Reflections of a YC Dropout
orianmarx.com
orianmarx.com
* "Lack of conviction" reads like a moral judgement on the rational business decision to leave a startup that isn't working.
* "Fear" is an emotional word that (to me) implies irrationality; "concern" or "wariness" might be more appropriate, especially because you don't give much context. What are they "afraid" of? A company with no revenue and a 3 month runway?
* In a three-person startup, the "half developer half CEO" probably shouldn't be picking out the ex Goldman developer as good-but-not-excellent for not turning out a feed reader fast enough; why didn't you get it done then? And especially...
* ... when the CEO of that pre-revenue pre-product decides to have the company pay to fly him to SXSW during that dev crisis.
I mean, look, you can do everything right and fail, and everything wrong and still win; startups are a huge risk, keep trying, etc etc --- but you wrote this to get feedback from people, and mine is:
* I wouldn't want you as a cofounder (hey --- my cofounders probably don't want me --- I work my ass off to mitigate that!)
* You seem more engaged with the "lifestyle" of a startup --- lawyers, "networking", advisors, incorporation, "voting" --- than with the reality, which is a mindbending daily grind of work and fear and effort hopefully aimed at getting to cash flow neutral as soon as possible, but most likely aimed right off a cliff.
You're obviously going to do this again; all knocks aside, you read like this stuff is in your blood. Better luck next time.
[edit: toned down very slightly].
Sounds like OP has some personality issues that need to be worked out. And, I got a distinct "mad with power" vibe, as well. Early stage company founders do not need a boss. If they do, they're already doomed to failure. It sounds like this fellow just likes the idea of being chief of something, and isn't all that good at it. Many nerds have started companies without management chops or a good personality, but they made up for it by producing code that solved a problem. I'm getting the distinct impression the OP (who may or may not be strong on the code front) is definitely weak on the management and personality front, but wanted to spend all of this time managing and "networking".
I don't claim to be an expert on this stuff, but I am a nerd, and I do produce (when it's my place to do so, though in my current startup, I produce far less code than my co-founder), and I think I would have ditched this startup, too. Nerds, in general, aren't good at being bossed around, and the kind that start companies definitely aren't good at being bossed around.
But, I agree with you. The guy probably does actually have a good company in him (because dedication and a healthy appetite for risk are the primary requirements...everything else pales in comparison). He just needs to keep assessing how he can do things better next time, particularly when it comes to interacting with co-founders.
Wow-- I think the OP failed to learn a few lessons. The biggie is the seeming lack of empathy for his partners and his apparent belief that he's in charge.
At this level, it's a partnership. As a CEO, it's not your job to lead and have your partners follow. It isn't your job to make unilateral decisions on how you spend your time (networking versus coding). With a small team, you can be a cheerleader, a tiebreaker, and a buck-stops-hear guy... But for the most part-- it's a damn partnership.
And it's pretty clear to me that the poster didn't treat it like one, which is a shame.
I think he's very right about the team needing to have the same level of commitment... His deeper commitment is probably why he felt entitled to "lead", even when PG suggested that that might be the problem.
A couple of things I should probably point out: the SXSW was supposed to be a team trip and the point was for everyone to have the experience of interacting with a bunch of top notch startup people (we aren't from the valley) and I only proposed it a few weeks ahead of time after we had a lot of people telling us that it was the single most useful thing to attend all year (I didn't even know about it before then). Only two of us ended up going, but that wasn't my intention.
When we landed the YC interview, it meant flying from NYC to LAX for a ten minute interview. We were told that only I needed to fly out, but I said everyone should go because they deserved the trip. This was obviously not the cost-efficient approach, but I think it was a lot better for the team.
As for the Goldman comment, I find this to be a typical programmer retort to any questioning of what they are doing: "If you're so great, why don't you do it yourself?" In fact, I didn't question what he was doing for way too long precisely for that reason, and I think that was a mistake. Now as for doing it myself... there are some areas of technical knowledge that I do not have, which is why I brought people on. Now that I'm on my own again, I'm doing my best to get it done myself.
Hey, you probably wouldn't want me as a cofounder, fair enough. I appreciate the better luck next time comment though.
Kudos to you for sharing.
However, it may be worth noting that tptacek and SwellJoe both have (fairly) successful startups. I don't, and neither do most of the rest of the people here. So when they say something, it's probably worth listening to.
Something I've noticed about writing postmortems: focus on "What would I do differently?" and "What mistakes did I make?"
Other people are who they are. You aren't going to change them, and they usually have good reasons for what they do.
