Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not to Fail
themacro.com
themacro.com
I think I've asked this question but I found myself a cofounder with 2 others that prioritized too highly IMO coffee meetings with "investors", no name board advisors, expensive conferences, and basically everything on that list. My approach was to gently voice my concern and but also let them do it in the hopes they'd see how useless it was. The other thing that didn't help was I was the "technical cofounder" and the attitude essentially was I didn't "get" business, and sometimes I wondered if they were right.
Interestingly both were woman, and I don't recall too much of #3. They definitely participated in women in tech type groups but I thought it was no different than any other useless networking others that aren't focused would do.
This will be definitely something I probe for in the future. Anyone looking for a cofounder? (I'm serious, and I have a cool little project we could do to see if we can build something people want together)
1) Aren't going to hire somebody for a leadership position because they met them networking --- they are going to hire them based on merit
2) The people in charge of smart companies aren't at networking events because networking events are a waste of time
Startups are a way to "level up" your career only because you can skip years of moving up a corporate ladder by starting at the top and building a successful company below you. This doesn't mean that by being a CTO of a 3 person company you are all of the sudden eligible to be a CTO at a big, successful company. The process of being CTO at your 3 person company and growing it into a big, successful company is what makes you eligible for that position at a different company.
The best insurance policy for your career is to be really good at your job, which means working on your job instead of networking.
This isn't true, in my experience. I have a few pretty good jobs on my resume (System Architect at a Fortune 50 company, Manager of Development at a big ad agency). Last year, when I was looking for work, those titles were pretty much entirely disregarded by the employers I applied to. Almost every one of them told me they never trusted titles from other companies and tried to get me to join as a mid-level engineer.
Every time I had a friend inside the company, however, I was routed to senior-level jobs that actually matched my experience. I've spent time keeping up those friendships with occasional notes and lunches. If I had just assumed that being really good at my job would be my best insurance, I would not have found the opportunities I did.
This was not even a startup where people get a cto-title just by happening to be there. This was a group inside bigco.
There's a whole world out there that technologists like us rarely pay attention to, which mostly consists of building relationships with other people whose only job is networking so that when their company is looking to purchase, they think of us. Familiarity is a remarkably effective distortion on our evaluation of what is "good", and many technologists who didn't realize this ended up building something that nobody ever heard of.
The reason YC (and other top startup advisors) say to ignore this isn't that it's unimportant, it's that you can fairly easily hire all the people whose day job is networking once you have a product that people want on its own merits, while if nobody wants your product, you'll have to hire them at fat prices to get anywhere. It's a matter of negotiating leverage: show up at the table with something people really want and you will find plenty of people willing to help sell it, while if you spend all your time trying to sell what nobody wants, it will never become something people want.
This doesn't mean "you should go to lots of networking events" -- many of those are a waste of time. But you should build relationships with people, because relationships are a massive influence on hiring, even at smart companies. Also, relationships give you ways to experiment with new projects, learn stuff, and test your own ideas.
Lots of people ignore this and do good work, but don't get recognized. Others do average work, but have powerful networks and advance strongly in their careers. While I favor meritocratic hiring, it isn't wise to advise people that networking is irrelevant.
Sorry, I have to disagree. Understanding the "merit" of a leadership/management role has way more to do with who you know than your merit. Management ability is almost entirely subjective.
So even if that were true (which is questionable, at best), they won't hire you if you are not on their radar. One way to get on their radar? Know them / meet them.
They are (probably correctly) betting that > 80% of the people they meet at these events aren't that smart. Birds of a feather and all that.
Most business founders come from an environment where this is what has worked for them their whole career. That's how you get a job on the business side of things, and it's how you do your job on the business end of an established company.
The take-away, I think, is to know which game you're playing and make your moves accordingly. Being a great research engineer is one game; being an engineer at a startup is another, and moving up the ranks in a big company is another one entirely. Doing sales for a big company is a different game from doing customer development for your own startup, which is different from doing business development for either. Building a lifestyle business in a competitive niche is very different from doing hard tech research, which is very different from solving a problem that seems crazy in an area nobody else will go near. If you apply the rules of one game to the situations of another, you're unlikely to get good results.
(A corollary of this is to make sure that all your startups' other decisions are lined up with the game it is playing. I've seen a number of startups with ideas & personal goals that are clearly in the "lifestyle business" camp, but then they make decisions about markets, fundraising & hiring that put them in the "we're gonna be Google" camp, and unsurprisingly this tends to end poorly.)
Despite my personal record for failing to do so 5 times out of 10, the core recipe is not that hard: build a product that solve a problem that people would be willing to pay to have solved and get them to hit the "buy" button.
Women in business face special challenges. Failing to deal with them at all can be catastrophic. But getting too focused on that piece can also be problematic. It can be challenging to figure out which is which.
Of course, it's REALLY hard to do PR when you don't have a product people love, really easy once you've got that. Keeping it fresh and top of mind is a challenge for many founders though.
I haven't had a ton of experience in startups...once I had to work out of a startup space. And it amazed me the number of conversations I would hear between aspiring entrepreneurs and random strangers that were variations of, "Please tell me if you think this is a good idea".
Everyone knows what it's like to want something. I didn't really hear about Tinder until after it blew up into something huge, but its proposition always made sense to me: Do you want to get laid? Do you often base your decision on the looks of a potential mate? Would you be OK with requesting consensual sex without having to fill out a form?. Yes to all of that. I can't think of anything I regularly use and/or pay for that I can't sum up as a one-sentence "want", whether it's Google, Twitter, Netflix, Facebook, Uber...of course being the first to recognize the desire does not lead to a desirable product -- there's scaling and marketing and implementation and luck, of course.
But that means the entrepreneur who is trawling around to learn what others want is even deeper in the hole. Is there something in startup culture that heavily cautions against pursuing something that you know _you_ want, because selfish concerns do not often scale (even though they've scaled in plenty of cases if you look at surviving startups, though that's obviously survivor bias).
Edit: actually Jessica says it in her talk:
My advice to those of you who are still looking for an idea is to solve a problem that you yourself have. Then you’ll know it’s something at least one person really wants. And when you’re part of the target market, you’ll have insights about it that you wouldn’t otherwise.
We went through this at my previous company, which we sold to a large Silicon Valley software outfit. Even though we had an existing business and could sell product to customers it still took about a year to build a solid presentation to help sell the company itself. At the end we could explain the company value proposition in a few sentences, but that was after talking to numerous insiders as well as a bunch of prospects. It took a lot of practice as well as feedback from many people to get the story right.
Curse my ethnic looks!
Once an enterprise software startup has built its product, or even 70% of its product, you have to go to conferences. Conferences are where you meet your users, and enterprise software users and buyers are a hard group to target otherwise. Marketing and top-of-the-funnel sales happen there. Conferences are also the places you gather intel about the rest of the industry to get a read on where it's moving and if you're aligned with it. So the question for enterprise software startups is: How do you select the most important conferences and pay as little as possible to attend?
