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How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#61

Post by anonymous5133 »

jarsin wrote: post #2

So has Ycombinator abandoned any hope for VR since he calls it a fake trend in the first five minutes? Just curious because I swear saw a blog where they want VR startups to apply awhile ago but can't find it now.

No, that is not what he is saying. He is saying that right now there is no "killer app" or major reason to run out to get a VR headset or use VR. I agree with him. There is a lot of advancements in terms of VR hardware but what about the software side of it? Extremely minimal use in terms of software. I think VR won't go mainstream until there is some sort of "killer app" in terms of software that could be run on the VR headsets.

Perhaps that is a sign. If you like VR and think it is the future then think about what that killer app could be and invent it because right now, I don't see any killer app for VR yet. Just lots of ideas floating around but no real product.

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#62

Post by anonymous5133 »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #3
jarsin wrote: post #2

So has Ycombinator abandoned any hope for VR since he calls it a fake trend in the first five minutes? Just curious because I swear saw a blog where they want VR startups to apply awhile ago but can't find it now.

He is dead wrong if he thinks VR isn't huge in the long-term.

He said he thinks VR will be huge eventually.

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#63

Post by anonymous5133 »

lwansbrough wrote: post #31
jarsin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a VR startup might be a tough sell right now (tougher than usual) until they think that trend changes from fake to real (if ever) is how I understood what he was saying.

VR is just really bad right now. Every experience either requires a thousand dollars' worth of equipment or it's going to make the user nauscious. The only borderline acceptable experience I've had was a Vive, and that required 2 lighthouses, an HMD, 2 controllers, 400 sqft, and a $2000+ gaming machine -- and I was still tripping over the fucking wires. Any sub-$100 system is a total joke that no one is going to use…

Here is my opinion on VR, what do you think:

I think one of the "killer apps" for VR will be in education. It will be for unique user experiences related to whatever the student is studying. Right now most students learn by lecture, reading books and maybe going online to watch a video on youtube. Well just imagine if you can do activities like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hXlwRlhueE

Now compare that to the lecture, reading books or watching a video. The VR experience is educational, it is interesting, it is fun, it is exciting. When you ask many kids how they feel about school, what do they say? They say it is BORING and I tend to agree with them (based on experience in school). Add in these VR educational experiences and the whole game changes.

Thoughts?

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#64

Post by mattnewport »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #58
mattnewport wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VR social chat is not going to be a big thing, even after gen-Z. People tend to forget what social chat is for, communication. VR just adds no value to that process. This is not out experience using VR chat for some of our meetings. We're a fully remote team building a VR product so we're in a somewhat unique position where all our employees have high end VR gear and we have a big need for effective remote collabor…

Fair point I did not consider VR collaboration and idea incubation for enterprise level applications, where details have a higher priority. My only counter argument to VR chat for enterprise level applications is four fold: 1. Its synchronous, like any conference call. Async is still going to be the main form of communication (Slack, git issues, email, etc). Synchronous communication has a higher weighting on just co…

I think as a fully remote company doing VR development we're "living in the future" a bit. It's a possible if not inevitable future at least. We use a mix of technologies to enable a remote team working across multiple time zones, some synchronous and some asynchronous: Slack, Zoom, email, Confluence, Jira, GitHub, Google Docs, Dropbox, etc. We also make use of VR: Rec Room, Bigscreen, multi user functionality in our own app, etc. There's no one tool that does everything but VR apps are a useful piece of the puzzle for us.

As I mentioned, we all have high end VR gear and most of us have it at our desks and are already in and out of VR all day as part of our development work. The use case for our project also benefits from us having capable portable setups so yes we do have people joining VR meetings from Starbucks but I don't expect that to be a mainstream thing for a while until the tech improves.

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#65

Post by ArtWomb »

Terrific intro to Startup School v2.0!

In a similar vein to the question "Why do startups win?", which besides having a rich history of rigorous academic inquiry and to my thinking has never been adequately resolved.

