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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

#31

Post by nandemo »

david927 wrote: post #14
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…

No please do take this as advice on how to get a startup off the ground. There's more here than "Scoble wants polished startups." What he's saying is that many products are similar to other efforts with additional features. That's not going to cut it. Page Rank wasn't a little bit better than existing search engines. It wasn't Yahoo but with feature x,y,z; it was a completely new approach to vetting results. I won't…

I don't know, he doesn't sound like he would've given a damn about PageRank if Sergey and Larry had gone to talk to him back then. He might have dismissed the first version of Google because they didn't index as many pages as the leading search engines. Look at his own example:

> Another company tonight that I met showed me a similar app, when I started it up (I do that while you talk to me) it gave me an error. Gone.

For all we know that company might have created some revolutionary technology but, who knows, their build system is still crappy and they forgot to change a symlink somewhere?

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

#32

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#33

Post by mjbellantoni »

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?

Not at all.

Am I the only person who feels that social media is a lot of work with little reward?

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

#34

Post by david927 »

nandemo wrote: post #31
david927 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No please do take this as advice on how to get a startup off the ground. There's more here than "Scoble wants polished startups." What he's saying is that many products are similar to other efforts with additional features. That's not going to cut it. Page Rank wasn't a little bit better than existing search engines. It wasn't Yahoo but with feature x,y,z; it was a completely new approach to vetting results. I won't…

I don't know, he doesn't sound like he would've given a damn about PageRank if Sergey and Larry had gone to talk to him back then. He might have dismissed the first version of Google because they didn't index as many pages as the leading search engines. Look at his own example: > Another company tonight that I met showed me a similar app, when I started it up (I do that while you talk to me) it gave me an error. Gone…

he doesn't sound like he would given a damn about PageRank

He wouldn't have. If probably wouldn't have -- if they pitched the idea but the site wasn't working. But the first time I used Google I said, "Wow! This is vastly superior to anything else."

If I understand him correctly, he's not saying, "Don't launch until it's perfect." He's saying, "Differentiate yourself." He can't see that if your site doesn't work or it's just Existing Site X with a couple more features. An MVP works. An MVP shows how it is Significantly Different. In fact, that's exactly the purpose of an MVP -- not to show that you could build and publish.

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

#35

Post by DanielRibeiro »

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…

Couldn't agree more. What many people fail to realize is that MVP is not about succeeding. It is about failing!

If most startups fail, and your idea is most likely to fail, the best way to find something that works is to fail, pivot, and fail again, until you get something people want.

The MVP entices this fail/pivot loop to happen as fast as possible.

And Scobble is right! If you are still on the failing phase, you shouldn't be seeking attention. Failing silently makes the whole experience less traumatic. And then we can move on to refraiming fail fast to learn fast.

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

#36

Post by mgkimsal »

pace wrote: post #12
revorad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we listen to him? Because he spends a lot of time looking at new products and technologies. He really tries them out. He does fantastic interviews with founders, often asking quite good questions about the products. He's built a huge network of people who consider him a credible source for new product recommendations. Getting featured by him can be huge for an early stage product. Just because someone is a…

Everybody can - spend a lot of time with new products and tech (no achievement) - try them really out (no achievement) - do interviews and they are not fantastic (no achievement) - nowadays build a huge network w/Facebook, G+, LinkedIn (no achievment) It is no achievement to blog while sitting for years at Microsoft doing some wishy-washy corporate job. But it is an achievement to build a startup, get traction and ra…

He hasn't been at Microsoft in years, and has taken positions at 'upstart' type companies or divisions within larger companies (podtech and rackspace spring to mind).

His 'blogging from his safe job' involves a fair amount of travel, disruption to routine home/family life, and an insane amount of work that goes in to his productions (hint - he does a lot of video, not just 'text blogging').

All that said, I think he (and most of tech journalism) has given most startups a bit of a free pass, and glad to see his current stance (although it feels about 5 years too late).

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

#37

Post by JulianMiller520 »

I'm reminded of a scene in the now-defunct "Playmakers" TV series. It entails a football player mouthing off to an aide who then bets the player that he can get the ball further down the field than the arrogant player. The player takes the bet and launches the ball a solid distance down the field. The aide waits for a maintenance cart to drive past. He tosses the ball into the back of the cart and watches as it rolls past the player's ball.

The player assumed that winning the game depended on his arm alone when the truth was many things had to align with that arm to win games. The vantage point from the turf isn't the only one.

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

#38

Post by 9oliYQjP »

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…

Isn't Scoble famous for being the guy who essentially took Microsoft, then facing uncertain times because of lack of direction, and suggest that one of their top priorities be to embrace employee blogging at all levels? It's the early 2000s and in the midst of unprecedented competition on all fronts -- everything from the iPod, to the LAMP stack (and its brethren), to Google -- he managed to convince Microsoft to get their employees to take what was essentially their 20% time and apply it not to a concerted defensive product response. But instead, he convinced them that their best strategy was to blog about wtf they were working on with Longhorn instead of, you know, preparing some voice recognition demos that actually didn't screw up because of an echo in the auditorium and threaten to kill (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1123221217782777472).

Bravo, the guy is really convincing. But he's a marketer and his opinions should be sandboxed as such. He's right, the bar is really really really damn high now. But he has hasn't a clue on what it takes to get your chin up above the bar. I see a fat guy at a chin up bar and see somebody who, if they ate healthier and did some exercise, could do ten chin-ups easily. He sees a fat guy who shouldn't even bother to try.

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