Startup advice, briefly • Hacker News Board

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#111

Post by prawn » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

vog wrote: post #95

prawn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say "partly" rather than "largely". I think the reason luck seems to be such a significant factor is that everything else that depends on your idea, execution, networking, and so on are all tough, and exceptionally so en masse. So, to minimise the impact of luck, you'd need to hit home runs in every other aspect which is unlikely. If your idea is great, but the rest so-so, then luck might seem like a stronger…

I beg to differ. Take the best 10 people, which are all the most dedicated, hardest working, most compentent: If these compete on the same idea in the same field, only one of them can succeed. After all, running a startup means taking risks, and risks are just another word for stuff that you don't have under control, and which is best described by probability.

In which case, luck is still partly a factor rather than largely a factor. It's only accentuated in that case because your hypothetical has every venture pushing each facet to the limit.

More realistic would be 10 ventures where a couple bail, another couple just don't have a professional network, another has a great network but an ugly design or awkward name, and so on.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#112

Post by crdb » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 4:22 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #55

One suggestion I would give Sam is to provide for each of the "bullet points" a couple of relevant stories about YC companies. Most public advice is devoid of context where it originated and unless stated very precisely is wide open to misinterpretation, forming a cargo-cult, or being ignored as too generic. Only a few people in the world can be that precise (I know just two), but adding a relevant story is available…

That. Learning is a high-p, low n problem even if YC attempts to do the opposite (extract a set of learnings that apply to every company, via observing first hand more than any other fund or entity in history). The richness of a story is a feature.

A nice parallel in finance is Steve Drobny's various books. Their format is anonymous interviews of very successful and well known hedge fund managers, where they explain their thinking through a bunch of events, actions, and analysis of what happened. They are REALLY good.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#113

Post by halfcat » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 4:50 AM UTC

>In general, avoid the kind of stuff that might be in a movie about running a startup—meeting with lawyers and accountants

Where is the line that says you move from "project" to needing to have your legal ducks in a row? All business advice I have ever heard says if you are doing business then you need to have a real business, with associated costs of legal, accounting, insurance, and so on.

It seems very risky to start making $500/mo while risking my house in the event a patent troll decides to sue me. Am I too paranoid on this front?

"Fuck you pay me" covers this [1].

[1] https://vimeo.com/22053820

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#114

Post by dreamdu5t » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 5:39 AM UTC

> The best way to start a company is to build interesting projects.

The best way? Lots of successful entrepreneurs would disagree, and did set out to build a business to make money. And outside of the SV bubble people don't imply that is The Wrong Way.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#115

Post by aorloff » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 6:25 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #94

ryanSrich wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the risk of sounding ignorant I'm going to go out on a limb and say one of the biggest missing pieces for most people is financial security - or at least the availability of a safety net. Based on my experience there are four scenarios where someone could start a company: - You have financial support from someone (whether you're in college or have a spouse that makes a good income - probably the most common) - Y…

Remember that a startup isn't a small business. Your venture backers want you to be hungry -- financial stability for you lowers the probability of a 50x exit!

This is the biggest mistake that I see startups make. Startups ARE small businesses, they are just supposed to be growing faster than "normal" small businesses. But many people make the mistake of not being a "small" business as a startup, and then they realize that they have no idea what to do when they have a medium size business on their hands (or never create any business at all in spite of products).

Avoid venture backers until you can't - entrepreneurs existed before venture capital, and exist outside of it as well. Venture should fund growth, but not inception.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#116

Post by bonn1 » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 7:19 AM UTC

It's hard to compress so much advice into one blog post and let is sound reasonable if context is missing.

However, I agree with all points except this one:

> In general, avoid the kind of stuff that might be in a movie about running a startup—meeting with lawyers and accountants, going to lots of conferences, grabbing coffee with people, sitting in lots of meetings

In general a successful CEO is 30% of his time networking and 70% working on hiring and leading the team and working on the product the product. Looking out for peers and spending time with them is important because...

- It changes your mindset, from being an employee to a real founder, this takes quite some time and your old employed friends are not the right peers anymore

- You learn a lot, small information exchanged on a conference can help you with fund raising; usually every meeting with a new person has some value, in particular at the beginning of your journey

- Especially lawyers—the good ones—are extremely well connected and sometimes help you with the first introductions

There are some CEOs who are real networking animals and do 100% networking and 0% working on their product, that's for sure not the way and I guess Sam referred to them.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#117

Post by cookiecaper » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 7:47 AM UTC

cjf4 wrote: post #44

kirinan wrote: post #2

Maybe Ive read too many blogs. Maybe its because I watched the class but Im starting to feel like this is the "generic" advice for startups. It doesn't make it any less true or valuable, but everytime I read it I feel somewhat empty; as if there is something critical missing that everyone but me knows but doesn't write down because it feels like common sense. I'm not sure other people feel this way or how to not feel…

