
Don't Start Big, Start a Little Snowball - jv22222
https://blog.nugget.one/2016/09/04/dont-start-big-start-a-little-snowball/
======
anthonygore
The problem with articles and discussions like this is that the "markers of
success" pointed out may all be true, but incidental.

Take Slack as an example. Yes, it was a simple idea with low product surface
area and easily protypeable etc etc. But other people had built Slack-like
products before that met the all those same criteria and were not successful.
The critical factors for Slack were the connections the founders had (or
made), the VC money, and perhaps a whole bunch of other things.

As much as we'd like for there to be a nice, neat guides for successful
businesses e.g. "build a little snowball", the truth is that the reasons for
success are often totally unique, contradictory and unrepeatable.

~~~
Clobbersmith
Slack also has an amazing UX, I haven't used a competing product that was as
enjoyable to use. Yes I know this is subjective, but of the people I know that
like Slack actually love it. Whereas I've never met somebody that loves
HipChat.

~~~
continuational
I'm not fond of the Slack UI.

First of all I don't want to talk to "@jjm", I want to talk to John Jameson.
Why can't it show me the full, human name?

Second, chat is basically the hello world of push based apps, but any other
update, like renaming channels, editing documents etc. aren't real time. I
have to close the app and reopen it to see the update. Come on!

Third, the document feature is not multiplayer. You have to lock the document
in order to edit it. And for todo lists, you can't even tick off a box without
locking the whole document.

~~~
ecnahc515
Slack has an option to display full names, which you can set. An admin can
also make that the default.

Secondarily, the reason for @username is because you basically have to use
usernames of some kind to ensure you can directly refer to another user
consistently. Users can also setup "highlight words" which will notify them if
someone says them in a channel they're in. This could be their name for
example, or other things.

~~~
pc86
I set up a Slack channel for the PTs at the gym my wife and I run, and have
defaulted it to real names and I get an alert for my first name, our last
name, and a handful of other words. Having never used Slack before I was
pretty impressed with the customizability of it.

------
pjlegato
This is somewhat interesting, but relies on the all too common tautological
device of "hustle," a quasi-magical activity whose details are usually elided
over.

Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now
you have a large, successful company.

What makes a successful company? "Hustle." What is "hustle"? Why, it just
means "working hard at doing all the things that make a company successful."
It's a perfectly circular definition.

Proposal: always avoid the word "hustle." Instead, talk about specific actions
and decisions that led to success in particular cases.

~~~
bsder
> Start a small company. "Hustle" diligently for a while. Profit. Repeat. Now
> you have a large, successful company.

And, also, survivor bias. Lots of companies hustled and hustled and died.

Elon Musk is a _really_ good example. At one point he couldn't meet cashflow--
and then the government contract for SpaceX finally came in.

3 months of delay on that contract and Musk is a goat instead of a hero.

~~~
taneq
This one drives me crazy. Sure, you have to be good and smart and you have to
hustle, but you also have to be lucky, and luck is a bigger factor than anyone
likes to admit. People who make it big forget the luck aspect and start
believing that because it worked, they did everything right. They then go
around dispensing questionable advice on the basis of 'it worked for them'
while knowing full well that they're a massive outlier.

It's like when old successful people give "life-affirming" advice like "quit
your job, follow your dreams, take risks, LIVE!" Which is great advice if
you're already financially secure and you know that doing so didn't result (in
your case) in you ending up as some peon working in a fast food joint. Never
mind the other 99% of people who did the exact same thing and it didn't work
out, because who listens to a failure?

~~~
dasil003
I agree with you, but there's a valid psychological reason that people don't
admit to being lucky more often. It's because to maximize your chance of
success you have to focus on what you can control. Sitting around and looking
at others to try to dissect what was luck vs skill is a sort of armchair
criticism where the practitioner is immune to failure by virtue of not even
trying. Ultimately the question of luck is so subjective that it starts to
become philosophical at some point. After all, so many small things happen via
day-to-day serendipity that anything that actually happens can be considered
incredibly lucky. On the other hand, one has a lot of agency when it comes to
building a company, and the art of building a startup is about matching
incredibly limited resources to the highest return activities, and ratcheting
that over and over again through years of changing circumstances. All the luck
in the world won't drop an Instagram-like success in your lap without just the
right preparation leading up to that amazing moment.

In short, it's not that luck isn't super important, but if you are _thinking_
about luck then you probably won't be ready to capitalize on it.

------
andy_ppp
I have this magical formula for building a startup that is 100% guaranteed to
work, but no-one discusses.

\- Do something illegal, then lobby for your rights!

\- DDOS your competition

\- Be evil

\- Ignore regulations designed to protect your workforce (often referred to as
'partners', hah!)

\- Tell everyone you have a special insight in making successful startups -
something to do with 'hustle' and 'product market fit'

\- Burn investor money while shouting stuff about self driving cars

\- Underpay your staff and/or take a huge cut of their value

\- Take massive equity stakes in already existing/launched companies and call
it seed funding

\- Be Elon Musk

/snark

