
Napkin Entrepreneurs - harscoat
http://steveblank.com/2011/03/29/napkin-entrepreneurs/
======
davidw
I don't like the sniffy tone in the conclusion:

> But it’s important to note what these napkin projects/test are not. They are
> not a company, nor are they are a startup. Running them doesn’t make you a
> founder. And while they are entrepreneurial experiments, until you actually
> commit to them by choosing one idea, quitting your day job and committing
> yourself 24/7 it’s not clear that the word “founder or entrepreneur” even
> applies.

I think he's right, but it comes across as a bit uncharitable somehow;
pointing out the obvious, I guess. I suppose it'd be like a professional
cyclist writing about how someone like myself is "merely an amateur". True,
but we both know it, and it's not really necessary to point it out unless you
feel like demeaning someone.

You could phrase the thing in a different way to convey the same message:

"I think it's great that we live in a time when so many people can experiment
so easily, and look forward to some of these experiments blossoming into full-
on startups, which I believe happens at the point when the founders quit their
day jobs to work on them full-time".

Or something to that effect.

~~~
mechanical_fish
What's "sniffy" about it? Is Blank not praising the napkin projects effusively
enough? It certainly looks like praise to me.

Read the sentence in context. He's trying to explain where all the startups
are. We are awash in napkin experiments; why aren't we similarly flooded with
startups? Well, because there's a significant risk barrier between one and the
other.

And, yes, he doesn't downplay that risk barrier. That seems fair. It doesn't
do your audience any favors to elide the significant difference between a
napkin experimenter and an actual founder. People can and do go bankrupt over
that difference.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I also have a problem with the "tone" of the article. Steve seems to be saying
that unless you commit full time, you're not a business. If I start a "napkin
experiment" website in my spare time and provide a simple service and people
pay me for it and I turn a profit, is that not an entrepreneurial venture?
Isn't it a business? Come tax time, the IRS will sure think it is.

Using the "go full time or go home" metric to decide whether or not something
is a startup or a business seems unnecessarily arbitrary to me.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
+1 to this.

I don't work full time on my lifestyle business but the IRS will be taking a
hefty chunk this year. I wish they read HN more so they could scoff at my lack
of entrepreneurship and spurn my meager revenues.

------
dclaysmith
I think this is a tired argument. It's a startup if it has "limited operations
history". You are a founder if you started it.

What if somebody jots down an idea on a napkin, spends the next few months of
nights and weekends creating a first version, gets ramen profitable, quits
their day job, hires a dozen workers, and sells to Google for $20 million.

Looking back, was it not a startup until they quit their day job? Of course
not, it was a startup the day they put pen to napkin and started coding.

Not saying there aren't a ton of poorly run startups led by founders who
aren't truly committed to them. But let them call themselves and their
"projects" whatever they want.

~~~
generalk
_> What if somebody jots down an idea on a napkin, spends the next few months
of nights and weekends creating a first version, gets ramen profitable, quits
their day job, hires a dozen workers, and sells to Google for $20 million._

Then they've got -- at the very least -- $20mm and experience running a
12-person company. This includes paying salaries, making sure the books are
kept properly, and all the other jazz that comes with running a company. These
are experiences you likely don't get if your business is selling ads on a
blog.

 _> Looking back, was it not a startup until they quit their day job? Of
course not, it was a startup the day they put pen to napkin and started
coding._

No, it was a startup business they day they started accepting money for a
service. Before that it was just someone's project.

 _> Not saying there aren't a ton of poorly run startups led by founders who
aren't truly committed to them. But let them call themselves and their
"projects" whatever they want._

How about "projects"?

Are you accepting money and providing a service? Congratulations, you've got a
business. This can be by selling ads on your new video game blog, accepting VC
to fund your crack team, or selling subscriptions to your SaaS product. You
can be dedicated enough to devote everything to your business, or you can be
content with keeping a day job and running your thing on the side. Some folks
aim for millions, some folks are fine with a little boost to their income.
Some folks learn how to manage teams and hustle, some don't.

~~~
coliveira
> No, it was a startup business they day they started accepting money for a
> service

under this logic, Twitter wasn't a startup until recently, since they were not
charging anything from anyone.

~~~
generalk
Near the end I mention that taking VC absolutely counts under "accepting money
for a service."

~~~
coliveira
What about a company that is funded by the owner. Isn't that a startup just
because of the origin of the money?

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patio11
We spend far too much time in the industry debating on what to name things.
Naming things, or preventing things from being improperly named, does not
build stuff or sell stuff to customers.

~~~
bhousel
> "Naming things, or preventing things from being improperly named, does not
> build stuff or sell stuff to customers"

I'm not so sure about that. Politicians and marketers have long known that the
name that we assign to a thing can be more influential than the qualities or
substance of the thing being named.

