
Jessica Livingston: What Goes Wrong - nswanberg
http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html
======
btilly
The link assumes that you know who is speaking. But it doesn't give that
critical piece of information.

 _Founders at Work_ was written by Jessica Livingston, who is a cofounder of
ycombinator. She's married to Paul Graham. But do not think that she's in
there just because of the personal connection. Her book is truly excellent.
And in previous articles I've seen Paul say that the #1 thing that they want
in a founder is determination, and the person that they rely on to spot it
during the interview is Jessica.

~~~
1123581321
She also contributed her financial and legal knowledge to YC. The others were
"only" programmers.

~~~
wheels
The part about the "others" isn't really true. Paul and Robert had founded two
companies together and Paul had been the CEO of a medium sized startup and
taken it through the acquisition process.

Also, at least in the earlier YC batches before there were more folks helping
out, Jessica definitely felt like the operations person; like she was the one
that actually made things happen.

~~~
1123581321
We are talking about the same thing. I meant operations as part of
legal/financial -- the business side of things. As Paul put it in an interview
at Mixergy.com, she brought the knowledge required to actually put YCombinator
together. I certainly meant no knock on the other partners' experience other
than what they claimed to lack themselves.

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nadam
Two of the problems can be easily avoided: 'cofounder disputes' and
'investors' are not problems in case of single-founder bootstrapped startups.
:)

One thing I would add to the topic of 'determination': Are we speaking about
determination to make a startup successful or determination to try out as many
ideas in our life as possible, learn as much as possible and try to make at
least one startup successful in our life?

I mean first we have to analyze what we optimize for:

If we optimize for the success of a given startup then it is obvious that the
optimal strategy is to never give up on the startup.

If we optimize for the success of a person in his lifetime then it is
different. In this case we have to examine all kinds of opportunity costs.
Could it be a better strategy to very quickly abandon a startup when it seems
that people do not want the product, so that we can start much more startups
in our life, to increase the chance of at least one becoming successful?

~~~
jordo37
For me and my co-founder, especially during the dark days of 1) tech not
working 2) clients stopping service with us or 3)someone yelling at us over
Twitter, email or phone - it is Critical to have a team and more importantly
to have a partner. I don't share all of my concerns with the whole team
because that could shift the mood of the company and damage our internal
resolve. But I need to be able to talk about the full reality of the situation
with someone and depending on who is having an up day one of us can rally the
other person around to being enthused again.

Without that, I know there would be days I would be lost, and if that lingered
at all I could see weeks of inactivity at exactly those points where we needed
to move fast.

I whole-heartedly agree with Jessica that having a co-founder that, above all,
you can trust is huge (I'm lucky that I do), but I agree with the other reply
here that a single founder, in almost all situations is more trouble than any
sort of cofounder disputes.

~~~
chmike
I fully agree, but the partner doesn't have to be cofounder. It could be the
wife (or husband), a very good friend or anything equivalent.

From what I have read so far the main difficulties of a single founder is
lacking an alternate view and help to restore drive when in doubt or
exhausted.

Of course other kind of problems may show up if the business is a startup of
the dropbox kind. But this is a mazzerati problem. My feeling is that more
than one founders expose to much more difficult and nasty problems than a
single founder will met. A single founder can find paliatives for his weakness
which do exist and shouldn't be ignored.

~~~
jordo37
I can see what you mean here - my wife is my life partner, and she is a
fantastic balance outside the support my business partner and I provide each
other. But she has other things going on - her life is more than just waiting
to hear about how Perfect Audience is going and having someone as focused as
you are on your work baby, but in different ways, is useful.

------
ericdykstra
Here's a link to the video version of Jessica Livingston's talk from Startup
School: <http://startupschool.org/2012/livingston/>

It really is great! I encourage everyone on HN to read or watch it if they
have not already. As a not-yet founder, it has a lot of interesting advice
that I don't think is documented anywhere as concisely and practically as it
is here.

~~~
blaines
As a founder (2x) she has some absolutely fantastic advice. Though I haven't
seen every problem/monster, many of them apply to my experience. In addition,
the examples she gives are fantastic.

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tarr11
Worth the read just for this:

The pizza place was very confused by this, but they send the pizza guy without
a pizza, Kyle answers the door, and the pizza guy says, "The site is down."

~~~
27182818284
Indeed. I plan on using this as an example of what a clever hack is from now
on when it comes up in conversation. It is adorable, clever, and just...great.