One can ask, "Why does Startup School work?" And a chief factor is the imposition of an external hard deadline (Demo Day). As well as the tracking of performance metrics by a team outside the locus of founders.

To that end, a "Milestone Tracker" interface that is both public and designed with accountability in mind could be a key component in making things "real" for participants.

It also occurs to me that in a class of 15K startups, you are going to receive a lot of "offers" to try products and services from your fellow classmates. Just in the past hour I got $250 in credits from a cloud analytics startup, and a discount coupon from a crowdfunding platform for foodies ;)

Manageable for a cohort size in the low hundreds. But perhaps an issue at scale that may result in missed opportunities.

It may be a good idea to have a centralized site at startupschool.org/offers with a canonical list of "startup-to-startup" (S2S) deals.

Of course it would be differentiated from third-party credits by the likes of GCloud, AWS, Stripe, etc

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#66

Post by gregrata »

Barrin92 wrote: post #57
rexreed wrote: post #27

I'll counter with some more basic and more broadly applicable advice. 1) Build a product people actually want and need and will pay money for 2) Promote yourself incessantly because others will be promoting themselves even more incessantly. 3) Spend your money wisely - focus on people, product, and marketing. Don't waste your money on office trappings and stuff that makes you feel good. Save your lunch money. 4) Igno…

> Ignore Venture Capital I have trouble seeing how this works in a robotics or biotech company. Yes, if you're building something facing consumers on the web you can go a long way on small savings and people just putting time in. But if you want to build something that requires some capital simply to keep the business running that's going to be difficult.

As stated:

> If it takes a lot of money to create what your customers want

I assume that covers what you are talking about...

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#67

Post by john_moscow »

_hyn3 wrote: post #51
john_moscow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just depends on the game you are playing. Currently you can make more money selling the emotion of owning a piece of something great to investors, than selling the actual product to customers.

Only over the short-term. Over the long-term, these should even out, all other things being equal.

Long-term thinking feels like a lost art nowadays...

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#68

Post by xevb3k »

gregrata wrote: post #66
Barrin92 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ignore Venture Capital I have trouble seeing how this works in a robotics or biotech company. Yes, if you're building something facing consumers on the web you can go a long way on small savings and people just putting time in. But if you want to build something that requires some capital simply to keep the business running that's going to be difficult.

As stated: > If it takes a lot of money to create what your customers want I assume that covers what you are talking about...

The rest of that sentence is: “then the VCs will want to talk to you anyways.”

Which is only a little bit true.

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#69

Post by mr337 »

gregrata wrote: post #66
Barrin92 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ignore Venture Capital I have trouble seeing how this works in a robotics or biotech company. Yes, if you're building something facing consumers on the web you can go a long way on small savings and people just putting time in. But if you want to build something that requires some capital simply to keep the business running that's going to be difficult.

As stated: > If it takes a lot of money to create what your customers want I assume that covers what you are talking about...

Only in a perfect world that would work that would ring true. For some reason people think robotics is cheap and easy, true with VCs.

Re: How to Succeed with a Startup [video]

#70

Post by Alex3917 »

sinatra wrote: post #18

- "Product so good that people wanna tell others about it" doesn't mean this is an excuse to hide in a corner and keep building the product. Product can't be "good" if it's not based on frequent and lots of conversations / interactions with users. - The point about "exponential growth in market" is very important if your startup wants to raise money from VCs and has similar goals. Otherwise, focusing on creating valu…

> Product can't be "good" if it's not based on frequent and lots of conversations / interactions with users.

It also can't be good if you're not implementing the ideas being surfaced in those interactions, and implementing takes longer than talking with people. If you have a conversation with someone and end up building something they ask for that takes six weeks of full time work, then does it really make sense to delay the timeline on shipping that feature so that you can keep talking with more potential users who will likely have the same objections anyway? I'm not trying to justify not talking with users, but at the same time once you've gotten the message, it may be time to hang up the phone.

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