Most startups fail because of team issues. Mine did - I tried to keep it going for 2 months after my cofounder left, but couldn't. But then, this is my fault. If we'd been further along in development, he might've felt that the startup was a better bet. If I'd listened to him and released the easy version he was proposing, we might've been further along in development (but then, we had good reasons for not doing so...startups are hard). And he certainly had good reasons for leaving - hell, if I'd gotten into HBS, I probably would've left too.
Here we have a CEO that refuses to step down to keep the company together, that gets two votes in group decisions while his partners gets one, and that places all the blame for failure on his cofounders when things go south. The arrogance approaches the comical, it becomes more and more outrageous as one reads along.
What is the first lesson he learned? "Getting the team right". You see, he had a bad TEAM. That explains the company failure. Yep. Not him. Nothing to do with the guy that chased away perfectly competent people that wanted to work with him. Nothing to do with the guy IN CHARGE.
Leadership is a two way street. You can't have control without responsibility! I don't think there is any team that wants to work with that kind of leader. You will never "get the team right" if you see your position that way!
His second "lesson learned" is to connect with people, and by "people" he means networking with potential investors, advisors, other businessmen, etc. Yet he never connected with his own teammates!
Next, he finally finds fault in his own leadership. You see, he is too much of a consensus seeker so he can't get things done quick enough! Obviously, he places too much trust in his cofounders. THAT is what he believes his problem is.
Then there's this little gem: "Then I decided not to take Paul Graham’s advice to make the other partner our CEO for the sake of civility (a decision I stand by fully), which effectively ended the company." You would rather your company fail than not be in charge? What kind of leader is that? You still stand by the decision that killed the company? What does that say about you?
Good leaders are famous for taking credit for failure, even when it is not entirely their fault. They also DON'T take credit for success. They let others give the credit to them unbidden. That's what causes their subordinates to at first respect them, and eventually love them.
Dear author: does that sound like you?
I'm sorry if I'm a little harsh; as I read this it is blowing my mind a little more with every paragraph.
I placed a great deal of trust in my team for nearly a year and some of that came back to bite me. Yes I did list a lot of flaws, but they were not flaws that everyone had in common, they were the things that stood out to me as being problematic across the length of the venture and, well, I thought I mentioned a lot of things I thought I should do differently. But I am open to hearing more.
In a three-person (or two-person, by the time this particular piece of drama came to a head) company, there is a team, and there are players, and if the team is running well there's a team lead --- who's there because the team believes they'll function better with a leader. If the team wants to sound "all grown up", they'll call the leader a "CEO". My team still doesn't call Dave the CEO.
Using the word "CEO" in this situation is a "tell". Think about what you're saying.
How was the other person not more suited for the position? The company couldn't survive under you, it might have under him. Do you care more about being in charge or having a successful business? Can you picture yourself working in a successful startup where you are not the CEO?
If you're just getting started, and you have no leverage, picking up part-time founders makes perfect sense.
They will never be as devoted as you will be. They will never be as committed. Sure they may be talented and will write tons of code for you - but what happens if they leave and you have to figure out how all of their code worked?
I'm sure you've read all the articles written by other entrepreneurs about how much dedication it takes to build a company. There are always exceptions to the rule (del.icio.us), but I'd say most successful startups require your full attention.
Vest everyone's shares too - if I bail on you early, I might just have a few % of the company when I leave.
I think it's OK to have varying levels of commitment. Of course, the CEO should be 100% in the game. But I've worked with developers part-time, as partners, and found them reliable and committed with a lower number of hours.
Second, I just want to share one thing I've learned. There's a lot of pyschology mumbo jumbo in your analysis but all that really matters is the numbers. How many pageviews/users/sales/conversions did you have? Etc.
One thing I've learned about Internet startups is that you absolutely cannot force them. The market dictates your success plain and simple. It sounds like you guys weren't listening to the market; you were not paying enough attention to the numbers. That's really the only thing you should pay attention to. A month into my startup last year, one of the co-founders said to me and the other partner:
Him: "Guys, I've discovered a pattern in our traffic." Me: "Well, what is it?" Him: "Every week it decreases." Me: (Proceed to ignore the importance of this simple statement and pursue the idea for 5 more months, believing that because we had a good team and we thought the idea was good we could succeed, which was too bad because from month 1 the market was giving us PRICELESS advice--we should have been working on a different idea)
Every other mistake was irrelevant because the only thing that matters is the numbers.
Or, "build it and they will come."
Wrong. You need to have market hypotheses and you need to build the smallest test cases possible to try and falsify these hypotheses.
That means instrumentation, a data-driven mindset, and the ability to iterate quickly.
You'll know very quickly if you're sucking. And you probably are.
Let me just jump in on a topic that I've seen a few times, and one that I think throws programmers for a loop. It's the whole "premature scalaculation" thing.