Naming things properly _is essential_ in getting things built and sold.

You said that we spend far too much time on deciding what to name things. In
fact, I think most engineer-types don't spend enough time doing this.

------
revorad
Also see #18: <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

_Statistically, if you want to avoid failure, it would seem like the most
important thing is to quit your day job. Most founders of failed startups
don't quit their day jobs, and most founders of successful ones do. If startup
failure were a disease, the CDC would be issuing bulletins warning people to
avoid day jobs.

...

Most startups fail because they don't make something people want, and the
reason most don't is that they don't try hard enough._

~~~
daoudc
I agree with the second statement, but I actually disagree with PG on the
first one. Trying hard doesn't necessarily mean quitting your day job.

It can mean doing a day job to support your family whilst working on your
project in your spare time.

Using the reverse logic, most people that produce something that people want
will be earning enough from their project to quit their day job. PG's
observation doesn't imply for me that quitting the day job has to come first.

~~~
revorad
In the above quoted passage, PG is not talking about issues such as supporting
family (which he does acknowledge as an important issue elsewhere). It's just
about the correlation between commitment, effort and success.

------
grigy
Actually who cares what they should call it? If I can make it to a point where
people will pay me to use my products I'll consider it as an accomplishment.
Is it a startup, company or whatever, I don't care.

------
thetrumanshow
Its also possible to quit your job and still only build a half-baked company.
At least you can call yourself a startup by this standard.

This smacks strongly of someone who is fostering elitism.

------
baberuth
Too much has already been written about how easy it is to get some sort of MVP
out there, but the real gem in steveblank's article is this:

 _"until you actually commit to them by choosing one idea, quitting your day
job and committing yourself 24/7 it’s not clear that the word “founder or
entrepreneur” even applies"_

Many hackers fail because they spread themselves too thin, firing at multiple
projects until finally realizing that they're performing suboptimally for all
of them.

------
6ren
Ah, I can get outside the building without leaving my computer! I still think
talking to actual people is more informing, because they'll often indicate
secondary or even completely irrelevant information that is more important. An
experiment will mainly either confirm or disprove an existing hypothesis
(though you may still get some info by asking for feedback etc - just much
less, and less often, than from a live conversation). In summary: personal
contact helps (said to be a comparative advantage of SV).

Can people really lauch several mini-webapps over lunch? I guess if you have
rails hosting setup and know your way round a domain name registrar, and
practice this a few times, you really could get that fast (for, of course,
simple webapps, like isitdownforeveryoneorjustme, or isitfriday etc). Payment
setup might be more hassle... but I guess if you have set up paypal once, it's
not hard to repeat. There are also various 3rd party services (like
Wufoo/google forms, fax, recurring charges, etc) and APIs. Though you couldn't
learn them all and use them several times over lunch, after a little practice
you could (maybe just one use is enough).

Who cares what you call yourself? An entrepreneur by any other name etc. It
only matters when you have to impress people, in a courtly procotol sense.

------
nadam
Doing something part-time does not mean that that project is a one weekend
experiment. If you do something for let's say 2 years 3 hours each day, why
cannot you call that thing a startup? For some of us, quitting our day job is
not an option (yet). (For example no one would invest into an eastern european
guy's vision about user-friendly database access, and his ability to execute
on it). But it does not necessarily mean that our projects are child's toys.
(Maybe some of us work on even more sophisticated stuff than startups with $40
million funding.)

------
skmurphy
Great comment by Dave Binetti on the original post:

    
    
       "Napkin Entrepreneurs" build products. 
       Founders build business models. 
       Products are part of a business model (the fun part) 
          but are not the whole story.
    

I like his summary that starting with the napkin is necessary but not
sufficient. What muddies the water is that sometimes the "built to flip"
approach can sell a napkin.

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rmason
Anyone in Michigan -- Steve Blank will be speaking in Ann Arbor this evening
at Blau auditorium on the University of Michigan campus.

[http://www.a2newtech.org/events/16094578/?eventId=16094578&#...</a>

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MicahWedemeyer
Your status as a business person is defined by customers and revenue, not
titles like "founder" or "napkin entrepreneur"

Let others debate on titles and definitions. Focus on making money.

~~~
jbigelow
Good point on focusing on revenue, focusing on revenue is how I finally
stopped worrying about whether my startup would succeed or not based on
something as arbitrary as whether I used .NET or not as the platform (the
consensus on HN is decidedly anti-.NET). Platforms and business designations
are just distractions from running your business.

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theklub
I thought steve blank was done blogging? Or he once said he was done
publishing things on the web or something along those lines...

