Joshua's story in "Founders at Work" is one of my top three most inspirational tales from the book. The combination of creating something while working a day job (breaking the work down into 15-minute problems he could solve at night) along with the idea of narrow, vertical services that do one thing well--great lessons.
While I don't buy into the whole maxklein nerdfight aspect of all this, I do look forward to seeing whether Joshua establishes a new pattern (parlaying the one-hit wonder into a series of relationships and investments that take him to a higher level) or whether he repeats the success (more like Andreesen).
Would you tell about some other projects that you did before delicious? Not necessarily their names, just roughly what they were about. Basically I'm curious whether there was a logical succession or were you just trying out random ideas.
This is taken from Founders At Work, which you should buy (it's great!):
Bookbook - Schacter never came up with a name for this, but it's basically an XML file on your website where you would provide a feed and other people would do this and create a central crossing engine that would say, "You have this book and he wants that book, and you are not that far from each other."
Loaf - a fully distributed social network (no central server whatsoever ... yes, that does sounds like Diaspora). Uses email as a carrier, a bloom filter, and it basically tells people you talked to about other people you corresponded with 'in an encrypted and compressed way'.
Memepool - which was a blog of links (before people knew what blogs were, this was in 1998). So basically an editor with reader submissions - a link at the bottom saying "Send us an email. Give us good links."
Muxway - 2001, 'which was a lot like del.icio.us'. Only it was single player - Schacter could save links, and those links were public, and that was that.
Nothing and thats the problem. Its the same it was since it started (as far as how it functions is concerned). And if I were to guess[1] it is rapidly loosing whatever standing it had good old days. Its horrible, because it had a lot of potential for growth in to something really amazing. In the fast moving internet landscape, you have to evolve with everyone else in order to survive. Other than a facelift, nothing much changed with delicious.
Sure there are sites and services that survived without evolving, but they are exceptions not the norm.
Once awesome but dying sites/softwares: Myspace, Digg, IE
Some companies acquire people for their talent. Few know what to do with that talent once they have it. Google is no exception. I wish Josh the best of luck. Wonder if he'll revive memepool?
I have a great idea for a app, but it is not related to memepool. If you are looking for ideas for interesting apps that could change the way people distribute information on the web let me know. It is basically a better mouse trap blog and threaded conversation app and I would love to see someone run with it. I won't bore you with the details, but if you have an open ear to ideas, I could sum it up for you pretty quickly.
Some people are not meant to work for others. That doesn't say much about the company. I bet most HN-er would love to have the experience to work at Google or Apple.
I don't think he was happy at google, just like I don't think he was happy at yahoo.
I think he should write a book now. It's the natural progression for people who make a single hit startup - they sell it, join some big company, decide that it does not make them happy, give a lot of talks, then fall into some type of mentoring role, then write a book.
My deal is that I will not let myself be bullied by a person who people support just because he is an angel investor (and they want his money). He's relentlessly attacking me every opportunity he gets for absolutely no reason, and because he knows that people will support him (being a big tech brand name and all) over me (being unimportant).
Man, what a douchebag you are. I've known Josh for many years and am very happy he's become successful. He is not attacking you. It's all in your head. Please go see a therapist.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1357182