~~~
ktRolster
Another business plan that can be very profitable:

\- Build something rather generic, mediocre, but serviceable

\- Donate a lot to politician campaigns

\- Enthusiastically explain how great it would be if people (or a certain
segment of people) were required to use a product with certain requirements

\- Your product somehow is the only on that matches those requirements

~~~
yellowapple
Also known as "how to guarantee the survival of the Z80 architecture well into
the 21st Century".

------
rl3
As much as I hate to admit it, the author isn't wrong.

Ideas too big to feasibly execute in typical startup fashion (i.e. incremental
funding rounds tied to key metrics) have a snowball's chance in hell of
actually succeeding. It doesn't matter if it's the best idea in the world; the
ability to adapt to and survive within the existing funding eco system
ultimately has more utility because it moves the company forward.

~~~
jv22222
Thanks!

Just curious, why do you hate to admit it? :)

~~~
rl3
The project I'm working on has evolved over the years into something I can no
longer feasibly accomplish alone. I truly believe the idea is solid, but
that's worthless without being able to go from zero to one.

The best I can do is hack together tiny glimpses of the final vision. As a
solo founder with no track record, pitching a concept for a product that has
high funding requirements with no hope of revenue until late-stage is
virtually impossible.

Years ago I reasoned the only way I'd get off the ground is to launch
_something_ and get organic traction. Despite my best efforts to delude myself
into believing the contrary, that seems to have proven correct.

If anything, thinking too big for your own good is tantamount to a mental
prison of sorts. You just become obsessed with an idea that has a
significantly lower chance of being realized. Hence why your snowball advice
is on point. :)

~~~
jv22222
That's very interesting. Thanks so much for the answer.

From all the work you've done on it, if you really think outside the box, is
there some single facet that could potentially be turned into do-one-thing-
well?

~~~
rl3
The product is ultimately _n_ -facet, with each facet relying upon the same
underlying core technology and principles.

There's three conceptualized facets. Two of them are relatively easy to
implement from a technical perspective, but are otherwise rendered very
difficult by non-technical considerations. The facet I believe to have the
widest appeal is paradoxically far harder to implement than the others in all
respects.

I think I'll take your advice and either try simplify an existing facet with
laser-focus, or perhaps think far outside of the box and hopefully come up
with something that's both stupid-simple yet feasible to implement. Something
that gains traction while acting as a proof of concept at the same time.

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

~~~
neogodless
It sounds like you're afraid to share your idea, despite the fact that
implementation is very difficult.

This means everyone else is too busy with their own ideas anyway and no one is
going to jump on board and join you because you won't share your idea.

Read what Derek Divers has to say:
[https://sivers.org/multiply](https://sivers.org/multiply)

~~~
rl3
There's nothing to gain from doing so. I'm not seeking co-founders, nor do I
think a quasi-open remote work model would be a good fit.

Besides, I could use the five dollars. :)

~~~
ahartman00
"The project I'm working on has evolved over the years into something I can no
longer feasibly accomplish alone" ... "I'm not seeking co-founders"

i dont know your situation, but maybe this is a mistake? 25% of something is
better than 100% of nothing? just a thought

~~~
rl3
That's true, and while there is a huge benefit to having co-founders there's
also drawbacks (e.g. time spent on recruitment and vetting, potential drama
down the road, less equity for employees, a fractured vision). In my
situation, that time and energy is likely better spent pushing forward.

Regardless, I should have qualified that statement by saying that a sizable
team is required at a minimum to ship anything resembling a final product.
It's far beyond what a few co-founders could accomplish together.

~~~
neogodless
I have some ideas that probably fit that description. But does the "lean
startup" concept still not fit? In other words, is the MVP feasible alone,
developed to a point where it can be announced and tested by real users, and
possibly gain popularity and possibly income, and ultimately facilitate the
necessary growth?

~~~
rl3
No. My only shot at completing a user-facing MVP with no funding would be to
either think up an entirely new facet that requires far less work and is
congruent with existing plans, or somehow trim down an existing facet.
Otherwise I'm just stuck pitching concepts.

------
thesmallestcat
Is the Google example oversimplified, or is my history wrong? It's reduced
here to a "simple database search" but I thought some of Google's novel search
technology was there from the get-go, so who cares how the index was
persisted?

~~~
dood
Oversimplified to the point of absurdity. The original Google was based on
Pagerank [1], which came out of the postgrad research of Larry and Sergey.

They also had to build a crawler, systems to calculate pagerank on relatively
huge graphs, and the search engine.

