
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Startups 4 Years Ago - amirkhella
http://blog.amirkhella.com/2011/02/23/what-i-wish-someone-had-told-me-5-years-ago/
======
pg
He's right. The most important thing we tell each YC batch, immediately after
interviews, is _start now_. Startups should be building stuff and talking to
users, and not much else.

~~~
daleharvey
having done a startup with no "network" at all, and one knowing of and taking
part in the tech startup community, I do think there is massive amount of
value added when you are a part of "the scene"

You gain a network who will push your startup, introduce you to customers,
investors, partners, media, you get some knowledge shared from people in the
same situation, tools and methods they used and sometimes its just comforting
being part of a group of people in the same situation who you can all relate
with.

obviously a lot of this comes as part of the package with YC, imo one of its
biggest attractions.

(and obviously this definitely cannot be done in place of building a product /
talking to customers)

~~~
pg
Introducing people is easy for us, but we need some ammunition to make
introductions effective. We need to be able to say not just please meet x, but
please meet x, who have built an amazing y.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
At the risk of being pedantic, and because I know a large percentage of folks
do not understand what you are saying, by "amazing" do you mean something with
a lot of users and proof of traction? Not something that looks cool, is an
incredible program, or most programmers would think is awesome? Because the
average user of HN's opinion of "awesome" and yours might be very far apart.

~~~
pg
When I say to investors that something is good, I mean good from their point
of view. Which means that users do or will love it, and the market is big.

~~~
yarek
This is a gem of an advice.

------
mattmanser
I am a little more pragmatic about this whole thing, without HN I really
wouldn't have realised the benefits of MVC, Memcached, JQuery, SEO, github,
the options for charging for an app, Python, the concept of bootstrapping,
timing attacks, how easy it is to become a contractor, incubators, even the
realisation that you don't need funding to setup a web app. And many more that
don't pop into my head now. It's made me a more confident programmer.

There is a lot to be gained in coming here and reading the blogs, the advice.
Perhaps more from the comments. Admittedly there is a fair bit of noise and
distraction too.

There are benefits as well as negatives, I think it's one of these cases of
all things in moderation. I go to the occasional startup meetings and
developers meetings near me for fun and relaxation, not because I think it
will gain me riches. Because it interests me. Occasionally it motivates me
(seeing Rob Wilmot (freeserve) and Joel Gasgoine (myonepage/bufferapp)).

While get it done and ship is a lesson I sorely need beaten into me at this
last stage of development, I for one do not begrudge myself these
distractions.

~~~
Terry_B
I agree, I've got the same value out of these things as you. But pretty much
all the people I know who have had some amount of success with anything didn't
know these things and didn't care.

They just hacked something together and didn't stop...

So I think the value you are describing comes a fair distant second.

------
edw519
Great post!

AFAIC, Success = (BuildingStuff) * (TheValueOfEverythingElse)

If you're not building stuff, it doesn't matter how much value you get out of
everything else. Zero is still zero.

Sorry it took you 4 years to learn that lesson. It took me a while too. I
don't really know how long because I don't look back. I suspect none of us
should.

~~~
amirkhella
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is right now
;)

~~~
ludicast
Maybe the best quote I ever read. Never heard/read it before but I will
probably quote it over and over again for the rest of my life. If it's from
another language I'll probably get a pretentious tattoo of it.

I finally live according to that dictum now, but it took me 37 years to get to
that place.

Facebook itself is brilliant testament to that. They entered an insanely
crowded marketplace, with many leaders way way ahead of them. The were as late
as late could be to create a "Social Network". It would be like showing up to
a potluck at 2AM with a tray full of appetizers.

And then they mowed everybody down.

~~~
Psyonic
Appetizers tend to be good snack food, and by 2 AM most people are hungry
again and need something to sober up with... so actually your analogy works
better than you probably intended.

~~~
arjunnarayan
So if its 2am and you're holding a tray full of appetizers, show up any way?
(Next best thing, after all.)

~~~
Psyonic
Absolutely

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DanielBMarkham
It is better to make $5 a month on something you created than spend a million
dollars on learning how to build the perfect startup.

The more I learn about startups the more I realize that the answers are not
found in a book or on a blog somewhere. Startups are about _synthesis_ , not
instructions. That means until you execute, you don't know what you're doing.
Hell, you don't know what you're doing even after you execute.

Also the more I learn the more I realize that me sitting around and writing
comments like this are a big part of the problem. Both for me and others.

