Google aside, that rarely translates into "great business".
I think you mean Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo aside.
I think you mean Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo aside.
Whose interest did those things capture initially outside of a small group of technical people? Were they built and people just lined up outside of Walmart to buy them?
Example:
> Who was the market for the original telephone/telegraph
Gee ... um ... I don't know. Everybody in the world who thought it would be more convenient to get instant verbal communication over a letter that took weeks or months to deliver/respond to?
Let me put it another way. Pierre Omidyar is a technical guy, and more specifically a programmer. Did he choose to develop something that solved an obscure technical challenge, the goal of which was to be published in some computer science journal with a subscription base of 12 people?
No. He had a rare abililty of having both the technical talent and being able to think from the perspective of the general population.
Hence someone like him would be an exception to what I said I've observed.
But for everyone like him that can be cited, I can introduce you to 20 programmers that are trying to start startups around "challenges" so specialized and irrelevant-in-the-scheme-of-things that I know for sure they did zero market research before starting or even during.
Sure, lots of things that seemed like a waste turned out to be very useful with the benefit of an unexpected consequence coupled with unpredictable developments and the benefit of hindsight.
In general, though, I'd prefer to start with "what's needed" and try to come up with a technical solution as simple as possible rather than "what's the coolest thing I could work on technically" and then spend time on that only to find out that 5 people in the world would actually buy it.
Apple in my mind = present an OS GUI according to the needs of the human brain. A lot more than 6 people were/are/will be interested in that.
Microsoft = make big business computer functions possible on the home computer (at least originally). Apparently more than 6 people were interested in that.
Yahoo's proposition originally = the world wibe web is taking off exponentially and you need some sort of list or something to keep track of all the interesting stuff that keeps popping up.
Again, more than 6 people were/are interested in that.
So, only Google. And truth be said, even Google doesn't count that much since from my understanding Google was just living off of angel/VC funding for a few years until a biz-dev V.P. came up with the idea to tie search results to paid advertising as text on the side.
Without what became adwords, Google would have just stayed an interesting technical solution.
Had that V.P. kept his mouth shut and left, secured VC backing based on his cred as an exec in a KP/Seq-backed venture and started his own search engine based on his adwords idea, I suspect he'd be the billionaire and "google" would have turned out to be a startup his subesquent company bought and absorbed.
And yeah, Yahoo! was just making a list of links - hardly a challenging technical problem, but people wanted it.
Do you realize you're arguing with yourself?
The 6 people argument was presented by you, and you're challenging other people based on that.
I'm talking about the actual historical Apple, not the one in your mind. It happened because Steve Wozniak made himself a computer.
http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html
Microsoft, likewise, began not with "business computer functions" but with a Basic interpreter for the Altair.
Yahoo literally grew out of the list of web sites Jerry and Filo compiled for their own use.
I recommend you read Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work, which is specifically about this subject: what actually happened when famous startups were started? It's a common mistake to underestimate the difference between how a startup began and what it later became.
When all those things you described were happening, almost nobody cared = no business. When they turned to meet needs of a much broader audience then the few technical people who were interested in such a narrow range of issues, they took off as businesses. In my mind, "startup" does not equal a business. Business means lots of people pay you money for selling them your thing. So to a limited extent, for example, Woz had a "business" selling computers through ads to computer enthusiasts in the back fo Scientific American or whatever. But that was nowhere near as successful a business as when Jobs visited PARC and realized the research they were doing on GUIs based on the human mind could be significant for a lot of people.
The Yahoo folks may have started with a list specific to their interests, and students may have found it cool, but that was not a business. It became a business when they broadened to general idea of an organized list to the needs of a larger audience.
I've come across quite a few programmers over the last year who turned me down because they said they were busy working on their own startups, all of which were based on solving a problem only they seemed to care about. They incorporated, had a "company", etc.
