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Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

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Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#31

Post by Johnie »

This post completely resonated with me as a former Googler making the leap into startup founder. It's been drinking from a firehose learning what it takes to get a product off the ground. What I've found is that the entrepreneur community is extremely supportive of each other.

For other Xoogler Entrepreneurs out there, a couple of us have started a Xooglerpreneur community with over 600+ Xoogler/Googler entrepreneurs. The group has been hosting monthly tech talks, founders lunches, and other networking events. We have active local chapters in LA and NYC with additional groups growing in Chicago and London.

There is an active Slack channel and the group is organizing an Xooglerpreneur Demo Day later this year as well as setting up an Xoogler Angel Fund.

Sign up here: http://www.xooglerpreneur.com

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#32

Post by peter_l_downs »

Johnie wrote: post #31

This post completely resonated with me as a former Googler making the leap into startup founder. It's been drinking from a firehose learning what it takes to get a product off the ground. What I've found is that the entrepreneur community is extremely supportive of each other. For other Xoogler Entrepreneurs out there, a couple of us have started a Xooglerpreneur community with over 600+ Xoogler/Googler entrepreneurs…

Sorry, what do you call yourselves again? Didn't quite catch that.

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#33

Post by dbcurtis »

jorgecurio wrote: post #25
dbcurtis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there isn't much money in solving non-problems. Instead, find people in pain, and sell them band-aids. In the 1980's I worked for an Electronic Design Automation startup (during the go-go years for EDA). Our CEO said: "If you asked customers to give a letter grade to their current EDA tools, most would give a "D" or "F". If we can get a "C" we will do great." He was very right. People in pain open their wallets…

Is my product a vitamin or a pain-killer? Excellent question.

I like that question. Keeping with the health metaphor, it forced me to think up this: "Hunt like a shark, act like an ER surgeon." Go where the customers are losing the most blood, then when you get there get them patched up and stable by the end of your shift. Eh... needs work. Another forgettable quote from the half-bakery.

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#34

Post by joelberman »

gamechangr wrote: post #3

Sales is pretty important. I read an article where Peter Thiel said that most startups fail because of difficulty in Sales and distribution. I read over and over again the value of Sales and the need for a founder to focus on "the business side", but then I still marginalize the role of sales. I'm I broken or do we all do that???

You have not yet met a really great salesperson. They will not let you marginalize them. Only the poor ones will. BTW, it is hard to have a business without customers. And whoever finds those customers is a salesperson.

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#35

Post by adventured »

brianwawok wrote: post #15
swimorsinka wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's also a misconception about how products get users. Going into this thing, I really thought it was all word of mouth. After all, that's how Google exploded. And I didn't realize that 99/100 people might not like what you built, but that 1/100 is enough to support a successful product. But you need sales and marketing to find that 1/100.

Some of it is a B2B vs B2C difference. A lot of the big apps we think of like Facebook and Google started as B2C.. where viral marking and word of mouth is what you need. If your startup is some enterprise product that cost $1000 a month.. or a small business app that cost $100 a month.. you are unlikely to get word of mouth users, and need to actually go down the sales route in one way or another.

It was also easy to convince users in 1998 to try a new search engine at least once. It's one click, zero commitment. At the time the majority of people still weren't using the Web regularly, so you're acquiring users from a rapidly expanding base; people that had no allegiance or bias in relation to an existing search engine. Further, AltaVista & Co sucked big time. Sifting through the volumes of spam in pre-Google search engines was a real pain.

Starting a Web/mobile email client today? Nearly everyone already has an email address, and they've likely had it for a long time. They're comfortable, they have a large index of emails at their current service, and eg Gmail is a 'good enough' product for most users. Extremely different scenario vs the one Google faced.

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#36

Post by supercoder »

peter_l_downs wrote: post #32
Johnie wrote: post #31

This post completely resonated with me as a former Googler making the leap into startup founder. It's been drinking from a firehose learning what it takes to get a product off the ground. What I've found is that the entrepreneur community is extremely supportive of each other. For other Xoogler Entrepreneurs out there, a couple of us have started a Xooglerpreneur community with over 600+ Xoogler/Googler entrepreneurs…

Sorry, what do you call yourselves again? Didn't quite catch that.

It's quite clever actually , it's a combination of X for 'ex' and then ...

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#37

Post by kearneyandy »

This was an interesting read in particular to contrast with other startup letters. The focus in the first point on sales and other roles is interesting because I've noticed before these posts focusing on the product (such as http://playbook.samaltman.com/). The idea that the sales and business will come naturally seems to stem from this kind of advice. It's clear that there needs to be some kind of balance that is usually not talked about.

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#38

Post by borvo »

nostrademons wrote: post #28
stevesearer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is part of the reason ad networks are are so popular - you only need to drop in code and sales is unnecessary.

It doesn't actually work that way, though - ads are worthless if people don't convert, and you make them convert by building something they actually want, and you figure out how to do that by talking to them, one-on-one. So you still need sales.

Or product management.

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#39

Post by gamechangr »

jorgecurio wrote: post #21
WJW wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of startups are founded by programmers, who know a lot about programming but not much about sales. This makes them able to see all the upcoming problems in the technical bits of the company, but not the upcoming problems in sales. Most effort is then spent on the technical side because "that's where the problems are." Kind of related to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

> This makes them able to see all the upcoming problems in the technical bits of the company, but not the upcoming problems in sales. Most effort is then spent on the technical side because "that's where the problems are." ugh. this is 100% me. spent 6 years working on a hard problem. Why? Because ironically people wouldn't pay large sums of money for it and I figured that if I made it 1000% more innovative than the…

"I can't stress enough. Startup is 80% people and 20% coding."

Agreed. I have recently come to that revelation :)

Re: Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup

#40

Post by mkramlich »

peter_l_downs wrote: post #32
Johnie wrote: post #31

This post completely resonated with me as a former Googler making the leap into startup founder. It's been drinking from a firehose learning what it takes to get a product off the ground. What I've found is that the entrepreneur community is extremely supportive of each other. For other Xoogler Entrepreneurs out there, a couple of us have started a Xooglerpreneur community with over 600+ Xoogler/Googler entrepreneurs…

Sorry, what do you call yourselves again? Didn't quite catch that.

HN jumped the shark into the realm of blatant self-promotion years ago, getting worse over time. I'll admit I've done it a few times too. Feel dirty, but, the market is a jungle.
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