111–120 of 188 posts
I've been involved in the early stages of a number of non-profits, time-and-time again it's clearly been determination above all else that drives success.
I recently read "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas" (It's sort of like Founders at Work but about non-profits), and again reading all the founders stories, it's clear the single factor that unites them is their determination about their cause.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, because in most startups there's a point where things seem hopeless. At that point the startup itself has no power to hold you together, because its expected value is (or appears to be) zero. You need a strong friendship to keep you together. E.g. I know for sure there were lots of times when Rtm thought Viaweb was never going to amount to anything, and only worked on it because I asked him to.
Were Woz and Jobs "friends"? Don't Page and Brin claim explicitly they weren't? It seems more like the shared purpose brought those pairs closer together than where they started or where they would have ended up had they never worked together. That example of Viaweb helps clarify the distinction I'm thinking of. You guys were friends and so worked together despite differing convictions. But what of people who share a…
I believe the answer to that is "absolutely". They certainly weren't in it for the money at first. Woz had to be very explicitly convinced to leave his nice job at H-P even after they had built the first Apple PC.
If you insist that their friendship was somehow bogus because real friendships do not involve "shared purpose", I'm not sure I have any friends, by your weird definition. My high school friends had the shared purpose of playing games and entering math contests. My college friends had the shared purpose of graduating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Were Woz and Jobs "friends"? Don't Page and Brin claim explicitly they weren't? It seems more like the shared purpose brought those pairs closer together than where they started or where they would have ended up had they never worked together. That example of Viaweb helps clarify the distinction I'm thinking of. You guys were friends and so worked together despite differing convictions. But what of people who share a…
I don't know about Woz/Jobs, but Page/Brin were definitely friends when they started a company . They may not have been friends when they started collaborating on their first research project, but at the moment they were "co-founders", they had already become friends.
My concern about Paul's vision has always been (2), flexibility. It is my humble belief that you should care what you succeed at, not just that you succeed at something. On this point Paul seems to be leading in the opposite direction from Tim O'Reilly ("work on stuff that matters"), and I wish he would do a 180.
I know how you feel, but if that empirically produces a lower probability of success then what can you do?
"We thought when we started Y Combinator that the most important quality would be intelligence." Being intelligent in Silicon Valley matters about as much as the price of tea in China. It's not that being intelligent isn't important, it's that there is such an oversupply of intelligent people that being intelligent really doesn't add that much value or differentiate you. Especially since everyone you meet is more tha…
That fifth item, like the post originally mentioning as something that dooms startups, gets me every time. Having a solid co-founder seems to be the hardest part, and honestly, it helps with all the others. It helps you be more flexible since two people can see things more ways. Gives you more imagination by the same route. It helps you be more determined since one can pull the other up if he/she gets too demoralized…
> I'm also surprised that none of these points mention marketing - an ability to sell something seems vital in getting a startup going. I agree. One of the best assets for a good founder with tech-skills is a business/marketing founder. She can keep the ball rolling on the business things that would halt or slow software development, and during development she can be out discussing the product with potential customer…
That startup sort of burned out, for reasons not worth going into. If we could find a new idea on a topic we're both passionate about (like travel), we'd pursue it.
Also, she's more technical (front-end) while I'm also technical (back-end), and neither of us have much business/marketing background.
I'm still skeptical about the whole co-founder thing. Sure, maybe if you're building youtube or justin.tv, and you need to talk to investors or talk face-to-face to potential clients or make deals with giant media corporations gasp then you probably can't do it as a single-founder. But, there is a large space of problems that can be solved by a single founder. But I suppose if you're determined enough you won't be bo…
The purpose of a cofounder is not to help alleviate load. It is to have someone tell you no, that your idea/implementation/justification sucks. They question your moves and make you justify them. Having a cofounder keeps you in check and keeps you from straying too far off the successful path.
AFAIK, PG's argument is that it's a lot of stress doing a startup on your own.