
What Startups Are Really Like - apu
http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html
======
patio11
I sometimes wonder if the Valley culture doesn't socially construct some of
the startup pathologies. For example, startups taking over your life: why does
this happen? Is this because startups take over your life and nothing can be
done about this? I am skeptical of this: I run a small business, the time
demands are rather modest, and I live a life outside of work. I'm surely not
uniquely in a position to do this.

Now, step back: who here wants to say any variant of "That isn't the same
thing!", "That isn't possible!", or "You are insufficiently dedicated and will
never be truly successful!" You see, _that_ is why startups take over your
life: because you expect them to take over your life, everyone you know and
talk to and model your behavior on expects them to take over your life, and if
they're not taking over your life you are told you are doing something wrong.

~~~
apsurd
Patrick, I definitely both respect and admire the business you built. You can
also say I'm pro the 37 signals mantra.

But I think your advice is specific to the model you've built and the output
you are yielding. I don't remember the numbers but I think you are somewhere
around 100k (or less) in yearly revenue? Startups, whether logical/warranted
or not, seem to be aiming orders of magnitude more than this, yes?

~~~
jimbokun
"But I think your advice is specific to the model you've built and the output
you are yielding."

This is equally true for what pg is saying, of course.

------
marcofloriano
#13 My advice is generally pessimistic. Assume you won't get money, and if
someone does offer you any, assume you'll never get any more.

I´m a business wannabe from Brazil and i just laugh when i read that one. Here
we dont have ANY chances of getting money from VCs so when we start something
new, specially with technology, we never expect to get money. Ramen profit
system is not an option at poor countries, it´s the law.

~~~
lloydarmbrust
I've been unconsciously practicing number #13 since the beginning of our
start-up. Every time I close a deal I'm thinking, "it's not over until we
start getting paid from these guys."

That attitude has served me well, I mean, I've had groups back out on us after
they signed an agreement. What are we going to do? Lawyers cost to much and
who wants to work with someone who doesn't want to work with us? Our customers
are our partners and we love them--but if the feeling's not mutual I'd rather
cut it off.

It's funny, I'm so optimistic about our success--I'm an entrepreneur after all
--but I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop when closing a new
customer.

BTW: I should mention that our customers are newspapers, who are notorious for
taking a long time to make bad decisions . . . so when we close someone, it's
time to break out the scotch.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
We counted the times our Founder announced "We're funded!" - total of 21 in 2
years. We never got ANY money.

------
saikat
One of the big problems I have with PG's essays is that, though I like the
content, I have a very hard time believing everything he says without
evidence. When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I
should just persist because PG says it usually works." So it was great to see
his points actually backed up by other founders' experiences.

As a side note, does anyone have a transcript of Jason Fried's talk? His was
another favorite of mine from yesterday.

~~~
cperciva
_When you are in an emotional low, it's very difficult to think, "I should
just persist because PG says it usually works."_

I usually take the opposite approach: I should persist because PG says that
single-founder startups don't work, and I'm going to prove him wrong, damnit.

~~~
c00p3r
There are a lot of explanations why one is not enough. Think about practicing
a foreign language - how it's much better when you have someone to talk to.
That's also correct for almost any kind of evolving processes. Even a reading
(which is a classical example of a lonely activity) could do better if you
will develop the habit of reading aloud, like Tibetan and many other cultures
have.

~~~
gcheong
I wonder though, with the comments about how the character and commitment of
your co-founders matters so much more than ability or output that, in the case
you can't get someone you know well to join you, that you would do better not
having a co-founder rather than spending time looking for one.

------
ardit33
_18\. You Get No Respect

There was one surprise founders mentioned that I'd forgotten about: that
outside the startup world, startup founders get no respect.

In social settings, I found that I got a lot more respect when I said, "I
worked on Microsoft Office" instead of "I work at a small startup you've never
heard of called x."

Partly this is because the rest of the world just doesn't get startups, and
partly it's yet another consequence of the fact that most good startup ideas
seem bad:

If you pitch your idea to a random person, 95% of the time you'll find the
person instinctively thinks the idea will be a flop and you're wasting your
time (although they probably won't say this directly).

Unfortunately this extends even to dating:

It surprised me that being a startup founder does not get you more admiration
from women.

I did know about that, but I'd forgotten._

\-- I totally agree with that. My previous job was in a startup, and when I
told them "i worked on real-time location based mobile communication", and
tried to explain what it was, it will usually go over the head.