- Most of large conferences and shows are not worthy it, especially the expensive ones that "everyone goes to". People are too overwhelmed, busy and disperse. So both branding and lead generation is ineffective.
- Mid-sized ones are better, I mean, the more targeted ones, which focus on a special professional-groups with only a few booths and a cozy space you can network like crazy.
- Always try/pay to get a speaker spot. Negotiate a deal so it's "included" in the price. That's what gives you most visibility, draws people to your booth and kicks off lots of conversations.
- Don't grab speaking slots right after meals (lunch usually), otherwise you'll get a drowsy audience.
- The opposite is true too. If you have a speaker slot, try to get a booth so attendees can find you to extend the conversation.
- Put up the largest screen you can get in your booth or stand, close to the edge, so that passers-by can stop without fear of being harassed.
- Try to get a booth close to the speaker/conference area so that you can quickly draw people into your booth. Here's a trick: have different slide decks, focused on each of the talks being given (prepared in advance) relating your tech with that subject matter. Then run your decks in synch with the talks. After listening to a talk (ie "Mobile app churn"), many people want to stay in the momentum, they'll be immediately interested if they see "Churn Management Strategies" in big letters on your booth's screen.
- Focus on demoing the technology continuously instead of approaching people asking if they'd like a demo. People stop by when they see you demoing to someone (even if it's an accomplice). They want to listen in, but they don't want to be sold to.
- Don't spend money on swag. People that come for swag just want swag (or food). But have something handy (ie. a simple card-seized mini brochure that's not bulky) so people that stop by to see your tech but don't want to interact have something to grab on to that has your website on.
- Alcohol, if the conference allows it, at the end of the day is actually a great weapon for hearing out your (potential) users. Offer beer at the booth or sponsor a happy-hour. Don't expect to get leads or do serious branding. And don't over do it! (like building a whole Vodka bar with DJ music at the booth). This is more about doing F2F and socializing with people that want to share a drink with you after you take off your salesperson/marketing mask.
- Have your local reseller/partner (or salesperson) in the booth with you, as co-sponsor. Not just for costs, but they can do a follow up locally much better than your marketing team.
- Rent the badge reader option, so you don't have to clumsy exchange emails or biz cards. Also works great with antisocial attendees that are just watching your deck from afar. That's an instant email distribution list for doing a great follow up.
- And don't forget about the follow up email. To all attendees, offer a post-conference webinar where the same content is discussed again so they can share the link with their colleagues saying "you should hear this talk".
Measure everything (cost vs. leads). Make sure you repeat at the good conferences and don't insist with the bad ones. Good marketing is all about consistency.
Personally, I find that there's a simple question:
Does this move the company, project, or team forward in a measurable way?
If the answer is "No" then you need to take a long hard look at it and explicitly decide that it's either okay and then stop doing it (ideal) or limit it. And that varies from person to person. Spending time with my toddler is okay in my book. HackerNews, less so.
The next level question is:
Is this the most effective task to this move the company, project, or team forward?
And that is way harder to answer.
I think a better question is, "Is this task consistent with our core values, value proposition, and beliefs."
Limiting yourself to only measurable activities will cut you off from serendipity, which alone can make or break a startup.
But if the problem is lack of focus, there's a balance in there. And it's going to be different for everyone. I think that's a useful bit to remember.
Hey, look at that! It's by Jessica Livingston!
This said, it's a survey of largely succesful organisations - and focuses in the main on what people did right. This talk was about anti-patterns, that in many cases often led to unsuccessful startups (or at least put unnecessary bumps in the road).
I can completely empathize that it's hard to talk safely about other people's private failures, especially as an investor.
For my first successful startup I did the marketing and build and my partner focused on the users. And we crushed the incumbent in under 2 years completely bootstrapped and they tried to buy us.
Now I have a new startup where I'm handling the build and the customers and another partner is focused on the marketing.
It's a subscription business and talking with users helps retention, acquisition via word of mouth and also product development. Do it even if you'd rather be spending that time building!
I don't completely agree with that. Depending on what type of business you're making, the best way to get work done is to go to conventions, because that's the only time you can easily meet with a bunch of people that are related to your industry and make new partnerships, check out new hardware/software solutions to save time or money, possibly hunt for some new talent to join the company, discuss business propositions, etc, can all be possible in much shorter period of time than doing the same outside the convention.
Even just having the opportunity to meet someone face to face that you've been doing business with for the past several months can be useful.
That being said, you don't need to go to a lot of them. Attend only one or two of the most productive ones per year (most productive ones are not always the largest), and you should get a lot done without spending too much time at them.
Also don't go if you're strapped for cash, as they're often expensive (depending on the industry). They're not absolutely necessary, and they can be a waste of time if you don't utilize them properly. But they can be helpful tools.
The lesson here is either avoid the sinkhole of conferences/events. Or, if you are so inclined to go, make sure you understand that unless you are extremely focused and efficient, it is likely to be a waste of time for you.
That experience comes from breaking the rule and living through the outcome.
A smart person knows the correct answers, but a really smart person knows when they wouldn't be correct.
It goes both ways.
This is basically true for every field ever. Generally recommended practices are most important for beginners. Once you're experienced you can start recognizing when it isn't applicable. Beginners oftentimes aren't experienced enough to apply nuanced advice, and nuanced advice oftentimes is masqueraded as general, rather than nuanced, advice.
Somewhere inbetween people might get lost but I feel like approach this gets the majority of people on the right track.
Sure, it's easy to treat it as gospel (it's also easy to not think about what you're doing); doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so.
I would say that her list sounds like stuff you can tell yourself is real work that will grow your product when it is mostly window dressing. The thing is, there are situations where those things will actually be useful. But, often, they are more style than substance.
If you're going to meet either of the two main goals - growth, talking to users - then you're going to do those things, not to go to a conference.
A. Go to customer/user conferences? YES YES YES!
B. Go to startup or generic conferences? Not more than once or twice a year.
Everyone in this thread seems to be mixing up the two.
Now unless you're selling to other startups, her advice is crystal clear.
There is a bit of circular reasoning there. How do you know what people want? If you don't, you might have to go and talk to people. Some of those could be at conventions for example. Certainly true for niche markets.
The assumption perhaps is at this point in the process, you've already been to all the conferences, had coffee with all the VCs and now you are focused on delivering.
I worked at another startup with the same number of employees where we never did anything but work, work, work, focus focus focus, everyone was in such a hurry to get everything done that there wasn't time spent to see where the market currently was, what the competition was, and if we were working on products that would be desirable and successful. That company crashed and burned real hard.
If nothing else, conventions give you and your employees a bit of a forced breather from that lifestyle. But again, they aren't truly necessary, they're just tools, and can be useful or a waste of time.
I think most of these are also things Jessica cited as distractions or just plain bad ideas for early startups.
The rise of the PC, or the fall of the horse buggy are in the former category. They can be influenced, but individual contributions are often insignificant, and predicting their course is very hard.
