What I Learned From My Startup Failing
snapsummit.com
What I Learned From My Startup Failing
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#2"Companies succeed with single founders all the time. Just look at Digg, Craigslist, eBay, Netflix, Wordpress, Wikipedia, Amazon, TechMeme, PBWiki, TechCrunch, TechMeme, and Etsy."
Is this true? I know it's hard to define "founder" precisely, since some co-founders may get involved after the idea is partly baked, or may not have as much of an impact. But several of these seem to be questionable. (And Techmeme is misspelled... twice.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordpress - "It was first released in May 2003 by its co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as a (considered the official) successor to b2\cafelog." (Or if you meant Wordpress.com / Automattic, it also has multiple co-founders.)
http://etsy.com/about - "Etsy was founded by Rob Kalin, Chris Maguire, Haim Schoppik and Jared Tarbell in June, 2005."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix - "Netflix was founded in 1997 in Scotts Valley, California by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, who previously had worked together at Pure Software, along with Mitch Lowe."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg - "Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBworks - "PBworks (formerly PBwiki) is a commercial collaboration service created by David Weekly, with Ramit Sethi and Nathan Schmidt joining shortly thereafter as co-founders."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia - "Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger..."
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#34) Talk to people and listen to them closely
The world, collectively, is smarter than you are — pay attention to it.
I feel like a lot of great companies would never have been built if the founders didn't ignore a bunch of naysayers. That said, if you get your product into users' hands early and often and nothing you do can persuade anybody to like it, you're probably better off not wasting any more time on it.
5) The fewer heads, the better
I'm going to have to agree with pg and say that going it alone is a bad idea. You need multiple, complementary skill sets. You need to balance out mood swings. You need varied backgrounds and bodies of experience to provide multiple perspectives on all the problems you'll undoubtedly face.
However, I can totally relate to the author when he says, "On many occasions, I’d come up with a new, inspiring idea, only to get a knot in my stomach before pitching it to my team."
I think it's important to cultivate a culture where it's perfectly acceptable to throw crazy ideas on the table and get them shot down. In fact, I think the more ideas you can burn through, the better. Creativity is an iterative process. Often times your crazy, will-never-work idea will spark a brilliant idea in the mind of one of your cofounders.
On a related note, we've found that getting a 3 person consensus on everything is a broken model. For any given decision there should be exactly one person responsible for making it. You can either divide up the problem space or you can just defer to the same person on everything. We even decided to rotate who gets to wear that hat every 4 months, to give everyone a chance and to make sure we don't stagnate.
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#4"Companies succeed with single founders all the time. Just look at Digg, Craigslist, eBay, Netflix, Wordpress, Wikipedia, Amazon, TechMeme, PBWiki, TechCrunch, TechMeme, and Etsy." Is this true? I know it's hard to define "founder" precisely, since some co-founders may get involved after the idea is partly baked, or may not have as much of an impact. But several of these seem to be questionable. (And Techmeme is miss…
You're right -- "founder" is a tough measurement. A lot of times -- as in the case of my own company, RFOP -- one person starts a company, sees a bit of success, then quickly brings on a small group of peers who join with the "co-founder" moniker.
As a company grows, it quickly evolves from a solo effort to (some variation of) a team effort. This can mean bringing on employees, or people who join as "co-founder." At PayPal, for instance, more than a half-dozen of the first employees were accorded "co-founder" status, which is why the company appears to have so many.
Further complicating the matter, many companies change their story after they reach success, presenting a company as a joint effort or team project, rife with co-founders and collaborators, when the truth is closer to one visionary bringing an idea to life, and assembling a team thereafter.
For instance, Digg. I was at a dinner a few years ago and had the pleasure of sitting next to Owen Byrne, one of the people mentioned above. Owen wrote the original code for Digg. He told me that Kevin Rose found him off of ELance. Until then, he was a fairly unknown Canadian programmer. His success has surely increased since taking on what started as a $2,000 contract gig, but I hesitate to call him a "co-founder."
99 times out of 100, companies build teams in order reach success. However, in many of those circumstances, that kernel of success starts not with a small team reaching consensus, but a single visionary with a single vision.
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#5"Companies succeed with single founders all the time. Just look at Digg, Craigslist, eBay, Netflix, Wordpress, Wikipedia, Amazon, TechMeme, PBWiki, TechCrunch, TechMeme, and Etsy." Is this true? I know it's hard to define "founder" precisely, since some co-founders may get involved after the idea is partly baked, or may not have as much of an impact. But several of these seem to be questionable. (And Techmeme is miss…
wikipedia and craigslist are such outliers in so many ways, they don't add much support for the single founder argument at all
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#6This FailCon advertised on the blog looks like a terrible idea. Why are the Meebo founders speaking? Meebo isn't profitable. There are only like two people from profitable companies there.
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#74) Talk to people and listen to them closely The world, collectively, is smarter than you are — pay attention to it. I feel like a lot of great companies would never have been built if the founders didn't ignore a bunch of naysayers. That said, if you get your product into users' hands early and often and nothing you do can persuade anybody to like it, you're probably better off not wasting any more time on it. 5) Th…
4) Yes, you're right. Naysayers do abound. I refer to the world's "collective" opinion because, yes, it's all too easy to find a token naysayer who's eager to shoot you down.
That said, once you have a beta out, or some kind of working concept, the world becomes your sounding board -- where else, after all, will you get your users and customers? While it's important at some point to ignore what people think, it's just as important to keep at least half an ear open to their thoughts and opinions. I believe that you can learn more by listening deeply and attentively to people than by ignoring them.
5) As I said in the post, teams work for a number of people. They're one of the most common structures for getting companies off the ground. In the case of companies with strong technical needs, they can be particularly helpful, as different people can bring different skill sets and perspectives that may prove to be instrumental.
That said, I challenge the widely-held assumption that a founding team is necessary, vital, or inherently "better" than starting a company by yourself, and bringing people on later.
I hold that a single person, charged with focus and determination, can launch a concept with speed and single-mindedness that's difficult to replicate in a team environment. A team, despite the benefits it confers, adds added complexity to decision-making, and can dilute an idea as easily as it can rally behind it.
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#81) Pick a problem and solve it.
Interesting, Christian never mentioned any of the "problems" Trogger wanted to solve. It does seem, at first glance, that this idea was a solution looking for a problem.
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#91) Pick a problem and solve it. Interesting, Christian never mentioned any of the "problems" Trogger wanted to solve. It does seem, at first glance, that this idea was a solution looking for a problem.
You're absolutely right. This was one of our biggest failing points from the time we started. We built a cool, graceful, elegant solution... that ultimately solved little.
Re: What I Learned From My Startup Failing
#10I would really like to see a Tufte style graph showing: a) number of people involved over time, b) % of time spent by each person, and c) profitability for the same time period, with a wide range of failed and successful startups.
Assuming one could come up with a way to clearly display that information.