Show success before asking for help | Hacker News Reader

Show success before asking for help

sivers.org

105 pointsdanielh32 comments

Most definitely. But it isn't like people are out to get you. Once you've shown success, people think (rightly or not) that you can duplicate it again. And they want in on that. They want to invest their money there because it seems more assured.

If you haven't shown any past success, then you're a risk. What makes you more likely to succeed than any random person?

This is why I like to have a few nice, running web apps of my own. When applying for jobs, they show that I've "succeeded" on my own (beyond what I might have contributed to on a team at my previous jobs). Sure, there are probably many people much smarter than me who don't have such apps to show off. However, my past "success" (at writing code and bringing it to production) is there.

The problem with the $15,000 songwriter that the article mentions is that they were a risk when first signed and so they only got a little. Even as they've proven themselves not to be a risk with their weekly submissions, they already accepted the bad terms and there's little reason for the record company to be "nice" and give them more. Likewise, if the $500,000 advance person is terrible, the record company has agreed to certain terms and there's no reason for them to be "nice" and renegotiate down because they're crap.

The largest part of this is that if something looks like it will succeed with or without help, it seems like a sure thing. Sure things don't require the rewards of high risk things because the chance of loss is low.

It's generally less that people think that you'll be able to do what you did last time again, and more that people believe that you're the kind of person who delivers on their promises. If you want to get a promotion at work to best place to start might be doing something as simple as taking everyone's lunch orders and getting them right. The point isn't to show that you're really talented in one specific area, but rather to create an asset, that asset being a group of people who trust you'll deliver on your promises.

" If you want to get a promotion at work to best place to start might be doing something as simple as taking everyone's lunch orders and getting them right. "

Dang, that is good advice.

This is what happens on the Dragon's Den. The Dragons are much more likely to invest in someone who can prove that they can make a small success on their own, and who has the balance sheet or sales statistics to prove it.

Even if someone has a stellar product or service, if they have only sold a meagre amount to friends and family in two years the Dragons start to get tetchy and either ditch them, or ask for a huge chunk of the company in return for their investment.

Of course, I'm sure the Dragon's Den isn't necessarily much like the real world, but it's interesting to note the things they look for.

"I quickly took it to the Xerox machine, made a copy, and put it back."

1. Don't leave anything confidential out on your desk.

2. Don't let this guy loose in your office.

3. Ethical behavior should be a prerequisite to blogging :)

[EDIT: This was downvoted within 2 minutes of posting, exactly what I expected. It happens every time. Why do people here have such a problem when someone mentions ethical behavior? Is is because they don't want to be preached to or is it because they want to do whatever they want, consequences be damned? Either way, a down vote should be accompanied by a comment. AFAIC, nothing OP had to say mattered once I understood how he got his raw data.]

> AFAIC, nothing OP had to say mattered once I understood how he got his raw data.

Why does that make sense?

Perhaps data is only correct if it was acquired ethically? :/ Maybe the unethical collection of data introduces large margins of error from the ethic-goblins.

You're missing the point. It has nothing to do with the correctness of the data, and everything to do with the means used to collect it. See also: torture & search warrants.

Torture introduces possible error into data. So it's an extremely bad analogy.

Picking up a sheet of paper doesn't call the validity of the data into question. It's still the same data.

Using methods to invalidate accurate results only makes sense if you're more concerned about suppressing certain methods than about accuracy.

Of course, one can find these results interesting and agree with your (1) and (2), as I do.

I'm not sure the ethical merit of what he did is germane to the message of the article.

Either way, a down vote should be accompanied by a comment.

I said this once and PG smacked me down. I think he's wrong. Unless you made an incredibly vapid comment with no substance whatsoever, you don't deserve to be downvoted unless there's at least one comment beneath your post. (Not to say I follow this rule all the time.)

Ooh, now that's ironic. Someone just did a drive-by downmod of all my posts!

edit: and again. I see the Reddit and Digg refugees are out in full force!

Upvoted grandparent, downvoted parent. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.

Oh, the reason's fairly obvious; upmodded for leaving a comment. :)

Down-voted because it's irrelevant to the point he's trying to make. Arguing ethics isn't really that interesting. Discussing success, cash advances, etc etc is far more interesting.

Success = (Factor1 + Factor2 + Factor3 + ...) * Ethics

Ethics is a binary 1 or 0. Maybe not that interesting, but hardly irrelevant.

