Should I tell you that your startup idea sucks? | Hacker News Reader

Should I tell you that your startup idea sucks?

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39 pointspzaniewicz36 comments

Sometimes, you don't have to tell anyone their idea sucks. You can make them reach that conclusion themselves by asking the right questions - or you'll realise it's not so sucky after all.

"Hmm. How is your idea different from X?" (Instead of "but X does that already, and has a 12 month head start.")

"But what happens when Y?" (Instead of "As soon as Y happens you're screwed.")

"Do you really need W & Z?" (Instead of "You're overreaching. You don't need W and Z in your first iterations.")

Questions let you find out if you're missing the bigger picture, and hopefully let them figure out for themselves what the problems are. If they blow you off they're probably beyond telling anyway.

Some one did both to our startup. It was one of the most productive meetings that I had. The conclusion that we needed to shut shop was pretty clear after that meeting. It was something that I guess we knew already, but needed validation (you know how much founders hang on to hope).

So yes, if an idea sucks, say "it sucks." It will be a revelation.

Agreed. But if can't figure it out and/or they blow you off, point out what you believe their problems are and encourage them to get a second opinion.

If they blow you off, they're telling you they don't want to hear bad news. How to react at that point is a matter of judgment; I've personally found telling people things they don't want to hear is tiring enough that nowadays I save it for emergencies, so in this kind of case I just drop the pointed questions, and nod and smile and say something pleasant that's vague enough not to be untrue.

This is probably the best way to approach it. It doesn't come off as rude, it addresses what it has to address, and it lets everyone reach their own conclusions.

This is really great advice. Few people enjoy or seek out being told they're wrong or their idea is not going to work.

By asking questions, you invite the person to open themselves up within their own assumptions. With the right line of questioning, you can help them see what they've been overlooking. It'll expose the problems with their idea and they'll thank you for leading them to "their own" conclusion, which just happens to agree with yours.

Pretty much never

Every successful startup was pitched at some point to some experienced startup person who thought it was a crap idea.

Ideas change, and are a very small indicator of success to start with. Successful startups are exceptional, just because you have seen 'yet another social image sharing site' fail 50 times doesnt mean the next one will.

Pointing out challenges and not feeling personally excited by a startup is absolutely fine, but saying something sucks and shouldnt be pursued is generally arrogant and naive.

I agree, whether an idea sucks or not is a very subjective thing, and sometimes it can be naive to believe that what you think is going to apply to entire population of the planet. That being said, one should probably point out why in your opinion the idea is weak. Just stress the fact that this is just one opinion, not the ultimate truth.

I would imagine if someone told me about a "microblogging" platform where people would submit posts via SMS to a shortcode I would have brushed it off as foolish.

A lot goes into to how the founders handle the "advice". Lots of items in this thread relate to how the commentor would explain something to someone else, but I think that the key is how you consume what you're told.

This needed to be said. Who are ANY of us to be THE ultimate judge of what will succeed and what will fail?

I consider myself a discerning critic, but there are companies and products that have succeeded that still baffle me, and products that have failed that I would have betted on.

This.

There's a certain arrogance baked into the assumptions of the OP.. that he (or she) knows which ideas are "likely to succeed" and which ones aren't. But no matter how experienced an entrepreneur you are, or what you've done, you never really know what's going to catch on and what isn't. And one measure of a good startup founder, IMO, is the ability to balance taking advice from others, with "keeping your own counsel". And sometimes you just have to say "Hey, Mr. Uber-experienced mentor, serial entrepreneur, VC, former CEO, whatever, ya know, we just think you're wrong and we're doing this anyway".

Even more to the point, sometimes you just have to go out and fail on your own terms, or you'll never be happy with yourself. Some things really can only be learned through direct experience.

Two things that actual banking and travel industry experts told me in 1995: "nobody will do banking over the Internet" and "nobody will book travel on the Web".

The reasons they provided sounded completely plausible - but turned out to also be completely wrong.

So I'd be careful about "experts" dismissing ideas based on their incorrect assumptions.

This is also related to the fact that there is no static >Internet<. It's changing every day. In 1995 you won't have thought of >banking in your pocket<. Today, as so many people use the internet, everything can happen.

To innovate you have to be far-seeing. Besides of other circumstance, you have a good chance to be successful with an idea.

But for somebody starting a company in 1995, online banking would probably have been a bad idea.

E-trade had $11 million in revenue in 1994. By 1995 there was clearly a market for online transactions to people that had the vision.

In 1995, Quicken, Money, and Managing Your Money already had the ability to dial-up to banks, retrieve your balances, and even move money around.

In 1995, there was already airline reservation capability on CompuServe, AOL, and the like. I don't remember if you could actually buy the tickets, or if you had to call in your credit card number. But that's just a detail. The thing that really disintermediated the travel agent is the ability to search through the listings.

I think the people you talked to simply had a vested interest in the existing way of doing things. They were in the banking and the travel industries. The tech industry, by contrast, already had other ideas.

There are just so many good ideas that are originally decreed as failures that it seems like madness to try and stop somebody from trying. The Xerox R&D team that was told the gui would never really catch on. The investors that told Amazon nobody would purchase books of the internet. Even the Yahoo execs that turned down Google in 1997. Of course some ideas, like the chocolate tea pot, might seemed so doomed to failure that it would be cruel to not call them out. That is until chocolate tea pots become the next big food trend. For more concrete evidence of why this is a bad idea though you should look to the performance of stock market traders over the last 30 years, for the most part their average performance rarely deviates from a 50/50 success rate.

Unlike the stock market, the startup world isn't even close to 50/50. If you say that they will fail, you're much more likely to be right than wrong.

Note that Google had no way of making money in 1997. It was actually Overture that pioneered pay-per-click search engines -- and Yahoo bought Overture.

