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I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

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Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#231

Post by codingdave »

fredgrott wrote: post #225
guynamedloren wrote: post #106

I’m surprised the YC application hasn’t been more of a focus in this discussion. The following questions are pulled from the application (perhaps an older version): What is your company going to make? Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it does…

you miss what PG was stating, Audience and User is the balance sheet and the business plan nothing else matters.

That is half of the story. The other half is that he is looking at the people, not the product. Someone with the personality and perseverance to keeping pushing and pivoting until they hit success is going to drive YCs goals farther than someone with a solid business who won't fight through troubles or will stop instead of pivoting when needed.

Now, we can talk all day about whether that is a healthy path, to constantly drive to build Y/VC-level growth no matter what. But whether or not you buy into the "startup" lifestyle, YC absolutely does run under that model, so they seek people who match, and those people aren't identified by snazzy spreadsheets.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#232

Post by amznbyebyebye »

guynamedloren wrote: post #106

I’m surprised the YC application hasn’t been more of a focus in this discussion. The following questions are pulled from the application (perhaps an older version): What is your company going to make? Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it does…

This can be summarized much more easily as:

Why this idea?

Why you?

Why now?

What have you done?

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#233

Post by TrackerFF »

user_named wrote: post #19

The ignorance-arrogance combine. Like bragging about failing math classes in middle school.

I think a more fitting analogy would be: The student that would read for hours upon hours, get good grades, only to brag / lie about not studying at all. "Easy test, I didn't even study. I guess I'm just really smart"

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#234

Post by everyone »

How are business plans not just guesswork? In practice how often does what actually happens to the business irl conform to the plan? And how closely? Like if you make 25% more profit in one year than planned than that's clearly way off and counts as not conforming.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#236

Post by greatgib »

onion2k wrote: post #133
guynamedloren wrote: post #106

I’m surprised the YC application hasn’t been more of a focus in this discussion. The following questions are pulled from the application (perhaps an older version): What is your company going to make? Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it does…

These questions cover product description, value prop, market analysis, financial projections and more, all of which are the core of a “business plan”. There is a key difference though - none of the YC questions are about the planning bit of a business plan. None of them are about what you're going to do in the near term future. It's all about what you've done so far and where you believe you could be when you exit.…

The point about the business plan and planning, is not really to be able to 'predict' accurately the future, but to ensure of having a well known project:

Ensuring that you did think well about the threats, menaces, and what could impact your future growth. And so you have already evaluated mitigations for them.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#237

Post by selfhifive »

baxtr wrote: post #223
guynamedloren wrote: post #106

I’m surprised the YC application hasn’t been more of a focus in this discussion. The following questions are pulled from the application (perhaps an older version): What is your company going to make? Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it does…

That business plans are a bad thing is becoming a meme. It's great to get some (many in PGs case) likes on twitter and that's about it. A business plan is great to have because it forces you to think through all the important pieces of the business. Many great companies had one, e.g. Apple (as mentioned by someone else in this thread). Amazon has detailed Word documents for anything they dive into. Of course, plannin…

The question is not about the general utility of business plans. It's about whether they're good for early stage startups.

These kind of organisations need to move fast and try a lot of stuff in a short amount of time to see what works. A business plan then seems expedient because the future direction is not set in stone anyway.

That's the logic behind the argument.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#238

Post by lupire »

onion2k wrote: post #195
exdsq wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they had one, Apple did https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5125

They may well have done, and plenty of other startups will have done too, and their experience of how wrong it would have been is likely to be the sort of evidence that pg has used to inform his position.

And now the thread loops

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30320281

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#239

Post by lupire »

nouveaux wrote: post #173
jcrben wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all just semantic nonsense. YC has no more profound understanding of the noun "business plan" than anyone else in the business world. Don't overthink it

To be fair, there is a pretty concrete idea of what a traditional business plan looks like. Traditional business plans are needed if you want a small business loan from a bank. If you try to get a small business loan from the bank with a YC application, you'll get laughed out of the bank. A YC app is quite different from a business plan and most people would not see it as the same thing.

And YC isn't a venture capitalist or angel investor either: it is a company that provides funding and advice to startups.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#240

Post by lupire »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #185
majani wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And assertive. No ifs, buts or maybes

Slight tangent: I wish there were legitimate threats to kill social media as it stands today. Any threat to the current business model, from anywhere.

EU is piling on threats to tracking for ads, data sharing, multinationalism.
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