Did you know the 3 guys who built YouTube initially didn't start it out as a video site? It was a dating site! Even more, did you know they didn't even use a version control system? The philosophy was "push once a day, make some type of change that the user can see." They also were focused on building out features, not worrying too much about scalability at first.
The guy who started PayPal said that one of the most painful parts were the times where he had to delete massive amounts of his own code. He said one of the biggest flaws of engineers is to write "the perfect code." And yet, 90% of it gets destroyed shortly after it's written.
I'm not an advocate of crap code. In fact, at our startup, we write very good code and follow the API models of companies like Google and Flickr so as to have a scalable product and architecture with clean, readable, commented code. But when you're a startup, you have different priorities.
I'd say maybe the first 6 months (an arbitrary number) don't worry about scalability. You don't even have a user ;) Why not worry about how you'll get your first 100 users, or better yet, how you'll get your first 100 users happy, as Paul Buchheit puts it?
On a final note, I read someone else mention about the CEO thing. In my opinion, you don't need a CEO until you at least have user growth down. Yes, you want investors, but try to offset most of that work to PG or whoever else is investing. It's in their interest that you succeed too. You should be working day and night with your engineers, building the product. It will make the future fundraising and meetings much easier, just think about Google and Andy Bechtolsheim.
I really enjoyed reading this, and I think you're going to go far in the future. Sometimes we get dealt some bad cards, and the only thing you can do is to fold 'em and wait for the next hand. Stay persistent, stay focused, and kick ass.
Really? Source? I knew that the they'd created the "I was at a party and realized there was no good way to share videos" story for the press. But I thought the actual story was that they'd done market research about trends that were changing the technology landscape, and came up with the rise of cellphone video and broadband access. From there, it was a short leap to "let's put video online".
I believe the idea was sparked after one of the founders read a particular wired article.
Hmm, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssfmTo7SZg
The genesis section starts around 25 minutes in. Looks like we're both right: they mention the Wired article at 25 minutes in, then the cell-phone video aspect (via Indian Ocean tsunami) at 29:00, and the other enabling technologies (including broadband) at 31:41.
I saw an e-mail that one of the founders wrote, and I can't remember where it was.. maybe at the second meeting which was private/not recorded. The contents of the e-mail were asking friends to tell their friends, and they offered to pay girls to sign up on the site and upload videos (thinking it would draw in guys).
It's kind of silly to argue how YouTube started--the argument I was trying to make initially was that your code will probably be erased shortly after it's written, especially if you're not sure what your company will be working on.
It's kind of like earlier today I was struggling through a paper written on a topic of advanced mathematics that I'd never worked on before. I asked a friend with a PhD in math if he could explain it to me. He used the same terms that I didn't understand from the paper in his explanation. So, I stared at the paper for another two hours. I doodled on my whiteboard. I could visualize the solution to the problem, but I couldn't work out the mechanics. Eventually it dawned on me, and it was really simple ... in retrospect.
I think a lot of things are like that. Parents try to warn their kids about their mistakes and it rarely works. I think the real lesson, perhaps, is to not be afraid to fail. Bite off more than you can chew and be willing to fail and learn from it. You'll definitely make mistakes, and your startup may fail, but you can at least be certain that you'll learn an enormous amount in the process and that you'll be able to carry that knowledge with you the next time you take a swing.
(This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something. Perhaps something to do with constructivism.)
The second major revelation was that this primitive part should not be dismissed as weakness or a useless carryover from a different evolutionary era. I know that in my case, if I always acted in ways that seemed perfectly rational to me at the time, with nothing inhibiting me, I'd be dead many times over by now.
I think what you're looking for is two words, not one: "Experience matters".
Maybe proverbs are more tags than content, like labels on bottles: the label tells you what's in the bottle, but to absorb it you have to drink the contents.
If that's right, then proverbs' main value is in retrospect - i.e. they help to organize experience and talk about it, but not to replace it. I know I've sometimes snorted at a proverb as being totally obvious, or a useless cliche, only to get hammered by experience and later go, "Oh, so that's what it meant."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation
Unfortunately Wikipedia fails to mention what the current academic consensus on that is.
Q: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg?
A: Four.If you read the history of an event how does that compare to living through it? Can you learn to ride a bike from a book? The challenge with a startup--like many other things in life--is that you need to integrate many different inputs, your own hopes and fears among them, and negotiate a working consensus with your co-founders.
You can be told, "look both ways before you cross the street," but it takes being hit by a car to really convince you to make the sacrifice of abandoning your current thought process whenever you approach a road.
There is nothing wrong with your cofounders. They are who they are and that's that. You spend the entire time looking for reasons to blame others, but my friend you should look into a mirror tonight because that is where you will face the problem.