Back to work.

~~~
gigantor
Absolutely agree. Execute first and make $5 online instead of reading books on
how to make your first $1 million.

But I don't see you writing this comment as a problem. If it reaffirms your
beliefs, results in you taking action, and teaches someone, you have just
taught two people something. Back to work...

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tjmaxal
I am Milton from Innotech and I hate my life. I'm stuck where I am because I
am working full time and a full time student. But neither is really
satisfying. I can't seem to raise enough capital to get my ideas off the
ground and I can't seem to think of any good ideas that require no capital and
can be completed with only a few hours a week.

But I will graduate eventually, then I will make more money and get out of
debt. until then all I can really do is watch things from the sidelines and
keep learning.

~~~
bartonfink
I did the same thing, and I can assure you that it's a wonderful feeling from
the other side. It is, however, hell to go through.

~~~
mkramlich
Especially when you realize your red stapler is missing.

------
light3
Reminds me of my favorite violinist, his one of the cleanest players you'll
find: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mixnMzHUYxA>

Once he was asked what music piece he thought was most difficult to play, his
reply was something like: "Either you can play a piece or you can't, there is
no difficult, difficult leads to friction in your playing"

The 'not best' players when faced with difficult passages will consciously or
subconsciously have fear of it and stress out, this is will cause tension and
can be picked up by the viewer.

Milstein's was known for taking any musical piece he liked and 'hacking' it
till he knew it inside out, for every passage he will try all sorts of
fingerings. An average player will be content to play one fingering well,
relying mostly on muscle memory, but Milstein would study a piece and really
play from his head, at each moment he could choose between different
fingerings. Thats how he thought and practiced, and if you look at his
performance he is always relaxed because his preparation is so thorough and he
played from his mind.

------
laf2019
Good post, I've been through a similar situation. I worked for some large evil
company, and needed all of those meetups and blog posts to validate the idea
that I wanted to work on or at a startup. But I am not sure that cutting them
out totally is a good idea. They do help you build your network, and some
people you meet at these events CAN actually be helpful. Maybe like with
alcohol, it is good in moderation. But I agree, it is easy to get swept up in
the spirit of entrepreneurship but never become one.

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lsc
I think networking, from a business perspective, is a lot like display
advertising. It's more about building credibility for when you need it later
than about the immediate sale. You want people to say "Hey, I've heard of that
guy before."

Several competitors, when they wanted out of the business, approached me about
buying them out for cheap. I even went through with one of the deals (the
customers and some of the other assets, but not the name, of tilenetworks now
belongs to prgmr.com. We'll be announcing a KVM product at some point based on
the tilenetworks stuff.)

But much like advertising, it's not much use until you have something to buy
or sell.

------
Macsenour
Great post!

I would add one thing about momentum: don't be afraid to say "I'll get back to
that problem" and focus on keeping the momentum going. This has made a HUGE
difference in my project. A feature could have stopped me in my tracks, I
bypassed it to keep development going and now it turns out that I don't need
that feature. It could have stopped my process for weeks, but now, not at all.

Just, keep track of those things so you can get back to them later.

------
jonny_eh
Great article despite the irony of advising people to not read it.

------
dlevine
I know a lot of people who could tell you the name of every startup that
launched on TechCrunch last week. Pretty much none of them have been
successful. My advice to most of these people is "take a month off of the
blogs and actually do something."

~~~
jdap
If you spend your life watching the waves, you're never going to catch one let
alone make one.

But if the first time you've seen the sea was when you ran into it with a
brand new board, the waves are going to catch you.

I engage in my own startups as if there were nothing else in the world. But
the instincts I have come from my own participation, and also by consuming
startup news in time I can easily afford.

------
Tycho
The problem with all the blogs/interviews/features about strategies or
lifehacks or whatever is that _if it hadn't worked, would they have bothered
to write a blog about it?_

Meaning, hundreds of other people might have tried and failed with the exact
same thinking, but you don't hear about _them_ , making success stories seem
more significant than they really are.

------
r00fus
I think the "wasted time" the author refers to is, in fact, time needed to get
ready. Some folks won't need as much of it (or any at all), others will need
more.

In the end, finding that "fear of not starting" is incredibly important, but I
posit that could only be found by the author after his "walk in the
wilderness".

------
phankinson
Bhahaha. I bursted out laughing when I saw Milton.

