
Why Your Startup Will Fail - tortilla
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-your-startup-will-fail.html
======
fallentimes
_Some Reasons Why Your Startup Could Succeed_

-You understand the numbers are against you and realize even if you fail it's worth trying again; you believe it's better to go for _0 for 50_ than _0 for 0_.

-You provide a utility that is good enough for someone to pay for.

-Your startup saves someone time or make someone's life easier.

-Your costs are so low you're virtually impossible to kill.

-You don't care about material possessions.

-Your startup makes others money.

-You treasure not (or rarely) having meetings.

-You love working for yourself.

-There's very little wasted time and red tape. Your team is lean, mean and aggressive.

-You're patient. Twitter, Kayak, Plenty of Fish and Facebook have been around longer than you think. And two of them aren't even profitable.

-You know IPOs or acquisitions aren't required to make a good living..

-You do instead of talking about doing.

-You realize, in the very early stages, that the worst thing that could happen is you lose a few hundred or thousand dollars and learn something. What do you have to lose?

-When you get lucky or catch a break you're ready for it.

-You believe that success is the amount of your life you control.

-You love what you do. Or at the very least, love your situation.

-You avoid blanket statements like this: _All the millionaires were in porn in 2000_ and realize that not every "startup rule" or any rule applies. Businesses can be very different from each other.

-You understand that your odds of having an enjoyable job paying 200k are roughly the same as owning a profitable small business.

------
pj
Do what you love and the money will follow.

If the money doesn't follow, you'll still be doing what you love and that's
worth more than money. People like being around people who are doing what they
love.

But not a lot of people like being around people with a lot of money. Who
cares about the money. I give most of mine away because my life is better
without it.

If you have a lot of money, people wonder who you screwed to get it. There's a
real bias against people with money in the world. They're greedy. They cause
the collapse of the world economy. They force the people to enact laws that
limit their own freedoms.

People who are motivated by money aren't that fun to be around.

People who want to succeed or accomplish something or make the world a better
place or have a grand vision and work hard to implement it -- those are the
people /I/ want to be around.

I know a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot of them are pretty
boring. They hate their jobs. They complain a lot. They're actually kind of
lazy to be honest. You don't have to work hard to make $70k a year and $70k a
year is a /lot/ of money, don't scoff. There are people in many parts of
America who don't know where their next meal is coming from. They could do a
lot with $70k/yr.

Those motivated by new experiences and love of life. Those people are happy,
because well.. they love their lives. They make people smile. They laugh. They
make the world better.

One of my favorite VP superiors told me a story once, her mother-in-law was
born without a dollar to her name and died without a dollar to her name and
/still/ has a library named after her.

Do what you love. Forget the money, you'll have more of it than you'll know
what to do with. If you love what you do, you won't have time to spend it
anyway...

~~~
rw
Laissez-faire capitalism is not capable of consistently rewarding people for
doing what they love. It does not care about self-actualization.

The fact that you do care about that is refreshing.

~~~
jerf
s/Lassez-faire capitalism/Reality/.

No current economic system can sustain it on a large scale either, because
reality itself is against it. Maybe someday, but we need still more
productivity first.

~~~
Retric
I think the vast majority of our society would function just fine if ~10% of
the populace worked a 40 hour week. EX: When you go to fill up your tank you
don't need anyone inside that store, a few vending machines for snacks and
drinks would work just fine.

As a thought experiment labor costs go up 10fold which jobs stop happening and
which ones become more automated. You could dramatically reduce the distance
the average trucker drives by using trains. Small farms suck from a labor
standpoint. There is little reason a person needs to make the coffee at
Starbucks. Romba style machines can clean vacuum. Bathrooms can be designed
and built to be automatically cleaned. etc.

IMO, low skilled human labor is still cheep, but a change in the cost of human
labor would soon see a huge shift.

~~~
jerf
I think you're wrong... by about twenty years, give or take quite a bit and
highly variable depending on exactly what we're talking about.

We can't _quite_ have robotic truck drivers... but we're actually getting
reasonably close. We can't _quite_ automate a gas station... but we are
getting reasonably close. We can't _quite_ automate a fast-food joint (one of
my personal favorite robotic bellwethers), but we're getting within sight of
that possibility.

