
Best ways to kill your startup - vinnyglennon
https://medium.com/swlh/best-ways-to-kill-your-startup-8604a1768a89
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hacknat
Posts on creating a successful startup seem to all suffer from a lack of 2nd
order thinking. Even some of the posts from PG. I’m sorry, but it is
blindingly obvious, IMO, that startups should focus on surviving, whereas
someone like Jeff Bezos has to think about how to serve an ace (and can suffer
a good deal of failures before it would threaten his company).

The unending stream of platitudes that come with these posts are also quite
obvious, but also somewhat useless: don’t hire too fast, but don’t hire too
slow; find a market, but don’t copy your competition.

I think PG said in a post once that the YC partners joked that their job was
to give founders advice that they would then ignore. So that makes me think
that the advice/wisdom people should be dispensing/pursuing is: what can you
do to make sure you follow all this good advice in a disciplined way? It seems
like a lot of intelligent people fail to do so, why? How can you make yourself
the exception?

I don’t necessarily have the answers, but from my limited experience the best
advice you can give an aspiring founder is:

1\. Don’t found a company. You have a good idea and you think you can execute?
Great, go find someone who is very likely already doing it and help them out.
You’ll have way more fun and probably make more money.

2\. Okay, you absolutely have to do this? The thing you have to really nail to
follow all this great advice is culture. I have been at many startups, the
ones that suceeded all had one thing in common: a highly functional culture.
What does that mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean everyone having warm fuzzies
and a Swedish masseuse. It means that information in your organization can
move effectively from anywhere in your company to anywhere else and people
will feel empowered to act on that information. This is not the default mode
for any organization. The default mode for any organization is
territorialism/feudalism. Humans have evolved to be zero sum thinkers, they
can’t help it. You have to create and organization that fights this
constantly.

~~~
andrewstuart
>> it is blindingly obvious, IMO, that startups should focus on surviving

I don't think it is blindingly obvious. In fact I think the typical beginner
entrepreneur really doesn't know where to focus. I've seen a number of people
commence business and focus on logo, writing blog posts, legal setup, making a
website, and then the whole thing goes kaput months down the track because
they didn't have any revenue, when I think they were perfectly capable of
earning money from my external viewpoint, but the beginning entrepreneur
thinks they should, or is enjoying, playing "business theatre".

And strangely it seems that there's nothing you can do to advise people
otherwise during this phase of their personal development.... they are full of
confidence and optimism and not open to hearing that they are not doing the
right things. People are more likely to listen once they have failed and it
has all come crashing down, then they have good reason to start looking for
answers.

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Veen
Essentially, make something people want, don't spend all your money before you
have an income, fire weak employees, and find a co-founder you can work with.

I've never started a startup, but I'd be surprised if these nuggets of wisdom
are news to anyone.

The tennis analogy was quite clever, but it lead me to expect more incisive
advice.

~~~
sky_rw
I've been involved in several startups, a couple winners and a couple losers.
Like all things in life I've found that the simplest principles are often the
hardest ones to grok.

It's like jumping into a Indy Car, and you think "Just go straight and then
turn left". Turns out when you are going 200mph at a concrete wall the simple
things become a lot more complex.

~~~
csallen
A lot of the simple advice needs further unpacking, too. I've seen founders
interpret "Make something people want" in all sorts of ways, as belied by
their behavior:

\- "Make something nobody wants, then keep adding features until something
magical happens."

\- "Copy another app that people already use, but add 'better' or 'faster' or
'easier' or 'prettier' in my marketing copy."

\- "Survey my users and build whatever they tell me, no questions asked."

\- "Build features that align with my own personal vision of what the product
should look like, then hope that other people want it."

\- "Create 1/5th of an ambitious product that people want."

\- "Do an excellent job solving a trivial pain point that nobody cares about
solving."

\- "Make something completely new and unique that the world has never seen
before, regardless of whether or not anybody wants it."

~~~
freehunter
>"Build features that align with my own personal vision of what the product
should look like, then hope that other people want it."

To be fair this is by far the most common startup advice. Make a product for
yourself, because if you've having a problem others likely are too. The only
place you fall into a trap here is if you're both unwilling to change the
design in the future _and_ you're wrong about the design.

~~~
zbentley
> The only place you fall into a trap here is if you're both unwilling to
> change the design in the future _and_ you're wrong about the design.

I'd change the "and" to an "or": is if you're unwilling to change the design
in the future _or_ you're wrong about the design.

This is because:

1\. Even if you're right about the design, and can make people want it, the
market (which drives what people want/can be made to want) may change. You
_will_ have to change, usually sooner than you think; a great vision doesn't
prevent the need for that.

2\. If you're wrong about the design or don't have a good sense for "what is
needed/works", no number of pivots will save you, because each pivot will
likely be to something that people either don't need or doesn't work.

A failure in either is a kiss of death.

