I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the QUT CAUSEE study. They actually did follow a group of early-stage startups, interviewing them each year and then afterwards looked at what factors predicted success or failure. Some of their results: - changing direction as a result of customer feedback (very, very good, one of the best predictors of success) - having an accountant (good) - having one parent born overseas (helpf…
Never heard of it, although I work just up the road from the Garden's Point campus. Where can I find a summary?
Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
151–160 of 171 posts
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#152BS feels heavy handed, but I sense her/his point. Paraphrasing:
Stop following and look for your own magic.
Yeah. Pleny of cookie-cutter knock off wannabe brands and products would benefit from such thoughts.
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is they're not saying "ONLY do things that don't scale". It's more like, "from time to time, ALSO do things that don't scale". Which, as I said, I think is good advice, but also pretty common sense.
> common sense Is this a meaningful category of knowledge?
[deleted]
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference is the prior. There's strong prior reason to believe not paying payroll tax is not going to end well. The theoretical basis is simple, clear, well-reasoned, and supported by strong evidence in adjacent realms (i.e. the IRS takes taxes taxes pretty seriously). Whereas the prior on the validity of something like "early-stage founders should live with their customers" is much weaker. Even though the advic…
> Whereas the prior on the validity of something like "early-stage founders should live with their customers" is much weaker. There's a pretty strong theoretical reason for that as well: startups succeed because they make something customers want; the more time the person making product decisions spends with times with customers, the more information they can gather about what the customers want; and the more the cus…
That’s an overly wide definition of living with your customers to be useful. Apple for example was selling people kit computers at the start, they did not really have much interaction with or feedback from their customers. Nor could they do much to adapt their product with customer feedback.
I mean if all you mean is have even a tiny amount feedback from a few of your customers. That’s going to include almost every company.
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#155Carnap vs Popper
Popper = create hypothesis and falsify
Carnap = see instances and use induction to create hypothesis
Everything else they say about the scientific method is the same.
Herbert Simon, in thinking of sciences of the artificial, used the Carnap method to create a ton of valuable science.
It's not that post-facto is bad - carnap showed otherwise.
It's about the quality of the science and the specificity of the recommendations, that lead to bs.
For instance you can mitigate for survivorship bias by studying the dead as well as the living, and driving deep into the differences. But that's a lot of work!
As a theory, effectuation studies the difference in decision making processes between expert entrepreneurs and corporate CEOs. The result, while similarly post-facto, is delightful. See effectuation.org - Vinod Khosla remarked it was the first useful study on entrepreneurship he had ever read.
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#156My marriage advice is always this: "Don't listen to any marriage advice except mine". I suppose if I wrote a longer version it would sound like this article.
"Marry my wife. It worked for me!"
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#157The issue isn't that its ex-post, it's how theory is built. There are better and more credible resources/work on this topic than a blog post.
The most common terms I've seen that gets used in academic research that is critical of how theories about entrepreneurship are built are 'mythifciation' and 'reification'...
e.g., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-6486.00...
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#158My marriage advice is always this: "Don't listen to any marriage advice except mine". I suppose if I wrote a longer version it would sound like this article.
But can you imagine starting a marriage never having heard any advice or even seen a marriage in person? You were raised by wolves, but one day you came to the village, met a girl, and now a guy in a robe says you're married. How much trial and error will it take to become a good husband? You should go acquire some wisdom by asking people.
Many startup founders are basically in that situation for a dozen kinds of relationships. They've never hired, never closed a sale, never rented an office, never tried to collect a late payment, never fired someone, never raised VC money, never hired a marketing firm... Those things aren't rocket science and you can certainly learn to do any of them, but noob mistakes are expensive and you don't have a big cushion of time and money. So it's good to have someone to talk your plans over with first.
A lot of advice does come down to "That's a standard problem, and here's a standard way to solve it that works fine." That's fundamentally conservative advice, but startups seem to do best if they innovate only on the few things that make them unique and just do the standard thing for everything else.
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Whereas the prior on the validity of something like "early-stage founders should live with their customers" is much weaker. There's a pretty strong theoretical reason for that as well: startups succeed because they make something customers want; the more time the person making product decisions spends with times with customers, the more information they can gather about what the customers want; and the more the cus…
That’s an overly wide definition of living with your customers to be useful. Apple for example was selling people kit computers at the start, they did not really have much interaction with or feedback from their customers. Nor could they do much to adapt their product with customer feedback. I mean if all you mean is have even a tiny amount feedback from a few of your customers. That’s going to include almost every c…
"Spend the relevant type of time with the appropriately targeted type of users"
Re: Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs
#160I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the QUT CAUSEE study. They actually did follow a group of early-stage startups, interviewing them each year and then afterwards looked at what factors predicted success or failure. Some of their results: - changing direction as a result of customer feedback (very, very good, one of the best predictors of success) - having an accountant (good) - having one parent born overseas (helpf…
Never heard of it, although I work just up the road from the Garden's Point campus. Where can I find a summary?