I agree with most of the points, but one thing I've learned in my years doing
web startups is making sure their is a need for your product. Lots of Lean
Startup principles are unbelievably useful at showing your idea has legs
before investing any time or money into it.

------
jrubinovitz
I use technology entrepreneur sites for inspiration when I'm getting sluggish
after working the day job all day. Devoting more energy to "learning about
being an entrepreneur" can be really unproductive. The best learning will be
done by doing. I agree with this link.

Now it's time to go back to work!

------
visava
I stopped reading techcrunch a year back. I will stop reading HN for the next
60 days

------
bfe
I think a valuable complement to this is the idea of finding the fastest
minimum viable product you can create and start getting feedback on, and if
the original idea would take months to launch, then trying to plan a path to
it through a space of increasingly involved products that are viable at every
step from the most quickly launchable initial product, even if that doesn't
bear much resemblance to the original idea.

------
Zakuzaa

        I stopped reading startup news and blogs for few weeks, and I realized I didn’t miss anything related to my products.
    

Fallacy?

~~~
rexf
The way I understand the message is that you don't _need_ startup news. By
reading startup news, you feel productive and informed, but that doesn't
contribute to actual time building your product.

Who cares how much Quora, Groupon, Fb, etc are valued. Who cares what new
feature Gmail has or what new tablet Apple is coming out with. Most startup
news is filled with these headlines that don't impact your startup.

By not surfing HN, Reddit, etc., the author was able to focus on building his
product.

~~~
sudonim
I turn to HN when I hit a road block. Sometimes I learn something new, but a
lot of times Im just procrastinating.

------
rblion
Truth. Theory and practice are not separate, they are one. I am learning this
myself right now. I finally realized the only way to change the fruits
(results) is to the change the roots (actions). Consuming empty information
are like consuming empty calories. It adds nothing but confusion and wastes
nothing but time and energy.

BTW: Favorite HN post of the month. :)

------
bconway
Great post. The discrepancy between the title and the URL made me smirk, even
though it was probably not relevant.

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bo_Olean
"work now and talk later"

this is just dead simple lesson in theory but why it takes time to actually
practically feel this?

i think i will read and re-read only this post for few days. no more popurls.

------
davidwparker
Good advice; Do you have other startup advice? I'd love to read all about it!

Isn't irony great; momentum and actually doing work is super important. Really
good post.

------
pxstock
Great, great post. To honour it's spirit: it should also be the last post I
read on HN. Before long another four years will have passed by.

------
spydertennis
I wish someone had told me about startups 4 years ago :-).

------
hetaoblog
really great!

------
sabat
_Don’t be an entrepreneur by association. Be an entrepreneur by action and
results._

That's one of the best things I've ever seen on HN. It (unfortunately) hits
close to home.

------
TimothyBurgess
_Whenever I get an idea nowadays, I do something to pin it to my reality, and
to make it tangible. I do it in a quick and ugly way, then figure out how to
do it better, and learn only what I need for that._

Perfect.

After reading a number posts/articles similar to this, I feel like I'm pretty
lucky to have gone the route I've taken. Being young and full of myself and
thinking I can do pretty much anything I put my mind to is also a big factor,
I'm sure. But it's also of course had negative impacts.

When I left my old lifestyle ("rockstar" lol emphasis on the quotations) I
immediately dove into the little side project I was working on while in the
band... and said, "Alright I'm gonna turn this into an actual business. Should
be pretty easy... there's definitely tons of bands and management out there
who would use it and I've already gotten most of it done." Little did I know,
after working on it for a month, I saw vast potential in the basis of the
project and decided to start over but make everything insanely flexible. Being
arrogant as I was, I figured it wouldn't take more than a month or two. But of
course it added on a few more months of (hard!) work and now almost 8 months
later I'm literally less than a day away from actual release. (Look out for a
rate my startup thread, hopefully tomorrow! ;))

Now, my determination (more like obsession) to get it 99% to what I'd imagined
it to be months ago has led me to probably a situation that could be better. I
probably could have released the app months ago at 50% and received awesome
feedback along the way molding its design to exactly as customers want...
while having a much larger customer-base and awareness than I do currently
(practically none! :()... but I was afraid it would get a bad reputation early
on and turn off more customers in the long run. But now in retrospect, if I'd
known this from the beginning I'd have gone in a direction that allowed me to
release much earlier without compromising the app's reputation. My mind was
just so set on that one full idea I had from the beginning. I guess next time
I'll be more prepared!