Now I tell I write the software of Kindle, and girls just dig it. I also heard
apple people that work on iphone/ipod get a lot of attention in parties. My
dating life has improved a lot.

I was thinking why is this, but it might have to do with "everyone has a
dream". As children we dream to be rich/famous artist/rockstar/soccer players,
etc., but actually few people achieve this status. And girls, the good looking
ones, during their lifes will get bombarded with "guys with dreams", and will
see them more often to just fail, than go anywhere. So the dream/vision is
just that, but normally doesn't pay the bills.

Plus, the "dream of a startup", it is a very selfish one.

While saying I "work for big corp/famous product", it makes you competent in
their eyes, and as you achieved something tangible, and not just dreaming.

Maybe I am overanalyizing it, but girls just like a provider, than somebody
with a 'dream', but nothing to show for it yet, unless your startup made it,
and you have something famous to show.

~~~
arh
You're not overanalyzing it - you're making generalizations about women that
are naive and, in my view, offensive.

~~~
btilly
It seems to me that honest advice about what actually works in dating usually
offends people.

Go pick up virtually any book by and for pickup artists. (Or start with a
website like <http://www.seductiontuition.com/.>) You will find it full of
incredibly crass generalizations about women that are guaranteed to offend.
_But it works!_ Pickup artists aren't worried about being politically correct,
they are interested in getting attractive women in bed. And they have found
strategies with a high success rate.

For the converse go pick up dating advice aimed at women like _The Rules_.
(You can find much of it summarized at <http://www.topdatingtips.com/dating-
rules-for-women.htm.>) It is full of nasty stereotypes about how to treat men
that I find horrible and awful. _But it works!_ The advice is popular because
it has helped many women land relationships they are happy with. No matter how
much I wouldn't like being treated that way, it clearly works on a lot of
guys.

Now let me be clear. I don't like either of those sets of advice any better
than you appear to. Nor is either relevant to my life - I was lucky enough to
fall in love young, and have now been married close to 20 years. However I
accept that there is empirical evidence supporting those theories. And the
lesson I take from that is that many people don't work like I'd like them to.

~~~
cousin_it
Wow, your second link (remove the period from the end) made me feel _exactly_
the way women say they feel about PUA/game advice. Good stuff.

------
babyshake
The line about how "it's like we're married, but we're not fucking" makes me
curious about the correlations between a founder's relationship with co-
founders and their relationship with romantic partners.

You might get some good insight by observing a potential co-founder's behavior
toward their romantic partner, or toward potential romantic partners if
they're single.

~~~
maukdaddy
I'm going to get blasted for this, but here goes anyway.

I'm willing to bet that the majority of founders are single males who do not
understand what marriage is all about. I have not had the experience of being
part of a start-up, but I do have 6 years of marriage under my belt. I cannot
imagine any circumstance where being someone's co-fonder is in any way like
being married to them.

~~~
caffeine
However, the wannabe founders reading it are _also_ probably single males who
don't understand marriage. We do, however, probably all share a very similar
_caricature_ of marriage - and thus the analogy is useful in communicating the
bizarre mix of love, hate, co-dependence, shared depression and elation,
occasional jealousy and careful maintenance that characterizes the
relationship between two guys in a foxhole with laptops.

~~~
jlees
it's particularly interesting when your co-founder is female. (or, you're a
female co-founder teaming up with a guy.)

~~~
caffeine
That _is_ interesting - have you done this? How did it go?

~~~
jlees
Yes. I'm the XX. It just seems a different dynamic than you'd get between two
guys or two women. (Obviously I've not directly experienced the former, but
I've seen it from the outside enough - it's kind of the model.)

I'm a kind of bloke-ish girl, but even so I think I worry about feelings and
opinions and perceptions a bit more - I bring that aspect of looking at
situations to the startup. 'Course, my "job" is to code, whereas my cofounder
is meant to be thinking about other people; it gets interesting.

There's also an entirely different dynamic: minority programmes. I took part
in Astia, a women-in-business networking and training group. All the contacts
from that equate the startup with me (the woman) and my cofounder's not being
treated very well by them at all. (There are a few other reasons beyond gender
there but it is something I doubt two-guy startups have to face!)

