

Focus on yourself - master

Too many entrepreneurs waste time observing/analyzing the actions of others.  In boom times, this creates me-too companies; in bust times, this creates ridiculous hysteria (such as that which we are seeing now).  Do your own thing.  And quit submitting these stupid link-bait articles.
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jmtame
I sort of disagree, but agree too.

I find it to be a healthy sign that people are receptive to reading and being
open to opinions. I'm on a college campus, one of the highest rated
entrepreneurship schools in the country, so I take for granted the massive
amount of speakers we get. You hear the same message repeated and you start to
see patterns.

Focus on yourself is one of those patterns that very successful people talk
about.

I just listened to Jimmy John (the guy who started Jimmy John's) talk about
how he doesn't read any of the "self-help crap anymore." He says he went
through that stage, and he doesn't even think about it anymore. He says all he
worries about is "kicking ass and that's about it." But I think that's a stage
in our life that is very important where we question how we should think and
behave. I think we all go through it, even Jimmy did (although doesn't like to
admit it). This is coming from a guy who lost all of his earliest partners in
the business and smoked weed. He obviously didn't have it all figured out from
the get go.

When you're starting out, I think it's hard to be confident about which way to
think. I don't think everyone has the "leadership" gene in their DNA, so they
want to learn about the leadership traits, and what makes a good company
founder. I've spent years reading through articles and how-to's, and while I
think a majority of them are BS because some guy is trying to make a buck by
writing the most appealing article, there are some that are worth reading.
Ironically, you don't need to know much to be a good leader. You follow all of
the basics, the simplest stuff you could think of. But then again, it may be
harder for someone new to leadership and startups to know what that means.

And YC News actually does a GOOD JOB of filtering through the crap. I just
read a post by Mark Cuban, with one of those small "patterns" that I keep
seeing. It's the "there are no easy ways or tricks to be successful" speech,
which I've heard time and time again from very successful people.

Yet, you still see contradictory advice given by people who don't know what
they're talking about.

And let me tell you why I agree with this post, too. The more you think about
things, the less you use your instincts. And your instincts are there to help
you survive, they will guide you. After you do so much reading, you don't even
think about stuff. It gets ingrained in your head, and you just do, you don't
think at a certain point.

Absolutely agree that you should focus on yourself. But don't block out the
really good stuff people like Mark Cuban write, saying there's no easy way.
You need people to remind you that you have to work hard for what you want,
and that also acts as a source of inspiration because they did it and they're
doing fine.

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sidsavara
Very broadly I agree - but I don't think it's often "me-too" companies because
people think "Oh Digg is cool, let's make another Digg."

Rather, I think people always look to RescueTime, or Digg, or Twitter and say
to themselves "Hey look, this part of it sucks. I can make this better and
make it my own."

In boom times, the competition (Digg/RescueTime/Twitter) is getting lots of
funding and praise - so you in turn, marketed to investers as "RescueTime
meets X" get funding because the market is already proven.

In bust times, there is culling of the herd, and if you haven't got something
to show for yourself, and are very similar to another company - well, everyone
prefers winners. So you get less funding, fold, or sold off.

There aren't 10 wannabe Techcrunches because they want to be like Techcrunch.
There are 10 wannabes because they believe they have something different
that's better.

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alex_c
One thing that bothers me about news.yc is a certain disposition towards a
cargo cult mentality. Maybe that's not quite as prevalent anymore, but if it's
being replaced by gossip (the other half of "wasting time observing/analyzing
the actions of others"), that's not an improvement.

That being said, there's value in being aware of what's happening around you.
I "do my own thing" when I'm not reading or posting on news.yc. If I'm
spending time here, then I'm obviously not spending it working on my own
thing. A "social news" site would end up pretty quiet and lonely without ever
talking about other people.

Then again... how does the quote go? "Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds
discuss events; Small minds discuss people."

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hooande
It certainly seems to me that any great creative person has borrowed ideas
liberally from the people around them. It's good to be a student of your art.
Don't you think that a great inventor like Thomas Edison was very aware of
what all of his contemporaries were doing?

I've seen Mark Cuban say something to this effect several times over the last
few months: "You should know more about your market than anyone." We analyze
other startups because in order to really make a change, you have to
understand your environment and how things work.

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symptic
My partner and I were discussing this exact thing earlier, albeit in more
harsh terms.

Our consensus was that companies need to form around a business model rather
than a business model form around a community. Communities suffer form group-
think and tons of start ups show this to be true. This isn't how we should be
doing business. Keyword there: Business. Not "projects" or "apps" or
"widgets".

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jupiter
Sometimes you just need to look outside the window and see what's going on. A
a lot of successful businesses started out completely different from what they
are now. They probably did observe others.

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einarvollset
On that note: [http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2008/10/fear-is-the-
min....](http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2008/10/fear-is-the-min.html)

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known
Do we want to compete with others or ourselves?

~~~
master
Great people are always competing with themselves (see, for example, great
athletes). Of course, that requires notions/delusions of greatness, but that's
another topic!

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vaksel
I don't think it hurts that much, by seeing what others are doing you can see
what does and doesn't work

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edw519
I know you meant well when you posted this, but to me, it came out so wrong.

I complete disagree with, "Focus on yourself."

I would change it to, "Focus on your customers."

Do well by them and you won't have to worry about yourself.

I'd wager that one of the biggest reasons businesses fail is when they forget
to focus on their customers. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to
focus too much on yourself.

~~~
master
In our industry, it tends to be that your first, and most important customer,
is yourself. A lot of the greatest companies started by fulfilling a personal
need; conveniently enough, you don't need to look at the DJIA to tell you
whether you need to scratch your own back.

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quasimojo
i'm not sure how much more narcissistic the web2 crowd could get, but we'll
take the post under advice!!