That is years of decidedly non-trival hard work, both academic and engineering
- pretty much the opposite of the 'snowball' the author claims it to be.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank)

~~~
nostrademons
The snowball idea for Google was "download the web, keeping only the links"
[1], and from there it grew into PageRank, sorting by PageRank, sorting by
PageRank with a filter for keywords, a search engine, etc. The description in
the article is largely bullshit; Google search has never used a database, and
PageRank predates the idea of Google as a search engine.

[1] source: Larry Page, explaining to Nooglers why they shouldn't be afraid to
work on ideas that seem crazy or useless at first.

------
otto_ortega
It seems the best kind of startups to create this days are about teaching
other people how to start a startup! Take the OP "nugget", "The Foundation"
(Dane Maxwell), "The Secret Society Mastermind" (Timothy Marc), etc, etc...
It's a pattern better explained on this comic:

[http://thegentlemansarmchair.com/comic/escape-
the-9-to-5/](http://thegentlemansarmchair.com/comic/escape-the-9-to-5/)

As someone who is currently on the process of trying to find his "Own Little
Snowball" and has sent over 500 emails on the last couple of weeks trying to
interview people to find that "one-thing" to do well.

I have to say that the whole process of funding an startup has come to be
oversimplified by most trying to talk about it, they present it on a nice
little set of steps from A to B and from B to C.

But once you get started trying to follow the path, you notice the "magic"
happens on what's in between the steps, and that's something nobody talks
about.

------
Mendenhall
I find the "do one thing well" advice to almost always be sound. Great ideas
are a dime a dozen, execution is the hard part. Sticking to one thing allows
you to focus on executing it well.

------
bikamonki
Sound and well written advice; however, I would add: don't expect your
snowball to reach über size. There are tons of problems to solve/improve but
the great majority of them have a small market size/potential. The big markets
are too hard to disrupt.

------
hoodoof
I don't agree that the only way to make a company is to build something small
and iterate. It's just one way, not better nor worse than other ways. Some
companies have succeeded doing this, other have not. Which means that the
point of the blog post is basically wrong. Don't "build something small and
iterate", build the product that you have in mind that you think people will
want - that might be big and need lots of functionality or it might be small
with minimal functionality.

Just because plenty of companies have done this does not mean it isn't equally
valid to build something with a broad set of functionality.

Survivor bias.

It's also painfully true that uncountable companies have built something small
that got no bigger. Maybe they would have been better to build out their idea
into something more full featured.

~~~
jv22222
I think it goes without saying this is not the only way you can build a
sucessfull company.

There are so many existence proof examples of companies that are precisely the
opposite of little snowballs.

Hootsuite, Salesforce, Microsoft, etc.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit, but the implicit understanding is
that this post is aimed at the lone wolf or small teams with no funding.

Sure, you can be a lone wolf or small team and try to build a large complex
project. I actually know quite a few folks who've done that. Most failed. Some
were sucessfull -
[https://www.centraldesktop.com](https://www.centraldesktop.com) \- comes to
mind.

But, the main point is, it is simply easier on most business vectors to tackle
a do-one-thing-well rather than build a big-complex-product.

~~~
kareemm
Hootsuite was absolutely a little snowball. Invoke Labs was an agency in
Vancouver that build Ow.ly (a link shortener that's still around). They then
continued to build an early ver of Hootsuite to manage their clients' social
media campaigns. Then they realized that other people might want it and
offered a free version. I had dinner with the founder the night before they
turned on their paid plans, and he was unsure what the reception would be
since they gave so much to so many people for free.

The reception was somewhat positive but they continued to grow and sell the
crap out of Hootsuite and now it's on track to go public. But they started
SUPER small.

------
kristianc
They missed the point where little plucky bootstrapped Uber bought growth with
VC money in every market they entered. It's a model, but I'm not sure there
are many lessons your average bootstrapped business can learn from Uber.

------
jasonkit
I really want to know how to be better in noticing the problem. I do get annoy
by some regular task, however I will easily adapt to it and lost the incentive
for solving the problem.

------
cmillard
While I don't know if my snow balls will go anywhere, one thing I've noticed
is that many (most?) successful entrepreneurs have a high risk tolerance. I
went to a meetup where Alan Grant (Hired) talked about his tolerance for risk-
sometimes it even involved activities on his part that were a violation of
TOS. The point is sometimes to do creative destruction you have to get your
hands dirty. Try to maintain a "chaotic good" alignment if you will ;)

------
ktRolster
Here's my little snowball:
[http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/3.html](http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/3.html)

Trying to spread the idea that code can exist with a low bug count, and that
it's better to write code that way.

------
rgun
Unix philosophy for the business world!

------
adventured
Chris Dixon's bowling pin post is among my favorite on this topic:

[http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-
strategy/](http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/)

------
nojvek
Nicely written. Although uber and Airbnb are big because of the big VC money
that can afford the lawyers and engineers. Not a lot of places around the
world where capital + talent is available for snowball ideas.

~~~
jv22222
I don't know about that... There are quite a few little snowball startups that
started out as self funded that do pretty well.

I'm thinking about Buffer, Drip, Litmus, Basecamp to name a few.

Sure, some of them did raise money, but that was a long time after they were
profitable.

