from Hacker News

What does "it's a good start" really mean.

by cosminro on 10/10/11, 2:42 AM with 43 comments

• by jcampbell1 on 10/10/11, 3:39 AM

  This strikes me as very true, but irrelevant. As an American I say something positive to every startup founder I encounter, but secretly think they are nuts. Had I met the founders of these companies, below is what I would have thought:

  Heroku: Sounds nice but impossible to deliver. Even if you do, no one is going to trust their business to your startup's platform.

  Dropbox: Yet another backup solution that is going nowhere.

  AirBnb: Have fun building a marketplace. Chicken and egg problems are impossible to solve.

  I have learned to not trust my instincts. Now I tell startups, "Sounds cool, but why are you at a tech event? You should be at an event for fashion/teachers/bar owners/tour guides/whoever your customer is. Why are you clowning around seeking reassurance from from other programmers?"

• by coenhyde on 10/10/11, 4:04 AM

  As an Australian I can relate to this. Often American's think I'm putting our startup down, just because I'm not overly excited saying everything is awesome and fantastic. I'm extremely positive and have absolute confidence that we will succeed. But I prefer to look at things objectively and to tackle the problems. However American's translate my language into "my startup sucks".

  So recently I've been training myself to talk roses when dealing with American's. :)

• by gojomo on 10/10/11, 3:59 AM

  I'm guilty of overusing 'great', especially as the first word (actually full sentence) of an email response.

  In that colloquial context, it means, "total assent/acknowledgement with what you've proposed or reported", rather than a quality evaluation.

  If aimed at a more concrete bit of work output, 'great' is more likely to be a superlative quality evaluation.

  For example:

  Q: "What about this general logo theme for exploration?" [a proposed abstract direction/plan]

  A: "Great!" [means, I agree that's worth pursuing, let's see where it goes]

  Q: "I've made this logo treatment."

  A: "Great!" [Somewhat vague; definitely means I'm glad we've reached this point (regardless of the treatment quality), but might (if directly gesturing at the object) also imply some evaluative approval]

  Q: "How would you rate logo treatment #2?"

  A: "Great!" [this finally really means it's evaluated as great on the relevant scale]

  Even 'excellent', 'fantastic', and other adjectives are often used this same way: casually used to signal sufficient approval, when describing something prospectively/abstractly/directionally, but only being strong signals of judgement when applied to specific, concrete, completed instances.

• by rwhitman on 10/10/11, 4:53 AM

  Continuing the generalizations depicted in this post - I would say that the politely disingenuous "this is awesome" response is actually endemic to the West Coast. I've found folks in the Bay Area in particular have a strong aversion to "negative energy".

  Having spent some time on both coasts I'd say its not necessarily an "American" thing, its more a "Californian" thing. Here in NYC, I'm learning that negative feedback is pretty common and often encouraged.

• by snprbob86 on 10/10/11, 10:09 AM

  Maybe I'm a cynic, but I tend to think that a left-leaning log normal distribution is more likely:

  http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+log+normal+distrib...

• by eel on 10/10/11, 5:05 AM

  I'm fascinated by cultural nuances like this. I really, really wish there was a website where you could look up things like this based on culture. I don't know how one would start to gather the data for a site like that.

• by Spenny on 10/10/11, 4:30 AM

  I am not sure that the American viewpoint is necessarily bad in this case, especially as it pretains to working on projects. I think it is pretty safe to assume that people are more likely to pursue something further if they have positive encouragement. Thus, if "it's a good start" generally means that it is an awesome idea to a group of people, couldn't that be translated into meaning that those people continue working on something after they have shown it to others more often? I have nothing to back this up with, but it is just how I would interpret the idea.

  Additionally, I always hear the line "it's a good start" as an acknowledgement that the person sees some potential in the idea, but that it needs a lot of work to achieve said potential. In fact, I can't remember a time that I have heard "it's a good start" by itself in a sentence. It is usually accompanied by a ", but ...", and I think the person behind the idea would know that this is coming, as he/she should know that there is still a lot of work that can be done.

• by dools on 10/10/11, 10:47 AM

  This was hilarious :)

  But I think you left off the one, international word for "totally fucking awesome I don't care where you come from":

  WOW

  If anyone says wow, you know you've got a hit.

• by TamDenholm on 10/10/11, 3:24 AM

  I'd like to see a graph for British people.

• by martinkallstrom on 10/10/11, 7:47 AM

  I like the faux-2D diagrams that are in reality one dimensional. Inventive to label the Y-axis "stuff" and give it a recognizable curve to make the post seem scentific.

  (Don't know how to rewrite the above to remove the traces of sarcasm. It's just an observation, I'm not trying to depreciate the OP)

• by VonLipwig on 10/10/11, 11:39 AM

  American boss just told me what I had made was awesome. After reading this article this morning I am significantly less flattered than I was last week.

• by smoyer on 10/10/11, 2:59 PM

  I'm American ... I tend to look for the positive in other people's ideas but I can be brutally critical of even my best ideas. Self-deprecation is an art-form best practiced in the company of friends who will contradict you :)

• by nicksergeant on 10/10/11, 2:53 AM

  It means "This is good, but it has a long way to go."

• by diolpah on 10/10/11, 3:53 PM

  I must be living in a different version of the United States than the author is. I don't think I've ever experienced the kind of false optimistic outlook referred to here. Is this a Silicon Valley thing?

  Most people I talk to about our business are fairly realistic about the challenges we face, or progress thus far, etc.