That's why I left open the possibility that this will change in the future.
Right now society still requires us to all work, but we're getting within
spitting distance of that not being true. Now, _that's_ going to be an
economic disruption on par with the industrial revolution, and I'd say we're
actually on the early part of that curve, because the first industries to feel
this are the ones most easily Internet-able...

~~~
Retric
How did you go from _reduce the distance the average trucker drives by using
trains_ to _We can't quite have robotic truck drivers_. A fairly limited
100MPH train network could dramatically reduce the distance and time it takes
to deliver most shipments. Long hall trucking says more about our broken train
system than how useful it is.

We have automated gas stations 95% of the time I show up pump my gas and go.
There was a time when when a guy would pump your gas but that cost more so
people where fine without that. As to Oil, and Tire pressure, my car senses
them while I am driving. I don't even need directions due to GPS. Other than
cleaning the bathrooms what do do we need someone in the gas station for? O
yea, the station does not want to add cash machines to each of the pumps. (I
suspect this is because when people are waiting to pay for their gas they are
more likely to buy something else.)

IMO, we are already at the point in the US where most people's job's are
redundant. But, as the need for people to do stuff drops off the cost of human
labor also drops. The human greeter at Wallmart is a great example of this as
their job could be done by a sign, OK they also cut down on shoplifters.

~~~
jerf
"How did you go from ... to ...?"

Some interpolation. Cutting humans out by 50% has a surprisingly small effect
because we've got most of the low-hanging fruit there and you end up with
other human costs getting in the way.

You've got to drop them to 0 to really matter.

"We have automated gas stations 95% of the time I show up pump my gas and go."

But there's a guy in the store, and it's going to take a _lot_ of work to get
him/her out. The rest of the stuff you mentioned is low-hanging fruit long
plucked, and getting the rest of the way there takes a lot of stuff.

"The human greeter at Wallmart is a great example of this as their job could
be done by a sign, OK they also cut down on shoplifters."

Cutting down on shoplifting is their _primary_ job; greeters are secondary.
Also, to the extent that greeters make people feel more at home and more
likely to spend, that's something nothing but a human is going to accomplish.

------
pg
His mistake is not to distinguish between the average and the median case.
Being an actor is an inefficient way to make money in both the average and
median case. Starting a startup also doesn't pay in the median case, but it
does a lot of better in the average case. In the average case it is probably
the optimal way to make a lot of money. And if you are young enough to stand
the risk, you can afford to care about the average case.

Startups and acting both have great variability, but acting also has demand
working against it. Being an actor effectively pays you in other ways than
money, because it's considered a cool thing to do. So demand pushes up the
price in foregone income.

~~~
eru
Last time I checked, startups were cool, too. Does that alter your argument?

~~~
pg
Not cool like being an actor. Perhaps the reason startups seem cool to you is
that you're thinking of famous consumer startups like Google or Facebook or
Twitter. But the median startup does some boring infrastructure thing, like
software for making online stores. You've never heard of the founders of these
companies.

Even founders of consumer startups are way less cool per dollar than actors.
I'd guess Larry & Sergey are about as famous to the general public as actors
whose net worth is 1000x smaller.

~~~
rogercosseboom
I think I've heard of the guy who wrote that software-for-making-online-stores
stuff. Its Paul somethingorother...

------
staunch
> _With a lot less effort, you can get a kickass job earning two hundred grand
> a year._

This is exactly why you _can_ succeed. Instead of making someone else a lot of
money and them giving you a $200k cut you can do their job as well and collect
all the money generated by your effort.

Being the next Zuckerberg might be a lot like being the next Bruce Willis, but
creating a small web software business with the ambition of making a few
million over the course of years is not. And the big payout for most small
businesses is when they sell to someone who already has money but wants a
proven business (to add to their existing business usually).

~~~
time_management
_Being the next Zuckerberg might be a lot like being the next Bruce Willis_

I don't imagine having to worry about this any time soon, but if anyone
described me as "the next Zuckerberg", I'd need three or four strong people on
hand to restrain me from getting in a fight.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Ummm...can you elaborate on why you'd be willing to visit violence upon
someone for merely comparing you to Zuckerberg?

~~~
time_management
I don't like Mark Zuckerberg much or find him remotely impressive, but it's
not even the comparison so much as the diminutive connotations of "the next".
If you're truly great, you're not "the next" anything. FDR was not "the next
Lincoln", and Obama (whom I expect to be our generation's great president) is
not the "next FDR" or "next Kennedy". I believe he has the potential for FDR
stature and Kennedy charm, but he is and is going to grow into someone
entirely new and singular.

~~~
eru
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosev...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt)

------
yesimahuman
So sick of hearing all of this.

If it fails, it fails, just go for it!

I hate pessimistic people.

~~~
tom_rath
...but it wasn't pessimism, the post was addressing motivation.

One gains money as a side-effect of being successful at something in demand.
You don't become successful by becoming a millionaire.

If becoming a millionaire is the goal of your software startup, you're facing
some pretty big problems right off.

------
nanijoe
The times in my life when I have made the most money, has been when I set out
to make money. So, thanks for the commentary, I think I'll take my chances.

------
blader

      All the millionaires were in porn in 2000; all the people 
      who started startups did it for a different reason.
    

Two things.

1\. The people who started startups wanted to make money just as badly, they
just didn't want to tell mom that they were in the porn business.

2\. I'm really lucky I love porn.

