Startup escape path • Hacker News Board

Re: Startup escape path

#21

Post by sunahsuh » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

billpatrianakos wrote: post #16

yesimahuman wrote: post #13

At this point, only other tech startup people care what stack you are using, and they probably aren't going to be your customers. If you have the ability to make something in a technology you already know, why waste more time learning something you don't, like node.js? Just make something already!

Agreed. This post comes at this in a way that's indicative of the broader mentality about startups these days. The word startup no longer defines a small but rapidly growing business. Instead it now means a website or some sort of technology with "app" appended to the end with young founders and millions of dollars worth of funding plus hype. The stack you use is now a way to judge your product. If Facebook were to b…

I beg to differ. These technologies come with real, actual benefits -- one of the biggest ones for most of these being speed of execution. Many of them fit much better with agile development methods. Others that you list offer scalability benefits, which will save headaches down the line. If you're a tech startup that doesn't at least understand these benefits and has a good justification for why you've gone with other technologies, I'd have questions about the skill level of your technical team. If you already know PHP, learning Rails to start building is like, an investment of a week (or should be if you're a decent programmer). Have you read up on the hoops that Facebook has had to jump through to make PHP scale for them? The future costs of trying to hire excellent developers when you're bound to a stale tech stack is another significant consideration.

I'm not disagreeing that you can make a good product with old tech, but I'd contend that producing a good product and using some of the newer tools are not unrelated, on a number of levels.

Re: Startup escape path

#22

Post by jqueryin » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 5:45 PM UTC

coolgeek wrote: post #17

jqueryin wrote: post #3

Somewhere in those steps you should add "make a name for yourself." Marketing yourself and your company can lead you from a good idea/MVP/prototype to a successful business. I've seen it first hand on several occasions. It's not about what you know, but who you know. Numerous articles on HN have been targeted towards the difficulty of traction. "I have a good product, but I have no traction." There comes a point when…

Okay - how about some criticism? What am I doing wrong here? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3356415 Everything's on the table - the site, the concept, the HN submission, even me. Tear it apart.

Done. Not tearing, just constructive criticism from an outsider.

Re: Startup escape path

#23

Post by yesimahuman » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 6:20 PM UTC

sunahsuh wrote: post #21

billpatrianakos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This post comes at this in a way that's indicative of the broader mentality about startups these days. The word startup no longer defines a small but rapidly growing business. Instead it now means a website or some sort of technology with "app" appended to the end with young founders and millions of dollars worth of funding plus hype. The stack you use is now a way to judge your product. If Facebook were to b…

I beg to differ. These technologies come with real, actual benefits -- one of the biggest ones for most of these being speed of execution . Many of them fit much better with agile development methods. Others that you list offer scalability benefits, which will save headaches down the line. If you're a tech startup that doesn't at least understand these benefits and has a good justification for why you've gone with ot…

I've never heard anyone say Java is slow when compared with Ruby or Python. In fact I'm looking at some benchmarks that show the complete opposite. And as for PHP, Facebook is a completely different company with traffic very few startups will ever see.

I also don't think the argument that Java or C# is somehow a worse fit for agile development is valid. Sure, I might be able to get my app out more quickly with Python or Ruby, but long term it's not like I'm adding thousands of lines of code a week. A startup takes a long time to build, if you are still writing a ton of code half a year out and you aren't making revenue, I think you should take a step back from coding and focus on business development.

I think agile development is hindered or bolstered by your tools (using git instead of svn, for example) more than the language you write your program in.

Re: Startup escape path

#24

Post by jriley » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 6:48 PM UTC

donw wrote: post #6

Speaking as someone that had a corporate job before, I think that 'working for somebody else's startup' is also a really great idea, especially if you don't immediately know what kind of company you want to build. You still get a paycheck, but at the same time have a chance to gain a lot of important skills, meet a lot of important people in the community, and understand what life in a startup is like.

Me too; good advice.

My two cents: Remember contracting is a decent bridge / fallback; maintain corporate relationships.

Get a revenue problem - multiple friends failed by obsessing over business structure.

Change attitude on risk/analysis; corporate often analyzes how things can fail while many successful entrepreneurs take uncertain gambles and pivot.

