Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Is there a rule these days that your startup isn't allowed to clearly describe what its product is?

Anyway, I guess this is an unmanned self-driving taxi service. Looks good, honestly. If it's significantly cheaper than a taxi with human driver, then maybe it really could help people not need to own a car. Especially if they can optimise routes to get more people riding at once.

Having to hunt for what the thing actually is also got me to notice the small disclaimer though:

> All on-road images of the Origin are renderings.



One distinct variety of company culture is one where the employees can't fathom a world where no one has ever heard of them.

That's ok though, especially if you target your marketing towards early adopters who would know who you are. I doubt some of these companies could handle the hype or scale of being a household name.



Well at least someone else has noticed. Off-topic but I've also started seeing modern software websites with no screenshots, to the point that I can get a better idea of what a product is like from the screenshots on Google Images than I can from all the text and pretty graphics on the site itself.


I suspect they do that because every update to your software/interface then renders your example screenshots outdated. For a startup at least and in my experience, that's a painful distraction when you want to just focus on building and getting people to your site. But I also go looking for screenshots and appreciate sites that provide them up front.


Quite possible but in that case I usually treat the website with scepticism. There are plenty of "fake it till you make it" type of products out there, and no screenshots or photographs on the site is a big signal for problem in my opinion.

Getting new screenshots doesn't seem very work intensive plus you can easily put screenshots of an earlier version and a disclaimer that the screenshots may not be fully up to date.


Big companies do it as well, to the point where I can't tell if it's split tested and proven more effective, or just a stylistic thing that they think is more important than effectiveness?


You can automate the taking of screenshots. Many teams already do this for visual testing of UI.

Doing it for marketing pages is similarly easy.


A good critique for the Nth start-up no one's ever heard of. Less useful for a $20B company owned by, and the future of, General Motors.


> Is there a rule these days that your startup isn't allowed to clearly describe what its product is?

1) Release vaguely worded press release announcing your imminent thing-which-will-change-the-world.

2) Read all the guesses at what you might be about to release.

3) If any of those guesses are better than your actual idea, then they become your idea all along!


The Verge video explains it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3E7p4S_1m4


If it can't be described without a video, that's not a great sign.


It doesn't even have to be significantly cheaper. Being the same price as Uber & Lyft will be enough, as long as it is profitable/sustainable.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: