Memo to Start-ups: You’re Supposed to Be Changing the World, Remember? | Hacker News Reader

Memo to Start-ups: You’re Supposed to Be Changing the World, Remember?

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Investor: What are you building?

Entrepreneur: Artificially intelligent software that automatically builds sophisticated business applications based on the enterprise's business rules.

Investor: Your competitors are too entrenched. What can you do that's simpler?

Entrepreneur: Small business software that ties all a company's applications together.

Investor: You'll never compete with Microsoft. What else?

Entrepreneur: Tiny apps that all kinds of people can use to run their stuff.

Investor: 37signals will kill you. What else?

Entrepreneur: Social software that enables your sales people to understand what's happening in the global marketplace.

Investor: It'll never work. Can you do something more practical?

Entrepreneur: An intelligent e-commerce system that guarantees the consumer the best value.

Investor: You'll never compete with Amazon or Ebay. Got any other ideas?

Entrepreneur: Recipe software.

Investor: OK, if that's the best you can do, we'll go with it. Geez, I just wish you guys would dream a little bigger.

I like this thoughtful example. Problem is, like what you've outlined, 90% of this conversation happens in the entrepreneur's head which is precisely the complaint!

Perhaps the startups most interested in changing the world are also least interested in impressing the attention-deficient flavor-of-the-month TC crowd?

I think there's a time factor too...for much of 2005-2007, many of the people who might otherwise be changing the world were a.) working for hedge funds or b.) chasing social networking, casual gaming, or video startups because that's where the money was. It's only with the recent financial crisis that getting deep expertise has become fashionable again, because now there are no easy outs. But it takes a minimum of 2-3 years (some would say 10+) to go from "I'm going to change the world" to "I'm changing the world."

Yes, I also believe this is related to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=727396

Oh I'm sorry, I work at a social networking entertainment start-up. You're absolutely right, I should be changing the world. I'll get started on that right away.

Letsee, I'm going to need some granola, Beatles tunes, a hipster haircut, and a peace-encouraging, inner-city-black-kid-helping, hippie-esque, capitalism-hating, new-age social-green-Obama-natural job. Doing something. That will change the world. Yeah.

Textbook example of a strawman attack. A social networking entertainment startup will probably "change the world" about as much as your granola lover will.

FWIW, I founded a casual-gaming + social-networking site in 2007. So I'm including myself in that smart-people-doing-useless-things complaint.

And I maintain that a social networking entertainment startup is most likely useless. If that's what you wanna do, more power to you. But don't kid yourself about its importance.

Sarah, it's called selection bias. The companies that are changing the world aren't rushing to get on stage for a blog conference that garners no tangible benefit in their target markets. What's the value prop for TC50? Getting in front of a bunch of investors and bloggers with 50 other companies and trying to rise above the noise for the attention of a questionable judging panel? (what gives these guys any authority in markets they don't understand?).

Investors are a dime a dozen in the bay area, and bloggers are starved for content (including TechCrunch), so they'll cover you anyhow if its relevant - and not in a flood of 50 other posts in under 2 days. Net tangible benefit to TC50 to the revolutionaries?: $0

The collective decision about TC50 in our office was, "Meh, why waste the time?".

This is like being lectured on good manners by Kanye West. Good message from a source with no credibility on the subject whatsoever.

The article references the judges' comments. The credibility you measure should be that of the judges.

The article is also an opinion piece by Sarah Lacy, not just straight-up reporting.

Because writing for TechCrunch is really changing the world. I'm waiting for the "Memo to TechCrunch: you're supposed to do serious journalism, remember?"

my downvote button is disabled since I submitted the article, please do the honors for me. thanks.

(referring to troll comment above)

Maybe you should've specified which comment you wanted people to downvote, because everyone seems to be downvoting your comment! ;)

Edit: I was just joking; I didn't expect you'd actually add that last line. I think everyone knew what you meant.

This article refers to the judges' opinions.

Your rebuttal is ad hominem (DH1: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html).

Lets try to rewrite the gp's post as DH5. Also, someone fix the parents score. Ad-hominem posts should be discouraged.

The author thinks start-ups should change the world. She's mistaken. Start-ups are businesses, they're meant to support the owners, provide services or goods, and feed families. If the owners manage to sell for some multiple of what they would have made working during that same time frame, Great. That's all that is needed.

Her call for start-ups to be swinging for the fences is as well founded as I would be in calling for her, as a journalist, to go report on something that really "matters", something that could cause a "positive" change, something with at least as much impact as jgrahamc's petition (edit: just reread this, I am not knocking the petition, just setting a bar. I was impressed.). It's she who chose start-ups, they're just business men, engineers, and programmers, they don't owe TC. And besides, how does the following work exactly? TC chose the attendees, and now they pass the blame.

I don’t say this to knock the conference or the selections we made. But the truth is I heard it too consistently backstage to ignore it. To be fair, we’re at that point in the start-up cycle where this is to be expected.

(I like the idea of labeling posts against Paul's system. I think it would make the only useful meme I have ever known.)

Maybe each comment should have a list where you can mark posts using that system.

