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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

This is why I get so grumpy about startup narratives. If you ask successful unicorns how they got started, they'll usually explain that's exactly what they did. Garrett Camp was just trying to hire a private driver, and realized it was too hard, there's no reason it should be so hard. Jack Dorsey saw a guy who didn't accept credit cards and realized it would be great if he could accept credit cards.

If you don't realize what's going on, that companies pick their founding myth based on which story sells the best rather than which story occurred on the earliest calendar date, it's very easy to get a false picture of how good startup ideas originate.

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The most realistic founding story so far is Bezos explanation for how he founded Amazon.

It was always a business-first mindset in an area of high growth.

That one short video filmed in 1997 should be a masterclass by itself.

This. Say what you will about Bezos, but he seems to be the most impressive tech founder out of any of FANG and any of the large unicorns founded after Facebook.

Such an impressive list of deft moves that he made (in a range of different areas) one after another between '94 and 2000 to set Amazon on a path to meteoric growth.

One thing to keep in mind is that he worked for nearly a decade in product/business roles before founding Amazon.

I agree that that explains some of the difference. Not sure it means that he isn't the most impressive.

I'd also add that in his stints at different firms pre-Amazon he was quite clearly an outlier among high-achievers.

Anyone has a link to the above video?

I think it's this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

This'd be one instance of said interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM

There's a lot of survivorship bias there. Case and point: the author did have this specific problem, and surely this problem is common.

Uber 'bought' their market - it might not even be viable when they run out of dumping money and have to raise prices.

I think there might be some opportunity in this guys startup with some pivoting.

Also I think there was some funniness on the feedback: Doctor used 'cost' as an excuse, but it may have simply been that the product was not hugely valuable.

Maybe for common drugs it won't help, but there are a zillion drugs out there, maybe doctors want a good reference.

The revenue model he didn't articulate comes from the drug companies. If Doctors used his tool, drug companies might pay for it in some way.

Finally, I have to say 200K lines of code sounds like a lot ...

Exactly. Founder myths gloss over the starting details heavily (perhaps because then they seem merely lucky and hardworking).

For example, a recent Musk biography spent maybe a page on the part where he became successful, and a Jobs one just a paragraph or two.

I'd like to see a compilation of these details.

There is a deep yearning in humans for a good story. However, taking these stories at face value is a recipe for certain failure.

In a certain harsh sense, if you're gullible enough to believe in those stories you're probably not ready to start your own business.

Part of being a successful founder is spinning a yarn for your startup though. It's not improbable that the majority of successful founders are also just good at telling the story about it while glossing over the boring hard parts.

Couldn't the founder story still be true, but simply incomplete? E.g. Jack Dorsey may have been frustrated that a company didn't accept credit cards, but also, he was already a successful entrepreneur and may have spent months or years researching the problem before starting Square?

A lot of these founder stories boil down to coming up with a good idea and then building it. You hear more about the stories where that worked out and less about the stories where it didn't. Plus the ideas and execution quality all vary, along with market timing.

It's hard to say what exactly can be learned from such stories.

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