Nice write up on your experience in YC, thanks for that.
How much do you think you get distracted by talking and listening with others in your YC network vs actually focusing on your product?
As a lone wolf programmer, I avoid talking to people
How much do you think you get distracted by talking and listening with others in your YC network vs actually focusing on your product?
As a lone wolf programmer, I avoid talking to people
I've built things solo with my PhD (dropped out), and collaboratively in a startup.
The biggest mistake we make is building the wrong thing. We need to talk to people, whether it's customers, co-founders or colleagues to correct all the incorrect assumptions we've made, but can't see.
If you're building something new, there's likely to be many, many incorrect assumptions...
I don't think talking to users can fix that. If you have the wrong vision about the product, you probably will talk to the 'wrong users' too. You’re not in the market the users think you’re in — you’re in the market you believe you’re in.
That approach will also lead you to very incremental solutions or even make you run around in circles achieving nothing. It lowers the cost of failure (downside), but also the potential impact of success (upside).
I'm writing an essay about this topic, feel free to take a look the draft if your are interested :)
https://ab0ve.substack.com/p/ec282c2c-95fa-4914-820f-7463cb5...
Likewise, Elon Musk has been a big personality for years. Now he can start a company drilling holes and attract big partnerships and investments. When he started, he was just a nobody making maps software, then still nearly a nobody making internet money transmission software. Both relied on the massive wave of internet popularity in the 90s, with PayPal riding eBays wave. In hindsight, victory seems obvious, it looks like they created their markets. In their time, they rode a market wave. Markets are people, and you can’t make people want something they don’t want.