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Projects and Companies

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Projects and Companies

#21

Post by shubhamjain »

vog wrote: post #10
babababa wrote: post #5

"All of these were ideas that seemed bad but turned out to be good, and this is the magic formula for major success." I see this sentiment expressed often, like it's a good thing that you want to pursue an idea that seems bad. If I were to think about founding a start-up, I'd rather find an opportunity that makes sense and sounds good, validate the opportunity, talk to potential customers, and do as much diligence as…

I think you misunderstood the point of "seemingly bad ideas". This is not about ideas that seem bad to you . This is about ideas that seem bad to others , i.e. ideas that seem okay to you, that you probably even verified in the small, but still have trouble convincing others.

> This is about ideas that seem bad to others, i.e. ideas that seem okay to you, that you probably even verified in the small, but still have trouble convincing others.

Won't a skeptical person find flaw in every idea he is confronted with? In that case, I guess it all boils down to execution. In my opinion, the "idea" need not be very clear but it is okay for it to be filmsy. Building a minimal product with a filmsy idea can help "project" to head in the right direction when you start seeing the facts.

Perhaps, the reason why Google and Facebook succeeded wasn't that the ideas were seemingly bad but "idea" didn't exist in the first place. They just wanted to build something for their own and started getting serious when it got traction.

Re: Projects and Companies

#22

Post by JoeAltmaier »

malanj wrote: post #12
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #9

> The best companies start out with ideas that don’t sound very good. They start out as projects, and in fact sometimes they sound so inconsequential the founders wouldn't let themselves work on them if they had to defend them as a company. Google and Yahoo started as grad students’ projects. Facebook was a project Zuckerberg built while he was a sophomore in college. Twitter was a side project that started with a si…

Starting a company when there are already established and strong competitors probably counts as "looks like a bad idea". I think the point is that the company (or project) seemed like a bad idea, not necessarily the market as a whole. Google and Facebook are both often used as examples exactly because they were "late" to the party. That seemed like a bad idea, but they both had a secret (as Peter Thiel likes to say),…

Existing competitors means two good things: customers exist, and the product is understood in the market. Building a better mousetrap is the ideal startup. There's nothing wrong with competition.

Re: Projects and Companies

#23

Post by zeeshanm »

The point about having self-discipline to work on projects is very true. I have found that the best way to stay motivated is to write as little code as possible and deploy as mush as possible. My usual commit is never more than ~50 lines of code. There is no better satisfaction than seeing your code doing magic in the wild.

Re: Projects and Companies

#24

Post by ianstormtaylor »

cossatot wrote: post #13

I like the long-standing definitions of the words: the company is the entity composed of the workers in their official capacity as well as its other resources, legal rights and so forth, and the project is the work the company has undertaken, and you are a beautiful if monomaniacal human being. >It’s far better to be thought of—and to think of yourself—as a project than a company for as long as possible. 'You' are ne…

I also agree with Sam's thesis, and I also strongly agree with your addition.

It's very easy for startup culture to fall into the trap of equating the people with the project/company they're working on, resulting in unhealthy consequences when things don't go perfectly. It's a tricky thing to come to terms with, because in the early days that overlapping identity—while never healthy—is probably critical to having the momentum to carry on. But as time passes, separating your own identity from that of your project/company is critical to avoid burnout and depression; the company will always crest and trough, but you can't be pegged to its state anymore.

Re: Projects and Companies

#25

Post by runesoerensen »

cossatot wrote: post #13

I like the long-standing definitions of the words: the company is the entity composed of the workers in their official capacity as well as its other resources, legal rights and so forth, and the project is the work the company has undertaken, and you are a beautiful if monomaniacal human being. >It’s far better to be thought of—and to think of yourself—as a project than a company for as long as possible. 'You' are ne…

> If any of these things were synonymous, there would be some serious implications. If your project fails, then you as the projectcompanyperson, are a failure and may cease to exist(instead of you still being an alive person whose project failed and whose company may or may not be on the rocks)

Fear of (personal) failure can be a strong motivator though; "One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating." [1]

[1]http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html

Re: Projects and Companies

#26

Post by w1ntermute »

> The best companies start out with ideas that don’t sound very good. They start out as projects, and in fact sometimes they sound so inconsequential the founders wouldn't let themselves work on them if they had to defend them as a company.

Isn't this just cherry-picking of examples that validate a preconception? What about Uber? Dropbox? Amazon? Xiaomi?

Theranos:

> In the fall of 2003, Elizabeth Holmes, a 19-year-old sophomore at Stanford, plopped herself down in the office of her chemical engineering professor, Channing Robertson, and said, “Let’s start a company.”

http://fortune.com/2014/06/12/theranos-blood-holmes/

Re: Projects and Companies

#27

Post by malcolmocean »

I've had a similar-but-different experience around being taken seriously with my app Complice. I'd be making small talk with other entrepreneurs (often students or whatever) and people would regularly break the ice with, "So what's your idea?"

...and I'm like "idea? I have a business. I make my living off of this idea."

Re: Projects and Companies

#29

Post by volaski »

w1ntermute wrote: post #26

> The best companies start out with ideas that don’t sound very good. They start out as projects, and in fact sometimes they sound so inconsequential the founders wouldn't let themselves work on them if they had to defend them as a company. Isn't this just cherry-picking of examples that validate a preconception? What about Uber? Dropbox? Amazon? Xiaomi? Theranos: > In the fall of 2003, Elizabeth Holmes, a 19-year-ol…

Does a limo service as a startup idea sound cool to you? What about just another online file storage service when there are hundreds of others out there already without any significant traction?

Re: Projects and Companies

#30

Post by jessedhillon »

This paragraph is basically the whole point of the post:

When you’re working on a project, you can experiment with ideas for a long time. When you have a company, the clock is ticking and people expect results. This gets to the danger with projects—a lot of people use them as an excuse to not work very hard. If you don’t have the self-discipline to work hard without external pressure, projects can be a license to slack off.

The idea that people were calling his startup a project instead of a company irked him because he perceived that, in their minds, they were putting his startup in the category of things people pursue without any intent of completing or being accountable for. That's how most people regard their projects: as hobbies.

That's at least what I was thinking to myself. The reaction I had when reading this essay was to think to myself "well, how do you expect to be taken seriously if it's not something you intend to deliver and be responsible for," but then he delivered this gem above.

The company doesn't deliver that level of intention, you have to generate it. Once you have it, the company is just a legal entity, and if you don't have it then no amount of incorporation, schedules, meetings etc is going to compensate for that.

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