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I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#22It looks like a paid content for advertising.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#23@dang, would be nice to add the year (2015?) to the title.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#24This is a kind of writing I think of as Silicon Valley mythos - in it, a plucky entrepreneur, a lucky angel investor and a hacker get together, and fail their way into an IPO. At the end they tell the reader he just needs to believe in himself more, and the SV myth will come true for him.
There’s a lot of hate in the comments here, but I am personally more equivocal - it is definitely true that absolutely no centimillion or billion dollar companies get founded by people that refuse to found companies. And, I think the real moral of the story - persist and get lucky with a good team and a good market angle at the right time - is a very potent moral.
But, I prefer the grittier SV myth stories a-la Ben Horowitz which mention all the times you’re vomiting in your bathroom worried about making payroll and fighting with your co-founders while your spouse is like “so, about that day job..” - I’m not sure there’s any company that gets truly valuable without some very difficult times.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#25This company was just acquired by Zoom for ~$15B
Yeah, and I have been thinking good job of them sucking from Zoom a la Autonomy or Qualtrics.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#26>"We then hired “The Machine” (Engineer #2) and I moved in with him into an apartment in the Twin Peaks neighborhood of San Francisco, mostly so I could harass him into programming day and night. And as my two engineers built a beta version of our call center software, I started dialing for dollars and calling call center owners with the pitch and promise of something cheaper.
After so many rejections, I wanted to reject myself.
After what must have been more than 2,000 cold calls, I finally reached a receptive voice on the other line.
Joe owned a small but successful call center in Provo, Utah. He called my bluff and said that he knew we didn’t have anything solid yet, but he trusted we could get it built — but it had to be half the price I quoted him.
And that’s the early lesson I learned about entrepreneurship, or maybe it was a lesson in America itself. That after so many rejections, I wanted to reject myself, but then found someone who would mail me a check for $40,000, even during a recession, because they were risk-taking business owners themselves.
It made me realize that America was a magical place for entrepreneurs."
[...]
>"I’m not sure if I have any sage advice for other entrepreneurs, but out of this experience I did learn one important truth. Namely, you don’t have to be an Ivy League graduate (I’m not) or have a lot of money (we didn’t).
You just have to believe in yourself against all reasonable logic,
as trite as that sounds."
PDS: What a great piece of writing about Entrepreneurship!
Worth reading and re-reading in the future!
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#27> Knowing nothing about software. A few lines in: > I created a horse-racing simulation game in Applesoft BASIC in Manhattan Beach Middle School’s computer classroom and ran a small gambling operation. ... Ok.
Compared to the engineers, it does sound accurate. I couldn't claim to know anything serious about medicine by reading Wikipedia compared to a practicing doctor. Disingenuous title? Well yeah. The author does sales.
No, but you could claim it if you'd worked as a volunteer EMT for a year.
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#28This is a kind of writing I think of as Silicon Valley mythos - in it, a plucky entrepreneur, a lucky angel investor and a hacker get together, and fail their way into an IPO. At the end they tell the reader he just needs to believe in himself more, and the SV myth will come true for him. There’s a lot of hate in the comments here, but I am personally more equivocal - it is definitely true that absolutely no centimil…
> centimillion
hectomillion, surely :) ?
https://www.nist.gov/pml/weights-and-measures/metric-si-pref...
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#29It's not clear what this person actually did. It sounds like it's his employees/partners did all the work.
The others were diggers, he told them where to dig.
That is a delightful expression. I think if you told this to 5 people, there would be 5 different attitudes arising from it. I'm going to have to steal that!
Re: I created a $350M software company knowing nothing about software (2015)
#30Someone always hits the lottery. The probability that it will be you is zero. Most people are much better served working for a company and punching the 9-to-5 clock--especially since startups nowadays rarely give contributors sufficient stock to make the risks worthwhile.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, this is a very valid point for most people by definition.