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I'd be curious to know good ways to balance these various things that don't scale. I speak from a position of inexperience, but I can't imagine a fragile startup could possibly max out any of them. Given that, what are some heuristics for allocating focus across several unscalable efforts? Put another way, what are cues to focus more on one thing than another?
This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual . I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that use…
How would you define "manual user acquisition"? Thanks for posting this. I hope you and others write more on failed products/companies. They are very enlightening, despite the details left out for privacy/embarrassment.
I think it's what PG calls schlep[1], or at least similar. Tasks like talking to users (not just your family and friends), scouring internet forums, reading everything you can to learn as much as possible about your demographic / target users and what makes them tick, going door to door (in the case of airbnb), being active on social media, etc. It's doing the stuff that nobody whats to do, because it's not glamorous, and it's not necessarily the most exciting. It's constant, it's draining (on every level), it's time consuming and its tough.
It may be easier to understand by looking at the opposite end of the spectrum - some sort of automated user acquisition: the expectation that a user acquisition plan can be conceived and launched, which will trigger loads of users knocking at your door, all requiring little to no maintenance afterwards. A strategy like this may include press releases about a new product and a giant paid marketing budget. Just flip the switch on those and the users start rolling in, then we can get back to building. ;-)
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I am sorry that your product failed. Would you mind sharing with us what you think had caused your product to fail?
I would love to - there's a lot to be learned from such experiences. Unfortunately, I would not feel comfortable doing so without approval from the founders - even remaining nameless. Internally, we have been reluctant to admit that the product has failed (despite it being shut down and pulled from the app store). We have not discussed the product since we shut it down. We have not looked at what worked and what didn…
If you think the idea is really good, you should ask for permission to develop it on your own as a side business. And if you don't think so... there's no point in chiding them for agreeing that the work isn't worth your time.
I'd be curious to know good ways to balance these various things that don't scale. I speak from a position of inexperience, but I can't imagine a fragile startup could possibly max out any of them. Given that, what are some heuristics for allocating focus across several unscalable efforts? Put another way, what are cues to focus more on one thing than another?
This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual . I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that use…
I probably would have been majorly bummed out at that moment.
Mike Arrington, before he was of Techcrunch fame, recruited us personally for the new company he had been hired as CEO/President of, Pool.com. Lest anyone thinks he does not know how to hustle he does. He can and was very persistent and determined with anything I threw at him. That ended up being a great relationship lasting many many years after Mike left the company. I feel fairly certain that a regular biz dev guy would have given up with what I threw at Mike. You may not have heard of Pool.com but they made a ton of money and were very successful.
I saw this on a miniature scale when I created a new subreddit ( http://reddit.com/r/LSAT ) I spent about two weeks creating quality articles for the sidebar, personally replying to every submission/comment, manually recruiting anyone who mentioned the LSAT, and reaching out to moderators of related subreddits for links. Mercifully, a subreddit is a small thing to launch, and after two weeks the place became self-sus…
Thats a great way to practice user acquisition.
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"People would be calling us constantly." "Let's try it for a few days and find out. I'll answer the calls."
You wouldn't believe how often I've attempted to make myself available to other areas of the company that have needed help. But I was hired to write code, so I should just focus on that. ;-)
Like airbnb:
But seriously Loren I think that the company that you are at now might have already marked you in a way that could limit what responsibility and opportunity they give you. Because they know you're not happy perhaps (and especially after reading your comments if they do). Personally I think you are cut out more for your own startup if you can in fact "wear many hats" than in one area like engineering.
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I would love to - there's a lot to be learned from such experiences. Unfortunately, I would not feel comfortable doing so without approval from the founders - even remaining nameless. Internally, we have been reluctant to admit that the product has failed (despite it being shut down and pulled from the app store). We have not discussed the product since we shut it down. We have not looked at what worked and what didn…
> We have not looked at what worked and what didn't work. We have not analyzed why it failed. Instead, we've chosen to blaze forward, focusing on our next launch. Ahem...That sounds... ominous. Why not spend at least a lunch with a basic analysis? Use a fishbone. http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_03.htm
Agree. Post mortem. Air crash investigation. More than just a lunch I would go for at least a dinner and learn from it.
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"People would be calling us constantly." "Let's try it for a few days and find out. I'll answer the calls."
You wouldn't believe how often I've attempted to make myself available to other areas of the company that have needed help. But I was hired to write code, so I should just focus on that. ;-)
If in order to succeed you need to clean the bathroom (figuratively speaking), just go do it. Go beyond the job description; it's a startup, after all. Job descriptions are worthless, until you have a decent size and need some bureaucracy to survive.
If the founder is not seriously expecting you to do go beyond your comfort zone, you should seriously question his ability to lead the company to the next level.