~~~
freehunter
Fair enough. I was thinking along the lines of Apple, where Steve Jobs knew
exactly what he wanted and was very reluctant to bow to market pressure or
critics because his vision was always the right vision. Or Basecamp, refusing
to add new features or at least putting new features into spin-off companies
to not compromise their initial vision. Either of these companies received a
death sentence the day they were created... except they were right, so they
succeeded.

Your comment shows its not black and white, there are many shades of grey in
between.

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tptacek
It doesn't sound like these are drawn from the author's experience, but rather
from other things the author read, which would make it more of a haphazard
survey than earned advice.

~~~
carterehsmith
That article looks like a bot-generated content. There are Facebook bots,
Twitter, Amazon bots (like, bots that generate book contents), even Youtube
bots with (sometimes super-weird) machine-generated videos.

BTW they do get clicks, so this is not some AI research moonshot, it is more
like a little cottage industry popping up.

~~~
bramkrom
Hey, I'm the author, and it's not :) But I guess the fact that you think it is
is good feedback, so thanks

------
epberry
At this point it's hard to tell if these posts are auto-generated or not. On
this one, I'm leaning towards yes.

~~~
YPCrumble
Well put. Perhaps AI is getting closer to passing the Turing test because
humans are regressing.

~~~
inimino
The Turing test is a _dialogue_. There is already tons of programmatic content
on the web and it is indistinguishable from human-written content in the
absence of contextual cues.

------
dom96
So if I have an idea that I think people want, how do I figure out whether my
assumptions are correct? Short of actually making the thing.

~~~
Strom
You talk to a bunch of people and ask them if they would be willing to pay
right now. Better if you don't mention that it's not available until they
agree to pay.

It's sort of a funnel: people you think want it > people who actually want it
for free > people who can see themselves wanting it if someone else pays (i.e.
future them could pay) > people who are actually willing to pay themselves.

~~~
Guest9812398
Keep in mind you'll get a lot of false positives. This is one of the biggest
mistakes I always did when validating ideas. I would ask people (and myself),
would you use or pay for product X? People would say yes, I would develop it,
and then no one would use it.

I realized you need to ask a follow-up question. Would you use or pay for
product X? If yes, then why are you not using similar services Y and Z that
already exist?

If it's truly a good idea, then they already know about Y and Z, because
they've been searching for a solution to their problem. They might be paying
for one of those existing inferior services too, because they need this
problem solved, and they're the only options available. That would be great
news. It's bad news when they don't know anything about the existing services.

As a simple example, you could ask pet owners if they would use a social
network for pets, where they register their pet, post entertaining photos of
their pet, follow other pets, etc. Basically, Facebook where all the profiles
and posts are from animals.

You'll get a bunch of yes answers from pet owners, which sounds very
promising, and you might start on development. As I said, this is a mistake.
If you search on Google, you'll find lots of existing pet social networks. So,
ask those same people, if they said yes, why don't they visit Google today,
and register on one of those other 10 sites? Why didn't they sign-up on one
last month? Usually, once they find out the idea exists (or you develop it),
they realize they don't care for, or need the service as much as they
originally thought.

As another example, I might want to develop a HN theme with bigger voting
icons, larger text and links for improved readability, etc. When I ask myself,
I answer yes, it's all positives, and I want and would use this theme. But
then I ask, why have I never used any existing HN themes from other users?
When did I last search for HN themes, because one probably exists today with
some of the features on my list. I then realize that I don't care that much
about a theme after all, and I actually prefer running sites as they're
originally designed, without third-party themes or add-ons, even if they do
add a few beneficial features.

~~~
jonex
This was a pretty clever idea. I haven't heard about it before. It gets some
of the benefits from making an MVP in a really cheap way.

------
bramkrom
Note: I'm the author of the piece.

Thanks a lot to the person who decided to share this here. It taught me a lot.
HN really hosts a group of experts. The comments here have been super nuanced,
showing actual mastery of the content. Really helps me sharpen my writing, so
thanks to all for commenting.

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benjaminsuch
I don't get the quintessence of this article. Startup life is hard, a
rollercoaster and many factors may it be good or bad will turn your startup
into a success or failure. I miss suggestions or ideas how to face these
problems and what a founder can do to minimize the risk.

For the author, I would love to read about scenarios where a startup or the
author itself overcome or prevent the mentioned problems.

~~~
bramkrom
Hey Benjamin,

I'm the author of the article, and love your feedback!

This article was actually a follow-up on a previous article, and wanted to dig
deeper on the failures of others. Will dig even deeper to figure out how to
overcome and prevent those problems.

Thanks!

------
kome
Please clap.

