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Hard Startups

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Hard Startups

#251

Post by kristiandupont »

ublaze wrote: post #177
kristiandupont wrote: post #4

Before I started Submotion, I did a fairly thorough analysis of what kind of startup I wanted to create. I decided that I wanted to create something that - was B2B. Consumers are fickle, things can explode but they can also go out of style just as fast. It's more sexy and makes for better smalltalk but my assessment is that they are much more difficult to grow predictably. - targets SME's. I am somewhat extroverted f…

Once you decided what kind of startup you want to make, how did you actually find a problem that fits that criteria? That's the part where I'm stuck now.

I've heard (or read) someone say that every Excel sheet is a startup waiting to be made. Submotion very literally replaces Excel or Google Sheets for people to the point where I am considering making the UI more spreadsheet-like.

It was hard for me too. I happened to consult for a company where someone got fired and was disgruntled about it. They hadn't had all of their accounts closed and went and did damage. It occurred to me that this must be something a lot of companies struggle with and so I decided to try it out. I spent two months just writing and calling people before I felt confident enough that this was a real problem.

So try and think of places you have worked or the place where you work if such a place exists. What kind of time consuming and tedious processes do they have that could be optimized? Could you talk to someone there about that?

Re: Hard Startups

#252

Post by imafish »

Paul-ish wrote: post #237
FiatLuxDave wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former fusion startup founder here. This is a very good point. My startup took 6 years to fail and much of our competition at the time is still at it 20 years later. There are a number of things which are also impedance mismatches between the typical SV startup mode and hard startups. One of these is the failure path. When an adtech startup fails, the founders just go get well-paying jobs at a FAANG, or at least that…

Gosh, a lot of what you are talking about sounds like what it is like to finish a PhD that doesn't have a future in academia as well. Sometimes I feel like a failure for choosing software engineering, but I should probably be grateful I have that option.

Many people can only dream of getting a degree that’s an instant ticket to upper middle class life.

Re: Hard Startups

#253

Post by kristiandupont »

pier25 wrote: post #121
kristiandupont wrote: post #4

Before I started Submotion, I did a fairly thorough analysis of what kind of startup I wanted to create. I decided that I wanted to create something that - was B2B. Consumers are fickle, things can explode but they can also go out of style just as fast. It's more sexy and makes for better smalltalk but my assessment is that they are much more difficult to grow predictably. - targets SME's. I am somewhat extroverted f…

How is Submotion doing btw?

Growing slowly but steadily :-) We don't have product/market fit yet and we are just one of at least 5 companies trying to figure out what this new category of "SaaS Management" actually means, so we'll see where we all end up.

Re: Hard Startups

#254

Post by acidburnNSA »

pfdietz wrote: post #155
otoburb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you attempted another fusion startup today would the odds of success be higher, or is fusion still about as far away as it was 20 years ago?

Fusion used to be aiming at being better than fission, because that was the default post-fossil energy source. But now renewables are cheaper than that. So the competition has gotten better since then, and continues to improve rapidly, and it's not clear fusion can ever get cheap enough to compete with them. Another argument is that fusion reactors will require robots to maintain them (even the aneutronic ones will b…

People say that about molten salt fission reactors too. The maintenance robots will need maintenance robots. Just sell the robots.

Lots of people still in fission and fusion are assuming trouble with renewables related to intermittency, land use, grid integration, EROI, raw materials, etc. might arise as we approach deep decarb. If that doesn't happen, wonderful! If it does, then it may be nice to have some low-carbon atomic power stations on hand or in work to diversify the risk.

It's basically the nuclear Pascal's wager.

With a big risk like climate change, there's room for investors who choose to take an interest in nuclear.

Fossil fuels still power the vast majority of the world. It's not yet clear that we're out of that woods.

For instance, Japan just announced that they're building 33 new coal plants to replace their atomic power stations. How on earth does one reconcile this with the game-over-renewables-are-already-cheaper-than-everything popular narrative?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/japan-coal-fukush...

Re: Hard Startups

#255

Post by anovikov »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #63
pjdemers wrote: post #7

The problem with startups building hard tech is it takes a long time to fail. Failures that take decades doesn't work in the startup model. Image working on a fusion reactor. It might take 25 years to fail. The failure may not be that your idea doesn't work, but because some other kind of reactor comes along that is a better business (ie, cheaper). At this point, you are now a world class expert at a technology that…

Former fusion startup founder here. This is a very good point. My startup took 6 years to fail and much of our competition at the time is still at it 20 years later. There are a number of things which are also impedance mismatches between the typical SV startup mode and hard startups. One of these is the failure path. When an adtech startup fails, the founders just go get well-paying jobs at a FAANG, or at least that…

I wonder, was it an honest attempt? After 20 years, you certainly have nothing to hide. I mean, did they expect it to work, or they were just having fun working on a hard problem they loved working on, for someone else's money?

Re: Hard Startups

#256

Post by tzhenghao »

m0zg wrote: post #82
FiatLuxDave wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former fusion startup founder here. This is a very good point. My startup took 6 years to fail and much of our competition at the time is still at it 20 years later. There are a number of things which are also impedance mismatches between the typical SV startup mode and hard startups. One of these is the failure path. When an adtech startup fails, the founders just go get well-paying jobs at a FAANG, or at least that…

How do you maintain momentum at these kinds of time scales? When I ran engineering at a startup, I tried to structure things such that we deliver something worthwhile at some kind of predictable cadence. It's the best set-up for everyone: the employees feel like they've accomplished someting, the investors feel like there's progress being made. With software this is pretty easy to do (and even so, people often fail t…

Might be a non-answer, but I think this really depends on how much leverage you have in pulling engineering + product culture levers.

In my experience, you need to first define a small set of north star metrics that lead to the promised land, which could be years, if not a decade away. Ideally, this should not be more than 3 so there's focus in the long term. If you define this well, everybody will understand the significance of it and be aligned to hit those objectives. Any increase, exponential or not, is progress the team should feel proud of. This is 80% of the "selling" for long time scale projects.

Once you've done that, all other initiatives should focus on improving only these metrics. Generally speaking, very aggressive milestones and keeping that momentum going, while not punishing teams for missing targets will move the needle faster than the other way round.

Re: Hard Startups

#257

Post by pnako »

1996 wrote: post #221
pnako wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wifi is not a counter example. The underlying technology was invented at CSIRO, the Australian government research agency.

Something must be invented somewhere. All I say is government research is not necessarily "better". It just is.

I don't know if it's better or worse, but since governments have a much longer time horizon they can fund more basic research.

Re: Hard Startups

#259

Post by everybodyknows »

starpilot wrote: post #125
jkubicek wrote: post #49

I feel like the money quote was buried in the postscript. > Another solution to this problem is to think about startups that can become quite successful with less than ten people. As compensation packages from the giant tech companies continue to increase, I suspect this will become a trend. As cash comp at big public companies grow and the future value of startup options plummet, we need to start thinking about diff…

Side note, but I've noticed how less/fewer confusion has ceased being considered a grammatical error. Interesting since pg has previously stated how important good writing is, and the YC app contained the same error.

Case in point: Whole Foods in the pre-Amazon, MacKay era had "Ten Items or Fewer" signage at checkstands. A few weeks after the sale, it was "Ten Items or Less".
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