
Tenacity - worldvoyageur
http://avc.com/2016/01/tenacity-2
======
Mahn
Tangential, but:

> _I don’t mean sticking with a failed idea for too long. That is a mistake I
> see a lot of entrepreneurs make in the Seed and Series A stages. That does
> nobody any good._

How do you actually know an idea has failed, though? Because I feel assessing
this is harder than he makes it sound. If you are building it, unless it's a
complete and utter catastrophe that attracts no users and makes no revenue,
there's always room to improve it even if you are still living off ramen.

~~~
wtvanhest
I wrote a response to this because I recently shut down my company, but when I
was finished I realized that none of the advice was actionable, and I didn't
know of a good framework for this.

I visited a lot of coworking spaces and met people working on things that had
been doing so for years with no traction. Some of the people clearly didn't
what problem they are trying to solve. Some really solid advice or a framework
for when to know your business is toast would be an anti-sv culture thing, but
could be extremely useful for helping people get their life back on track.

~~~
hayksaakian
Here is a simple but opinionated answer:

If you are not growing by C% every month, you're a "dead" startup.

Now, do you want to pivot to being a small business, or traditional
enterprise? Are you spending VC money that demands results? Is your business
funding your own lifestyle?

Answer those questions and you know what to do next.

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Multiplayer
RE: FourSquare. Very interesting to me that he doesn't mention that they just
changed out the Founder/CEO this week and did a significant down round. I
almost feel like the entire article was a camouflaged smoke screen for
propping up FourSquare. Just odd.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
That was announced after this post.

~~~
bnwllc3
yes and four squares is in the union square ventures portfolio, he would have
knowledge of and may have been part of the decision making process.

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jakozaur
Many great companies takes decade or more to build.

A lot of the most valuable companies have their founders/early employees as
their CEO vs. someone who join later (usually a professional one):
[http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_we_prefer_founding_ceos](http://www.bhorowitz.com/why_we_prefer_founding_ceos)

Though you may argue it is a survivor bias, I believe sticking longer with
something that works give an edge vs. leadership changes every few years.

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panic
_For the past three years the narrative around SoundCloud has been that it was
stuck in the mud, that remixes and other derivative content were getting taken
down, that labels were forcing artists to take their content off the service.
All of which was true, but the real narrative was that SoundCloud was going
through a difficult and complicated process of developing a new business model
for audio content in partnership with an existing industry that has done
things a certain way for a long time._

It's a shame that SoundCloud was forced to yield to the established music
industry like this. The world doesn't need yet another way to play "artists as
diverse as Avicii, Bob Marley, the Beatles and Justin Bieber"
([http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/13/soundcloud-universal-
music-...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/13/soundcloud-universal-music-
interview/)).

~~~
rockarage
No, they were not forced to yield to the establishment, they chose the
establishment because it is the path with seemingly less risk. There is a
meaningful difference, by using well know and established music it becomes
easier to gain the hallowed "traction" VC funded musictech startups want.
Soundcloud has little to no interests in focusing on truly independent artist
and productions the way Bandcamp has and is doing.

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rckrd
Looks like avc.com is down. Here is a cached version for now

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YSjjxaE...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YSjjxaEGetoJ:avc.com/2016/01/tenacity-2/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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tkt
I think what's interesting about this piece is that it again highlights that
many companies are not 'overnight successes' and the true commitment and time
it takes from a founder and/or CEO to develop an organization. It gives hope
to people who still feel like they're in the trenches and not seeing as many
deliverables as they would like.

The author also highlights the importance of a good Board. Often not enough
thought goes in to selecting a Board. A Board that believes in the idea and
the people, has a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds, and has a
relationship with the founder/CEO where there's room for disagreement and
discussion can make all the difference.

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untilHellbanned
This is a weak article.

1\. Soundcloud: 99% of founders would love to have the level of success that
Soundcloud had leading up to these 3 years of "hard work" getting labels
onboard.

2\. Foursquare: Got so much money and press for almost a decade now. The least
they could do would be to go to work and figure out how to honor all the good
fortune people bestowed on them.

Again, its not hard to keep working if you have massive traction in terms of
users or money (VC or otherwise). What's hard is when you have neither of
these things.

This reads as a motivation piece because Foursquare has shat the bed and like
anyone, AVC wants to get out of it what he still can.

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drpgq
Myself and a few friends still use swarm a bit. Who still uses foursquare
itself?

~~~
simonw
I recently started using Foursquare a bit after mostly abandoning it for
Swarm. It's actually really good. By far the best feature for me is the
"trending in your city" bit which is fantastic at letting me know about good
newly opened places. If there's a better tool than Foursquare for figuring out
what exciting new businesses have opened in your neighborhood I don't know
what it is.

