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Do Things that Don't Scale

paulgraham.com

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Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#101

Post by chacham15 »

> And except in domains with big penalties for making mistakes, it's often better not to aim for perfection initially.

I feel like this exception is another potential pitfall because it is so easy to think e.g. "if this doesnt look polished, users will think that we arent professional" and that is a big hit.

Although that is a more clear case, there are more ambiguous ones: imagine that your startup is doing encrypted email. What level of encryption/protection do you go with at launch? Do you go with the best practices as good as the founders know of or do you get an audit from tptacek? The latter is probably wayy out of your price range as a startup, but if your security takes a hit people wont know if they can trust you with their important information. What is the right line to go with here?

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#102

Post by larrys »

Jd wrote: post #24

TLDR: Startups that try to focus on big launches are generally lazy. Success comes from putting in extraordinary effort to putting your customer first. This means you get super-enthusiastic users. This works by the principle of compound growth as users tell their friends. Somewhat ironically I am of the opinion that: (A) this is one of pg's best and most useful essays ever (B) it is partially more useful because it i…

Agree but not "c".

Target of this essay has the time to read something this long.

I'm saying that as someone that doesn't even need the info but yet I found it good enough (don't always agree with PG or anyone for that matter "just because") to read. I may read it again (ok I skimmed quickly first time because I have to get somewhere).

Lots of similarities between what I've done, what I've seen (in the traditional non "pg startup" business world) and what was written here.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#103

Post by jmtame »

This is probably my favorite PG essay to date, something I've spent a lot of time thinking about as well.

I think what separates novice investors from good ones is that a novice investor will start asking questions that only make sense at a later stage. They're committing a cardinal crime in startups: premature optimization. For some reason, even though they explicitly say they invest at the seed stage, they're looking at it from a warped lens of "let me think about how this works, in your current implementation, at enormous degree of scale." And of course the implementation will change, so the logic immediately breaks down on itself because you're assuming the thing you see now will be the same in 5 or 10 years. The baby analogy seems perfect for this reason. A baby will arguably have little to no resemblance to itself in 5 or 10 years, everything about it will have changed significantly.

The nice thing is you don't have to explain these things to the investors that "get it." It just clicks instantly, and I think this happens even before the meeting--it probably goes all the way back to the introduction that someone else makes for you. Good investors at a seed stage understand there's some degree of risk in a small yet still fragile startup that has at least some degree of promise to it. From the top tier people I've spoken to in the past, they focus less on the specific numbers and metrics, and more on the "does this fundamentally solve a problem in the market right now? Is there a real need for this thing to exist, and what's better about this than everything else out there?" They look at similar companies in different spaces and draw interesting comparisons. "You guys are like this other company, which started out much like you did, and you're applying a very similar solution. I think this will work!"

The really good investors don't try and evaluate your company as a Series D investment, they look at where you are right now at the seed stage and see it for what it is, and what it could be. I suppose this all sounds obvious, but the real world is full of surprises that contradict assumptions.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#104

Post by klibertp »

guiambros wrote: post #100
guynamedloren wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you are an early employee at a startup, you were hired to make the company successful, not just to write code. 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…

No, he was hired to do the job his employer want's him to do. If the founder says "stop thinking about stupid/unnecessary/other's things/jobs/responsibilities" then he HAS to do just that. It's not his role to tell the founder how bad a management this is. And yes, I saw such founders in action, it does happen... Quite often in my experience, though obviously YMMV.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#105

Post by [deleted] »

guynamedloren wrote: post #46

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…

[deleted]

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#106

Post by jfarmer »

trevelyan wrote: post #93
guynamedloren wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In defense of the founders, there's a lot to be said for failing fast. And while it's entirely possible you could have built a better product, it's more likely the resulting business would hardly have paid a fraction of your salary, let alone theirs. 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 chidin…

The idea behind the "fail fast" mantra is that folks over-emphasize getting every decision correct. This is a problem because you don't really learn until your idea meets reality, including what's important to focus on and what's not important to focus on.

The goal is to learn new things as fast as possible. Since most people dither, "fail fast" serves as good, rough advice. With no extra information it's more likely someone is going to be shipping too slowly than shipping recklessly and pointlessly.

However, if you "fail fast" but also fail to internalize any lessons from that failure, it's little different from never having done it in the first place. You're committing the complementary sin to those folks who spend hours, days, and weeks tinkering until the product is "just right", except in this case it's the other half of the learning loop that's broken.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#107

Post by jchrisa »

jfarmer wrote: post #106
trevelyan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of the founders, there's a lot to be said for failing fast. And while it's entirely possible you could have built a better product, it's more likely the resulting business would hardly have paid a fraction of your salary, let alone theirs. 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 chidin…

The idea behind the "fail fast" mantra is that folks over-emphasize getting every decision correct. This is a problem because you don't really learn until your idea meets reality, including what's important to focus on and what's not important to focus on. The goal is to learn new things as fast as possible. Since most people dither, "fail fast" serves as good, rough advice. With no extra information it's more likely…

When you have traction, you'll know it. Traction is what allows you to learn. Then you might wanna try not failing, or at least, let features fail fast, but keep the overall ball rolling.

Real traction isn't something you can buy, so if you find it, stick to it and grow it.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#108

Post by victorf »

jfarmer wrote: post #106
trevelyan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of the founders, there's a lot to be said for failing fast. And while it's entirely possible you could have built a better product, it's more likely the resulting business would hardly have paid a fraction of your salary, let alone theirs. 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 chidin…

The idea behind the "fail fast" mantra is that folks over-emphasize getting every decision correct. This is a problem because you don't really learn until your idea meets reality, including what's important to focus on and what's not important to focus on. The goal is to learn new things as fast as possible. Since most people dither, "fail fast" serves as good, rough advice. With no extra information it's more likely…

> We also spent enormous amounts of time and resources tweaking the app design to perfection (pre-launch)

Not only are you right, it sounds like in this case they failed slow. I've been in a situation like that before, it's incredibly frustrating and demoralizing.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#109

Post by cpursley »

peteforde wrote: post #19

"The Perfect Store" is a book about the early days of eBay. The primary takeaway for me was how they deliberately went to swap meets, flea markets and garage sales all over America — especially the rural flyover states — and talked to people. They identified the key influencers and flew many of them to California to be given VIP treatment. Those folks returned to their communities as true believers and encouraged the…

"I suspect that there are many founders who would be open to taking the show on the road."

I think this should be taken literally by many startups with national scope. Get the hell out of California, buy a used RV, stick the team in it and travel city to city while you build the startup. It's cheaper and you'll be able to meet more customers.

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