Then there's "micro luck". Things like hiring a great engineer, finding the right investor, or including the right feature or line of copy fall into this category.
With these smaller random, but not fully random events you gain the ability to influence the outcome significantly. Want to find great engineers? Move to Silicon Valley, join your LUG, get wasted at DEFCON, these all significantly increase your chances of succeeding at that particular subtask. You get to make significantly more educated guesses at what works and what doesn't.
I think this is an important distinction, after which it becomes good practice to follow the advice in the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebur
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Could it be also that maybe we are not yet aware of the myriad of other factors that also influence the outcome?
i.e. it may seem like luck but it could be something we just aren't modelling properly, unless you define luck to be precisely the "bag of unknown variables". However more than once I've seen people define luck as "that ether around us that makes lucky people lucky", kind of like an external force and not something directly related to you, your surroundings and your history.
Here is an example - the article says to focus on building something people want. Well how do you know you have built something people want enough to pay for before they buy it? You can't really know, which is why VCs fund a lot of companies for cheap and try to see who is lucky enough to actually be building something people want.
The conclusion of the article says that if you follow these steps you will be the master of your own fate, but this conclusion is disingenuous. It is based on looking backwards rather than forwards - all companies that succeed have made something people want and quickly increased their revenue, so all you have to do to succeed is make something people want and grow! Good luck.
You say that "luck is when the variables that you cannot control for work out in your favor", and I kind of agree with that, except that I have doubts if they are really variables you can't control that are part of this "good luck" term.
e.g. Let's say I do great in my career because of "good luck". What amount of that luck is actually because I grew up in a family that gave me support, self-esteem, social skills, study skill, etc, even though many of those variable can't be controlled by you?
My point is (not really disagreeing much with you) that luck can be actually just a way of describing all those variables that we don't know even exist or that we don't know how to model/explain, even though they are actually stuff that CAN be influenced by you or your family, friends, etc. Kind of how we describe dark matter or dark energy, where it's actually just a placeholder term for saying "we don't really know".
So again, I do agree with you in that you could describe good luck as the set of those factors that helped you out and I guess also bad luck as those that work against you, and in that sense I also think that it's not really paiting the full picture, but unless you try to model these hidden variables, I guess it's as best a prediction as you can make to say that you need to avoid those 4 mistakes + "good luck".
You actually got me thinking a lot on this...it's an interesting topic for me I guess.
Maybe that's all you need, maybe not. But it'll put you in the best position to take advantage of good luck, and survive bad luck. Or, perhaps you'll be one of the lucky ones who don't need luck at all, in which case those skills had better be sharp!
You need to get out a product, and get it out fast. Keep your feet moving, talk to users, and build in the direction they want.
By doing more & learning more & meeting more people, you essentially increase your luck surface area in 3 different ways, increasing the odds you'll get lucky.
Many founders I've seen 'got lucky' when they were on the way to the 100th trip to meet customers. Did they get lucky or did they make their luck?
But in either case I don't find it to be a useful sentiment. The fact is that as entrepreneurs we have agency to make decisions, and we each have uniquely imperfect information on which to base those decisions. "Luck" is nothing more than this universal phenomenon of imperfect information. What might be luck for one person might not be for another. At the end of the day, lucky or not, we are all tossed about by the whims of fortune. That should not blunt our drive, or check our decisions, or detract from our accomplishments. Sincerely acknowledging luck is an admirably humble thing to say in a press conference, but luck as a concept will not help you take the best action for the future.
" I claim that luck will not cover everything. And I will cite Pasteur who said, ``Luck favors the prepared mind.'' And I think that says it the way I believe it. There is indeed an element of luck, and no, there isn't. The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it. So yes, it is luck. The particular thing you do is luck, but that you do something is not."
I love to shut myself in and write code, don't get me wrong. But consistently tracking sales growth, setting goals, and hitting goals (i.e., execution) is what separates the wannabes from the dids.
Your goal as a founder is to maximize chances of __your__ success. Having the right founder-market fit goes a long way.
On the other hand, if you build something useful, and can start racking up subscriptions by doing some footwork (talking to users, giving out free accounts, etc), then you've got a much better chance.
For an R&D based startup working on Fusion, that progress would be measured differently.
Many businesses have Key Performance Indicators (KPI's). Startups should be no different.
I have personal projects that I want to finish (not a startup), and the conferences I enjoy tend to feature people showing off their own projects. Whenever I‘m at one, I think, “I’d rather be on stage, sharing something I put months (or years) of love into, than be one of the 100-1000 people in the audience watching.”
Of course, going to a conference can be inspiring, or introduce me to people or ideas that’ll shape my future work, so they’re not all bad. I’m interested in how other HN folks approach this conflict.
Semi-related, I experienced something interesting at a hacking conference a few years ago. Mid-conference, feeling inspired, I hid in the volunteer lounge for almost a whole day and worked on a reverse engineering project that I’d been fighting to understand for over a year. I solved it! Being there, and aware of all of the people and activity around me, but actively ignoring it, gave me focus and motivation. That was fascinating, and I’ve considered doing the same thing again (or finding a really interesting conference and not buying a ticket, so that I could work while I know I’m missing it).
>One of the most conspicuous patterns we’ve seen among the thousand startups we’ve funded is that the most successful founders are always totally focused on their product and their users. To the point of being fanatical. The best founders don’t have time to get caught up in other things.
>Here’s a list of things that I see easily distract founders. These are like the startup equivalent of wolves in sheeps’ clothing.
[she includes 8 points, of which I quote 4 below - I am quoting selectively.]
> - “Grabbing coffee” with investors
> - Networking
> - Doing a “partnership,” thinking it will get you more users
> - Going to conferences
Now, I need help understnanding this. She has listed some of the items that separate people building startups in unfundable locations where there are 0 startups, and startups building in the Bay Area.
If you don't need to do these things, why did YC shut down it's Boston program and make everyone do it in the Bay Area?
If you don't need to do these things, why can't you build a startup from anywhere in the world as long as you speak good English and have no costs?
Aren't these things literally the things that make startups fundable, financiable, possible to grow into huge businesses?
I and anyone else on HN who has been in the Bay Area and in startup-dead locations knows the huge difference. She seemed to quote some of it under 'distractions'.
Can someone help me understand why they aren't, in fact, part of focus?
It would be different if they were fruitful, but more often (in my experience) they are dead-ends, and worse they spawn other activities that are dead-ends. It becomes a huge time sink. That said, it seems difficult to make legit connections without having them initially. Where I live, there are a few major companies that had succeeded decades ago, and most of the startups in the city seem to be run by ex-employees of those companies.
I think the advantages of living in the bay are 1) more opportunity to bump into someone who knows someone, and 2) having access to more (passionate and active) early adopters.
>The best founders don’t have time to get caught up in other things.
>Here’s a list of things that I see easily distract founders.
