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The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

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Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#21

Post by codetrotter »

galdor wrote: post #15
slugiscool99 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so true - way more to learn from failures than successes

Failures are always interesting, but it is incredibly hard to pinpoint why it failed. Lots of things can go wrong, and it is usually a combination of factor that kills a company. I was once told only to take advice from people who succeeded repeatedly at a task. Building a company and succeeding is impressive, but there may be a lot more factors in play than just the actions of the founders. Building several successf…

It’d also be interesting to hear from someone who succeeded once but then repeatedly failed, and then succeeded one or more times again

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#22

Post by s1k3 »

mdorazio wrote: post #8

Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.

You know what I’d listen to is a podcast of just normal founders. I’d love to just hear about people like me, not the 1% on either side.

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#23

Post by O__________O »

JohnFen wrote: post #19
dang wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that failures are interesting, but the bias problem doesn't go away. Reasons people give for why they failed are no more reliable than reasons they give for why they succeeded (or anything else, for that matter). We're good story-tellers and bad reason-knowers. I often have this feeling when reading "why my startup failed" blog posts (how do they know?!). Which doesn't mean they aren't worth reading!

> Reasons people give for why they failed are no more reliable than reasons they give for why they succeeded 100% true. That's why when you learn about other ventures, successful or not, what the founders say are the important features aren't really the part that you should pay the most attention to.

What specifically in your opinion are you supposed to pay attention to?

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#25

Post by theGnuMe »

mdorazio wrote: post #8

Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.

Startups succeed in spite of themselves.

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#26

Post by whatshisface »

mdorazio wrote: post #8

Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.

Nobody does the right thing. You will not find any startup, future success or failure, that is doing everything the right way. Many times the difference between success and failure is who got lucky and never had to pay for the stuff they skipped over, and who got the predictable consequences.

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#27

Post by mdorazio »

michaeladas wrote: post #9
mdorazio wrote: post #8

Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.

Any podcast recs of interviews and stories like this (i.e. podcasts about start ups that took the "right path" but still failed?)

I have yet to find a good series that address this well. One episode of the Autonocast does come to mind, though: http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/3/27/181-stefan-seltz-ax...

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#28

Post by mdorazio »

whatshisface wrote: post #26
mdorazio wrote: post #8

Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.

Nobody does the right thing. You will not find any startup, future success or failure, that is doing everything the right way. Many times the difference between success and failure is who got lucky and never had to pay for the stuff they skipped over, and who got the predictable consequences.

I think you missed my intended point. Of course there are no perfect startups. However, at any given time there are multiple startups doing largely the same thing, but most of them will fail. I want stories about why Startup A succeeded, and why Startup B doing the same thing in the same space at the same time failed. We typically only get the former stories, which aren't very helpful in a vacuum. It's far more educational to look at both sides and draw conclusions.

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#29

Post by csallen »

mdorazio wrote: post #8

Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.

Ironically, this perspective itself is a result of survivorship bias.

There are seemingly so few podcasts and publications about failure stories that it must be a rare and unique idea to start one, right? But the reality is that it's a very common idea. I feature success stories on my podcast (Indie Hackers), and I've been getting requests for "more failure stories" since day #1. I've tried them, and I've also seen a lot of competing websites and podcasts try them. And guess what?

They aren't popular.

It turns out, there's a lot of failure-based content out there. It just never survives or thrives enough to get popular. Hence the survivorship bias illusion that nobody is making failure content.

My theory as to why is simple to understand if you understand basic story structure: Every success story is actually made up of a bunch of small failure stories followed by a small success story: fail-fail-fail-win. People greatly prefer to hear the failure stories of those who eventually succeeded, than to hear the failure stories of those who never did. Not only does it make for a better overall story, but it's more effective to learn from. So I think people are right to prefer this.

Re: The Social Radars: Conversations with Startup Founders

#30

Post by nickpinkston »

csallen wrote: post #29
mdorazio wrote: post #8

Any chance they break out of the survivorship bias bubble in their discussions? I largely stopped listening to Acquired because of that. I want more stories about startups that failed while doing seemingly the right thing, and fewer about startups that probably got lucky.

Ironically, this perspective itself is a result of survivorship bias. There are seemingly so few podcasts and publications about failure stories that it must be a rare and unique idea to start one, right? But the reality is that it's a very common idea. I feature success stories on my podcast (Indie Hackers), and I've been getting requests for "more failure stories" since day #1. I've tried them, and I've also seen a…

Yea, that's an interesting perspective. I do wondering if we can learn from a related, but successful form of failure content, which is the disaster/accident investigation videos. I watch a wide range from the classic TV airliner crashes [1], to highly detailed air crash disaster investigation reports / training [2], to industrial / other accidents [3], to gov't industrial accidents reports / simulations [4].

I wonder if there's anything to be gained from way that content succeeds while business failures don't? Is it just that startup failures aren't as dramatic? It's not a clear-cut kind of narrative that's satisfying? No idea...

These are all great:

[1] Tenerife Crash for TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RBLM6qO0g0

[2] Tenerife Crash for Pilots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d9B9RN5quA

[3] SL1 Nuclear Accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYle_eI5j78

[4] BP Texas City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goSEyGNfiPM

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