Founding and being the CEO of Shopify, a $48bn company and one of the best-performing stocks of the last few years, isn't "the top"?
Different people have different styles that work for them. Some people love to work 60+ hours and are productive doing it, others get more and better work done when they limit themselves to 40 and take time off. What works for you/Tobi/John doesn't universally work for others.
I'm not sure I agree that quality isn't a major driver of success.
Two counterpoints:
- Shopify came in and dominated Magento and others via a much better quality product (later they built network effects with app store, but originally it was just an easier platform)
- Slack came into a workplace communication space where there were (arguably) free alternatives in IRC and others and won with a better, simpler product.
I think product quality is extremely important in determining success. I think it was less important 10-15 years ago as the web was establishing itself, but today consumers expect a polished, feature-complete experience.
But then how do I sell my mvp startup newsletter to all the people not capable of actually building a quality product? /s
In all seriousness, it is comical how often people apply revisionist explanations for the rise of certain companies. Its simple really. Great product + big market. You must have both, no exceptions.
Welp let me be your first counterexample. I work downtown and I LOVE the dockless scooters. I usually walk or take Muni, but I've found myself using these pretty frequently to go all or part of the way. I've also found them super fun to use with friends, when going to get lunch at a place that's a little farther away than walking distance etc.
I'm not sure why bikes never appealed to me, I like biking but it feels less casual. I just feel like I can grab a scooter and go.
I disagree about the public nuisance as well, of all the things that challenge San Francisco I think electric scooters on the streets are the least of our worries. The public safety concern I agree with you to an extent about, but I see people biking without helmets and boosted boarding without helmets regularly as well. Riding on sidewalks is annoying, police just need to start issuing more tickets.
Unfortunately this wouldn't really work. If you're selling insurance, you're going to have a strong incentive to play it safe. If you run a business, you're going to be furious if legitimate customers are rejected (which is unavoidable at some level, but no matter what level that is you're going to make the business furious when they discover a legitimate charge being rejected).
I wasn't thinking about outright rejecting any charge, but rather that you would price some charges more expensively than others. As a seller of insurance, you're going to price above your estimated percentage, to give you some profit and compensation for the risk, but if you price too high you have no revenue.
It also becomes a much more interesting market if there are multiple competing providers of insurance that bid against each other (just as ad networks work, for example).
As a buyer of insurance, I would always have the choice to not buy the contract and take on the risk myself.
If the market works (which is a big if), it should become an efficient transfer of risk to companies that are experts in evaluating it.
Very interested to hear more of your thoughts though, as you're obviously part of the target audience at your dayjob!
There is a new, quite stealthy startup that does this (not sure if I can give away their name when their website doesn't say what they actually do). They guarantee every payment they accept against fraud.
The tradeoffs are pretty obvious to merchants when they compare their authorization rates between processors and look at the revenue the lose, either through fraud or through false positives.
I think a different model could align incentive while still providing the same service. Maybe "We get X% in payment processing that's not charged back" or similar.
That's a pretty uninformed opinion. YC is a collection of smart people trying to build things...
That "fancy apartment" is the cheapest place you can find in Mountain View with 4 people stuffed in, half sleeping on the floor.
How many YC founders go on to business school? I've heard of none, but I'm sure there are a few... But do you have anything backing up that people go to YC for that reason?
I think I went to one party during the course of YC. In fact, all I really did was build product and talk to users. It's one of the mantras of YC and anyone not following that advice certainly isn't seen as a "cool kid".
Probably not worth trying to change your opinion, but you're 100% wrong on every point (except the first if you define "cool kids" as people working hard trying to build things).
I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure I agree with the argument that this approach is not in their interest (I also use an ad blocker by the way, not preaching just being practical). I would bet that ~50%+ of people are choosing to disable their ad blocker to view Forbes content once they got stopped (I did), and that that the value driven by that increase in ads served outweighs the cost of not having the small % of users who refuse to turn off ad blockers not share their links.
I can also 100% guarantee they split tested this, before rolling it out, to make sure it was the right cost/benefit choice.
Have you considered trying another way to monetize? Selling merchandise, especially if you have an engaged audience, tends to have a higher effective CPM ($20-100+ in our experience) and can be run simultaneously with ads.
Teespring (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder and t-shirt addict) can be an effective tool for doing just this. We ship hundreds of thousands of products each month, you get retail quality products and margins as though you were paying up front.
Absolutely no risk and no costs. You'll never pay us a penny, we only make money if you do.