You should try to develop your ability to pick partners, but even with a great partner you sound like someone who is way too emotional.
I thought I would never say this to anyone, but you are not ready to be a CEO. If the guys you thought would help you change the world, were not ready to confirm with your strategy and you stood there trying to fight it instead of explaining it, then you need more time and experience.
Sincerely.
That's never a productive thing to say to someone. Either it's true - in which case one of the symptoms of their unreadiness is that they won't hear you - or it's false, in which case you're just wrong.
There've been many times when I've thought it about someone, but the only thing you can do there is avoid working for/with them.
It seems that a lot of people here took my posts to be me just blaming my partners, but that must be a light reading because I definitely talk about my own shortcomings, and I take responsibility for what ultimately happened. I've been looking in the mirror constantly for the last three months, and posting here is part of that process of reflection too.
People who are really successful in these roles seem to be completely unafraid in business situations where a lot of fear would probably be warranted.
And there are always lots of people standing by and ready to offer up plenty criticism...
The main thing that stuck out was how you seemed to be a programmer as an after thought. Particularly with the voting scheme; did you not have a genuine belief about the right way to pursue certain tasks? Whether from the beauty of a design, or the long standing approach it might have, or from a quick tweak to an existing infrastructure. I also don't think its enough to 'marvel' at two or more viewpoints. Just the fact that they can exist isn't enough, as you do a disservice to both/all parties unless you go with a decision, hopefully one that jives in some way with an internal model of how you see or have come to see things, and thus consistent.
Finally, I got the sense that you were 'hosting a party but constantly worrying about whether people are having a good time'.
These aren't meant to be brutal comments its just I think your series deserves an honest response!
if I suggest this to you, what would your reaction be:
- Call up all the old team members and apologise honestly, blaming everything on yourself
If you instantly thought it is something you would never do, then you've not learned.
Not cool.
My startup has its ups and downs. Lately it's had several downs. C'est la vie. People are always telling me I should be blogging about this stuff. I don't see how it would do me much good until I'm at the point where my product is doing what it needs to do. Otherwise I think I'd just be telegraphing to people to steer clear.
I think you should be blogging :)
> Get the Team Right
> Be Wary of Founding With Friends
I think I remember Marc Andreesen writing that the best way to start a startup is when a pre-gelled team meets a new opportunity. Can't find the blog entry in question, but he suggested that any other founding scenario has drastically lower odds of success.
I thought I had a fairly strong team, with 4 other guys that I'd known (and been fairly close to) in college. Over the year we worked, they all dropped away, one by one. They just had better opportunities come up, and when it comes to the actual daily grind, startups...kinda suck. I'm lucky; I escaped with all the relationships intact, probably stronger than they were before, and one of them just sent me a job offer last month to come work with him (hmm, I wonder if that still stands, in light of the recent financial crisis ;-)). A lot of that came from deliberately taking the short end of the stick on many occasions, eg. I put in the lions share of work and did not take a leadership position. Many others aren't so lucky, and lose their friends in addition to their startup.
I'd also add that it's really important to have worked with people on a project, not just in social settings, and for them all to be on the same page regarding what they want with their life. A lot of people really want to be an employee: they can't deal with the uncertainty and random bad luck that comes with being in a startup. It's a losing strategy to try and force them into a startup; it's not good either for them or for your startup.
> Connect With People to Thrive
I was a little skeptical of this: when I wrote up my postmortem, one of my lessons was "If you're doing anything other than building your product or getting users, you're wasting your time." But there's always the possibility that I'm the one who's wrong: after all, we both killed our startups. ;-)
I think, in hindsight, that I'd look at it this way: Don't expect to get anything out of networking if you don't have a kickass product. However, don't expect to get anything out of networking anyway. If you do it without any expectations whatsoever, just taking an interest in the people around you, you might build some useful connections.
The other thing that struck me: it seems like your startup dissolved before it got to the daily grind of actually trying to build something people want. And that's the part that's really depressing. I never thought that emotional stability would be the limiting factor in startups, but ultimately, that's what killed mine. I remember talking to a coworker who'd previously done a few startups, before starting one, and he told me "Make sure you come out with your sanity intact." I quit because I felt like that was slipping away, and I was becoming someone I didn't really want to be.
Are you going to continue with this same concept, or going to start on something new? What are you going to do differently now to make sure that the startup succeeds? Or this this Part IV of your blog? :)
Orian's case brings up a good question that I've dealt with in the past, and I am sure is on the minds of many startup founders here - how important is it that the co-founders are all technical, and are all coders? Is it, "product first, marketing second?" Or is it equally just as important to have a strong "networking" guy on the team? If so, what are his roles, just networking, or coding as well? What about a guy who is doing the coding but feels he could do networking just as well, is it unfair to him?
