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Comment by rsp1984 | Hacker News Reader

rsp1984

Appreciate the chime-in and honesty.

> If building a valuable product, talking to users, and focusing on facts sounds good to you, you should consider applying to YC.

Also being perfectly honest, it does sound very appealing, but I'm afraid it unfortunately just isn't what makes startups successful in 2023. Speaking from personal experience and carrying the battle scars.

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It's certainly not sufficient and experiencing that in practice is painful and sucks.

building a valuable product doesn't make you successful in 2023? Please, elaborate.

* markets measure sentiment

* capital flows through trust networks

* the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws)

* Curse of Development: the depth of any transaction is limited by the depth of the shallower party (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/the%20curse%20of%20develop...)

* You Can't Tell People Anything (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/you%20can't%20tell%20peopl...)

* Much Madness is Divinest Sense (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/much%20madness%20is%20divi...)

* Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target Destroys All Value (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/sufficiently%20powerful%20...)

These all sound like marketing tactic problems, not fundamental "build something valuable" problems.

How does this invalidate the possibility of a valuable product leading to success?

At least on the consumer side of things it doesn't. The consumer-facing side of the internet is quite mature. You are fighting for consumers' attention with giant companies that have addiction down to a science. Furthermore there are entire categories of the internet that have people's attention on lock (social media, video, music, gaming, news, chat, e-commerce and gambling). Breaking through all that existing noise is super tough now, a valuable product won't cut it. If you look at the big consumer-facing successes post-2015 (TikTok, OpenAI, Fortnite, Disney+), they all spent obscene amounts of money to get where they are at now

I’d be curious what does make them successful.

Making the "right" product, and talking to the "right" customers.

That's encompassed by "valuable" in "valuable product." If it's not the right product for the right customer, it won't have value.

At the right time. That last part is more or less luck (and you need to have already done the other two)

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