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mck-
The Mixergy interview with PG (Feb 2010)[1] mentions Jessica working on a
second edition of Founders at Work.

PG: "You know, that is her deepest wish. If she is watching this, she’ll be
laughing so much at this point because that’s what she would like the most too
to be able to spend more time on the new version of Founders at Work. There’s
a new, she’s working on a new edition, with a bunch of new interviews."

Any updates on this?

[1]: <http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham/>

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pmarca
This is extraordinarily accurate, based on my experience.

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cs702
This is excellent -- and very much in the spirit of Charlie Munger's often-
repeated saying: "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never
go there."[1]

\--

[1] <http://www.pbs.org/wsw/news/fortunearticle_20031026_03.html>

~~~
abbasmehdi
Death is inevitable, these mistakes aren't.

------
biscarch
Having started riding this roller coaster I particularly enjoyed a view of
what pitfalls to be aware of in the future.

Also, since I just survived a dual-founder breakup (company intact), it was
encouraging to know that this was probably a bigger bullet to have dodged.
(For those curious, post-breakup I reached out to an old friend with whom I've
shared some tenuous situations and we have applied to YC for the next batch)

Edit: I forgot about the pizza comment! When she asked how to contact someone
in Lake Tahoe, I audibly said pizza (in my empty apartment). When the solution
was pizza, I had a celebratory moment.

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mynegation
Very interesting. Statistically speaking, women are better than men in reading
non-verbal information. I wonder if this is a part of YC success.

~~~
pg
I think so. Within YC Jessica's nickname is The Social Radar. One nickname at
least; the other is Panic.

~~~
johnsang
PG, mind sharing some insight on the "Panic" nickname? I'm curious about
how/if the two are related.

~~~
pg
We call her Panic because she's the office worrier. I never considered her two
sides might be related. Interesting idea, but I don't think so.

~~~
cup
I wonder if her strength in picking up social cues also causes people to panic
because shes the office warrior, detecting problems/issues and cutting through
to their core.

~~~
johnsang
My thoughts as well. Empathy has its costs. I was wondering if exposure to
swings was one of them.

------
dools
Arguing anything other than differences in levels of persistent hard work and
skill in your particular field has a large mountain of evidence to overcome.

The effects of those two are very large, the effects of everything else
comparatively small per decades of startup and longitudinal entrepreneurial
studies.

Nonsense about hustle is exactly that: nonsense. The weight of evidence
suggests that, if anything, hustling and creativity have a net negative effect
on long term health of a startup.

But there's money to be made keeping up the lie.

Lastly, beware of pseudo-pop-science that opens with only a few people's
stories. People manage to succeed as founders all over the world; these
stories are not remarkable and tell us nothing.

In general the whole "determination" thing has little to no value in any
serious consideration of startup success: it's about on the same level of
credibility as diet fads.

~~~
l0stman
Well, played. For a couple of seconds I was wondering why I had this
impression of deja vu then I found this
(<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4692794>). I burst out laughing.

~~~
dools
Haha you got me. PG can rest assured that middlebrow dismissal apparently only
gets a disproportionate share of upvotes when it's about health or nutrition
:P

------
goronbjorn
This is another great piece of writing by Jessica Livingston (I was at Startup
School for the talk as well).

Is she ever going to pursue writing a sequel to _Founders at Work_?

------
brianmcdonough
Jessica's speech follows one of the themes she established in "Founders," -
overcoming emotional responses being a key to success in startups (and life).
Her skill in communicating complex ideas is subtle, but more impressive
because it lacks the usual dose of ego and/or one-upmanship. The sole intent
being to help people who can listen well enough to use the information to help
themselves.

------
LiveTheDream
Are people really having such trouble with the context of this article? The
author's name is in the headline (maybe it was modded in later, to be fair),
but also there's an "author" link[0] in plain sight. PG's essay's don't have a
"who am I" introduction, and if you didn't know who he was then you'd simply
click on the obvious "bio" link.

[0] <http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html>

~~~
btilly
At the point where I replied, the name was NOT in the headline. It was
definitely modded in later.

------
Rajiv_N
I know this is a minor issue. But when I publish something I want people to
inform me of problems. Please note that I don't mean to be disrespectful and
just want to help. So here goes:

3rd sentence: "There's a talk I've always want to give at the beginning of
each batch...". I think this should be either "I've always wanted to..." or "I
always want to..." right?

