Podcast-conversations with YC founders whose startups failed | Hacker News Reader

Podcast-conversations with YC founders whose startups failed

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105 pointsthinkwithlucie48 comments

Also, This series is good, although sadly, I dont see much new content being added.

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/lessons-from-a-failed-s...

Also, if I were to give one advise to startup founders. Ignore all advice online about how to succeed. It's mostly whitewashed stuff. Unless you know the founder privately, 1-on-1, it is useless. The only honest ones are from failed founders.

Whitewashed as in the secret sauce is kept secret to avoid giving away leverage?

I've contacted founders who completely deleted that experience from their Linkedin and pretended they were never involved with the startup, others wanted to seek YC's permission or were charging a fee to speak with me...crazy

Startups often use dirty tactics and connections to grow, but will later go on to say they just worked hard and found product market fit. The public example that comes to mind is reddit astroturfing their community to grow it, and that's a really mild example. Startups can do some pretty evil shit to get going.

No. Whitewashed as as in give an aura of we did no shady things, we never faked anything, we did not have to give an extreme discounts to anyone, all our discussions with customers were straight forward. We just walked into people's offices, gave presentation and they were a contract, there are no externalities to our product, we are very profitable and stress free at each step of the journey.

Also include, 'We didn't have rich parents, Who didn't provide us with connections and more importantly didn't provide us with the safety-net required for taking risks'.

Hi, sounds interesting- is it available outside of Spotify?

Seems like it https://twitter.com/thinkwithlucie?s=20&t=r9TEtQtGFRgD9pKBYF...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-29-why-do-star...

I wasn't able to find a link that would work with Overcast.

You can add this URL: https://anchor.fm/s/6e02cc2c/podcast/rss

It would be great to be able to add this podcast via RSS. Seems like it's only available on Apple or Spotify

https://anchor.fm/s/6e02cc2c/podcast/rss

Thanks a lot, really excited to listen to your podcast!

Thank you, consider please adding it to Pocket Casts: https://pocketcasts.com/submit/

https://pca.st/pax0qhxj

I wonder what's the most common cause for failure. Or if there's even a common cause.

From my interviews, it seems like cofounder issues and product market fit are the most common reasons. Excited to speak with more founders to prove this point

Co-founder issues would be very interesting to hear more about.

I’m a solo founder and really getting sick from posts everywhere from VCs and investors against going solo.

Don’t get me wrong, being solo is hardest than anticipated but imagine with all the hard work you put, you have the emotional rollercoaster of dealing with a co-founder when you discover you’re not good fits few months or years down the line.

YC always urge to find a co-founder yet there are no stats about how many startups failed due to mismatch or issues between the co-founders.

> I’m a solo founder and really getting sick from posts everywhere from VCs and investors against going solo.

The YC/investor mantra that insists upon founding teams is real, and it's sending the wrong message. How many successful products have been built with solo founders, or with "teams" in which one person is basically making the hard decisions and doing most of the work?

If you can swing it as a solo founder (and many people do) you are avoiding the Russian roulette that comes with pairing up with someone else.

238 Solo Founder Startup Unicorns https://www.failory.com/startups/solo-founder-unicorns

The reason why VC wants you to have a cofounder is because at some point they will ask-force you to do something or integrate with another of their ventures and you don't want to do. The cofounder is there for political purposes, they don't want you to be an immovable object. Confounders get bought out and let go all the time.

It should be obvious there can't be a common cause

Is there a podcast URL I can use to add to Overcast?

https://anchor.fm/s/6e02cc2c/podcast/rss

Off topic: I think Spotify should have created two products - Spotify Music and Spotify Podcast.

Why seperate them?

just uploaded a video version of episode 30 using the new Spotify video feature, works great btw! Powered by Mux <3

Please stop focusing on Spotify.

For one, it’s infuriating that all of the music in my house stops if I want to listen to a podcast. Refuse to even try Spotify podcasts for that reason alone. I often have quiet background music on with a podcast in the foreground.

So the issue isnt really that you want to have podcasts and music be seperate. It's that you want to be able to play two audio streams at once from Spotify.

That isnt a supported feature. They would ask you to get a second account if you want to do that.

90% of startups fail : https://review42.com/resources/what-percentage-of-startups-f... There is no surprise a startup is failing, most of them propose products nobody needs and are a big waste or time, energy and money.

But hey, creating a startup and trying to make it an unicorn is still trending. Still tons of people with too much money have a hobby investing in bullshit tech things, so there is hope for each founder to find a lot of founding money if they are good at selling their product idea, no matter how bad or good it actually is.

And then, when the initial cash flow runs dry, the startup fails, time to create another one !

so what? that’s the cost of making the other 10% happen.

and that’s how society becomes prosperous.

Yes, and the society is doing great and is very prosperous those days, thanks to all those succeeding startups, that's really cool.

Just keep creating startups with all this money, and everything will be fine. No problem at all.

Do you know which website you are using?

Reddit for engineers?

Reddit Orange Edition

Why orange? Nobody knows

Because it's clearly the best color for a bike shed.

Any comparison to reddit here usually incurs the wrath, just a heads up. It can be funny and it can be true, but you will be asking a friend to spare some internet points by the end of the night unless its just like a magnificent specimen of a punchline and a compliment and some type of couched meta acknowledgement.

That stat is well supported, but I wonder what the percentage of failure is within YC, are there any stats on this?

that's a great question, yes, you can use the startup directory to run the stats on inactive startups. on average, every third startup fails If you consider all batches, the average failure rate is 32%

So that makes them much better than the average.

yes of course, YC only picks the best of the best, i think the acceptance rate is around 1%

You can swap startups with restaurants and it still holds true, not sure what the point is.

For me, there is quite a difference between investing millions or even billions in some trending startup who mainly know how to sell their crap tech idea, and investing a reasonable amount of money in a restaurant that will actually serve food to people.

Owners invest more than you think into restaurants to sell their crap food no one needs.

Have we collectively reached Office Space ending. Developer leave to take up construction jobs because it feels more real.

Investing in a restaurant is really similiar to investing in a restaurant without the unlimited upsize most fail in both cases but only one produces unicorns.

One feeds you and drowns your sorrows for free on the way down, the other does your laundry and walks your dog as long as you keep the shackles on just a little longer.

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