This valley conceit is just astounding. Do some of you people who are obviously so smart at what you code and create really think that this is the only way to go about being a success? You look like trapped otters.
We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
41–50 of 93 posts
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I guess today you could call the Internet the city/town. There is also something to be said about what seems to be serendipity. When there is a high concentration of people doing the same thing, you are more likely to bump into people who can help you turn your vision in…
> From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I'm highly skeptical of this claim. Can you back it up?
There are several well-documented examples throughout history: Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century[1], and the Florence Renaissance during the fifteenth century.
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Insight-Understand-Unconscious...
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#43Sometimes it just takes talking to the right person to get your start. It may take a few thousand no's, but one yes can change your life. This story is inspirational and reminds me that you have to put yourself out and communicate with others not just build a great product.
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#44"Three days into joining YC, we decided to pivot. We’d been working on the dating site for six months at that point, and we knew it wasn’t working... Also, I’d read a study that said happy employees are twice as productive as unhappy employees. That was the beginning of AnyPerk."
After all the flak the word 'pivot' has gotten I'm surprised to see it used this way here. This does not seem like a pivot, but rather you just deciding to work on a completely new business. Were the two ideas related in any way? Did anything in the original dating business inform this new idea?
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#45How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged b…
>the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea.
This part of your very pessimistic comment is certainly true, and I would like to point out that this is the government's fault, not Silicon Valley's. People who aren't rich are legally not allowed to invest in startups. [1]
But the unstated major premise of your comment, which is wrong, is that investment in startups is some kind of magic bullet for making tons of money. This is demonstrably not the case. One of the common justifications for the law in [1] is the fact that high-risk investments like startups are not necessarily any better than traditional low-risk investments (like stocks in big companies), and (by some metrics) are worse.
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#46"We started in January 2012, and may still be the only Asian YC founders ever." So that is not true. 9gag is from Hong Kong. Semantics3 is from Singapore. Strikingly is from China. Memebox is from Korea. Cleartax is from India. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. That being said, I actually would love to see more Asian startups applying to Y Combinator. We should be funding one from each c…
>I did office hours with over 60 Japanese startups trying to understand why it feels different over there.
As someone who has "Start a company in Tokyo" on their long-term plan, can you elaborate? I wish there was more out there about international startup hubs.
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#47The amount of cynicism in the comments for this story is astounding. The list of complaints is long. By my accounting, people don't like that the founders were:
* naive
* exploitative of the funding climate
* deluded into irrational personal sacrifice by dreams of riches
* whiners for thinking their hardship was hard
* bad decision-makers overall by coming to SF
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#48How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged b…
>the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea. This part of your very pessimistic comment is certainly true, and I would like to point out that this is the government's fault, not Silicon Valley's. People who aren't rich are legally not allowed to invest in startups. [1] But the unstated major premise of your comment, which is wrong, is that investment in startups is some kind of magic bullet for mak…
I completely agree that VC is not a magic money making bullet, but I don't think it matters for the post.
Certainly there are patrons who will lose money. Having a portfolio full of lemons isn't going to make any financial elite any money. Most will hire accountants and financial and technological advisors. Some will provide extra services (advice, contacts, demo day audiences, etc) to bolster the prospects of their portfolios. Some will fail anyway. The ones who stick around are the ones who are good at it.
The real unstated major premise of my comment is that it is essentially impossible to be a self-starter unless you are already rich, which (along with the other stated bits) implies that growth in the tech industry concentrates wealth and that there is a mobility problem that runs counter to our nice cultural myth about geniuses in garages.
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#49How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged b…
I've never really understood these comments. As someone who's founded two VC-backed companies and raised millions of dollars I have to tell you that the parts that bother me really aren't "working tirelessly and thanklessly" for the benefit of my "patrons" who aren't taking any risk. I actually really like my investors. Many of them are effectively startups, too: most funds, especially new ones, have to work hard to source and get into good deals and demonstrate a return so that they can raise their next fund. That's far from guaranteed. Those investors are as much entrepreneurs as we are, just in a different sector. I'd say probably 70% of my investors fall into that category.
Occasionally a founder will get screwed by a VC. It's happened to people I know. In retrospect it's very rare that they didn't see it coming, and usually it's more complicated than just "investor screws founder." Investors have to work with the small ecosystem of each other and new startups on an ongoing basis. It's an iterated game and truly bad behavior gets you shunned. It really does.
It's actually more often that I hear that people wished they'd raised VC. I have several friends who have bootstrapped successful multi-million companies who look back over how they got there and the challenges they face now and wish they'd raised money. Yeah there are a lot of great small businesses - and bootstrapped startups - that do well without getting investors involved. But I can tell you first-hand that investors can really add value and drive entire fields much faster than they would have otherwise matured, and at the end of the day come out successful in real terms.
Founders have ways to diversify. I've executed minor equity swaps with a few friends to create a portfolio of my own. It's more "downside protection" (hopefully) than designed to replace the possible returns from my own company, but those investments have actually done really well.
It boggles the mind that in this corner of immense wealth creation and the freedom to do really whatever we want to do - if you don't want to work on something, don't start that company - what people fixate on is "investor vs founder."
Just go do it. A lot of the stuff you wrote about above really aren't things you worry about.
Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'
#50How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged b…
This is the very reason I take Dash[1]'s approach to success. He has half a lifetime stored up in a savings account, and he works a fraction of the time I do per week.
1. Make a small niche app.
2. Market it ferociously.
3. Don't be a slave to your job, make it the other way around.
4. Be your own #1 customer.