
Signs that a business idea will probably fail - spking
https://dannorris.me/9-signs-that-your-business-idea-will-probably-fail/
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vivekd
One thing that bothers me about silicon valley influenced thinking is that
"business idea" always seems to mean "disruptive startup that changes the
world and makes billions."

Business doesn't have to mean that sort of business. Some guy making $3000 a
month selling t-shirts and coffee mugs on etsy has, what I would think of, as
a good business. Someone opening up a hotdog stand making $4000 also has a
good business.

I noticed this in Zambia, lots of people standing by the side of the road
selling soda pop and cigarettes or dried fish, or whatever they could get
their hands on. Great businesses, great ideas, I'm glad they're doing it and I
commend them for it.

The signs this article talks about are extremely limiting, to the point where
the author is saying most people shouldn't bother. I think they apply for
starting a big disruptive tech startup. I don't think they apply to an etsy
store or hot dog stand, and those are viable and fairly easy to reach
businesses. Personally I'd much rather focus on the easily attainable later
sort of business rather than focus my time and energy in a quixotic effort to
try and be the next Musk or Zuckerberg.

~~~
grawprog
If someone's business is self sustaining and supports somebody's lifestyle,
it's successful as far as I'm concerned. Ultimately that should be the basis
behind a business. This is just my own likely, uninformed opinion but I feel
this attitude of ever constant growth above all else is ultimately harmful and
in the end actually ends up stifling innovation and creativity.

A small comfortable business with some extra revenue is probably more likely
to take some risks ans come up with something new than a large corporation
focussed on maximizing revenue growth. The amount of capital the smaller
business has available may be less, but what good is capital if you're not
willing to innovate and try new things.

In a lot of ways it's kind of like the indie vs AAA games market. Small indie
games may not be as visually impressive or make as much money as those epic
AAA games, with photorealistic graphics and Oscar award winning cutscenes, but
the good ones sre usually pretty innovative and offer quality gameplay a lot
of those larger games focused on wide appeal and maximizing profit.

~~~
mikekchar
Case in point: who would have ever set out to make Minecraft? The only reason
to do it the way it was done was due to the constraints on capital
expenditure. Lately I've been playing Dragon Quest Builders 2 and it's
awesome. It mixes a block building sandbox game with a more traditional RPG.
The thing that makes the game, though, is the blocks. Building with blocks is
simple, intuitive and incredibly fun. But I don't think anybody would have sat
down and thought "Building with blocks is just good UX" unless they had some
reason to try it.

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danieltillett
Not a bad post. One suggestion that has worked for me to stop me working on
dozens of ideas at once is to write them down in detail in an ideas diary.
This seems to take away most of the desire to start working on the idea right
now.

~~~
tluyben2
Do you later execute any of them? I feel I need the optimism that I only have
when I do not see the details clearly yet to start something.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes. The last one I executed on was to do in depth fundamental analysis on all
the ASX listed biotech/pharma companies (there are about 70 of them). Out of
this process I found one very undervalued company that I took a large
strategic investment in and joined the board to help turn it around. This has
turned into a very good investment, although it has taken up a lot of my time.

~~~
tluyben2
Nice. What works for someone might not work for someone we can see again!

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rglover
That working on multiple things at the same time one is spot on. That has been
the #1 reason I've screwed stuff up.

Something I constantly remind myself: it's not that you're not capable of
doing that thing, it's that you don't have the capacity. You may be perfectly
capable of doing something, but if you don't have the capacity to do it,
there's a good chance you'll blow it. Disconnecting your ego from reality on
this one will save you a ton of heartache and stress.

And for those who say "not me," I, too, was an egomaniac and thought everyone
else wasn't as good. Pump your brakes and thank me later.

~~~
brnt
Being incapable and having no capacity sounds very similar to me. Could you
explain the difference a bit more?

~~~
rlayton2
I could easily count to 1 billion, but I don't have the time to undertake that
task.