~~~
moe
He lost me on this blanket statement, too. First off it's simply not true
(there were millionaires outside of porn) and he makes it sound as if starting
a porn biz would be the surefire way to become rich.

I wonder how that's supposed to work because I'd imagine if there's one
example for a "saturated market" then it would be porn? You're not only
competing against a whole set of major players in each imaginable segment,
you're also competing against bittorrent, porntube and the like. I somewhat
doubt that one could get a foot down there without some _serious_ warchest.

------
larryfreeman
It is a very well written commentary. In my view, each of us has a decision:
quality vs. reward. You won't get to quality by constantly thinking about the
reward.

I disagree that you can't get to the reward if that's all you want. Sales is
all about the reward as is investment.

I agree on the article's main point: Entrepeneurship (as opposed to sales or
investing) should be about the quality of the business. The employees, the
customers, and the talented investors all know that the surest path to success
is well-targeted quality.

------
webwright
Yeah, the guy who started Salesforce.com just LOVES CRM software.

~~~
daveungerer
Maybe he loves helping others get their jobs done through software that
doesn't suck?

------
apsec112
Even if you _are_ a mercenary type, and you're motivated entirely by money,
how can you do better than starting a startup? Getting a job making $200K/year
is _hard_ ; most entry-level investment bankers are smart and work ninety
hours a week, and they still fell short of $200K even before the crash. And
$200K/year is still much less than you'd expect to get out of a successful
startup.

------
zmimon
He doesn't define failure. It seems to mean any outcome other than making
millions of dollars. I consider my startup a wild success if it just manages
to break even while supporting a liveable income and giving me something
useful and interesting to do with my life.

------
mattmaroon
That has to be the first time in history anyone has name dropped Edward James
Olmos.

------
davidalln
I dunno, this article seems a bit too similar to smashLAB's article 3 weeks
prior.

<http://www.ideasonideas.com/2009/01/startup_fail/>

------
noonespecial
Your Starup will fail.

Don't give up, try it again.

One win is enough.

~~~
likpok
This reminds me of a rule about relationships.

Every (startup|relationship) you start ever will fail.

Until one doesn't.

~~~
noonespecial
True that. I actually just wanted to disagree with the author in Haiku form
after tiring of the traditional long form way of explaining that in startups,
you're supposed to try more than once, not fail and give up; but thanks for
the reply anyway. :)

------
cool-RR
Statistically, the author of this article cheated on his wife.

~~~
giles_bowkett
Dammit! OK I was re-reading my post because I always check to see if I've
written something I can stand by or not. And the answer is kinda, there are
some problems with it, but anyway, I was doing that, this was right below it,
I saw it. My self-control is not formidable. Having seen, I gotta respond.

So: I've never been married. And I think your statistics are wrong, especially
if you only posted this here and not anywhere else.

------
jmtame
I already disproved (have disproven?) this theory. Google "theory disproven
money motivation" || see mark cuban

------
time_management
_The startup world requires intensity and focus. With a lot less effort, you
can get a kickass job earning two hundred grand a year. Your startup will fail
because millions of dollars might be different from hundreds of thousands of
dollars, but they just aren't different enough to justify that much effort._

I'm in a startup. Admittedly, I'm doing it, in part, for the material
benefits... but I'm taking the long view, knowing that my short-term fortune
is highly uncertain. I realize that I might never see a dime from this
particular startup, but I figure that what I'm gaining from the experience,
because I'm learning 5x more per unit time than I ever did in a corporate job,
will benefit me in the long run. I might never be a millionaire, or even see
the "kickass job earning two hundred grand a year" (although I've had average-
ish jobs close to that) but I feel like I'll be employable in more interesting
roles on account of the knowledge I'm gaining here.

------
point
He's right in that if your motivation is to make a million bucks, you will
give up very quickly, because the road there is too long.

If you are just some poor ass person who is tired of being poor, you will also
fail.

The only crowd that will be successful are those who don't have any choice but
to strike out on your own. If you really hate working for people, if everyone
you know is doing business, etc, then your business is the only path.

All the people who just want to be rich will not be rich. Wanting to be rich
is not a skill and it's not a talent.

------
giles_bowkett
So I saw this is on here. I'm going to skip reading the comments because I
know from experience that some of you are idiots and I'll end up swearing at
you. I'll just save time. If you disagree with me, you need to either re-read
the post or study chess.

Every time, that's all it ever comes down to. Every one of you who ever
disagrees with me. You either don't understand how to use what I'm saying, or
you don't understand what I'm saying itself in the first place. Sorry to skip
it, but it's boring as hell.

