LikeALittle's Ridiculous Hacker House
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
"As soon as I graduated from business school I started a company called ProFounder with two cofounders, Jessica Jackley who had started Kiva before, and Dan Mauriello. While doing that, I met my current cofounders for LikeaLittle, Shubham and Prasanna. They had left Microsoft, came to Stanford, and used to hang out there because they were trying to start a company. A mutual friend introduced us and after a month or two we decided to join forces.
So we started ProFounder. I worked there for about six months and then it moved on to L.A and I didn’t want to go to L.A; I decided I wanted to stay in Silicon Valley and do some consumer Internet things. So, Shubham, Prasanna and I came back to Palo Alto, lived together in a one-bedroom apartment with no furniture, slept on the floor, subsisted off of rice, and tried a bunch of stuff until we caught something that worked.
This was January 2010. For several months we just brainstormed; it wasn’t until October that we actually came up with LikeaLittle. We had probably tried 10 ideas before that and they all failed miserably. So, in October 2010, we created a first edition of LikeaLittle.
We’ve been working together for almost a year, but before YC we had not done any fundraising. We were bootstrapping the entire time; we were living in a one-bedroom apartment our entire time together and then for a two month period, [my cofounders] lost their visas, so we had to go and live in India together. So we lived with my cofounder’s family in India and were doing the startup from there. It was interesting, the power would go out all the time and our users were in America so we had to be on U.S. time; all kinds of crazy stuff was happening.
But, in India there were no expenses. The family would make us food and we’d stay with them; we literally had a zero dollar burn rate in India. So that was pretty fantastic; we kind of had an infinite runway. We’ve basically spent the entire year living off of rice and beans and sleeping on the floor, together."
I wish there were more firsthand accounts like this. Keep up the great work, LAL team!
It's like digital crack. You get a sensational story, and it's kind of cool because it makes the startup world seem more attractive and now you have this overconfidence that you can do it, because well it's just easy and it looks like fun. It's probably better to read the full stories and get the full context. The founders aren't usually in the media to talk about themselves anyway; they're out there promoting their startup, so you're mostly walking away with a sales pitch (although startups do this to varying degrees, Indinero comes to mind when I think of startups who are most intent on using media coverage to grow, just an example). This video was definitely cool though, it's fun to see how they all work. They have one of the best pitches for hiring: "we have some of the smartest engineers" is an easy sell.
Check out the book if you want all the back-stories. It's pretty sobering; a nice break from the koolaid, so to speak.
I actually didn't get that impression when I read (and heard) their hiring pitch. To me, their pitch was "the people who work here are geniuses and you have to beat them to be recognized. Oh did we mention they are the best in <insert continent>?" Not exactly as humble as saying "come and work with brilliant people. you too can have a massive impact."
We had probably tried 10 ideas before that and they
all failed miserably.
That aside, these guys kinda look like they're following the Social Network playbook to the T. I wonder how long it'll be until they hire Sean Parker and dilute one of the founders' stake in the company.
I already have had (and left) a dorm room.
My perfect coding environment is a quiet office, alone, with an awesome view of mountains. High speed internet. Silent computer. Company IM. Garguntuan monitors. On the walls, whiteboard, and a bookshelf somewhere. So, totally not LAL!
I'm glad that there is a culture like this out there. It espouses productivity and gives a real view as to what folks will do in order to try their hand at a serious venture.
Clearly the guys here are aware of exactly what they're doing by putting this whole thing on film. They're happy, they believe in their projects, and they're not ashamed to put this on the record.
Having said that, I remember my early 20s, too.
It's certainly possible to start a company in your 30s - PG did it, founding ViaWeb at 31 and selling it at 34 - but it does seem like a bit of an uncanny valley without many founders. My theory is that people who are the type of person that's going to found a startup probably would've founded it by 26, and then if their first couple attempts failed, they're licking their wounds at 30 and trying to figure out how to give it another go.
Those same people often end up starting follow-up ventures much later, after the kids are self-sufficient. I have one friend from elementary school whose dad is working on his second startup at the age of 70. His first venture - founded at around age 60 - ended up IPOing at a market cap of several billion before crashing and burning.
EDIT: I wish I was experienced enough to work with you guys.
I'm pretty sure in the video the CEO says they're much more interested in aptitude than experience, after all they hired a college freshman.
Evan: This is one of our recruiting strategies. We literally go to recruiting events...and we just tell them, "Hey, I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can beat my co-founder, Prasanna here, in a coding challenge."
Jason: Do you usually win?
Prasanna: Ah, I mean, if we lose...
Jason: Then you're going to hire the guy...
Prasanna: Yea.
These guys sleep like for 3 or 4 hours and code for the rest of the time. Amazing company :)
e: just to clarify, you guys are awesome and i admire your work and attitude... just each to their own and when in rome yada yada
I like that a little, even on the chance that it does fail again at least this time it will be on our terms.
These days, you just use Ruby or Perl or something and its 100x faster to develop and probably runs faster than 1999 C++ on a mainframe did. So there goes your main cost. (Netscape is a good example from that era. Not that great a piece of software -- it ran super slow and needed a lot of people to write it.)
Also, good startups are pretty easy to do with just one person. So when you only have one or two people, you don't need flashy offices or sushi chefs... you just rent a nice apartment and order out. Expensive, but much cheaper than what people did in 1999.