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rickpmg
> That’s why entrepreneurs, myself included, waste years of their lives on
> shitty ideas that will never work, following the popular trend of “ideas
> don’t matter, only execution matters”.

The saying has to do with just having an idea is worthless in itself, you have
to do something with that idea.

He interprets it as a shitty idea will be successful if executed well.

Wow.

~~~
quitethelogic
Directly after the line you quote, the author continues:

> Bullshit.

> Ideas matter a lot, and if yours is a shitty one, for you, at that time,
> with the resources you have, it will almost certainly fail.

I think your interpretation of the author's interpretation is flawed.

~~~
rickpmg
Yes, he called bullshit on it.. on his incorrect interpretation of the saying.

The saying is more along the lines of "An idea without action is worthless"

His rephrasing of it was either a 1) bad interpretation or 2) a purposeful one
so he could disagree with it and appear 'edgy'.

~~~
darkerside
This is called a straw man. It's a logical fallacy, but unfortunately a very
persuasive argument at times.

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yesimahuman
A sign that a business will fail: you worship tech heroes instead of being
willing to forge your own path and go against the grain (see #3)

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syllogism
I very much disagree with:

> 7\. You are operating mainly on assumptions

You'll always be operating mainly on assumptions. Everyone will.

It does help to check your assumptions against external things, so if you're
wrong, you can notice faster. But even the process of noticing that the data
is confusing is like 99.99% rationalism and only 0.01% empiricism.

~~~
bluewalt
I spent 2 years building an awesome product, thinking that my future clients
would think this product awesome too, and that they would need it.

I was completely wrong. I didn't know my clients and my market. This is the
exact definition of operating mainly on assumptions. I lost at least 18
months, since I could have find this out way sooner.

~~~
jariel
Tell us more about the product, market, and clients.

~~~
bluewalt
I built a copycat of www.bellycard.com for French market. As a software
engineer, the technical product was good IMHO. but I spent almost 2 years to
build it, without really trying to sell it. My thought was: "if it's sold in
US, it will be sellable in France".

Then I found ont the real truth:

\- Merchants won't find your website to buy your amazing product, you need to
meet them physically (that can seems obvious but it was not the case for me at
that time)

\- Merchants don't care about you or your product. They won't listen to you in
deep, except if you have specific social skills (I don't). Every day someone
enters in their shop trying to sell them something. If you're not
psychologically ready to hear "I don't care" or "is it free?" 9 times on 10,
then you can not do that for a very long time.

\- Independant merchants, generally speaking, don't have any marketing skills.
What seems obvious for you is not for them. For example, they don't see the
powerfulness of getting emails and consuming habits of their own customers.
Plus, I'd say 2/3 of them were really suspicious about technology in general.

So what was hard here was not to make a product that have intrinsic value for
merchants, but to teach merchants what this value is.

The real need to succeed in this project is absolutely not tech, it's to know
the market, and how to convince merchants.

~~~
jariel
Thanks for this. Great write up. Rings absolutely true.

That said, all of this would be as expected, even for a great product, with
product-market fit.

Selling is hard, you have to find the right niche of customers, references,
and not everyone will love it right away.

Great lesson that you will take with you on the next run.

~~~
bluewalt
Thanks for the support. Yep even for me, now when I tell this story, the
mistakes I made seem obvious.

Selling is hard, and becomes close to impossible if like me, you don't know
your target, and on top of that, you're socially anxious to talk to strangers
and get a "no" as answer.

Client prospection requires specific skills I don't have and I'll probably
never get.

Sometimes we (solo-dev people) need to be more humble and accept we can not do
everything well. Or as an alternative, we need to find project ideas that suit
our skills better (B2C would probably have been easier for me than B2B).

------
ftbai
> You are the wrong person for the job

The first rule of "some level of self awareness" is to not completely hand
yourself over to survivorship bias. So the argument is that Mark is a smart
hacker and possesses "balls of steel" -> Mark is successful? And because
you're the opposite way -> you'll fail?

