
Underrated Startup Success Factors - yinso
http://blog.capitalandgrowth.org/niko-bonatsos/
======
hayksaakian
> In contrast, some really talented and hardworking founders just happen to
> work on the wrong things and don’t attain the same level of success. Some
> even tried Zuck’s idea but were too early. It often isn’t their fault. The
> timing just wasn’t right.

How do you plan your company around timing? It seems easy to say "they had
good timing" in retrospect.

This sounds like hindsight bias.

It's too easy to blame timing instead of your own mistakes.

For example, with Justin TV/ Twitch TV they were "too early" because 4G
internet was not ubiquitous, and most average people could not even consume
their streams.

After years of grinding it out, the tech caught up and they were positioned to
lead the market.

It's certainly possible to be "too early" or "too late" to market. I think if
you have the right people working together you can make it through being "too
early". If you're "too late" then you have the opportunity to win with brand
appeal or marketing now that the market is familiar with the product or
service.

~~~
Waterluvian
Timing is just a component of luck, no?

~~~
adventured
I'd agree that it frequently can be. It's not always luck however.

There's another component to it. Actually spotting that the time has arrived
for a thing, that a confluence of technologies is ready to make something new
possible at a formerly impossible scale (or possible period). That doesn't
have to be luck. Paul Allen watched like a hawk what was going on in the very
early personal computing market, he was aggressive and relentless in doing so,
as well as about prodding Gates about starting a business around it (Gates
then played brake to Allen being frequently early with an idea). That
Microsoft was one of the first software companies, wasn't luck, they saw the
opportunity after watching it for years and then acted. It took a lot of
intentional time and effort application for Allen to accumulate the knowledge
and skill necessary to see that opportunity coming.

That's the case with Tesla. The iPhone. And so on.

Jobs didn't like the Newton because he believed it was a crap user experience.
He was right, the time was wrong for the technology. He did the iPhone because
he believed the time was right, that several technologies were ready to come
together in a small form factor that could produce a high quality experience.
That wasn't luck, it was decades of evolved knowledge and skill looking at a
problem / opportunity.

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curiouslurker
Interesting but I often wonder how much better VCs are than the rest of the
population at determining startup success. In hindsight they can always say
"see, those two factors were important, for my X exit. Told you so" but they
also pick companies that make zero sense. Like the $400 juicer company (backed
by the most respected VCs in town).

Some also claim to have a thesis but will quickly drop it the moment a hot
company comes along that violates their thesis and everyone seems to be
investing. I'd like to see a VC publicly state a thesis and then invest in
only companies that fit it for 10 years and then do better than average.

And how much of it is confirmation bias? If you back a Facebook early in your
career, the very best entrepreneurs will gravitate to you and you will have
more success.

~~~
tyrw
To be fair, the 2 things that are most often cited (timing and product market
fit) are what many VCs do invest in, and they often get called crazy for doing
so.

The $400 juicer is a great example: my guess is there were some metrics that
led them to believe traction or timing were real, even though on the face of
it the idea seems silly.

------
ryandamm
I pitched Niko (he passed for now, too early) -- and this interview does
capture his style pretty well. My cofounder and I found him very smart, but
also personable and genuinely interested in what the startup is doing. He
asked good questions.

As for the '2 Underrated Success Factors' \-- I think when Niko calls it
'timing,' you wouldn't be wrong to call it 'luck' (he hedges a bit in the
interview). Any mental model for startup success that doesn't incorporate a
huge dollop of luck is probably overfitting. But that's my two cents, not the
article or Bonatsos's.

------
skndr
The other relevant parts:

> _What are three things that turn you off when entrepreneurs pitch to you._

 _The first is founders who don’t know their numbers. I am talking about the
post early stage company that has launched a product and has users but the
founders either don’t know their metrics or are trying to hide something._

 _The second, also related, would be the founders not having empathy for and
understanding their users. As a founder you need to understand the key reasons
that are driving adoption of your product, in great depth._

 _Lastly, I want to invest in people who are learning animals. This is a tough
one to assess in the thirty minutes to an hour I have with a founder but it is
absolutely critical. I don’t care if you are expert now but I do expect that
you will be one in three years._

------
ToJans
I think luck and timing make sense from a VC point of view, but when you are
on the other side, it feels slightly different: as a founder, you need to have
a vision about your future consumers within 5 to 10 years, even before you are
laying down the first brick... It needs to be so obvious and in your face that
you can sell it effortlessly to others (including VC's and your prospects).
You start from a gazillion ideas and hunches, and after a while some will keep
emerging until they will evolve into a vision. You pick some of those ideas
and try to assess them, to figure out if you are stuck in your own bubble, or
are really on to something. To me it's a little bit like Thoughtworks' tech
radar: adopt, trial, assess and hold. Once you've made your choice, one of the
most important things IME is that you need to be able to adapt that vision
based on customer feedback. By the time you're in that phase, it might look
like it's sheer luck and timing, but I honestly believe that all the grunt
work and preparation you did increase the odds to succeed big-time...

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manuelflara
To mw, the most underrated success factors that seemingly nobody talks about
(probably because it goes against the motto of "be smart & work hard and
you'll be successful" that we all want to believe), are being lucky and
existing personal connections/wealth.