I started to get the same sense, and remembering a couple of the following things have helped me keep my bearings: -Startup advice, especially from this corner of the world, applies to a very specific way of creating a software company through venture capital, and subsequently, aggressive growth. It is also built to take advantage of a highly optimistic financial environment that, to me, seems to be temporary (look a…

I definitely believe there are more cynical motives in SV than many wish to believe. There's a reason VCs and incubators overwhelmingly target naive college kids. Most of their programs are structured such that any participation by less-naive persons is impractical.

The VC line on this is simply that "college kids are just super innovative, pure, unadultered". Ignoring the fact that this is basically an optimistic list of synonyms for "naive", if you believe that line of horse hockey you are likely one of the naive college kids being taken advantage of (or wish you were).

It's a real shame because startups could benefit greatly from the mature leadership available out in big bad "corporate America". Not talking multi-million dollar CEOs here, just regular experienced folks who have mortgages and families to support because they're older than 20 and would like at least a market-competitive salary.

Instead, VC firms hoard this maturity and experience for themselves, and leave their founders locked in apartments, surviving off a stipend that has room only for ramen to the exclusion of both fair treatment and personal dignity.

There is undoubtedly an insidious element in this. There's no way experienced investors are looking at these companies and sincerely saying "Oh yeah, those two 23-year-olds definitely have a handle on this."

The simple truth is that for many investors, it's an entertaining, [relatively] cheap, and profitable lottery. And they want to keep it cheap.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#118

Post by cookiecaper » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 7:55 AM UTC

abstractbill wrote: post #38

subdane wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is YC advice boiled down to its essential and most generalizable terms. Because it's general (applies to almost all their founders) it's also generic - the patterns matched across hundreds of humans. It leaves out the human toil, mistakes and doubt - but most importantly the emotions. It doesn't tell you why you should follow this advice. It doesn't show you what happened to the folks that did. It takes for gran…

A lot of YC's advice was not considered obvious when they started out (nearly ten years ago!). If some of it seems generic and obvious now, that's because they've succeeded - more than anyone else - in discovering and sharing some actually repeatable strategies for building startups.

Maybe it's just about who it's obvious to. YC is run by technical people, and most VC firms aren't. When PG got into the game and started making good picks because he actually knew what he was talking about and had direct experience, unlike the finance guys dicking around with macro-scale projections pulled out of thin air, he wrote down the obvious from his perspective and was immediately copied (poorly, in general) by the people that saw the success knowing what you're talking about can bring.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#119

Post by cookiecaper » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 8:01 AM UTC

seanflyon wrote: post #46

und3rw4t3rp00ps wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It just feels hollow." - I'm probably too blue collar for these airy advice musings... but I really turn my nose up when a business man tells me to "work hard". Never do these manifestos acknowledge the basic truth that all entrepreneurs are escaping professions, trades, and "jobs". Scoff this terse anonymous message away all you like, the entrepreneur redefines work, then audaciously proclaims himself the hardest w…

Work: activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. I'm not sure what definition you are using or how "the entrepreneur redefines work", but if you think that 'real' work must include lifting heavy things, then you are selling humanity short.

I think he's saying that for some people, entrepreneurship is more about indulgence than discipline, and that discipline is pre-requisite for something to qualify as "actual work".

In the terms of your definition, he's referring to entrepreneurs that are not directing their effort to "achieve a purpose or result" in a disciplined, effective manner. On paper, of course, they all have a purpose or result, but that doesn't mean the entrepreneur is actually working toward it, at least not very hard.

He seems to be expressing the sentiment that many entrepreneurs are of this slacker variety and use entrepreneurship to escape the demands placed on other, "normal" people for their maintenance, not to drive new results or purposes.

Re: Startup advice, briefly

#120

Post by ohashi » Sat, Feb 21, 2015, 8:54 AM UTC

hayksaakian wrote: post #69

DenisM wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to put my money where my mouth is, consider this example: Advice: In B2B be on the lookout for people, organizations, or events which can force the hand of your prospect customers. Story: There was a company that made e-commerce vulnerability detection/prevention software, but when they tried selling it, they found that IT departments stonewalled the adoption because they didn't want to admit there was a security…

the advice is look for X who can do Y, but provides little means of identifying if any given X can do Y the story is better in this case because i can draw my own maxims from it which directly apply to my business. the downside is the story doesn't fit in a tweet.

If that is the downside, perhaps we should stop catering towards the absolute lowest common denominator.