So if you don't get "caught up" in it it's important; while they can "easily distract" founders, they're important. I think she might have gone too far stating that they're the startup equivalent of "wolves in sheeps’ clothing", because wolves in sheeps clothing presumably are only out to hurt you - but read this way her point comes across well. Spending too much time with them ends up hurting you, even though they can be important. I mean one of them is Networking... try building a startup without that.
Don't get me wrong, it is isolating in general but after working for two startups, one bought out by a foreign company and another now has billions in funding, doing software analytics on the trading floor through summer internships in college, and going to a predominately male college for engineering, 70% males overall, and 99% male in my major, I can say I have a diversity of experience even within the tech field and also years of experience working at single companies before moving on, I can say a few things that I think echo what she is saying
1. Most of the people speaking the most about female controversey are not coders, or engineers or in the nitty gritty of tech. While I appreciate their empathy and willingness to latch onto a cause and speak for us, they often get it wrong, and recently have done so much so that they scare the MAJORITY of men to feeling uncomfortable talking about it. What do I mean? onto point #2
1a. Sorry, before I go to Point 2, another way journalists or people wanting to speak out on our behalf (female women in tech) get it wrong is by assuming we want to change the culture to be this outgoing, social fashion forward world. Actually, alot of us are introverted geeks and like doing the same thing other male engineers do. I definitely think wheather you were or are a cheerleader sorority girl who likes to bake and throw parties or an introverted star wars nerd and each one is an engineer, either should feel equally comfortable at a new tech company and not isolated by the culture, but anecdotally I happen to be an extreme introvert, and the excessive socializing and advice or notion that if we have an environment where we can all be super girly like omg together is the vibe I get from alot of female focused events in tech. It's actually overwhelming and makes me feel more out of place than not. Listen to us, not imposing your idea of how we might feel onto us. Get a good profile of what females are saying who are IN tech, and if there is a difference between that and the ones who are latching onto the idea of it or operating in auxiliary roles surrounding tech. These women are just as important, and are are still subject to sexism working around male dominated industries, but if you want more women IN tech, instead of talking about tech but not in it, listen to the women IN it, you might be surprised.
EXAMPLE
Here is one example where both genders are contributing to the problem but making it harder for women IN tech. my friend is a Biomed Engineer who prototyped and developed her hardware. Keeping her anonymous on here, but she went to a big tech conference in the bay area and was approached by three men asking if she was a "showgirl" at the conference as a starter to the conversation. Of all the things you could possibly say right? How offensive to a female engineer with over 30 pending patents running a multi million dollar company and two engineering degrees under her belt. Welp, those guys are in the wrong, but also why are there showgirls at tech conferences. because hot girls attract geeks to the boothe. But MEN hired these showgirls, and WOMEN are actually fufilling those roles. So both parties are at fault.
Who suffers? The people who suffer are the ACTUAL female engineers who would love to go to a conference and not have it be assumed they are there in an auxiliary tech role until proven otherwise.
once my friend described who she was, both of the guys felt really bad, even embarassed and apologized profusely. They ended up being cool guys she is still friends with. they learned a lesson, but they have also been heavily conditioned by males and females who are both willing particpants in establishing a stereotype that is demeaning to women actually in tech.
2. Most men I've met and worked with in tech are absolutely fine. It is that in general outlier cases good and back stick out in our heads. If there are 200 employees at a company and only 2 females in my department of 40, probably over a 6 months period the chances are I'm going to be made to feel uncomfortable whether intentionally or not by one person atleast. I'm not saying it's acceptable or ok, or that steps shouldn't be taken to fix it, I'm saying 19/20 guys I work with in a random sampling are just fine, and don't make being a girl a thing, and treat me just the same, or if anything are excited to see women in tech and go out of their way to make you feel comfortable. It's then in your discretion to stand on your own two feet and not take advantage of that, because some women do, which brings me to...
3. There are some women who abuse their minority status. I'm NOT saying women who have spoken out about being treated poorly are the ones who are abusive, or that they are lying. It is usually ones that have nothing to complain about and the situations are much more nuanced. I'm sorry people will get mad at me about this statement but I feel comfortable saying it as I've observed it and I work in tech and I'm not going to lie to remain politically correct. Both males and females are capable of abusing their position. Not all males do it, not all females do it. So hating men or making them terrified of saying the wrong thing if anything is just going to make you feel more isolated.
There are also women who still have queen B syndrome and like being the only female around, and actively bully other women. This is so obnoxious. However, in my varied experience in tech, I can say one key indicator of a real female engineer, is that most of us would LOVE a female friend because we don't have many. Females that view male dominated workplaces as a fun new playground because of all the men, are constantly having coworker boyfriends, and view other women as competition, instead of empathizing with them, have probably not experienced the long term years of being in college engineering classes and doing their homework and not having female friends, and the desire to be treated as an equal instead of put on a pedastool or having to prove themselves. Real females doing real work in tech know what it's like to be isolated, and when we get together as females, we are all super super grateful for it, and we all feel uncomfortable going to glitzy girl focused events where we are bombarded by girls not in tech telling us how things should be. This has been my experience.
4. While some of us can't choose who we work for and with, if you are a female IN Tech, not marketing or some soft auxiliary department of a developed company, but you code or prototype electronics or hardware or engineer something, then you are valuable enough that you can move onto thousands of other companies if you don't find one with a culture that fits your comfort zone. Not just because you are a talented brilliant ambitious female, but because you are a talented brilliant ambitious engineer, and they are in great need in any gender, but being a female is always a great added diversity and step into equality for EVERYONE, not just females. AGAIN, it's not ok women should ever have to feel uncomfortable but we live in the real world and not everything is fair, not just for women, but for alot of situations and people in general.
CLOSING COMMENTS
In life in general, forget being a women or startups, a good rule of thumb, and one I took way too long to learn myself in my personal and professional life, if you don't like how you are being treated, then start hanging around different people.
I have plenty of male engineer friends who are low key, we geek out together, order pizza, watch tv, code, switch knowledge, music and talk about latest tech stuff, and its totally chill. What and who makes you feel comfortable but also gets you excited about learning and obtaining your goals? hang around them and your work life and personal life will be better. It's the same as if you want to stop drinking but your friends only method or venue for socializing is drinking, well it's not going to be super fun for you, so hang out with people who gel with your same lifestyle.
I definitely have my frustrations, but my successes and friends male and female far outweigh my desire to spend most of my time feeling negatively. This is coming from a girl who has been through some troubling times with male coworkers. It's not that is hasnt been harder, its just that I have so many things I want to do, I'd rather "show them" by being successful and acheiving my goals than fighting a legal battle. I am glad some women have chosen the legal path, but I actually would be upset if someone chastized me for not spending all my time in court. There are lots of way to bring tech forward with everyone, not just articles and legal battles. Sometimes, just being a good role model, the girl you wish you had to hang with 5 years ago when you had no female friends, goes alot farther in the world of tech females who actually need a friend, not just people reading the hottest news. Any new girl I meet in my company or department or otherwise who is an engineer or software developer, I atleast attempt to make friends and go out to lunch or a grab a drink with them , let them know I'm available to chat or otherwise, and every time I've been endlessly thanked saying I'm the only female friend they have. Well, now I have like 5 awesome female engineer friends and we all are friends as a group now, it's not much, its not enough, but its more than we ever had and it's all we have time for, because you know, we are also coding, starting companies and doing all the same things males do so we are not over here just being social butterflies. As cliche as it sounds, and something I never would have believed about myself years ago when I was feeling isolated, is that I focused on being the change I wanted to see in the world, and the role model I wish I had when I was fresh out of college, instead of fighting legal battles. Sometimes thats the right thing to do, sometimes my path is a good one too, and I don't regret it.
