

Bill Nguyen: The Boy In The Bubble - d_r
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/bill-nguyen-startups

======
roythunder
I used to work with Bill at Seven, and this article captures his personality
pretty well.

His biggest strength is he's an unbelievable salesman. He can talk pixie dust
and make you want to sign on to his vision.

I believe the ability to sell your vision is the most important skill for an
entrepreneur (which is too bad for me, cause I'm a coder and I suck at this
skill).

~~~
r00fus
He should stay in sales then. Without a meaningful vision, all the sales in
the world is just bullshit talking.

~~~
roythunder
Depends on your perspective. He sold OneBox for $850 million, so I'm sure he's
happy he didn't stay in sales.

~~~
dylanhassinger
Seems to me he still IS in sales

------
MJR
First his product was the Facebook killer then he decides that he doesn't want
to kill it, he wants to build on top of it. _"It's the everything." ... "So
we're about to make it more functional, more valuable for people than ever."_

You can't flip-flop more than that. I can't wait until Facebook incorporates
their new ideas into the product and puts them out of business - assuming that
this new business actually exists in the first place.

~~~
Timothee
What struck me is that he pimped out Color as a Facebook killer without,
according to this article, having really used Facebook before.

Then of course to turn around and say that Facebook is the answer to all
things is pushing the irony very far…

------
aristidb
Is it just the way I read it, or does Bill Nguyen come across really badly,
there? Wow.

~~~
esk
> "I mean, I literally don't think there's anything to be learned from other
> people's stuff." That is exactly what happened with Color, which Nguyen
> never even bothered to test. "I'm not here to practice. I'm here to play,"
> says Nguyen[...]

I don't think there's any other way to read that.

~~~
zheng
I'm naive when it comes to anything related to VC's and funding, but I'm
pretty sure if I had a ton of money to invest, it wouldn't be anywhere near
someone like that. Even after reading the article, I don't think I fully
understand why he can secure funding so easily.

~~~
tptacek
VCs know that most of their investments aren't going to pan out. When they
evaluate companies, they aren't worrying about whether they'll fail. Even the
good companies fail. What the VCs are worried about is that they're going to
say no to Facebook, and then have to explain 5 years from now how the fuck
they possibly could have said no to Facebook.

What that seems to mean is that if you:

* have a persona that at least superficially seems driven, ambitious, likely to succeed, and

* you tell a convincing story about a market that might experience explosive growth, and

* you have any kind of track record of any sort to make it hard to write you off as a total bozo, and

* you have some sales skill, so you can manage the pitch process and create pressure to VC firms, then

you're probably fundable even if you think testing means "practicing instead
of really playing".

These kinds of pitches seem very different from the kinds of things people
write in Show-HN: postings. In particular, these pitches aren't meant to be
_reasonable_.

This is way more of a response than you were looking for; sorry, I just had to
get this out, since all I can think of when I read about Color is how good an
illustration it is of VC cliches.

~~~
patio11
Life note for HNers: Like almost any other market failure, this is profitably
exploitable.

~~~
statictype
Can you elaborate?

~~~
barry-cotter
Let me sketch the exploit, assuming you are not that guy.

Find someone who has done more than one highly impressive thing, prefereably
in approximately the same line, who seems high energy and sociable. If they
have anything resembling sales experience that's a big plus. One of the best
hunting grounds will be in and around universities, as they're full of people
with not much money and confidence that's higher than is justified, and some
of them will be much more impressive than their age mates. Find one.

Harvest startup ideas by say, looking at previous Show HN posts, or doing a
Madlib generator on the Crunchbase DB for X of Y, and look for something that
you can build a good story about explosive growth around, or have what you
think is a good idea already.

Sell your ambitious young go-getter on your idea, or on you, somehow, and
start pitching VCs with your incredible story of wild growth and fantastic
riches. Meanwhile iterate on your idea. Pivot if it looks like a good idea,
and hope and pray for growth while pitching VCs all the freaking time.

Basically, have an idea that could conceivably grow explosively and have a
business guy with previous record of Impressiveness, capacity to Believe in
your Great Idea, and the ability to Sell Stuff, including your Awesome Idea.

If you are that guy, _and_ you can program your own mockup and iterate you
might be able to get into YC as a single founder.

~~~
balsam
I believe that you have just managed to generalize Poe's Law. Congratulations

~~~
barry-cotter
I would appreciate a much expanded version of what you just said. I am aware
that Poe's Law states more or less that no parody is so extreme that it cannot
be taken seriously by at least one person in the faction the author is
atempting to parody.

~~~
balsam
I always felt that extremeness (extremity?) is not necessary in the statement
of Poe's Law but I could never find a good example. What you said sounded like
a mockery of the YC process, but I'm not sure. The 2 have something in
common... attention to detail? (Poe's Law: the parody and the parodied are
both outrageous in their own ways.) In light of your discovery, I might
restate Poe's Law thusly: no parody can be so ardent that it cannot be
mistaken for what it parodies. What do you think about punctuation to indicate
the state of being serious?

~~~
barry-cotter
I think that punctuation to indicate seriousness/sarcasm would never catch on
because it would interfere with deniability, deliberate obscurity, signalling
and (im)plausible deniability.

