“Your shitty website is not a startup.”

Reflecting on negative attacks

I recently posted to reddit asking for advice on the branding of a website I have been working on called whatthefuckshouldibuy.com. Specifically I was interested in opinions on whether the word “fuck” would solidify or alienate my target market of college/recent college grads.

I got many helpful responses and there was a lot of good conversation on the post, but one commenter’s feedback stuck out. It was actually a series of three comments:

Granted, the website isn’t much. It’s just a blog of product reviews geared toward furnishing a new apartment with a basic frontend for browsing. But this sentiment got me thinking.

You’re not a startup, stop associating your shitty little website with startups. A kid selling lemonade is not a startup. You are not a startup.

If you honestly think you’re a start up, you are the most deluded dimwit I’ve ever had the misfortune of communicating with.

At first I agreed. Maybe my website really is just a shitty lemonade stand.

Then I remembered why I built the website in the first place. I wanted to rescue people from decisions. I wanted to save people time. I wanted to provide a service that I wasn’t sure anyone needed, and I had set out to validate that assumption.

When a little kid decides to make a lemonade stand they usually don’t know that it’s been done thousands of times over. What they do know is that they might buy a glass of cool lemonade if they happened to be walking past, and maybe other people feel the same way.

So maybe my website isn’t very interesting right now. That’s ok, but I think the idea of “taking the pain out of choosing what to buy” is still a good one. I don’t know exactly what form it will take, and I hope it looks very different than it does today. I’m open to any suggestions for solving this problem, this was just my first shot.

For now I’m going to keep trying to sell lemonade, keep on watching how people respond, and keep in mind why I’m doing it.