------
tptacek
"If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you
waited too long to launch."

~~~
ksvs
They should print this at the top of the comments on each TechCrunch article.

------
qeorge
#15, "You May Have to Play Games", resonated the most with me. I think even
though we all know this its still a bitter pill to swallow because hackers
generally don't have time/patience for smoke & mirrors. I think this is why
customer development seems so _wrong_ at first blush.

One nitpicky little thing:

 _"If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your control (i.e.
immigration) seem to work themselves out."_

Should be e.g., not i.e. I know its a quote and pg shouldn't fix it, but it
drives me nuts when people get this wrong. i.e. is roughly equivalent to "in
other words", and e.g. means "for example."

~~~
jlees
Could be a specific reference to a particularly big problem the quoter had, in
which case i.e. is just about o.k.

------
steveplace
_Running a startup is not like having a job or being a student, because it
never stops._

I was fraternity president for a while. I distinctly remember being surprised
by this "feature" of my job. Especially when I am awoken at 3AM with news that
a (fully sober) member had driven his truck into the lake across the street.

This job was the best experience I had prior to running a startup, and I'd
never do it again.

------
mattmaroon
#18 REALLY depends on where you live. If you're in the Valley, definitely.
Everyone who is not in a startup there works at somewhere like Adobe and has
10 coworkers who previously founded a Web 2.0 social search engine for pet
clothing which promptly flopped. People used to ask me "what do you have to do
to become a professional poker player?" and my reply was always "quit your
job." It's a lot like that with startups, and everyone within 100 miles of San
Jose knows it.

If you live in Ohio, however, "I own a software company" goes a lot further.
If only I were single...

~~~
brandnewlow
I guess it depends on how you describe it, eh? "I own a software company" does
sound like it'd be more successful than "I run an internet startup."

~~~
tptacek
I say "I own a company", exactly because "I have an internet startup" seems
like an eye-roller. I agree with the previous comment: the fact that we're
out-of-the-ordinary in Chicago is one of the things I like best about Chicago.

~~~
mattmaroon
It's basic salesmanship. Phrase things in the way that sounds best (within the
bounds of honesty of course). "I have an internet startup" sounds a lot like
"I fell for a get rich quick scheme. Would you like to buy some vitamins?"

------
coffeemug
One theme in this essay is that Paul keeps drilling these concepts into
founders, and almost every time the founders don't believe him. Paul then
reaches the conclusion that it's probably because the founders are too
optimistic. I think this bit is wrong.

It's not that we're too optimistic, it's that the process is so subtle that
the English language is too coarse to describe it. For example, what exactly
does it mean when someone says 95% of the VCs are incompetent? How exactly are
they incompetent? To what degree and in what ways? What exactly do they do
that makes them appear incompetent? If you've never talked to VCs before,
reading that they're "incompetent" probably won't give you a good idea of what
an average interaction with them is like.

It's sort of like describing what making love is like for the first time. Very
eloquent people have written volumes on this, but it's far too subtle for a
written or spoken language. Until you actually do it, you'll only have a very
poor approximation in your mind of what it might be like, no matter how much
you read. Startups are like that.

------
gcv
I'd like to (slightly) challenge #8: it seems to me that Dropbox is a
counterexample. The Dropbox guys took quite a long time and their first
release was quite polished. Not perfect, certainly, but way, way ahead of just
minimally functional.

~~~
pmjordan
I think that's in no small part due to the problem Dropbox solves. Don't
forget this problem has been "solved" about a gazillion times before, but the
lack of polish made those "solutions" unusable in practice.

------
netsp
My Favourite soundbite"

 _"Over-engineering is poison. It's not like doing extra work for extra
credit. It's more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you
don't contradict it."_

------
lloydarmbrust
Very timely post for me as I started up earlier this year--amazing how many of
these things I've already learned the hard way.

#1 is aptly chosen. I've always heard that picking the wrong business partner
is worse than picking the wrong spouse and I have to agree. Some days I spend
more time talking with my co-founder than I do my wife, and right now he is
currently six states away.

But I wanted to add that #5 also plays a role here. I vividly remember the
first time my co-founder and I had a disagreement: we were both pissed and
thought the other was pretty stupid. Some things were said and I got offended
but we were both able to take a step back and remove our emotion. I told
myself, "this is how start-ups die." Once we both removed our emotion from the
situation we were able to address the problem and ultimately make the product
better. We needed to be persistent not only in our work, but also in our
relationship.