Going back to Orian... judging based on other factors, there seems to have been some trust impediments in my opinion - having two votes when all other things being equal is not a fair distribution, even for the sake of maintaining decision-making. Trust between partners is more important than decision making, otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
Rather than take apart Orian's flaws, I am trying to understand if this startup could have been saved. What if Orian went to his parners, and said, "Guys, how about we all participate in the networking?" (Assuming he did his equal share of the coding by working on the demo.) Maybe this would have generated some further excitement and instilled trust in them? AND, it would become self-evident whether or NOT the networking efforts equaled the coding efforts. I know that some may argue this is not a good solution, because concentrating on networking would have further removed them from realizing a product, but at least it could have played a role in bringing the team back, which it sounds was their first priority. Another thing, higher visibility and transparency. If all the partners were stuck in the same office all day long, maybe this lack of trust would diminish? Maybe a regular status meeting to keep tabs on everyone's progress? What does everyone (including Orian) think, what would be possible solution in their case?
It is very common for successful companies to have key founders quit before payday and during shitty times. The company lives through the tough times.
What has served me well is to have an attitude that I am going to go along on this ride(my startup) regardless of my cofounders. Until you can sustain that belief, your start-up will live on(hopefully with your co-founders--but not necessarily).
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
God if I wasn't a heterosexual, I would marry David Hansson
See his presentation at "startup school 08" . You won't be disappointed.
( ouch instantly downmodded for recommending other beneficial resources.... 0.o )
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
I think this book would have helped with some of the prioritization issues the author of this blog post describes.
Or his emphatic appeal to iteratively build a market for your evolving product rather than over-invest in engineering, miss your sales estimate, and fail to service negative cash flow in a "Noh play" of blame and catastrophe?
I think the "death spiral" scenario Blank describes in the book (using WebVan) happens less often now, but still, people don't talk to their target market enough. Maybe this is why people who are making things for themselves tend to do well, they can skip this step and still come out OK.
Maybe I just wasn't clear. What I got from this article was the very simple "Get Real" concept. No need to focus on intangibles until you have the only tangible that matters: your product.
I agree this concept is so "basic" but if this article is making top page, perhaps we still have some more beating to do?
http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/16/reflections-of-a-y-combi...
as a friend told me once, when you add a second person to your team and it's the wrong person, your overall performance will fall under 100% of what you could be doing alone.
This is what I sometimes feel that I'm unfortunately experiencing myself (we are two).
CEO? Why would you need a CEO when there isn't a company to run either on paper or in actuality?
A CEO twittering all day long, hanging out / socializing / spending money at conferences and meetups is NOT going to bring ANY value to the startup at all.
You first need a product!
Once you have a product out of the door, a proven idea and a cash flow you can start worrying about filling up those hi-procrastination roles. Until then worry about finding people who can code, can design, can hack, can do anything that has a measurable outcome.
When I was 100% a geek, I would agree with you: the product (code) is everything, who cares about those other minor business annoyances?
Reality: how programmers does it take to implement a good product that people will buy? More than you can afford. How do you afford them? Raise money. Which for you may mean "pitch to dumb rich people", but that's still a CEO's job.
At any time in the project development, a good pitch to the right business partner can turn the company around and greatly improve its prospects. Yes, if you don't do any of those "CEO" things, you may still succeed because you push through an amazing product. But why take the chance? Try to do everything well, the product development, as well as the CEO/pitching part.
I think the value of the technology is.
IMO, where value exists, everything naturally follows, including people/companies that want to network with value.
I found the story to be rather depressing, yet there were a few points that were - to me anyway - glaringly obvious.
Someone focusing on suit type endeavors when that someone is an engineer/geek/hacker/techie/[insert name for us here] is irresponsible in that it amounts to a gross misallocation of resources.
In other words, any double digit IQ'er wearing a suit can network, but not everyone can design and code and troubleshoot, which is what creates value.
Networking for the purpose of getting to know people can be useful, but during the early stages of a startup if you are out talking to people your goal should be to understand your target market better. Otherwise, don't worry about networking instead of coding until you need to raise money.
I completely disagree with this point...
"Someone focusing on suit type endeavors when that someone is an engineer/geek/hacker/techie/[insert name for us here] is irresponsible in that it amounts to a gross misallocation of resources."
What do you plan to do if that person doesn't exist? Wait to sell your product until you can hire one? Get another co-founder to go out and raise money? PG talks about Sam Altman pitching phone execs the early days of Loopt to great success, and his background was CS not sales.