I wasn't really joking at all with my description. I mean there are almost
certainly groups that fit that description _perfectly_ among YC alumni.

------
alexwolfe
Facebook started with $17,000 investment from a friend and was a dorm room
project, not a company. When trying to beat someone it is probably a good idea
to see how they got to where they are at. Steady growth over time works.
Dumping a shit ton of money into something and saying its going to the the "X"
killer doesn't.

The laughing stock is not Bill Nguyen, its the VC's that gave him the money.
If you walk in a room and say Color and they laugh, they should really be
embarrassed. How many of these same people wanted to get in on this deal
before it launched? The really funny thing is that there will be someone else
that comes in with a great deck and grand illusions of how they will be the
next Facebook, the VC's will pump this person with money too.

------
skrebbel
Why is it that political journalists are critical, trying to turn every stone,
and business/financial journalists treat their subjects with softer gloves
than a teen mag does Rihanna?

If there's one person in the Valley who you can ask difficult questions, it's
Bill Nguyen. Instead, the author asks him about whether his wife likes the
house on Maui.

~~~
ricefield
Politicians live in the public eye, in a way different from celebrities (be
they pop stars or CEOs). They are, in a sense, obligated to grant interviews
and be open to the hard questions, because a politician is selling him or her
SELF.

A pop artists sells music, a company sells a product or a service. I'm not
predicating my use of facebook based on whether or not Mark Zuckerberg did pot
in college or got blowjobs from his secretaries.

So when you interview someone who isn't selling themselves, you don't have the
freedom to ask those kinds of questions. Unless maybe you don't that person to
ever grant you or your magazine an interview ever again.

~~~
ahoyhere
This explanation doesn't really get to the heart of it.

Fast Company has always been breathless and brainless. They always present
"business" in such a way to make it seem like all you need to be a rich,
successful, famous, sexy entrepreneur is "a great idea" and maybe some fun
personality traits.

They aren't in the business of _reporting_ , they're in the business of
titillating, teasing, and making their reader think "that could be me!" -
exactly, in other words, the stuff I've dubbed entreporn:

[http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2011/09/entreporn-dictionary-
def...](http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2011/09/entreporn-dictionary-
definition.html)

"I've got a pizza here with extra sausage." "Ohhhh, we lost our purses,
however can we pay?" -- I DELIVER PIZZAS… IT COULD BE ME!

~~~
DilipJ
that's true, but that's also why I love Fast Company. If you want harder-
hitting business journalism, it's better to stick with Fortune or
Businessweek. There you can read about the underbelly of business,the
Madoffs/Goldmans/oligarchs etc.

Fast Company and Inc. are both owned by the same firm, and they try to portray
a more humanistic view of business, ie. social capitalism, the belief that
entrepreneurs can one day solve all of the ills in the world. Its a very
uplifting philosophy, and I for one find it encouraging.

I've never heard of the term entreporn though, if you coined it then congrats!
I like the term, and maybe it is apt. Maybe that's precisely what someone is
curious but hesitant about entrepreneurialism needs.

~~~
ahoyhere
Which is fine! I'm not ANTI-Fast Company. I'm also not anti-porn. Assuming it
doesn't hurt anyone, people have a right to enjoy whatever they care to enjoy.
Some people even enjoy _TechCrunch._

People just need to understand _what_ they're reading, and _why_ they
shouldn't _place their trust_ in its realism. What I see here on HN all the
time is a refusal to question the motives or background of the
speaker/writer/what-have-you. It's considered ad hominem, a fallacy. But it's
not. It's just _good thinking_.

------
protomyth
"The premise was to create a mobile social network of people you didn't know,
rather than ones you already did. Nguyen believed Color would be the Facebook
killer."

I have a theory that conflicts with his thinking. If an app connects people it
will trump an app that requires people to physically connect themselves. My
test for this is "does this app work for users coming from a rural setting?".
Facebook works amazingly well because it connects people. Color works
horribly. Your app can be profitable and cool not working in a rural area, but
it won't be a Facebook.

------
jphackworth
There's no big secret why Bill Nguyen can raise money. Once you have sold one
company for $850 mil, you aren't going to have trouble raising money in the
future.

~~~
Deutscher
I don't really know how venture funding works, so pardon my stupid question:
Why did he need/want to raise $41m from outside when he sold his company for
$850m a few years ago?

~~~
gallerytungsten
A) He probably didn't own very much of it at that point.

B) Using other people's money is always a lesser risk.

