Has anyone been able to get a letter of intent with just an idea? Is that even possible?
Second time founders get this sometimes, if their first startup was a success. Basically, they've already proven they can execute.
Startup Playbook
131–140 of 243 posts
Re: Startup Playbook
#132I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns. I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet…
The Basecamp (née 37Signals) folks have been beating this drum for quite some time. DHH posted "Reconsider" to their blog today, actually; it's an entertaining read, if nothing else: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider Here in Seattle, there's a great community of small software businesses with meaningful profits and impact. We have ties to the broader Seattle startup and technology community, without bein…
That "Reconsider" post was at the top of HN yesterday(1) but it was quickly removed from the front page(2). What a coincidence.
DHH's "Reconsider": "Our definition of winning didn’t even include establishing that hallowed sanctity of the natural monopoly!"
Sam's "Playbook": "We also ask how the company will one day be a monopoly."
Re: Startup Playbook
#133I have a really hard time buying a lot of this about how novelty and monopoly are keys to a successful company. If you look at the really successful startups, especially unicorns, almost none of them are actually monopolies or new ideas. The vast, vast majority are old products done right, and almost all of them have very substantial competition. This attitude is, in fact, encompassed in the near footnote-like sectio…
Monopoly can be a localized thing.
Most of them have a high friction associated with them. Ditching your benefit provider is a major pain in the ass if you're Zenefits. If you're a paying customer, ditching Dropbox is tough too.
Re: Startup Playbook
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Basecamp (née 37Signals) folks have been beating this drum for quite some time. DHH posted "Reconsider" to their blog today, actually; it's an entertaining read, if nothing else: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider Here in Seattle, there's a great community of small software businesses with meaningful profits and impact. We have ties to the broader Seattle startup and technology community, without bein…
I was surprised that article didn't trigger a bigger response on HN. It is a little over the top, but it leaves a lot to think about. The Unicorn, disruption PR wheel has drowned out the virtues and benefits of other forms of entrepreneurship.
For me personally I tend to ignore most of what DHH writes.
He has an unfortunate tendency to see the way that he was successful as the only way to be successful, and seems to lack the ability to benefits in other ways of doing things. We used to see this in PG's writings too: back before he started YC he appeared to be utterly convinced that it was Lisp that made his company successful. After he started YC and he saw a lot more his writing became a lot stronger IMO.
Regarding DHH, I'll just point at [1], with the comment that Facebook made $891 profit last quarter. It's also currently valued at ~$300B.
[1] https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2585-facebook-is-not-worth-33...
Re: Startup Playbook
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I also say it with some distaste. This is the path I'm personally pursuing though, and I'd love to have some better terminology to describe it. I wouldn't call it a "small business" either because, to me at least, that brings to mind a small consultancy and does nothing to communicate the "sell widely but stay small and focused" approach of the intentionally-small digital B2C business. (Mouthful there, huh?)
How about the term "scale-sustainable", meaning the business is cash flow positive for most of its growth?
I usually just refer to my business by what it was (an office design magazine/website) as opposed to defining it by a category of technical jargon because the majority of people I interact with don't want to know.
Some people ask how it makes money (advertising) or if I have raised any money (no) or if I have employees (not yet), but I've never once needed to use the term "lifestyle business" or "small business".
Re: Startup Playbook
#136I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns. I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet…
[deleted]
Re: Startup Playbook
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they benefit from YC's value prop, it's in Sama's and PG's interest to beat the Big Startup, Fast Growth, VC train, Silicon Valley drum. It's not disingenuous, it's literally what they believe and are committed to. But it's not the only way to be happy as a technologist. I'm not even convinced it's the best way to be happy as a technologist. YC put those materials out 1) as a branding and marketing effort and…
Unlike the DHH rant linked above, I'm not condemning the Big Startup / Growth / VC approach. At a societal level, it has managed to spin up many game-changing companies very quickly. I think it's a movement that will go down in the history books for creating a lot of rapid progress in the first half of the 21st century. But I'm also not convinced that it's the best way to be happy as a technologist. The system produc…
I started my business 8 years ago and might be able to hire an employee soon and have been considering writing a post called "How I Hired My First Employee In Only 8 Years".
The goal would be to balance out some of the other posts here about getting 10000 users in a week or "bringing in $500k of revenue in 3 months.
Re: Startup Playbook
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what this essay overlooked is that the choice between a "low-risk but small business path" and a "high-risk unicorn path" is not always merely about business-choices and cornering markets simply by using large sums of money. A different "high-risk unicorn path" is going through hard scientific research, which often requires external money to get anything from the ground. And it is this last type of business t…
I think "unicorn" is strictly reserved for the Ubers and the AirBNBs of the world. Anyone who calls the company that gets fusion energy working a "unicorn" will probably be laughed out of the room.
It seems like Aileen Lee was one of the first people to popularize unicorns. in his article around 2013[0] he defines them as
> We found 39 companies belong to what we call the “Unicorn Club” (by our definition, U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors). That’s about .07 percent of venture-backed consumer and enterprise software startups.
That being said, the term is now almost a pejorative moniker for overpriced vaporware or at least "proof of the bubble". or something. Still though, a fusion company would be the rare breakthrough on a big idea that would warrant such a moniker. Unicorns missed the ark during the great flood, so at IPO time we'll see if tgey go extinct or evolve into narwhals.
0 http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club...
Re: Startup Playbook
#139I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns. I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet…
The vast majority of businesses are not going to fit any of this playbook. The problem is this playbook covers a niche. If you don't want to play that niche game, that's totally fine. However, like me, you will have to look elsewhere to decide what game you DO want to play, and what rules you'll have to live by. Sometimes that's customer focus, sometime's that is volume focus, or diversifying, or a 12 month profitability plan (sometimes longer, like maybe a restaurant).
There's no rules in business but the laws of the land. Pretending that there's one definition of success is very limiting to both focus and opportunity for all of us.
Re: Startup Playbook
#140> On the other hand, starting a startup is not in fact very risky to your career—if you’re really good at technology, there will be job opportunities if you fail. Most people are very bad at evaluating risk. It's true that career risk is low, but opportunity cost could be high. If you're well into your career, taking a few years off to work at a startup that might fail could really be a million dollar tradeoff. So yo…
That is the calculation I used over the course of a few months to switch from being a teacher to going all-in on my office design website.
At the time I was pretty burnt out from teaching, ended up moving to a new city and was doing a few temp jobs to make some extra cash. The risk was low enough at that point that the website was almost a no brainer. I'm pretty confident that had I been in a good spot career-wise at the time, I would likely have either never kept my side project going.