Ever since that time we've decided that while we may at times offend each
other (it is a natural reaction), we just need to get over it, and quickly.
Now we can say things like, "you're doing this wrong" or "that looks ugly" or
"we need to completely rethink this" and no one wants to take their toys and
go home. By removing emotion we can more direct, more efficient. And our
product is better and we have more clients because of it.

------
pclark
I'd like to see pg write more about #12: Getting Users.

~~~
incomethax
Getting users is such a topic that it is radically different from one startup
to the next. Even two start-ups in the same area are likely to have very
different plans for attracting and retaining users.

~~~
pclark
I don't believe thats true. your messaging to users [why do you want this?]
and so on are good rules that can be learnt and iterated upon other peoples
experiences.

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

------
anateus
One of the reasons startups aren't for everyone is that most people strongly
prefer a steady moderate income over a risky and sporadic one no matter how
great (though they still buy lottery tickets).

This helps explain #18 as well as #4 :)

~~~
codexon
So are you saying that running a startup is like playing the lottery?

~~~
tpyo
P(winning the lottery) * winnings - (cost to play) < 0

I think this is false with startups, but the chances of succeeding are still
low.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Actually the lottery can do better than that. The expected value of a lottery
ticket can exceed the cost to play ($1) when its in its third or fourth round
without a winner.

------
peripitea
I would love to hear how other founders have worked their immigration issues
out. That's probably the biggest thing from stopping me right now -- all of my
potential co-founders are American but I'm Canadian without a green card.

------
conskeptical
Mostly, I like this article. But... :

"This is the same phenomenon you see with defense contractors or fashion
brands. The dumber the customers, the more effort you expend on the process of
selling things to them rather than making the things you sell."

At first I thought this was funny and smart... but now I think it's rather
glib. "Fashion brands" is almost by definition entirely a marketing
exercise... tautology is a pretty boring type of argument. Now... the industry
in wearable items is huge and not entirely oriented around marketing at the
expense of value...

Defence contracting... I think it's a lot more complicated than dumb
customers. For one, there are only a few customers... typically governments.
So in a market with a low ratio of buyers to sellers, clearly you have to
invest a lot in getting attention. And given the nature of contracts, once you
have their attention (and their contract), the profit motive is then to
satisfy the contract as close to the line as possible... that is... to skimp
and make your product as crap as you can get away with.

Witty insights should really have some grounding in reality, and point the way
to other interesting thoughts. This just seems to be a collective geek snigger
at the aggressive and the fashionable.

------
shawndrost
Paul says asking what is surprising is equivalent to asking what he got wrong,
but it may be that some things are impossible to communicate in essay format.
Things like "persistence is key" are accurate textual representations of the
underlying lesson, but the important part of that lesson is the unassailable
gut knowledge of its truth, which is hard to get from an essay.

------
gbookman
_All the scares induced by seeing a new competitor pop up are forgotten weeks
later. It always comes down to your own product and approach to the market._

This quote and the other comments about overestimating your competition really
stood out to me. It's true that as a Founder, your own ability to execute and
find what customers want is what matters.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Remember its a survivor that said that. The ones that got squashed dead by
competition aren't in the conversation.

------
10ren
> _[Over-engineering is] more like telling a lie that you then have to
> remember so you don't contradict it._

Meaning that you have to keep justifying that extra bit of complexity, by
thinking in terms of it - and therefore making it "true", even if it's not
appropriate? Like a theory you have committed to ahead of the facts?

Reminds me of YAGNI and "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" -
except applied to solving a real-world problem, instead of a pre-specified
technical problem. I would like to add that doing this also increases
iteration speed - that is, the speed of learning and adaptation.

<http://c2.com/xp/YouArentGonnaNeedIt.html> \-
[http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.htm...](http://c2.com/xp/DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.html)

------
bensummers
Well, it's nice to know that the last two or three years of my life are pretty
usual in this game.

------
bootload
_If wrote a new essay with the same outline as this that wasn't summarizing
the founders' responses, everyone would say I'd run out of ideas and was just
repeating myself._

The Super-Pattern, 2nd para needs "If _'I'_ wrote a new essay".

~~~
pg
Fixed; thanks.

------
hop
Off topic - why the Yahoo favicon?

~~~
jmtame
probably has something to do with pg's sale of viaweb to yahoo

~~~
pg
In a sense. It's because my site is made with Yahoo Store, and there is no
obvious way to change the favicon.