C) Raising big money = big PR ("social proof").

~~~
larrys
"Raising big money = big PR ("social proof")."

And of course the mafia always needs to be cut into any good deal and requires
a "taste" and to dip their beak.

------
ambertch
You know something interesting? I went around linking friends to this article
due to Bill possessing a lot of the traits typically lionized in
entrepreneurs.

My psych major friend reads it and goes "yup that's a checklist for
psychopathic behavior. Don't believe me?" then he links me the wiki:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy>

VERY interesting if you read the wiki on psychopathy and re-read the Bill
Nguyen article.

I'll also be careful to state I'm not trying to say anything here - behavior
is highly contextual after all. Take for example a professional fighter who
can be a really nice guy, loving family man and friend yet flip a switch when
the bell rings. You just can't say whether this man is violent or not - his
behavior is contextual.

------
arihant
There's a lot of criticism about raising money, having a high profile team and
starting a company without actually having a product. This may turn out to be
short sighted. I think Cisco started the same way.

For all his negative qualities pointed out, at least this man is thinking
something freaking different than a freaking share button with a varied alias.
Color didn't go hit, but its far better than 90% of photo sharing apps out
there. It at least does something different.

What these guys are selling is a photo app, what these guys are doing is that
they are toying around with possibilities in sensing, VR and localization on
mobile. Could very well be huge.

------
rms
One of the great secrets of the Valley is that investors love hypomanic CEOs.

~~~
gwern
_hypo_ manic?

~~~
rms
Yeah, true clinical mania looks a lot like psychosis.

~~~
gwern
No, I meant that 'hypo' means a lack, and 'hyper' means an excess, so I would
expect a 'hypo'-manic CEO to be some sort of depressive and not look like a
great candidate for funding and a 'hyper'-manic CEO to be extremely energetic
and convincing and voluble and so at an advantage with VCs.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Clinically it's used as "not quite mania, but close".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypomania>

~~~
gwern
Huh. TIL. Goes to show that understanding Greek or Latin roots doesn't always
help you.

------
vimalg2
After reading, I feel motivated to re-read my copy of 'Influence' by Robert
Cialdini. Bill Nguyen was really really good at one thing.

Here is a guy who thrives on persuading people. I think the average founder
could always use a little more of the same skillset.

------
antimora
After so many times encountering Color, I still don't understand what this is.

------
arram
>' "When you're binary, you just pick a side; whether it's right or wrong
doesn't really matter. You're all in. So you find out all the good and bad
things about it instantly. When you find that it's not right, you just move
on," he says.'

I'm reading the Isaacson book, and he reminds me of Steve Jobs. Everything is
black and white, everyone is either a genius or a shithead.

------
dgurney
The new Color app, judging by its website, actually looks really cool. Nguyen
has taken something that already exists -- social broadcasting from your
phone's video camera -- and made it seem space-age (turn a photo into real
life.. the "transporter" comparison). Same technology, but now I can see why
he's a master salesman.

~~~
JulianMiller520
i couldn't agree less. I think the thing looks exactly like what it is. A
hurried, "let's ship something before my reputation is entirely ruined"
product from someone who sold a vision without so much as the scaffolding in
place. The original product was a mess and facebook could easily eat the lunch
of "color" as it stands now. Hoping for better for whatever is next from this
team.

------
scottallison
This article summarises what makes the valley both awesome and absurd. I got
mixed emotions reading it. It manages to be both appalling and inspirational.

And Bill Nguyen makes the manic Zuck portrayal in The Social Network appear
shy and retiring by comparison. I'd love to meet him.

------
DilipJ
fascinating article. It looks like Color raised a lot of money, then launched
and found out why customers didn't want it, and now they are trying to pivot.
Basically the opposite of what YC and 37signals recommends.

~~~
csallen
For the record, YC doesn't push any particular ideology as hard as 37signals
does. And if you were to ask PG, I think he'd say that different things work
for different companies and founders. Running out of money before capitalizing
on a profitable business model is the most common way that startups die. So
launching quickly, raising money, and pivoting are all good things.

~~~
DilipJ
oh I see. For some reason I thought Jason Fried and pg were completely on the
same wavelength when it comes to startup methodology

------
statictype
It's been two years since we entered the 'post-PC' world. If you had to choose
which one to give up - your ipad apps or the web, which would you choose?

That's what I thought.

~~~
suivix
If you had to give up your mobile plan or your home broadband, what would you
pick?

~~~
statictype
Good question. On one hand, my mobile plan is expensive. On the other hand,
its damn useful.

But I fail to see how this relates to what I said.

I can still browse the web on my mobile device/tablet. The web is very much
not in danger of being replaced by native "post-pc" device apps.

------
wavephorm
It was an interesting read. But by the end I have no idea what Nguyen is
really good at other than selling a startup. He's a wheeler and a dealer, but
I sure don't have the impression that he knows how to build something as truly
disruptive as he says he can.

~~~
felipemnoa
So he is missing a Wozniak, I guess.

~~~
wavephorm
But there was nothing in the article that gives me the feeling he is anything
like Steve Jobs. He's just phenomenal at the flip, and that says a lot about
what the Silicon Valley VC's that invested in Color are after.

~~~
wyclif
He flips companies. That's nice and everything, but it's not innovation. He's
essentially a parasite.

~~~
OstiaAntica
"Parasite" is unfair. You still need guys like him to agitate, to unsettle and
disrupt the marketplace. Color was a pretty innovative idea, it was just
terribly executed both in technology and marketing.

~~~
wyclif
Yeah, that's unfair...I retract that. But I wouldn't suggest for a second that
you don't need "guys like him" i.e. great salespeople who can sell ice to
eskimos. That's why I find his arrogance so over the top insofar as he
compares himself to Jobs and other innovators.

