"they aren’t that much better than many of the great coders I’ve worked with. They’re just bolder." Interesting way to put it. Sounds like an critical ingredient for success.
It's also a critical ingredient for failure.
Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
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Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#12"they aren’t that much better than many of the great coders I’ve worked with. They’re just bolder." Interesting way to put it. Sounds like an critical ingredient for success.
It's also a critical ingredient for failure.
I'm a huge fan of "necessary but not sufficient" qualities like this.
A startup needs:
1) Boldness 2) A crazy idea that most people think is stupid. 3) Persistence
All of these things seem to be absolutely required for success. But none of them is sufficient. Combine 'em with good "product/market fit" (a la Andreessen) and I think you win.
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#13would love to see a bit more depth here, most points seemed rather surface - "we focused entirely on product/mark fit" - how?, what are some methods you found effective? maybe best left for a follow up post but after reading it I wanted more on their successful/unsuccessful tactics.
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#14surprising at 7%/week growth with Tony being featured on so many blogs
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#15surprising at 7%/week growth with Tony being featured on so many blogs
Surprisingly low or surprisingly high? If you think that's low, consider that 7% weekly growth is roughly 3300% annual growth, something that most companies would kill for. If that can be sustained for 3 years, the company will be roughly 25,000 times larger than when it started.
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#16surprising at 7%/week growth with Tony being featured on so many blogs
Surprisingly low or surprisingly high? If you think that's low, consider that 7% weekly growth is roughly 3300% annual growth, something that most companies would kill for. If that can be sustained for 3 years, the company will be roughly 25,000 times larger than when it started.
Yeah, we're pretty damn tickled with the growth (and stickiness-- abandonment seems unusually low for web software, from what I've read).
FWIW, the 7% week/week was well before any of the press coverage around YC demo day (and associated splash). We've been 12-14% for the last two weeks. I expect it to settle back to the standard word of mouth level of 7%. Of course, I think we have some clever SEO/viral things in the pipeline, which might pick things up a bit.
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#173. We focused entirely on product/market fit. I'm curious. In what way did you focus on product market fit? What signs did you look for to point you towards it? Seems to be a very important aspect of success (besides boldness).
This might be a too-fancy way of saying "we focused on what people wanted" (to put it in PG-speak rather than Andreessen-speak).
We started with a permission marketing campaign (before we wrote a line of code)-- showing a few screenshots and allowing people to sign up to hear about the launch. That helped us understand how much people wanted it (measured by traffic and conversion of traffic to sign ups). We were immedietely barraged by lots of people who had ideas about the product, and we listened very carefully.
We ignored lots of things that it might've been bad to ignore in favor of building features that people wanted and talking with users. We didn't incorporate. Didn't get a bank account. Didn't talk to a lawyer. Didn't worry about SEO or any other marketing (even though I'm a bit of an SEO nut). Didn't talk to investors.
Lots and lots and lots of focus on reducing frustration, reducing friction, and increasing value-- and lots and lots of communication with users (to understand that stuff better).
Boiled down-- lots of focus on understanding what the market wants (both individual lifehackers and biz teams that want to be more productive) and then building/iterating. Rinse, repeat.
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also a critical ingredient for failure.
I'm a huge fan of "necessary but not sufficient" qualities like this. A startup needs: 1) Boldness 2) A crazy idea that most people think is stupid. 3) Persistence All of these things seem to be absolutely required for success. But none of them is sufficient. Combine 'em with good "product/market fit" (a la Andreessen) and I think you win.
Startups don't need "A crazy idea that most people think is stupid". In most cases, an idea that most people think is stupid is exactly that.
Startups need to offer something of perceived value, that's pretty much it. In some cases, it's doing a typical task in a non-typical way, or doing something non-typical altogether (your crazy idea), or marginally improving your typical task in a very typical way.
In the end, it's all about value.
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#19From the article: I'd rather own 94% of a watermelon than 100% of a grape.
That's a very good metaphor and a very good explanation of why you'd want funding.
Re: Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a huge fan of "necessary but not sufficient" qualities like this. A startup needs: 1) Boldness 2) A crazy idea that most people think is stupid. 3) Persistence All of these things seem to be absolutely required for success. But none of them is sufficient. Combine 'em with good "product/market fit" (a la Andreessen) and I think you win.
Startups don't need "A crazy idea that most people think is stupid". In most cases, an idea that most people think is stupid is exactly that. Startups need to offer something of perceived value, that's pretty much it. In some cases, it's doing a typical task in a non-typical way, or doing something non-typical altogether (your crazy idea), or marginally improving your typical task in a very typical way. In the end, i…
Startups - like any market - are a parimutuel system. Your payout is determined not just by whether you're right or not, but by how many other people are also right. If you bet on social networks in 2004, you'd be right, but unless you're Mark Zuckerburg or Tom Anderson, you wouldn't have gotten rich off it.
So really, you need "a crazy idea that most people think is stupid, but is less crazy for customers than for competitors." Either that, or there has to be some barrier to entry that lets you execute but prevents everyone else from executing, even though they can see the same opportunity that you can.