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It's a fine startup postmortem. A small gripe: I don't get why Django has to get dragged into this. Whether it's the title, or the venue. It distracts from the

It's a fine startup postmortem. A small gripe: I don't get why Django has to get dragged into this. Whether it's the title, or the venue. It distracts from the broader lessons he brings to the table in hindsight as a CTO-founder. Other than the author making fleeting references to Django, there's no technical depth or major points delivered on how the stack effected operations. I have nothing wrong with Django criticism, but the title needs to be fixed. Maybe: "Autopsy of a slow train wreck (DjangoCon 2017)"

amjith 9y ago
He was the president of Django Software Foundation while running the startup. So naturally he was a big proponent of Django and his stack was written completely in Django.
- kornish 9y ago
  Right. But what outcome did Django have on his startup? Seems to me they likely would have committed all the same business mistakes had they used, say, Rails or Play.
  - shangxiao 9y ago
    My take on this, drawing from his "Humans gonna human" is: "Engineers gonna engineer" - a mistake that's cost me dearly in the past.
  - stickfigure 9y ago
    The article is adapted from a speech given at Djangocon. The title includes "Django" to explain why Django developers would be interested in it. Out of context here on HN, any startup failure draws interest (no matter what technology), so the Django mention looks odd.
Alex3917 9y ago
> A small gripe: I don't get why Django has to get dragged into this. The fact that none of the reasons why they failed have anything to do with tech is what makes it being a Django startup relevant. The whole point is that they were focused on their technology instead of the customer acquisition channels, sales funnel, pricing strategy, etc. Yes it's clickbaity, but it's also art.
shangxiao 9y ago
As a Django developer working for a startup, I clicked on this expecting to read some lessons on how Django caused them to fail but didn't see anything _specific_ to Django, but more of the same general advice that I'd seen before. It's worth nothing though that this is only the title of the presentation aimed at Django developers at DjangoCon. The title of the blog article removed the reference to Django.

amjith 9y ago

He was the president of Django Software Foundation while running the startup. So naturally he was a big proponent of Django and his stack was written completely in Django.

kornish 9y ago
Right. But what outcome did Django have on his startup? Seems to me they likely would have committed all the same business mistakes had they used, say, Rails or Play.
- shangxiao 9y ago
  My take on this, drawing from his "Humans gonna human" is: "Engineers gonna engineer" - a mistake that's cost me dearly in the past.
- stickfigure 9y ago
  The article is adapted from a speech given at Djangocon. The title includes "Django" to explain why Django developers would be interested in it. Out of context here on HN, any startup failure draws interest (no matter what technology), so the Django mention looks odd.

Alex3917 9y ago

> A small gripe: I don't get why Django has to get dragged into this. The fact that none of the reasons why they failed have anything to do with tech is what makes it being a Django startup relevant. The whole point is that they were focused on their technology instead of the customer acquisition channels, sales funnel, pricing strategy, etc. Yes it's clickbaity, but it's also art.

shangxiao 9y ago

As a Django developer working for a startup, I clicked on this expecting to read some lessons on how Django caused them to fail but didn't see anything _specific_ to Django, but more of the same general advice that I'd seen before. It's worth nothing though that this is only the title of the presentation aimed at Django developers at DjangoCon. The title of the blog article removed the reference to Django.