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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

#151

Post by logicallee »

ap22213 wrote: post #47
logicallee wrote: post #23

Could someone help me understand her list under Point 2, Stay Focused? She writes: >One of the most conspicuous patterns we’ve seen among the thousand startups we’ve funded is that the most successful founders are always totally focused on their product and their users. To the point of being fanatical. The best founders don’t have time to get caught up in other things. >Here’s a list of things that I see easily distr…

Having failed because of some of those reasons, I think it's because those activities are very time-consuming and distract from being fanatical about the product. It would be different if they were fruitful, but more often (in my experience) they are dead-ends, and worse they spawn other activities that are dead-ends. It becomes a huge time sink. That said, it seems difficult to make legit connections without having…

I think I misread it. She actually said:

>The best founders don’t have time to get caught up in other things.

>Here’s a list of things that I see easily distract founders.

So if you don't get "caught up" in it it's important; while they can "easily distract" founders, they're important. I think she might have gone too far stating that they're the startup equivalent of "wolves in sheeps’ clothing", because wolves in sheeps clothing presumably are only out to hurt you - but read this way her point comes across well. Spending too much time with them ends up hurting you, even though they can be important. I mean one of them is Networking... try building a startup without that.

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

#152

Post by Retra »

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…

If your understanding of success is "be an entrepreneur who makes decisions", then there is no luck involved. But that is not most entrepreneurs' understanding of success. So this isn't about making decisions, it's about having those decisions be accepted and rewarded by a reactionary and fickle culture. And that takes a lot of luck.

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

#154

Post by pbreit »

sbov wrote: post #130
cableshaft wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's somewhat circular reasoning, but my view would be: if you're so inexperienced such that you will blindly follow her advice then you should blindly follow her advice. If you aren't so inexperienced such that you don't blindly follow her advice then you're probably OK to not blindly follow her advice. This is basically true for every field ever. Generally recommended practices are most important for beginners. Onc…

But in this case, there are a lot of somewhat experienced people who (mistakenly) think conferences are likely to be valuable. Those are the folks who would be wise to listen to such advice.

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

#155

Post by Frondo »

birken wrote: post #109
akg_67 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The networking is the personal insurance policy by your cofounders against startup failure. The people connections built during networking events will land these cofounders leadership/management positions at other companies if and when startup fails instead of being unemployable or starting at the bottom. The founders, typically technical co-founders, that don't network has no such insurance in place and tend to go b…

The problem with this line of thinking is that smart companies: 1) Aren't going to hire somebody for a leadership position because they met them networking --- they are going to hire them based on merit 2) The people in charge of smart companies aren't at networking events because networking events are a waste of time Startups are a way to "level up" your career only because you can skip years of moving up a corporat…

"Aren't going to hire somebody for a leadership position because they met them networking" -- Agreed with sibling posts; relationship-building is extremely important for anyone who wants to be in a leadership role. People will trust you and listen to your ideas when they know you, after all.

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

#157

Post by taneq »

dang wrote: post #79
danso wrote: post #40

> 1. Make something people want. I haven't had a ton of experience in startups...once I had to work out of a startup space. And it amazed me the number of conversations I would hear between aspiring entrepreneurs and random strangers that were variations of, "Please tell me if you think this is a good idea". Everyone knows what it's like to want something. I didn't really hear about Tinder until after it blew up into…

It's well-established, within YC at least, that solving a problem you yourself have is one of the strongest foundations for a startup. Edit: actually Jessica says it in her talk: My advice to those of you who are still looking for an idea is to solve a problem that you yourself have. Then you’ll know it’s something at least one person really wants. And when you’re part of the target market, you’ll have insights about…

That makes perfect sense. You're going to be best able to judge the quality of the dogfood you're making if you are in fact a dog.

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

#158

Post by taneq »

Cpoll wrote: post #93
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.

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.

Sadly if you're not experienced enough to know when it's okay to break the rule, you probably don't know whether or not you're experienced enough to break the rule.

That experience comes from breaking the rule and living through the outcome.

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

#159

Post by pedalpete »

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…

Thankfully, with the exception of PR, I loathe all the things in #2. I'll do them when I have to, but that's it.

Of course, it's REALLY hard to do PR when you don't have a product people love, really easy once you've got that. Keeping it fresh and top of mind is a challenge for many founders though.

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

#160

Post by blrgeek »

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…

I think the dichotomy is

A. Go to customer/user conferences? YES YES YES!

B. Go to startup or generic conferences? Not more than once or twice a year.

Everyone in this thread seems to be mixing up the two.

Now unless you're selling to other startups, her advice is crystal clear.

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