But that doesn't equal business. Business means people pay you money. For that to happen you have to broaden your considerations to what those people want, not what you care to/can build. I won't, nor will anybody pay any of your startups a penny because somebody wrote really cool code that everyone on Hacker News agrees is awesome. But I'll pay you money if your code solves my needs. You don't care to solve my needs? Fine. You may have a technically awesome thing. I won't pay you for it, though. And neither will anyone else.
Misunderstandings of any details you have in mind aside, in general Google too fits into the general idea: before Google started thinking about how to channel its technology to meet the needs of people with money, it was an interesting startup, but not a great business. The second it took the needs of customers with money into account, then those people handed over their money and that made Google a great business.
My point is that in my mind there is a simple distinction that most startups seem to either accidentally or purposely ignore: startup = bunch of guys working on a cool technical thing / business = bunch of guys working on a thing that makes life better for paying customers.
Having not seen Benny Hill since childhood, I assumed that the reason people were starting startups were to transition to businesses which made life better for paying customers.
Apparently I was wrong. People here, for the most part, as well as just about every programmer I've run into over the last year or so trying to start my own thing, seem to be more interested in starting a startup so they could post "Hey guys, check out my cool thing" type of posts.
I don't know where I'm going wrong here, but unless somebody finds a way to transform positive feedback from Hacker News into cold hard cash, that's not a business. At least not IMHO.
But judging by the feedback I get on other posts, not too many people seem to care about starting a business, just starting "startups" where "startup" = somebody pays me money to sit around writing code and drinking Mountain Dew.
I can't see how that's different from a job where you happen to be working on a cool project.
Isn't that what you yourself said in one of your posts on your blog, or am I misunderstanding your position?
I even posted a post to this effect where I basically summed up the most interesting part (for me) of a marketing book:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=127157
In order to have a clear value proposition to get people to give you their money, you need to answer (according to the book) these questions in succession of difficulty:
Who you are / what you do / for who / because they need what thing that they can't do without you / unlike your competitors / your different in what way / which is a very important distinction (how?) and makes people care (why?).
I'd say most startups start with "who they are" and stop. Some make it to "what they do" although not expressed clearly. The part about "for who" and "why they care" never seems to be spelled out, just implied or something.
The first response is by some guy who took this as both a personal attack and an attack on the whole Y Combinator community!
Then PG comes on and says, "well such and such venture capitalist says he funds business that solve a problem the founders had."
I try to point out that that only holds true as long as that problem is one a huge market of people are also having and are willing to pay for the resolution of.
Then, in a rather futile and pointless exercise, he goes on to systematically knock about 30 points off my all-time high of 80, perhaps under the delusion that I secretly covet a high point tally so I can impress him or something.
It's like, the very mere suggestion that people need to tie their technical ability to practical solution solving for paying customers, especially in this economic climate, seems to meet with rage and fury from programmers who seem to take basic economic reality like a personal insult or something.
> "Make something people will want", since people don't > always know what they want.
That would need perspective and ability to anticipate possible patterns of future development, ability to assign probabilities to multiple scenarios, etc.
All "right brain stuff". Most programmers I've come across, especially here, couldn't seem to care less as long as they post their startup and score points from peers.
Perhaps you could stop being so nice to us. Just kidding. Believe me, most of the programmers here understand this completely. We also understand that things like quantitative market analysis, business plans, etc are for the most part useless because no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. In this regard, I think we are more right-brained, or at the least more honest, in terms of what we think users want. We put out a rough approximation of what we think they want and let them guide us. What could be more empathetic than that?
Name 1 that provides a benefit people care enough to pay for.
... ... ... ...
But if what you said is true, ie, that programmers are "more honest in terms of what we think users want", shouldn't you be able to point to a lot of things?
If it's true that "We put out a rough approximation of what we think they want and let them guide us", how come nobody seems to be guiding anybody towards an offering people are willing to pay for?
Or do you guys just think you're "more honest" and "empathetic" when in reality you may be very, very far from the reality of what people actually want enough to pay for?
I'm sure I've forgotten a hatful.
I can't help but notice, though, that clickfact's management team seems to be around PG's age so I wouldn't call it a pure Y Combinator thing based on the premise of Y Combinator as I understand it.