Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says (2007)

softwarebyrob.com

53 pointsdshah22 comments

This guy is statistically correct, but reading stuff like this is like kryptonite for entrepreneurs.

What this guy doesn't take into account is that in practice, not everybody is equal. If you learn from the right people and think in the right ways, you can position yourself much better so that your odds are much greater than 2% or whatever random number he threw out there.

It's lame when you see posts like this because all it does is make people want to quit when they are actually learning a lot and taking a chance and seeing what's possible. If you are enjoying what you are doing, keep on doing it for as long as you can.

Clearly it's not easy, and most entrepreneurs would love to face the challenges that successful ones do.

I think you're misunderstanding the post - the author is not encouraging entrepreneurs to quit, but instead highlighting the importance of choosing your niche carefully.

This seems like sensible advice to me - if you want to maximise your chances of success then pick an area to compete where the number of competitors is proportionally smaller or existing competitors have missed the point.

Just because a market may seem boring doesn't mean the technology used to address it will be.

To give an idea of how important this is. If twitter had a real competitor in the early days they would have been toast due to technical issues. However, because they where stumbling alone in the dark nobody was there to rob them of customers. Which game them time to grow large enough and competent enough to become a much harder target.

I think, before I ran my first business this kind of thing would have been discouraging. But now that I have experience building and growing a business, accurate data is good. I think a seasoned entrepreneur will tend to look at grim data and say "OK, now I've got a grasp on this, admittedly bad, situation. How do I make things better?"

> this is like kryptonite for entrepreneurs.

The truth hurts. Everybody wants to be a rockstar, but for most people, it's little gigs all the way.

A proper understanding of what this means will lead to less heartbreak, although the dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur won't care anyway.

I downvoted you because I disagree. We have so many "superman" posts here on HN, we do need the occasional "kryptonite" post.

This is not kryptonite. This is practice kryptonite.

Persistence allows luck a chance to happen.

I'm a strong beliver, having spent a lot of time consulting with various companies, that most of them become successful because they get lucky at some point in their history.

I've rarely seen or worked with perfect companies that have smart leaders and ideas that area too good not to succeed. However, what I have found common is these successful companies usually spent a long time (>5 years) not being successful until one day they land their whale, great PR/marketing opportunity, big idea, etc and become successful.

What did they do different? They weren't smarter, had more money or worked harder than their competitors. What they did was persevere until they got lucky. Luck is a factor of probability and, as long as you don't have a real lemon of a product (and even sometimes if you do), you will be lucky… eventually.

Does anybody really believe startups are easy? When I talk with people, I always make it a point to say "startups are _hard_" -- and everybody nods in agreement.

Note the date on the article. It's from 2007, which was the height of the Web 2.0 / FaceBook App craze, before the market cratered. Everybody - myself, my future brother-in-law, several of my friends, a few of my current coworkers - was creating a startup back then.

Everybody - myself, my future brother-in-law, several of my friends, a few of my current coworkers - was creating a startup back then.

That's funny - I feel like I'll be saying the same thing about 2010-2011 in a few years.

Except this time it'll be with Apps... :)

Startups are easy. It's making one succeed that is hard. That might seem like a semantic nit-pick, but it can be a real problem for some people that easily begin a startup, but don't have the knowledge or abilities (gumption) to succeed.

This is what kills me about the "startups are really hard" stats: it perpetuates the "you're bad if you're a failure" mantra. There have been numerous posts saying how a failing startup is not a failure and something to be congratulated here in the US, particularly in the Valley. Someone recently posted an article as to why entrepreneurship is lagging behind in Japan for exactly this reason. So why scare entrepreneurs here in America?

I've learned, without even having started my own company, that if you build something...ANYTHING...it can only be a good thing. If I created a project and the best stat I ever received was that 5 people used it, the WORST possible thing that could happen is I spent a couple of bucks on hosting, and now I can demo it to every future job I decide to take. If you build something in your spare time, it shows passion, initiative and excitement. Who doesn't want to hire someone like that?

Possibly a reality check for someone who might have been chugging the ol Kool-Aid a bit much.

Unfortunately the "bottom line" section makes the whole article sound like a jaded entrepreneur who made a 'me too' social application that didn't bring in the easy dollars.

So Software startups are hard unless you try a 'boring' idea like 'bug tracking' or 'invoicing software'? Huh? So a software startup is 'easier' if you have have found people suffering problems that cost them real time or money, which your piece of technology can solve?

Guess what - those 'boring' ideas, or the lessons and rationale behind them is the real thing you are learning about building a business. Will it be 'easier' than your me too social app? Not a chance - it will have its own set of challenges and pitfalls - but you will learn even more about process and be be a little more likely to be 'successful' the next time round when you are thinking "Oh, man it would have been easier if I had have done this 'boring' thing over here that these people were successful with".

Who on Earth said startups were easy?

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

Luck is a huge factor in success. Napoleon used to ask of candidates for lieutenant "is he lucky?", and he meant it.

Time and chance, folks. The idea for Facebook is as old as dirt in internet time.

And for Groupon, as well!

Thing is there can be a dozen great ideas out there but it won't necessarily be the best one that succeeds but rather the one that people actually hear about.

Amazing how many people believe if they build it "they will come" with nothing else planned. Oh if only the world were so easy.

Yeah, making "them come" is almost as hard as building a product that will keep them coming back...

> Thing is there can be a dozen great ideas out there but it won't necessarily be the best one that succeeds but rather the one that people actually hear about.

So true. I guarded my own startup idea jealously for years, then one day discovered at least 2 serious contenders. One of them has launched and quit (Contenture). Another one (Kachingle) is still around. Flattr does something similar and has better publicity.

Nevertheless I've realised that it can take years for one startup to suddenly be in the right place at the right time. I'm planning to revisit my startup idea because I think my twists on it are smarter and will give me enough of an edge to be the person for whom time and chance was a friend.

This is a poster case of political correctness gone wrong. Making millions of dollars does not make a woman significantly attractive. Case in point, Kathy Bates, who has a terrible time meeting men, despite her success/wealth/talent.

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