Hm I was looking for some more practical advice on avoiding death.
How Not to Die (2007)
91–100 of 140 posts
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#92I think this essay was valid for the year it was written (2007) where much fewer people were doing startups, lots of good ideas had not been executed yet, mobile was about to take off. Just like the belief in 2007 that "real estate prices can never go down" lead to the real estate bubble/crash that eventually invalidated that statement, if everyone starts beleiving if they start a company and never give up they will…
Yeah exactly.
Things were really really different then. Youtube was two years old, Facebook had only been open to non students for less than a year. Things like making databases of electronic parts or other less sexy B2B style ideas were often still wide open green fields with almost no competition. Plus just making websites work was tough, the cloud existed but just getting servers to work and stay up was a non trivial part of launching something.
You can't just do the X + Software formula anymore and expect to get anywhere.
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#93My version of this story: I almost quit a year ago, exactly today, then my company got acquired. A story (with pictures! only on Twitter though, link at the bottom.) This is what I looked like last March 27. [horrible pic] One month prior... My dad passed away. I wasn't having a good month. But that wasn't what happened on March 27. I took a photo on March 27 because it was probably the worst I had felt in the last 5…
This isn't a bad story, but copy-and-pasting to YC from Twitter-with-images is not an effective communications format.
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#94For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you. When we haven't heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that's a bad sign. If we send them an email asking what's up, and they don't reply, that's a really bad sign. So far that is a 100% accurate predictor of death. Can someone at YC comment on if this is still a good proxy for startup failure? From a personal perspective, we'v…
The updates around that time were the hardest ones send out The people who don't want to have those hard discussions are the ones that have their startup die. People who don't reply to emails are often people who are having negative feelings they don't want to deal with. Maybe they don't have answers and are afraid to give a status report that includes an admission that they simply don't know. Maybe they don't want t…
Why did this comment get downvoted? (It's currently somewhat greyed out.) Can someone who downvoted say what they found objectionable?
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#95I don't think "If you can just avoid dying, you get rich" has proven true. I've invested in startups (including YC ones) that followed this to a tee. They never found product-market fit, they could have been going forever, investors forgot about them. Some are still going, some managed to get acquired, some closed shop. It's really a false dichotomy, only a small fraction of the companies that avoid dying manage to e…
I think the point where you stop trying to pivot into higher and higher growth opportunities and accept your fate as a sustainable but small business could be classified as a form of “death” (perhaps “undead”) if your original goal really was to get rich.
Imagine how much better the tech industry would be (in countless ways) if more business owners were content with "small but sustainable".
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#96"Don't take advice from the successful; they might just be lucky."
-- anonRe: How Not to Die (2007)
#97> One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating. Oh, boy. Why can't we have a world where I can pursue my interests without the fear of loosing something. I g…
The technical term is called "loss aversion" and is very well documented.
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#98Personally I Think Paul Graham is very under appreciated, his legacy on the Startup ecosystem and zeitgeist will probably only be recognised many years on the future. It's a great pity that he doesn't write these wonderful essays for some time now.
Read his book, Hackers and Painters. I don't think he's under appreciated. He was way ahead of the curve. And deserves to be happy with his family, or change the world some more..
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The updates around that time were the hardest ones send out The people who don't want to have those hard discussions are the ones that have their startup die. People who don't reply to emails are often people who are having negative feelings they don't want to deal with. Maybe they don't have answers and are afraid to give a status report that includes an admission that they simply don't know. Maybe they don't want t…
Why did this comment get downvoted? (It's currently somewhat greyed out.) Can someone who downvoted say what they found objectionable?
Wild guess but I'd be remiss not to express this saturnine suspicion: probably because it's Doreen. She posts a lot, mostly solid content like the above post, some of which hard hitting. Some people take offense, she's often greyed out for no reason and regularly gets pretty harsh criticism. I would be shocked if she doesn't have some auto downvotes for every post. Unfortunately.
I recognise it's not constructive to express this suspicion of sexism, except perhaps as a message of support, so hereby: Doreen, you have my +1. Ignore the haters.
Re: How Not to Die (2007)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. So much this. The whole electronics manufacturing industry runs on Excel sheets. Every BOM, inventory list etc. is in Excel. Because that's what your manager knows how to use, because that's what their managers knew how to use, and so on. It came with Windows so that's that, they can't be bothered to try anything else. Not even after mangled sheets cause repeated mistakes. I would so love to work on something l…
I am starting a bootstrapped business along the lines now. My take is that sellzong a solution won't work. You have to compete with Excel, and all the reasons you just stated, and SAP (or any other ERP-System they might use if any). Selling a service is different story so. If you can show them that you as a subcontractor, in my case as a 4PL, can deliver better performance or solve some of their pain points you can u…
BOMs as a service! I like it, but I'm not quite sure how it would work. A lot of the errors that creep into these documents are things only someone very familiar with the company and the product design would spot. You'd almost have to be onsite.