I've had to abandoned some groups, and in one case a company because I was around egotistical chovenistic males who challenged me on everything and even worse it was all subconscious sexism so it was not even easy to address. no its not ok, but I decided to instead of fighting for it for years and years, to move onto something better for me, and now I can spend the majority of my time coding and working on my goals, instead of fighting against people. It was the best decision I've ever made, I'm able to be alot more technically advanced, and by holding my head high and deciding I could do better, instead of tearing other people down.
Atleast three of those guys have come to me years later to apologize (with no prodding on my part), tell me I was a good player on the team, and I know from females who joined that same team later, they are treated very well. Those guys straightened up because sometimes the most powerful thing you can do, is know you deserve better, walk away and discover a place that fosters your worth. If you have real tech skills, this will always be an option for you as a woman, or a man. It's ok to stand up and "fight" and it all depends on your situation. I should have had more support in mine, but honestly I think I made the right choice by just moving onto something better.
FINAL NOTE
She is right, don't be scared. JUST DO IT. If you can actually code or prototype, then do it. Perform, let your product speak for itself and noone can argue with you. That is the cool thing about coding or being an engineer, if it works and people are paying for it, who cares if youre a girl, or a transgender, or have purple hair, wear tennis shoes to work, or if you are a hippopotamus. It's not going to be easy, it's going to be WORTH it, and there may be some extra barriers, but how rewarding for you to be a trailblazer.
I never thought of myself that way until people started calling me a trailblazer or a "badass" years out of college and now that I think about it, hey yeh, I've been through some pretty hard times but damn this is cool, minority or not, I love what I do and nothing is going to stop me. In fact, I had no idea when I first went into this that anyone would want to stop me, or feel threatened by me, and honestly, that is the hard part.
THE HARD PART
The hard part is realizing that some people are actually not supportive of you, subconsciously or not, alot of the anger on your part comes from the confusion surrounding the challenge of understanding this concept, because if youre an awesome person who doesnt need to tear other people down to have success, this isn't going to be intuitive for you to understand other people are actually that lame. Once you realize yes these warped people in self denial who project their own insecurities onto you DO exist, and probably always will in some form or fashion, then you can be like "oh, no I'm better than that sorry". Sometimes again, legal is a good way, sometimes not.
Just do you and find that confidence. if you don't have it, dig deeper, if youre reading this youre already way ahead of the game and have nothing to feel insecure about. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond and how you let it effect your opinion of yourself or your subconscious belief about your capabilities.
Have that attitude, and support other girls around you, focus on your work and not people, and youll be amazed. In the words of Dr. Suess "oh the places youll go.."
I'm just one more anecdote and a bit of a living edge case, but this has been painfully true for me as well. I deliberately avoid women in tech events/blogs/etc now because of how uncomfortable they tend to make me. Hearing "tech" talks about how it's important for women to get hired because we're just like, so in touch with our feelings and therefore we make great UX--incredibly demoralizing and othering for me.
I am an old white straight male. When I started out in my employed career - semiconductor design - Motorola - Tokyo Japan in the late 80s, I had to spend a year in the US for "training", but in both the US and Tokyo it was about 70%~80% males and 20%~30% females. Systems. Circuits. Layout. Fab. Prequal. I guess more females in layout, but ... in general that was about how it was.
We all worked together, raised barns together, drank together, went to funerals together. We were mates. Co-workers.
It wasn't until recently that I was told that this was wrong. That I needed to show more concern about female issues in a male dominated world. And maybe this is right - I don't know. I wasn't educated enough to know that treating a talented female engineering co-worker as a talented co-workers wasn't enough.
I guess my question is this: Is ignoring gender when interacting with co-workers wrong? Should I be doing something different when I interact with female co-workers?
Unfortunately, I'd say 1/20-30 guys I work with are going to make a pass at me, or make me feel uncomfortable. Alot of this is encouraged r discouraged based on the culture of the workplace.
In general, I get along with my male coworkers, and I loathe getting special treatment or being given breaks because I'm a girl so I agree with you, you don't need to do anything extra beyond what you normally do.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as awesome as you. It's more just that statistically if females are a minority, and the culture of the workplace allows it, it's likely you might get hit on, and it's possible the female coworkers you hung out with may have gotten hit on inappropriately at work and just never talked to you about it. For sure, none of the guys I worked with who were cool with me knew what I went through.
Same as you, I started in semiconductor. 95% of the guys were totally chill and we worked and ate together etc etc. I did however, get asked out on dinner and dates by four married men in my two years working then, who then avoided me and refused to even do necessary job place coordination with me on daily tasks after I turned them down, making my job harder for me.
The team was 114 people, 6 women, all of us 20 yrs younger than the average age of the men. SO that means 108 of the men were totally awesome, and 4 of them sucked. This is not all that I went through, just a PG version but in general, I'm making the point on average and most men are not like that, instead of trying to hone in on the few bad outlier scenarios I had to encounter.
I definitely don't want these conversations to make men like you feel you are not doing enough. On the contrary, need more men like you that DON"T feel the need to treat us any differently, because thats what we want, atleast for me.
I don't even know how to count teams that large -- I suspect the way I process "team" and you do are different.
I was getting my sea legs back when I was in semi-conductor, and (I don't recall, to tell the truth, but I think I'd never had a girl friend), I asked a lady for a date. She was very cool and said "no", and that she had a boy friend. I was a little mortified that I didn't already know this, but she was a (the?) sales engineer on on of my two accounts (Canon and Sony were "mine"), and I don't think it would have occurred to me to NOT work with her.
I guess I'm saying that I was embarrassed as hell, but it was my fault for asking for a date in the first place.
I am so sorry you had people (probably people like me) get their own ass embarrassed and treat you like that.
Me being sexed female doesn't really qualify me to answer this question--I'm just some random person and have no formal power to speak as the official representative for Women Everywhere (I'd be a very bad choice for that, too--I am so masculine that I tend to be perceived as male, that's part of what I meant when I called myself a "living edge case" in my earlier comment).
