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Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

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Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#51

Post by mwfunk »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #5

You can do all of the above and still fail. Often, success or failure is luck-based and completely not skill-based.

Of course you can still fail- success or failure in most things in life almost always has at least an element of luck. There are things you can control and things you can't- the best you can do is optimize the things that are under your control, hope for the best, and brace for the worst.

Maybe that's all you need, maybe not. But it'll put you in the best position to take advantage of good luck, and survive bad luck. Or, perhaps you'll be one of the lucky ones who don't need luck at all, in which case those skills had better be sharp!

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#53

Post by tanker »

dasil003 wrote: post #44
pfarnsworth wrote: post #5

You can do all of the above and still fail. Often, success or failure is luck-based and completely not skill-based.

It bothers me people proclaim the importance of luck to successful startups. Usually it is either sour grapes at someone else's success, or conversely, an act humility from someone who is successful. But in either case I don't find it to be a useful sentiment. The fact is that as entrepreneurs we have agency to make decisions, and we each have uniquely imperfect information on which to base those decisions. "Luck" is…

I like the way Richard Hamming stated a similar sentiment:

" I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not."

Full Talk: http://blog.samaltman.com/you-and-your-research

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#54

Post by secstate »

cableshaft wrote: post #25
pbreit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever someone advises "don't do this", it's usually pretty easy to come up with valid reason to do this. Fine. The lesson here is either avoid the sinkhole of conferences/events. Or, if you are so inclined to go, make sure you understand that unless you are extremely focused and efficient, it is likely to be a waste of time for you.

Fair enough. It's also very easy for people to treat what she says as gospel and go "I must not go to a conventions because this very knowledgeable person who has much more experience than I do said they're not useful. So therefore they must not be useful." It goes both ways.

Ay, but it's kind of the like the road out of a forest fire. Sure, you can go both ways, but if you don't know what the hell you're doing, or are even experienced, but not an expert, best to follow the directions of those around you.

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#55

Post by verganileonardo »

kayhi wrote: post #46

"The best metric to choose is good old fashioned revenue." The best metric to choose is good old fashioned profit. I appreciate that growth can be hindered by making a profit, but isn't that what matters in the end? Amazon, Twitter, Box and many other public tech companies went public without turning a profit so it seems I'm wrong.

I would say that revenue and marginal marginal contribution are the most important. It is OK to be unprofitable of you can fix it by growing and diluting fixed costs.

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#56

Post by mathattack »

kayhi wrote: post #46

"The best metric to choose is good old fashioned revenue." The best metric to choose is good old fashioned profit. I appreciate that growth can be hindered by making a profit, but isn't that what matters in the end? Amazon, Twitter, Box and many other public tech companies went public without turning a profit so it seems I'm wrong.

Early on profit will be negative by definition. (Otherwise they wouldn't need to raise money) This is advice for hypergrowth startups, not stable companies.

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#57

Post by kross »

kayhi wrote: post #46

"The best metric to choose is good old fashioned revenue." The best metric to choose is good old fashioned profit. I appreciate that growth can be hindered by making a profit, but isn't that what matters in the end? Amazon, Twitter, Box and many other public tech companies went public without turning a profit so it seems I'm wrong.

> The best metric to choose is good old fashioned profit

I agree that ultimately, the only measure is profit for a company you are building to operate. The only caveat being that in the early stages, it may require more investment, and you don't want to sacrifice good investment to higher profit when it could mean the ultimate decline of the company (and profit). This is why there could be a period of time where the revenue measure is simplest and meaningful.

With regard to at least Amazon, I think they are focused on the long game and profitability. Twitter and others I don't follow, but I would agree that from the outside, many seem not to focus on building sustainable, profitable business without continued funding or expectation of being sold.

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#58

Post by mathattack »

Measuring the right things is very important too. I was at a company that lived and died on user counts. We grew 30X in users over my year there, but no revenue so we ultimately died. (And costs were out of control too, and we lost focus, so much of this article hits home)

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#59

Post by yishanl »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #36

Yeesh. #2 hits close to home. I think I've asked this question but I found myself a cofounder with 2 others that prioritized too highly IMO coffee meetings with "investors", no name board advisors, expensive conferences, and basically everything on that list. My approach was to gently voice my concern and but also let them do it in the hopes they'd see how useless it was. The other thing that didn't help was I was th…

Emailed.

Re: Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail

#60

Post by palakchokshi »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #36

Yeesh. #2 hits close to home. I think I've asked this question but I found myself a cofounder with 2 others that prioritized too highly IMO coffee meetings with "investors", no name board advisors, expensive conferences, and basically everything on that list. My approach was to gently voice my concern and but also let them do it in the hopes they'd see how useless it was. The other thing that didn't help was I was th…

This one hit so close to home for me too. Your comment is what I would have written except my cofounder was a non-technical guy. In the future I am going to voice my concerns a little more forcefully.
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