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How startups should die

blog.42floors.com

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Re: How startups should die

#11

Post by jaf12duke »

ballooney wrote: post #3

"back in 2007, we were enabling college students to debate issues on their campus. And in the unfortunate theme of that era, we had lots of people using it but nothing resembling a business model." Let's all be thankful things have moved on so much since that era!

They really have. When I look around the current batch of YC companies, I find that virtually every one has a built-in business model from the beginning.

I think the craze of 2007 was that you could make something that would become popular. Popular felt so much better than not popular. Max Levchin once called it blowing up a balloon. They get big fast, but they're just full of air.

Re: How startups should die

#12

Post by dmyler »

Financial transparency FTW. I've worked for two companies that were extremely transparent. It's made me feel like a) the company knows I am a big kid and can take the good & the bad news, and b) views me as a partner in the work, not a cog in the machine. And if declining finances leads some people to leave, that's infinitely easier than having to let them go.

Re: How startups should die

#13

Post by jaf12duke »

brd wrote: post #7

Absolutely yes to "Pass the Hacker News test". Seneca's letter Epistle XI is one of my favorites and teaches this exact lesson. It closes with "Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them." http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html#‘XI1 I've found it to be a great technique for making better decis…

One of the powerful parts of the HN application of this age-old teaching is that it includes lots of super smart hackers, who by their very nature are skeptical and inquisitive. This crew doesn't miss details.

So in those times when your discipline is failing you. It's actually helpful to know that the HN crowd will catch you. For our industry overall, it's a very healthy self-policing mechanism.

Re: How startups should die

#14

Post by rubidium »

brd wrote: post #7

Absolutely yes to "Pass the Hacker News test". Seneca's letter Epistle XI is one of my favorites and teaches this exact lesson. It closes with "Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them." http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html#‘XI1 I've found it to be a great technique for making better decis…

There's also the deathbed technique. Imagine you're 91 years old, with a few members of your family around, and you're thinking back over your life. How would you wish you would have made the decision?

Admittedly, this only worked really well for me after I sat with a grandparent at their deathbed.

Re: How startups should die

#15

Post by jaf12duke »

mathattack wrote: post #10
eggbrain wrote: post #6

Just curious, but how much would a list of 1-million targeted emails go for? High five figures? Low six figures? I'm trying to put myself in perspective of his struggle -- was he potentially buying another year of runway? Another month?

Part of the question here is also, "What did you promise (implicitly or explicitly) when you got those email addresses?" That's really where it becomes an ethics issue. Our data gets sold every day. Another question is, "Did everyone get paid?" He did the right thing and saw to it that everyone got made whole. If the business goes into bankruptcy and some creditors are not being made whole, it's much harder to not se…

OP here.

I can't remember what the exact figure was--but it was in the 5 figures. Which for me felt like a potential life-saver.

I don't think what I promised my users was actually that relevant. It would've been super easy to change our terms of service to include the ability to sell or rent user data. I could have written it in a way no one would have understand. Of course, no one would have ever seen the change anyways.

The real issue was that I knew it was wrong. Even if legal.

Re: How startups should die

#16

Post by mbesto »

> I remember sitting down with Paul Graham as our startup was failing. I remember how unbelievable difficult it was to get myself to that meeting. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to tell him my startup was failing. It took him 30 seconds to process the failure and then he moved on. He was so unbelievably supportive and so excited for whatever it was I was going to do next.

And this, my friends, is the fundamental difference between SV and the rest of the world. From my knowledge and experience, something like this simply does not happen outside of America. I haven't decided whether this is universally a good or a bad thing, but one thing is for sure - (us) Americans are very tolerant of failure and that is a good thing for startups.

Re: How startups should die

#17

Post by tomasien »

I wrote like 10 topic sentences for comments about shutting down a company and then just erased them, because what a horrible set of memories that topic brings out. I like reading about failure from Jason because he's had a win and is on his way to another, so he can talk about it with a pretty even mind. Personally, I've only got like 10% of a kind-of-win since shutting my first company down, and it still makes me absolutely ill.

Re: How startups should die

#18

Post by brd »

rubidium wrote: post #14
brd wrote: post #7

Absolutely yes to "Pass the Hacker News test". Seneca's letter Epistle XI is one of my favorites and teaches this exact lesson. It closes with "Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them." http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html#‘XI1 I've found it to be a great technique for making better decis…

There's also the deathbed technique. Imagine you're 91 years old, with a few members of your family around, and you're thinking back over your life. How would you wish you would have made the decision? Admittedly, this only worked really well for me after I sat with a grandparent at their deathbed.

I think the thing that makes the Seneca/HN approach so effective is that it can be applied to the minutia. No one wants to look bad in front of their mentor, no matter how trivial the act is.

When you're on your deathbed most individual events will be irrelevant. Not to mention that it doesn't really work until you have a visceral appreciation of your mortality, something many younger people lack.

The deathbed concept I had heard frequently with little effect but reading that letter from Seneca had a profound impact on my decision making process.

Re: How startups should die

#19

Post by mathattack »

jaf12duke wrote: post #15
mathattack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the question here is also, "What did you promise (implicitly or explicitly) when you got those email addresses?" That's really where it becomes an ethics issue. Our data gets sold every day. Another question is, "Did everyone get paid?" He did the right thing and saw to it that everyone got made whole. If the business goes into bankruptcy and some creditors are not being made whole, it's much harder to not se…

OP here. I can't remember what the exact figure was--but it was in the 5 figures. Which for me felt like a potential life-saver. I don't think what I promised my users was actually that relevant. It would've been super easy to change our terms of service to include the ability to sell or rent user data. I could have written it in a way no one would have understand. Of course, no one would have ever seen the change an…

Thanks for sharing!

Re: How startups should die

#20

Post by jaf12duke »

tomasien wrote: post #17

I wrote like 10 topic sentences for comments about shutting down a company and then just erased them, because what a horrible set of memories that topic brings out. I like reading about failure from Jason because he's had a win and is on his way to another, so he can talk about it with a pretty even mind. Personally, I've only got like 10% of a kind-of-win since shutting my first company down, and it still makes me a…

Jason (OP) here.

Yep, know that feeling. Well.

Would love to have you over to the office to chat. Ping me offline. jason at 42floors

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