That disclaimer out of the way, two points to your question:
1. It's highly unlikely that you are treating women identically to men, even though you genuinely believe you do. I'd bet hard money that you don't, actually, because a) almost nobody does, myself included despite my best efforts b) I can already name an instance where you didn't--you specifically asked me this question based on my sex and only my sex, by your own admission. I don't know how much you've read about unconscious bias, but it's a very well-studied and documented phenomenon and I recommend looking into some of the research on it that's been done. Hiring managers are more likely to extend offers to identical resumes that have male names, and the offers they extend to the male-named resumes tend to be higher. Startup pitches given by male actors are rated as more convincing and more likely to earn investment by VCs than the exact same pitches given by female actresses. Women are interrupted much more frequently than men in group discussions, and a group will perceive that women have talked "most of the time" if they talk for >=30% of the time. Men are perceived as more technically competent than women. Women are perceived negatively (too aggressive, "not a team player") for negotiating their salary, in general, whereas men are not. Even if you specifically are 100% egalitarian and have no mental shortcuts that you apply towards women whatsoever, the vast majority of the people they're interacting with are not truly gender blind. This is from people who really believe that they are unbiased, in a lot of cases, and aren't aware of the subconscious stereotyping that's driving their behavior--that's the unconscious part, and it's insidious. So, consciously saying "well I believe the genders are equal and I treat everyone the same and that's what we should do in the workplace, not take sex into account at all and just be buds" can just leave subtle sexism totally unchecked and rampant, instead of truly promoting equal behavior. Harvard hosts a couple free online tests to check your implicit bias, if you're curious to check yourself: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html (I come off as biased on gender, for the record, most people do, regardless of their sex.)
2. I think this question, like affirmative action, comes down to whether you think it's more ethical to prioritize equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. Women in general are socialized to defer to the people around them, be more caring, be less assertive, be less confident. That has already happened by the time you're hiring them. If you and everyone in your workplace somehow do overcome your socialization and years of mental heuristics and manage to treat women in the field exactly the same as you do men in the field, the women will still have lower salaries (don't want to be confrontational and negotiate aggressively), apply to your job openings less (women do not apply to a job unless they meet the majority of the listed qualifications, unlike men), be less likely to voice their opinions in meetings, etc. Note here: I'm not saying all women act like this or every individual woman is more likely to than every individual man, I don't as far as I'm aware, but I'm saying that a random sampling of women are in general more likely to than a random sampling of men are. I'm sure you've seen that internet argument half a dozen times already, but in general the argument for treating everyone the exact same way is that you're treating everyone equally and that's the best you can do, even if there's disparate outcomes we shouldn't treat people differently, we should just control our behavior and make sure that's egalitarian. The argument against is along the lines of: we don't tell people confined to wheelchairs "the stairs are open to you too, stop fussing", we build ramps for them--the starting points for the two groups are not equal, therefore treating them the same isn't really egalitarian in the first place, it's just keeping the (unequal) status quo.
I can tell you that I personally would be extremely unhappy if my coworkers decided to behave in specific ways towards me because of my sex, but I'm, like I said, an edge case. And, on the contrary, I've had coworkers (correctly) guess that I am attracted to women and make awkward non-sequitor statements about their lesbian relative/friend and how happy they are for her--I actually am really pleased when this happens, even though it's always extremely awkward and we both know why they're bringing this up out of the blue. It lets me relax about it and just act normally without it affecting my career. (An aside: my first internship, my boss was big on listening to Rush Limbaugh in his cubicle, I wasn't working in a state where sexual orientation was a protected class, and I wasted a huge amount of mental energy agonizing over him potentially firing me over it, 0/10 internal conflict would not recommend.) So even an individual can have conflicting feelings about their minority status being explicitly accounted for by their coworkers, you can't really generalize.
I think Re #1 - that I did treat them differently is probably right. I almost went back and edited my original question a few seconds after I posted it. I noticed that I blushed (a lot) when women would say risque things vs. guys. They noticed too - and ganged up on me a little about it. There were probably more instances of this. I need to think about it some more.
Thank you.
Why would a parent knowingly disown and put their gay child out on the street, risking criminal charges and effectively wasting however many years of effort they put into raising their child? I don't know, but ~40% of the homeless American youth population identifies as LGBT. (Source: http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/americas-shame-4...) Happened to a friend of mine as a teenager. People are not always rational actors. Firing someone over their sexual orientation is extremely rare, but not unheard of. (A handful of anecdotes: http://www.advocate.com/year-review/2013/12/18/meet-people-f...)
Luckily though, my former boss had similar opinions to you and I was completely fine. I've since moved to California and established myself as a solid developer, so it's not even a serious issue on my radar anymore. I would just switch to a better workplace now if I was concerned.
I'm still processing your upstream comments, but anecdotally, when I got to spend about a year on the street, Imma gonna to say that in central Texas, there were a lot of people with mental challenges (which is sad) and a whole lot more with drug issues (which is a different problem, and separately sad), and either of them would have swung any way you asked for their next hit. I am not going to claim that this experience is representative in any way.
Maybe the methodology was incorrect or the sample unrepresentative, my only personal experience with it is the one friend.
I'm probably so far right as to make Rush Limbaugh un-listenable (to me) because: 1) he's irritating and repetitive, and 2) too far left. :-) (that's kinda/sorta a joke)
But I've gotta say that even though they were outnumbered (80/20?), females made up at least half, if not more, of my top developers in a start up in the late 90s. And from what I understood (I was afraid to ask), half of the female developers were homosexual. The point is: I would have had to have been insane to fire them. It would have knocked $20M (maybe $200M) off my market cap the very same day!
I guess I need to thank you. I have a lot to learn about the way that the world works...
(thank yOU!)
To be fair, the internship and his mentorship were both invaluable to me, I was very lucky to be hired, I don't want to make it sound like a sob story. Firing over sexual orientation isn't really tracked so there's no hard numbers, but IME it is incredibly rare--never happened to me or anyone that i personally know, to the best of my knowledge. My concern could have been (probably was? your anecdote brings N up to 2, anyway) completely irrational, like the above poster was wondering.
Hah. Reminds of the story about the time Eisenhower reportedly tried to root out lesbian members of the armed forces: https://books.google.com/books?id=HO7IKU79zgAC&lpg=PA47&ots=...
In aggregate, upstream, you are saying: 1) No: I am not treating them equally, even if I think I am, and 2) Females have some real needs/concerns that I should care about.
Now that I know that I am inadequate to this task - what should I do to be better?
FWIW, this is personally my ideal working environment. I can't speak for women in general, and I'm not a moral authority, but this is exactly the kind of treatment I want from my coworkers.
>what should I do to be better?
I don't know, honestly. I know that's an inadequate response, but I'm not sure how to appropriately address ingrained societal sexism either. As far as subconscious bias in hiring goes, having rubrics and standardized interviews goes a long way at eliminating it. I'd theorize that standardized metrics for performance reviews would help on that front, too, though I don't think that's been studied.
If you browse the million and one women in tech posts out there you can see people talking about it at length, though I would be wary of taking somebody's opinion as truth just because they're female, and I would be doubly wary of taking a tech blogger at her word vs an actual female engineer. Your personal set of ethics re: equality of opportunity vs outcome also plays into what you "should do" quite a lot. Some suggestions (like formalized hiring rubrics) are completely valid whether or not you believe in equality of opportunity vs outcome, but others (like instituting diversity quotas in hiring) are not.
