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I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

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Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#241

Post by thenerdhead »

It's not really uncommon. Some very successful investors & businesses can focus purely on the value exchange.

At the end of the day, KPIs, OKRs, MAUs, etc are all just numbers. What really matters is whether the value being exchanged is business worthy.

Like take an example about the Steam Deck recently by Valve. Gaben doesn't really care about these metrics right now because he's trying to validate a hypothesis that PC gaming can work as a handheld device (which has been tried for many years). Can it fail miserably? Maybe.

Or look at Mark Cuban's recent online affordable pharmacy. Mark obviously is showing he doesn't care about draining individual's bank accounts for life saving generic drugs, but validating if the big pharma industry is a bit corrupt and wants to slash the prices down. Can it fail miserably? Maybe.

Do you need business plans, balance sheets, or pitch decks to do this? Arguably not. You just need to know how driven the individuals/team is and whether there's a sense of product-market fit.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#242

Post by timcederman »

themanmaran wrote: post #72
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you think its bullshit? for startup companies that are looking for seed investments who writes business plans?

The YC application is effectively a business plan.

I can assure you it is not anything like an actual business plan.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#243

Post by lupire »

austenallred wrote: post #186
pfortuny wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a teacher, I would rather examine my students orally. Shorter and to the point. Much fairer. In that sense, what he says is normal.

It’s also a bit of an IQ test to see how you can hit balls back across the net with zero preparation.

Zero response time. Tons of preparation required.

See both Roger Federer and college debate teams.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#244

Post by timcederman »

LeonB wrote: post #125
gdsimoes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind giving more details?

Not something I’m going to dig into, sorry. People have every right to block others, without giving any explanation and I support that side of it completely. It stood out from my pov because there’s very very few times I’ve noticed I’m blocked and I don’t generally mean to cause any offence. The most I would’ve been intending to cause was a little introspection.

> there’s very very few times I’ve noticed I’m blocked

Is that a normal thing, to be blocked more than once on Twitter?

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#245

Post by projektfu »

Someone must be making sure there’s not a few million in debt casually tossed in, making a $250,000 or whatever investment into a $3,250,000 investment. Beyond that, balance sheets are really just part of the process of making sure the company’s not fragile.

Startups are always fragile.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#246

Post by lupire »

ignoramous wrote: post #200
monksdream wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His essays are usually a big pile of “focus on the important things and add value or whatever”-type platitudes. It’s funny that each one has been proofread and revised based on comments from the Who-is-Who in SV, a typical Emperor and His New Clothes situation. To be fair though, 99% of wisdom books from successful people are like this.

Calling it platitudes is harsh. The Airbnb founders have repeatedly said that their company was going no where but for Paul Graham's mentorship and the series of advice he gave them, amidst an economy in dire recession. And btw, before YC, the whos-who of SV were a closed-knit, exclusive group. You underestimate the very radical nature of YC when they started in 2004.

What AirBnb was consulting, not a pile of generic essays. Otherwise why would they give him 7% of the company?

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#248

Post by projektfu »

nomilk wrote: post #73

Very similar to Sam's confession on Econtalk [1]: > I probably shouldn't admit this--I'm on the Board of a public company: I can't read a balance sheet or income statement or anything like that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYXUgNHHc4&t=1656s

That’s a worse confession. I’m sure PG can read an income statement just fine and likely used his to sell ViaWeb.

Looking at things like Uber, though, they’re coming up with ways of making these basic reports harder to read critically. It reminds me of the pre-SEC financials covered in “Security Analysis” by Benjamin Graham. Companies claimed all sorts of things, especially treating one-time events as operating revenue, and toed the line of fraud.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#249

Post by tkiolp4 »

nicodjimenez wrote: post #76
Neverending wrote: post #71

He later goes on to claim he's "never read a pitch deck". https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1492696791434731529?s=20&t=... What an eye roll.

I love the man's essays and he is clearly a genius, but he's getting carried away a bit on Twitter.

I didn’t know people consider him a “genius”. Wow, I always consider him a good businessman.

Re: I have never read a business plan or balance sheet

#250

Post by phkahler »

onion2k wrote: post #133
guynamedloren wrote: post #106

I’m surprised the YC application hasn’t been more of a focus in this discussion. The following questions are pulled from the application (perhaps an older version): What is your company going to make? Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it does…

These questions cover product description, value prop, market analysis, financial projections and more, all of which are the core of a “business plan”. There is a key difference though - none of the YC questions are about the planning bit of a business plan. None of them are about what you're going to do in the near term future. It's all about what you've done so far and where you believe you could be when you exit.…

>> It's all about what you've done so far and where you believe you could be when you exit.

YC was never about an exit. It's about building something people want. Only after that can you decide what to do with it. Continue running a business was a serious consideration before it got overrun by VCs.

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