"any double digit IQ'er wearing a suit can network, but not everyone can design and code and troubleshoot, which is what creates value."
There are two fallacies here.
First, the fallacy that everyone can network equally well. Some people are incredible at networking, they can network so well that they are a valuable asset to a company for that reason alone. (See Keith Ferazzi) Everyone can "network" but only certain people can make their network pay very well.
Second, that only coding creates value. A great product still doesn't sell itself. What do you think Apple would be without brilliant marketing? You can have the best product in the world technically, but in terms of market value you have nothing if its not sold.
Of note is that while pitching execs in the early days he was also doing at least 2x the development work of anyone else. He didn't stop coding until long after we had a fully functional demo application that was good enough to raise our series A.
I am sure that some are better than others at networking, my point was (minus my admittedly harsh figurative description) that high intelligence and knowledge are best applied to something that mandates intelligence, as opposed to something that does not mandate a high level of intelligence and knowledge. Those kinds of activities (networking, sales, marketing) do not mandate exceptional intelligence, from what I have seen those mostly require innate skill and experience. Many people can network, sell, and market. Not many can code.
Now, I mentioned more than coding when I referred to what I believe creates value, however I will respond to your point by saying that 1) creating value is conducive to attracting attention IMO 2) I did not state that there should be no networking/marketing/promotion at all, I wrote that it should not be done before a product is ready, and that it should be done by someone adept at it (usually not a propeller head like me, for example, although I am sure some guys are skilled at those activities as well as tech work)
I still think this is arguable, you describe what separates star marketers from the rest is "innate skill" in this case innate marketing/sales/networking skill. However, I think I can equally make the case for star marketers. I'll discuss you're argument from the marketing perspective because its the area I'm most familiar with and feel most qualified to speak for.
Marketing isn't just a game of follow these rules and you will be successful, its not just a matter of experience either. If it were, marketing agencies wouldn't be differentiable and campaigns like Absolut wouldn't have cult-like status. Just as there is an so described "innate skill" for programmers I would argue that there is a similar type of "innate skill" that separates the best marketers from the rest. To say that intelligence on the same level as programming isn't mandated for marketing is demeaning to that profession as a whole and represents a misunderstanding of what really goes into a well defined marketing strategy. Admittedly, it may not be as quantitatively measured as programming, but that does not mean it requires less intelligence or is less demanding.
I do agree with your point that creating value is conducive to attracting attention, but by no means is it a limiting factor. There are plenty of historical examples where things of little to no value, when marketed well, rose to great success. (The pet rock, among other things)
I've done a fair amount of both programming and marketing, and while I don't claim to be a "star" at either, I still cringe when people dismiss one or the other categorically as being of little added value. It happens from both sides and most of the time just represents a lack of understanding of the efforts that go into either.
I did not say that marketing was a follow the cookbook type endeavor either.
Problem with this point is that, neither one of us in this small debate has any hard data to back up or counter our respective points (does any exist? I personally doubt it) which are highly subjective anyway, mostly based on anecdotal perception.
I stick by my opinion however, and can point to the relative number of programmers versus marketing people in the global workforce as indicative of what I am saying . . . if more people were smart enough to program, as opposed to market, they would . . .
Marketing has its place, but to an admittedly occasionally arrogant geek such as myself (who has come across some incredibly, impossibly dumb marketing types) they are figuratively just the people who stand outside the shop on the sidewalk and try to get people to step inside and look at the wares . . .
Can you further explain here? Market forces will determine where people go, salaries will rise until people move into those positions. The number of people in given positions is not indicative at all of the skill of the people taking those jobs.
"Marketing has its place, but to an admittedly occasionally arrogant geek such as myself (who has come across some incredibly, impossibly dumb marketing types) they are figuratively just the people who stand outside the shop on the sidewalk and try to get people to step inside and look at the wares . . ."
I agree with you that this is an extremely arrogant viewpoint. I've met many stupid programmers but I don't assume the same of all programmers. I also think you're confusing the roles of sales and marketing but that's beside the point.
Discounting the value of people who aren't like you isn't a very great way to get anywhere in life, especially as an entrepreneur.
You are not reading what I write. I did not mention skill, I mentioned intelligence. Those are not the same.
It is quite simple. Look at all occupations. There are more non-intellectually demanding jobs than there are intellectually demanding jobs. There are more dumb people than smart people on the planet. That is obvious.
Speaking of market forces, why are programmers on average paid more than marketing and sales people?
You have met stupid programmers? Interesting. I agree that not all are extremely bright, however, anyone who is truly stupid will not be able to even learn how to program, much less become worthy of the title programmer, whereas, I have seen some nearly illiterate folks working in marketing, and sales, and I realize those two are different, even though I do not bother to differentiate between the two when making reference to them.
