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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

#91

Post by usmeteora »

balls187 wrote: post #90
usmeteora wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is true. I'm actually non judgmental of dancers and even strippers. I mean, for the same reasons you just said. but should this be an advertising mechanism at a tech conference? if you need a dancer to advertise your startup, then you probably have a shitty startup because your product doesnt speak for itself. So no I'm not against dancers in general, or even strippers, but there is a time and place for everythi…

Yes, your point that the men assuming women weren't engineers was incredibly sexist (although as I often joke with one of my friends when she talks about some game designer she infatuated with, by asking if she runs the game companies social media account). I do also think that it's less about Men & Women creating a sexist atmosphere, but rather, the old addage that sex sells (assuming the conference room floor was a…

ok well an afterparty is an afterpary.

and she wasnt at a Pharma Convention, she was at Google I/O. Her stuff is everywhere, and has nothing to do with Pharmaceuticals.

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

#92

Post by caseysoftware »

davemel37 wrote: post #87
caseysoftware wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that the teams that lost focused probably quietly dissolved before they got to any of our attentions. (Maybe Yahoo?) Personally, I find that there's a simple question: Does this move the company, project, or team forward in a measurable way? If the answer is "No" then you need to take a long hard look at it and explicitly decide that it's either okay and then stop doing it (ideal) or limit it.…

> Does this move the company, project, or team forward in a measurable way? I think a better question is, "Is this task consistent with our core values, value proposition, and beliefs." Limiting yourself to only measurable activities will cut you off from serendipity, which alone can make or break a startup.

Good point. And agreed.

But if the problem is lack of focus, there's a balance in there. And it's going to be different for everyone. I think that's a useful bit to remember.

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

#93

Post by Cpoll »

pbreit wrote: post #19
cableshaft wrote: post #2

Jessica asserts that conventions are too distracting and you shouldn't go to them. I don't completely agree with that. Depending on what type of business you're making, the best way to get work done is to go to conventions, because that's the only time you can easily meet with a bunch of people that are related to your industry and make new partnerships, check out new hardware/software solutions to save time or money…

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.

I'd like to echo this. If you're not experienced enough to know when it's okay to break the rule, you shouldn't break the rule.

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

#95

Post by Sidnicious »

Woah, I've been struggling with the idea of “going to conferences” (on the list of distractions).

I have personal projects that I want to finish (not a startup), and the conferences I enjoy tend to feature people showing off their own projects. Whenever I‘m at one, I think, “I’d rather be on stage, sharing something I put months (or years) of love into, than be one of the 100-1000 people in the audience watching.”

Of course, going to a conference can be inspiring, or introduce me to people or ideas that’ll shape my future work, so they’re not all bad. I’m interested in how other HN folks approach this conflict.

Semi-related, I experienced something interesting at a hacking conference a few years ago. Mid-conference, feeling inspired, I hid in the volunteer lounge for almost a whole day and worked on a reverse engineering project that I’d been fighting to understand for over a year. I solved it! Being there, and aware of all of the people and activity around me, but actively ignoring it, gave me focus and motivation. That was fascinating, and I’ve considered doing the same thing again (or finding a really interesting conference and not buying a ticket, so that I could work while I know I’m missing it).

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

#96

Post by balls187 »

usmeteora wrote: post #91
balls187 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, your point that the men assuming women weren't engineers was incredibly sexist (although as I often joke with one of my friends when she talks about some game designer she infatuated with, by asking if she runs the game companies social media account). I do also think that it's less about Men & Women creating a sexist atmosphere, but rather, the old addage that sex sells (assuming the conference room floor was a…

ok well an afterparty is an afterpary. and she wasnt at a Pharma Convention, she was at Google I/O. Her stuff is everywhere, and has nothing to do with Pharmaceuticals.

Ah sorry--the pharma comment was complete non-sequitur.

I recall that despite the medical field being roughly equal in representation of men & women, many of their conferences cater to men.

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

#97

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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.

If someone is really going to take the advice of a person they've never met so completely literally, without considering its nuances, then I suggest that they're headed for failure anyway.

Sure, it's easy to treat it as gospel (it's also easy to not think about what you're doing); doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so.

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

#98

Post by saganus »

selectron wrote: post #32
giarc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a recent YC Podcast, the guest talked about luck (sorry I can't remember who it was). The interviewer asked about how much of their success can be attributed to luck. The guest agreed that, yes, there was some luck involved but luck is like collecting lottery tickets. You can take actions with your startup to increase the chances of succeeding, just like buying more lottery tickets increases your odds (by a tiny m…

The role of luck explains why your startup succeeds while that of another person who works just as hard and is just as smart fails. Obviously hard work is important, but most startups have a lot of hard-working and smart people behind them, and yet still fail. Those that do succeed are very hard to predict. If success is unpredictable, that usually means that luck plays a large role. In general people prefer to under…

> If success is unpredictable, that usually means that luck plays a large role.

Could it be also that maybe we are not yet aware of the myriad of other factors that also influence the outcome?

i.e. it may seem like luck but it could be something we just aren't modelling properly, unless you define luck to be precisely the "bag of unknown variables". However more than once I've seen people define luck as "that ether around us that makes lucky people lucky", kind of like an external force and not something directly related to you, your surroundings and your history.

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

#100

Post by ginkgotree »

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…

So true. This was probably one of the biggest mistakes I made with my first startup. I was in a city outside of silicon valley, so there was a lot of pressure to have a lot of meetings and go talk at local conferences. I also thought that conferences in my market would be a good sales channel. In reality, it didn't. Most people at conferences just want to be entertained or distracted from their daily jobs - not a great mindset to try and sell them something. I also had no idea how incredibly distracting meetings with potential, and even current, investors can be. Lesson learned was to only talk to potential investors when you are specifically fundraising, and keep time with current investors to regularly paced meetings and updates, unless a immediate situation requires otherwise.
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