Comments for Thomas Knoll

Comment on Help you help me by thomasknoll

thomasknoll — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 19:34:00 +0000

Oooh!! Good call, Graham! I didn’t even think of that!

Comment on Help you help me by grahamkahr

grahamkahr — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 16:10:00 +0000

I think this is really helpful, whether you are working with a mentor on a startup or just dealing with your manager. Thanks for posting this Thomas.

Comment on When should we start? by ginevra

ginevra — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 21:43:00 +0000

[this is great]

Comment on When should we start? by Goldie Katsu

Goldie Katsu — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:49:00 +0000

How inspiring and beautiful.

Comment on When should we start? by Lynn Gehrke

Lynn Gehrke — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:46:00 +0000

This is beautiful, Thomas. It made me cry, but not for sadness, but for its beauty and love. A true gift of love to your mom.

Comment on re: Should startups bother having original ideas if big companies can just come along and clone them? by Andrew Hillman

Andrew Hillman — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 05:51:00 +0000

Startups should absolutely work on original ideas because once a company gets to a certain size or point it gets really hard for them to work on original ideas. Anything can be cloned but if Big Co doesn’t have the insight, passion or obsession that founders often do there’s a good chance the Big Co clone with fizzle out. Big Co’s may clone the technology stack but they tend to tweak the UI so it doesn’t look like a blatant copy. But here’s the thing, the UI is often directly related to that same founder insight, passion and obsession. I was recently approached by a couple of “well known” developers (they had a smallish exit). They were looking to buy someones alpha (for good money), raise a seed round at a ridiculous valuation (they can do this with one exit under belt) and then hire the person they bought the alpha from. When I said, I wasn’t interested in working for them, they knew enough to understand that without the founders insight, passion and obsession they wouldn’t be able to execute the vision. They learned this by witnessing M&A flops when they worked at Big Co.