"Discounting the value of people who aren't like you isn't a very great way to get anywhere in life, especially as an entrepreneur."
Neat, now you are starting the personal attacks.
Innate skill and intelligence are pretty much the same thing. (Although I would argue that intelligence can grow as a function of effort).
"Speaking of market forces, why are programmers on average paid more than marketing and sales people?"
The pay of programmers vs. marketers is pretty comparable. Check salary.com
"Neat, now you are starting the personal attacks."
No, just responding to your multi-post personal attack against marketers/bizdev with one against arrogance. Its up to you whether to take it personally.
I have more points I could make, but this doesn't seem to be going anywhere useful so I'm done with this discussion.
salary.com? Please.
I wrote "on average".
As far as "on average" goes, where do you think salary.com/payscale.com get their data, averages of real-world salaries.
Wrong.
>(see dictionary)
Skill n. 2 a) an art, craft, or science, esp. one involving the use of the hands or body b) ABILITY IN SUCH AN ART, CRAFT, OR SCIENCE
ISBN 0-02-860586-1 pg. 1257
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skill%5B2%5D
1 obsolete : cause , reason
2 a: the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance b: dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks
3: a learned power of doing something competently : a developed aptitude or ability <language skills>
(emphasis mine)
Edit: Stalemate?
This is overly optimistic about the capacity of your fellow man to recognize value. Sometimes you just have to tell them what the value is, and if you don't have a network, you have no one to tell. Sounds ridiculous to nerds like you and I, I know, but if you spend a little time in the corporate world you'll begin to see how much major purchase decisions are made based on what a trusted individual recommends. A lot of times the "trusted" individual is a vendor with a vested interest in selling something. This actually works better in the long run than you might think, because most people work in the same business for many years, and if one vendor screws them (while seeming very nice), they have time to learn and change to another vendor (probably also someone they've spoken to before).
But, I do think the OP does have some prioritization issues. It always comes back to the product. If you don't have a great product, you don't have a company worth networking for.
It has its place, but just as useful at times is getting together with a group of peers you trust and exchanging notes. Having a few beers and talking about what challenges you're having, what breakthroughs you've made...
I think the tradtional idea of networking is overemphasized among a lot of startups (and sometimes dangerously so) because it's an abstraction away from the work that keeps them alive. You've got to make sure you keep a watchful eye on your schedule and don't confuse attending X and Y event for Z productivity.
Not sure I'm saying "my kind of networking meets X times per month", but I will say this: we organized monthly meetups for the professionals in our market (computer/network security), made it as all-inclusive as we could, and it's been far more valuable to us than the vanity networking we did early on.
Isn't this one of the major recurring criticisms of valley culture? That all those people do is go to parties with the same people every night?
I'm with you on that.
SXSW trips not so much.
I don't think Wozniak did much networking. I don't know what would have happened if Jobs got mad at him because he didn't.
I'm not sure I'd question the commitment of people who were actively building the product either. It sounds like this startup really had some forward momentum with people getting stuff done. I'm not sure the authors expectations were reasonable, and I think he had to work fairly hard to kill this startup.
I agree with the second part of your comment.
On the other hand, some folks take being pragmatic to an extreme, as in no order/uniformity/quality control/structure/thought into design/effort to identify possible future issues and a general just get whatever done in a hurry and push it out the door attitude . . . which is all just as bad as too much formally define roles/establish this and that and the other/talk about and plan stuff to death/posture around with this and that and the other . . .
If you have good people, some funding, a demo and the start of a code base then thats a lot to lose over your expectations on networking and days of the week devoted to the startup. Even if the truth is more networking and fulltime cofounders would have helped.
I certainly may have killed the startup by emphasizing things that I thought were important, but it doesn't make any sense to think I was actively trying to kill it. My point was that I was blindsided by what happened in the end, so now I've gone back to think about how we got there and, you know, these are some of the conclusions I've drawn and of course they could still be wrong.
On the one hand you could feel in retrospect that the conflict points were important enough that the startup could never have succeeding without the direction you were pushing - so you were lucky it ended swiftly. On the other hand if you think your startup had a good chance of success even if you hadn't won those battles, then you may want to look at your conflict resolution.
After spending a few months thinking "okay, so how did it get to that point, and I didn't even realize it" I wrote my reflections. I still think the startup has a good chance of success, but not with the dynamics that were at play then.
It totally depends on the product, but from the YC PoV, you have 3 months to build something that dazzles investors. Generally, YC discourages hunting for networking/bizdev/funding deals because you have EXACTLY ONE SHOT to impress a room full of the most important early stage investors on the planet.
