

Don't Read Tech Blogs: 10 Pieces of Startup Advice from Backupify's Rob May - gthuang1
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/03/07/don%E2%80%99t-read-tech-blogs-10-ideas-from-backupifys-rob-may/?single_page=true

======
markbao
> _3\. Incubators aren’t thinking big enough. ... If you want to build
> something really big, May says, “three programmers and $50K isn’t going to
> get you very far.” He appreciates lean startups as much as anyone, but when
> it comes to disrupting big industries and building big companies, you need
> time and capital._

Well...

HARD: finding a product that has very good product-market fit and has the
possibility to be a huge company.

EASY (at least relatively): raising money when you've got a product with great
product-market fit.

Three programmers and $50k isn't meant to make you become a big company. It's
meant to allow you to experiment with ideas to see if it gets traction, to
determine whether it's a big company or not. If it is, then the big bills can
come out to make it a big company.

Maybe incubators aren't thinking big in the sense that they're sinking $10
million into an idea that might have dubious traction, but they are thinking
pragmatically.

------
ScottWhigham
>> Don’t read too many tech blogs... Part of the reason, he says, is that many
of the bloggers are 23-year-olds who haven’t built a real company yet

Ha - I'm sure will ruffle many, many feathers around here. If we could
downvote articles, I'm certain that many here would do so for this reason.
And, although I'm sure I'll get downvoted for saying this, I'm pretty sure
that those of us who are 35 or older who have built successful companies
nodded in agreement as we read that line. I thought I knew a lot at 23 but, at
40 when I look back, I really appreciate just how much "naive exuberance" I
had.

------
WiseWeasel
Quite the conundrum; had I followed his advice, I may not have discovered it.

~~~
snprbob86
I interpreted _tech_ as referring to _engineering_. I know that 99 times out
of 100, Googling around, reading blog posts, and otherwise banging my head on
the latest and greatest is less productive and produces lower quality software
than just reading some damn man pages and spitting out some code.

------
robmay
Just to clarify the "don't read blogs" comment... what I meant was that tech
blogs are disproportionately written by engineers. You don't see, for
instance, many middle managers at Apple or Amazon blogging about their work.
So if that's all you read, you have this skewed view of how a company should
work based on what a bunch of young, small startup engineers tell you.

There is a disconnect between how the world works and how you think it works
if you spend too much time reading these blogs, and that disconnect hurts you
more than it helps you.

------
shingen
I knew Rob back when he was running BusinessPundit. He's a great guy, classic
entrepreneur. He was about ready to give up on starting businesses - penning a
sad blog entry about failing and not being sure where he was going next - when
he came together with some other founders to do Backupify. I've never liked
the cliche about success being closest when you're just about to give up, but
it seems to ring true an awful lot.