(Don't believe me? Let your customers find out about you lieing, cheating, or stealing. Then see what happens to your revenue stream.)

(Don't believe me? Let your customers find out about you lieing, cheating, or stealing. Then see what happens to your revenue stream.)

That really just convinces me of the equation

Success = (Factor1 + Factor2 + Factor3 + ...) * Appearance of Ethics

Which still doesn't explain Microsoft, oil companies, tobacco companies, etc.

>> Let your customers find out about you lieing, cheating, or stealing. Then see what happens to your revenue stream.

Your formula for success isn't true in the least. Whole companies have been built on lies and cheating since the world began.

Bell for example, built a whole company after stealing someone elses patent to the telephone.

I'm afraid most customers don't particularly care that much about ethics. At least not to the point that you seem to.

Ethics is certainly not a 1 or 0, otherwise humanity wouldn't struggle with the subject so often. Suggesting that they are a 1 or a 0 indicates to me that you are in no way qualified to judge ethical behavior.

I don't have any problem with people mentioning ethics; however in this case it has NOTHING to do with the point the writer of this article is trying to make.

If you feel so strongly about ethics, write an article about it and post it here.

Let us say someone posts something like this: "Hey guys, I wrote a webapp in C and used Google AdWords to get traffic. I spent $n and made $(n+m) (where m=|m|). This is what I learned about AdWords using my analytics..."

Your comment is like talking about why it is not best to write webapps in C. Yes, you will be correct in saying that it is not a good idea to write webapps in C. Everyone knows that already! For whatever reason and under whatever circumstances, this guy wrote his webapp in C. It perhaps still is a Bad Thing™ but here we are talking and trying to learn about AdWords and analytics!

I didn't downvote you btw :) And let me preempt anyone about to reply "are you saying unethical behavior is only as bad as language of choice of webapps?". That is not what I am saying.

You were probably downvoted because:

1. People don't come here for education in ethics. They might decide to discuss ethics if they find that discussion interesting, though, which leads me to my next point.

2. The first two points of what you said were completely obvious and, by virtue of adding nothing useful, devoid of interest.

It was downvoted because people anticipated you'd be whining about downvotes, and no one likes whining about downvotes.

Respecting confidentiality is not exactly high on my list of ethical priorities. If the information is not dangerous or likely to be misconstrued, and the other party has not earned the respect, I don't think it's morally wrong.

(did not vote on post)

The lesson is good and true for us, IT guys. But the idea behind getting help is exactly that, to show success. If you can show success by yourself why you need then ? So even your trust grows up when you have a happy past, but the problem with new "good" guys is that they don´t have sufficient confidence to pursuit the success by the lack of a past success history. So maybe the big trick is to trust until the end that you can be a success by yourself and then get the world.

Its just like the first rule of bank loans. The best way to get a loan is not to need one.

With a fixed amount of money, people tend to invest less money to risky business. People without past success are more risky. They just follow the common sense.

    	Show success before asking for help.

This is exactly what VCs always have in mind.

I can't believe so many people are missing the moral of the story and focusing on the ethics part of it. Its not like he was harming anyone by making the copy and I'll bet he thought ethics was the last thing people on the blog would be talking about.

Now for the meat and potatos of the story: I think that you can apply this lesson (making it on your own before you ask for help) to many other areas other than the music business. Lets say you were looking for VC funding, don't you think the people funding it would be more impressed if you got your idea up and running without any help? When you do things with little or no help it shows determination and a will to succeed no matter what the odds are.

It could be that people are focusing on the ethics because the "meat and potatoes" of the story are stupid.

The author's main point is: if you're rich and famous, people are more likely to treat you as if you're rich and famous.

The author says you have to "make your own success," and as an example, he points to a "really bad metal" songwriter who was "in a band with a major rock star" and who helped to sell 20M records.

But surely not even the author believes for a second that this songwriter managed to sell 20M records "on his own." Surely there were publishers, promoters, record companies etc. involved, yes? If the songwriter in question was a surprise indie hit, surely the author would have said so?

I think the very idea that a business deal involving an advance payment is somehow a charitable cause ("asking for help") dramatically illustrates the the arrogance, the star-struck cult of fame and money that's brought the music business so low.

In the music industry, don't you have to pay an advance back?

Wouldn't that mean an already rich songwriter can pay it back, even if he bombs?

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