You can always network after you've got a product, but if you can't do both at once, product comes first.
Edit: What I mean by this is networking at the expense of product/technology building.
As for allocating resources to networking before there is a working product, check out www.path101.com. I met these guys when they did an open brainstorming session with nothing but a preliminary pitch deck and not a line of code. Being open from very early on enabled them to find angel investors and their first employees, and when it came time to doing an alpha launch they had tons of people that had been eager to try the thing out for months.
What happens when it turns out that the bullet points with features cannot be implemented, or are simply not the best solution for the users?
I find pg's thoughts on the subject of how problems may end up being redefined as they are being worked on to be very wise advice.
I know successful (>10M revenue) companies who have mocked up a brochure and sold it this way. Their thought was "if they don't bring out a credit card right away you aren't solving a pain, you dont have a product".
Consumers/users ALWAYS get screwed in those type of scenarios. I don't believe in taking risks with other people's money.
1. Create mockup/demo/realistic brochure/non-functional physical prototype 2. Go to your target market. Count number of targets 3. Try to sell them the product at the target price 4. Once they hand over their credit card etc, just hand it back. 5. Tell them thanks very much for their support, but this was a test so you can make sure the market wants the product, if they want we can contact them when/if the product is ready. 6. Do your stats. What proportion of the target market you sampled bought the product. Extrapolate to the estimated population to get an idea of how many units you can sell. [rinse and repeat to make your product more attractive to the market]
It's the only way I have ever heard of turning a snake-oil, soothsayer business plan into one that can statistically show the uptake of your product in the market.
I refuse to believe that there is no other way of conducting a market study other than resorting to sneaky, dastardly little tactics. Why? because there ARE other ways.
Also, nice strawman, I obviously did not counter with "conduct NO market studies/surveys" - I came back with "that's dishonest and I don't believe in it".
Funny, how I have set up services (granted, not products) that made me money and I did not have to resort to cheap little deceptive tricks.
I would rather have a product I can be statistically confident is going to sell because users have wanted to pay for it. There's no debating whether it's right for the market or not.
Thanks for the discussion by the way, this is fun :). If you do have a better way I'd love to know.
I am seriously curious to know how many times you have seen that work. I would think that many people would resent the tactic and retaliate by not purchasing your product, or they would lose their trust in you (and rightly so, you done suckered them once) and therefore respect. It's interesting to note how many thousands of products have been researched, developed, and taken to market to great success, without deception tactics.
I guess we will agree to disagree on the ethics. I personally don't find it any different than deceptive advertising that is used in the majority of sales channels worldwide, the many deceptive claims of products overstating the benefits, understating negatives etc.
I simply refuse to do it because others are, and believe that successful market studies can be carried out without deceptive tactics.
This general attitude and outlook on my behalf actually mostly derives more from sheer pride than from any sort of assumed moral superiority - I simply can't sleep at night if I think that I applied or relied on anything other than my own merit to achieve something, and deceptive/slick tactics make me feel as though I cheated because I was unable to do it the hard way . . . that kind of thing.
I will close by conceding that I may be wrong about this, however, I might also just end up identifying more user needs in a highly accurate manner with my approach, which is conducive to even greater profits.
How dissapointing. I have seen PHP do better than this. This is depressing.
I had/have the same aversion to selling things that don't exist that you have. But honestly, I think that the next time I do a startup, I'm going to do it that way. I get really sick of speculatively building things that nobody wants. Why not make sure they want it first and then build it?
Plus, two of my favorite startups - DropBox and RescueTime - both used this approach (though perhaps with a little less dishonesty - they clearly marked it "demo"), and their products are better for it.
Often times first thing I want to do is jump into code, and it's the last thing you should be doing. Proving the market is critical, and the only way you can prove it exists (for most companies) is to fake sell.
When people tell you, I would buy it if it had this feature, they are often lying. Unless they are willing to pony up their credit card, you haven't solved the problem imho.
I think that the objective is a market study, for which I believe there are some tried and tested methods, although it occurs to me that in this field those may not apply as so many other things, however if that is the case, then I believe "how to find out what the users want without selling vaporware/other questionable tactics" is a worthwhile problem to tackle in and of itself.
Selling vaporware is to me similar to using users as unwitting beta testers, I don't believe in it, I think we should be upfront like the examples you cited: if it is a beta let people know, if it is vaporware, let people know, if it is a demo, let people know.
In my opinion it's the ethical thing to do, not just for you but for your users. Why bother creating a product if it's never going to get traction in the market? You won't be able to afford to support it well, and it won't develop into a great business unless you get significant revenue. This is more unethical for the users, as you'll have to fold or let is stagnate. Why risk it?