Re: Startup escape path

#25

Post by jes5199 » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 7:17 PM UTC

Oh, I was hoping to read how to escape from startups.

Re: Startup escape path

#26

Post by tptacek » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 7:42 PM UTC

billpatrianakos wrote: post #15

Registering as a corporation may not be smart if you're planning on bringing some VCs on board. You'll likely end up having to reincorporate in some other state for some reasons. Even when you apply to YC the guidelines say its preferable that you haven't filed as a corporation. You can get a simple DBA for real cheap and still be considered a company. I started off at my local County building and paid only $5 plus a…

People say this every time the topic of incorporation comes up. It's true: if you take funding, they're going to tear up your existing corporate structure and rebuild it. This argues for keeping your pre-funding structure as simple as possible. But what's not true is that you'll get passed up (for anything) because you're already set up as an LLC. If your pitch is so flimsy that $1000 of legal work kills a deal, you never had the deal to begin with.

Re: Startup escape path

#27

Post by zeemonkee » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 7:43 PM UTC

sunahsuh wrote: post #21

billpatrianakos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This post comes at this in a way that's indicative of the broader mentality about startups these days. The word startup no longer defines a small but rapidly growing business. Instead it now means a website or some sort of technology with "app" appended to the end with young founders and millions of dollars worth of funding plus hype. The stack you use is now a way to judge your product. If Facebook were to b…

I beg to differ. These technologies come with real, actual benefits -- one of the biggest ones for most of these being speed of execution . Many of them fit much better with agile development methods. Others that you list offer scalability benefits, which will save headaches down the line. If you're a tech startup that doesn't at least understand these benefits and has a good justification for why you've gone with ot…

I've made good money fixing utter crap written by people who decided a new startup is the best time and place to learn a whole new technology at the same time.

There's so many ways for a startup to screw up - marketing, financing, hiring, pure bad luck - without throwing the whole unknown of an unfamiliar language or framework into the mix.

Unless you actually need new tech to solve a specific problem, use what you know.

Re: Startup escape path

#28

Post by philwelch » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 7:44 PM UTC

Here are the points I would question. I don't speak from any experience or expertise, so let these thoughts stand on their own merits:

2. Connect to the local startup community? More important to connect to customers and users. I won't discount the value of the startup community entirely, but there are echo-chamber and groupthink effects. Connect to customers first, and then the startup community might be more valuable to you. Treat the startup community as an end in itself and you just end up creating derivative, unprofitable ideas.

3. Read Hacker News? Maybe 2-3 years ago this was more valuable. Now I would suggest skimming Hacker News and using what you can, but also find the important forums and venues your customers use, and read those more closely.

6. Start a blog? Not bad advice, but the more general point--to write--is more broad than that. Blogging is only one medium, and there are many other mediums you have to write well in.

Re: Startup escape path

#29

Post by loceng » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 9:23 PM UTC

This doesn't address getting investment, nor finding a technical co-founder. You don't mention how much personal money they are bootstrapping or have access to either.

I've been doing this a long while now and after bootstrapping and making mistakes, I am seemingly still not near being able to do what I want (either through getting investment or finding a technical co-founder).

Re: Startup escape path

#30

Post by gphil » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

coolgeek wrote: post #17

jqueryin wrote: post #3

Somewhere in those steps you should add "make a name for yourself." Marketing yourself and your company can lead you from a good idea/MVP/prototype to a successful business. I've seen it first hand on several occasions. It's not about what you know, but who you know. Numerous articles on HN have been targeted towards the difficulty of traction. "I have a good product, but I have no traction." There comes a point when…

Okay - how about some criticism? What am I doing wrong here? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3356415 Everything's on the table - the site, the concept, the HN submission, even me. Tear it apart.

Here's my criticism:

Knowing what groups are meeting in my community isn't a pain point for me at all. I'm aware of the goings-on in my community well enough already (too many for me to attend all the ones I'm interested in.) Of course, I'm just one data point, but this doesn't solve any problems for me.

Edit: Upon reflection, a related feature that would solve a pain point for me would be a service that helped provide me with videos/transcripts/minutes of the events I couldn't make it out to.