No. He's been completely blindsided by survivorship bias. It's actually the
other way, from that Mark became very successful (via good luck which was
probably modulated by some highly attainable level of skill in execution) ->
everyone thinks Mark is a super hacker with balls of steel.

It's terrible advice which gives you premonitions about yourself which would
keep you from even trying. Or maybe the author can actually tell innate
potential to some uncanny degree, in which case he should join YC to vet
founders.

~~~
marcus_holmes
this. Also in point #3 - "these people are not like us" then points #4,#6
using tech idols as role models. If they're not like us then we can stop using
them as role models, right?

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chiefalchemist
He says this:

“ideas don’t matter, only execution matters”.

Bullshit.

Ideas matter a lot, and if yours is a shitty one, for you, at that time, with
the resources you have, it will almost certainly fail."

But most, if not all of his red flags are execution-centeic.

I'd like to add, it's not that ideas don't matter. They do. However, most of
the time a good idea executed well will beat a great idea done poorly.
Furthermore, very few ideas are born great. They usually reguire refinement.
That refinement process is...execution.

~~~
pier25
I also read somewhere (I think PG said this) that generally speaking it's not
obvious which ideas are good _a priori_.

It makes sense if you think about it. If we knew in advance what ideas will
work anyone could have a successful product which isn't the case.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Just the same, if execution was easy, everyone would be doing it.

A well-played execution process has iteration and refinement baked into it.
Few ideas are born fully grown. They evolve; provided they are allowed to do
so. That evolution is part of execution.

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cryptica
In the current economic climate, in the tech sector, the idea doesn't matter.
It's almost all about execution and social networks.

Does your business model leverage network effects? Did you get funding from
the right investors? Does your business model reward customers for helping you
recruit other customers? If so, then your odds are very good regardless of
what you do.

If you don't have a network growth strategy, then nobody will know about your
startup. You can have the best idea in the history of the universe, it's not
going to work because no one has an incentive to use and recommend your
product or service but they have an incentive to maintain the status quo.

Investors and users need to stand to gain more from your project than from
upholding the status quo. And these days many investors are shareholders or
employees of the status quo so this is a difficult thing to pull off.

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user239
Is it just me or the logic in #3 is deeply flawed? I mean who of the author’s
heroes knew in advance what their companies were going to become (and thus how
“special” they were)?

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urlgrey_
5\. You can’t build a story / brand around it

Many articles focus on the idea of building your community etc, but few
actually focus on how to do it amidst all the noise

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paulcole
> When I think about entrepreneurs who have given large amounts to causes, the
> ones I think of like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos

What causes has Bezos given to? He shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same
sentence as Gates.

~~~
bdcravens
This article points out that Bezos has been light on his giving (compared to
the richest billionaires) but it also lists out who he has given to, which is
a diverse set of interests as well as some princely sums:

[https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-
trends/article/307...](https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-
trends/article/3075956/why-hasnt-jeff-bezos-donated-much-charity-billionaires)

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AbrahamParangi
> 3\. You are the wrong person for the job

This is ridiculously bad advice. How can you expect to make a dent in the
universe if you can't even manage to believe in yourself?

~~~
MagnumPIG
It's weird because it's a valid point, but they go on to elaborate using
absurdly misguided arguments.

They're mostly developing on the importance of being smart, all the while
misunderstanding what being smart _is_ (it's not grades jesus christ) and
failing to establish a correlation between smarts and fitness for a particular
task.

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samtho
> 2\. You are working on more than 1 thing

This is so true it’s almost a cliché. Too often have I been in organizations
that try to do a little of everything I hoped to eventually find something
that sticks and it has almost never worked out.

~~~
bluedino
He means side projects or businesses. If you want to build Uber, don't try to
build eBay or PayPal on the side. Founders and other early employees have to
do a little of everything as there isn't anyone else to do HR, sales,
marketing...

