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Do Things that Don't Scale

paulgraham.com

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Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#111

Post by 1337biz »

dominotw wrote: post #31
pg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've funded several startups doing components of that. It's hard to do in the general case. Essentially, every startup is a user-acquisition startup in its own domain, and it's hard to beat the good ones at their specialty.

But the domains can be divided into general classes of users. If jawbone can recruit me for it UP band then withings can also recruit me for its body analyzer. Not all startups in health segment have do its own health conscious user recruiting. There is a lot of overlap between products and I am sure there is some market for a generic user recruitment.

My suspicion is that you don't want generic users. You want users who are going to stick with your product for a while and not jump from one train to another. Without them thinking that your product stands out changes are pretty low that they are going to talk with somebody else about it.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#112

Post by jfarmer »

jfarmer wrote: post #106
trevelyan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of the founders, there's a lot to be said for failing fast. And while it's entirely possible you could have built a better product, it's more likely the resulting business would hardly have paid a fraction of your salary, let alone theirs. If you think the idea is really good, you should ask for permission to develop it on your own as a side business. And if you don't think so... there's no point in chidin…

The idea behind the "fail fast" mantra is that folks over-emphasize getting every decision correct. This is a problem because you don't really learn until your idea meets reality, including what's important to focus on and what's not important to focus on. The goal is to learn new things as fast as possible. Since most people dither, "fail fast" serves as good, rough advice. With no extra information it's more likely…

@jchrisa: Sometimes the HN comment timeout doesn't make sense. Hah! This is my reply.

"When you have traction, you'll know it. Traction is what allows you to learn. Then you might wanna try not failing, or at least, let features fail fast, but keep the overall ball rolling.

Real traction isn't something you can buy, so if you find it, stick to it and grow it."

This is true, but if step #1 is "getting traction" then there's a learning loop there, too. I'm not sure if what you're proposing is a process that looks like "try lots of things until you get traction and then worry about focused iterations."

If you are then I think when that approach works it works by accident. It's true you'll have a hard time coming by lots of quantitative data before you get traction, but that's only the strictest kind of learning. On the other hand, if each failure results in a complete product/market reboot, that's not learning -- that's guessing. :)

It sounds like this is what the OP's company was doing, though.

If your product didn't get traction, why not? What will you do differently next time? Will our product work, but not for the customers we thought it would work for? Is our first market too big, too small, too ill-defined? How will we know when we're succeeding or not, pre-traction?

etc. etc.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#113

Post by forsaken »

peteforde wrote: post #19

"The Perfect Store" is a book about the early days of eBay. The primary takeaway for me was how they deliberately went to swap meets, flea markets and garage sales all over America — especially the rural flyover states — and talked to people. They identified the key influencers and flew many of them to California to be given VIP treatment. Those folks returned to their communities as true believers and encouraged the…

Thanks for this comment. It led me to read the entire website that you linked. On a page I found a link to The Man Who Planted Trees.

I was walking across the country recently on the Pacific Crest Trail, and I had to come off the trail because of an injury. I have been looking around listlessly at the world, and trying to figure out what to do.

This video has struck me in an interesting way. It shows someone who is true of heart can find happiness in profound ways. It has also helped me re-imagine art, as the man painted the landscape and changed the feeling of a region.

It is a beautiful example of the change a single person can make.

Earlier today, I was tempted to tweet "What would a present day John Muir look like?" -- Interestingly I found an answer by another avenue.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#114

Post by jfoster »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #37

I'd be curious to know good ways to balance these various things that don't scale. I speak from a position of inexperience, but I can't imagine a fragile startup could possibly max out any of them. Given that, what are some heuristics for allocating focus across several unscalable efforts? Put another way, what are cues to focus more on one thing than another?

Imagine that airbnb got the door slammed in their faces at first. If so, they should keep trying and adapting their approach. Once some X% would convert (where X is acceptable), but they can't reach enough doors, the problem has changed, so they need to start scaling better.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#115

Post by jfoster »

peteforde wrote: post #19

"The Perfect Store" is a book about the early days of eBay. The primary takeaway for me was how they deliberately went to swap meets, flea markets and garage sales all over America — especially the rural flyover states — and talked to people. They identified the key influencers and flew many of them to California to be given VIP treatment. Those folks returned to their communities as true believers and encouraged the…

It's almost like going from writing code all day to running a political campaign, isn't it?

