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Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

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Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#91

Post by pg »

psycho wrote: post #86
pg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating two distinct ideas: optimizing for the success of an idea, and optimizing for the success of a startup. They're not the same thing, because a startup can switch ideas. In her talk Jessica mentioned OrderAhead, which went through 5 ideas before the current one.

And what do you think about concept "Do fast and fail fast" meaning in general that you should give up idea (and startup that was based on this idea) as fast as you can if you find out that idea doesn't work? I agree with "smart pivots" idea but "fail fast" is one thing that I don't understand in "Lean startup" concept as I'm quite persistent and I understand that in general it takes several years for startup to succ…

Failing fast means that if an idea has a fatal flaw, you want to discover it as early as possible. When you phrase it that way, it's hard to see how anyone could be against it. This is for example why I encourage startups to launch quickly.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#92

Post by pg »

uhwuggawuh wrote: post #88

Are those Pokemon in the first figure? If so, I have severely underestimated the coolness of next-generation Pokemon.

Jessica got those monsters from Mino Monsters (http://minomonsters.com/).

(When you've funded 467 startups, you can find one to supply you with practically anything.)

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#93

Post by chmike »

jordo37 wrote: post #82
nadam wrote: post #71

Two of the problems can be easily avoided: 'cofounder disputes' and 'investors' are not problems in case of single-founder bootstrapped startups. :) One thing I would add to the topic of 'determination': Are we speaking about determination to make a startup successful or determination to try out as many ideas in our life as possible, learn as much as possible and try to make at least one startup successful in our lif…

For me and my co-founder, especially during the dark days of 1) tech not working 2) clients stopping service with us or 3)someone yelling at us over Twitter, email or phone - it is Critical to have a team and more importantly to have a partner. I don't share all of my concerns with the whole team because that could shift the mood of the company and damage our internal resolve. But I need to be able to talk about the…

I fully agree, but the partner doesn't have to be cofounder. It could be the wife (or husband), a very good friend or anything equivalent.

From what I have read so far the main difficulties of a single founder is lacking an alternate view and help to restore drive when in doubt or exhausted.

Of course other kind of problems may show up if the business is a startup of the dropbox kind. But this is a mazzerati problem. My feeling is that more than one founders expose to much more difficult and nasty problems than a single founder will met. A single founder can find paliatives for his weakness which do exist and shouldn't be ignored.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#94

Post by dools »

l0stman wrote: post #76
dools wrote: post #65

Arguing anything other than differences in levels of persistent hard work and skill in your particular field has a large mountain of evidence to overcome. The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else comparatively small per decades of startup and longitudinal entrepreneurial studies. Nonsense about hustle is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence suggests that, if anything, hustling…

Well, played. For a couple of seconds I was wondering why I had this impression of deja vu then I found this ( http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4692794 ). I burst out laughing.

Haha you got me. PG can rest assured that middlebrow dismissal apparently only gets a disproportionate share of upvotes when it's about health or nutrition :P

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#95

Post by psycho »

pg wrote: post #91
psycho wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you think about concept "Do fast and fail fast" meaning in general that you should give up idea (and startup that was based on this idea) as fast as you can if you find out that idea doesn't work? I agree with "smart pivots" idea but "fail fast" is one thing that I don't understand in "Lean startup" concept as I'm quite persistent and I understand that in general it takes several years for startup to succ…

Failing fast means that if an idea has a fatal flaw, you want to discover it as early as possible. When you phrase it that way, it's hard to see how anyone could be against it. This is for example why I encourage startups to launch quickly.

Oh, that makes sence when talking about ideas - not startups. Thanks.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#97

Post by jordo37 »

chmike wrote: post #93
jordo37 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me and my co-founder, especially during the dark days of 1) tech not working 2) clients stopping service with us or 3)someone yelling at us over Twitter, email or phone - it is Critical to have a team and more importantly to have a partner. I don't share all of my concerns with the whole team because that could shift the mood of the company and damage our internal resolve. But I need to be able to talk about the…

I fully agree, but the partner doesn't have to be cofounder. It could be the wife (or husband), a very good friend or anything equivalent. From what I have read so far the main difficulties of a single founder is lacking an alternate view and help to restore drive when in doubt or exhausted. Of course other kind of problems may show up if the business is a startup of the dropbox kind. But this is a mazzerati problem.…

I can see what you mean here - my wife is my life partner, and she is a fantastic balance outside the support my business partner and I provide each other. But she has other things going on - her life is more than just waiting to hear about how Perfect Audience is going and having someone as focused as you are on your work baby, but in different ways, is useful.

Re: Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong

#98

Post by psycho »

mkramlich wrote: post #90
psycho wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, it's much harder to be determined if you work without co-founder (i.e. at least 1 person who supports what you're working on).

> In fact, it's much harder (...) It's not a fact, just an opinion or anecdotal observation. And I submit it depends on the person in question. Some folks may find it easier to have a co-founder, some may find that to be more of an obstacle. Both cases have merit. Agreed it helps to have other people support you, be a cheerleader, be a listener, etc., but that doesn't have to be a cofounder. Since cofounder implies e…

Yeah, you're right that there's no 1 law that fits everyone. Still we can say that in general it's easier to work together than alone with a note that there are some exclusions, of course.
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