This blog post is well cited and worth a read, it has a few good suggestions IMO: https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-i...
And this personal anecdote is a positive story, which I think is just good to keep in mind (that not all individual women necessarily feel or have been through the standard negative Women in Tech narrative): http://lea.verou.me/2015/12/my-positive-experience-as-a-woma...
> But MEN hired these showgirls, and WOMEN are actually fufilling [sic] those roles. So both parties are at fault.
There was a pretty good article written by a woman who was hired as a dancer to attend a convention who was lectured by one of the female attendees. Her point was that she had a right to make a living too, and it's just as destructive to bash a woman who works for a conference floor, as it is to assume a woman who attends a conference is there as a "showgirl."
Not everyone can be an engineer, and not all jobs make ends-meet, so throwing women who are working tradeshows under the bus is just another form of sexism.
edit to add:
https://makirollschopshop.com/2016/03/21/a-dancers-thoughts-...
but should this be an advertising mechanism at a tech conference? if you need a dancer to advertise your startup, then you probably have a shitty startup because your product doesnt speak for itself.
So no I'm not against dancers in general, or even strippers, but there is a time and place for everything, is a tech conference the time or place for dancers? I would say probably not.
When I say "demeaning to women in tech" I mean WHILE AT A TECH CONFERENCE, for women to be default assumed to be in an auxiliary role because most women at tech conferences are hired to be in auxiliary roles, is demeaning.
I'm not making a statement about appropriate sexual behavior. I am a liberal feminist and I believe women should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies, and sympathise with women who don't get the opportunity to educate themselves, and also support women who willingly choose other paths. The female body is a wonderful thing and can be enjoyed by whomever she feels comfortable sharing it with. In South Korea, prostitution is a respected career and feminists in south korea even lit themselves on fire in protest of trying to outlaw it because they believed it was encroaching upon their freedoms. Awesome for them. One of the girls on my old sports team just got featured in VICE magazine for, after graduating as valedictorian from my highschool and then at Princeton, went underground for multiple years studying female rights as a call girl in multiple countries in multiple socioeconomic stratas and wrote a huge article on womens rights even in the realm of prostitution.
Believe me, I am not here to crap all over women dancers. It is women in entertainment, and female rappers who are trailblazing the idea that their bodies are wonderful and they can do what they want with them and say what they want and that its ok.
I absolutely agree with you, but I still dont see what that has to do with a tech conference...
tech conferences are somewhat professional and its even valid to argue diverse enough that some ethnicities might even have males that are offended by female dancers at a tech conference.
That's not true. A big tradeshow has tons of companies. Attendees are busy, especially at the shows where floor hours are very limited. At least for B2B products, where a single deal can be a lot of income, it's incredibly effective to have attractive people working onsite. Due to the demographics of the shows I've been to, this means hiring women. (If the attendees skewed another way, I'd hire attractive men.)
But don't hire "dancers" -- I agree on that. They are intimidating. Guys will gawk but not come in; you won't gain customers. I've seen companies make this mistake. The goal should be conversion. So have friendly, good looking people, to make introductions, get leads.
If this is wrong, then it needs to be banned at the tradeshow level since the incentives are in the wrong direction. Maybe that's unethical, but a lot of "growth hacking" is, too.
>some ethnicities might even have males that are offended by female dancers
What's ethnicity got to do with it?
For our tradeshows, most of the people who work our booths are either Account Managers, or the actual Marketing team that runs tradeshows.
I was lucky enough to be invited to our biggest tradeshow and work the showroom. Funny enough, I suppose, was because I was an engineer. As someone who is an extreme introvert around strangers, it was definitely an interesting time.
*
In this case, it was an afterparty.
For manning a tradeshow (mansplaining trigger warning) companies hire out to 3rd parties, who then staff the booths. Those companies usually are measured on how much traffic they generate.
I would strike up conversations with the women who worked at various PAXPrime booths about the games, and more often than not, they were just contractors.
Occasionally, as a rare treat, it would be one of the developers--like the lady who co-developed BroForce.
I've never been to a Pharma convention, but I imagine those Drug reps hire attractive people specifically to generate more traffic.
and she wasnt at a Pharma Convention, she was at Google I/O. Her stuff is everywhere, and has nothing to do with Pharmaceuticals.
I recall that despite the medical field being roughly equal in representation of men & women, many of their conferences cater to men.
My wife normally works remotely, but meets with her team in person twice a year. Last time, at the first whole-team dinner, she announced she was pregnant... and the other women on the team fawned and fussed over her the rest of the week. Which was super duper uncomfortable for her, as one of the most extreme introverts I know.
She's not interested in being "girly". She's interested in being who she is -- technical, brilliant, competitive, powerful, and into My Little Ponies because it's a great show, not because it's girly.
Do you have links to any write-ups that you find more accurate?
I read this phrase a few times. I'm genuinely curious - and didn't really see it in the article - what are the reasons for which Jessica is referring?
Edit - downvoted for asking a genuine question...? Did it ever occur to anyone that I may be asking to see how I could help, seeing as I'm involved with a few startups?
That's literally off the top of my head from things I've literally seen first hand.
Can we stop pretending the real world isn't full of douchebags?
OK. But don't miss the rest of what she said:
> So while I’ll tell you that it is going to be harder for you as a woman, it’s not going to be so much harder that it will make the difference between success and failure.
There's real sexism, still. It makes it harder for women. That's unfair. It shouldn't be that way. But while all that shouldn't be, and all that makes it harder for women, don't just look at "harder" and decide not to do it.
The best metric to choose is good old fashioned profit.
I appreciate that growth can be hindered by making a profit, but isn't that what matters in the end? Amazon, Twitter, Box and many other public tech companies went public without turning a profit so it seems I'm wrong.
No, the best metric to choose is 'discounted future profits'. That frequently means the best strategy is 'lose millions now to make billions later'.
I agree that ultimately, the only measure is profit for a company you are building to operate. The only caveat being that in the early stages, it may require more investment, and you don't want to sacrifice good investment to higher profit when it could mean the ultimate decline of the company (and profit). This is why there could be a period of time where the revenue measure is simplest and meaningful.
With regard to at least Amazon, I think they are focused on the long game and profitability. Twitter and others I don't follow, but I would agree that from the outside, many seem not to focus on building sustainable, profitable business without continued funding or expectation of being sold.
https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/net_income
Growth is their priority. Yet, they make sure they have plenty money coming in to keep everyone paid, invest back in business, and have a pile of profit on occasion. Years ago, I did a research report on them. Back then, they were making a significant profit with just $200 mil in debt or so. They could've paid off total debt in just a few years if they paused to maintain the profit. They killed the profit on purpose to expand the then-new AWS. Smart decision. :)
I love how Pat Flynn talked about building a market map in his recent book Will It Fly. I think this method is very helpful in finding out if what your doing is something people want.
