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Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

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Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#21

Post by kingsidharth »

drusenko wrote: post #10

Scoble is telling you what he wants to see before you show it to him and hope he writes about it, but that's literally miles away from where a startup first gets off the ground. Before even talking to Scoble, a startup should have come up with the idea, have built a first version, launched as early as possible (but only after what you have is better/more useful than what is currently out there), found a core group of…

VERY TRUE!

Don't try if you look less sexy than XYZ is NOT the way to go. Every startup has different dynamics. For some design is core for others timing might be.

Scoble is a tech blogger he hardly knows anything of startups. Oh wait, he never had one! There are just too many moving parts to declare why a startup failed, Scoble is the last person I'd ask what those parts are.

Shipping stays at top. No matter what. Even if startup fails, learning is priceless.

Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#23

Post by viandante »

Angostura wrote: post #17
viandante wrote: post #15

I am assuming Scoble is a famous guy. As he expects quality from wannabe entreprenours, I would then expect quality in his analysis, which I don't think (allow me to give a honest opinion) is true. He forgets totally about the business sector. A crappy looking app with some errors would still be years of light ahead of consolidating a P&L from 30 different excel files sent from 30 different parts of the world. Don't…

Examine what he says a little closer: "...the market is very crowded now for certain kinds of apps. Especially location-based and social network ones. So, if you're gonna pitch me something it better provide magic. Angels better sing when I open your app up. Otherwise, why should I use your app instead of Instagram, Foodspotting, Foursquare, Yelp, or my new ones, Batch, SocialCam, or Oink?" So yes, he's not concentra…

I did read that, but the focus of his article was clearly on quality good looking apps. I would push more for quality of processes. How does this app make the business more efficient? How much the client saves using this app? Etc.

He makes some good point, they just don't apply everywhere. And even if he says people are doing too many similar apps, his examples are still about the kind of apps he complains about in the first place. You see the flaw?

Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#24

Post by jiggy2011 »

If it doesn't do something with both Facebook and Twitter (with Google+ to come) then you are gonna look lame.

Am I the only person who feels slightly bored that about 50% of startups I hear about are basically all about sharing links on social networking websites?

Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#25

Post by adaml_623 »

If I say that he sounds like a Hollywood Producer talking about what he wants to see in his next script then I hope people follow the analogy.

He uses 33000 people to tell him it's good. So you get things that appeal to the average.

There is no place for niche apps and no cult hits in his world. Just the sexy and the summer blockbuster.

But there are other lots of other bloggers out there in the world.

Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#26

Post by biot »

pace wrote: post #2

Tons of useless advice from a guy who never delivered a product himself -- excuse my harsh words. Scoble was/is/stays a blogger, always blogging while having a safe job. He never raised, never started a real venture or done an exit. This guy hasn't got the vaguest idea of what it is to quit your job, start a venture and take high risks. Never experienced how the lowest points of a startup-life full of despair can fee…

That's a logical fallacy. Someone who has never been a stock broker in their life can still validly point out that a stock broker sucks when the broker squanders everything that person had on a foolish speculative investment regardless of how much blood, sweat, and tears the broker went through in losing their money.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how tough the journey is if the product you put out at the end of the process sucks. I don't think it takes an entrepreneur to call out various "me too" social/mobile/local clones for being derivative and void of innovation. The world is a harsh place and effort has never been rewarded; all that matters is results.

Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#28

Post by ekidd »

MVPs force founders to (1) talk to customers and (2) actually ship something.

Most early-stage founders I meet are working in a vacuum. They have ideas, but no way to validate those ideas against reality. Mostly, they're just wasting time on half-baked visions of world domination. The game doesn't start until you ask a customer for money.

It's a bit like whitewater kayaking: You can float around all day looking at the rapids, but eventually you've got to let the current suck you downstream towards the waves and rocks.

Now, maybe in Scoble's world, the rules are different. He sees so many startups that anything less than perfection on the first try is a failure. But this suggests that Scoble's market is getting saturated—perhaps we already have enough mobile/social/local apps for tech bloggers?

Maybe it's time to listen to patio11, and find markets where any solution at all will make users climb across their desks with a checkbook in hand.

Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#29

Post by YourAnMoran »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #24

If it doesn't do something with both Facebook and Twitter (with Google+ to come) then you are gonna look lame. Am I the only person who feels slightly bored that about 50% of startups I hear about are basically all about sharing links on social networking websites?

Well I agree. There are billions of bucks to be made in the domains of enterprise and industrial applications, and social network integration is not really a business case there - maybe just a potential security issue.

Since when did start-up become synonymous with consumer application start-up?

Re: Scoble: Why I'm treating startups more critically lately

#30

Post by patio11 »

ekidd wrote: post #28

MVPs force founders to (1) talk to customers and (2) actually ship something. Most early-stage founders I meet are working in a vacuum. They have ideas, but no way to validate those ideas against reality. Mostly, they're just wasting time on half-baked visions of world domination. The game doesn't start until you ask a customer for money. It's a bit like whitewater kayaking: You can float around all day looking at th…

It takes an awful lot of work to be the sixth most impressive thing Scoble (or the New York Times, or Techcrunch, or $PICK_A_GATEKEEPER) will see this week. It takes much, much less work to offer a better user experience than a) an Excel spreadsheet sent over email, b) having your office manager act as the endpoint to a REST API, or c) doing anything involving actual paper. These are frequently the competition in underserved markets.

There's a million fun, valuable, important problems to solve out there which you go grow old and die without ever reading about on a Valley blog.

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