
"A startup company is like a bicycle", said one VC to me. "The two wheels are marketing and engineering and you don't get very far without both" - BioGeek
http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/97
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far33d
The first think I thought when I saw this quote was that there's a wall full
of unicycles at the YCombinator/AnyBots office, and lots of people that ride
them effectively.

~~~
danielha
From <http://tlb.org/eunicycle.html:> _"Some time ago I built a self-balancing
two-wheeled scooter. Since then I realized that two wheels are redundant, and
only a single wheel is needed to make a ridable vehicle."_

~~~
far33d
sometimes an analogy works just way too well.

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danw
Darn it, Ya'll beat me to the unicycles :)

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vlad
"A startup is like a bicycle." I think only a business person would come up
with such an analogy. Remember, it implies there is somebody else sitting in
the seat.

And the VC is riding you? Certainly not your customers, in the early stage,
since you may not have any. And each of the founders we know is already a
bicycle wheel, not the rider. Must be the VC, right? Remember, business people
and large software companies see programmers as cogs or wheels, important only
as part of a system. If you play along with their analogies, you are just
asking for trouble.

How about a different analogy, which favors us, the software guys? A startup
is like... Fill in your own reply.

~~~
vlad
I found some by Paul Graham, of all people, when I typed in "a startup is
like" into Google:

"A startup is like walking on your hands. A startup is like a pass/fail
course. A startup is like a small boat in the open sea. A startup is like a
mosquito. A startup is like a hang-glider launch.

No.

A startup is like being a mosquito trying to fly a hanglider-boat while waking
on your hands and not failing school."

Can somebody top that (and throw in a marketing aspect?)

~~~
mauricecheeks
vlad-

in keeping with the theme:

A startup is like being a mosquito trying to fly a hanglider-boat while waking
on your hands... simultaneously trying to negotiate the wind to keep you up in
the air and convince your teachers to get in your boat rather than fail you.

;-)

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zach
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get
paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for
creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else
is a cost center." - Peter Drucker

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pg
Google?

