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Startup = Growth

paulgraham.com

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Re: Startup = Growth

#141

Post by DASD »

apinstein wrote: post #138
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #94

- Venture Capital pouring millions into untried businesses. - The crazy valuations. - The recent complains of VCs that "Entrepreneurs aren't working on enough big ideas". It all actually makes sense now. It's all in the name of Big Risk = Big Reward style ventures. Especially after defining a "startup" as a company meant to grow rapidly and to massive proportions. Not necessarily a tech business. Not an online store…

We need a "slow startup" movement. pg's definition of a startup is just one kind of startup. I like to call it the VC startup. It's an organization whose goal is to succeed big or fail, and fast. This "charter" is driven by the needs of investors, and I get that. It makes perfect sense, and from where pg's sitting, it's the attitude he needs to have to successfully manage his portfolio. But it's not the only way to g…

Perhaps even applaud "slow" in the sense of longterm as a movement. It applies to not only "startups."

Joel Spolsky wrote a great article about this in 2009 that also had an active discussion here.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920668

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/does-slow-growth-equal-...

Re: Startup = Growth

#142

Post by readyfounder »

apinstein wrote: post #138
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #94

- Venture Capital pouring millions into untried businesses. - The crazy valuations. - The recent complains of VCs that "Entrepreneurs aren't working on enough big ideas". It all actually makes sense now. It's all in the name of Big Risk = Big Reward style ventures. Especially after defining a "startup" as a company meant to grow rapidly and to massive proportions. Not necessarily a tech business. Not an online store…

We need a "slow startup" movement. pg's definition of a startup is just one kind of startup. I like to call it the VC startup. It's an organization whose goal is to succeed big or fail, and fast. This "charter" is driven by the needs of investors, and I get that. It makes perfect sense, and from where pg's sitting, it's the attitude he needs to have to successfully manage his portfolio. But it's not the only way to g…

Couldn't agree more. PG's definition of "startup" aside, there are plenty of high growth businesses that started at a measured pace, with little or no outside capital, found a market sweet spot, then scaled rapidly (usually with later stage capital)... Maybe they're not startups, but they are highly successful businesses with high impact and wealthy founders. Not easy to do, but perhaps at least as likely to succeed as a classically defined startup (whether tech or non-tech).

Re: Startup = Growth

#144

Post by rdudekul »

Paul Graham is a hero all technology startup founders need to look up to. Who else can say "the constraint of growing at a certain rate can help define a startup", so well?

It is rare to find a blog post that has so much insight that you will need to read it slowly and then read it again even more slowly.

Re: Startup = Growth

#145

Post by blakeweb »

asknemo wrote: post #91

Am I the only one who think pg's view points appear to be getting more and more extreme, in some sense rather biased compared to his previous essays? Zynga is definitely all about growth. It is fiercely focused on metrics, fiercely focused on growth. But as someone from game industry, we cannot agree that this model is THE model that gives the world and everyone value. If the game industry worked like the way pg desc…

"Growth drives everything in this world."

I think you're choosing one single sentence and taking it out of context, in other words, misunderstanding. By "this world", I took pg to mean the high-tech area of economic activity, with silicon valley serving as a figurative stand-in. I don't think pg means that every single thing in the world is driven by growth. The essay is about what makes a company a startup, and how a startup can be successful. The essay is not about what is most important in the world.

Re: Startup = Growth

#146

Post by outside1234 »

apinstein wrote: post #138
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #94

- Venture Capital pouring millions into untried businesses. - The crazy valuations. - The recent complains of VCs that "Entrepreneurs aren't working on enough big ideas". It all actually makes sense now. It's all in the name of Big Risk = Big Reward style ventures. Especially after defining a "startup" as a company meant to grow rapidly and to massive proportions. Not necessarily a tech business. Not an online store…

We need a "slow startup" movement. pg's definition of a startup is just one kind of startup. I like to call it the VC startup. It's an organization whose goal is to succeed big or fail, and fast. This "charter" is driven by the needs of investors, and I get that. It makes perfect sense, and from where pg's sitting, it's the attitude he needs to have to successfully manage his portfolio. But it's not the only way to g…

After several "fast startups" I'm with you on this. We're doing it slow this time - no VCs, bootstrapped - and it is making a huge difference. Focus is on building a service that people will pay for so we can keep building the service instead of wasting tons of time doing the "VC money dance." It has helped tremendously in almost everything - more time with family - more time working on the product than on VC stroking - more focus on the customer.

I'm on the slow startup train and I'm never going back.

Re: Startup = Growth

#147

Post by ozataman »

caf wrote: post #135
ozataman wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there is something about this startup model I don't quite like. To be upfront, I am not arguing what the word startup means - the society is free to assign to it any meaning it wants and what Paul describes here is a clear, specific meaning that's as good as any. What makes me uneasy is the model itself and what it implies for the entrepreneur. To me, it makes the most sense for the VCs and other investors who…

It's not so much "who cares if you're inefficient" - if you really have found that goldmine then you have to tear into it quickly, because if you slow down to get that extra efficiency then a faster, less efficient competitor will dig it out from under you.

Right, that's a better wat to put what I intended to convey implicitly.

Re: Startup = Growth

#148

Post by photon137 »

apinstein wrote: post #138
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #94

- Venture Capital pouring millions into untried businesses. - The crazy valuations. - The recent complains of VCs that "Entrepreneurs aren't working on enough big ideas". It all actually makes sense now. It's all in the name of Big Risk = Big Reward style ventures. Especially after defining a "startup" as a company meant to grow rapidly and to massive proportions. Not necessarily a tech business. Not an online store…

We need a "slow startup" movement. pg's definition of a startup is just one kind of startup. I like to call it the VC startup. It's an organization whose goal is to succeed big or fail, and fast. This "charter" is driven by the needs of investors, and I get that. It makes perfect sense, and from where pg's sitting, it's the attitude he needs to have to successfully manage his portfolio. But it's not the only way to g…

Couldn't agree more - let the entrepreneurs define and live the term "startup" - not the VCs.

(PS: After sleeping over pg's essay, I found it much less convincing the next day - implicitly, he's mixing up price with value, ignoring the temporal nature of markets and of opportunities - Google couldn't have been a startup in 1989 and Ford was a startup in the 1910s - and disregarding multi-product and B2B startups (premium Tibetan to Hungarian services) altogether. The clincher from yesterday - weekly growth of 7% - sounds like utter BS today.)

EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. I'm just pointing out that this article only and only defines a startup in terms of its worthiness to investors. It's as misleading as any other single-formula characterization of a complex multi-agent system. Startups != Growth, period.

Re: Startup = Growth

#150

Post by tptacek »

carsongross wrote: post #123
gruseom wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But doesn't that picture track the current essay rather well? Apart from a false start that turns out to be noise, it shows a series of experiments that don't go anywhere for a while but eventually produce a repeatable growth rate. If the diagram were data, the essay would explain it.

Not at all. Notice that Paul says you should be alarmed if you are not hitting 5/7% growth per week . That kind of growth only makes up a tiny fraction of "the process" and, in my opinion, is the easy part to deal with. The hard part, where VC/gurus can add value is the vast gut-it-out parts, but this essay hurts more than it helps on that axis. I think this is an essay more about "startups y combinator can flip to V…

I found this essay exasperating, but YC doesn't "flip startups to VC". That's not how it works.
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