~~~
CM30
The latter reminds me of an example of a London based startup where the CEO
wasted millions of dollars on holidays and personal luxuries while trying to
market an app with no mainstream audience. But hey, his dad was in the banking
industry and could get him millions from investors he knew, so hey a non
viable company got funded.

~~~
foldr
The relevant ethic being that it is ok to give money away as long as you give
it to people who already have it.

------
d--b
These do not seem to very underrated. Jessica Livingston lists "luck" (mostly
timing) as the #1 factor for becoming a unicorn. Empathy for users is also a
frequent one "build something that you know is painful for your users"

I'd love to read about truly underrated aspects, such as:

\- tiny differences that make all the difference (like Airbnb professional
photographer)

\- the mayonnaise effect (like Facebook: start small, whip the hype up, open
up little by little)

\- connections: different kind of startup founders need to know what kind of
people?

\- what's different between different successful startups?

------
kelukelugames
"The 2 Underrated Startup Success Factors" sounds as bad as "one weird trick
for startup success!" Please edit title?

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adamnemecek
> YikYak (valued at $500 million).

Oh the irony (they folded in April iirc).

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jkuria
The op here. Thanks HN! I appreciate the traffic and engagement. Let me know
how if I can be helpful to you: jkuria gmail. And of course, thanks Niko for
agreeing to do an interview with a random stranger who cold emailed!

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m12k
A couple anecdotes about timing: I remember one of the Unity founders talking
about how they essentially built a ship in the desert (a user-friendly game
engine for Mac) and then a flood came for them to ride (the iPhone app store
and all its games). And in a similar vein, one of the founders of a European
ride-sharing service, GoMore (in case you don't know them, it's an actual
ride-sharing service, not a taxi-service-disguised-as-a-marketplace like Uber)
said that he'd essentially had his company in hibernation for several years
when the smartphone revolution happened and suddenly they time was right for
them to grow.

------
edoceo
Fails to mention Customer Development, a critical first step.

Customer Development (see book by Alvarez) is the boring grunt work that makes
it look like you had "timing". Really you are building traction.

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martinmusio7
Of course are timing and empathy for the user crucial to success, but the most
important feature a person can have is being a learning animal (as he names
it)! Staying hungry for new things and being bold are, long-term thinking,
most rewarding!

------
chicagogal
My favorite quote: "[timing] could be explained as foresight or genius of the
founder to launch the startup at a great moment in time". We should stop
attributing others' success to pure luck

------
ThomPete
Timing and luck.

~~~
rhizome
and measurement.

------
Palomides
> timing

> products that seem stupid or annoying at first. In addition, there should be
> a small group of early adopters who really care about the product

saved you a click

~~~
Clubber
Yes, that wasn't a very good article. "Timing." well duh. Might as well have
said, "success," or "luck," or "having rich parents." Then the rest of it was
a puff piece on how awesome the guy being interviewed was.

I'm going to assume no one really knows, and everyone just pretends to know.

~~~
ahartman00
To be fair, its different for every product. If you aren't a social network, I
don't see how you could go viral. Search ads wont work if nobody searches for
your product, ie if it is something completely new. You can't get users to
refer friends if you have no incentive to give.

This is why I pay closer attention to advice that is descriptive, rather than
prescriptive. Tell me what your situation is, and what you did that worked,
and let me extrapolate. Bonus points for what didn't work.

~~~
rhizome
> _To be fair, its different for every product._

Doesn't that mean the entire idea is not generalizable?

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everdayimhustln
I love sheepdog startups which are like grandma sleeper cars with 1000 hp
under the hood. Innovating in an area others dismiss, and killing it.

~~~
crucini
Got any examples?

~~~
Clubber
iPhone (not really a startup), NEST off the top of my head.

~~~
icebraining
The iPhone wasn't in any way developed "in an area others dismiss". It was a
huge market, with huge new competitors entering it (like Google).

~~~
Clubber
It's the lack of mechanical keyboard that really differentiated it. They all
had number pads or mechanical keyboards, because everyone dismissed it. Now
none of them do. Even Google's early prototypes had mechanical keyboards. When
Schmit took took the idea to Google, they switched to screen keyboards.