To the OP: if you feel that this knowledge imparted in the context of a 72-hour hackathon is of any importance, I have to question your overall context.

A hackathon is a social event with some potential learning involved. Any decent product and/or idea is going to have to survive beyond a 72-hour window. Your contributions during this timeframe, compared to the overall success/failure of a product, are meaningless.

Not trying to bash here, just recommend you don't overthink it. Go the hackathon, be a cheerleader and have a good time. And take the opportunity to sell all their mobile games as a challenge to yourself, much like a salesman's interview: sell me this pen!

You can ask the right questions ("what problem does this solve?", "What are you going to learn by doing this?", etc) but if it's not your startup or project, you are not there to provide or judge the answers on your own.

Yes, you should.

There is no space in the market for drama queens. If you can't give negative feedback now because of their feelings, how do you expect to give it to them when their company doesn't meet targets & expectations?

Negative feedback is priceless. It's toughening, it points people in the right direction and, sometimes, it helps to laser-focus (especially when it's pointless - eg remember when people asked for GANTT charts on Basecamp?).

should I focus on encouraging and motivating them to realize how cool it is to create your own product

No. You shouldn't have to motivate someone to see how cool something is. Expose them, yes. Motivate them, no. If they can't see how cool it is on their own, then they shouldn't be doing it.

should I help them create a product that has a chance to succeed?

In a hackathon? Really? What is the purpose of a hackathon, to create an outcome or to enjoy the process and the compansionship and maybe even learn something? Personally, I can't imagine a worse environment to create a successful product.

it could be devastating for a newbie

That's a pretty perverted use case for the word "devastating". A serious accident? A loss of a loved one? Those are devastating. Being told your idea sucks? If that's devastating to you, maybe you don't have the backbone for this and should be doing something else.

I was always very gentle with this situations

Don't be. You're not doing them any favors by coddling them. They need brutal honesty. If they don't get it from you now, rest assured that they will from someone else later.

it's almost impossible to succeed with wrong assumptions, too big scope or incomplete team.

I would rephrase that "it's almost impossible to succeed this time". They will likely learn much more failing on their own than blindly taking some mentor's advice. When you taught your children to walk, did you ever let them fall? Personal failures provide the best feedback to toughen up and grow. Don't take that away from them.

They wasted the weekend

You can waste a weekend getting drunk and watching TV, but you can't waste a weekend at a hackathon. Lighten up.

Why take such a hard line on your comments? Reading this post, I felt you were saying, "You clearly and obviously don't know how to handle situations like these and you don't get it - these poor folks were very unlucky to get you, not me." You just seem pissed off at OP and have a very holier than thou attitude in your comments. His take is different from yours, that's all. That doesn't make him wrong and you right. Lighten up.

You just seem pissed off at OP and have a very holier than thou attitude in your comments.

I'm not seeing that at all. If anything, the author of TFA seems to have something of a "holier than thou" attitude. It's a bit grating and abrasive, honestly. If I were to write a reply, it would probably take a tone fairly similar to the one edw just wrote.

I don't think we need to be rude to say to someone that something is going to fail or something is not good. It is not a matter of time: –Look, I don't have a minute for you, so your project sucks. It is a matter of being a good persona. Simply use others words will make it better on the other people, and you will not be responsible of creating ravaged developers: –Look, your idea sounds well but you need this, this, and do this, and I don't see this happening right now, bla bla. 2 minutes speech is enough and better than saying "it sucks, and the doors is that way".

Simply, put on the table the facts, those ones will do the reasoning work inside the enterpreneur brain and tell him his wrong, lost, or behind the point he think he is. Steve Jobs is dead and I hope in peace. We don't need any Steveness on this world.

No, I will not tell you it sucks (because who knows). But I will definitely ask you how you plan to make money. People who count on going viral to get some organic traction through a freemium model don't seem to have the slightest idea of makin a real sale.

Some ideas really do suck, and in this case, yes, it's always kindest to say so before someone wastes their time.

It's a bit like telling someone they have bad breath. Yes, it makes you the bad guy, but it's the kindest thing to do in the long run.

I think you should tell them, but not in those words. Carefully explain your objections. At worst it will be a good filter for teams that don't have the necessary commitment to carry through on their idea. If they are smart, they'll consider what you say, see what applies, and make any modifications that seem justified. If they quit, it's better they give up early in the process, because there will much more discouraging things hitting them down the line, and if they can't handle a few reasonable objections, they aren't going to make it even with a good idea.

As a contractor I have said this to my client. I did it because he was a 20 years old student and I felt responsible for him. He went on with the project though. Yes, it was a failure.

This is a big one. When contracting/consulting, if I see a problem with client's vision or specs (and the problem is within the scope of what I was hired for), I feel it is my professional duty to tell them (often quite bluntly) exactly what is wrong and my ideas for fixes or workarounds.

I think this should also extend to any sort of critical relationship, such as when someone's success or failure depends very much on your actions and advice (for example, in mentor-mentee relationships as well as someone is paying you).

There are many good ways of pointing out faults that don't boil down to "this sucks" and trying to sugar coat, gloss over, or hint at major problems is doing a major disservice to whoever is on the other side of the relationship.

Regardless, civility and decorum should rule the day. Advisors and mentors are valuable for the introspection and internal analysis they induce. If you can find a way to encourage people to channel themselves in the right direction with tact and dignity, go for it. Otherwise it's probably best to just let people live their own lives, learn their own lessons, and earn their own success.

I'd say that if nobody thinks that the idea will fail, it probably will. If it's so obviously good, why didn't anybody succeed with it yet?

That said, you should tell them. You should also tell them that they can change their idea any time they want, and that they don't need a great idea, a good one with great implementation is enough.