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Startup Playbook

playbook.samaltman.com

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121–130 of 243 posts

Re: Startup Playbook

#121

Post by swamp40 »

davepeck wrote: post #44
m_fayer wrote: post #36

I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns. I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet…

The Basecamp (née 37Signals) folks have been beating this drum for quite some time. DHH posted "Reconsider" to their blog today, actually; it's an entertaining read, if nothing else: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider Here in Seattle, there's a great community of small software businesses with meaningful profits and impact. We have ties to the broader Seattle startup and technology community, without bein…

Too funny! From DHH's blog post:

Angels? Really? You’ve plucked your self-serving moniker from the parables of a religion that specifically and explicitly had its head honcho throw the money men out of the temple and proclaim a rich man less likely to make it into heaven than a camel through a needle’s eye. Okay then!

Re: Startup Playbook

#124

Post by vdaniuk »

ska wrote: post #115
vdaniuk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifestyle business is a dirty word somewhere? "Lifestyle" business is a significantly more rational choice in comparison with VC backed startup if one considers their personal happiness and psychological wellbeing as an important metric.

Can't speak for poster but I suspect this is being used pejoratively in the context of "lifestyle business" == "living off passive income".

That's just sad and I mean it in a non-sarcastic way.

Re: Startup Playbook

#125

Post by will_pseudonym »

tertius wrote: post #62
jMyles wrote: post #21

> Startups are the point in your life when tricks stop working. Awesome thesis, hidden in the middle of the text. In some ways, this is a great single sentence answer to the question, "What is a startup, really?"

That's great. This has been my life, finding the easy wins, and when they stop working, moving on to the next. This is one of the points that characterize me as soft.

What do you mean by "characterize me as soft"?

Re: Startup Playbook

#126

Post by m_fayer »

amelius wrote: post #91
davepeck wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Basecamp (née 37Signals) folks have been beating this drum for quite some time. DHH posted "Reconsider" to their blog today, actually; it's an entertaining read, if nothing else: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider Here in Seattle, there's a great community of small software businesses with meaningful profits and impact. We have ties to the broader Seattle startup and technology community, without bein…

I think what this essay overlooked is that the choice between a "low-risk but small business path" and a "high-risk unicorn path" is not always merely about business-choices and cornering markets simply by using large sums of money. A different "high-risk unicorn path" is going through hard scientific research, which often requires external money to get anything from the ground. And it is this last type of business t…

I think "unicorn" is strictly reserved for the Ubers and the AirBNBs of the world. Anyone who calls the company that gets fusion energy working a "unicorn" will probably be laughed out of the room.

Re: Startup Playbook

#127

Post by nostrademons »

odbol wrote: post #119
jhchen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novel does not mean no competition--there's always competition, even for breakthrough technologies. Even the telephone had to compete with telegraphs or snail mail. The novelty comes in the way an existing need is met. From your list, Uber competes against taxis to transport people short distances. Airbnb competes against hotels to provide short term housing to travelers. Dropbox competed against flash drive to trans…

This is a small nitpick, but I'd say Dropbox competes against sysadmins setting up a corporate network share or FTP server (or even email attachments) for storing documents. They basically automated the sysadmin's job, with a slick interface that was easy to set up and easy to pay for. Same with Slack. They took the concept of IRC, which many companies use internally, and made it dead simple to set up and use. In ess…

Dropbox started out as a consumer company, not enterprise. When they launched, most of their customers were individual people not affiliated with a company.

Re: Startup Playbook

#128

Post by jedberg »

> On the other hand, starting a startup is not in fact very risky to your career—if you’re really good at technology, there will be job opportunities if you fail. Most people are very bad at evaluating risk.

It's true that career risk is low, but opportunity cost could be high. If you're well into your career, taking a few years off to work at a startup that might fail could really be a million dollar tradeoff.

So you really gotta believe in your startup.

(Note: I left my comfortable high paying job earlier this year to start a startup)

Re: Startup Playbook

#129

Post by m_fayer »

nostrademons wrote: post #117
m_fayer wrote: post #36

I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns. I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet…

Reading the advice in the handbook, I don't think it's all that different from what you'd need to start a lifestyle business. You still need to start with a business niche that is underserved where you can make a few customers very happy. You still need to focus on improving your product (or service) to the point where people will give you business via referrals - pounding the pavement for every single sale isn't a v…

The devil's in the details. The handbook emphasizes Growth Growth Growth. So when your small focused obsessively cohesive product saturates its small niche and your growth is suddenly not-so-exponential, if you're a startup you start to Expand Expand Expand your product, new use cases, new functionalities, until you've reinvented email again.

If you're less growth focused, have your pricing nailed down, and are well positioned in your niche - then you should have enough new users from simple population turnover and you don't need that graph to keep angling so sharply upward to avoid ulcers.

Re: Startup Playbook

#130

Post by nedwin »

m_fayer wrote: post #36

I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns. I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet…

There are tons of resources for this niche. Amy Hoy + Rob Walling would be two people I would check out.
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