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Comment by jeff18 | Hacker News Reader

Very insightful interview. However, I'd like to hear more interviews of startups where there is more of a "fight" -- where getting traction is a battle that requires a lot of iterating. Model startups that tend to be interviewed seem to:

a) Come up with a great, simple idea

b) Make the site very clean and simple

c) Launch publicly

d) MASSIVE VIRAL GROWTH! (Of course, more modestly ;))

That seems to go against conventional startup wisdom, where you have to fight tooth and nail for a long time before you start getting traction. These interviews of late are really motivating and awesome, but at the same time, they are sort of demoralizing because the subtext seems to indicate that if you aren't growing super fast from day one, you are almost better off just starting over.

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I think this story (your a-d) is rare, which I tried to codify in this powderkeg/movement metaphor in a recent blog post: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/02/are-you-building...

Posterous seems like the typical powderkeg. And at any point there are powderkeg ideas out there waiting to be launched, so a-d can work. Or in other words, some ideas are valuable! (Not to discount execution at all, which is usually a necessary condition.)

Half of my other interviews already, however, have told a different story. Steve Welch and Steve Barsh made cold calls endlessly. Rand Fishkin blogged tirelessly, for years. And Mark Cramer experimented with lots of things before he hit on some success with a Firefox add-on. Wikipedia was also a slow growth story that really capitalized on SEO.

Necessary conditions for a movement includes 1) an idea which is fundamentally easy or makes a lot of sense 2) lots of people discovering that idea at the same time and exciting each other, 3) an idea that lends itself to the improvement of one's social-status/geek-cred, so they share it with others. It's very much unpredictable.

I'd liken this to winning the lottery. And that's why articles like this are discouraging, because you are trying to find the magic and you invest your time, listening to the very end, but you find that the magic isn't really there at all.

Cold calling endlessly, blogging tirelessly, etc - everyone wants the news that it will easier than that! ;)

I know there was a post recently about achievements that I didn't read, but I find achievements (in the Xbox 360 sense) can be a reasonable motivator. Wondering about a service that is almost an achievement list, a to do list with pre-filled actions, to help entrepreneurs work through some of the bland getting-traction things. Third blog entry, 20th blog, Triple Figure Blogging, Got a TC mention, Had a blog entry with 20 comments, Got to 2k page views/day, Had a tweet RTed 20 times, etc.

Obviously doesn't guarantee success, but anything that can encourage someone to stay motivated and pushing themselves would be helpful.

This interview seems really useful for small sites battling to get traction, especially the part about doing better customer service than big sites can do.

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