Derek Sivers of CDBaby has this same mindset. He has always worked off the pull method rather than the push method for what he creates.
Ash Maurya in his book running lean gives you a nice script for customer development interviews. I have tried this with a previous startup idea, and they saved me from going down the road of working on something people did not want. They are probably a bit more involved than Pat's method, but it is something else to consider.
1 - Seed money is given on promise
2 - How to get VCs to invest: Build something people want + talk to users + focus = 10% growth
3 - Be default alive, which means: existing cash + revenue - consistent expenses gets you to breakeven
*How to shoot yourself in the foot: Overhire -> Default Dead -> Ugly Duckling -> No VC
We all know companies that have built products that nobody wants. They went through all the planning, product development, market research, production, and the result was nobody wanted it. It's a myth that if you build it, they will come. People have to want your product at each stage of the process.
Of course, some ideas are impossible to execute small and simple.
Very much agree. Make something quickly that somebody really likes, and try and find more people who like it. Figure out what people like about it and expand in that direction. Rinse and repeat, as you expand just keep making sure more people want it.
Sure, you can interpret YC's advice as containing an obviously silly contradiction. But you could also interpret it as saying that you should fundraise when you need to, but not waste time on coffee meetings when you don't.
We're seeing a similar shift with programming, too. When one's formative experiences were in the low-status phase, it can be weird and challenging to realize that's not true anymore.
It's easier to make something people want because the people I spend my time talking to every day are my team and my customers. With all of the time spent talking to my customers I am incredibly in tune to exactly what they want.
It's easier to stay focused because there is no outside pressure of people to grab coffee with, potential acquirers down the street, "networking", board of advisors, "partnerships", or any of those time sinks.
And lastly it is much easier to "keep expenses low" when you don't have to pay for you and your entire team to live in one of the absolute most expensive places in the world. I have a top team of people recruited from top universities in the area, I have a beautiful office on a harborside pier right in the heart of the city with most of my team in walking distance, my expenses are a fraction of what it would be in Silicon Valley, and I'm still in a US city of comparable size to San Francisco.
In my opinion, Silicon Valley is one of the worst places in the world to hit all of the points Jessica Livingston brought up.
Why is this a distraction?
1) you get introduced to customers indirectly (the partner's users), this isn't necessarily a bad thing but you'd rather have customers come directly to you.
2) the partner's objectives as a business are not your objectives, they may demand exclusivity of you or prevent you from doing business with their (the partner's) competitors. This may come to bite you if your startup grows, evolves or pivots and a better partnership comes along.
3) partnerships usually involve contracts which cost time and money.
These are some nice tips, but the problem with this advice is that it probably won't change founder behaviors.
Most startup founders I know would think that they are focused, building something people want, not over hiring, etc...
With the exception of the default alive or dead, none or the other tips are really quantifiable.
I appreciate everything Jessica has done, and she has a wealth of experience and exposure to a wide variety of startups, but this advice is too subjective.
> If you do the first two things I told you, make something people want and focus, you’ll get growth as a result. And that means you can use growth as a test of whether you’re doing those two things.
In fact, a lot of founders =think= they are building something people want but actually are not. Sure, they are unlikely to change based on a blog post but that's their problem.
P.s. I haven't seen her talk yet.
PS: And i don't like the "not fail" part. You don't want to not fail. You want to succeed. If you fail and succeed the failing is fine.
I've built a product that manages the compliance process for the Big 5 (i.e. PCI-DSS, SSAE16-SOC2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and FEDRAMP).
My product, ComplianceChaos[1] competes with RSA Archer, Protiviti, Lockpath, Aruvio, and MetricStream.
From my research, 80% of IT operations around the world can't confidently certify themselves against any of those information security frameworks. When recently talking to Security Directors and above, they claim "I don't need to comply" or "well we may not be the best, but we're not the worst, so compliance just isn't a priority."
We understand that a big business like General Electric will not do business with your company unless you can show some kind of proof that you're compliant with the Big 5. For example, if you're a cloud service provider or SaaS, GE wants you to certify for SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
We also know that if you host on Amazon's FEDRAMP Compliant environment or Catalyze.io's HIPAA compliant environment, it doesn't automatically mean your company is also compliant. Your company still needs to go through the compliance process too."
When I first set off to build this product a couple years ago, the security officers first exclaimed, "We need a compliance tool so that we don't have to deal with scattered documents and long spreadsheets." When I built the MVP and continued iterating on it, security officers again exclaimed, "this is the most beautiful compliance product I've ever seen! Better than RSA Archer."
However, when I asked them to use it, for FREE, they would say, "Well it's nice, but compliance just isn't a priority for us because the business has other missions like doing real security work". Explaining to them that compliance frameworks like ISO 27001 and FEDRAMP is real security work was met with deaf ears. In fact, they would retaliate saying, "Compliance like ISO 27001 isn't security. It's a low bar, bare minimal, and not enough."
When I counter with, "But 80% of the industry can't confidently assert that they've done due diligence in meeting the compliance controls. If compliance is so bare minimal, then why do only 20% go all the way to Attestation instead of all 100% of you guys?" That question would again fall on deaf ears.
I've recently pivoted to a services company, no thanks to TrustWave for getting sued for performing subpar security compliance auditing work. I'm specifically looking at you auditors who ask employees to put their passwords in a spreadsheet.
So here I am, having built a product and auditing service that IT Operations do in fact need, but do not want. They don't want the politics behind it nor the emotions behind it, and wish to sweep compliance under the rug.
How do I solve for #1 Make something that people want, when nobody wants compliance, but definitely needs it?
[1]http://www.ComplianceChaos.com
I'm going to sleep now, but I would really appreciate reading your responses in the morning and I'll definitely respond too.
How do your competitors sell their products?
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19227/plural-of-l...
* http://grammarist.com/usage/learnings/
* http://www.johnsmurf.com/jargon.htm
* http://www.dailywritingtips.com/what-the-heck-are-learnings/
* http://customerthink.com/16_marketing_terms_to_ban_in_2011/
* http://valleywag.gawker.com/dear-dummies-learnings-is-not-a-...
* http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/9_completely_pointless_co...
Learnings is a plural version of a singular noun that does not exist. And there's already a perfectly good word you can use to get at what it attempts to communicate, namely lessons. (You can even call them lessons learned if you absolutely must shoehorn the idea of learning in there.)
Until this part, that is:
> And you know where the founders of these big winners are going to come from? From this room!
Not sure how to view this part. On one hand, of course she's right. If no "unicorns" ever came from YC, they wouldn't be around still. But it seems to imply that all founders that are going to be wildly successful were in that room. That's either appealing to emotion for morale purposes, or way too elitist. Not sure which.
I took the time of watching the talk, not just read the transcript. Came up with a completely different impression. They really needed some words of encouragement after the meat of the talk.
As the sibling comment says, I've indeed over-analyzed it. My apologies.
I find this sad. It tells you something about humanity. Don't build something people need. Build what they want. Make it addictive. We either don't know what we need or if we know it, we still want something different.