideas don't get funded, or even noticed. Why? Because no-one has done it yet, or it's "too risky". The big money would rather bet on something other people have bet on before, because it's "tried and true". So these groups of people with original ideas trundle on their own for awhile, and sometimes end up with a startup company that took years to put together while they cooked sausages at children's festivals.

Developer's Platforms
Newsflash: basing your entire "business" (without revenue) around the whims of someone else is stupid, and roughly equivalent to swimming in the ocean while chewing on a giant electrical line that's dangling from a satellite in orbit.

Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. can change their APIs, data access levels, or platform structures at any time, for any reason. You want to develop a way to throw Zombie feet at your friend's pig farms? Great. You want to create a company, and get funded, so you can do random "social activities" with other people through another company's platform? Right.

One of the cardinal rules in running web software is that you should control as much of the user experience as possible. This is why Facebook has massive data centers instead of cloud-sourcing to someone like, say, Amazon S3... and you don't see someone like Google betting the virtual farm on MySpace's clunky architecture.

People Are Idiots
If you follow that motto, you'll see the world clearly. Ok, maybe have alot less friends, but you'll thank me for it. Why? Because once you realize that people are lazy and want to do the least work possible to get fame/success/fortune/whatever, you are able to see the giant flaws in their plans without falling into the potholes containing many fellow sheep.

There's only two reasons why someone would assume that having funding equates to a "good idea", a "great business", a "revenue stream", or "really smart people":

They have no idea what they're talking about
They're an idiot

Conclusion

So why, in all that is mighty, would anyone assume that an extravagantly funded Web 2.0 "software" company is going to exist in 5 years, be profitable, or even be remotely valuable to real people?

I have no idea.

p.s. If you want to cry and complain and argue that I "have no sources", then use what little of that brain you may have to do some Google research yourself.

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Update (6/26/2008 4:00am PST): How fitting! Mashable just put up a story about a major Facebook Application "magically disappearing", and not due to something the app developers did... it either got "accidentally removed" or banned. Hmmm... [see more]

Update (6/26/2008 1:15pm PST): Valleywag picked this up. Nice! And it seems that people agree with me...