~~~
hop
Add this to your in the head tag and it should work --

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico">

I just emailed you a vanity favicon :)

~~~
pg
Unfortunately Store doesn't give you access to the head. Is there something I
could stick in the body that would work?

~~~
johnrob
Here's how to get access to the head (took some googling and tinkering):

1) Put editor in advanced mode by clicking on red arrow on top right (you have
to be in advanced mode to override a variable)

2) Click 'Variables' link (now it is possible to 'override' the missing Head-
tags variable).

3) Override the 'Head-tags' variable by clicking the "Define New Variable"
button (even though we want to override)

4) Now you can paste in a tag like this: <link rel="shortcut icon"
href="<http://enter-url-here-to-your-store/favicon.ico> type="image/x-icon" />

I love yahoo store, but it has some serious usability issues right now ;)

~~~
pg
This is the weirdest thing. You're explaining my own software to me. (The
editor is the part of Viaweb I wrote.) I'd forgotten there was a head-tags
variable. But thanks to you I've finally been able to get rid of the annoying
Yahoo favicon.

Incidentally, you don't have to override head-tags. You can just change the
global value on the Variables page.

Sorry about the usability issues. It was pretty good for 1997.

~~~
hop
I love it that you and the many people you surround yourself with are
brilliant web developers - and your site has a 90's almost craigslist
asthetic.

But like craigslist, it's a very ironic cool and minimalist design that I hope
you don't change.

~~~
pg
Actually the design of HN derives from the (old) design of
del.icio.us/popular. So it's at least an early 2000s aesthetic.

~~~
hop
Ok, early 2000s aesthetic sans a flash intro. But we're talkin' internet years
here so you're still rockin Air Force 1s, but their as popular as ever. And
like I said earlier - it doesn't matter. Not like Buffett and his famous
annual letters to shareholders are looked down on because he has a "thrifty"
site either <http://www.berkshirehathaway.com>

Looking at it with firebug, the whole nav is one tall .gif and all the links
are mapped via rectangular coordinates. The title for each essay is also a
.gif, though they have alt description tags.

I know its your baby, but if you managed this with wordpress or another CMS,
it would be really easy and you could be much more flexible to add new things.
With wordpress, you could make a theme just like your current, but with CSS
styled text links and you would just make static pages for all your new essays
and whatnot. I could recreate your whole site in about an hour if you'd like.

------
mmt
#14 strikes me as the most startling. It's not that I hadn't guessed VC
cluelessness, despite never having talked to them myself.

Rather, it's that so much pretense has been acceptable for so long. If
technology knowledge isn't necessary to make successful technology
investments, why do the asset managers put up with the charade?

Is it all just an effect of VC rewards being too loosely coupled with results?

(#15 seems to me to follow as a matter of course, and is, arguably, the other
side to the same coin)

~~~
dualogy
If it so happens that their primary concern is financial developments, "market
trends" etc., is that really news to anyone? I mean I'm a developer myself but
I acknowledge that if they don't have as much of a clue as we would like them
to have, maybe it's because the market(s) reward their other qualities and it
Just Doesn't Matter (or make such a big difference to their returns). (The
fact is that not everything that matters to us personally matters on other
scales just as much.)

------
b3eck
_The reason not to put your all your eggs in one basket is not the usual one,
which applies even when you know which basket is best._

The last paragraph of 7 has an extra 'your' (but otherwise you're not
repeating yourself ;-)

------
allenbrunson
There are a bunch of passages surrounded by asterisks. Shouldn't that be
italics?

~~~
pg
Fixed, thanks.

~~~
dunstad
At the beginning of section 6. Think Long Term, you say "shear stress", but I
think the word you intended to use is "sheer".

~~~
swolchok
It's correct as written. See sense 9 at
<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shear> \-- shearing stress is the
stress between two blocks pressed together along a plane and moving in
opposite directions parallel to that plane.

It's a very nice analogy: the startup is moving fast in one direction and the
VC or whatever is moving slowly in another one.

~~~
cperciva
_It's a very nice analogy: the startup is moving fast in one direction and the
VC or whatever is moving slowly in another one._

Personally I prefer the phrase "impedance mismatch".

~~~
swolchok
It's much harder to explain impedance concisely. I, for one, never took a
circuits class, and I wouldn't expect other CS programs to require one either.

------
JLaramie
Such a great presentation from Paul. I particularly like the piece on
competitors, not worrying about them, and believing in your approach to the
market and product. Go get em!