Anyway, here's the one thing I wanted to add: PLENTY OF MOTHERFUCKING FISH. In
2000 the millionaires were in porn and the crazy fuckers who do shit that
doesn't work were in startups. Some of you remember this. Others of you will
have to just trust that we old-timers remember what happened and are not in
fact hallucinating or making things up.

In 2009, it's not about porn. Today if you want to be a millionaire, you still
don't get in a car and drive down Sandhell Road. But you don't hire a bunch of
emo girls from Hawaii to take their clothes off, either. You study strategy
constantly, you spend __less __than four hours working per week, and you put
cash in the bank by the truckload.

Boom. You're done.

I haven't made it work for myself yet, but I had Warcraft characters who were
living it. It's a great economics sandbox. Everybody thought my characters
were twinks because they had crazy gold at low levels. No twinking, just a
system. And of course Plenty Of Fish and Tim Ferriss have made it happen in
__reality __in at least two cases. I think the millionaires are paying more
attention to that than to VC.

I even see blog posts by monkey motherfuckers who say they believe that the
four-hour work week works, but they want to spend more time than that working,
because they're passionate about what they do. That's the stupidest goddamn
thing anyone could say. The whole point of the four hour work week is it only
takes four hours. Take four hours a week out of your busy schedule to do
something that actually works, put the money in the bank, and get on with your
day. That day, and that busy schedule, can include anything you want it to,
including working your ass off on a startup.

OK, come to think of it, if you disagreed with me because of this reason - if
you're that particular idiot - then you don't need to study strategy or re-
read my post. You need to learn the fundamentals of logic. Discover the
difference between necessary connections and incidental connections.

Come to think of it, I encounter that one all the time too, so if you're that
particular idiot, sorry for missing your case in the above condescending
blanket dismissal. Here's a special condescending blanket dismissal of your
very own: go study logic, you idiot.

And fallentimes, it was hard to skip your post because it was at the top of
the page. You would have made it a lot easier to respond to if you had
numbered your reasons. However, your reasons mostly aren't worth responding
to. They don't represent a cogent response to my specific argument; you're
mostly just sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala I'm not
listening." Your response is a filibuster.

You do have a few specific responses, however, so I'll answer them.

"You understand that your odds of having an enjoyable job paying 200k are
roughly the same as owning a profitable small business."

I'm fairly certain that's factually inaccurate, but I can't prove it, and I'm
not going to stick around for your answer, so I'll let it go. What I can nail
you on is that this is a comparison on uneven criteria: for 200K to win, you
have to enjoy it; for a small business to win, it has to turn a profit.
Technically a prostitute has a profitable small business, so in this uneven
comparison, a prostitute pulls ahead of anyone making 200K, even if they do
enjoy it, since you say their chances are equal. You need to set up even
comparisons to be fair. I think we can throw out this part of your filibuster,
or at least require you to come back with an even comparison.

"You know IPOs or acquisitions aren't required to make a good living.."

and

"You avoid blanket statements like this: _All the millionaires were in porn in
2000_ and realize that not every "startup rule" or any rule applies.
Businesses can be very different from each other."

I think it's obvious I'm only talking about VC-funded startups here. You
appear to be suggesting that the way your startup can succeed is by being a
different type of startup than the type of startup I'm talking about. That's
not refuting my argument. That's merely changing the subject. I apologize for
not making it clear that we were only discussing VC-funded startups. However,
since this was an answer to a specific person, and a continuation of a
specific conversation, let me tell you, as it happens, that's what the
conversation was about.

The blanket statement thing is a legitimate dis. You've got me there. But
rephrase it: the majority of millionaires were in porn. The core of my
argument remains unchallenged. There were people doing a simple thing that
worked. If your goal is to be a millionaire, it makes a lot more sense to do
something that many millionaires do, which often works, than to do something
that few millionaires do, which often fails.

That's why I made the analogy with acting. If you're going to work very hard
and the odds are against you, you need to have something which fuels that, and
if the only thing that fuels it is a desire for money, that won't be enough to
take you to the finish line. Actors come and go in Los Angeles all the time
because they think it's going to be easy. I don't get close enough to startups
to say this with the confidence of fact, but my intuition is that this is very
true of startup founders as well. You need to believe in the technology, or
the way you'll change the world, or the corporate culture even. If you set out
to become a millionaire using a strategy that very infrequently makes anyone a
millionaire, you're going to give up the minute your common sense kicks in.

"You don't care about material possessions."

Again, you're changing the subject. This is a response to a guy who was
interested in VC because he wanted to become a millionaire. Obviously, if
you're putting forward that somebody who cares about something more than the
money might have a better chance, well yeah, that's my point.

Sorry everybody else if there was some devastating, incisive refutation
somewhere else on this page. I just don't have the patience, the even-handed
temper, or the time.

~~~
ph0rque
> I apologize for not making it clear that we were only discussing VC-funded
> startups.

Ah... now your post makes sense!

