Wearing your Failures on your Sleeve

nytimes.com

19 pointsanishkothari3 comments

This is really hard for me to explain and I don't want people to think I'm being ignorant. I've tried to think deeply about other people's ideas. Sometimes you have to experience a problem to really understand why the idea is good.

I still feel that 80% of these startup ideas are really bad. Maybe there is something wrong in the way I look at them. I want to join a startup here in Santa Monica but so many people like to work on garbage. Can someone explain to me what is wrong with my view ?

If you feel it's garbage, don't work on it. :-) Many startups fail because of execution problems, many fail because they are too early, many fail because they are too late. And yes, some fail because the idea doesn't look good. There is no reason to waste time on the 80% (or 99%) of ideas that don't look good.

But.... Many great ideas didn't look so hot at the time. Instagram? Does the world need one more startup doing photos? Snapchat? Text that doesn't stick around? Really? Of course hindsight corrects us.

Thanks mathattack on the reply. What you're saying is true.

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