Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you please get the designer of this playbook and ycombinator.com to redesign HN too?
And Craigslist. And ReadMe.io.
but Craigslist's anachronistic static-HTML feel is so charming...
Startup Playbook
191–200 of 243 posts
Re: Startup Playbook
#192Peter Thiel's 'Zero to One' should be what anyone looking for more of this kind of reading should look into.
Re: Startup Playbook
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree strongly. We have the web because Tim Berners-Lee didn't raise an angel round, so he didn't ask 'how do I monetize' and built an amazing open system. Before him we had CompuServe and other VC backed trash. VC businesses like Twitter and Uber create centralized points of stagnation that seem great at first, but can't innovate the way open systems can. If Twitter was open we wouldn't be wondering if they'll…
> We have the web because Tim Berners-Lee didn't raise an angel round Perhaps, but how successful would TBL's creation be without the Kleiner-Perkins investment in Netscape. The paid web browser probably wouldn't have taken off and the VC funding allowed Netscape to invest in building a quality browser while not charging end users to download. VC has it's place and we shouldn't write it off entirely. But we should al…
You did still have to pay for Netscape sometimes.
Re: Startup Playbook
#194Earlier 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…
Thanks for reposting this, I didn't see it the first time around. Many of the pro-startup stuff I see, in particular this Altman piece, make me subtly uncomfortable, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it's because, while I live in the Valley, I'm a Seattle native. Maybe it's because Sam's younger than I am. Maybe it's because I like the suburbs better than San Francisco proper. Maybe it's because I'm no…
I think the advice re. competitors tends to be about "how much should you worry about what a competitor is doing _right now_" - and the answer to that is pretty much always "not a whole lot." You can have two businesses doing similar things but taking radically different approaches to execution and both succeeding in their own way.
But on the macro scale there are always windows of opening and closing opportunity on what makes for a viable business before (new technology takes over/bigger companies start paying attention/governments try to regulate you out of existence), and it is that more general climate of whether it's possible to execute at all that pressures the potential unicorns into a do-or-die mode. Monopolistic competition like e.g. Uber vs. Lyft is an exceptional case for technology; the expectation is that if you succeed at all you will probably be in complete control until the technology ecosystem itself shifts.
There is a second half to this, of course, which is that the type of people who found a fast-moving VC-backed startup are so deeply enmeshed in their plans for the company that they will put themselves into an unsustainable overdrive and expect everyone around them to do the same. Their enthusiasm can be entirely real and still be basically toxic and lacking in conservative sensibility. There are a lot of commonalities among founder personalities, IME.
Re: Startup Playbook
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> lifestyle businesses I really hate this term. It makes it seem like anything that's not a high growth unicorn startup is somehow a failure. It's like a way to give it a label and somehow look down on it. (don't mean to aim this at you - just a general remark)
I generally use the term "Bootstrapped" as a shorthand for product/SAAS business started with limited capital and focusing on growth through their own operating profits.
At the same time though if a business is doing $3m profit a year between two people earning $1.5m a year each, calling it "Bootstrapped" is underplaying its success a little.
Re: Startup Playbook
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for reposting this, I didn't see it the first time around. Many of the pro-startup stuff I see, in particular this Altman piece, make me subtly uncomfortable, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it's because, while I live in the Valley, I'm a Seattle native. Maybe it's because Sam's younger than I am. Maybe it's because I like the suburbs better than San Francisco proper. Maybe it's because I'm no…
Results don't scale linearly with effort. I don't know if it's worth it.
I should do a blogpost about the small business I took over from my dad, and the impact it had.
Re: Startup Playbook
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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." (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10506422 (2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item…
There's plenty of room for both models. Lifestyle businesses are awesome. 100% great. But we wouldn't have society-level upgrades like Uber, Twitter or Apple without venture capital. They just don't work any other way.
You're suffering from startup myopia.
Things like GPS are society-level upgrades. Uber is just one application of GPS.
Re: Startup Playbook
#198Re: Startup Playbook
#199> You want to start with something very simple—as little surface area as possible—and launch it sooner than you’d think Honest question: does this model apply when your product can't at any point be, for lack of a better word, half-baked? Say you're making a security product or working on control code for rocket thrusters.
Sure! Small and simple doesn't have to mean janky and shitty. You reduce scope, not reduce quality. To carry on with your two examples, I'll make up a security product and a product related to control code for rocket thrusters. For the security product, let's do a "secure storage on Dropbox" product. Version 1, you do as much as you can with with existing libraries and pieces. Use OpenSSL to handle the crypto bits. T…
Thanks, good thoughts!
Re: Startup Playbook
#200I 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…
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…
Even I kinda feel like this, they make effort to make their name out in the market, but that doesn't mean that their advice is BS, some parts of them obviously will be a little bit too far fetched because they want to serve their purpose, but it is amazing to have free startup advice like the stanford lecture that YC took. Truly amazing content.