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#116

Post by jeffasinger »

klibertp wrote: post #104
guiambros wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an early employee at a startup, you were hired to make the company successful, not just to write code. If in order to succeed you need to clean the bathroom (figuratively speaking), just go do it. Go beyond the job description; it's a startup, after all. Job descriptions are worthless, until you have a decent size and need some bureaucracy to survive. If the founder is not seriously expecting you to do go…

No, he was hired to do the job his employer want's him to do. If the founder says "stop thinking about stupid/unnecessary/other's things/jobs/responsibilities" then he HAS to do just that. It's not his role to tell the founder how bad a management this is. And yes , I saw such founders in action, it does happen... Quite often in my experience, though obviously YMMV.

I wouldn't ever want to work in a company, or run a company where it's unacceptable for an employee to say:

"Hey, the company would be a lot better off if I spent some time on X, instead of my usual responsibility Y."

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#117

Post by peteforde »

cpursley wrote: post #109
peteforde wrote: post #19

"The Perfect Store" is a book about the early days of eBay. The primary takeaway for me was how they deliberately went to swap meets, flea markets and garage sales all over America — especially the rural flyover states — and talked to people. They identified the key influencers and flew many of them to California to be given VIP treatment. Those folks returned to their communities as true believers and encouraged the…

"I suspect that there are many founders who would be open to taking the show on the road." I think this should be taken literally by many startups with national scope. Get the hell out of California, buy a used RV, stick the team in it and travel city to city while you build the startup. It's cheaper and you'll be able to meet more customers.

Well, yes: exactly.

I guess you could say that my current "startup" is helping founders do exactly this. Specifically, the exact part that happens right after you concede that it's a potentially great idea and right before you have any idea how to make it happen.

Where to go, who to talk to, and why.

You can follow the origin of the idea starting here: http://reedwordsinamerica.squarespace.com/blog/2012/12/17/th...

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#118

Post by peteforde »

jfoster wrote: post #115
peteforde wrote: post #19

"The Perfect Store" is a book about the early days of eBay. The primary takeaway for me was how they deliberately went to swap meets, flea markets and garage sales all over America — especially the rural flyover states — and talked to people. They identified the key influencers and flew many of them to California to be given VIP treatment. Those folks returned to their communities as true believers and encouraged the…

It's almost like going from writing code all day to running a political campaign, isn't it?

I'd say it's much more like going from jamming on weekends with your friends to writing and recording an album, then taking it out on tour. You have to line up radio promotion, online fan community building, potentially a video or three, magazine interviews, contests, backline... you can't just do one thing and expect everything else to fall into place.

Every band is a complex business that has to get really good at managing multiple moving parts while entertaining people with great songs.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#119

Post by peteforde »

forsaken wrote: post #113
peteforde wrote: post #19

"The Perfect Store" is a book about the early days of eBay. The primary takeaway for me was how they deliberately went to swap meets, flea markets and garage sales all over America — especially the rural flyover states — and talked to people. They identified the key influencers and flew many of them to California to be given VIP treatment. Those folks returned to their communities as true believers and encouraged the…

Thanks for this comment. It led me to read the entire website that you linked. On a page I found a link to The Man Who Planted Trees. I was walking across the country recently on the Pacific Crest Trail, and I had to come off the trail because of an injury. I have been looking around listlessly at the world, and trying to figure out what to do. This video has struck me in an interesting way. It shows someone who is t…

I keep a short list of videos about inspiring creatives. I might be mis-reading your comment, but I will share them, anyhow:

Painting Coconuts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQxOKtCWEGE

The Knife Maker: https://vimeo.com/31455885

The Inverted Bike Shop: https://vimeo.com/36258512

Pins and Needles: https://vimeo.com/57247225

The New Wave of Barber Shops: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gpm54WIyZk

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#120

Post by [deleted] »

klibertp wrote: post #104
guiambros wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an early employee at a startup, you were hired to make the company successful, not just to write code. If in order to succeed you need to clean the bathroom (figuratively speaking), just go do it. Go beyond the job description; it's a startup, after all. Job descriptions are worthless, until you have a decent size and need some bureaucracy to survive. If the founder is not seriously expecting you to do go…

No, he was hired to do the job his employer want's him to do. If the founder says "stop thinking about stupid/unnecessary/other's things/jobs/responsibilities" then he HAS to do just that. It's not his role to tell the founder how bad a management this is. And yes , I saw such founders in action, it does happen... Quite often in my experience, though obviously YMMV.

[deleted]
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