Because apples are oranges. I'm waiting for the "Memo to apples: Yo, where's the citrusy appeal that I've come to expect from oranges?"

Seriously, that a commentator wouldn't succeed in a particular field doesn't give absolution to those in said field. A journalist is not an entrepreneur. No crap.

I'm kind of confused...seems like TC are undermining their own brand here. If several TC50 entries were so boring that they're apologizing for it afterwards, does that mean their selection process was flawed, or are they just saying they were deluged with umpteen 'me too' ideas and many of their selections were not good, just the least bad? I feel a bit sad for the companies mentioned :-/

But then, as they say in the comments, how would twitter have looked on day 1? I admit that when I first heard of it, I thought it was something for people who couldn't understand IRC.

Is it just me or is it sad that they seem to be blaming the entrepreneur's for not wowing the judges. TechCrunch was the gate keeper of the event, it is their responsibility to find the game changers.

Don't blame the entrepreneur's because you forgot to post in the guidelines, that your business must change the world or won't be accepted.

I have a hard time believing that people how are trying to change the world appear like that from the moment they launched.

I'm so sick of this change the world bullshit. Most of us are just trying to get by.

I am too. I am sick of Google trying to "build a faster internet" giving out tips on how to optimize PHP3. Enough marketing bullshit.

I just like when people who have neither the skill nor motivation to change the world berate others for not doing so.

I prefer when writers provide extraordinary prose, too, but she has no prayer of doing that.

Yeah, nobody berates a gas station owner who doesn't provide a game-changing way of pumping gas. Likewise, most realistic entrepreneurs are just trying to make a product that some people will use and pay for.

Solve a problem. Charge a reasonable fee for it. Iterate on this.

I find the premise a bit questionable. Was Google recognizable as a company that was going to change the world when it was a startup? Altavista, Yahoo existed. Wasn't it just trying to make existing things better?

Right. And when you pitch the vision, "We're going to collect all the data in the world and organize it in a useful way" people will dismiss you as crazy or say, "Ok, come back when you've done it."

I totally agree with what Sarah says but I think those who complain, including investors, would probably dismiss bigger ideas as not concrete enough most of the time -- at least that has been my experience

Those people just don’t understand the Valley and what makes great start-ups great

What makes start-ups great is that they are your business, not you working for someone else. They are your passion not just your job. They are your nimble flying car to your entrenched competitors' oil tanker juggernaut.

Changing the world... has nothing to do with it.

I am really annoyed with this memo. Not that most of the startups were good or bad at TC50. Likely bad. Just the researcher or commentator philosophy to harp on people who are at least doing something. Writing about it and interviewing people is one thing but to take action and build a business is extremely difficult.

Until Sarah does something (not even important) but anything, she should keep her opinions to herself.

While the critique is not without basis, perhaps part of the problem is that the industry's a tad spoiled by a constant string of game-changers? Not even the transhumanists are claiming that innovation's going to happen in consistently accelerating rates.

And who knows? What if TC50 was held just a month later, when somebody else's pet project's finally had its last cog hammered into place? Much depends on the timing of the thing.

They have to remember not everyones in startups to change the world. I don't think many here would be to upset if all they ended up with a $170 million exit.

"I want to see huge audacious failures and huge gaudy wins"

Then of course everyone should put aside their own personal financial interests to satisfy you. Right?

agreed. I've had huge audacious failures. Its took years to recover. I'm not gun shy, just learned and now have a family to balance in my decisions.

The last startup I was a part of was designed entirely to make money for everyone involved by solving an extremely specific problem that you've never heard of. At least, you've probably never heard of it -- maybe you're a dentist, in which case, yeah, I can help.

(The entrenched startups from the 80's that we're competing with? You've never heard of them, either.)

Our response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829238

Most companies that change the world rarely appear as if they will change the world at the beginning stages.

By the same token, most startups that appear like they'll change the world rarely end up changing the world.

"too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google"

Google started by trying to do better search (big change to search geeks, incremental change from perspective of people outside the search world). Google could have easily been an early sell to Yahoo, MS, AtlaVista, etc... After they hit big, they were able to dream big. I'm pretty sure AdWords was not in their original biz plan.

Start-ups by definition don’t have the experience, market position, funding or resources to tackle obvious market opportunities.

Utter bullshit. I'm surprised she was brave enough to print that in an article that mentions mint.com

Look at an existing market, find how it's underserved, improve it, even if just a little, get rich. Mint did it, 37signals does it, and plenty of successful startups do it.

<<Note to Self>> The objective of my business is not to impress Sarah Lacy and/or other tech bloggers/armchair critics.

what else do they expect? they got what VCs wanted in down economy, safe bets that will likely to bring some steady(not crazy) returns. How many start ups do you know that pitched to make greater improvement and change the world right at their first launch day? how many of them have changed the world? how many of them were looked at as serious candidates to do that? you see where I am getting. It is a nature of the beast, you do not know something is going to change the world until it did because the world evolved along with the idea.

RedBeacon winning this year doesn't help TC50s credit, in addition to Yammer winning last year.

google would've been thought of as "yet another search engine" before the name "google" existed. Nobody knows who or what is going to change the world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com