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Basing a business on a notepad app seems unwise...
PS: Any suggestions on alternatives?
Maybe fail fast should also include ... fail cheap? >Lots of once-hyped companies live on the “Remember this?” spectrum. On one end, there is a cluster of fast flameouts — the Yo-Ello-Peach-Meerkat-Stolen-Clinkle-Secret-Color coterie. That makes me think someone should create (maybe has) a start-up graveyard for folks to peruse.
I don't really think its in the self interest of someone trying to make a successful product in tech to take a landslide of outside capital to try to grow a functioning, healthy business. But its definitely in the self interest of the founders if the goal is to get big and blow up. Because getting big alone has many benefits - besides the aforementioned pay, you become connected and influential in the industry in ways that can absolve you of responsibility to outside money in your future ventures or interests.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Kinda makes me think that a lot of Unicorn style world domination or nothing, result in some business orotundities being lost if those are the only two options." I think a lot of companies are doomed because of that attitude. Companies with high valuations like Slack, Github and others can't just keep a nice business going but they have to expand like crazy to justify their valuation. And most of them end up convert…
If you want to be bold, start your Slack replacement now. Do whatever you can to make it easy to transition to your product (API compatibility, integration compatibility, etc.). Be ready to pick up the people who will be disgruntled by Slack in two or three years. You may never be as big as Slack but there's probably a business there.
What alternatives would you recommend?
Failure, in this context could either mean product or company failure, and the "fail fast" adage is usually applied to product, not company. At least as this article presents the story (executive churn, etc), it sounds like company failure is the main part of it. The issue with "unicorn" failures is that a product can be really successful in objective terms (users, revenue, profit..) but still an investment failure,…
I often think of the story of the guy who posted here about how his startup "failed" but in reality it just didn't bring in the massive cash flow that was hoped for. IIRC he bought it from the investors for cheap (so they could get it off their books) and then just ran it as one guy (maybe a few more added part time later)... and it does just fine in that conext, and who knows what might happen from there. Kinda make…
If they end up closing down or pivoting they have helped to create the market and all their users will be looking for an alternative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to be bold, start your Slack replacement now. Do whatever you can to make it easy to transition to your product (API compatibility, integration compatibility, etc.). Be ready to pick up the people who will be disgruntled by Slack in two or three years. You may never be as big as Slack but there's probably a business there.
There probably is but it’s really hard to compete with a company with deep pockets. That’s what I find pretty worrying about these unicorns. They kill a lot of potentially good smaller businesses just by being able to burn a lot of money.
Basing a business on a notepad app seems unwise...
Evernote failed because their product was sub-par. Onenote always provided better organization, better pen input. There were just numerous places in which you could see that man-hours were being placed in the wrong places.
I once read an interview with the founder of Genius, and something he said stuck with me: “I guarantee that 90% of you are working on the wrong things, and you think you’re working hard, but you might as well not be going to work at all."
Spot-on.