~~~
jl
Fixed - thanks!

~~~
Rajiv_N
Wow! Thanks for replying. I have already been down-voted once for what I
posted and was beginning to think my comment was a huge mistake.

As hackers we get trained to look at details. So I was hoping others on
"Hacker News" would understand where I was coming from. It's not about right
or wrong. It's not about ego. I just thought I could help.

------
alid
I love this! It's one of the best pieces of startup advice I've read in a long
while; I've sent it to my startup friends. New fave quote: "Determination is
really two separate things: resilience and drive. Resilience keeps you from
being pushed backwards. Drive moves you forwards".

------
loumf
If you are interested in a take on this topic that is based on data, check out
Noam Wasserman at BoS 2009 (his talk at BoS 2012 was very similar)

[http://businessofsoftware.org/2009/05/professor-noam-
wasserm...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2009/05/professor-noam-wasserman-at-
business-of-software-2008-rich-or-king/)

He has been collecting data on start-ups and then looking at survival lengths
and outcomes. He wrote a book on the topic

[http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-
Foundat...](http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundation-
Entrepreneurship/dp/0691149135)

------
001sky
_In order to make something people want, being brilliant and determined is not
enough. You have to be able to talk to your users and adjust your idea
accordingly. Ordinarily you have to change your idea quite a lot even if you
start out with a reasonably good one._

\-- This is a great point. Even outside of startups.

------
michaelnovati
I saw this talk at Startup School. Honestly, as someone working in industry
who tried doing a startup during school, there's a huge thing missing.

CMD+F for "luck" = 0 results.

Luck is a huge factor and sometimes you just need to move on to either
something new, or working for a company to fill in the gaps, and trying again
soon.

~~~
AVTizzle
Talking about "luck" in a presentation like this is like talking about the
life benefits of physical attractiveness.

Precious little of it is in your control, so what's the point? Address what
you _can_ control, and hope for the best.

~~~
chrischen
Actually you control luck with determination.

By increasing determination, you decrease the effect luck has on anything you
do.

~~~
philwelch
And for that matter, you can control physical attractiveness. There's always
_something_ you could do if you really had to, right? Lose a little weight,
gain a little weight, hide your flaws, accentuate your good points, dress a
certain way. You know how sometimes on tabloid covers in the supermarket they
have pictures of celebrities wearing sweats and no makeup? It's a petty thing
to fixate on, but it illustrates a valuable point.

~~~
chrischen
The initial analogy with physical attractiveness is broken. Physical
attractiveness is akin to the intelligence you're born with. You may not be
able to boost your intelligence much, but you CAN minimize the factor luck
plays in you realizing your potential afforded to you by your intelligence.

------
faramarz
Awesome read!

Jessica mentions the Codecademy team launched 2 days before Demo Day and
managed to signup 200k users. If I remember correctly, they launched on HN
through a Show HN thread.. and so on..

What I really want to know is, how many of those initial 200k users stuck
around? I was one of them and I have only signed in maybe twice since their
launch.

So what does that mean? they leveraged the curious users to get VC interest?
Did they really engage me, us, the 200k? is that a false positive?

I guess if the net result is a positive one Today, none of this really
matters.

~~~
brc
Really I would think it doesn't matter. With that kind of interest (even if it
just of the curiosity kind, rather than the stickiness kind), then it's a
definite flag that you're onto something.

So, even if the 200k users never came back, there was clearly _something_
interesting about the concept to get that much attention. And with the right
development, the next 200k people can be convinced to stay around.

It's a lot easier to convince 200k people for a second look than it is to find
200k in the first place.

------
andrewhillman
This is one of the best articles I have read in a while. Obviously you see a
lot over 7 years/ 500 startups.

------
ww520
Wow. Great advices. I especially like the resilience part. Those rejection
stories really hit home, as I have gone through similar experience recently.
When reading them, the line "when life deals you a lemon, make lemonade" kept
flashing through my mind.

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bcooperbyte
Loved it. Very informative. Being an entrepreneur is a tough road, but with
preparation, belief, and determination things will eventually take its course.

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uhwuggawuh
Are those Pokemon in the first figure? If so, I have severely underestimated
the coolness of next-generation Pokemon.

~~~
pg
Jessica got those monsters from Mino Monsters (<http://minomonsters.com/>).

(When you've funded 467 startups, you can find one to supply you with
practically anything.)

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nanodeath
A byline would be helpful, here...

~~~
LiveTheDream
There's an "author" link: <http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html>

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swah
I read this yesterday thinking it was from pg, strange feeling.

------
seacond
"Investors tend to have a herd mentality."

